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Well, my paphiopedilum is in bloom. Pretty exciting, this is the second orchid that has bloomed since I took custody of a nice collection from a friend.

paphiopedilum in bloom

In my quest to get back on the GTD wagon, I decided to spring for a copy of OmniFocus for both the Mac and the iPhone.   One neat feature is the ability of the app to use WebDAV to store the database on a web server and then sync between the two versions remotely.  I will probably always have my phone with me when I am using my laptop, so I don’t know how critical this feature will be for me.  However it does provide for a remote backup of the data, plus allows me to pull the data down when I want it instead of having to remember to sync “one more thing” on the phone before heading out the door.  You can use a MobileMe account to do this, but since I’m a cheapskate I had to figure out how to do this with the servers I already pay for.  A quick google search showed some nice blog posts on getting this setup using Mac OS X Leopard, but I wanted to run this on my Ubuntu server. So here’s basically what’s needed. First, make sure you have apache2 installed. I won’t cover that here. You need to enable mod_dav and mod_dav_fs.

sudo /usr/sbin/a2enmod dav
sudo /usr/sbin/a2enmod dav_fs


I also wanted ssl enabled so I wasn’t sending credentials in the clear. Turns out that the ssl certificate script (apache2-ssl-certificate) that most tutorials mention is not included with apache anymore. But you can do basically the same with the ssl-cert package, so install that as well as openssl if it’s not installed already. One problem is the cert is only good for one month, so if ignoring the warning you get from OmniFocus bothers you, you can fix that later by generating a cert with a longer expiration, or getting a real one.

sudo aptitude install openssl
sudo aptitude install ssl-cert


This should create a certificate and put it in /etc/ssl/private/localhost.pem. Then enable the ssl module and the ssl configuration on apache.

sudo a2ensite ssl
sudo a2enmod ssl


Then, create an htpasswd file that will be used to authenticate for your directory. I put mine in /etc/apache2.


sudo htpasswd -cs webdav.passwd username

Then follow the prompts.

You need to setup your config for the ssl part of your server, it will be in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled.   You need to pick a location on your server to host the data.   Whereever you put it, make sure it’s owned by the user that apache runs as:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data data/


Here’s a sample config:

<VirtualHost *:443>
SSLEngine On
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/private/localhost.pem
Alias /data "/opt/data/"
<Directory "/opt/data">
Dav On
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
AuthType Basic
AuthName WebDAV-Realm
AuthUserFile "/etc/apache2/webdav.passwd"
require valid-user
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Just restart your server and hopefully everything is setup.

sudo apache2ctl graceful

You can check it from a browser by navigating to https://yourdomain.com/data, assuming no other apache strangeness has been configured.

I received a new credit card and ATM card in the last few weeks as my old ones had expired.  In the past, when I needed to activate them I was able to just do this via an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system in about 15 seconds.  Done and done!  This time, for the credit card I was connected with a live person who proceeded to tell me all about a credit monitoring service that I should use.  I managed to talk my way out of that one, but for the ATM card I was forced to listen to an automated message for the same service.  It must have droned on for about a full minute, and then when I didn’t press “1″ to buy the service, it said something to the effect of “while you are waiting for us to activate your card, don’t miss this great opportunity, blah, blah”.  Do they really think we don’t know how long it takes to activate a card?  I guess they have to make up their billions of losses somewhere…

This article from the New York Times was interesting.  Turns out that by being very frugal, the Japanese have possibly made their economy worse.

However, I’m not sure if “underconsuming” is really that bad of a thing, even if it causes some economic pain.  I love the quote from a 20 year old Japanese woman, ““I’m not interested in big spending,  I just want a humble life.”

Maybe this is where we are headed, and it might do us some good.  If we had all lived more simply sooner, the current financial crisis would probably have been avoided from the beginning.

I read Serve God, Save the Planet a number of months ago, but was prompted to write about it based on the story in the NY Times today about a change in the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on climate change and another story on the addition of pollution to the official list of sins in the Catholic church. Obviously, climate change, pollution, the environment, energy consumption, and similar issues are not going away any time soon.

Serve God, Save the Planet, A Christian Call to Action is written by Matthew Sleeth, a former ER doctor from the East coast. He was living the good life, with a big house, nice cars, and a good career. Then he began to notice how many of his patients were coming into the ER with sicknesses related to environmental issues, from asthma to breast cancer. As he started to look into the issues behind these illnesses, he was convicted by his own lifestyle and how it contributed to the environmental damage that was causing these problems.

This book is an easy read with lots of practical advice. He backs up his viewpoints with scripture, and shares some fascinating stories. Most of us have heard “tree huggers” telling us how to live, but this book really prompted me to action. After reading it, I immediately made a couple of changes that I have stuck with since:

• I have stopped taking my lunch in plastic bags to work that I threw out - I’m now recycling all plastic bags
• I am not going to put pesticides or herbicides on my lawn - I still have a bag of Scotts in the garage from last spring
• I am turning off lights like crazy around the house
• I turned the thermostat down one degree this winter

One thing I like about this book is that it doesn’t spend time debating whether climate change is real or not - it concentrates on the real measurable impact of our consumption on the world’s resources. It really is an environmentalist primer for Christians, with scripture to back it up. This would make a great book for discussion in a small group or among friends.

