Random Synapses

Dear Bob,

Before you leave on your trip, please allow me to give you a few tips which might help you come back with the greatest holiday photos you have ever taken.

1. The camera manufacturer labeled it “point and shoot” implying the ease of photo taking from a technological point of view — no more fiddling with manual controls. This, however, doesn’t mean that you will actually get some decent photos without prior thinking for a fraction of a second. So don’t click your finger sore, as this approach will only generate some thick photo albums filled with garbage and a group of irritated fellow tourists. Yes, garbage — just because it’s yours doesn’t make it any less than that.

2. Your average camera’s flash can only illuminate subjects up to about 10, maybe 12 feet (3 to 4 meters) away. For anything farther away or for taking photos through the window of your hotel or bus, please learn how to turn off your flash. Otherwise, not only will your photos be ruined, but it’s plain stupid to use the flash when taking a photo at a distant mountain, at a yacht far away on the open sea, the city lights a few miles below the airplane, and so on. Your flash can’t reach the subject, and can’t illuminate it sufficiently in the darkness.

3. Amazingly, when you hold the camera to take a photo, your feet are still able to move around. Instead of standing frozen in place and leaning backwards in awkward body postures, or asking your family members to move “a bit to the left, no, back to the right a tad, too much, come back, there, smile, no, go back, why can’t you people stand still for a second” for two minutes for each photo, take a few steps back or to a side to reach the angle you want.

This particularily applies to stupid photos you’ve seen of people apparently pushing from a side on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or holding the Eiffel Tower from its tip, or other idiotic postures you thought were “cool” and plan to reproduce with your own family members. Don’t annoy them (and hundreds of other tourists around) for half an hour until you get that “perfect” shot, telling your subject to move a matter of inches. Shift your body position so the person and the monument align the way you want them to. Don’t forget to label these photos as “Idiot pretending to hold the largest European stadium in his hand” and show them to everyone you know, pay close attention to their actual level of interest.

4. When you plan to visit a large monument, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Eiffel Tower or the World Trade Center, remember well in advance that you want a photo of that monument. Most likely your average camera doesn’t have a wide angle lens and the monument won’t fit in the frame when you’re two feet from the entrance. No, taking 30 steps back peeping forward through the viewfinder or watching the camera screen in front of you, and without looking whom you’re bumping into, will not be far enough for the monument to fit. If you forgot to take the photo at the right time, just let it go; take the photo on your exit, or buy postcards photographed by professionals.

5. When taking photos of a person a few feet away, don’t aim the camera so his or her head is dead center in the picture. You are allowed to move your eye and look at the whole frame before taking the shot. Learn to frame the person correctly and don’t butcher their feet off while filling the upper half of the photo with the naked sky. The 5 typical framings for a person are: the face, the chest and head, from waist up, knees up and full body; all usually imply that the person’s figure takes up most of the frame, not just the bottom half. In full body photos or groups, always watch the feet and make sure they fit. Don’t cut off the foundation (and, if possible, tip) of a building either.

6. If you bother to take photos, photograph something that is interesting to see even some time later. The photo should be able to speak for itself, to tell a story, to have a main character and make a point. We’re all tired of looking at a photo documentary of everything you have seen on your trip, with the message “This is what I saw.” I’m sure you feel that you feel the need to explain everything in these photos every time you show them to someone. “These are the slippers from the hotel. That’s the standard TV remote control. This is the dull view from the window. Over here we have a blue sky, which is completely different than the blue sky you can see from your own home. Yeah, they also have nice sunsets in Austria; who would have thought? I brought back evidence, though. This photo I took from the bus and it’s a donkey on the side of the road, but the bus moved so I only caught the back legs and you can barely make them out because of the camera shaking-induced blur. Trust me, it was a donkey, even if you can’t see it.” Just stop. Please.

7. Even worse than watching everything on your trip through the camera’s viewfinder and photographing every stupid, insignifiant detail, is taking awkward photos of your head and maybe some piece of body in the forerground, with a tourist attraction poorly framed in the background. Such photos scream “This is proof I went there.” That’s really, really pathetic. Do you need to brand your photos in that way, so they can be returned to their rightful owner in case they get lost, or maybe preventing your co-workers from stealing them and claiming it was their trip? I’m sure your friends will believe that you took the photo even if you’re not in it. Are you part of the overall picture, the surroundings, or a piece of the story you want to transmit through that photo? Do you fear your memory will eventually fail so bad that you need photos to remind you where in the world have you been? Stop embarassing yourself.

