Archive - 2010
February 22nd
General Assembly Hearings, Monday February 22nd
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 09:35Today will be busy at the Capitol in Hartford. Starting at 10 AM in room 2B will be the Government Administration and Elections Committee Public Hearing about the Citizens’ Election Program. I intend to be there and cover it using Twitter, Facebook, CoverItLive and perhaps QIK. I’m going to juggle the mix a little bit this time and post most of the running commentary on CoverItLive with only the keypoints posted to Twitter and Facebook, since I don’t want to overwhelm those feeds. If I can juggle things, I’ll also stream some of it via QIK. The CoverItLive stream will be available below the fold.
Also, the Environment Committee will be having its public hearing starting at 10:30 in room 1E. There is one bill I’m interested in there, and I’ll probably write a blog post about this later, but not try to catch the Environment Committee hearing.
There are several appropriation subcommittee meetings during the day as well as a Central CT Bike Alliance Legislative Reception at 2:30.
February 21st
This Week In Woodbridge
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/21/2010 - 21:40After a particularly quiet week last week, this week in Woodbridge starts off with a flurry of activity. On Monday, starting at 6 PM, there will be a special meeting of the Board of Selectmen to review department budget requests for FY2011 and to vote on the recommendations to the Board of Finance for the FY2011 budget. At the same time, the Board of Fire Commissions will hold a meeting at the new fire house. This meeting will also be discussing budgets, building use. The EMS Commission is scheduled to start at 7 PM at the Town Hall.
Over at Beecher Road, there are two meetings taking place, both starting at 7 PM. The regular meeting of the Woodbridge Board of Education is scheduled for the Media Center. At the meeting, there will be a report on the monthly enrollment as well as actions on the school district’s participation in the Open Choice Program and the Wintergreen Magnet School.
The board is also scheduled to act on a recommendation of the BRS Town Building Committee to retain Dimeo Construction as the construction manager for the BRS building project. Acting as a committee of the whole, the board will review curriculum issues as well as the strategic school profile.
The recreation commission will meet at the same time at the South Assembly Room. The agenda will cover mostly the same topics as the January agenda, but in a slightly different order.
At the Library on Wednesday evening, starting at 5:30, there will be a career networking meeting. The regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen is scheduled to take place at the Town Hall starting at 6 PM. The Woodbridge Park Association is also reportedly meeting on Wednesday and the Massaro Farm Board is reportedly meeting on Thursday. There will also be a screening of The Time Traveler’s Wife at the library starting at 7 PM on Thursday.
Ending off the week will be The Hoot at Beecher Road School from 11:30 to 3:30. Also, starting at 1 PM on Saturday will be storytelling about maple syrup starting at the public library, followed by a hike in the Alice Newton Street Park.
This will be followed by a Gala Purim Masquerade Ball at Congregation B’nai Jacob in Woodbridge starting at 6:15 PM. Sunday, starting at 3 PM there will be a Purim Carnival at the Jewish Community Center.
(Cross-posted at the Woodbridge Citizen).
Lyman Orchard's Winterfest 38
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/21/2010 - 11:10I’ve lived in Connecticut for about twenty years now, and my wife and two youngest daughters were both born here, so it is a surprise that none of us have ever been to Lyman Orchard’s annual Winterfest. Yesterday, we corrected this error and had a great time.
One of the main draws for us was seeing Bill Covitz’s ice sculptures.
Of course Fiona was especially interested in sampling some of the food that was for sale in the store. They had lots of great samples, and I want to highlight some of the best. One of our favorites was the Mango Spice Salsa from Giff’s Original in Cheshire. It was very tasty and they use as much local products as possible in their relishes, chutneys and salsas.
There were quite a few other really good salsas and sauces available as well. Besides buying some of the Mango Spice Salsa, we picked up some Sachs Brand Barbecue sauce. Another good sauce that we sampled was All Natural Frank’s Marinara sauce. Frank used to run a restaurant up near Hartford, and now makes his sauces from Hebron, and you can find his sauces in a lot of stores around Connecticut.
