Pyroblogg

Yesterday, February 8th was my 23rd birthday.  I received ‘The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes‘ , a Bliptronic 5000 and a fantastic dinner from my girlfriend, Brit.   I know of a few other gifts that should be arriving in the mail any day now…   As a ‘gift’ to myself, I’m putting another $25 into Kiva.org for a cycle or two of lending.  Check it out for yourself, Kiva is a great way to help people accomplish their goals without making them charity cases.

Finally, to celebrate; here is a wonderful performance of the birthday song by my dad.

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PS Prepare yourselves, all ye who leave me phone messages.

PPS My blog was taken down for a few days due to a snafu in a configuration file and the fact that I was celebrating my birthday over the weekend.

I was worried for a bit that I’d lost everything.  Thankfully fixing one line of code make everything work just fine again.  Also, I recently signed up for an account with Backupify to backup my social media endeavors in case the worst happens.  Things like this are also nice* wakeup calls for better routine db backups and maintenance.

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays by zachschwoebel

I hope that you are enjoying the holiday with your family or other close loved ones.

If you faced travel I hope it went smoothly and you arrived safely at your destination.  If you were snowed in by inclement weather or otherwise unable to celebrate I hope that you will still make the best of it.

Now get off your computer and go have some fun!

In case you skipped through or missed the Facebook privacy update stuff earlier this month I’ll give you an update.  In an effort to be more social,  Facebook now considers the following, Your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages you are a fan of to be “Publicly Available Information.”  And by social,  I do mean it *is* easier now for people who might want to friend you to do so.  However, it also gives advertisers and others access to more of your information to target their ads.  They no longer have to “ask” for this “privileged information,” it’s just out there for everyone to see.

Some of the information, like your name, profile picture, and current city is actually less invasive than having your name, number and street address in a public phone book.  But the rest of them are things you used to have a degree of control over.  I reckon most users felt ok with their circle of friends knowing that they’re a member  ”I’ve partied in a cornfield” but I don’t think they were planning on sharing it with  everyone on Facebook, and beyond (make no mistake, it’s available to a lot of people/companies now)

Users gave this information to Facebook with a respectable degree of confidence that they got to decide who had access to it.  You knew that if you joined “My hometown can out drink your hometown!” your friends might see it.  But not, say, your employer whom you’ve specifically not friended because they have no business knowing who your friends are, what pages you like or what things/ideas you personally associate yourself with.  Now, theoretically, everyone can get access to this information, it’s “publicly available.”

The reason Facebook has pulled this bait and switch on it’s users is because it’s actually part of their business model.  Get users to input trusted information, use that information in combination with information gathered from their friends to sell targeted advertising, Profit.  Letting you keep your information to your self, if you so chose, was costing Facebook money they could have been bringing in from more specifically and more easily targeted ads.  By labeling this information “public” and completely removing your control from the loop, Facebook has made it easier to make more valuable associations and thus make more money.  All without caring what your intent was in having a Facebook profile in the first place.

Personally, I keep my Facebook account to keep occasional tabs on friends, and increasingly, family (I just friended 3 aunts in 2 days, and they all found me.)   I didn’t ask for, nor do I want, anyone outside of the people I’ve accepted as friends to know which groups i’m in or pages i’m a fan of.  I didn’t join those  groups or friend people for that information to be in the public record.  This is in contrast to my website, blog or Twitter, for example, where from day 1 I had the expectation that every character I typed would be in the wide open for a lot of people to see.  I expected the exact opposite from Facebook and am very disappointed.

What Facebook should have done is made the control of these settings more granular, not removed it completely.  I really like the new privacy control over the status updates, where you can select whom you’d like to share each individual post with.  They should have extended this control to your friends list, groups, and pages.  If I have a Facebook account and I really don’t want you to use my information (like it was in the past!) I should be able to make that decision for myself.

If you look, not even that hard, you can find a lot of information about me on the internet. Information that in large part, I have put there with the intention that it was going to be on the open internet.  I’m really not afraid of having my name around the internet, what i’m upset about is the means by which Facebook has come to this point with the private information of millions of people.

For you, Facebook might really be the only “web presence” you have and you may have considered it your little corner of the internet, accessible only to the people you choose.  Well, it’s increasingly becoming less and less of your corner and more and more of Facebook’s file on you.

I say something because apparently Facebook cares about what their users think, and I want it to be a better experience for all of its users.  But when they have the authority to amend their terms (and rightly so) without notifying you or requiring any action on your part and then  suddenly redefining how they handle your information it makes me think they really are barely listening at all.

End Rant.  Care to comment? I’d like your opinion if you have one, even it it’s “meh, who cares.”

PS Don’t ever say anything sarcastic or vent on Facebook.  The world might react, and take off your head.

With the recent release of the Foobar200 v1.0 beta I am finishing up a new release of FooSnarl to be released later this week. Watch this blog for more details.