8. Keep in mind that you went on holiday to get some peace and relaxation, not to work at getting photos. Pocket your camera and watch the world around you through your own eyes. Breathe the air, experience the different culture, enjoy yourself. Take photos only if you strongly believe they are worth it. Otherwise, buy the nicest of the gazillion postcards available nearly everywhere. Professional photographers have better equipment than you, better knowledge than you, better experience than you; let them do the work for you. Trust me, nobody back home will get pissed if you don’t show them a bad photo of the Great Pyramid, which they have already seen on TV plenty of times, nor will they care about a dark sarcophagus you don’t know anything about. Do yourself a favor and use your camera with moderation; the fact that you own a camera doesn’t mean you have to use it all the time.

Thanks and have a great time!

In recent years, all the books I’ve read were either for school or technical-related, while the little literature I’ve read was in electronic format.

I love e-books: not collecting dust and not taking up space on shelves, usually cheaper than their printed versions, and environmentally friendly. I can deal with reading on a computer display, while I appreciate the search ability of an electronic document.

But for my birthday, I bought myself a few books from Amazon.com. Real books. Words on paper. They’re books I have been looking forward to read for quite some time. Now that they’re here, I can almost taste the thrill of anticipation. Here’s the list:

• Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat - A brief history of the twenty-first century”;
• Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind - Why right-brainers will rule the future” - the revised version of “A Whole New Mind - Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age”. Ok, so I made a mistake and thought the two books are not related, and ordered them both. They’re good books nonetheless, and one of them will make a nice gift.
• Daniel Pink’s “Free Agent Nation - The future of working for yourself”.

“A Whole New Mind” caught my attention in February 2005, just a couple of months before it was published. Daniel Pink’s article “Revenge of the right brain” in Wired Magazine briefly brought up the main points of the book. It was equally a very interesting reading, and proof that Daniel Pink has an excellent writing style. The subject came in right on time to fuel my interest in self-development and potential trends in work environment. “Free Agent Nation” is now about to continue building on those thoughts.

Thomas Friedman has made excellent points on globalisation in his earlier work. I’m very curious on what synapses will be fired by this new book of his.

Hands down, these will be the most interesting things I have read in recent years. Even before I opened the covers, I highly recommend them to you. At least read Daniel Pink’s article and see if anything clicks for you.

I’ve got a mixed love/hate relationship with Dell.

I love them for having great ideas. Their computers are not designed for everyone; they’re specialized tools that perform very well in specific tasks and areas. The hardware is well thought and assembled — exactly what you need to do something. Custom designed motherboards embrace the BTX form factor, to improve air cooling, minimize noise and size. If you open some Dell desktops or servers, you will simply be amazed on how every little piece of plastic has its well-thought role, how detailed the design is and how much more you are getting in the box, compared to a generic brand PC. The servers particularily stand out, just go through the service manual of a Dell PowerEdge 2950 and be amazed. And, like most brand name systems, these are tested for incompatibilities and should give you fewer problems than self-built systems.

But I also hate Dell for screwing up more often than you’d like. The reason anyone goes with a brand PC is the set of extra services included in the price. Dell’s services have been slipping for years. Tech support is in India, they simply cannot do anything to help you out other than recording your complaint; it’s even more aggravating when you have to ask the dude to repeat what he’s saying 5 times, because you can’t understand his English. Order processing has its issues as well; as a company that sells directly to the consumer, they need to make sure the orders are processed in due time. Delays in shipment, incorrect addresses, lost packages and wrong configurations are a few things they need to control, as well as sending refunds for cancelled orders.

And finally, there’s the hardware. When it runs, it’s awesome. When it fails, it’s a nightmare. You don’t know for sure what’s wrong with it. They don’t know either. There’s no easy fix, and you end up spending weeks asking yourself “Why?” Just like my three Dell Latitude laptops: why on Earth have they decided to go with SDRAM instead of DDRAM? What a horrible bottleneck in performance, also seen in many of their Pentium 4 desktops! Why have they decided to go with Hitachi hard drives, which nearly self-destruct on a periodic basis? Why are there hardware issues with power management when I install Western Digital replacement hard drives? And why are they still listing ancient driver versions on their support site, when component manufacturers (Intel chipsets or 3com network controllers, for instance) have released newer, improved drivers?

