Author: clock

On Monday morning, I had finished my previous book and was “stranded” on the plane without anything else to read, I raided the boy’s backpack for one of his new birthday gifts: The Twenty-One Balloons.

What a fun tale. Written in 1947 by William Pène du Bois, Twenty-One Balloons won a Newberry Medal the following year for “Excellence In Children’s Literature.” (The boy is six now, so I wasn’t going to pull Dickens or even Clancy from his backpack.) I never came across this one in any of my other reading: child, youth, or adult.

The matter-of-fact style for a work of fiction, the effort to ground its few “sparkling” (you’re groaning if you know the story or read the links above) central fictions in the real world… all are appreciated. The illustrations, from the author, are not special, but fit the earnest, interested tone throughout. This is only an hour or two of your reading life, and it would be well spent.

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Earlier in the weekend, I flew through the other additions to the boy’s library. My excuses were that I wanted to be ready to answer questions about what he was reading, to make sure he wasn’t headed down some inconvenient paths a bit early, and to gauge his reading skills. But those are just excuses!

Both The Fantastic Mr. Fox and James and the Giant Peach are from Roald Dahl, a favorite author for almost his entire range of writings. I don’t know when I read these two as a child, but these are certainly short. In fact, each is much shorter in reality than in memory. I wasn’t as disappointed with a re-read as I was with the first in the Narnia series, but I’ll have to honor my fears about Danny, Champion of the World.

Daniel Silva wrote The Mark of the Assassin in 1998. This book is pretty much your standard terrorist/spy thriller, but not crafted like Robert Ludlum at his best. Reminder: ignore Ludlum’s current re-incarnation (literally, since he’s dead) as a “brand” for new novels. Mark of the Assassin was Silva’s second novel. If you followed that first link, you’ll see that he now has a string of similar novels. Worthy as a paperback airplane read, but not more.

When I switched WordPress themes many moons ago, I “lost” the comments link at the end of each post as it appears on the home page. It was a simple theme edit, which I just resolved now.

If you’re curious, the missing line of code was:

< ?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?>

which I learned in this WordPress support thread

Last week, the local CBS affiliate followed up on Allison’s suggestion that they cover PhishTank as part of their Consumer Watch program. David was out of town. So, while Mike did the bulk of the coding, Aaron brought the design together to make PhishTank easy on the eyes and mouse clicks, Allison reached out (with success) to numerous media outlets, and others contributed in various ways, I ended up as the on-camera representative for OpenDNS. Judge for yourself.

The report, “Sites Offer Ways To Fight Back Against Phishing,” only actually covers one site, PhishTank, and runs just under 2 minutes long.

A few notes:

* The fun part which doesn’t appear here but was in the original broadcast was the tease before the intervening advertisements: PhishTank was the hook used to get you to stay tuned to CBS5 and watch the various election-related ads. The tease was well done, and we’ll have to get a copy.

* Those are not my hands typing, although I did do some “B-roll” footage of me typing away, or looking at the website, etc. None of that was used, which is just as well — those staged moments felt more awkward than actually talking to the producer while tape was rolling. (If it was even tape in this day and age.)

* The editing spliced together separate statements from me in a new order. Not really a surprise, and maybe the cuts are not obvious to others, but I notice. I’m not upset, but maybe it’s a reminder to keep each individual sentence as a standalone in this context.

* The folks (cameraman and producer) who came to our office from CBS5 made this process quick and painless. Overall, I’m thrilled with the outcome, even if it’s quite odd to watch myself on video.

At work, I need to pick the right forum software to run on OpenDNS.com. We’ve discussed the possibilities informally a few times, but the burst of activity — and resulting customer support — triggered by two print articles made this project more important.

I’m going to share my research and the final decision in a few blog posts, in the hope that (a) others might benefit and (b) others might weigh in with helpful, informed opinions. Or any other kind.

In this “table of contents” post, I’ll add links to the follow-on posts as I write them. No set length or schedule… you’re duly warned.

