Monthly Archives: May 2008

Writing Hurts

I had forgotten how painful scientific writing is. It’s good to know, from quotes I’ve read, that many of the best writers in history have had difficulty producing written works. If they had difficulties, how can I expect it to be easy?

Tricycle Art at Velocipede



Tricycle Art at Velocipede

Originally uploaded by brocktice


Velocipede hosted an art opening last Friday with pieces studying tricycles. I thought it was a pretty cool venue for the show, but I didn’t realize the pictures would be staying for a little while! They add a lot to the space. Too bad we can’t afford to buy them all.

I’m going to bring my real (read: not phone) camera next weekend to see if I can get a higher-quality picture of this.

Maintain Your Identity with phpMyID

You hate maintaining a bunch of user names and passwords for the tens or even hundreds of sites on which you have accounts. I haven’t even bothered to phrase that as a question, because I know it’s true. It’s such a common problem that a group of people and companies came up with a scheme called OpenID. Sites that support OpenID check with your specified authentication source, rather than asking you to authenticate with them individually.

Of course, you still need an authentication source, or provider. This leaves you dependent on some site’s authentication scheme, and requires that you maintain an account with said site, even if you no longer want to use their service. This is analogous to using an email address to log into everything, and later deciding you don’t want to keep that email address. For example, LiveJournal accounts may be used for OpenID authentication. Imagine that you’ve established accounts on a bunch of sites, and then decide you hate LiveJournal. You then have to find a new provider, and transfer or re-create all of your other accounts.

This sort of eliminates the point of OpenID, and is one of the reasons Microsoft’s borg-like Passport / Live ID was and is doomed to failure as a universal authentication mechanism. Who wants their entire online life to be at the mercy of Microsoft?

Why not just run your own OpenID server? Don’t let a lack of programming knowledge, or knowledge of the technical details of OpenID stop you — someone has already taken care of that stuff. You can install phpMyID on a hosted web account or your own server. To truly gain the advantage of a permanent online ID, you’ll probably want to make sure you have a domain name you can keep regardless of the web hosting provider (such as brocktice.com).

The big downside of doing this is that it will most certainly link all of your online accounts to each other. So, if you’re doing nefarious things, they may come back to haunt you. I use the same username pretty much everywhere, derived from my real name — in the end it helps to keep me honest and keeps my internal Internet Asshole from coming out too much.

I won’t go into the details of installing phpMyID here — the software’s website does that pretty well. If you have any questions about how I’ve set mine up, feel free to ask in the comments or by any of the methods here.

The Rosewood Thieves

Last year (or was it in 2006?) I went with some friends to see the band “Live”, uh, in person. I wasn’t that impressed. However, the band that opened for them was awesome. That band was The Rosewood Thieves. I bought their CD (From the Decker House), containing a mere six tracks, on the spot, and after listening to it a few times was hungry for more. The lead singer seems to be channeling the ghost of John Lennon.

Lo and behold, some years later my hunger has been partially sated. They have released more tracks for “From the Decker House”, and another album entitled “Lonesome EP.” They have a vintage rock sound, with a lot of rock organ and the aforementioned channeling of John Lennon. Unfortunately, I was not in New Orleans a few days ago to hear them play live at the Circle Bar.

Now, I’m not known for my excellent taste in music, but based on the reactions of others with better reputations, I can heartily recommend you check them out. I only hope they have more albums coming.

ADDENDUM: Looks like they have another album coming this summer, and you can check out a free track, “She Don’t Mind The Rain”, here. I don’t like it as much as some of the stuff on “From the Decker House”, just as a point of quality reference.