Author: Andrew Huey

Happy Birthday Dad and Gloria

My father and our friend Gloria shared the same birthday, August 9. Dad’s been gone a while now, but this is the first birthday since Gloria passed away. Here’s a nice picture of the two of them together. Seems weird not to have anyone to call and wish a happy birthday to today.

There’s a timestamp in the bottom of this photo that says “02 8 9”, so this was probably taken on August 9, 2002. I’m guessing my Mom took this photo with my Dad’s camera. And I’m sure my Dad and Gloria had a little drink together that day, and had some fun joking around with each other.

Dad and Gloria

 

My bookshelves are a mess

Scott Hanselman posted a tweet yesterday with a photo of a bookshelf, asking people to reply with photos of their bookshelves. I was bored last night, so I took a few photos. This morning, I posted them to Twitter. A lot of other people replied to him too, with some cool photos.

I thought I’d post my photos here too. Of course, a large portion of my reading these days gets done via Kindle, iPad, and laptop, so my physical bookshelves aren’t necessarily reflective of what I’m reading these days.

It would be nice to have organized bookshelves, but what I have is really just piles of stuff, sometimes on bookshelves and sometimes on the floor or on various horizontal surfaces. It seems like the piles just grow, until they become structurally unsound, at which point I need to toss some books and/or reorganize. That’s one of the many reasons why ebooks are so great. I can buy as many as I want, and they never become a fire hazard.

I feel a little like I need to justify and explain these photos a bit, but maybe it’s better if I just let them speak for themselves. Or maybe not. The first one is a pile of random computer books, most of which I’ve read, but a few of which I never really got around to. The second is a pile of paperbacks, mostly Vonnegut, that I got from one of my brothers. (I can’t remember which brother.) I haven’t actually read most of them. (Oh, and there’s a couple of Ghost in the Shell DVDs on top of the paperbacks.) The third is some random SF paperbacks, all of which I have read. Mostly Gibson and Zelazny. The fourth is one of several “to be read” piles of graphic novels. There’s some stuff in there that I’m really looking forward to, including Grant Morrison’s X-Men run, a few volumes of Bill Winningham’s Fables, and some Usagi Yojimbo. (I’m a little embarrassed by the Vampirella book in that pile, but I’ll own up to liking Vampirella. It’s goofy cheesecake, but it’s fun.)

 

 

MoMA renovation

MoMA is in the midst of a fairly major renovation project. The last couple of times I went, things were pretty confusing. A lot of stuff was under construction. Here’s an article from the NY Times, from June, with some detail. I know that the entire project won’t be done until 2019, but I’m hoping that, the next time I go, things will be a little more stable.

I have a few complaints about the current status of the museum, but they’re mostly minor complaints about services and not about art. For instance, I think there’s still supposed to be a members coat check, but I have no idea where it is. And I don’t like the way they’re running the cafe now. It used to be run like a regular sit-down restaurant, but now (at least as of the last time I went), they’re running it like a hybrid cafeteria/restaurant. You order and pay for your food first, at a counter, then sit down, and they bring it to you. Not a big deal, but it makes it just a little less relaxing, and a little harder to deal with, if you decide you want an espresso and tiramisu after you’re finished with your meal. (Yeah, I know, first world problems.)

I do like the fact that the extra space will help them show more art from minority and female artists. At the same time, I hope they don’t relegate some of my favorite “white guy” art to the basement or something. I know that Starry Night isn’t going anywhere, but I am a little worried about OOF. (Yeah, I know it’s weird, but I like looking at it. In fact, I’m using it for the wallpaper on my Mac right now.)

more TypeScript and SharePoint

I got a chance to work on another TypeScript / SharePoint project at work recently. I’m finding these projects to be a nice change of pace from my usual Dynamics AX work.

I’m not doing anything that’s much more complicated than I did on the last one, but I got a little more ambitious on this one. I’m still using Q for promises and Papa Parse for parsing an input CSV file. I think I’m getting a little better with promises, but I still occasionally have problems with them.

On my last project, I put all my TypeScript code in one file. For this one, I’ve broken things up into several classes and files. I’ve even gone as far as having an abstract base class with two child classes inheriting from it.

And, for the last project, I just deployed the generated JavaScript as-is. For this one, I’m using Web Essentials to combine and minify the JavaScript. That’s working better than I thought it would.

I’ve also given up on the idea of deploying this thing as a regular SharePoint sandbox project, though I’ve set it up that way in Visual Studio. Instead, I’m simply copying the HTML and JS files to the SharePoint server with SharePoint Designer. Maybe that’s not the best way to do it, but it’s the easiest, and the least disruptive to the server. (I should look into whether or not it’s possible for me to do that with PowerShell.)

more cable TV and internet shenanigans

I got a phone call from my cable company recently; the person who called started rattling out a prepared script about some good news: they were upgrading my internet speed. I got suspicious pretty quickly, and, at some point in the script, she mentioned some additional fees. I assumed the call was a sneaky way of getting me to agree to upgrade my account, and cut her off to tell her that I was happy with my current service and didn’t want to upgrade. Then I hung up.

