This dishcloth has the hidden pattern of a Dalek and is based on the Exfoliate Dalek Cloth by Penwiper who has given permission to publish this pattern and modifications (thank you!!). It is best knit on smaller needles than your yarn recommends to keep the pattern tight and visible. The color changes are easily carried up the side of the cloth and I recommend using contrasting colors so that the hidden image shows clearly.

Click here to download the free chart or grab it here on Ravelry.

If you enjoy illusion knitting, these sites have even more great free patterns and information:

Wooly Thoughts – Illusion knitting patterns for many popular themes as well as a Mona Lisa!

Freshisle Fibers - Illusion/shadow knitting pattern links

In honor of SysAdmin Day (July 31st), we most proudly present ThinkGeek’s 2009 SysAdmin Pageant! Do you know a sysadmin King or Queen who saved the network from inevitable doom? How about the brilliant mail server admin who finally got those plighted African businessmen out of your inbox? Now you can finally say thanks in a way that he or she would actually appreciate: the title of SysKing or SysQueen, plus a $500 ThinkGeek gift certificate! And if your nominated sysadmin wins, you get a $250 ThinkGeek gift certificate, too. Hurry, our pageant ends July 24th – and we’ll announce the winner on Sysadmin Day – Friday, July 31st!

Nominate them now!

While finishing up the DVDs for season one and starting season two of Doctor Who, I knitted up a Police Box for my iPod Touch.

This was inspired by the TARDIS iPod Cozy. It looks really cool when I have it on and glowing through the stitches.

Yes, I am a fangirl. There is a bead on top for the ligh (and also to hold it closed) but you can’t see it in the photo.

CPU Graph as Art

I may print this out on a plotter and frame it. This CPU graph symbolizes not only the job I love but it also makes me think about my busy life and family. As a graph it is functional but if you separate it’s purpose you can then see it’s beauty. Who knows, maybe I just love what I do too much.

I originally signed up at Facebook (when it was still closed to the public) because higher ed used it and I work full time in higher education. I have branched out my Facebook relationships, but I won’t add just anyone who adds me. I like to keep Last.fm to those I know or are interested in similar music. I use Ravelry to connect with knitters and crocheters. Now I do have overlap on some of these networks and that is pretty awesome but normally I don’t want to talk web 2.0 in a yarn forum. Specialized networks should be used for the specific types of relationships they foster to get the most benefit from them.

Back to Twitter static; I had to clean it up. I was missing messages from people who I really enjoyed reading updates from. One of the best tools to start my purge was Twitter Karma. Twitter Karma pulled in all my followers and friends and sorted them. First I could see who I follow but that doesn’t follow me. If you aren’t famous or a service, I would appreciate the follow-back. If you don’t follow me back, maybe you aren’t interested so I re-evaluate if I am really interested in your updates. Non-followbacks cut dozens of my follows out.

Twitter Karma shows how long ago user updated.

Next was the mutual relationships. I sorted these by Last Updated and cut everyone who hadn’t updated in at least the last 90 days then reviewed everyone who hadn’t updated in 30-60 to see if that was just their way of doing things before purging them.

I have cut hundreds of people and it’s sad I even let my account get to the point where I have to do that. The last phase of my Twitter purge is to watch my timeline and if I don’t recognize a friend or they tend to tweet things I am not interested in, I am manually removing them. It’s nothing personal, I am just not interested. There might be a few that get caught in the cuts that I want back, and I am sure I will find them again.

The moral of the purge is that it is easy to go to excess with social networks. If the network you are using isn’t teaching you something, connecting you with others, or benefiting you then either cut the site or figure out how to fix where it went wrong. I miss Twitter, hopefully this will get me back in gear again.

When I recently rebuilt my main machine, I installed Hardy hoping to give Ubuntu another chance. I used to be a huge Ubuntu fan unfortunately, the fandom stops with Feisty.

Bonus to Hardy, that annoying tracker does not install and hog my system by default. The most annoying thing? Lots of support for lots of hardware was dropped. Winfast & Hauppauge TV Tuner cards which have worked wonderfully in linux have all kinds of special issues in Ubuntu starting with Gutsy. MythBuntu equals a big pain in the neck.

I have heard from others who are leaving Ubuntu since the last few releases. Reading through the support forums and the bugtrackers, the community has reverted to the old standard of either not replying, treating people like they aren’t worth the effort to explain things to, or assuming their position on the issue is superior. This is why linux users have always been avoided, because they act like elitist.

Ubuntu is supposed to be user friendly and for new linux users. How can you possibly promote that if the community snubs the newbies.

One thread that struck me was about the fact that there was no GUI disk management installed by default.  The very first response to this posting was “no one should need to manually manage disks…” WTF? Seriously?