Another honorable mention goes to Rich’s Sweet Heat crossing the line from Coventry, RI. Also notable in the sauce and salsa category is Salsa Delievery from East Granby with their Fresh Salsa of the Month club.
In the drinks category there were samples of fresh cider from the orchard, East Haven’s Foxon Park White Birch Beer, and Sweet Leaf Tea which had various ice teas and lemonade available for sample. Sweet Leaf Tea is actually from Austin Texas, but they’re making a big push in the northeast. Rounding out the drinks section was Lebanon, CT based Farmer’s Cow.
Across the aisle from the Farmer’s Cow samples were sample cider donut holes and cherry pie from the orchard and nearby were nuts from The Nut Lady from Agawam, MA.
With our food sampling complete, Fiona insisted that we stop and say hello to the puppies. Guilding Eyes for the Blind had a display up about their puppy raising program as well as several very cute puppies.
Ending off our day, we visited the igloos. These were small, but still large enough for Fiona to climb into. After this we went on a brief sleigh ride. Although the snow was melting around us as the horses pulled our sleigh across the field, it was a great experience.
As we left, Fiona asked if we can come back every year. I tend to take things a little more ‘one day at a time’, but agreed that we would put it on our list of things to try and come back to in 2011.
As a final note, in light of recent FTC rulings about bloggers endorsing things, I should let people know that the only things we have received for this favorable review was the good times and good samples we had at the Winter Festival, as well as a free cherry pie that we have been offered for putting some pictures of the event up on the Lyman Orchard’s Facebook Fan page. Fiona and I are really looking forward to Kim picking up the cherry pie.
For more pictures of the event, check out the pictures tagged ‘winterfest38’ on Flickr.
February 20th
MeeGo Community Dynamics: The Battle for the Third Estate of Mobile Devices
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/20/2010 - 10:22Ever since the announcement that Moblin and Maemo would be merging into MeeGo, there has been a raging discussion about whether rpm or deb packages should be used. At times, this has led to some good discussions about the technical merits of different packaging and distribution systems and the package formats they support. However, more often, it seems to be a heated exchange of religious viewpoints. Initially, I thought this was simply a traditional open source religious feud, but I’m beginning to think that it is much more than that. I now believe it is a battle for the third estate of mobile devices.
It seems as if the mindshare battles over mobile operating systems have settled down to iPhone versus Android. Yes, there are lot smartphones out there with their proprietary operating systems, and new ones coming every day. But it seems like iPhone and Android have captured the attention of most. They are, in the mobile world, the new Mac and PC. Sorry, Microsoft, I just don’t see the Windows Mobile stuff lasting. Like the desktop and laptop world where people argue about Mac or Windows, and there is a third estate of various forms of Linux, it seems like the same is happening in the mobile world. Two of the most credible Linux efforts in the mobile world seem to be Moblin and Maemo. The merger of the two seems like a good thing for the future of the Linux third estate in mobile devices.
Yet when any two communities merge, there are interesting dynamics. Over on the Nokia side, people seem to believe that Maemo Harmattan will be the first version of MeeGo. People argue whether or not this will run on the N900. These are the two topics in what is now called the MeeGo / Harmattan thread in the OS /Platform section of the Maemo Talk system.
Meanwhile, LG is trying to position their Intel Moorestown powered LG GW 990 as one of the first Meego based mobile devices. This is be based on the Intel Moblin platform. One Moblin developer has written How to build Meego images (a.k.a moblin 2.2) and another has information on updating the Broadcom drivers for running Moblin on a Dell Mini.
In a related post, he writes,
Nokia, in my opinion, have decided to abandon the Maemo platform and move their application stack over to Moblin. This was obviously bound to cause uproar in the maemo community. So in my opinion the MeeGo project and the portrayal as a merger is a PR stunt to try and save Nokia some face.