Update [12/16] - So I feel like I’m shooting myself in the foot here, but there will be no release at the moment.  It turns out i’m becoming notoriously bad at estimating time needed for projects, especially where padding for unforeseen events comes into play.  After making my post last week I had some personal issues come up that have been taking up a significant amount of time.  It also seems I have undertaken a few too many homemade Christmas presents this year, and with THAT’s a deadline I can’t miss.

That being said, progress is being made.  Two-way communication between Foobar and Snarl is coming along nicely.  There will soon be configurable actions when left (or right) clicking the snarl notifications.  It’s the handling of the configuration that’s been slowing me up.  As far as deadlines, lets say I’m confident FooSnarl will hit 1.0 no later than Foobar2k releases a stable 1.0.

For more day-to-day, short form updates on FooSnarl progress, follow my new twitter account @FooSnarl

For heckling about the delay, use the comments below or tweet me @pyrodogg

BisHack.com Launced Today!

BisHack is my attempt to spark some interest for a hackerspace in Bismarck.  I essentially want to continue the great times I had back in Minneapolis with the folks from TC Maker.

Since I’ve set up my workbench a few weeks ago I’ve been working on a few projects and I’ve really started to miss meeting up with other makers and chatting about/showing off the projects we’re working on.  Ultimately I would still like to have a place to actually meet up with makers and work on those projects together.  I’m hoping I can find some people to start a small space, or at least meet up for drinks.

If you know any makers/hackers in the Bismarck area, please send them to BisHack.org

I need a workbench.  My computer desk just isn’t suited for working on projects, especially ones involving electronics and soldering.  I don’t have much for woodworking tools at my apartment yet so I’ve been looking for some nice plans that won’t take much to build.

A few days ago I came across a bench designed by Bre Pettis for the Make: Weekend Projects program back in 2006.  It’s a nice simple design consisting of plywood, 2×4s, and wood screws, something I can accomplish in a day.  The design calls for making it 8′ long but I think that’ll be a bit big for my needs so I’m going to cut it in half to 4′.  The new workspace will be good because  I anticipate working on a few projects concurrently.

The Build

On Saturday I went across town to the local Menards to pick up my supplies.  It was nice to find a 4′ x 4′ piece of plywood for the top instead of getting a 4×8 piece and only using half.  I got a handsaw to do all the cutting and a $30 cordless drill for fastening things together (you could use a hammer if you’re so inclined).

I got all of the 2×4’s cut down in no time, using towel covered table benches as my saw horses.  One benefit of making decisions ahead of time  is that I was able to eliminate an entire 2×4 from the design, saving me time and money.

I got a little help holding down the plywood and got the table top, shelf and back brace cut next.

Screwing things went together went pretty well too.  It turns out that cheap and small power tools don’t have much power.  I had to turn my drill up to it’s maximum torque setting just to drive 2 1/2″ screws through 2×4s.  I guess I could have drilled pilot holes.  Or I could have just bought a hammer and some nails.

The Results

For the first (if simple) woods project I’ve tackled in a while I managed to get everything put together fairly square.  The table is even near dead on level!

More photos on flickr

Go ahead and make your own! Let me know how it goes.

More info on workbench design

Make Podcast: Weekend Projects – Make a Workbench

This week I am in Denver for new employee training with my new company.  Training has been going great so far, today we finally got into the guts of the system that we’ll be working with.  It’s very impressive to work with the software that the company has developed to date.   I really look forward to working with it back at my project site.

Apart from training it has also been a fun week hanging out with the other new recruits.  Monday night we went downtown to the Wynkoop Brewpub for dinner and some fantastic brews.  Friday night some of the founding partners of the company are taking everyone one out as well.

Yesterday, when I got back from dinner I finally thought to check hackerspaces.org to see if there was a hackerspace in the Denver area.  I was bummed to find out that I had just missed an opportunity to drop in on a DenHac meeting.  Such is life, I’ll just have to check ahead the next time I go traveling somewhere.

Two of my good friends, Ryan and Molly, were married last friday.  Their wedding was fantastic (not too much crying)  and the reception was a really fun party for the two of them.  The happy couple is now honeymooning for a week out in Yellowstone.  I wish them many many happy years together!

Congrats to the Burfs!

Check out MtBurf.com!

The Burf Bros. Ryan and Jeff loved the name so we launched the site.  Be sure to check out the photo gallery.  I’ll be talking to Ryan about sketching out a few maps of the trail when he gets back from his honeymoon with his bride Molly!

Some of my friends have built a single-track off-road bike circuit on the hill behind their parents house. I’ve been photographing them and am in the middle of building them a website. While the final name is yet to be settled it’s currently being developed under my domain at bike.pyrodogg.com

Check it out and let us know what you think, of the trail and website