There are several cases when you need to manually manage disks: 1) the LiveCD does not mount local disks, 2) If you add a new disk to the system. How many people who aren’t major geeks know how to manage their disks from the command line? I know several people I consider pretty geeky who don’t even know how to do it in Windows.

There are apps you can apt-get to enable a GUI access like gparted, but you have to know what it is called & how to install it ~or~ the right search terms to google to learn how. How many newbies are going to know how to do this or not reach maximum level of frustration with this? Ubuntu doesn’t have a utility that kicks off on boot if you have added new hardware either.

Ubuntu is really losing it’s way, and I have to say I cannot recommend it anymore. I am back to vanillla Debian and maybe dabble some more in Arch. Do you have a particular distro you absolutely adore? Let me know what you are using and why you love it and I will give it a whirl.

It’s a shame these are only available for a Mac. 

Photo credit: onesevenone at Flickr

Danger, Inc. is the company behind the T-Mobile Sidekick smartphone platform. While they don’t make the hardware (the SK3, ID, and previous models were produced by Sharp and the current Sidekick Slide is being manufactured by Motorola) they are the company behind the OS that runs the devices and manage the closed software/ringtone catalog for the smartphones sold only through T-Mobile. Although the Sidekick is in the smartphone category it is more a consumer driven device than a business class phone. Prominent features of the Sidekick devices are instant messaging (MSN, AIM, and Yahoo IM), email (t-mobile branded email addresses as well as the ability to add external accounts with POP), a web browser, a camera, and the ability to purchase themes and customize the phone. It has been marketed to the younger (hipper?) crowd whereas smartphones such as the Blackberry have been prominently used by professional business people.

As a Sidekick 3 owner, one of my favorite features of the Danger OS has been the fact that it is constantly synchronized with the (T-Mobile/Danger) server. As long as there is a data connection available my Sidekick keeps my address book, my calendar, my notepad items, my email, my SMS messages (and my pictures if I am storing them locally rather than on a SD card supported by the device) syncronized. Should my phone be broken, replaced, lost, or whatever the circumstance, I can sign on to My T-Mobile and view my device through a web browser and if I get a replacement SK all my data is retrieved once I insert my SIMM card. I never lose my data. The major downside to the Danger OS is that is an extremely restrictive platform and is not friendly to developers. I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get the SDK and the only way I can get my apps in the download catalog is if they are completely my own, there is no open source build ups allowed. I have purchased a few apps for my SK3 including the Terminal app that lets me SSH in to servers and manage my systems remotely from my phone (although not the fastest method going across the EDGE network). Most apps are more consumer driven including a lot of games, audio mixers, theme modifiers, and diet apps. Besides selling third-party software, Danger’s primary source of income is the recurring Sidekick subscription plan on the T-Mobile network.

According to GigaOM Microsoft shelled out a whopping $500 million for Danger, Inc. My guess is that they want to use Danger’s OS mobile service platform to integrate and deliver Microsoft branded services perhaps in competition with the Google Android platform. While I am sure there are a lot of financial reasons Microsoft purchased Danger, Inc. I am really not surprised that they did from a platform perspective. Microsoft is closed source (even if they have been trying to jump on the open source bandwagon) and Danger is as well. Due to that, I don’t see them as any threat to Android even though we have yet to see the fruits of Google’s labor. Taking two companies that have always done business on a closed platform it takes reworking not only on the business side but also on the software side to open the platform up. I don’t see that happening any time soon but I think if they hope to really compete they would be wise to open it up.

Another aspect to the purchase shows that Microsoft is making a move towards the consumer smartphone marketplace. While they have the Windows Mobile platform it has been primarily in the business smartphone class. With the recent Zune changes, the Zune marketplace, and the continued success of the XBox platform, I would not be surprised to see a continued move towards the consumer market with modifications in the smartphone platform area. Hopefully they don’t try to make the Sidekick into a Zune phone any time soon but no matter, with all the smartphones integrating full keyboards like the SK3 has and even the Blackberry now including a camera, I am moving out of my SK3 within six months or so anyway. Microsoft can have it.

Link: pingdom: When data center cabling becomes art

Despite all of the very interesting speculation over the last few months, we’re not announcing a Gphone. However, we think what we are announcing — the Open Handset Alliance and Android — is more significant and ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can’t imagine today.

This is the word from the Official Google Blog .

Bet you good money it won’t make my Sidekick3 any less crappy. At least I won’t have to change carriers. ;)

For those of you following me on Twitter and/or Facebook, you will have heard all about my quest for Apple’s new iPod model, the Touch. Getting my hands on one in the Greater Kansas City area was not the easiest thing to do but finally got my hands on one on Friday evening when a new shipment arrived at the Apple Store on the Plaza. I opted for the 16 gig model which was the only one in stock at the time anyway.

