Ralph Hogaboom's Weblog

Sophie vs Haystack

2008-12-01T09:13:00.001-08:00

Sophie vs Haystack
Originally uploaded by ralphhogaboom

Sophie vs Haystack

2008-11-29T17:39:00.001-08:00

Sophie vs Haystack
Originally uploaded by ralphhogaboom

There are many pictures of Cannon Beach, OR's Haystack Rock. This one is mine.

The logo for GHC, my employer

2008-09-03T13:07:00.001-07:00

The logo for GHC, my employer
Originally uploaded by ralphhogaboom

Just testing out Flickr's blog function.

Doctor Doom

2008-07-21T11:03:00.001-07:00

Doctor Doom
Originally uploaded by ralphhogaboom

I'm working on my halloween costume a little early this year. I usually come up with an elaborate dream of a plan, and don't do shit about it. This year I'm going to get it done.

And it is Doctor Doom. Damn.

2008-05-29T07:03:00.002-07:00

I have two tracks from our practice with our cello player last night. First time she'd played with us, or any non-orchestral group, actually.

firecracker & it's the only thing (both mp3)

Recorded using my Canon XL S1 camera microphone. These songs are real rough, but it indicates a healthy first practice, so hooray.

While we were playing with the song firecracker, I was vaguely aware drummer Geoff kept asking for the song to be simpler. When I finally listened to him and backed off the guitar looping a bit, it got much cleaner. I think it needs cleaner still, but I do like where it's going.

2008-05-19T10:55:00.001-07:00

Some Mondays, it doesn't get better than this.

2008-05-01T07:37:00.002-07:00

I have my old band Nobstreater's Where Are The Wise Men Where Are The Scholars on iTunes Music Store. It should be no big deal, because I paid for it. I feel so warm and fuzzy seeing it there.

2008-04-14T05:42:00.003-07:00

I put the Nobstreater album up at the Amazon MP3 store. If you've previously downloaded it from my music pages here, but feel really convinced its been good for you, feel free to buy a few songs from the store to ease your spirit. I have to admit, it'd be really fun if I ever got a check from song sales.

Coining the term LSP

2008-03-11T20:04:00.001-07:00

It's so boring to say The Music Industry is Dying. Passe. Lame. LAMMO. Tom Horan used to say that to me all the time. Hi Tom!

What's much more interesting is where the music industry is going, right now. I can tell you it's not going away. Bands still need distribution, booking agents, recording studios, promotion, managers, etc. What's changing is the way record labels interface with artists. They're turning into service providers - you need to record? Here, we can help you find some way to do it. You want to play a tour? Sure, we can arrange that.

I just found an article about Archer Records in TN; it's an indie label that just bought a recording studio. As the RIAA reports year over year decline in sales, and massively slashes staff and costs, studios for hire don't get as much money. Like this one in TN, it closed down. What's interesting is that it's cheaper for Archer Records to buy it and spend $230k renovating it for recording its own artists. It's a self-serving consolidation that makes the label more financially stable, and able to offer more to artists. It's just a smart move.

I chat with Ira Merrill often. He's a software developer in Seattle, and run through his string of bands. We met in the 90's when our bands played a few shows together. He's been toying with this idea of a low-overhead record label that is basically a clearing house of all the self-producing bands around the area. Nothing fancy, just a place to put that stuff out there.

But as we chat, we keep brainstorming on this Label-as-a-Service-Provider (ooh! We'll call it LaaSP, or maybe LSP). Physical CD distribution can be a nightmare, but using tools like CD Baby & iTunes, blogs, and playing shows and promoting your stuff at a table would be great ways for working bands to make it all come out even. No debt, no $20,000 recording and production fees. Just a working band with day jobs making a small business pay off while doing what they enjoy anyway.

I really like that idea. Ira's even offered to buy me a lunch sometime while we brainstorm it. How very record executive of him.

VMWare: "Hey, where'd all the servers go?"

2008-03-04T15:25:00.001-08:00

One BS Bingo term I learned from Scott Huston was 'information sharing seminar', which IIRC involves one person who goes to one of those free-tech seminars to return and write up a simple report sharing what they learned. This is distributed some how to the rest of the department, and facilitates sharing information and skills rather than hoarding it.

I hate hoarding information, so naturally this was right up my alley.

I still have my notes from the Microsoft Public Developers Conference from a couple months ago to put together, but in the mean time here's my impression of the VMWare Virtualization seminar I attended in Seattle today.

The seminar was split into two, maybe 2.5 sections.

1: A virtualization overview of what VMWare is doing in the field right now;
1.5: A brief, clumsy overview of the features of those really expensive EMC storage solutions you can by for virtualized environments;
2.5: A fascinating Q&A with a Washington Mutual bigwig who had real knowledge and experience implementing large scale virtualization of servers and, the interesting part, virtual desktops.