I’ll probably buy a new computer in a few months. What will it be — a Dell, or a bag of components I’ll assemble myself? I’m oscillating between these. If I get the Dell, I’ll probably be very happy with what it delivers without needing to open the box at all. However, it won’t be too flexible in how I can modify and upgrade it. And if something will go wrong, I’ll be cursing my decision. On the other hand, with a custom built computer, I’ll probably spend a decent amount of time with my hands in it, tweaking and fiddling with stuff — lots of fun, but also annoying at one point, and definitely not as impressive as the brand name hardware and construction.

Stay tuned for the next episode of this amazing soap opera.

If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even if there’s nothing that can go wrong, it still will go wrong.

Situation: rack-mounted server with all the goodies on it, Windows 2000 Server running SQL Server, IIS and a bunch of other stuff, including Symantec Antivirus. External HP tape drive to be attached. No-brainer to-do list: set correct SCSI ID, connect the cable and restart the system so the SCSI controller finds the new device. Windows will detect the drive, then the drivers will be updated with most recent ones.

No biggie, you’d think. Pretty much the same complexity/risk level with connecting a USB printer, 30 minutes of downtime. Tops. I have not seen, heard of, or even imagined something this trivial can go so horribly wrong.

On reboot, server is as slow as an old, feeble turtle which suffered some rare illness as a baby-turtle. The tape drive is recognized, but when trying to access the device properties to update the driver — everything freezes. Nearly anything I try to do in Management console results in MMC freezing. Disk management doesn’t work at all. Worst of all, the SQL server won’t start — and time is ticking, people need to use applications relying on this data, business isn’t running, you can almost see money flying out of the pocket. To top it off, I don’t have physical access to the server by myself, only others do and they all went home to enjoy the Friday afternoon. No “Safe mode” for me, no unplugging the tape drive and hope things will turn back to normal. What to do?

First thought, the universal Windows fix: restart it. Servers aren’t exactly snappy at getting back online, in fact their POST diagnostics can take more time to complete than the operating system to load. So 20 minutes later, I’m staring at the same situation.

Second thought, let’s see what is not running properly. Checking services, I notice that a few of them are trying to start but get stuck at “Starting” — stop action is disabled at this point. OK, let’s disable these services and restart. Nope, can’t disable them, management console freezes when applying changes. Hmmmm.

Third thought: this situation occured as a consequence of attaching the tape drive. Being unable to physically detach the cable, I can only disable the device. No workie. Uninstall the device, to remove the driver from memory. Nada.

At this point, phone calls are building up and one of the people with access to the server has to return to the office. I know he’s pissed off — I would if I were him. Goodbye weekend plans, when worst case scenario is spending the next 24 hours reinstalling the operating system and restoring all settings to the way they were before. We detach the tape drive, but the server doesn’t seem to care and continues to be as slow as a dead fish thrown down the toilet. We test the SCSI controller, diagnose drives, try anything we can think of; nothing wrong. Must be software, then: we go through the system and manually delete all references to the tape drive, even in the registry. Same outcome. Finally, the server is started in Safe mode from the console, all supplemental services are disabled, server restarts and… whew, we have a stable system.

Sort of.

We enable critical services, SQL server starts in less than 10 seconds, things are back on the floating line, except for a few management services including the Symantec Antivirus. Its event log contains a reference to some 40+ settings being changed, and it just won’t run properly for some reason. Maybe it has detected the tape drive as a Removable Storage and attempted to scan it (with no tape in drive)? Maybe it was just Windows automatically creating scheduled backups. I don’t know. And frankly, at 1 in the morning on a Friday night, I don’t effin’ care. It’s been too long since the last time I tried to find logical explanations for Windows’ oddities.

Lesson learned? Never underestimate the possibility that things can — and will — go wrong when you least expect them to, and in a way that you couldn’t predict. What started as a 10-minute connect–reboot–verify-that-everything-works-before-leaving-for-home kind of after-hours job, turned into a 5 hour ordeal propagating into tens of hours lost by other people waiting for this system and probably thousands of dollars of losses from delays. And a pissed off boss.

