Jonathan Tullett

Reading Materials – January, 2012

jkt — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:30:19 +0000

Quiet month this month in the reading arena. Studying for the exam last Friday took up a lot of my focus and delayed the writing of this post. Here is what I did manage to work my way through:

Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris. Sitting aside Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris launches his own anti-religious missiles, with each one landing smack on target. Written as an open letter to America, it easily translates over the pond and cleverly destroys most of the arguments used to justify religious belief. Running at only about 50 pages long, it can be easily read in an afternoon, and is well worth the effort, no matter which side of the divide you stand.
Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Walter Isaacson. Weighing in at over 650 pages, this was the bulk of my January reading. I usually shy away from biographies – there's only so much narcasism I can stand – but this was written more as a time-line of Jobs' life. Covering everything from his crazy fad-diets, questionable parenting choices and of course the creation and then resurrection of Apple, Inc, it's all here, the good, the bad, the (occasionally) very ugly. If you're interested in a complete overview of the man and his life, this is certainly the book to get it from.
Everyone Loves You When You're Dead: (And Other Things I Learned From Famous People), Neil Strauss. As writer, and eventually editor, of the Rolling Stone, Neil Strauss (of 'The Game' fame), publishes the parts of interviews which weren't appropriate for print at the time. I found the writing often hilarious, the content bizarre (the interviewees, not the writer). Most of the subjects I knew, which always makes this kind of book more interesting, but some I'd never even heard of; if they were in the Rolling Stone, they must have been important at some point. An easy read, but there are certainly more interesting books out there.
Get Out While You Can – Escape The Rat Race, George Marshall. More of a flick-through than a read. Covers most of the items already written about in the 4 hour work week, but with less humour. Can easily be distilled down to a couple of tenets: generate multiple revenue streams; selling information is financially more efficient than selling services; if you're working more than a couple of hours a day, you're wasting your life. I actually enjoy what I do for a living, so mostly pointless.
Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics, Henry Hazlitt. Excellent primer in economics which quickly starts by dispelling common myths. I identified with a number of the core-misconceptions with regards to macro-economics, and I hope the lessons learned will stay with me. Anyone who's gotten into dinner-time conversations which have involved the discussion of unions, economic policies, or anything else even remotely economics based, would be well advised to read this book; you'll immediately be more knowledgeable than many of the armchair economists trying to turn you to their point of view.

Amazon customer service: credit where it's due

jkt — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:21:48 +0000

I write about dreadful customer service a lot, but rarely when customer service has been outstanding. Well, today is the dawn of a new era. Or maybe I slept well or something.

The screen on my Kindle broke a few weeks ago. Amazon said they'd replace it without question. A week later, the replacement hadn't arrived. I called and they asked I wait another few days for delivery.

As of this morning, it still hadn't arrived.

I've just called them, went straight through to Kindle Support and they're sending another one out to me special delivery for Monday (they offered to have it with me tomorrow, but I'm not available to take it). While on the phone I mentioned the problems I'd been having with the case too. They've told me to throw it away and they've credited the amount for a new cover to my account.

This is exactly the sort of customer service which should be provided. I actually feel like they give a crap about me, about my custom, and they're keen to ensure I'm happy.

Thank you, and well done, Amazon, and especially to the reps who have helped with my problems over the past couple of weeks.

MacBook Pro for sale

jkt — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:23:38 +0000

Update: sold

I'm looking to sell one of my Apple MacBook Pros.

It's an April 2010 model, customized with the following spec:

15.4-inch LED-backlit antiglare Hi-Res widescreen display (1680 x 1050 px)
4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory
OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard); an upgrade to Lion can be had for 30 GBP from the App store.

