BKaF – Brad Kovach and Friends

Watch this video. Kevin Kelly says that eventually, the Internet will be the One. I just had a great idea to make that happen.

Data ubiquity is the future. And I want to make it happen. And I want to try.

I am a lazy person.  If I don’t want to do something, it won’t get done immediately.  This laziness dominates everything I do, so you can naturally assume that my morning routine is a pathetic mad-dash for class, work, or wherever I need to be.

Days ago, an auto-grinding auto-brewing coffee maker was on sale for $55 on woot.com.  To be specific, it was the Cuisinart Grind & Brew 10-Cup Coffee Maker with Gold Tone Filter.  Normally about $140, this seemed like a great deal at the time.

I knew that this coffee maker would be a boon to my laziness.  If I just set it at night,  I could wake up in the morning and JUST KNOW that my coffee was freshly ground and brewed to perfection.  With this in mind, I knew that I could hit the snooze button several times and still make it to class “on time.”

It’s been three days, and I’ve already condemned this machine to “counter-top decoration” status.  And so begins the three day narrative of my experiences with the worst coffee maker ever designed…

Day 1.

I get a text from a coworker that my coffee machine has arrived at Starbucks.  I didn’t order it through Starbucks, but I work there and naturally have all of my cool new Internet things shipped there.  Getting a package through WWCC’s mail system is impossible.  The fact that it was a coffee maker being sent to Starbucks was amusing.

I take the machine home and unpack it.  I am immediately dismayed to discover that the automatic coffee grinder is a blade grinder.  Blade-ground coffee is disgusting compared to the full-flavored burr-ground coffee.

Once everything was washed and assembled, I realized that this is a gorgeous coffee maker (which is why I am leaving it on the counter).  It’s stainless steel and smooth.  The carafe is eye-catching.  Visually, I cannot tell that this is the most ill-conceived piece of coffee brewing equipment ever stamped out by a Chinese robot.

I set the clock on the unit and set the auto-brew timer for 8:00 am and headed to bed.

Yes, I just compared this coffee maker to Hitler.

Day 2.

I wake up to the sound of a jet flying overhead.  A few moments later, when my lucidity arrived, I realized the sound was my coffee maker discretely brewing a pot of coffee in the kitchen.  After about a minute, the screechs and whirrs of the grinder ceased and the coffee quietly brewed.  I drifted back to sleep because I didn’t need to be awake yet.

I wake up, get ready and pour a cup of coffee.  The coffee was palatable.  It wasn’t perfect.  I’ll be considerate and blame the old coffee beans for this lack of flavor.

I filled up my cup and went to class.  I was still late, but again, I cannot blame the coffee maker for that.  Actually, I can and I will: the coffee pot’s clock was EIGHT minutes slower than my phone–the same phone I used to set it the night before.

This coffee machine is a bastard.

Day 3.

Once again, I awake to the sound of my coffee maker grinding my sanity coffee to a pulp for brewing.  Despite the noise, I anticipate a decent cup of coffee since the beans were fresh.  I bought them the day before at Starbucks.  Knowing that my coffee maker was on top of things, I drifted back to sleep because I can.

45 minutes later (ten minutes to class), I wake up to a catastrophe.  I open my door to see a fresh pot of coffee brewed all over my floor.  Not only was my coffee ruined, but I am now forced to wipe a pot of coffee off the floor.

As I began to swab coffee off the floor with my Swiffer WetJet, I began to reconstruct the incident that has permanently condemned my coffee pot to a life of “looking pretty on the counter.”

The night before, I had filled the bean hopper with delicious, new coffee beans (Caffé Verona, if you care).  I filled the water tank with cold tap water.  I rinsed out all of the components because I wanted my coffee to be phenomenal the next morning.  The night before, I had failed to realize that I didn’t assemble the machine in its entirety.

