Sun, 13 Mar 2005

New Mattress is Alright

After a couple weeks on the new mattress, I decided that I like it. I no longer feel like I'm sinking into the mattress, and while I sleep on my side and stomach, it is very comfortable when lying on my back too. So, the Novafoam mattress gets a thumbs up.

misc | Permanent Link

Smith Barney is Silly

After Apple's recent run up to almost $70 a share (over 10% since I sold half my shares 10 days ago), Smith Barney downgrades AAPL to hold, advises selling, and at the same time, increases their 12-month target to $75.

"Despite the fact that we are raising our target multiple on calendar 2006 operating earnings this morning from 26 times to 29 times, we cannot justify more than a $75 fair value in 12 months. And while this suggests another 10% upside from current levels, we can no longer recommend that medium- to long-term investors place new money into the shares," the brokerage wrote.

The downgrade occured today when the stock opened at 66.13. A 13% increase within 12 months seems like a good investment. So what should investors do, Smith Barney? Hold, sell, or buy this undervalued stock?

business | Permanent Link

Getting a Toll-Free Number

We're getting business cards printed for Postica so we decided to get a toll-free number to put on them. It will be good to have on the web site too, since we currently just have our support email address.

A search on Google for 800 number or toll-free number brings up a ton of ads. We went with GotVMail because the price is good and we were able to sign up online in about 10 minutes. We didn't have to talk to a salesperson or fax any forms like other companies require. We're paying $9.95/month plus 7.4 cents/minute. If we start getting a lot of calls, we can start buying blocks of minutes for about 5 cents/minute.

business | Permanent Link

Thu, 03 Mar 2005

iPodder on Debian

I still don't quite understand what all the hoopla around podcasting is about, but since KCRW started offering feeds of their programs, I thought I'd check it out. I don't have an mp3 player, so I was thinking I might listen to some programs while working or listen to them through my Tivo.

I downloaded an RPM of iPodder, converted it to a Debian package using alien and installed it. It looks like it requires wxPython 2.5 so I installed the libwxgtk2.5.3-python package. Since I also have wxPython 2.4 installed, I had to update /opt/iPodder/iPodderGui.py to use the right version. Here's the diff:

--- iPodderGui.py.orig  2005-03-03 11:28:58.000000000 -0800
+++ iPodderGui.py       2005-03-03 11:29:06.000000000 -0800
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+import wxversion
+wxversion.select('2.5')
 import wx
 import wx.xrc as xrc
 import  wx.lib.filebrowsebutton as filebrowse

I still don't see what's so great about this. I'd be happy if straw supported enclosures so I could just download the mp3s from there.

Update: Mostly as an exercise, I've created a Debian package for iPodder.

tech | Permanent Link

Tue, 01 Mar 2005

First Night on a New Novafoam Mattress

We bought one of those memory foam mattresses, a Novafoam one from Costco in particular. Buying a mattress sucks. We went to bunch of different stores and looked at pretty much all of the different types of mattresses out there.

We live in a small apartment with only room for a full-sized bed so we didn't want to spend a lot of money on a mattress because we'll probably buy a queen or king in a couple years. We've been using a futon mattress that's about 4 years old. It was great when I bought it, but now, the middle of it has been compressed to about 25% of its original thickness making it not very comfortable.

First, we went to Robinson's May and Sear's in the Northridge mall. The mattresses at Sear's were filthy so I couldn't get Denisa to try many out. Plus the sales guy yelled at potential customers, "Don't do that! Never do that!", as they were touching the mattresses. "Never just touch the mattress. You have to lie down on it."

Robinson's May was much nicer, but after lying on a couple mattresses, I was ready to call it a day. I thought it was just the clothing, but everything in the mall sucks the life out of you. I don't know how I spent all those days after school during my junior-high years wandering around the Del Amo mall. We stopped by the Select Comfort store before leaving. They are the ones that make those "sleep number" air mattresses. The beds were pretty comfortable, but the sales guy was too pushy, telling us how important it is to get a good night's sleep. Duh, that's why we're shopping for a bed. Plus, the fact that they charge $200 to add the digital remote control that shows the sleep number instead of the remote without an LCD display pissed me off. Not that I'd need it, but I just think that's ridiculous. But I guess the marketing ploy works for them. The sales guy did tell us that we should try the Tempur-Pedic mattresses.

