Orwell and Afghanistan

Take a gander at this piece:  http://kingsofwar.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/shooting-an-elephant/

Nice parallel, there.

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Get Three Amazon MP3 Downloads... For Free

Do you buy digital music?  If so, do you iTunes to do so?  You really shouldn't. 

I own an iPod (actually, there are three in the household) and I think they are pretty amazing lumps of consumer technology, particularly my Touch.  However, iTunes is mediocre at best, and I tolerate it only because it works for me - barely. 

My biggest issue with iTunes from the start has been the iTunes Music Store.  Sure, they own a huge library of music for me to buy, and they do thier level best to make the process simple.  However, hidden behind that slick interface is the one thing that I hate in our digital world - Digital Rights Management.  I can only use the music I've paid for in ways that Apple approves.  I can only share it among five computers (I own and use more than that).  I cannot play it on any portable device besides an iPod.  That iPod can only associate with one iTunes Library, etcetera, etcetera.

Bah!

However, for a long time, there was no option... until your friendly virtual bookstore threw thier hat in the ring.  Did you know that Amazon sells digital music?  They do, and their catalog is growing all the time.  Did you know that Amazon has a nifty utility (the Amazon Music Downloader) that makes downloading your purchases simple and easy?  Yup.  Did you know that the Amazon utility will automatically put your new music into iTunes for you?  Yup, it's virtually seamless.  And here is the real reason you should buy from Amazon...  Did you know that Amazon downloads are DRM free MP3 files?  Yupper.   You can use that music wheverever you want - on you iPod, in iTunes, on your Sansa MP3 player, on your Tivo, etc. 

So now you have an opportunity to try Amazon's MP3 service for free.  No excuses. 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=dm_tw_3forfree?ie=UTF8&docId=1000455181#

Give it a spin, and see what you think.  I suspect you will find that it works well and is easy to use.  And you will be taking a step to show that you support a business that believes you should use your music the way you want to.

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The Ecological Impact of Pets vs. SUV's

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427311.600-how-green-is-your-pet.html?full=true#

Interesting read, even if I'm not solid on the facts. It sure
*sounds* interesting.

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Google Dashboard... Cool

Exactly what you think it is.

https://www.google.com/dashboard/

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BlackBerry PhoneSnoop Application

CERT is talking about this proof-of-concept application that turns a
BlackBerry into a listening device.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/10/dhs_warns_of_blackberry_snoopi.html?hpid=sec-tech

This may be an... interesting... app to have on your phone.

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US Still Developing Counter-terrorism plan for Pakistan

Pakistan Counter-Terror Plan via Dawn.com

The US is still working on a counter-terrorism plan for dealing with Pakistani insurgents and others based in the frontier region. I cannot state this enough... Pakistan is the key to the region, and a solid, workable strategy is going to be the difference between success and failure in the worldwide US 'war on terror'.

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Not Your Typical Helicopter Rescue

Download now or watch on posterous

HowtoblowadeeroutofafrozenlakewithahelcopterJB.wmv (1868 KB)

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Simon Klingert - Photojournalist

Excellent site from photojournalist Simon Klingert. http://www.simonklingert.de/

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Report: Stray jet's pilots were on laptops

via cnn.com

So, the Northwest pilots were discussing the new aircrew scheduling system... in such detail they missed radio calls and their destination. Uh huh.

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Google Voice Desktop Application

via rstoeber.com

Another bit of Adobe Air goodness. This app gives you desktop access to the mobile version of Google Voice. Voice is another great tool that I and still working out how to integrate into how I do business.

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Waver, an AIR Google Wave Client

via adobe.com

Waver is a new Adobe AIR platform client for Google Wave. It does what it says, and it another 'interesting' addition to my 'what the heck do I use Wave for?' equation. If you are also trying to figure out an actual use for Wave, this might be worth a look.

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Hulu Officially Charging for Content in 2010

via lifehacker.com

Say goodbye to free Hulu. That's a shame, as I think it's a great service with a lot of content that I would watch (had I more time). In fact Hulu had me thinking of a media center PC next to the TV in the living room. Now it appears that cable + TiVo will continue to rule the day.

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Porsche Panamera - The New Family Truckster

via porsche.com

Finally! I've been waiting for Porsche to deliver the sports car with room for the kids. Four (real) seats, and still 0-60 in 4 seconds. I'll take two.

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Left vs. Right via InformationIsBeautiful.net

Another great graphic posted today on
http://informationisbeautiful.net. This is a great site for folks
that really appreciate how info can be plotted and displayed.