Afterward, I started to get a feeling that maybe I should have listened all the way through or at least tried to engage her in conversation and get some questions answered. Maybe it wasn’t a sneaky attempt to get me to agree to a service upgrade, but instead a sneaky way to try to brand a price increase as a service upgrade.

A few days later, I got an email from them, again with the “good news” that they were increasing my internet speed, to 60 Mbps. I read the fine print carefully, but there was no explicit mention of a price increase or any additional fees.

So I did some internet research, and I found a thread at DSL Reports that seemed to confirm that there would, indeed, be additional fees. So I then went and checked my most recent bill, and found the details in the fine print there. It looks like they’re going to start charging a $5/month modem rental fee, starting next month. And they’re signing me up for their “service protection plan,” for free until the end of the year, after which it’s probably $7/month. (I think I can drop that when the free period is up, at least.)

The most frustrating thing about all this is how they can’t just come out and tell you that they’re raising prices. It’s always a bunch of double-speak and shenanigans. The “service protection plan” is (of course) nonsense.  And the modem rental fee is also pretty ridiculous. (And they try to make it sound like they’re doing you a favor on it, by discounting it from the usual $10/month fee.) I might be able to dodge the modem rental fee by buying my own modem, but it’s not clear if they’d let you do that, or how much grief it would be to set up. (And I’m not really in a mood for a bunch of extra grief right now, so I’ll probably suck it up and pay the fee.)

Anyway, Cablevision/Altice just keeps getting worse, but I don’t really have any alternatives. I also found out recently that Verizon is retiring their old copper lines in my area, and that they probably wouldn’t be running new fiber into my apartment building. So I may lose the option of getting POTS from Verizon soon. (I know all the “young people” think that having a landline phone is an anachronism, but I kind of like having one.) So I might have to drop home phone service entirely, or switch to Optimum Voice, giving Altice yet another way to drain money out of my wallet. (Also, I had always assumed that Verizon FiOS was an option for me, for internet service, but from what I’m hearing, apparently it never was, since my apartment building isn’t wired for it. So I’m stuck with Altice for TV, Internet, and maybe phone service.)

Oh well. (Yes, I know that this was a pointless rant, but if I can’t rant on my own blog, where can I rant?)

Not at SDCC, again

Once again, I am home in NJ instead of enjoying San Diego Comic-Con, since I (again) couldn’t get a ticket. I was entirely OK with this, up until this week, when the weather here in NJ got really hot and humid, and I started thinking about that beautiful San Diego weather. It’s been pretty brutal in NJ this week, and I could really use some nice moderate San Diego summer weather. I shouldn’t complain though; my air conditioning is working fine.

I’ve been following the news out of San Diego, but in a very scattershot way. The Beat and Newsarama have had some good coverage. I’ve watched some of IGN’s video coverage on my TiVo and on the web. And I’ve set up the TiVo to catch SyFy’s nightly show and Conan’s show from the con. All of this is a very welcome distraction from the usual barrage of disheartening political news. I even added “comics” and “comic con” as topics under Apple News on my iPhone, so now I’m seeing stuff about Batman and DuckTales in with the usual Trump news. I plan on continuing to nerd out on Comic-Con news through the rest of the weekend. If anything important happens in the “real world” I can wait until Monday to find out about it.

Kirby and Eisner Humble Bundle

Humble has a pretty interesting bundle running right now, celebrating Jack Kirby and Will Eisner, who would both have turned 100 this year. It’s definitely an odd assortment of stuff. Most of Kirby’s work was, of course, work-for-hire, done for Marvel and DC, so none of that’s going to be in a bundle like this.

Eisner’s Spirit character was creator-owned (very unusual at the time). I think DC currently has the rights to reprint the original Spirit material, so none of that is in the bundle. Some modern Spirit comics, published by Dynamite, are in the bundle though. (DC published new Spirit stories for a while, a few years back, and I’ve read most of those. I haven’t read the newer Dynamite stuff.)

A couple of Eisner’s modern graphic novels are included, and those are all pretty good. (Of the two included, I’ve read one.)

For Kirby, there’s a couple of collections of his very old romance comics, plus some of his creator-owned stuff from the 80s (Silver Star). And some newer comics featuring his creator-owned characters, but done by other creators. I read the original Silver Star series when it first came out, and it’s pretty weird stuff. I haven’t read any of the modern spin-offs.

And there’s a bunch of magazines and books about Eisner and Kirby, including a bunch of stuff from TwoMorrows. So quite a random collection of stuff, of varying quality. But probably worth $15 or $20, given that some of that would be going to CBLDF and/or the Hero Initiative.

