Technology Bytes

Allright. First and foremost, thanks again to everyone who helped us make our goal in what was possibly the most painless on-air membership drive ever.

It was definitely a creative use of technology that went outside our normal channel to achieve our goal in a previously unheard-of time. It was an excellent hack, if you will. That’s hacking in its truest sense and not the nefarious activity that should probably be labeled as cracking these days.

The field of *hacking* has changed quite a bit over the last two decades. Gone are the days of pimply faced teens in their parent’s basements, war-dialing entire area codes and writing rudimentary shell scripts. These thirteen-year-olds have been replaced by thirty-somethings. Or maybe these thirteen-year-olds just grew up into thirty somethings.

Whatever the case, the “scene” is now an “industry” and the corporate term for these shenanigans is Information Security or InfoSec. (One definite perk to things going corporate is that most of the people in the industry can now afford digs outside of their parent’s domain.)

Information Security, for the most part, tends to be reactionary. AntiVirus vendors add virus signatures to their products only after the new virus has been spotted in the wild or otherwise detected by the vendor. The same goes for vendors of Anti-Malware and Anti-Spyware products. Anti-Spam tool kits also work along these principals, constantly improving their filters based on what is actually being seen in the real world.

In these arenas, it’s definitely a case of the bad guys leading the pack. In fact, the bad guys *often* find themselves on the cutting edge of technology. A great example of this is BotNets. It’s not uncommon to hear about BotNets that control hundreds of thousands or even millions of computers or nodes. To put that in perspective, the largest cloud based computing resources have, at most, just tens of thousands of nodes.

So it’s no surprise that the Bad Guys controlling these networks (that are often powers of ten larger than their corporate counterparts) have some pretty advanced technology to maintain control of these nodes and pass them instructions or workloads. These interfaces are called Command and Control structures and are just one of the topics covered in the Security B-Sides San Francisco Talks that took place yesterday and today on the West Coast.

B-Sides (think mix-tape) is a community driven unconference built for and by information security community members. The goal is to expand the spectrum of conversation beyond the traditional confines of space and time. It creates opportunities for individuals to both present and participate in an intimate atmosphere that encourages collaboration. Its an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants. It is where conversations for the next-big-thing are happening. If you’re familiar with the BarCamp format, you already know what these guys are about…

They’ve been streaming all of the talks via Qik the last two days, and while they are no longer live, they have been staged online for your viewing. Hit www.securitybsides.com and follow the B-Sides San Fran link or just surf directly to www.pathsecurity.com/pathtv/ for full videos.

While San Francisco is a little far away, Austin is not. The B-Sides Austin conference is happening Saturday, March 13th, in Austin, Texas, at the Norris Conference Centers. Titled, “BSides Austin 2010: Keep Security Weird” the one day event kicks of at 10:00 AM and culminates in an evening after-party called “Hackers on a Duck”. The group has reserved the Austin Cosmic Cowboy Tour for an evening of mobile hacking and drinking. The conference is free, and the Hackers on a Duck outing has been subsidized to the point where it’s just a few bucks to get on the duck. As with most water foul, seating is limited, so make your reservations now. There should be plenty of room on dry-land for all of conference attendees, so not to worry. Hit www.securitybsides.com/BSidesAustin for a complete run-down of the stationary event.

A little closer to home is our own open conference, covering all things tech: the March Geek Gathering. This is the Spring Edition, when the stench of “love of electronics” permeates the air. The downside to all this is that it’ll probably be too chilly to hang out on the outside patio, meaning that you may have to go home and explain why you smell like electronic love to a loved one.

Those who are unattached can come out in search of someone with which to bump, dock, or possibly practice what’s on the front of one of phliKtid’s home-crafted tee-shirts. Though I’d like to be the moral compass on this and say that you probably shouldn’t do that with someone you’re not twitterpated with. That’s a Bambi reference, by the way, not a nod to the fail whale.