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Serving Office 2007 Files from IIS6

Ran into a problem today where one of our users couldn't access Word
2007 files (.docx) on one of our CMS sites based on Windows Server
2003 and IIS6.

The file was in the right place, other files could be downloaded, just
not the newer Office docs. As you can imagine, it's a MIME type
issue. Here is the link I found to set it right, and it did the
trick.

http://www.jameskovacs.com/blog/ConfiguringIIS6ToServeOffice2007FileFormats.aspx#

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FluTracker

via flutracker.rhizalabs.com

Great data visualization site for tracking H1N1. I put this up here because of the slick mashup, not necessarily because I think you all need to be tracking H1N1.

http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com

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School Photos 2009-2010

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Real Tauntaun sleeping bags coming in November

via scifiwire.com

ThinkGeek is releasing the Tauntaun sleeping bag! This started as an April Fools Day joke, but customer demand has driven them to create the product for real. Love it!

"And I thought they smelled bad on the *outside*."

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Conversations

via xkcd.com

If you aren't reading XKCD every day (well, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), you should be.

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Zombie Attack SitMan

This tongue in cheek Exercise manual was published by the University of Florida. They have since taken it down, but it's still hilarious.

Be sure you get the proper approval if you are forced to 'dispatch' an infected co-worker.

Download now or preview on posterous

ZombieAttack-SituationManual.pdf (38 KB)

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Happy Dog!

You gotta admit, who doesn't want to be the family dog?

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Google Wave... Any Feedback?

Wave has hit the streets (in limited form), and I'm starting to see
some reviews coming in. I've watched the demo videos, and I'm waiting
patiently for my invite, but I want to know if anyone has some real
examples of Wave being *used*. I'm starting to wonder if perhaps it's
more hype than substance. Not to say it doesn't work... but is is
useful? If you have comments, let me know.

We are in the process of developing social media tools for a couple of
projects, and I'm thinking about how this could integrate.

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Free Software and the Everyman

We all use software everyday. Some of it you pay for, like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, but much of it you don't. In fact, when I look at the software that I use everyday I find that the vast majority of it has no monetary cost. I use Firefox and Thunderbird for web and mail, Eclipse is my preferred development environment, Google and their apps fill all kinds of niches, iTunes handles my music, and Digsby cleans up my IM mess. You have to admit, we as users get a lot of value out of free software.

The problem comes when a users are not savvy about exactly what is going on with their computers. It's a simple fact, most users don't really have any idea the fulls scope of what most of this software does for them, on behalf of them, and *to* them.

Two recent examples.

Digsby is my unified IM client. It is available free of charge from their website, and allows me to use a single piece of software to manage all my IM accounts, as well as track Facebook and LinkedIn. It checks my email accounts and tells me when I have messages there as well. It's attractive, slick and works great. The problem comes from the fact that until recently, unless you knew where to look, Digsby was hijacking the computer and using it to do distributed processing work, for which Digsby was making money. This situation didn't hold for me, as I knew the setting was there and disabled it. Today, Digsby still offers this 'feature', but it now defaults to 'off'. This change was made after a huge outcry online, and is probably a case of closing the barn door after the horse has left. Digsby lost users over this, guaranteed.

When I booted up my computer a week ago, it prompted me to upgrade iTunes to Version 9. The Apple Software Update window told me updates were available for iTunes + Quicktime, as well as the iPhone Configuration Utility. But I don't have an iPhone. So I unchecked that box, and let the software go on it's merry way, updating iTunes. (That later caused drama as well, but it's unrelated to this post.)

Today, during my morning read, I discover that the iPhone Configuration Utility was not only completely unnecessary for just about everyone, but it actually installs an Apache Web Server on your PC, which is simply appalling to me. The software itself is probably useful for some - specifically System Admins on a corporate network integrating iPhones with their message systems - but a complete security risk for just about everyone else.

We put a lot of our lives into bits and bytes that we then store on our personal computers, as well as on online services. The number of people who are cognizant of the security and privacy issues is growing, but it still isn't high enough. Add to that mix companies who are, in effect, preying on this user ignorance and you have a serious problem that will only get worse. Do you believe that the trend of digitizing one's life is going to reverse? Me neither. And I'm also afraid that most people are going to maintain just the bare minimum of awareness and skills to protect themselves. Companies such as Digsby and Apple need to recognize this, and act accordingly. As the number of software options increase, the company with the best track record of privacy and security awareness will fare better in a crowded market.

More reading on the issue:
http://lifehacker.com/5336382/digsby-joins-the-dark-side-uses-your-pc-to-make-money
http://blogs.computerworld.com/14808/apple_shovelware_problems_again_iphone_configuration_utility

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Fatal Infection Rate Visualization

via informationisbeautiful.net

From Information is Beautiful, here's a fun little graph that plots the relative fatality rates of several diseases. The larger the circle, the greater the mortality rate.