The iPod Touch packaging is apparently supposed to make you feel as though you are now in possession of a true luxury item. Apparently that is just the Apple way. Inside the glorious bauble awaited, well, my “Touch” (excuse the pun).

I have found the wi-fi to be excellent. I was able to pick up signals without a problem. At home I could see all the neighbors wi-fi networks and at work I was able to connect to the wi-fi in an area I can’t even connect with my laptop due to signal strength being weak. The iTunes store has been very fast with previews of songs loading faster than the full version of iTunes on my desktop.

When browsing the web through Safari you can have multiple pages open to flip back and forth between sites and or applications. Bookmarks can sync through iTunes with Safari or Internet Explorer only. Because of that limitation I have decided to use Safari on my Windows desktop solely for bookmarking mobile friendly or iPhone optimized sites to sync with the Touch. I have noticed that sometimes when closing a window in Safari on the Touch it will open the URL that I just closed in the previously open window thus losing where I was at to begin with. I am not sure what causes this and the only way I have been able to stop that behavior is to to a complete device shutdown by holding down both buttons on the device then powering it back on.

While browsing the iPod will automatically reformat the view to a landscape wide screen style when turned on it’s side which makes reading sites that have not taken mobile devices into account much easier to read. A few taps zoom in the page or you can place two fingers on the screen and draw them together or apart to zoom in and out on text. Tapping on a text input field brings up the keyboard automatically.

I had heard a lot of conflicting reviews of the iPhone keyboard but had tried it out and was very impressed. After using one more I am still impressed. It works very well and I don’t really make any more typos than I do when using the keyboard on my Sidekick 3. The trick is that you just need to use your entire pad of your finger to type. When you try to use the side or very tip or nail it really fouls things up and slows you down. Trust the device and just type and it will work very well for you.

Previous to this purchase I have been using my Sidekick 3 with an extra SD card for storage to play podcasts and music. Not the most advanced music player in the world but it was good enough for podcasts. The sound quality on the Touch is far superior to the Sidekick but in my opinion is on the same level with my old Creative Zen Nano player. I am very impressed with the video quality and have been working hard to convert all my movies and shows to iPod compatible mp4s. I started subscribing to more video podcasts and have even added some NickJr and Disney ones for the kids.

The settings panel is easy to navigate, there is a standard calculator, and a multi function clock which can tell you world time, set alarms, run a timer, or even function as a stop watch. The stop watch has been most handy for timing my kids on their practice math tests. ;) Unfortunately the calendar only allows viewing. If you want to import entries you much sync iTunes with Outlook. It would be nice to be able to add entries on the fly. The contact book allows for editing directly on the Touch or through a sync with Yahoo! or Outlook. I ran a sync on my work computer with Outlook for both my calendar and contacts and it worked without a hitch. I will most likely refer to my calendar and contacts from the Touch more often than the Sidekick now as it it easier to navigate and read (unless of course I am making a call from the Sidekick).

I haven’t done a lot with the YouTube button as of yet. t has seemed the couple of times that I tried to load a video it has been so slow it wasn’t worth it. Not sure if it the the video I selected, the wi-fi connection at the time, or just the device’s limitations. Once I would start a video it would freeze up loading after a few seconds.

Also included is the ability to sync your photos to the Touch. Unfortunately, I cannot use this to connect to Flickr but must choose a local folder. This will probably not be something I will use very often. I also found a really weird bug when trying to sync some photos. I started getting an error that a photo by the name of IMG00440.JPG was not compatible with my device. This was a photo I had taken with my cell phone so I wasn’t sure how it could possibly be a resolution or file size thing besides it was syncing all the previous photos with fairly similar names. I renamed it to picture1test.jpg and ran the sync again just for kicks. This time it had no problem syncing that one but failed on the next one in the series, IMG00441.JPG. I decided to go through the entire series removing a “0″ from the name and on they next try they all synced. Not sure what the issue is there since I have others with the name like IMG00390.JPG and thisisapicture.jpg. Very odd and I can’t seem to see a pattern that makes a whole ton of sense.

Now for the music library. Navigation through your music is very intuitive and simple. There is not only the ability to sort the standard ways of by artist, album, type and so on, but the album cover browser is very nice and reminds me of the CD style jukeboxes where you flip through the available albums to find the song you are looking for. This feature made me realize just how much album art I am missing and will probably be spending way too much time getting.

I haven’t come close to filling up the 16GB of space but wouldn’t have considered the 8GB because there isn’t enough price difference to warrant dropping down to half the storage. I really do wish I could use an application other than iTunes or that iTunes was available for Linux. For now I am using my Windows XP partition on my work laptop to run iTunes and pointing the iTunes directory to a Samba share from my Linux server. I installed mt-daapd on the Linux box so that I could see the share natively within iTunes but I cannot sync across the network. To get the songs from the server to the iPod I have to copy them locally and I don’t want to have duplicate copies of my library on more than one computer.