Based on the discussions on the Nokia based forums, this does not seem to be the case, but it does, perhaps illustrate the real reason for all the heat in the deb versus rpm debates. The MeeGo community will be made up of people paid by Intel and Nokia as well as enthusiasts for both the Moblin and MeeGo platforms. People are fighting for turf. They are fighting to feel not abandoned.
I would also suggest that they are fighting based on a narrow view of MeeGo. MeeGo’s website tries to position it as the platform for Netbooks, Pocketables, In-Vehicle, Connected TVs as well as ‘media phones’. As people fight for their little bit of mobile Linux turf, they are missing the bigger picture.
What might it be like to have the same operating system on the screen in the back of the minivan, on the navigation display on the dashboard, on the cable set top box, on the Blu Ray DVD player, on the Digital TV, on a netbook, an eReader, and a smartphone? Each of these devices have different user interface requirements, different connectivity requirements, different location requirements and other differences affecting what the operating system presents to the user. As an example, I don’t need GPS on my Blu Ray player, but I would really like to be able to download videos off the Internet that I could record to Blu Ray, play on my TV, my smartphone or the screen in the back of the minivan.
Likewise, different devices might want Bluetooth connectivity, wired internet connectivity, WiFi internet connectivity, 3G data connectivity, or different types of cable data (DOCSIS) connectivity. Some may provide for lots of data storage, some for much less.
Can MeeGo deliver an Operating System that will nicely meet all these needs? An open source Operating System that will get other smartphone manufacturers to use MeeGo instead of Android? Get in-vehicle manufacturers and various television manufacturers to use MeeGo? If so, MeeGo has a very interesting future. On the other hand, it might just get derailed by people more concerned about whether MeeGo looks similar enough to their current Moblin or Maemo operating system. I hope this won’t be the case.
February 19th
Please Scare Me
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/19/2010 - 14:11In 1982, I invited unknown masked men to my apartment in New York City via the Internet. Seven years later, the apartment I was living in was burglarized and my portable computer was stolen. The Internet was much smaller then. I had been working at Bell Laboratories and the unknown masked men where people on a Usenet group coming to a Halloween party. Between 1982 and 1989, I moved several times, so I don’t believe there was any correlation between the two events.
Since then, I’ve started blogging and writing details about when I would be away from my home. In 2006, I started using Twitter. I’m not sure how long I’ve been on BrightKite, but it has probably been about two years. I’ve been on Foursquare for quite a while, but never started using it until I upgraded to my latest phone. With that, I’ve posted many times when I’ve been away from my house.
However, the vast majority of the times that I’ve made posts like that, someone else has been home, the neighbors have been watching the house, the dog has been standing guard, the alarm system has been on, and/or many other factors have made it so that if anyone managed to connect my online message with my real address and headed over to case out my house, they would have been disappointed at best.
So, it is with some interest that I’m reading all the posts about the latest sensational fear-mongering website, PleaseRobMe. “The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare”. That is an important goal. However, the sensationalism and one-sided nature of it detracts from the goal.
Yes, people should think about all the content they put online, their location, their activities, pictures of what they are doing, and so on. Everything has a risk and reward profile. There are risks of letting everyone know when you are not home. I believe those risks are much less than people writing about PleaseRobMe indicate. Just because you’re not home doesn’t mean that the house is empty or unprotected. For that matter, letting your neighbors know that you are not home may even encourage them to keep a closer eye on your home and you may, in fact, be better protected than if you hadn’t let your neighbors via an online service that you are not home.
No, instead the site and the responses people have had to it sound an awful lot like the famous movie ‘Reefer Madness’, or the warnings from parents to kids not to make faces because their faces might get stuck that way, or not to masturbate because they might go blind.
By the way, as I write this, my wife and daughter are out running errands. Our dog is sleeping, but I’m sitting at my computer in my home office. Watch out everyone.
