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Ken — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:39:33 +0000

(Vámonos!)

Save me from this prison
Lord help me get away
Cause only you can save me now
From this misery
I’ve been lost in my own place
And I’m gettin’ weary
How far is heaven
And I know that I need to change
My ways of livin’
How far is heaven,
Lord can you tell me

I’ve been locked up way too long
In this crazy world,
How far is heaven
And I just keep on prayin’ Lord
And just keep on livin’,
How far is heaven
Yeah, Lord can you tell me,
How far is heaven
I just gotta know how far is,
How far is heaven
Yeah, Lord can you tell me

Tu que estas en alto cielo,
Echame tu bendiciòn
[translated from Spanish]
[You that are in at higher heaven
throw me down your blessing]

I know there’s a better place
Than this place I’m livin’,
How far is heaven
And I just got to have some faith
And just keep on givin’,
How far is heaven
Yeah, Lord can you tell me,
How far is heaven
I just gotta know how far is,
How far is heaven,
Yeah, Lord can you tell me,
How far is heaven,
I just gotta know how far,
I just wanna know how far

Henry Garza (b. 15 May 1978) vocals, guitar
Jojo Garza (b. 4 June 1980) bass, vocals
Ringo Garza (b. 29 November 1981) drums, percussion, vocals

Sony says they are going to build a new Ecosystem

Ken — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:35:45 +0000

Creating a new ecosystem is way harder than creating a new TV interface. An ecosystem will require more than a single thing:

1. A killer product that will own a category and enable rapid wide adoption (iPod in Apple’s case).

2. Integrated on at least 3 levels with device (TV, Phone iPod), cloud / backend (iTunes & Netobjects) and computer (software). Arguably today that would need to include more than one device as in both phone and TV.

3. Great content (this could be Music, Games or commercial programing or could be user created content) they key is something everyone wants to have access to. gain today it arguably needs to be more than a single category.

Sony has access to all the components to build this kind of ecosystem, but they have a very poor history in most of these areas and even in the device hardware segment their recent past is not encouraging.

The intersection of content, network delivery and portable devices (or technology and the liberal arts as Steve Jobs like to say) is still a bit of the wild wild west, and it is still possible for someone to build something revolutionary and get market share quickly (look what Android has accomplished in the phone market and the level of interest in the new Amazon Fire tablet). From this perspective Sony is still in the game especially with their strong brand and wide distribution in the CE / TV market.

But if I was a betting man I would not count on Sony’s success, rather I would look to someone small who can combine the worlds of social network fabric into a TV / video content delivery system that builds very quickly from the internet. This would be both disruptive and could grow to power without directly confronting the existing TV content providers.

Adobe, Flash, Apple Some Thoughts

Ken — Mon, 24 May 2010 07:42:15 +0000

Media coverage of the “War between Apple and Adobe” is good for lots of page views on news and blog sites, but most of the coverage is about who is going to “win”. It seams the combination of the media’s attention to everything Apple along with Adobe attempts to wage a publicity war is producing lots of traffic bringing out the fan boys on all sides (Apple, FLash, along strangely enough with fanboys from Microsoft, Android and Open Source).

There are a few good examples of people actually trying to figure out the facts and what it all means like these:
Reading Between the iPhone OS 4.0 Lines – daringfireball.net/2010/04/reading_between_the_iphone_os_4_lines

All week long I was reading the volleys on the web about the “effects” of the new iPhone OS4 SDK developer agreement, the impact of no flash on Apple’s iPad or Adobe’s success and the whimpering cries from the Android developer fan boys, while at the same time I have been working on a major project for a new client website- using Adobe tools for the job (CS4 testing across Safari, Firefox and Chrome on both the Mac and Windows along with IE ). This project required me to work more intensely with the Adobe CS4 than I have have in the past. I have used Adobe products since they came out – and in most instances from before they were Adobe products, but it has been many years since I was this directly doing the work instead of overseeing a team, so I had to get my hands dirty and actually delve into the depths of CS4.

The project calls for what should be easy today a database driven site requiring:

CSS based Web layout
Simple Motion Graphics
Instructional Videos

Other than Photoshop all the Adobe CS4 products I worked with did a very poor job and proved to be unreliable.

The documentation (or should I say lack there of) is something Adobe should be ashamed of. They expect a customer to pay more than a thousand dollars for a product that has no documentation??? The online help is poorly indexed and when you search for answers you come up with mostly out of date references to older versions of Creative Suite that are not every useful. I am sure Adobe would be happy to sell me support and lessons, that is not what I am looking for. In almost every case it was easier and better to simply search for off the shelf PHP, Javascript or HTML/CSS solutions than use Adobe’ solution.

In every case it turned out simpler to use not Adobe supplied solutions where you Google what you are trying to do, quickly find a solution, copy and quickly edit it to your needs. The Adobe solution if you could find one was spend hours searching for Dreamweaver help and end up with a proprietary solution that is clunky and harder to produce and maintain. Examples of this are:

Inserting RSS feeds into a webpage – something that is simple in iWeb, or even in WordPress is a major project in Dreamweaver!

Adobe needs to get back to their knitting and make their software work.

Hello world!

Ken — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:32:14 +0000

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Fun with Upgrading your computer

Ken — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:46:18 +0000

With all the talk of upgrades here is some of the fun stuff floating around the web:

Apple’s upgrade path from fake Steve:

From: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

Walt’s version from: Deciphering Windows 7 Upgrades: The Official Chart:

Windows 7 Upgrade paths that can kill!

The MS response by Ed Bott Microsoft blunders with a confusing Windows 7 upgrade chart:

The MS response

Just for fun here are some old charts on the web about upgrades

An old HP Unix upgrade chart HP Tru64 UNIX Version 5.1B-2 and Higher: Patch Kit Installation Instructions

HP Unit Chart

It is always easy to make fun of Vista!

Vista was no easy path

MS makes it interesting (or difficult):

What version of Vista can I upgrade to from XP?

From April Survey: 84% won’t upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year:

In addition to Mac OS X, enterprises are looking at a rainbow of Unix alternatives, as shown in the chart

From http://karchesky.com/comics/stochastic/operating-system-chart/

What is the best OS for you?(December 7th, 2008)

Other charts I found looking around:

The Mac is better at all but Porn

Believe it or not, YouTube has been inaccessible in any corner of the world for about an hour.

The Joy of Tech! 2007

Computer Hardware Chart (July 20th, 2009)

Unix Family Tree

IT guys love flow charts – from Oracle

Migration from SBS or NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 or SBS 2003 is not a simple one!

Lets not forget Linux

From the www.itjungle.com (love the name)

Doubling up the core counts to a maximum of 32 cores in the Power 570 did not change the upgrade paths, as you can see:

All in good fun!