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Battlesharks Soccer - CSA Game 1

via youtube.com

Excerpt from this mornings game. This is U12, Capital Soccer Association, and D3 plays for the Battlesharks (navy blue). They are all nine and ten year olds who are playing up and having a great time.

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Top 10 Unanswered Questions in Geeky Movies

via wired.com

I have an opinion on the Raiders of the Lost Ark submarine issue, but the rest seems dead on. About half of these I had never even considered before (ESB for one).

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Hybrid Airship Will Deploy to Afghanistan in 2011

via gizmodo.com

Found this via Slashdot, and it fit well into my Afghanistan reading this morning.

The video is of the Lockheed Martin prototype flying in 2006. The newer version is bigger.

http://gizmodo.com/5366082/250+foot-long-hybrid-airship-will-spy-over-afghanistan-battlefields-in-2011.

This technology is coming fast, and may prove to be a very cost effective way to get sensors over the battlefield, particularly in environments like Afghanistan and Iraq where there is no air defense.

I wonder what William Gibson thinks of this?

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Afghan Warlords are Looking for US Support

The Washington Times has an article this week that describes how Gen. Dostum, a long time Afghan warlord, states that he could defeat the Taliban if the U.S. would provide support. Dostum has been around the block several times, and was a partner of U.S. Special Forces during the post-9/11 invasion. However, the situation in Afghanistan is never that simple (ever), so go read the article.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/22/afghan-warlords-will-fight-if-us-gives-aid/

For more background, I recommend you pick up the book 'Horse Soldiers' by Doug Stanton. It chronicles the early days of U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, and features Dotsum as well as a few other warlords.

http://www.amazon.com/Horse-Soldiers-Extraordinary-Victory-Afghanistan/dp/1416580514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253799501&sr=8-1

Suffice it to say, Afghanistan is a thorny problem, and will remain so. Whatever the solution, I'm convinced that we will need the support and action of the locals to deny the Taliban and al Qaeda
refuge there.

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You Can Get a Ticket Anywhere...

via wired.com

Air Force Security Police *running radar* at Joint Base Balad, Iraq. Or more accurately, running 'laser'. Which of course, brings up the scenario... If the SP is using a laser, and the speeder doesn't stop, can the same laser then be used to guide in munitions? I think the Defense Department needs to look into that.

I can see the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin/General Dynamics commercials now... "The new LSGU-233 - detecting speed infractions more efficiently. With a flip of a switch, the user can tell the unit to either log speed and print a ticket, or interface with an loitering Predator-SP drone and direct a strike using precise munitions."

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Information is Beautiful: Troops in Afghanistan

via flickr.com

Interesting representation of relative troop strength in Afghanistan. From Information is Beautiful (http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/four-infographic-morsels/)

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Picasa 3.5 Released, Now With Facial Recognition

via googleblog.blogspot.com

Google has announced the release of Picasa 3.5. The biggest new feature is the facial recognition and tagging, which looks like an adaptation of the existing Picasa Web Albums functionality. Having this option on the desktop should make the process faster, not to mention that I don't upload much to PWA anymore.

If you haven't tried Picasa at all, it's worth a look. For the average home user, it does just about everything you should need to organize digital photos.

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"The Year of the Flood"

"The Year of the Flood" is a new novel by Margaret Atwood.

First, if you haven't already, go read "Oryx and Crake". This new
novel is set in the same "time slice" (Atwood's term) as Crake, which
means it's post-apocalyptical with a unique flavor. I'm looking
forward to this one.

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385528771

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Google Voice for Blackberry and Android

Google has announced Google Voice clients for Blackberry and Android platforms. Great stuff.

I've installed it on my Curve, and it seems to work great, allowing me to call contacts and have my GV number appear on caller ID. You can also access your voicemail from the app.

An iPhone version is rumored to be coming.

Now to actually figure out how to leverage Voice properly.

We Choose the Moon

"We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Tomorrow morning (16 July) marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. In five days (20 July), we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of these immortal words, "Houston, the Eagle has landed."

This web site is an incredible tool to relive that adventure. Take your kids, pull up a browser and relive one of the most famous space missions in 'real time'. This site will take you back 40 years and let you see the mission unfold as it did for those watching it then.

The site is nicely laid out, and includes widgets for your desktop (using Adobe AIR), Facebook, and MySpace. You can also follow the 'astronauts' and 'mission control' on twitter - though the widgets do that for you.