Tempur-Pedic's gimmick is that their memory foam was developed at NASA. We tried it out at a mattress warehouse store and it was very comfortable. At around $1,300, we passed. The mattress warehouse place actually had the type of mattresses that I had been looking for all along. Denisa's mattress from childhood is about 20 years old, made from foam, and is still in great shape. It's nice and firm and hasn't lost its form at all. If communists were making such mattresses 20 years ago in Czechoslovakia, surely they must be available in the U.S. Well, this store did have some foam mattresses, latex and polyurethane, but they cost as much as an inner spring mattress. Our search continued.

We went to Costco to see what they had. They have good old-fashioned Sealy Posturpedic mattresses, but they didn't have the firm ones in the store, just a softer one. And they only had queen and twin. We could have ordered the firm full-size one, but we couldn't test it out first. We would have to make a decision by touching a dirty one-foot square sample.

So we decided to buy the Costco version of the memory foam mattress online. It's made by a company called Sleep Innovations. I figured it would feel similar to the Tempur-Pedic one, and if it weren't comfortable, Costco will take anything back.

It arrived yesterday. It weighs about 80 pounds and comes in a box. Within the box, the mattress is folded up in a vacuum sealed bag. The instructions say to let the mattress decompress for 24 to 72 hours, but by the time we were ready for bed last night, about six hours after I removed it from the bag, it looked like it was ready. It's 12 inches thick, putting us at least 8 inches higher off ground than we were before.

Unfortunately, I didn't sleep very well last night. I woke up at around 4am and had a hard time getting back to sleep. It felt like my pelvis was sinking too deep into the bed. Denisa loves the new mattress, mostly because it's much warmer than the futon. I'll have to give it some time. Hopefully, I'll get used to it.

Update: After a couple weeks, I've decided I like the mattress. For some reason, my old feather pillow seems inadequate though. I'm tempted to get some of these fancy Novafoam pillows to go with the mattress, but $100 each seems pretty steep.

Update (11/12/2008): Three years later, we're still happy with the mattress.

misc | Permanent Link

MySQL with SSL on Debian

Due to licensing issues, the Debian packages for MySQL are not built with OpenSSL support. In order to enable SSL, the packages must be recompiled.

server:/usr/src# apt-get build-dep mysql-server
server:/usr/src# apt-get install libssl-dev
server:/usr/src# apt-get source mysql-server
server:/usr/src# cd mysql-dfsg-4.0.23 (or whatever version you're building)
server:/usr/src/mysql-dfsg-4.0.23# vi debian/rules

Change --without-ssl to --with-ssl.

server:/usr/src/mysql-dfsg-4.0.23# vi debian/changelog

Add an entry to the top of the changelog.

mysql-dfsg (4.0.23-4-zerolag-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * Compile with OpenSSL support

 -- Christian Warden   Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:32:05 -0800

Then build and install the packages.

server:/usr/src/mysql-dfsg-4.0.23# ./debian/rules binary
server:/usr/src/mysql-dfsg-4.0.23# dpkg -i ../*mysql*.deb

If you already an SSL certificate that you're using with mod_ssl, you can use that. Otherwise, generate a new key and certificate. See /usr/share/doc/mysql-server/SSL-MINI-HOWTO.txt.gz for information on how to generate a self-signed certificate. Add the key and certificate to /etc/mysql/my.cnf.

[mysqld]
...
ssl-key=/etc/mysql/server.key
ssl-cert=/etc/mysql/cert.key

Create a user in MySQL that requires SSL encryption.

mysql> GRANT ALL on db.* to user@10.0.0.10 IDENTIFIED BY 'password' REQUIRE SSL;

Now, you should be able to connect over SSL. Remember that the client must have been compiled with SSL support too. In order to use SSL, the client must use the --ssl-ca option, either on the command-line or in ~/.my.cnf (or [mysql] section of /etc/mysql/my.cnf).

client:~$ mysql --ssl-ca=/dev/null -h server -u user -p

As far as I can tell, there's no way to actually force the client to validate the servers certificate so it doesn't matter what value you set for ssl-ca. It doesn't even have to exist. This, of course, means that while the connection is encrypted, it's vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

See /usr/share/doc/mysql-server/SSL-MINI-HOWTO.txt.gz if you want to use client certificates to authenticate clients rather than, or in addition to, passwords.