Purpose

Forums (aka, bulletin boards) will supplement the many instructions we’ve assembled for different ways to change your DNS settings. Additionally, forums will provide a useful place to learn about unique set-ups which we’ll never find time to document. I expect, too, that forums will serve as a unique middle ground between interesting links about DNS and fuller blog posts on the OpenDNS blog.

I considered a wiki, but I like conversations and threads, and wikis do many other things well, but not linear time. Blog software could do the job, with a bit of extra wrangling. But why struggle? The right tool for this job is forums.

Requirements

Given our environment (technical set-up, in-house expertise, etc.), here are the requirements which serve as the framework for my evaluation.

• PHP based
• MySQL DB
• Installs on your own server, not a hosted service
• Demonstrated usage; other successful installations
• Great price (read: free)
• Active developer community
• Strong security

There are other important features, but they are just that: features. I’ll discuss them later on.

The contenders

I’ll go through each one of these in future posts, but I’ll just give a quick overview here.

phpBB

phpBB – phpBB 2.0.21 – June 9, 2006

phpBB is the 800-lb. gorilla in terms of broad usage around the Internet. My best experience with the software is in the FeedBurner forums. A notable concern, though, is the high volume of security exploits targeted at phpBB. I’m quite certain they can be avoided, but how much extra work does that require?

Also, personally, I’m not a fan of the default forum interface. Even though I experience it all around the web, I find my eye lost among the clutter of available options, even when looking at a single person’s post. I’m quite confident there is enough customization to play with here so as to avoid this visual cacophony — but why is the default so dismal? I will note that PHPBB’s default interface may, for experienced forum contributors, be a soothing backdrop of power and customization.

PunBB

PunBB – PunBB 1.2.14 – October 15, 2006

Suggested for consideration because our talented web developer Aaron has customized PunBB before. Its philosophy aims in the right direction (simplicity), although the website look like, well, forum software. Also, the software appears to have a single developer. I’ll have to dig deeper into this in the future.

BBPress

BBPress – BBPress 0.72 – October 13, 2006

I’m a big fan of WordPress, personally and professionally. I’ve used the WordPress support forums and been happy with the experience. Those forums run on BBPress, a sibling project to WordPress. A major concern, though, is that the software hasn’t even hit a 1.0 release. Now, the team and community behind this software builds solid stuff, so they don’t indulge in verion number inflation. Still, might be a factor.

Vanilla

Vanilla – Vanilla 1.0.1 – August 21, 2006

Vanilla was suggested via a support email at work. Very interesting looking site, and I’d be lying if I said that the care taken in explaining the value of the (free) software wasn’t appealing. When a developer takes as much care describing how to get things done with his software as he does building it, that’s a good sign. I’m not clear if there is more than one developer, although the general vibe with the extensions structure feels like Mint and Pepper… which isn’t bad.

Visual appeal of the websites

I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but in my first quick scan through the sites, it was very clear where I would prefer to spend time learning about the software. Here’s the ranking: Vanilla, BBPress, phpBB, PunBB. This is heartily superficial. But if I’m going to do research on all four websites, I might as well enjoy the process.

Farther along, I’ll rate the overall quality of the websites, beyond their visual pizzazz.

Future posts

I’ll discuss each of the contenders in an individual post, looking at criteria such as:

• Installation requirements
• Security
• Admin tools
• Themes and customization
• Feeds and notification options
• Plugins/extensions
• Integration with external registration
• Posting options
• And more… I’ll update this list after I get started.

Wikipedia has a comparison of forum software which I have yet to read. I’d rather read it after I learn more on my own.

There is an impressive list of applications at Web Developer forum, but it’s just that… a list, broken down by development platform.

Next up… we’ll see.

The Departed is a worthy big-screen drama. Utterly violent, very funny, certainly Boston, The Departed is mostly set in the present, but a few early scenes play in the era just after Bag Men (nice coincidence for me).