Many coffee pots are built with a little valve that is activated by the top of the carafe.  Without something on the top of the carafe, the valve wouldn’t activate and the coffee will not flow through the valve and into the carafe.  My coffee maker is equipped with such a luxury.

Since I didn’t put the top back on the brewing carafe the night before, there was nothing to press up and activate the valve and let the coffee flow into the carafe–even though the carafe was in place.

Coffee gurgled out of the top of the machine because it had nowhere else to go–the valve was shut.  It filled my counter, pooled up on my floor and made my entire dorm smell like coffee with a hint of Swiffer WetJet mopping solution.  Magically, the gurgling coffee pot didn’t land a drop of coffee into the carafe.

I was late for class again.  My dorm was a mess.  Don’t buy this coffee maker.

I have some exciting news for everyone: I have successfully secured a position at the college radio station doing a weekly talk show.

You can consider this the return of Meet Someone New, but with much more content stretched over the course of an hour.  The format of the show will be changing a little, but the show itself should simply be an amusing hour involving funny stories, amusing personalities, weather forecasts and more.

That’s about the entirety of my endeavor. I should have the first airing posted for you soon after.

Recently, you may have noticed that Facebook has allowed users to pick usernames.  Upon learning this news, I immediately thought, “How convenient will this make it for people to find  me!?  This is fantastic news!  Now, I will be able to rapidly expand my internet empire with a eponymously chosen username!”

I was looking forward to June 12 at 10:01 pm when I would finally claim http://www.facebook.com/bradkovach.  But I had to work at 5:00 am the next day.  So I loaded my ears with foam plugs and went to bed at 9:10.  This is now my biggest regret.  I, being fully able to conveniently register ‘bradkovach’ as my username at every other site on the entire internet, assumed that I could go to bed, and work my formidable nine-hour shift, come home and register my name.

It might surprise you then, considering my previous luck registering ‘bradkovach’ on EVERY OTHER WEBSITE, that I was unable to register http://www.facebook.com/bradkovach for use in my Internet empire.

Well then, who did?

This guy:

Another Brad Kovach

So now, I must write a letter to Brad Kovach.  From Brad Kovach.

Dear Brad Kovach,

You might know me from the first four results when you Google your (our) name.  I am Brad Kovach.  Not only am I Brad Kovach, but I am the most important and most accomplished Brad Kovach on the Internet–until now.

You see, Brad Kovach, you have damaged my ego.  I have successfully been building my Internet empire from a very young age.  I have been signing up for websites using “bradkovach” as my username successfully for years now.  Today, however, you ruined me.  You STOLE my username on Facebook.  While this is a small victory for you, you will not win this name war.  You see, while you have taken a highly coveted username on a very prestigious site, you cannot outdo me.  Let’s check the scoreboard.

Brad Kovach (me)	Brad Kovach (you)
MySpace (which I cancelled–taking the username with me.) Twitter Google (yeah–GOOGLE) Digg Reddit YouTube WordPress.com Flickr bradkovach.com (checkmate)	Facebook LinkedIn?
At least 9…	1… maybe 2?

I suppose it’s normal to be a celebrity and have imposters and doppelgangers. I can live with these side-effects of fame.

Sincerely,
(the real) Brad Kovach

So here is the happy ending: I picked an equally awesome username for Facebook. You may now check out my profile at http://www.facebook.com/thebradkovach.

Also, since I am a jerk that WILL kick a horse while they are down, I have redirected all of the bradkovach.com/site urls to their respective site.  For example, http://www.bradkovach.com/facebook will take you to my Facebook profile.

Our TVs are better now.  And our media is too! High-definition movies are on the rise.  Blu-Ray players and High-Definition TVs are coming down in price and “1080p” movies are all over the shelves.

But, these 1080p movies I keep buying aren’t 1080p–despite repeated assertions on the packaging.