If you wanted to read a nice collection of Eisner’s original Spirit comics, Will Eisner’s The Spirit: A Celebration of 75 Years would be a good place to start. I was trying to think of something similar for Kirby, but I can’t really think of any one book that would be a good starting place. Maybe Fantastic Four Masterworks Vol. 1? Kirby did so much work for Marvel (and DC), it would be pretty hard to create a “best of” volume.

finishing Transmetropolitan

I just finished the final volume of Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan series. I bought the series from Comixology back in 2012, when they had it all on sale for some reason I can’t remember. I started reading it about a year ago. I got through about half of it last year, then took a break, then picked it up again a few months ago. It’s a really good series, and holds up well. (It was originally published from 1997-2002.)

I’ve been on an Ellis kick lately. I also recently finished his book Normal, which was fun little novella. I have some more of his stuff in Comixology that I might read soon too. But I’m also on a Grant Morrison kick, having recently finished his Batman & Robin run. (His Batman Inc stuff is up next.)

So I have a lot of good stuff waiting to be read. I went to Garden State Comics Fest yesterday, expecting to come home with some more books to add to the pile, but I wound up buying only one comic, out of a dollar bin. So I guess I spent more on gas driving to and from the con then I did on actual comics. I thought about going back to the con again today, but decided to sit outside on Division Street reading Transmet instead. I think that was a pretty good decision.

Joe Sinnott

Here’s a nice article about Joe Sinnott, from the NY Times, earlier this week. One thing that’s good about all the superhero movies coming out nowadays is that they usually kick up a handful of related media stories that can bring some attention to creators like Sinnott. (Though this article isn’t directly related to the new Spider-Man movie, it does mention it, and the article probably wouldn’t exist if not for the new movie.) I tend to think of Sinnott primarily for his long run on Fantastic Four, but that’s barely mentioned in the Times article.

The article is largely about Sinnott’s current work on the Spider-Man newspaper strip. It’s kind of cool that the Spider-Man newspaper strip is still running, and that folks like Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott are still involved with it.

Speaking of stuff that’s loosely related to the new movie, this exhibit at the Society of Illustrators sounds interesting. (I’m still a little annoyed that I missed their recent Will Eisner exhibit. That’s entirely my fault; I knew it was there, and I just didn’t get around to it. So I should make a point of going to this one.)

more on subscriptions

This post is a follow-up to this morning’s post about subscription software and services. First, it turns out that I do have a 7-day trial subscription to Comixology Unlimited. I got an email today telling me that it would expire soon and that I could convert it to a full 30-day trial, if I wanted to. But it looks like it won’t auto-convert into a paid account, so that’s nice. (It would have been even nicer if Comixology was more straightforward about it to begin with, but close enough, I guess.)

On the O’Reilly item, there was a discussion about this on Hacker News today. (And one on Slashdot, though I don’t pay much attention to Slashdot these days. And another on Reddit.)

In the Hacker News discussion, a few people mentioned the Safari subscription that’s included with ACM membership. This has always been a limited subscription, with only a small subset of the full Safari library, and a limit of ten books on your “bookshelf” at a time. Well, it turns out that ACM now offers full access to Safari, starting yesterday. (See this FAQ for details.)

While I’m pretty happy to have found out about this, I’m a little confused. A full Safari subscription costs $400 a year. An ACM membership costs about $100 a year. I’m not sure why O’Reilly would give away full access to Safari like this. ACM is a professional society, but (as far as I know) they don’t enforce any real membership criteria. Most members probably have at least a BS in Comp Sci, but I don’t think it’s a requirement. So I don’t know, now, why anyone would pay $400 for Safari when they could just give $100 to ACM and get Safari, plus the other ACM benefits. Maybe I’m missing something. Either way, I guess I don’t need to worry about buying any computer books any time soon. (I’ve been an ACM member for many years.)

This all gets me thinking about Pluralsight again. I paid for a one-year subscription back at the end of last year. I got some good use out of it for a while, but I honestly haven’t done much with it over the last few months. Part of the reason for that is that I was using it to get up to speed on SharePoint programming; I’m not currently working on any SharePoint stuff, so I really don’t need to finish watching all the SharePoint content I had queued up. Another reason is that they’re cracking down on streaming video at work, due to concerns about bandwidth usage. While Pluralsight is probably OK, I don’t want to risk showing up on any management reports, so I just haven’t watched any videos at all at work recently.

I don’t have any particular area of technology that I need to learn for work right now. I should probably pick something new to work on in my spare time. I could get back to F#, but I’ve read several books on that, and I don’t see much value in getting back to it without having a real project to work on. Or I could get back to Ruby on Rails; I really didn’t get very far with that, the last time I started working on it. I picked up some TypeScript skills on my last SharePoint project, and I can see where there’s a lot I could work on with TypeScript and modern front-end development in general. (There’s a lot I don’t know.) Or I could try to learn more about .NET Core, which would be more in keeping with the career track I was trying to keep myself on before I got side-tracked into my current Dynamics AX position. Oh, and hey, Swift looks interesting!

So I should really pick a topic, then watch some Pluralsight videos and/or read a book or two on Safari, and see where that takes me.