Thursday, September 30, 2010
Brief Server News
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Shower Knobs
Something that's always bothered me is how much shower faucets really suck. There's a variety of designs out there that we've all seen, and none of them really work as well as they should. My main beef with shower faucets is the fact that when in the shower, you generally want the temperature to be about the same as it was the last time. Sure it may fluctuate up or down a bit given the season, but more or less you've got a temperature that you enjoy and that's what you want to keep it at.
Most shower faucets don't care about this fact, and make it a challenge every time you get in the shower to recreate that magical temperature, so you spend most the shower tweaking with the stupid faucet. Let's look at some designs.
Giant Pointy Ball
We'll start with my least favorite, and actually the type that's currently in my shower. The giant pointy ball. This one actually has an up arrow on the front, which is an advanced feature for this type of shower knob. You have about 90 degrees from hot to cold on these guys, and positioning it just right is impossible. The very uniform pointiness on the plastic ball means there's no "landmark" positions for you to remember where to set it at. There are so many ways to rotate these, it's a total guess and check on what temperature the water is going to be. If I never saw another of these knobs ever again, that would be awesome.
Knob Segregation
So here's a close second in the race for worst shower faucet, which was featured at the Birchwood estate. Two knobs independently controlling the hot and cold water. If the knob in the middle controlled the pressure then we'd be talking, but nope, it controls tub vs shower output. To take a shower then, you need to turn three different knobs. And breaking news, I want to control the temperature of the water coming out, not deal with ratios of hot to cold. The reason this isn't my least favorite is at least you can develop some kind of routine to get in the neighborhood of the right temperature - hot all the way on, cold a quarter turn and a half. I'm sure this is the plumber's favorite, but usability wise, it's terrible.
Single Twist Handle
Finally we're getting somewhere. The good news here is you've got a single knob to control all your functions. It's also a circle, so as long as you can remember sorta what angle the handle is at you'll get in the same temperature range. The example pictured here even has a well defined hot and cold zone with little notches so you can landmark where you like the temperature, which is awesome. Many faucets of this type try to be "clean" with only faint markings for which side is hot and which is cold. Those are lame.
The bad news is you still have to touch the handle each time, and you've got go through either freezing cold or scalding hot to get to the temperature that you need. Certainly a passable design, but we can do better.
Single Twist Round Knob
On a side note, here's an example of how to screw up a good thing. This works the same way, just it is designed as a perfect circle with just a tiny notch to indicate where you are in the temperature scale. Faucet designers, why do you do that? It's just making it harder. Not to mention that you have no landmarks to where to point it at, just a vague angle that you have to remember.
Don't use a round knob, it just doesn't make sense. Is your clock a giant round knob with just tiny sticks pointing out to tell you the minute and hour? Nope. Neither should your shower knob. You want a handle.
Separate Temperature Knob
So then what do I want in a shower knob? I can't actually find a picture of one, but I want the controls that we had on the cruise ship. Pretty simple. On the ship, it was shaped like short handlebars. The grip on the right was temperature. Yep, just the temperature, and it was labeled with actual water temperatures. The left grip was water control. Totally independent. So that means once you figure out what temperature you like, then you can just turn the water on and off and NEVER HAVE TO MESS WITH TEMPERATURE EVER AGAIN! How awesome is that? It remembers what temperature you like from the last shower you took. So simple, so perfect. Even if someone messed up the temperature on you, you had an actual, definite, black and white number that you could remember and set it back. No messing with "oh the handle was about at the one-thirty position" or "three twists to the cold and five to the hot". Set it and forget it.
I'm not sure how much a faucet like that costs, or what kind of plumbing work has to happen to make it work. In my head, we aren't doing anything revolutionary, this should be in every shower in America. It's still hot and cold + water pressure. Just it totally makes sense. And when I have a house, that's one of the first things that's going in.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Cruise Recap
As mentioned earlier, last week Molly and I went on a cruise to the Western Caribbean on the Carnival Inspiration. This is a (likely not-so) brief account of our journey. We were slated to visit Grand Cayman Island and Cozumel (Mexico), although there was a slight change in plans. A passenger had a heart attack on the first name, and we had to re-route to Key West instead of Grand Cayman for our first day on shore.