An additional irritation with syncing is that I want to sync Outlook for my calendar and contacts. Since I carry the Touch around with me I sync it from my desktop at work as well, but I have to either set music, movies, pictures, and TV shows to a manual sync or risk completely wiping out and overwriting my libraries on the Touch by syncing in more that one place. Multiple computer syncs would be a nice thing to have.

Battery life is excellent if you are only moderately using the wi-fi, playing audio, and spending a lot of time in standby. By the time I got around to watching a video last night, a 30 minute clip took the battery from reporting that it was 50% full to 1% full. Most of the time it probably won’t be a problem for me as I can charge it while I am working at my desk at random times throughout the day but for a trip battery life would be a real problem.

In my opinion the price is a little steep for just a media player and Apple should have enabled more function in the calendar…but I didn’t expect too much from Apple in the reason ability of the price. ;) To sum it up, I recommend the iPod Touch and don’t regret purchasing it at all. I looked at the competitors and there just isn’t anything close to it yet in capabilities. It is more than an iPod, it is also a mobile web browser and a (limited) PDA.

More pictures at my Flickr photostream.

Note: As of this post, the Last.fm client does not recognize the Touch as an iPod. Rather frustrating as I finally got a “real” iPod and was looking forward to scrobbling my play history. 

Per their site, SugarStats makes it simple to track, monitor and share your blood sugar levels and other key statistics to help you manage your diabetes online. Having seen the effects of diabetes and the work that can go into maintaining your health I can see this service being very valuable to people that have busy or active lifestyles. If you use Twitter, you can also send a direct message to their service Twitter name containing your stats plus optional comments. The stats get imported into your SugarStats account along with the comments and the date and time the message was received.

No more forgetting what your glucose levels were, worrying about a dead battery in a blood meter whipping out your history, or having a pad and pen handy for jotting notes down. Most people carry their cell phones with them everywhere they go and by using Twitter and SugarStats they will also always have a place to keep their records. Especially handy is the comments for noting at the time exactly how you are feeling, eating, or doing.

SugarStats has also integrated a social networking type option within their service. You could share your stats, collaborate, and exchange messages with those you share with. At the very least this might be valuable for your doctor. Graphs and trends are created from your data so that you can easily visualize your history.

Not a Twitter fan? You can also send your stats to your SugarStats account via email or their mobile web through your phone or PDA browser.

Having your children go missing or anything bad happening to your children is a parent’s worst nightmare. As a mother of four I am on constant alert and I realize I cannot keep an eye on everything going on at all times especially as they get older and become more independent. However, when it comes to what is going on in my home, darn tootin’ I know what is going on.

Internet access? Monitored via a proxy and firewall, all accesses are logged into a system log, AND the computer is right where I can see it. Even if all the technology blocking and logging fails I am still there to monitor the activities on the computer. If they go to friends houses? Yeah, I talk to the parents to ensure that the computer policies are the same as in my home, if not there will be no computer access while my children are visiting and if they should ever think that is ridiculous then I don’t want my kids there to begin with. Same goes with any other policy such as phone, TV, movies, video games…

What amazes me is that this man called this girl’s house and talked to her on the phone. Her mother thought it was just a classmate. Either this child is a REALLY good liar or something failed here. I know, parent’s are busy people! They don’t have time to stay on top of everything, right? Let me put it this way, my children are more important than ANYTHING else. Period. I want to know who people are when they call. I want to meet them, I want to talk to their parents if it is someone who they have talked to in more than just passing.

Take precautions when it comes to the internet just like you would your home. If you lock your door, subscribe to caller ID, install security systems on your property then for all that is holy, why do you leave your internet unsecured and unmonitored? Bad people on the internet isn’t new and it isn’t hard to monitor your family when they are on the computer. The software is free from most ISPs and the best prevention is to keep the computer screen so that it faces you in a common area when you children are using it.

/end rant

I hit Update and Twitter said this:

Me thinks Twitter forgot how to count!

The dearth of women in math and science has been discussed frequently. Computer science and programming is part of that same picture. It is obvious to everyone that the ratio is seriously lop-sided. But determining exactly why and what, if anything, we can do about it is not as obvious.

….

Ruby on Rails Podcast — Roundtable: Women in Development

• • Part I (MP3, 26 minutes)
  • Part II (MP3, 20 minutes)

The podcast is a round-table discussion on the state of women in open source programming. It features Jen May Wu, Dr. Ana Nelson, Liz Summerfield, Sandy Metz, Carmelyne Thompson, Cynthia Kaiser, and Desi McAdam, and it is moderated by Geoffrey Grosenbach. To share just one insightful tidbit from their discussion: they mention how many technology companies only give out men’s t-shirts and how much they appreciate companies that bother to stock both men and women’s t-shirts. A great point.

Read the entire post