For those interested in more technical details:

Processor: 2.66GHz Intel Core i7
Cache: 4MB shared L3 cache
Memory: 4GB (two 2GB) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics5 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with automatic graphics switching
Hard disk drive1: 500GB Serial ATA, 5400 rpm
Optical drive: 8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Wireless: AirPort Extreme (802.11n)4 Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
Expansion: Two USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, one SD card slot
Video and Audio: iSight camera; Mini DisplayPort output port with support for DVI, VGA, dual-link DVI, and HDMI (requires adapters, sold separately)
Stereo speakers with subwoofers, omnidirectional microphone, audio line in minijack (digital/analog), audio line out/headphone minijack (digital/analog)
Size and weight:
- Height: .95 inches (2.41 cm)
- Width: 14.35 inches (36.4 cm)
- Depth: 9.82 inches (24.9 cm)
- Weight (standard configuration): 5.6 pounds (2.54 kg)

It was completely refurbished (by the Apple Store in Covent Garden) in October 2011, with a whole new uni-body, trackpad, keyboard. It's as 'as new' as you can get; boxed, all the cables etc.

Brand new, it was 1950 GBP. That same spec, with the same hi-res (1680 x 1050 px) anti-glare screen, on E-bay is going for 1250. I'd prefer to sell to someone I know, and will accept 1000 (or make me a reasonable offer). I'll include insured shipping to anywhere in the UK, or it can be picked up from Orpington or Central London.

Let me know if you're interested – j (at) jkt (dot) im, else I'll go on e-bay next week.

FreeNAS == Mac OS X Backup perfection?

jkt — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:00:56 +0000

According to Linus Torvolds, I'm not a real man. But I can live with that; I don't want all my data uploaded for FTP mirroring.

The Tullett house is, laptop wise, almost exclusively MacBook Pro based. Sure there's a netbook which boots Linux and a couple of laptops which we're about to ship to The Gambia, but if they're nuked by some random disaster I don't really care.

Our laptops however are home to our entire photo collection and iTunes libraries. Add onto that all personal documents, some of which aren't in the cloud, and should disaster strike there will be a lot of tears.

A feature I've loved in OS X for the past few releases is Time Machine. As a sysadmin for over ten years, I've rolled one or two backup solutions. I'm still trying to find a decent alternative to Norton Ghost for Windows – it's a problem which should have been solved by free software by now! – but that's a subject for another post, as it's a Windows problem, not Mac.

If you do not have a Time Capsule, wireless backing up is difficult unless you've a spare machine and bunch of disks laying around. Oh, and time to configure Netatalk and a bunch of other stuff. These days, it's time I'm short of.

Due to a screw up long before Xmas, I ended up with three spare 2Tb hard drives, which have been sitting unused in a cupboard; the other three which had been ordered at the same time had already found a home.

During a talk on WGC (a chat forum I use) last week, I heard that there was a £100 cash-back offer on HP Microservers at Servers+; making the machine only £100 to buy. On the same day I was also pointed to an open source NAS project called FreeNAS. The seed was sown.

Saturday morning I took delivery of the Microserver, and within an hour had the three drives installed. Digging out a trusty old 2Gb USB stick, I installed FreeNAS and booted it up.

Within a minute I was presented with a functional GUI to configure the machine. Over the course of the next hour or two I learned about how to configure the software. Setting up a RAID-5 configuration – allowing for 4Tb usable storage from the 6Tb installed – I created two volumes of 1Tb each for the laptops, leaving 2Tb free for future use. Configuring access to the shares was trivial: click a few buttons to enable AFP and set permissions on the shares for the users. Done.

Configuring the Macs was also straight forward. With one running Snow Leopard and the other Lion, wireless Time Machine backups work out of the box (as opposed to earlier versions which required tweaks to the system's configuration.) Having selected the disk, the first backup – Rae's machine – started

200Gb was never going to be quick, especially going over a wireless network, so it took most of the day (and into the night) to complete the first backup. Futures ones will be quicker as they only back up new file or changed files. This morning I set my own laptop up to start its backup. At the moment the NAS is pushing 40Mbit, not too shabby, considering the data's going over the wireless network.

The other 2Tb will probably be reserved for sharing on the VPN Mesh which is still being set up. 250Gb each should be plenty, especially as the data will be replicated over multiple sites.

Mostly though, I'm happy to finally have automatic backups in place which don't require plugging the laptops into external drives – a manual step which is guaranteed to fail at some point, and indeed does when I get the notification that a backup hasn't been completed in ten days. How much work/data could be lost in ten days? It doesn't bear thinking about…

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: SMS sending delays

jkt — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:25:17 +0000

For Xmas, I got Rae one of the new Galaxy Nexus phones.