Kevin Connor from VMWare began by talking about market cap, market share, number of employees, main product offerings, blah blah blah. He was smooth and fun to listen to, peppering his talk with words like potty, groovy, and my fav "a pillar to hang your hat on." He explained some of the leading edge stuff that VMWare is doing, like Vmotion. Neat stuff.

I couldn't stand the EMC guy and I really had to potty; when I got back, I'd missed it all.

By then the WaMu guy (sorry, didn't catch your name man) was talking. They'd started out with an impossible project, migrating 1500 call center workstations to two offshore locations on a tiny budget where no information could be housed outside US borders and do it in 45 days. They did it by virtualizing WinXP desktops and hosting them, and they did it under budget and under time.

I can believe that. One of the real benefits of virtualization that I can see is provisioning a new machine, and I'm not talking about IT work. I mean if you have to order a new machine, you need to spec it out, write up a cost justification, figure out who's budget it comes from, set it up as a capitalized expense (depreciated over three years), then order it and wait for it to arrive. Making a new VM? An hour to copy a template and run sysprep, assuming you've got the server available already.

Once nice thing about the WaMu guy was that he gave numbers and configuration examples. He's building VM farms out of 4-core, four socket machines. He sets up six of these things, and hosts 100 to 120 XP VM's. Nice advice I have no reason to doubt: No matter the scale of your farm, no matter the multi core or what, don't go more than 8 nodes. If you scale out that broad, you simply cannot recover from a node failure very flexibly. This makes sense to me on an intuitive level, i.e. eggs and baskets.

Ultimately, this is the first time I've heard real practical examples of utility computing in the enterprise. All the other times it's been research scientists doing the equivalent of mainframe timeshares back in the day. This guy was building out a farm, and when various departments called with a new project or server request (and budget to back it up), they'd carve out a VM from the pool of resources. Then they'd charge that department for it. While saving money from power and hardware. Faster. In fact, funny story, when they'd get a request for a new server or workstation, they'd intentionally delay the availability by a day. Internal customers thought they were getting gipped if the IT department gave them same day turnaround. By articifically delaying it 24 or more hours, by comparison, internal customers decided that the IT dept must have drop shipped the new hardware. For some reason, I find that really funny.

Lastly, I like that he did a full cost recovery model for their first VM farm. I'm interested in a similar exercise for the college. We've been using GSX, as it's free. ESX starts at just $500 for a nice hypervisor. I bet it makes a nice difference.

Things like this make me feel less lonely

2008-01-03T23:54:00.001-08:00

HELLA MUSIC VIDEO from davidnicholson on Vimeo.

Nobstreater - Live in Tacoma

2007-12-18T05:51:00.000-08:00

Nobstreater - fifteen 30 from ralph hogaboom on Vimeo.

This was taken from an old camcorder tape someone had made at the last show of my band, Nobstreater. This must be about 7 years old or so - I can't really remember.

Grays Harbor Wind Storm - the Hogaboom report

2007-12-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

Grays Harbor Wind Storm - The Hogaboom Report.

Desktop Wallpaper - Strictly for the Fans

2007-11-23T20:47:00.000-08:00

All I can say about the beard is, you're welcome.

My Little Reader

2007-11-05T10:04:00.001-08:00

I claim credit for teaching Sophie to read, but the reality is that she took to it like, um, greased lightning or something. She received a placement test when she started kindergarten this year; she's reading at 3rd grade, 2 months level. That's amazing.

More amazing is that she's getting this homework, where she brings home a book and reads it and gets a comprehension test at the end of the week. She keeps passing with 100%.

The best part? It's a computer logon test, and her account is shogboom. I wish that were my nickname in highschool, or something like it. Like "shagboom". It just sounds powerful.

Deadly Snake Trainer

2007-10-29T12:55:00.001-07:00

Deadly Snake Trainer
Originally uploaded by ralphhogaboom

My costume, and picture, from Saturday night. Shannon Weidman had a party at the Pourhouse, which is Aberdeen's premier yet mediocre drinking establishment.

Tomboy - finally! Ahhhhhhh .... (that's a sigh of relief)

2007-10-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

For years now I've longed for Tomboy on Windows. I've done some pretty stupid things to try to get it to work: crude regedits, multiple installs of Mono, and I once got really drunk and messed around with this guy I know. None of that helped.

But someone got it working, well enough to use every day. Now I depend on it, oh so much. Tomboy is the most perfect personal wiki application. Better than voodoopad, fo sho.

Linux.com reviews it here. You can download Mono here, then go here for the install instructions & the installer. If you get an error on startup, ignore it. Tomboy runs in your notification area after that.

Happy note taking.

