It was a day I hoped would never happen, but I sat down this weekend and updated my little US national debt clock to display over $10,000,000,000,000. I say it's a sad day because despite what some people say (that the further in debt our country is the more prosperous we are) I find it hard to believe we're better off because of the debt we've just taken on. The whole concept of "money as debt" just seems corrupt. Then again, I'm not an expert on economics. Maybe having our national debt increasing at the rate of $36 per millisecond is a good thing.
The debt clock started when a friend e-mailed me a years ago and asked how to do a counter like a clock that starts at a specific point. He needed it in Flash so I whipped one together and sent it to him and then realized I could maybe do something worthwhile by putting it out there for people to use. I did.. and it hit myspace and facebook.. and I'm currently seeing about 65,000 views of it each month. I encouraged people to download it and install it on their own servers (it's not sucking too much bandwidth, but they shouldn't have to wait on my server for their page to finish loading..) so I'm not sure how many views it's getting that way.. I know it's being used on quite a few political web sites (both Republicans and Democrats running for Congress for example), in articles, and on some personal web sites.
I don't fuss with the accuracy of it since I figure if they can pull a number like $700,000,000,000 out of thin air just because it's "a really large number" then there's no point in trying to be too accurate on anything based on numbers provided by the same folks. I like to think that over the last few years I've helped a tiny bit to raise awareness of our out of control spending.. I can hope it's not too late to sort things out and maybe someday I'll be able to reverse the clock.
Off Topic
Updated debt clock to show over $10,000,000,000,000 Sunday, October 05, 2008
Check Layer 1 first Wednesday, July 09, 2008
I was working at about midnight the other night when I heard my little VPN app scream that it'd lost connection.. I noticed that I couldn't get out to my favorite site and checked my DSL modem.... the status light was off. So the next morning I got up and saw it was still off. I called the DSL provider, we went through the standard power off/on stuff and the regular checklist and the guy in India said he'd overnight a new modem (it still hasn't gotten here..). A little while later I remembered something from my CCNA 1 class - check "layer 1" first.
So I swapped out the line between the modem and the wall jack. The lights came back on. I took that phone line and tested it with a phone and it was bad... heh. Always check layer 1 first.
So I swapped out the line between the modem and the wall jack. The lights came back on. I took that phone line and tested it with a phone and it was bad... heh. Always check layer 1 first.
CNN, ABC, NBC, etc - ENOUGH! Thursday, April 19, 2007
I'm not trying to minimize what happened at Virginia Tech.. but I've heard way too much about the killer. My family has seen the pictures of him glaring into the camera holding guns way too many times, we've heard his nut case self rambling on about why he did it. His goal was to be immortalized, and the media is giving him that in spades.
Cover the loss, the victims, etc... but please stop giving his messages air time.
Cover the loss, the victims, etc... but please stop giving his messages air time.
Save to AVI from Lorex QLR0440 Wednesday, February 07, 2007
This'll be off topic for Flash developers, so sorry. Well, actually... you might be interested because you're a developer and this is a tale of woefully bad UI.
What I have is a Lorex QLR0440 based cctv system with two "4 port" PCI cards. I've had them both for a while, but they're still selling these babies at Radio Shack and lots of online retailers are selling them new. These aren't the super cheap cards you find on eBay coming from Hong Kong either. They come with documentation in English, nice packaging, etc. They have sensor inputs (so you can trigger cameras from motion detectors or door sensors) and output relays. So you can do trick things like have motion detection in the camera turn on a light and send an email to you with an image from the camera.
One of my cards works well (doesn't freeze up, displays and records video, etc. but if I put both cards in the system then one will freeze up after a short time. I haven't hassled with it because it was fairly low priority, one worked and did enough to keep people happy, etc. It's a really neat tool to have set up at a business, and it does work.
But... There's loads, and I mean loads of UI issues in the server, client, and search applications. Here's a for instance.
When you've got some video captured and you want to get it into a format that you can use (wtf is a .mpf file anyway?) you use the "Save to AVI" feature. It seems pretty simple really. You select one of the cameras and click somewhere on the timeline until you've got an image and then you click the little button. But then you get this little popup window:
And if you're like me you click the Start button, right? but then you get this error:
So I try again but this time I pull down the little combo box and the only other choice is "DIVX". No luck with that either since it gives a similar error. Drats. I search around on the web and find nothing, I look all through the Lorex docs and find nothing. It should be easy right? So I try typing AVI into the little combobox. I get an error. Then it hits me.. AVI isn't compressed. Th little compression type combobox should be blank. I clear it out and out spits an AVI file. So why wasn't it blank to begin with?