Things get going this Friday night at seven PM at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston. If you don’t see any geeks gathered inside, just follow the twinge of tech in the air out the door and to the right where you’ll find the Geek Gathering overflow room. I’m not sure if this was an upsell, or if JR’s just hiding us from the rest of his clientele, but it’s definitely been a lot of fun the last few months. There’s plenty of table space, so feel free to bring whatever interests you. We’ve had things from very high tech non-functioning robot rovers to very low tech yet
extremely functional toboggan caps built on site, so feel free to push the envelope in either direction or just aim for somewhere in between.

The Coffee Groundz offers free WiFi, and non-free food, beer, spirits and wine. Surf to www.coffeegroundz.net or just hit up our own website at www.geekradio.com for details and directions to Friday’s event.

That’s it for your Intro to InfoSec and that’s that for BarretTime.

Allright.

We’ve got one lone event on the radar this weekend… This Saturday, February 20th, Bob, “Dr. Mac” Levitus, will be giving his State of the Mac Address to the attendees of the February Houston Area Apple Users Group. Special Interest Group meetings kick off at nine am, Dr. Mac’s address happens around eleven, and things are wrapped by two. Hit www.haaug.org to get SIG details and driving directions to the Bellaire Civic Center, located at 7008 South Rice Avenue in Bellaire, Texas.

I’m curious if Dr. Mac actually gives his talks wearing blue scrubs over what I can only assume is a black Genius t-shirt and a stetho-mouse: half-mouse, half-stethoscope. I assume that he uses the device to deduce whether you are, at heart, a Mac or a PC. If the pic on haaug.org *was* PhotoShopped, I don’t want to know. I’d prefer to live in a world where the stetho-mouse exists, even if that world is completely out of touch with reality. Like the one Google just moved to.

In all fairness, I think that everyone enjoys the occasional break from reality. It’s why people still watch Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It’s probably why Lucas made episodes one through three. It’s also probably why a lot of you partake in the immersive and often complex worlds created by Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Things like World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, EVE Online and arguably Second Life. The problem with a few of these pass times is that the in-game rewards are often based on time spent playing the game. This usually takes the form of hunting around for money or doing various repetitive things to gain those precious experience points. Of course, real life money can always be converted into virtual riches, even if you have to go through some fairly shady sources to do so.

Tonight’s big announcement is that Technology Bytes has its own MMO-RPG that lets you compete with other players to earn real-world
rewards. The game is so completely immersive that, for many, it is indistinguishable from the real world. To play, you simply surf
to www.geekradio.com. That’s it.

While you may not realize it, you are now playing Technology Bytes Farm Town. To start the game, you simply go around the house looking for loose copper and silver coins. That’s right, your first job is a copper farmer. As a level one noob, you’ll want to start by farming your immediate area. Your own pockets, under the cushion your sitting on, and so forth. Once you have a feel for the game play, you can widen your search to other rooms and immediately outside your home. Be careful when farming in the street, though, as Tech Bytes Farm Town doesn’t let you respawn. Once you’re out, you’re out. Which is probably why we should get a Tech Bytes Farm Town Last Will and Testament up on the site. (I’ll get with the developers…)

When you’re ready to begin questing, you may search friend’s houses, the coin return slots of pay phones (if you can still find them) and vending machines located in public areas. When you’ve amassed a total of $40.00 in change, head back to where you launched the game, and click on the Donate button on the left of the game UI. Once you have submitted your Tech Bytes Farm Town Copper, you will be rewarded with the title of “Member” in the Guild of Listener Supported Radio.

Now, I’m not a fan of running in-game cheats or hacks, but there is a way you can control more than one virtual player or avatar at a time. In games like World of Warcraft, this is known as multi-boxing. To do so in Tech Bytes Farm Town, simply open a new browser window, get it side-by-side with the existing geekradio.com window, and surf to www.technologybytes.com. Now you’re multi-boxing; now you’re elite.