While we weren't fired up about it, Molly and I didn't have much of an opinion on the change in scenery. If anything, we were excited about getting cell phone signal! But there were lots of people on the ship that were fired up about it, and none of them in a good way. Lots more people than I would have expected are from Florida, and we heard from a couple people that lived in Key West for many years. I could see how that would be a problem for them.
So our first full day on the ship was supposed to be at sea, but instead at Key West. Our excursion planned for Grand Cayman (which I am a little sad we missed, we were going to hang out with dolphins and stingrays at Stingray City). Being mostly unprepared for the destination, we sorta walked around for a while in Key West. Unfortunately, it was ridiculously hot and walking around was really unpleasant. So we actually ended up going to the movies at a theatre downtown. Long-time readers may recall this isn't the only time I've gone to the movies on vacation, but this time was considerably more satisfying because of the 1 3/4 hours spent in air conditioning.
We ate dinner at a harbor restaurant (where this video was filmed) that was actually really tasty. As the video (may?) mention, it looked like death was about to rain down from the sky. After eating we booked it back to the ship area where we ran across Dominique the Catman. This guy was a cat-tamer and absolutely 100% insane. I took some YouTube video which you can watch here and here. We did not get rained on, by the way, which I was thankful for.
The next day was at sea, so let's talk about the boat. The Inspiration is of the smallest class of ship Carnival has, supposedly there were over 2,000 passengers on board. To me, that's huge. There were two dining rooms (one of which you were assigned to), three or so buffet sections, 4 or so "clubs", a 1,000+ seat auditorium, mini golf course, pool, and lots more stuff on board. Every day we got delivered a newsletter with the day's activities on it. Evening-time was busy enough on ship, as they had 2 song-and-dance-type shows on our trip and a couple adult comedians. During the day they had various contests, trivia (Molly and I dominated one of the "12 S of Z" type trivia contests and got a trophy out of it), bingo, and that sort of stuff going on. Including this amazing older asian guy with a guitar singing legit Johnny Cash-style country. So since during the day was a little sketchy as far as activities, we spent a fair amount of time trying to find some shade on deck to spend quality time with a book. Despite me complaining a lot about the heat, with the breeze on the boat, it was pleasant in the shade. Not in the sun though. I had a lot of pictures turn out foggy because my lens was fogging up due to the extreme temperature difference from inside the boat to the deck of the boat.
Our next destination was Cozumel, Mexico, where it was again hot. Right off the ship was a shop-type area that was moderately nice, although obviously mega-touristy. In retrospect that wasn't so bad, and I'll get to why in a second. Our excursion here was a clear kayak and snorkel adventure in Chankanaab National Park. The beach was Corona-ad beautiful, and we kayaked up and down the shore. On the beach is a dolphin park, so we got to see dolphins, sharks, and stingrays through a fence. After that was the snorkeling, which was unanimously the highlight of the trip. Like swimming in a fishtank, it was incredible! If you held your hands in a fist, the fish would think you had food, and you would get swarmed! Ridiculous! Our guide was helping point stuff out to us too, as well as fetching a seahorse from the ocean floor, which we held in our hands.
At the park we ate some very legit and tasty mexican food (we might have paid in Pesos) and had some Coke "Light". After a quick trip back to the ship to attempt to wash off the ocean, we headed back out this time to downtown Cozumel. Lots more shops here, but things got shady immediately. Every shop had a guy out front trying to bring you into the shop (always addressing me in particular by the way, never Molly...). One guy quietly asked me if I wanted to buy any knives. Around the corner was police with machine guns. Not really my scene. We stopped in Carlos & Charlies and Senor Frogs, two famous Cozumel bar/clubs for a couple of drinks, where we were also constantly pressured to buy something. Or slightly assaulted by an overly friendly waitress selling shots of some unnamed liquor. All in all it was fun; I'm definitely glad we went downtown, and I can see why those bars are so legendary. But once is enough for me!