Oh, and just you go digging through the docs and find somewhere that says you have to open more than one port if you want to use the remote search features. It took me a lot of tinkering to figure out that video was (for instance) on port 2020 like the default config, but for the search stuff to work I had to open ports 2020-2024. And to me that's a primary use of this thing. I want to be able to sit at home and see video from yesterday.
Oh, Oh.. . and you have to log in with a password every time you connect. ? No option to remember the password? And every time you disconnect from the server you get a "are you sure you want to disconnect?" prompt. When you exit the application you get "Are you sure you want to quit?" YES, I am freaking sure I want to quit for the 500th time. Give me a "remember this choice" checkbox or some way to turn this off.
And there are some big features that could be there.. almost are there.. but not quite. Like in the server application you have some buttons you can use to open or close relays (think turning on/off lights or sirens, reboot the pc, or whatever). Can I do that from the remote client? Nope. Boy.. that'd be a nice feature, and I bet it'd be about 20 lines of code to get it working. Arrgh. But.. of course I found a workaround. Yep. That's what God made VNC for. I just VNC into the server, open the VistaPro server app, and click that relay button. And I'm sitting at home. So there.
What really bugs me is the QLR0440 isn't a cheap little toy (Radio Shack is selling these things online for $399 each but get 'em on Amazon for about 1/2 that
) and yet the software and support info is in the same dismal state that I found it in over a year ago. ? I can understand rushing a product out with bugs and features that aren't quite fleshed out, but then you put out an update that fixes the bugs and you update your support pages on your web site.
What I have is a Lorex QLR0440 based cctv system with two "4 port" PCI cards. I've had them both for a while, but they're still selling these babies at Radio Shack and lots of online retailers are selling them new. These aren't the super cheap cards you find on eBay coming from Hong Kong either. They come with documentation in English, nice packaging, etc. They have sensor inputs (so you can trigger cameras from motion detectors or door sensors) and output relays. So you can do trick things like have motion detection in the camera turn on a light and send an email to you with an image from the camera.
One of my cards works well (doesn't freeze up, displays and records video, etc. but if I put both cards in the system then one will freeze up after a short time. I haven't hassled with it because it was fairly low priority, one worked and did enough to keep people happy, etc. It's a really neat tool to have set up at a business, and it does work.
But... There's loads, and I mean loads of UI issues in the server, client, and search applications. Here's a for instance.
When you've got some video captured and you want to get it into a format that you can use (wtf is a .mpf file anyway?) you use the "Save to AVI" feature. It seems pretty simple really. You select one of the cameras and click somewhere on the timeline until you've got an image and then you click the little button. But then you get this little popup window:
And if you're like me you click the Start button, right? but then you get this error:
Starting AVI conversion..
Compression type {M,P,G,4} not supported on this system
Finished AVI conversion
So I try again but this time I pull down the little combo box and the only other choice is "DIVX". No luck with that either since it gives a similar error. Drats. I search around on the web and find nothing, I look all through the Lorex docs and find nothing. It should be easy right? So I try typing AVI into the little combobox. I get an error. Then it hits me.. AVI isn't compressed. Th little compression type combobox should be blank. I clear it out and out spits an AVI file. So why wasn't it blank to begin with?
Oh, and just you go digging through the docs and find somewhere that says you have to open more than one port if you want to use the remote search features. It took me a lot of tinkering to figure out that video was (for instance) on port 2020 like the default config, but for the search stuff to work I had to open ports 2020-2024. And to me that's a primary use of this thing. I want to be able to sit at home and see video from yesterday.
Oh, Oh.. . and you have to log in with a password every time you connect. ? No option to remember the password? And every time you disconnect from the server you get a "are you sure you want to disconnect?" prompt. When you exit the application you get "Are you sure you want to quit?" YES, I am freaking sure I want to quit for the 500th time. Give me a "remember this choice" checkbox or some way to turn this off.
And there are some big features that could be there.. almost are there.. but not quite. Like in the server application you have some buttons you can use to open or close relays (think turning on/off lights or sirens, reboot the pc, or whatever). Can I do that from the remote client? Nope. Boy.. that'd be a nice feature, and I bet it'd be about 20 lines of code to get it working. Arrgh. But.. of course I found a workaround. Yep. That's what God made VNC for. I just VNC into the server, open the VistaPro server app, and click that relay button. And I'm sitting at home. So there.
What really bugs me is the QLR0440 isn't a cheap little toy (Radio Shack is selling these things online for $399 each but get 'em on Amazon for about 1/2 that
) and yet the software and support info is in the same dismal state that I found it in over a year ago. ? I can understand rushing a product out with bugs and features that aren't quite fleshed out, but then you put out an update that fixes the bugs and you update your support pages on your web site. 