Look at this picture…

For the curious, this comes from the case of Austin Powers in Goldmember from the Austin Powers Collection: Shagadelic Edition Loaded With Extra Mojo box set.  You can clearly see that this main feature claims to be in “1080p High Definition.”

Great!  So I bought it.  But I got home, loaded the disc into my Blu-Ray player.  And what do I see?  Letterboxing.  On my High-Definition TV.

(see full frame screen capture)

Don’t get me wrong…

I don’t want to be misunderstood.  I love the fact that these movies are high definition; they are gorgeous.  But a lot of 1080p movies AREN’T 1080p.  And the Austin Powers movies aren’t the only guilty films.

So far, in my collection…

Full 1080p

• Juno

Partially 1080p

• The Dark Knight – some sequences were filmed in IMAX

Not 1080p

• Wall-e
• The Phantom of the Opera
• Cloverfield
• V for Vendetta
• Kill Bill: Volume 1
• Kill Bill: Volume 2
• Batman Begins

In Conclusion…

If you work for a movie studio, are in charge of Blu-Ray production, and rip people off on a daily basis, how do you sleep at night?

Also, leave comments about other non-1080p movies.

Every night, I make a backup of bradkovach.com and some other websites.  The script begins at 11:00 MST, gathers all the information that my website needs to survive, bundles it up, and sends it to a remote server.  By “remote” I mean, “in my Mom’s laundry room, connected to sub-standard broadband.”

The process takes about eight hours–due to the slow connection.

Also, the server’s hard drive fills up quickly, so it can barely hold a week’s worth of backups–not enough.  But still, having the backup has been beneficial.  Just a few days ago, I ruined a client’s website (while the client was there) with some trigger-happy deletions.  The backup saved my day.

But when I needed to restore the backup, it took HOURS.  I thought–there has to be a better way.  And there was…

Enter Amazon S3

Everyone who has the Internet is familiar with Amazon.com, the Wal-Mart of the online world.  They’ve taken shopping to a whole new level by making it affordable and easy.

Amazon has amazing infrastructure that keeps their site running.  The same infrastructure has been made available to end-users who want simple, solid, affordable storage.

At its core, S3 is a very simple file system.  S3’s structure includes buckets and objects.  Buckets are like folders.  Within a bucket, you can place objects.

Each S3 account allows 100 buckets.  Each bucket can hold unlimited objects.  Within buckets, you may not create folders, rename, move, copy or modify files.  Within buckets, you may store data–lots of it–and cheap, too!

Backup your *nix server with Amazon S3

If you have a *nix server that needs regular backups, S3 is a perfect solution.

The only downside?  It’s kinda tricky to maneuver.  But I’ve figured it out!  You can too.

There are a number of approaches.  Most involve programs, compiling, and administrative access to the machine they run on.  I don’t have administrative access to my webserver (thank goodness)–so this solution is shared-hosting friendly.  You only need shell access to make this work.

The Ingredients

1. s3-bash – a collection of scripts that can interface with Amazon S3 to get, put and delete objects from your buckets.
2. *nix-based system to back up
3. An Amazon S3 account.  Set one up at Amazon’s website.  (you need a credit card)
   1. Have your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key ready.  You can find them on this page.

Let’s Backup!