After the landing on 20 July, the site will let you navigate through the mission at your own pace.

We Choose the Moon: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing

Aviation Photography from John Fleck

Got this from a friend of mine this morning... some truly amazing aviation photography.

John Fleck Photography

Check out his other galleries as well, amazing stuff.

SCOTUS Rules on Student Strip Search

I've been waiting for this decision for several weeks, and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. The NY Times has a great, concise article on the case and lays out the 7-1 decision pretty clearly.

I think the court actually walked a fine line here. They ruled that the strip search violated the constitutional rights of the middle school student, and that's a good thing. They also ruled that the administrators directly responsible (the assistant principal) cannot be held liable for the action.

This splits the issue cleanly. While most people agree that the search (in the clean light of retrospect and distance) was unreasonable, teachers and administrators cringed at the thought of being held liable for action they take in the classroom. By stating in the majority opinion that the administrator could not be held liable, the Court has prevented paralysis on the part of school officials in situations where they *might* be in the wrong.

In the end, it's always a balance between security and privacy, but I agree with the way this one finished up.

Judge Rules that Crunchberries Obviously Aren't Real

Here's a prime example of a flaw in our judicial system. That a 'consumer' could bring a lawsuit against a company because they though 'crunchberries' were a fruit is simply ludicrous. While it is humorous and I'm glad the judge tossed it; I wonder how much time and money was spent to get to this point. Ridiculous.

Lowering the Bar: Reasonable Consumer Would Know "Crunchberries" Are Not Real, Judge Rules

Concerns Over Recovering AF447 Recorders

Mass media has begin stating this morning that it's likely that the a/c broke up in flight based on the fact that multiple debris fields have been found. I think that it's too early to tell, frankly. I'm also skeptical that we'll ever have a complete view of what happened.

At this point, investigators say it is premature to determine whether the seen debris field indicates the aircraft impacted the water surface in tact (sic) or may have started disintegration while still airborne.

Suffice it to say, it's horrible for those who were aboard and their friends and families.

Concerns Over Recovering AF447 Recorders (from Aviation Week)

Windows 7 Dates Announced

Windows 7 has an official release date. It would appear that in a few months, my current OS (XP) will be two generations old. How is it that I never upgraded anything to Vista?

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Timelines Shared

A Rocket Scientist Dissects Exploding Planets

Love it! Great read.

Scientist Wil McCarthy shows how Star Trek's planets explode | SCI FI Wire

Offsite Backup for your Hard Disk

This is an interesting option for those of us with large photo archives. I've already got mine uploaded (and yes, it took forever) but as I'm considering a large scan-all-my-old-negatives project, this is a real possibility.

Offsite Backup for your Hard Disk - Ship the Storage Device to Amazon via Postal Mail

Smart Grid Infrastructure Vulnerability

Tallahassee has begun rolling out Smart Meters city wide as part of an effort to decrease costs to the city-owned utility. There a many critics of the initiative, and I don't feel qualified to speak about the specifics on purchasing and installing this technology.

However, when I found out that the collectors that talk to the Smart Meters, and then in turn report data to the city utility actually have public, routable, IP addresses, my mouth popped open.

That is ludicrous. And now one of the manufacturers of these systems is acknowledging potential problems.

IOActive Verifies Critical Flaws in Next Generation Energy Infrastructure

Look, I'm not an expert in infrastructure, but there has got to be a better way to do this.

REI Shopper Hauled Away Over ATM Photo

So what's your take on this... Your Rights: Loomis Rent-A-Cops Have Shopper Cuffed, Hauled Away Over ATM Photo

Personally, I think it's a classic case of a conflict escalating faster than anyone involved wanted it to, and it underlines one golden rule... be nice to the police. Yes, the Loomis guards overstepped their authority, and REI shouldn't have called the police. But once law enforcement is on the scene, it's a different situation. And remember, everything that comes out of your mouth will be used against you. Everything.

Wi-Fi to Go

If I ever take the plunge to a cellular data plan, this is the only way to go.

State of the Art - With a Private MiFi Hot Spot, Be Online Wherever You Like - NYTimes.com

An Expectation of Online Privacy

Great essay from Bruce Schneier.

Schneier on Security: An Expectation of Online Privacy

My best advice? Don't put anything online that you wouldn't want on a billboard alongside an interstate. Don't write that snide email, don't publish that photo, without thinking first.

The world, it be a changin', and everyone needs to be ready for that fact.

What is at Stake in Afghanistan

Great quick read on what is at stake in our conflict in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: What Is at Stake? - Brookings Institution

Of particular interest is the part where the author ties Pakistan into the fate of Afghanistan. Everyone needs to remember that Pakistan is a nuclear nation, with a small stockpile of weapons.