While a little large for my liking, the phone is pretty and Ice Cream Sandwich seems a decent incremental upgrade, despite a number of applications not yet being upgraded to take advantage of some of the features (the Facebook application doesn't synchronise contacts, for example).

One problem which has surfaced is serious and affects the functionality of the phone: SMSes are sometimes delayed on sending. By 'sometimes' I mean every day, but not every text.

Rae and I will communicate regularly throughout the day, and sometimes many hours will go between me receiving SMSes and then a number (3, 4, maybe 5) will come in at once, with exactly the same received time stamp. If I've sent her messages before the flood, everything looks on her phone as they're in chronological order, while on mine everything is out of whack.

The delay can be from a few minutes to many hours (I think five hours is the highest so far).

The latest over-the-air update was applied (it was bought off-contract so isn't locked to any provider and can receive updates as soon as they're available) on Monday and hasn't resolved it.

Any suggestions on the cause? Could it be a hardware problem, or is it most likely software? It's only surfaced since her phone changed.

Rae's on Vodafone, I'm on O2, if that's relevant (I don't think it is.)

Letting go; unsticking the brain

jkt — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:40:23 +0000

One of my goals for 2012 which wasn't on my list, is to work on certain aspects of my mental agility.

Some people have amazing skills of compartmentalising: when they're at work, that's all that's on their mind; at home they are able to switch off completely. Others, even if their upset-triggers are fired, they can either rationalise it quickly or it just doesn't seem to affect them. I'm jealous of both skills, and I'd love to acquire them.

The first I want as I believe it'll help me improve my productivity at work – I have an astounding amount to achieve here in 2012: get up to speed on risk, pass 7 exams, get up to speed on all the systems – while also improving my quality of life at home: I ponder over work things during the evening and it can attribute to reduced quality of sleep and decreased connection with what's going on around and who I am with.

Regarding the second, I have certain triggers – subjects or behaviours (started or enacted by others) – which either cause a mental upset which can and often does last days or weeks (the weeks are more what I call 'ripples' than constant focus), or anger (which I guess is a form of upset) which can last many hours.

The former (upset) is, I believe, influenced, perhaps enhanced, by my underlying anxiety issues. The latter (anger) is mostly generated by stupid people; I have an incredibly low stupid-person tolerance. Unfortunately, dealing with stupid people is par for the course. You can do your best to minimise their impact, but ultimately, if you want to stop them having any impact on your life, you need to eliminate them entirely. This, unfortunately, isn't possible.

Getting to grips with the triggers is another matter. I do, ultimately, know I have control over how things affect me. But transitioning from theory into practice is difficult to say the least. CBT would seem the route forward, but the thought of desensitisation training scares me (forcing myself to think of things which upset me, until they stop upsetting me). What would be beautiful is an off-switch I can press on certain things.

Is there a viable solution to either? What works for you? Am I asking for too much?

God Head: And then there was art

jkt — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:25:01 +0000

Since our trip to The Gambia where we purchased our first artwork by a local artist, we've consciously been looking at adding to our art collection. Last Thursday we were fortunate enough to be at the private viewing of Cut & Run at the Kemistry Gallery in Old Street.

Some great work there by all the artists, mostly in the style of South Park, but one (actually two, we're negotiating on the pair) caught my eye, so we've decided to purchase it. It's this piece by artist Jack Teagle:

It's connected with me at a level no other painting has. I'm unsure whether it appeals to my iconoclasm, or my militant atheist/antitheism bent. Either way, I love it, and in acrylic paint, it's beautiful. I think it'll be most at home at the top of the stairs.

Nintendo 3DS: Finally worth purchasing

jkt — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:00:09 +0000

While late to the game in some technologies (e.g. Bittorrent), with portable gaming hardware, I'm frequently an early-adopter. While I didn't import a Playstation Portable from Japan, as soon as they were released here, I had one in my hand. Same went for Nintendo DS, DS Lite and most recently, their 3DS.