1. Create a bucket to store some objects
   1. Visit http://jets3t.s3.amazonaws.com/applets-jets3t-0.6.1/jets3t-cockpit.html
   2. Click the “Direct Login” tab
   3. Enter your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key
   4. Click Login
   5. Click the gear positioned at the top right of the left-hand pane
   6. Click “Create New Bucket…”
   7. Complete the wizard.  Make note of what you named the bucket.
2. Download and extract s3-bash to an empty folder on your *nix-based system:
   mkdir ~/s3/
   cd ~/s3/
   wget http://s3-bash.googlecode.com/files/s3-bash.0.02.tar.gz
   tar -xzvf s3-bash.0.02.tar.gz
3. Create a key file for your Secret Access Key.  The key goes between the quotes with NO ADDITIONAL CHARACTERS BEFORE OR AFTER THE QUOTES.
   echo -n "-SECRETACCESSKEYHERE-" > ~/s3/aws_key
4. Copy some files to your account:
   ~/s3/s3-put -S -k ACCESSKEYID -s ~/s3/aws_key -T FILEtoCOPY /BUCKETNAME/NAMEDOBJECT
   ACCESSKEYID is your Access Key.
   FILEtoCOPY is a file to copy.  In my circumstances it would be backup.tar.gz
   BUCKETNAME comes from the bucket in step 1-7
   NAMEDOBJECT is what the file will be named in S3.  Usually, keep it the same as FILEtoCOPY.  You can create pseudo-folders by using slashes.
5. Wait for the script to exit.  It shouldn’t take long if your server is on a high-bandwidth backbone.  On my setup, I can transfer 1 gigabyte in about 1 minute 30 seconds.

That should do it.  You can easily work this into scripts.  My script compiles a folder, tar/gzips it and then uploads it to Amazon S3 and then (for some odd reason), I still upload to my little server that could.

Restoring from Amazon S3

Using s3-bash, we can retrieve files from Amazon S3 as well.  Assuming you have followed the above steps to upload to Amazon S3, the following command will retrieve from S3.

~/s3/s3-get.sh -S -k ACCESSKEYID -s ~/s3/aws_key /BUCKET/NAMEDOBJECT > FILEtoSAVE

S3 Benefits

Fast - I can backup in MINUTES instead of HOURS.  Inversely, I can restore a backup in MINUTES, too.

Reliable - Amazon has multiple copies of all of my data–in multiple geographic locations.

Cheap - I estimate that I’ll be paying three dollars a month to maintain a month’s worth of backups.

I just “seasoned” some Schwan’s Overpriced Teriyaki Wingz(tm) with a little puddle I squirted onto my plate from a bottle of “Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce.”  As I sat writhing in pain I said “I should write an article about this horrible pain experience.”  So I am.

Measuring How Hot Something Is…

When I contemplate things that shouldn’t be adulterated by logical hand of scientific analysis, I think of:

• Hot Sauce
• Pillow Fights
• Your mother

However bizarre as it may be, hot sauce and SPICYNESS in general has been analyzed scientifically.  And a scale has been written: the Scoville unit, eponymously named after Wilbur Scoville–a jerk that liked measuring hot things.

Scoville’s test involved taking a sample of the pepper’s extract and diluting it in sugar syrup until there is no detectable taste of heat.  We still use Scoville’s scale.  But, being a technologically inclined society, someone took all of the fun out of testing a pepper for heat with a robot and its robonose.

Now, a machine takes a sample, examines the chemicals, and a few magical moments later, the computer tells you how hot something is.  Personally, I’d much rather prefer the “precision,” “pain,” and “performance” of a human panel blasting their taste buds through rigorous heat examinations.

What is spice?

Very little is known about spiciness.  Please note: if Wikipedia doesn’t know, nobody does.

The feeling of spicyness is caused by capsaicin, a chemical that causes burning when in contact with mucous membranes.  Spicyness is not a flavor, but it is pain.  Your body has an actual endorphin response when in contact with spicy food.  Nerves are actually being tortured.  It isn’t a flavor, it’s a sensation!

My frustration sets in…

Don’t get me wrong, faithful readers, I love spicy food.  But I’m not a thrill seeker when it comes to blasting my tongue with chemical pain.  For one, I have Acid Reflux and spicy foods are not good for my esophagus.  Two, I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to have the “flavor” in extreme doses.  When a little dab will do it, why do you need the whole truckload‽ That’s right… I used an interrobang.