"A victory for the Afghan Taliban would encourage its new partners, the Pakistan Taliban, in their struggle to take over the world’s second largest Muslim country. This February several Pakistani Taliban leaders united their forces and proclaimed their allegiance both to Omar and bin Laden."

This issue isn't going away soon, and it isn't going to be solved with force of arms alone.

New Swine Flu Outbreak Map

The map I posted earlier this week doesn't seem to be updating in a timely fashion. This one looks to be better on that front.

2009 Swine Flu (H1N1) Outbreak Map - Google Maps

This map was culled from the aptly named swineflumaps.com.

Swine Flu Tracking - Google Maps Mashup

The good folks at Google have put together an interesting maps application that tracks suspected and confirmed H1N1 Swine Flu cases. Data is better understood when visualized... go take a look.

H1N1 Swine Flu - Google Maps

It's even better in Google Earth...

Google Earth Swine Flu .kml file

U.S. Already at War in Cyberspace

The following article isn't very deep, but it underscores an emerging threat. Cyber-warfare shares several key traits with terrorism in that it is asymmetrical and can easily be conducted by non state actors. The ease of an organization to attack a nation through these means, coupled with the relatively low risk from doing so virtually guarantees a huge upswing in this type of conflict.

U.S. already at war in cyberspace, experts say -- Government Computer News

Twitter Panic

As always, XKCD is topical and hilarious...



From XKCD.com

Pandemic, Update

After a little research, the current estimate is a mortality rate of around 6% for this strain of swine flu.

Two questions stand out. First, why are cases in Mexico City apparently more severe than cases in the U.S.? And second, how accurate are the infection estimates coming from Mexico? There are reports of (around) 2,000 hospitalized, but how many got sick at home and never presented themselves to a doctor? That would swing the mortality rate lower.

Just food for thought.

Pandemic Does Not Mean Panic

Swine Flu has been in the media quite a bit the past few days, yet info about the disease seems to always be light in these reports. The biggest take away I got from the networks this morning is that there are 100 reported deaths in Mexico, and that cases have been reported in the United States. The networks then went on to report about how some European governments are recommending that their populations limit travel to North America, including the U.S. Of course, this type of announcement is news, especially in the economic climate we live in right now, but I can't help but feel as if CNN, FOX, and MSNBC have missed some key points in their reporting.

First, there is little or no talk about the mortality rate of this strain. Unconfirmed reports of 103 dead in Mexico means nothing in a vacuum. So 103 are dead, but how many are/were infected? And of those infected, how many received medical treatment? These are the important questions. If 103 died, and 200 were infected, that's a mortality rate of over 50% - and I'm worried. If 103 died out of 20,000 infected, I'm several orders of magnitude less concerned.

At the same time, I've actually heard people today postulating that eating pork can cause this disease. I'm sure this is coming from the fact that China has now banned live pork imports from Mexico and some U.S. states. The problem is, China's action was designed to keep infected swine from bringing the disease into China and then infecting Chinese swine. The action has nothing to do with people eating pork from Mexico.

And lastly... every major news report has talked about this new strain of swine flu becoming a 'pandemic'. What people need to understand is that pandemic is a technical tern describing an emerging disease that effects humans, across a loarge geographical range. It does not mean that the disease is necessarily going to kill millions (though that can and does happen).

The CDC, in an excellent proactive move is using the web to get accurate, responsible information out the the public. They are providing a link widget (written in ColdFusion, I might add) for people to use that will stay updated with direct links to the CDC fact sheet.


If you would like to use this widget, you can pull the source code from here:
http://www.hhs.gov/web/library/index.html#HHSWidgets

So try to ignore the the inflammatory reporting, and get your facts from the source.

The Railo Project, Part I

My center, The Center for Disaster Risk Policy, has for years been using an custom application called Tabletop Exercise System Technology (TEST) to facilitate discussion based tabletop exercises. TEST was written in house, lately by me, in Adobe ColdFusion, utilizing a MySQL database backend. We deploy TEST on a 'server' laptop that is connected via a wireless network to a cache of client laptops that then run the application via a web browser. The application captures particpant responses to scenario information, and formats those reponses to be compliant with the Homeland Security Exercise Evaluation Protocol (HSEEP).

TEST has been used successfully by the center since 2004, and has been evolving ever since. As part of that evolution, we have licensed the software to a private firm, who is now marketing the product across the country. As we anticipate third party users, I started to think about the licening fees we were going have to pay Adobe to use ColdFusion. This led me toward two newer ColdFusion Markup Language servers, Open BlueDragon and Railo. BlueDragon is the older of the two, but it was Railo that I've settled on for our needs.