The almost parallel characters played by Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio draw you in, and the usual screen dominance of Jack Nicholson doesn’t go too far (although it doesn’t feel new for him). Perhaps the best praise I can give the movie is that I didn’t look at my watch once in 2 hours, 30 minutes. I didn’t anticipate the outcome, really, and yet the surprise wasn’t total, or unbelievable. Pretty impressive, overall.

Metacritic weighs in with a very high 87 — probably deserved. It’s rare that I can give a movie recommendation while it’s still early enough for most people to view in the theaters, but I’d encourage you to see The Departed.

There was a child under the age of 5 at this movie, with her parents. That was unbelievable, and sad in a way. This movie’s violence splashes across the screen repeatedly. Not for children.

These aren’t new, but it is Saturday, and I’m sick of staring at them in my inbox.

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I thought all The Economist content was invisible on the web, but not this September 7, 2006 opinion piece, “Welcome aboard,” which asks “In-flight announcements are not entirely truthful. What might an honest one sound like?” An honest one would be scary; this, therefore, is funny.

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When will the web have a better tool for comparing traffic than Alexa? Boy Wyman’s musings are one among a dozen examples I might dig up where people jump to conclusions based on these numbers only because there is no viable public alternatives.

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Via the Map Room blog, I noted with dismay that Amazon discontinued its Block View feature. I was convinced in early February 2005, right after its introduction, that this was big news.

I think Amazon is trying to kickstart Dan Bricklin’s cornucopia of the commons for a web view of a locale that is better than anything previously offered or envisioned.

Well, I’ve been right before and I’ve been wrong before. Oh well. I hope the data gathered doesn’t disappear: will be a historical curiousity, if nothing more.

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A friend pointed out LibraryThing, and I’ve been meaning to invest a bit of time to see just how addictive it might. Not yet.

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CNET News.com article “Make sense of medical bills with MedBillManager” caught my eye. Several weeks ago, I found the bill from a Saturday night visit to the emergency room for the boy’s earache to be maddening, both in its amount and its complexity (why do the doctor and the hospital bill separately?). I’m more likely to input my books into LibraryThing than medical information into MedBillManager at this point, but I do hope someone finds a profitable niche in making the medical maze less troublesome for real people.

Flux is book two of Maps in a Mirror, the collected volume of short stories by Orson Scott Card. Of the seven stories, I found the last one, “The Originist,” the most compelling. Set in the Isaac Asimov’s Foundation world of Trantor, “The Originist” imagines some of the hinted-at creation of the Second Foundation.

More than most writers, Card seems to enjoy writing about his writing, explaining the context and the process. Since I enjoy much of his work, I appreciate the peek behind the curtain. If I enjoyed reading longer pieces online, then his website would be a treasure trove, but I can’t spend more time in front of a screen than I already do. Paper is my mental escape from the screen.

I bought Gold Mine for a bus ride home last week, and it barely lasted longer than that. Yes, another Wilbur Smith book (my previous mention), although this one is (for him) practically a short story, at only 263 pages. Only now am I noticing that this one was originally written in 1970, making it one of his earlier novels. It’s not particularly good, but it fits his pattern of historical fiction set in Africa, with heroic, roguish men winning business battles (and other kinds) at the less-than-genteel edge of civilization. This one is set in and around a gold mine (surprise!).

These are so-called guilty pleasures, but when I learn that the first two authors that Smith lists as his favorites are C.S. Forrester and Patrick O’ Brien, and Bernard Cornwell also makes the list of eight, then I suppose I know why I keep returning to his tales.

Gold Mine, though, is not his best.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bag Men, by Mark Costello. I finished this novel a few weeks ago, after picking it up this summer from a family bookshelf. I’m not sure whom I have to thank for putting it on that shelf, but I’m grateful.

At its core, the story is framed by a murder investigation, but mid-1960s Boston pops with Costello’s mix of religion, class, and (then) current events, like the criminalization of LSD. The writing is darker than, say, Dick Francis, but the vocabulary is similarly terse. Spare, even.

I’ll have to pick up Big If, his more well-known novel. Apparently Bag Men was published originallyunder a pseudonym, in 1997. His success with Big If brought Bag Men back in paperback under his own name.