Update: I originally forgot to note that you should update the changelog before building the packages.

tech | Permanent Link

Mon, 28 Feb 2005

mutt-ng

It looks like mutt development is starting to pickup again. For those not familiar with it, mutt is the best email client out there. Development has forked and there is a new mutt-ng project. Kyle Rankin has written up a little summary. So far, it's mostly just integration of many of the third-party patches that have been available for a while. Since the Debian package includes many of these patches already, including one of the most important, header caching, that's not too exciting.

Two of the new features included in mutt-ng are a sidebar and nntp support. The sidebar is similar to those in most gui mail readers which shows the number of messages in the folders in your mailboxes. With pager_index_lines set, mutt basically looks like a text-mode version of the common three-pane interface in most gui clients. I'll probably unsubscribe from the exim-users mailing list once the newsreader works since I can just read the gmane group. Right now, trying to read a usenet message causes a segfault unfortunately.

mutt-ng seems a bit slower too. Returning from the pager to the index takes an extra second or so.

Debian packages for sid are here:
deb http://people.debian.org/~nobse/debian/ unstable/

tech » mail | Permanent Link

Show stdin in a Web Browser

This is brain-dead simple, but useful.

For example,

$ pandoc example.rst | stdin2www

tech | Permanent Link

Sun, 27 Feb 2005

ChangeThis Gets Lazy

ChangeThis, the publisher of cool little "manifestos", has gotten lazy with their latest batch. ChangeThis manifestos are digital pamphlets that focus on one specific topic. They usually short enough to read in one sitting, but packed with more information than you can fit on PowerPoint slides (not that I encourage the use of PowerPoint). The format is similar to slides, but they are designed to look good both on the screen and printed out. What makes them special is the thought that has gone into the design, making them difficult to avoid reading once you have opened one up. The content is generally a call to action or the author's insight into their particular area of expertise.

For example, they've taken a number of Joel Spolsky's essays (which are already compelling reading) and formatted them as manifestos.

This week, they've released two manifestos which, as they'd say on Sesame Street, are not like the others. The first, Shhh!, contains little cards that can be printed out and given to annoying strangers talking on cell phones. The design is clean, and the idea is cute, if somewhat tired. It doesn't follow ChangeThis philosophy, though. There's no individual behind it and it's not presenting much of an idea other than not to be rude on one's cell phone.

The second misfit is called Two Tomatoes, and actually is some kind of manifesto telling consumers what kind of tomatoes to buy, I guess. I'm not really sure what the content is because it's not readable on my screen. Except for the cover page, it doesn't look like anything else that ChangeThis has released.

Here's a typical page from a manifesto:

And here's the tomato one.

business | Permanent Link

In Bubble Wrap Champ

I'm an In Bubble Wrap champ! I love free books, and today I got my first free book from In Bubble Wrap, Creating Customer Evangelists.

In Bubble Wrap is an advertising program run by 800ceoread in which you can win free business stuff, mostly books, every day. Thanks go to Seth for the head's up.

In other free book news, I have Paul to thank for a free copy of The Number. I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it's pretty good. The Number, by Lee Eisenberg, is about the amount of money you need to retire, and discusses the ways different people think about the Number. The book is targeted to those in their 40s and 50s getting closer to retirement who, for a variety of reasons that Eisenberg investigates, don't know what their Number is, but it's a worthwhile read for those of us pushing 30.

Its discussion of retirement being a rather new concept is pretty interesting. One hundred years ago, most people worked until they died. Then, people started to live longer, get kicked out of their jobs, and die in poverty. Then came Social Security. Next up, long lives requiring savings somewhere north of -1.5% during the productive years.

business | Permanent Link

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The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. - Frederic Bastiat