Aside from the 3DS, I've been happy with my decision of being an early-adopter. The games on launch for the PSP were pretty good, and the NDS launched with a few mario titles and quickly the library built up.

The appeal for the 3DS was for me was of course the 3D without glasses. Sure, it had the potential to be gimmicky, but the reality for me was different – it was superb advancement for gaming potential. There were two things which let the device down: launch price and lack of decent games.

The launch price was £230, and there were, I think, 5 games available on launch day.

The price would have been fine, but finding out a mere six months later that Nintendo felt they had made a mistake and were cutting the price by about a third, was a kick in the teeth. Sure, they offered some free old games (from the original NES) – if you signed up to their eShop in time; I missed that window as it wasn't broadcast to the early adopters – but it's not quite on par with the financial saving, especially when I'd purchased two on launch day (now three, with presenting Rae with one before we went to The Gambia – but that was at the improved price.)

What's remained frustrating, until November (eight months after launch), has been the lack of decent games. 'Decent' is subjective, but having played Zelda (feels impossible to get into and the controls are shockingly bad!) and Rayman (a rehash of the one launched many years ago, but visually pretty), I've certainly seen what the machine is technically capable of, but I felt let down as a gamer.

November saw the launch of Super Mario 3D Land, the latest in their franchise of Mario games, and one which shows exactly what the 3DS is capable of while still being amazingly good fun (and approachable) to play. Both myself and Zachary are working our way through it (he's three worlds ahead of me, actually!) and having a great time. Then in December came Mario Kart 7, the latest instalment of their racing series. Superb fun to play, multi-player without all users needing the cart (download play), and a happy addition to my game collection (it was an Xmas gift too); it's also amazingly pretty to watch.

Finally! Finally! I feel the 3DS is worth buying. Nintendo really should have, in my humble opinion, not launched this device until those two were complete. But now they are. Go buy, share your friend codes, and play until your fingers bleed; it'll have been time well spent.

That's all for 2011, folks!

jkt — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 09:54:38 +0000

What a year that was. It started out pretty shit if I'm honest, but got better and better as the months flew by.

I travelled all over the world, east and west; met some wonderful people, and made some friends (hopefully) for life.

I learned a great many things during the 12 months of 2011. I discovered things about myself, about others and I hope they'll help shape me for a more productive future.

The regrets I have are few, but worth listing: I didn't achieve as much as I wanted during my sabbatical. I also got into arguments about things which really don't matter; pointless waste of time. I think that's it. I did however achieve something I never expected to: proper, unadulterated happiness; oh, and how to relax.

More interesting than ruminating on the past is looking to the future, and here is what I wish to achieve in the coming year (in no particular order). If they're not achieved, I won't be considering it a failure. But for every non-achievement, I hope to gain and unlisted one instead.

Write more about life, my views and my opinions. I love writing on this blog, and it's important to me (at the moment) that I continue doing so.
Take up circus skills again; either diabolo or juggling; maybe both.
Keep up with the sleep routine. I have a routine which works for me mostly, with which I can function, be productive, and happy. When I stray from it, I'm affected a lot. I owe it to myself to be true to my limitations, and strive for a happier life.
Get married. Unbelievably excited about this. Can. Not. Wait.
Continue building on the ever-improving relationship with Zachary, and really show him how much I love him.
Don't waste time. Doing something I enjoy isn't wasting time. Relaxing isn't wasting time. Wasting time is doing something for no purpose than to have the hours pass. If I find myself doing that, I want to stop and switch to something more productive (like reading).
Get cycling again. One for the spring, summer and autumn; cycling in winter is a miserable affair.
Improve my diet. This includes quitting wheat and gluten (confirmed triggers for me) for good, reducing sugar intake and quitting eating crap.
Get fit. Who doesn't have this on their list? I'm not going to go to a gym, but I want to work out with kettlebells a few times a week, and do yoga at least once a week.
Develop a product which others want to use. Deliberately vague, but a place-holder for something awesome.

That's all I can think of for now.