Here!  Look at this chart:

	Real World		Spicy Food
	Sleeping		Bell Pepper (0 SHU)
	Gentle handshake		Pepperoncini Peppers (100-500 SHU)
	Headlock		Jalapeño Peppers (2000 SHU)
	Kick to the crotch		Cayenne Peppers (30,000 SHU)
	Spinning Back Fist		Red Savina Habanero (300,000 SHU)
	Biting the curb		Naga Jolokia (855,000 SHU)

I hope you have found this chart useful. Please print this page for your handy reference. It SHOULD prove wildly convenient when you need to know how hot something is. Extra credit: memorize the chart.

Patheticness…

Please note that my birthday is coming up.  Compensate me for my HARD WORK by buying me something you can’t afford!

Citations and Images

• Wikipedia several times over
• Google Image Search
• SXC.hu
• chiliplants.co.uk

For those of you that don’t already know, Google has thrown its hat into the ring of the browser wars. By “browser wars” I mean “the fight for being the only way that you can access the Internet.”

So far, Google has drawn criticism–mostly on it’s user interface though. It’s blue. I’ll discuss that in a moment.

I’ve been playing with Google Chrome for about two days now. And it’s worth using. Here’s why.

Security

Online scams and phishing (a type of online scam where you are fooled into surrendering precious information by an impostor website) have become increasingly popular topics in the last couple years.  The Internet has provided identity thieves an efficient, productive way to steal credit card information, passwords and much more.

Google has seen and has been active in thwarting this problem.  They’ve cross-referenced their massive catalog with the Internet with feedback from users and have made a blacklist available to anyone who wants to check for malicious websites in their programs.

As a tremendous benefit of having this information available, they have built in state-of-the-art security features.

First, any malicious website that has been cataloged by Google will not load.  Instead a prohibitive screen will warn you and give you an opportunity to leave before things get ugly.  This type of feature has been in Internet Explorer (boo!), Mozilla Firefox, and Safari for years now.

But most notably included is address highlighting that easily exposes what website you’re browsing, but also what mode (secure or non-secure) you are browsing in.

Take a look at this screenshot…

You can easily see that the site I’m visiting is bradkovach.com.  Since the “http://” isn’t in green, I know that I’m not communicating over a secure connection.

But take a look at this screenshot…

You can tell that I’m connecting to Facebook, but I’m connecting to the wrong site. (I should have used https://www.facebook.com instead of https://facebook.com).  It uses the color red (which has been programmed into society to signify a problem).  And it also puts a slash through the connecting protocol to let you know that something isn’t right.  Not pictured is the contents of the actual page, which are prohibitively red with two options: “Proceed anyway,” and “Back to safety.”  On this page, clicking “Proceed anyway” lets you continue to the Facebook server you specified, but Facebook does the right thing and forwards you automatically to the secured version of their 100-million-strong web app.  This demonstrates the use of

Among passive security systems that will allow users to make their own calls on safety, this is a serious, but simple step toward Grandmother-friendly site identity validation.

Speed

There have been a number of benchmarks done by independent 3rd parties that conclusively prove that Google has made the fastest browser… ever.  It can evaluate Javascript MUCH faster than any other browser  It also uses a super-fast rendering engine (WebKit) to draw the pages on your screen.  For websites that use Javascript heavily (Facebook, Gmail) this results in a significant speed boost when performing day-to-day tasks.

Chrome has also made the tab much more usable.  When Javascript grinds down one tab, the others remain usable since they are isolated by a cool computing concept called “sandboxing.”  This means that one tab could crash completely, and the others would remain independently stable.  Very cool.

Also, since Chrome is sandboxed, memory management issues have been eliminated.  Traditionally–and users of Firefox know this–browsers have been very sloppy at “garbage collection.”  This means that every time you close a tab, load a new page, etc, a fragment of the old tab/page/etc is left behind and cannot be removed from memory.  After a day of surfing, browsers can occupy upwards of 200 megabytes of memory–a hideously large amount for a web browser.