Effin’ tape drive and older Windows systems. Effin’ physical access restrictions. And effin’ single point of failure in case this server goes down. Which is why I added the tape drive, to have a full system and data backup ready for emergencies. Which is exactly what caused the emergency.

In a few minutes I’m going to fall asleep thinking “what have I done wrong?” That ain’t good.

This blog originally started with the default permalink structure: to reach a post, the URL would contain the ID number of that post, like this: http://www.randomsynapses.org/?p=43 . Actually, it started with a different URL, as a subdomain. It’s only been 11 months since the blog got its own domain name. Anyway, the links are only examples, take ‘em that way.

After the first few posts, I decided on using a more intuitive structure which included the date and the post “slug” (the title in lowercase, with dashes instead of spaces), like this: http://www.randomsynapses.org/2005-10-23/fixing-western-digital-scorpio-clicking-noise/ .

This is how Google and the other search spiders indexed this site, and how I posted links to my own contents on various sites and forums over nearly two years (one year, considering the current domain name).

About a week ago I became annoyed with the date being included in the link. Ok, it helps having it there as an obvious indicator of how old a post is; but it really looks ugly. So I thought, why not just change the permalink structure? What can go wrong? My two “fans” subscribed to this blog in BlogLines not finding my posts? The forums that don’t draw many visitors here having wrong URLs? I had little to lose, but a lot to learn: let’s see how fast search engines catch up with the new structure, which now looks like: http://www.randomsynapses.org/fixing-western-digital-scorpio-clicking-noise/ .

By the way, all three URLs exemplified so far point to the same post. The second one no longer works because of the new permalink structure in WordPress, but I’ll get to that a bit later.

To make things more complicated, I have a custom 404 page that redirects the browser to the main “index”, so to speak, in case a visitor tries to access an inexistent address. Although the web server should clearly indicate this with the 404 message header, I’m not exactly sure if search engines pick it up or just follow the redirect in a meta tag. Normally, search engines should identify 404 messages and drop those pages from the database. So my old URLs should disappear from Google fairly quickly, while the new URLs are being added. Just to make sure, to force search engines to drop the old URLs from the index, I added specific lines in robots.txt file to deny access to /2006-*-*/ for instance — that would match all URLs for posts published this year.

But I didn’t stop here. Google has a really neat service for webmasters, Webmaster Help Center, where you can get some neat stuff done with the sites you manage. I had interest in the way Google used my robots.txt file to decide what to index and what to skip, and in the Google Sitemaps service, as well as some statistics about what Google “sees” on your site. So I added my site to Sitemaps, confirmed it by placing a meta tag in the head section as instructed, installed Google Sitemaps Generator plugin for WordPress, generated a sitemap file and had Google use it.

And then, I waited, watching my web host’s recent access log every couple of days and Google’s tools for webmasters.

At first, the blog would get a lot of hits on old URLs with the former permalink structure, including the date. Because of WordPress’ current design, once I changed the permalink structure it no longer recognizes the parameters passed through the old structure, so all visits to old URLs were getting the 404 page and getting redirected to the main page of the blog. This probably has pissed off or turned away some people which were not getting the contents they were looking for.

It was search spiders I was interested in, not real visitors. Google, MSN and Yahoo seemed determined to hit, verify and reindex URLs with the old permalink structure. But a day or two after the switch, they all started requesting my robots.txt like mad, and indexing the most recent posts with the new permalink structure. Day after day, they kept requesting old and new URLs, with a clear trend of increasing frequency for new structure and decreasing frequency to old URLs. A promising start, isn’t it?

It’s true that Google still shows the old structure in search results and keeps a cached copy, although I added a meta tag to prevent that. It will take some time for this to sink in, apparently. See for yourself, search for wd400ve-75hdt0 — the post linked above appears 8th from the top.

Curiously enough, Google’s stats show me that it got over 25 “Page not found” (404) messages for old URLs, but also that on its most recent visit it could not find the robots.txt file on the site. Say what?

Before I close, I’m curious if there is a WordPress plugin of sorts that helps smoothing out the transition to a new permalink structure. I imagine I could do it by fiddling with the .htaccess rewrite rules, but is there a neat, clean, easy way of doing it by extending WordPress’ permalink functionality with a plugin?

[Edit] Yes, there is: Dean Lee’s Permalinks Migration Plugin. Now you don’t have to go through my pain.