Rules of engagement

jkt — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:22:21 +0000

It is said the people you're closest to are those with whom you'll argue most. I'm unsure whether the definition of 'closest' is physical proximity or emotional connection; it's likely to be a mixture of the two. Regardless of the exact definition, the person who's both of these is most likely to be your partner.

Managing conflict is incredibly difficult without the right tools to manage your feelings or manage the situation you find yourself in. I'm bad at this (the former, especially). I'm ridiculously difficult to argue with (so I'm told); I'm stubborn, don't listen, know I'm right, and often refuse to be reasonable. If you're thinking at this moment I must be a nightmare to live with, you're probably right.

However, knowledge of our shortcomings, and plenty of experience has led Rae and myself to create our 'Rules of Engagement'. These are a handful of rules which we both agree to follow to the letter whenever there is an argument. If any of them are broken during the conflict, then there's an automatic time-out penalty of thirty minutes to allow the situation to cool (30 minutes isn't an arbitrary figure, that's how long it takes the body's physiological symptoms of stress to dissipate so is important.)

Some of these we've come up with on our own, others from conversations with other couples and even more from online research. They help us, and maybe they'll help you.

The Rules of Engagement

Remember that the person you are talking to is someone you love.
Take turns speaking and listening.
Let one person speak at a time. When one speaks, the other should be listening – really listening, not just planning their rebuttal. Take turns speaking and listening so that you both have a chance to say what you need.
Feelings:
1. Describe what you're feeling.
  Don't assume that the other person knows.
2. Own your feelings and share them.
3. Allow the other person to have their own feelings.
  Listen and ask questions, acknowledge.
4. Don't tell the other party what they're feeling.
  If you are unsure, ask questions to understand then repeat back to show your understanding.
Don't be a 'yes man.'
Agreement must be genuine else it'll breed resentment in future.
Don't be a naysayer.
Don't just say no for stubbornness or points of principle, ask questions and look to understand what is happening for the other person.
Say sorry.
Take responsibility for your argument, or if you've hurt the other person and say the words and mean them. Invoke a time-out if required to reflect on this. A good rule of thumb: if you've hurt the other person, you're in the wrong. Period. Even if you're set on being right on the point, the fact you've hurt the other person means you're wrong; nothing is worth breaking someone's heart over.
Time-outs.
1. Minimum half hour (no longer than twenty-four hours).
  The person invoking the time-out must remove themselves from the room to another area. Both parties should actively use that time to cool off, calm down and get perspective, reflect on why you feel the way you do.
2. Think about how to express yourself in a positive way.
  Try to think about the other person's feelings and point of view. Think things through before you speak. Only restart once this is done; agree if the time-out needs to be extended or if it is to be cut-short to continue.
3. If an argument reaches the 1 hour mark, an automatic time-out is to be invoked.
Don't touch.
Unless invited by the other person, keep space between the two of you as it's very easy to unintentionally have the other person feel trapped. If contact is invited, accept, or explain why the request hasn't been accepted (by talking about your feelings).
No name calling.
If you feel about to use a derogatory term, call a time-out, tensions and emotions are running too high to continue at that moment.
Don't intentionally put the person down.
Same as the previous point, but slightly different target. Invoke a time-out if you feel about to put them down or otherwise do something which could damage their feelings of worth, importance or self-esteem.
Stay on point.
Ensure everyone knows exactly what it is being argued about and stay on that topic only. No diversions or deflections. If necessary, make a note of other points which come up, but they must be discussed separately after the current situation is resolved successfully.
Stay in the present.
If historical issues are raised, note them down for separate discussion as they would appear not to be resolved (else they wouldn't come up). Stay on point.
No talk of divorce, or leaving.
No trying to exploit loopholes in the rules.
These rules are designed to keep arguments constructive and as short as possible. Using or abusing semantics or exploiting loopholes goes against their core purpose.
Again: remember that the person you are talking to is someone you love.

We actually have a print out of the above (titles only) which we carry in our wallets and a print out of the full rules (with descriptions) at home to which we can refer in times of stress. Of course we're hoping we'll never need them, but being pragmatists, we have it just in case. Our relationship is important to us, and we will both do what's best to ensure its survival.