Railo has been around for a few years, but version 3.1 was released as an open source project just a few weeks ago. It is compatible with almost all of the ColdFusion 8 standards, and includes a few tricks of its own that Adobe's server can't do. For starters, using Railo, you can deploy a CF application as a Java app into a cloud environment. That's pretty exciting, and I can't wait to give that a go.

I downloaded Railo Community server 3.1 and installed it on a Windows 2003 virtual machine. The install started simple, but got more complicated as I configured Railo to work with IIS, not it's own internal web server. Railo is marketed/packaged as a stand alone product, but in fact is a layer that sits on top of Resin, an existing Java server. Once you have everything working properly, you never notice that Resin is there, but getting everything up and running took a little trial and error. More on that in a different post.

Once I had everything running, I installed the TEST codebase on the new server and took it for a spin. A couple fo things needed to be fixed, highlighting the subtle differences between Railo's CF interpretation and Adobe's. All the changes were minor, and fixed with about thirty minutes. Once that was done, the app ran beautifully, In fact, it was perceptibly faster than the Adobe CF server. That was impressive.

I've not had time to play much beyond that, but I'm fairly certain I've purchased my last Adobe CF license. I can see where CF Enterprise may be required in some instances, but Railo has clustering and failover capability built in. Impressive. Our next step here at the Center is do deploy a CentOS server running Apache, MySQL, and Railo. That would allow us to deliver enterprise grade CF apps without paying for any server software. Personally, I can't wait.

More to follow on Railo as we continue our migration, and I fully intend to document how we got it running from scratch, since there was a lack of single source docs on the subject.

Expanding a Virtual Drive in VMWare Workstation

Here are some handy instructions for expanding the size of an existing virtual disk in VMWare Workstation. We've all done this; you created a VM, and now decide that the system partition is too small. Sure you can add another virtual disk, but sometimes you need that system partition to be bigger.

Expanding a drive within a VMWare image at Sean Deasy

After you have expanded the virtual drive, you can use a partition tool to expand the partition in the guest OS to make use of all the new room.

Here is a link to how to do that.

Cheers!

Aviation Diplomacy

When flying throughout the Persian Gulf these days, aircraft are required to communicate with local Air Traffic Control AND to provide the Iranian Air Defense Radar a ten-minute heads up if they will be flying, briefly, through Iranian airspace.

Recently, a commercial airline pilot overheard this conversation on the VHF Guard while flying from Europe to Dubai. The conversation went like this...

Iranian Air Defense Radar: "Unknown aircraft! Unknown aircraft! You are in Iranian airspace. Identify yourself immediately."

Response: "This is a United States aircraft, and I am in Iraqi, repeat Iraqi, not Iranian, airspace. Over."

Iranian Air Defense Radar: "You are in Iranian airspace, sir. If you do not immediately change course to depart our airspace we will launch interceptor aircraft!"

Response: "This is a United States Marine Corps F/A-18. Send 'em up. I'll wait around."

Iranian Air Defense Radar: (no response)

Google Made Me Irrelevant

With the release of CADIE, especially this auto-email portion, Google has finally made me irrelevant. More than usual, that is. I don't know what to do. There is even talk that CADIE will be able to write code and design emergency management exercises. I'm crushed. Why Google, WHY?

Check the date, folks. Fully 104% of news you read today will be fake. Or that's what they want you to think. :)

But this is one of Google's better April Fool's Products, to be sure.

Persistent BIOS Attacks

Researchers unveil persistent BIOS attack methods (via threatpost)

Yeah, this is just lovely. So what's the fix here, a hammer?

Bored Coders

From XKCD.

No. This is not reflective of me at all. Honest. I would *never* enable Gopher.

Escambia County Exercise, Part II

I was planning on writing this as we drove home from the exercise... but I was pretty much brain dead, and it felt a little too much like work.

Overall, things went very smoothly. It wasn't a large or complex event, which helped, but there is always the potential for these things to go off the rails. The airport folks had rounded up 120 victim volunteers from NAS Pensacola - a bunch of young enlisted to play the roles of the airline passengers. I swear, I am going to get my victims from the military at every opportunity in the future; these kids were great. They were enthusiastic, followed directions, and were self organizing.

Since we were there working for the county, but the county was participating as a 'junior' partner to the airport and City of Pensacola, we had to be cautious not to offend or overstep ourselves. In many ways, this made the day fairly easy for us, since most of the prep and set up was done by the airport folks.