Yay!  Apple has apparently announced a fix for the keyboard freezing problem on MacBooks and MacBook Pros that I was noticing.  The software update notice says:

This update addresses a responsiveness issue on MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook computers. Some MacBook and MacBook Pro systems may occasionally experience a temporary suspension of keyboard input which can last a minute or longer. The Mac OS X 10.5.1 update is required before installing the MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1.

We’ll see how this goes.  I had not noticed as much of this since updating to 10.5.1, but it was still happening occasionally.

I read an article on boingboing last year about buying cheap eyeglasses online, which led me to the glassy eyes blog. I promptly went to zenni and ordered a $12.95 pair of glasses, throwing in the sunshades for $4. Laura ordered a pair as well. The glasses arrived a few weeks later, but I found that they were a bit strong, and I think it was due to bad measurements.

The process is pretty simple, you obtain your prescription from your optician, which they are required to give you by law. However, they don’t give you one piece of information - the pupillary distance. This is the distance between your pupils and is used to properly center the lens in the glasses. The first time we measured this, I had Laura do it. She tried to hold a ruler up to my eyes and “eyeball” it. I think this was the source of the error.

I then came up with a great idea. I held up a ruler to my eyes and took a photo of myself straight on. Then, I downloaded the picture to my laptop and blew up the photo and measured the distance from there. Turns out I was about 5mm off the first time. I ordered a second pair and they feel much better - this time I ordered a deluxe frame with a magnetic sunshade and higher index lenses - $45. With prices like this you can afford to make a few mistakes, and it’s great to have a few extra pairs just in case or to mix things up a bit. Give it a try.

As a huge fan of Office Space, I really was excited when I heard heard about Idiocracy a few months ago, but when I heard it wasn’t a sequel, I didn’t go out and get it right away, but I finally got around to putting it in the NetFlix queue. Unfortunately, I forgot about it, and on a whim went ahead and rented it and forgot to remove it from the queue and it showed up, so I payed twice for it. I don’t know if it was worth two rentals.

The basic idea is that one man and one woman (Luke Wilson as a soldier and Maya Rudolph as a prostitute) are selected to participate in an army experiment where people could be put in a state of hibernation. The man running the experiment gets busted for pimpin’, and the subjects are forgotten about and wake up 500 years in the future. Since the smartest people in society stop reproducing and all the idiots procreate like rabbits, the world is full of complete morons. Everything is sponsored by a company, there is trash everywhere, and the English language is a mixture of rap and hillbilly. It turns out that an average joe from 500 years ago is now the smartest man on the planet. The president is a wrestling (as in WWE) superstar, and the crops are dying because they are being watered with the equivalent of Gatorade. Society needs to be rescued, but you wonder how they survived as long as they did.

The jokes get a little old and are pretty crude, the language is a little foul, and it’s not nearly as funny as Office Space, but overall it’s a pretty good idea. I think I laughed more than I have in a while, and it was great to see a lot of the same actors from Office Space. Milton is there, and Michael Bolton, but the main actors are different. It also makes you think a bit about where we are actually headed with all the crazy marketing messages we get every day. It seems far-fetched, but watch a little TV after the movie, and you’ll begin to wonder how far from the truth it really is.

My mom got us this book at a garage sale for $0.25 shortly after Audrey was born. It’s called The Ballet Bears (TM) getting in shape, by Jill Wolf. It has these fat little teddy bear pictures in leotards, leg warmers, and ballet slippers, and basically tells the story of the wonderful life of a ballerina. Well, Jill might be in need of some counseling, listen to the opening stanza:

Ballet Bears
Must get in shape
For their new dance revue:
They exercise
Eight hours a day
And watch their diets too

Eight hours a day! Holy cow! Now I’m sure that professional ballerinas might work on dancing eight hours a day, but is this really what you want a toddler to start out with?

And then this gem…

Ballet Bears
Are shaping up–
They hope their tights will fit,
Or else they won’t
Be getting up
When they do the splits!

Yes, obsess about your clothing and whether it will fit, and you always need the pursuit of perfection and poor self esteem.

Ballet Bears
Are shaping up–
They spin and pirouette;
Although they’re looking
Very good,
They’re just not perfect yet.

Needless to say, now that she is comprehending what these books mean, we’re putting this one away.

Almost 30 years before Joel Johnson wrote this scathing blog entry about people buying gadgets that overpromise and underdeliver, Richard Foster basically said the same thing (minus a few vulgarities) in his excellent book Celebration of Discipline.

Foster give us ten controlling principles for the outward expression of simplicity. Part of the fourth reads as follows:

..refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry. Timesaving devices almost never save time. Beware of the promise, “it will pay for itself in six months.” Most gadgets are built to break down and wear out and so complicate our lives rather than enhance them…. Propagandists try to convince us that because the newest model of this or that has a new feature (trinket? ), we must sell the old one and buy the new one….. Often “new” features seduce us into buying what we do not need.

I think Foster is right on here. We have been held captive by the companies marketing to us for too long. How much different is this year’s model than last year’s? I think Joel gets it right in the gizmodo post when he says:

Stop buying this crap. Just stop it. You don’t need it. Wait a year until the reviews come out and the other suckers too addicted to having the very latest and greatest buy it, put up a review, and have moved on to something else. Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn’t do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself. Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it.

If we followed this advice, we might see a slower trickle of new products, but I’m willing to bet they would be better, would fit our needs, and would maybe actually change our lives.