Aesthetics and Usability

First there was IE, and now there’s Google Chrome trying to reshape the browser interface paradigm.  Google has taken a new browsing tab, a fairly new browsing tool, and moved it!  Instead of appearing as a row below the address bar, they compose the title bar.  Not only does this save space, but it’s kinda handy.  When a Chrome window is maximized, a flick of the mouse toward the top of your screen will always land you at the row of tabs that you have opened.

And the most major criticism of Google Chrome so far?  It’s kinda ugly–on Windows XP.  Vista versions of Chrome look great (better than Firefox).  For the new features that GChrome brings to the table, the look of the application is a minor inconvenience.  A more translucent and space-efficient design would also help things tremendously.  But for now, it’s in beta.  Give Google some time.

In today’s modern web browser eco-system, page zooming is standard.  By page zooming, I mean that the ENTIRE page gets blown up, not just the text sizes.  Curiously absent from Google Chrome is a page zoom feature.  GChrome only supports text zooming, which is rather useless on many websites.

Plugability

One of the reasons that I enjoy Firefox more than other browsers is its dynamite extension system.  So far, Google hasn’t made a clear path to an extension API–so your useful plugins like AdBlock Plus will not exist.  Surprising, consider Google owns the two largest advertising networks on the Internet.  At some point, however, Google will hear the cries for easier extendability.

Conclusion

Google has made a browser: Google Chrome.  It’s fast, safe, and stable.  It has some minor inconveniences, but it’s a few days old.  Give it time and Google Chrome will be a serious contender in the browser arena. (Apparently, it already has a 3% market share.  WTF!?)

Try Google Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome/

Dear BKaF,

I recently bet my friend $100 that the United States would win a gold medal in every single event we competed in.  Aside from Michael Phelps, we aren’t doing to [sic] well.

What can I do to resolve this situation? And, as a bonus question, how can I avoid this in the future?

Sincerely,
Overzealous Olympian

Dear Overconfident,

There are a number of things that you can do to remedy this situation:

Edit Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit–even you!  When your friend asks you to pay up, show him the Wikipedia page summarizing the United States’ EPIC WIN at the Olympics.  If he starts asking to “see citations” you need to have a backup plan.  Try faking a seizure or saying “OH LOOK! AN EAGLE!”

Pay your friend

Yeah, we know, you’re trying to avoid this consequence, but you shouldn’t have opened your big yap in the first place.

Kill your friend

It’s harsh, but IT’S ONE-HUNDRED DOLLARS.  That’s more than some small countries’ GDP.  And it’s not just the money–it’s your pride.  Could you handle having a friend heckling you for “being gullible,” “being stupid,” “having a big mouth,” and “having bad grammar.”

Act like it never happened

When your friend stumbles around to gather his winnings he so-rightfully deserves, just say “What?  What do YOU MEAN I OWE YOU ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS?!”  He’ll inevitably ask for the money again, when you start faking a sub-standard lifestyle.  Try to convince your friend that you already spent your economic stimulus check.  And when that doesn’t work (It won’t–we promise) LIE LIKE YOU’VE NEVER LIED BEFORE.

Fall into hiding

This looks cozy.

We’ve never been THIS desperate to evade trouble, so we can’t give you any pointers on living in the jungle, although we can recommend a soundtrack!

Kill yourself

Believe us–if the Japanese made this bet, they’d already be dead.  The ancient suicide ritual seppuku has spared thousands (millions?) of Japanese the embarrassment of admitting failure.  But, seeing how you’ve written this letter, you’ve already admitted that you lost.  This is probably not your best option.

We really hope that this run-down of cowardly escape routes has helped you maintain your measly net worth, and helped you score $100 dollars from your smarter-than-you friend.

Oh, and your bonus question about avoiding this problem in the future?  Answer: shut your mouth.  That should be rather obvious.

Thanks for writing in!
Brad Kovach and Friends

If you need a slice of wisdom, email us for help!

ask@bradkovach.com

We look forward to solving your problems!