The 'crash' site was basic, consisting of a debris field located at the approach end of runway 8. The scenario involved the crash of a commuter airliner with 85 souls on board, resulting in a mass casualty incident. The city/county coordination was going to be key simply because even though the accident occurred on city property, and the primary response agency was Pensacola Fire Rescue, the city does not have any Emergency Medical Service (EMS) assets.

In addition to the city fire department, county fire department, county EMS, and law enforcement, a goal from the county standpoint was to test procedures for asking for and deploying mutual aid assets from outside the county. In events such as these, emergency managers need to be able to move resources into the area quickly and efficiently. Also being tested was hospital surge capacity. Many of the victims were loaded onto ambulances and buses and actually transported to four area hospitals. This allowed local emergency rooms to practice handling a sudden influx of patients requiring immediate critical care.

In the end, everything came off fine from an exercise standpoint. That's not to say that the participating agencies didn't learn some lessons (that's the point) but it all ran smoothly. I even got to facilitate the 'hot wash', the after exercise discussion between all the participants where they discuss what went well, and what went wrong. Fun stuff.

I'll get some more photos posted up somewhere soon.

Escambia County Exercise, Part I

We are headed over to Pensacola today to set up for the Escambia County Airline Crash Exercise. My center (http://cdrp.net) is worked with Escambia County Public Safety to develop the exercise, and tomorrow we will assist them in putting it on. The exercise is a interesting blend between the Escambia Regional Airport exercise and an HSEEP (Homeland Security Exercise Evaluation Protocol) compliant exercise being conducted by Escambia County Emergency Management. We facilitated the County side development process and we are going to act as exercise controllers and exercise evaluators tomorrow, which is always my favorite part. I will be acting as a controller during the exercise, which means I will basically stand around and make sure that everything stays on track. Since exercises, particularly multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency exercises like this one, try their best to go off the rails, my job can call for some creative thinking to keep everyone pointing in the correct direction.

Today is set up at the airport, and we will get our final look at how the coordination for the city/airport side of the exercise is shaping up. Since we don't control that, it's not that big a deal to us, but it will prove interesting nonetheless.

I'll be posting more as things develop.
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Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone

So he doesn't forget it, and for you to read it

Once of my friends and co-workers has finally joined the twenty-first century and created a blog. Let's all give him a big hand for taking his first step into a larger world.

So head over to So I don't forget it... and have a read.

Homeward Bound

Finally headed back to Tallahassee after a very long few days on the road. I'm really looking forward to seeing Holly and the kids, as well as sleeping in my bed.
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Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone

Ready to Be Home

We are headed home from FEPA's annual conference today, after what feels like a week on the road. In reality, it was only three days, but it's enough. Before we get rolling this morning, we have one more private demo to go through, this one for our flagship software product, TEST. Yes, it's an acronym. What it stands for isn't important.

After that demo, we'll load up the minivan, and be Tallahassee bound. Can't wait to get home and see Holly and the kids.

Note the label 'Live'. I'm starting to use this for posts such as these that are 'in the moment', and not me just rambling on about whatever shiny bit I saw recently. Off to find breakfast, then a printer.

Hey, That Went Pretty Well

Our presentations on Technology and Special Needs Populations went very well this afternoon. We gave the same ninety minute talk twice today, and believe it or not the first time was much better. The first session had a larger crowd, and we were able to get more questions and comments from them, which really helps engage the audience in what you are trying to tell them. The second group was smaller, but we still had some good dialogue.

The real trick here was presenting this topic without making this into a ninety minute sales pitch for software. No one wanted to see or hear that, so we were very careful in how we developed our material to really focus on the academic and real world research our center has participated in over the past three or four years. We did a very nice job of talking in general terms, even as I moved from the broader view into a live demo of SpinReg.org.

And despite all of this, and the fact that two thirds of the presented content wasn't about SpinReg at all, just about every question we fielded at the end of each session was about the new system.

How do you balance that? I told any who talked to me about it afterward the simple truth: FEPA's conference was not a marketing tool for us, but if they would like more info, I'd take their card and we would set up a real demo at a later date. That worked very well, and I think that everyone was appreciative of the fact that we hadn't taken this opportunity to simply stand up there and hawk our wares. Even though I would have liked to.

Honestly, in my opinion SpinReg is one of the most important projects I've worked on. It addresses a clear need in emergency management, and it does it in a way that is accessible and powerful. Of course, there are always issues. We are still trying to work out a price, for starters. The center is a research center at FSU, we are not a for profit enterprise. As such we are not interested in making gobs of money and then retiring, we honestly want to provide a product that is helpful to the community. Of course, that costs money. We have to fund ongoing development, support efforts, contract management, and etc. Therefore we have to price the product at a point where it is inexpensive enough for local governments to be interested, but also where it generates enough revenue to support itself. That is not an easy task, and one that I actually fear is impossible. We'll see.