The last day at sea we had scheduled the "Behind the Fun" tour, where we learned a lot about how the ship works and life on the ship for the staff. We got a tour of the bridge (among lots of other places) and an impromptu tour of the captain's quarters! I'm always excited about the behind-the-scenes stuff, and we made a good decision by dropping the cash on the tour.
We ended up eating in the dining room for dinner all week, which worked out pretty well. Our table-mates were all nice and our age, both of which were exciting (our table sat like 10 but there were only 6 of us there each night). Perhaps my favorite crew person on the trip was our waiter, Claudio. He was pretty excited as he was about to go on vacation himself - he said his contract is for 7 months working then 7 weeks off, so I could understand why. At the end of dinner, all of the waiters would sing and dance to usually some techno song. It was really odd, and at the same time absolutely hilarious. Claudio would dance with the pole next to our table, and another waiter was dancing on a nearby chair. Totally ridiculous. The last night they sang us "You're leaving on a Funship" (NOTE: that video isn't our cruise, but it's the same song).
Overall it was a great time, though I'm left with mixed feelings about cruising in general. While food was plentiful, eating was a lot harder than I imagined because the buffet was crazy busy most the time. For five nights of room and board, it was relatively inexpensive - but they were constantly badgering you to buy stuff. Soda was extra, pictures were $22 each, alcohol was standard bar prices but you could in no way achieve your own - even the on-ship duty free shop didn't let you leave with bottles in hand, you had to get it delivered on the last night. There were people of all ages on board, which means there were kids running around pretty much everywhere. So while it was fun, and I would do it again, it's not the only method of vacationing I want to do. If nothing else, I appreciate the cruise forcing me to relax and take some naps, not to mention the fact that the tropical destinations essentially come to you instead of the other way around!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Cruise Detour
Other than that things are good on board. Lots of food and old people, and more people that stink than I would have guessed. Lots of shops, decks, chair areas, and frozen yogurt. I've heard that the shows on ship are terrible, and from the "welcome aboard" show we saw yesterday, I can see why people would say that. But there are various scheduled things to do pretty much non-stop, so that's a good thing.
It's hot, unsurprisingly. It's breezy on ship though, so if you can stay out of the sun it's not a big deal.
Currently the ship is docked in Key West, and we're avoiding the rush off the boat by eating some free lunch on ship. An ambulance came and took away the man in need of assistance; hopefully that works out for him.
Looking forward to seeing Key West!
Mark D
Monday, September 6, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Server update (last one)
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Moving Update/Server News pt 3
The good news is that I have legit internet again. It was a bit of a pain to setup however. The U-Verse connection goes through my phone line, and I discovered that none of the phone jacks in the upstairs seem to work - only one jack (that's actually a cat5 jack) in the basement actually works. Anyway it's hooked up now.
In hooking things up, I also elected to use the "wireless gateway" that AT&T gave me, as I got way better speeds with it than with my old Linksys router, which sorta surprised me. I was really digging the Tomato firmware that I put on there, but I'm opting for speed and change in this case and instead dealing with the misery that comes pre-installed from AT&T.
Among other things, that also affected my server setup. I was having a heck of a time just getting the server an IP address, although it appears I got that resolved. Apache for some reason wasn't started, so I fired that up and it seems to be working, thankfully. The gallery software is still down however. I suspect MySQL isn't running, but at this point I can't even remotely login to the thing. Between having to physically walk into the basement and my lack of Linux skills (and upcoming vacation), I have no idea when it will be back up. I know Pete just put some photos up there, so I'm committed to getting it back up...at least for a while. We'll see about long-term options. My patience for Linux is growing thin.
As far as the moving goes, I'm as unpacked as I'm going to be. So far everything has been good. Now that I have internet, I can figure out how to get Hulu+ to my TV. Still haven't done so, but now I can! The new Apple TV is cool, though I really don't see it entirely fitting my needs. A Mac Mini may be in my future, despite the price tag. I dunno.
Anyway that's the story. Server is in progress - in my frustration I decided to update to the latest Ubuntu, which probably was a terrible idea. It seems to be randomly prompting me for information during the install, which is making it take forever since I'm not babysitting it. I'm worried that it's going to severely break stuff when it finally completes. Oh dear, such is life I suppose. I may need to get my IT friends over to help me out... =)