Jennifer Anderson for Hoquiam Mayor

2007-10-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

Here's the four parts of the radio show that Jennifer Anderson did on KBKW. She's running for mayor this year. Jen's an old friend of Kelly's.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

How-To: Make bad audio sound better with Audacity

2007-10-09T11:41:00.001-07:00

"Audacity is a free, Mac/Windows/Linux audio editor. It does a great job cleaning up bad audio sounds in a relatively straightforward manner. It’s certainly worth having around and knowing a few tricks with it. And it can help your media projects sound better. Here’s how."

read more | digg story

Young Frankenstein

2007-10-07T14:07:00.001-07:00

Young Frankenstein
Originally uploaded by ralphhogaboom

This is the poster I designed for the 7th Street's October movie, Young Frankenstein. If you haven't been to one of their movies, come to this one. It's a blast!

Testing Writer

2007-09-26T12:47:00.001-07:00

Paul Thurrott mentioned Windows Live Writer on the podcast he does with Leo Laporte called Windows Weekly. It's a good show - check it out if you haven't yet.

This is me, testing a post using it.

2007-09-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a small library in Ilwaco. My wife and I have been on vacation for two nights now, and the weather gets better each day. Sadly, I'm getting sicker each day. And less together, mentally. Just when I wrote that, I thought I should make a logo for sickr, all flickr/web 2.0 like.

Doesn't take away from yesterday, though. I took my bike out for a bit. Turns out that my Cannondale Super V700 bike - which I'd picked up for a mere $200 from a retired assasin with a steel rod and morphine pump in his body, no shit - excels at camp trails. It pulled me into them, asking me to do all sorts of crazy stuff. Try to ride over rocks that were way to big, ride up steep hills, ride down lumpy beach trails with narrow passages and barely jumpable logs.

I ride up the hill, to the light house and some remains of fort canby; on the way back, it feels so good to glide down and have the breeze in my face that I let go, and put my arms out Kate-Winslett-Titanic-style while flying through the first of the fall leaves, weaving down from their branches to the ground.

Earlier, I'd been out to the north jetty. It was smooth, so the bike and I ventured out. We got further, and further, and the rocks got bigger and sharper. Soon, I had to carry the bike - it's a real lightweight frame - until, again, the rocks were so sharp and large I put the bike down. I needed all four limbs to proceed.

The further out I got, the more hostile it became. The rocks were wet, and I slipped a few times. Then, even further out past the straggling fishers, I got to a part where I surprised the seagulls, who appeared to eat more fish and less McDonald's fry wrappers out here. At least, the fishy guano was plentiful.

Finally, I reached the end of the jetty and snapped a picture. The mist of the waves was constant here, and I was getting wet. I briefly celebrated my victory over the jetty, reaching a place where not many tourists would have the patience to reach. Seriously, this was like 5 seconds. "Okay I made it's getting wet hooray for me now I'm getting outta here" or something.

Three steps later, and a belligerent wave crashed, over the jetty, and into my back. It was cold and mean, but felt exhilarating. I scrambled the rest of the way, feeling more fear of the water than I had previously. I had sweat dripping off my nose when I reached my bike, and I hoisted it on my back while I made my way toward more bikable terrain.

By the time I made it back, Kelly had woken from her nap and made coffee. My sickness was beaten back a bit by the air, and I felt delightful. Here's to hoping for a bike ride with Kelly later today.

Phish Food

2007-09-04T09:04:00.001-07:00

This morning, I saw in my junk mail box a pretty transparent phishing attempt. This one must have harvested my work email from the ghc.edu web site; it read:

Dear Member,

School Employees Credit Union of Washington temporarily suspended your account.

Reason: Billing failure.

We need you to complete an account update so we can unlock your account.

To start the update process follow the link below :

https://www.secuwa.org <http://URLREMOVED/include/menu2.htm>

Once you have completed the process, we will send you an email notifying that your account is available again. After that you can access your account at any time.

The information provided will be treated in confidence and stored in our secure database. If you fail to provide required information your account will be automatically deleted from SECUWA database.

Copyright © School Employees Credit Union of Washington, All Rights Reserved

Instead of just deleting it, however, I wanted to have a look around. The disguised link points to a site that provides home schooling supplies; the phishing files were stashed in ~admin/www.secuwa.org/index/ behind the domain.

A quick call to the company put me through to a woman who simply answered "Hello?" Turns out she was the designer, didn't know that the files were there, but immediately grasped the ramifications. I forwarded the email & link, she thanked me quickly and apologized, and we hung up.

I hope she gets the files down quickly.

Zesty Tofu Wraps @ Im Cooked

2007-09-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

In case you don't check my sorta-video site mighty kitten, I'll steer you there myself: Check out Kelly's Im Cooked video. Zesty Tofu Wraps & "East by West", a Nathan Smurthwaite song.

I worked with Nathan at x10.com, and he was the music for our wedding in 2001. This song comes from his self-recorded, self-produced CD. It's very shiny. KEXP appears to have given it a bit of play.

2007-08-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

Kelly mentioned the other day that we got kittened. Totally true.