Okay, this turned into a much longer bit that I had originally intended. Stay tuned for more news on SpinReg as we move closer to a public launch.

Okay, The Presentation Looks Good

Well, it has come together nicely. We have streamlined the content and swapped the order each of us are presenting our parts and I think it does flow better now. Time to grab a sandwich (and coffee!) before we go on at 1:30pm.

Rewriting a Presentation, Three Hours Out

What could go wrong?  No, it's not a major rewrite, but still.  This is not my finest moment of preparedness.  I think I need more caffeine.

Technology and Persons with Special Needs Presentation

I recently talked about how much I enjoy writing code as of late. Well today, I'm at the Florida Emergency Preparedness Association's annual conference in Orlando, and I'm giving a presentation based on a product that I wrote. I've done this kind of work dozens of times, but I'm particularly nervous today and I'm not sure why.

We are speaking on utilizing technology to manage and register people with Special Needs. This is a important area, as these populations needs a lot of assistance from government and NGO's in case of disaster.

I'll post more when I'm done this afternoon.

Losing Myself in the Code

You know, about the only thing that I really enjoy about IT anymore is writing code.  I'm pretty good at a wide spectrum of IT tasks, from system admin and setup to application development, but the only part of it that brings me joy is writing code.  Funny, I used to be the other way around - I'd rather have spent hours on a server issue or router, but these days I find myself loathing that type or work. 

It's possible that I just enjoy what I'm better at.  I know that in the past few years I've concentrated more on development and less on admin, and I know that my admin skill set is rusty.  It might also just be that writing code is simply the best creative outlet that I have right now.

Today I am back into SPINreg.org, and I'm seriously enjoying myself.

Gmail Toolbar Update

Google has added a new toolbar to the top of Gmail.  For the most part, the functionality is the same... except for one big (and useful) new feature.  There is now a 'Move to' pulldown, that allows you to label a message, then archive it in one fell swoop.  This action mimics moving he message to a folder, which it great for folks like me who try to keep the inbox (close to) empty.

Nice and useful, Google!  I like it.

Daschle Withdraws

Former Sen. Daschle has withdrawn his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Good. Since the revelation that he had not paid over $140,000 in back taxes (which he has now paid, with interest) there has been rampant criticism (all very deserved) and speculation.

Here's my two cents (now only worth $.012 in this economy)... He should have dropped out days ago. Put simply, if I can manage to pay my taxes without (too much) griping, why can't he? This is simple, and it's a fundamental responsibility of all citizens of this country. If he can't hack that, I don't want him in my government. Period.

President Obama has promised us a new era of openness (or openisity, as President Bush might have said), and appointments such as this would just tarnish that.

Say Goodnight, Blackwater

The Iraqi government has denied Blackwater a renewed operating license, effectively putting an end to the operations of one of he most well known private military contractors in Iraq. This action is, of course, in response to the Blackwater shooting incident in 2007, as the license was denied for the firm's use of 'excessive force'. The State Department, who is the client for Blackwater, has not confirmed who will be taking over the privatized diplomatic security mission in Iraq. There are two other PMC's (private military contractors) operating in Iraq, but we'll have to see who gets the contract.

Here's an interesting idea, how about booting the PMC's altogether? I know, that's a stretch, but while I recognize the need to utilize PMC's due to U.S. force limitations, I don't like the diplomatic or security consequences.

CNN Wire Article | ABC News Article |
Reuters Article

London from Above, at Night

More awesome photography from Boston.com's "The Big Picture". I am always amazed at the quality of photos displayed there.

More of London from above, at night - The Big Picture

A Street With a View

Performance art meets Google Street View. It's pretty unique.

Well, sure. It's not like anything else has worked.

From abu muqawama: Well, sure. It's not like anything else has worked.

The U.S. is falling behind in th deployment of advanced herbivore brigades. I'm troubled.

Version 44 Update

http://www.chromecow.com/2009/01/20/us-democracy-server-patch-day/

If you aren't a gamer geek, some of this might not make sense... but trust me, it's hilarious.

Buy More Ninjas

Saw this article over at abu muqawama on what perhaps the Navy should be pouring funding into. Good, quick, read.

http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2009/01/maybe-we-should-buy-more-ninjas.html

Flying

Yikes.

If you think jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is not the smartest thing in the world, you are seriously going to wonder about the sanity of these folks. But it's really cool to watch.