Of course, you can always just skip all the farming & questing and just donate real life money without the need to go through any shady sources to do so. And if you choose to pledge during a guild meeting night, like right now, you can submit your gold through our in-game voice chat system. It’s a little like Ventrillo and it’s called the telephone. Just pick it up and dial 713.526.4000 to get online with one of our game operators now.

Well, that over half of that for our own pledge farming quest, and that’s it for BarretTime.

Allright. I’m back in full swing, with all the appropriate keyboard mappings in place. Last week’s blunder was actually a brilliant segue into what has become known as the Collins Incident in several college communications classes.

When Waco’s K X X V’s regular TV sportscaster became ill, college freshman Brian Collins agreed to step in. All you have to do is read the lines, right? Not too tough… Unless you happen to have been working with an inexperienced teleprompter operator who accidentally fast-forwarded through each of the scripts, leaving Collins with only a few occasional words to use. The video can be found on YouTube, and is fairly painful to watch. When you *do* get to that magical meme, Boom Goes the Dynamite, you will have suffered sufficiently to knowingly command the phrase yourself. Don’t cheat. Feel the pain. It’s the kind of awkward pain that probably made The Office such a hit…

Now that the president has delivered a teleprompter-error-free State of the Union Address and Jobs, who also achieved elocutionary excellence, has dropped the iPad on the nation, it’s time for our own local State of the Mac address to be given by Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus at the general meeting of the Houston Area Apple Users Group next Saturday, February 20th. That gives you a full week & a half to make peace with whatever feelings you may have about the Apple iPad before Dr. Mac puts his finger in the wound once again.

I’m not letting my own personal feelings show, am I?

A number of Special Interest Group meetings take place between nine and two, with the main presentation kicking off at eleven. 7008 South Rice Avenue at the Bellaire Civic Center is where you want to be to hear what Dr. Mac has to say about everything Apple. Hit www.haaug.org for details and directions to February’s general meeting and to catch up on the group’s activities.

And if you find yourself on the PC side of the fence… Amend that. If you find yourself on the *North Side* of the PC fence, then you may want to check out the 1960 PC Users Group. That’s Farm to Market 1960, not a group of people still stuck on the Intel 4004 processor. They’re a support group of volunteers from the Spring, Tomball and Northwest Houston areas of Texas with an interest in personal computers and their usage.

And as luck would have it, their Investors Special Interest Group is meeting tomorrow night, Thursday February 11th, from seven to nine PM. This month’s special topics include Preferred Dividend Stocks and Exchange Traded Funds. There will be an open discussion during the meeting, at which point you could pose questions about modifying your investment strategy to siphon off a few dollars every month for KPFT.

I’m guessing that they would probably tell you that you’d be hard pressed to find a return similar to the one you would realize by investing in KPFT at any one of our various membership levels. Now, I haven’t looked at a prospectus in ages, but I’m pretty sure none of the Fortune 500s are offering coffee cups and t-shirts along with welcome letters. You’ll also get better voting rights with KPFT. One share out of 906 million won’t sway any elections at Apple, but a single membership in KPFT has the same voting weight as our very own Jay Lee’s membership.

Once you’ve devised your new investment strategy, you may wish to display it graphically. A personal investment pie chart, with a big slice for KPFT may be the way to go, but you’ll want to spruce it up a bit with some text overlays. If that’s the case, then next Thursday’s Graphics SIG may be for you. In addition to following up on some questions as to ‘how best to overlay text onto a photo’, the group will be discussing some non-photographic uses of graphics editors, as well as taking a quick look at the photo organizing program, Picassa.

Both of these meetings take place at the Cypress Creek Christian Community Center, located at 6823 Cypresswood Drive in Spring, Texas. The group’s website is www.1960pcug.org, where you can find a full calendar of the group’s monthly SIG meetings.

And finally, if you’re not on either side of the PC vs Mac fence, but are instead frustrated by the lack of a third option, then the Houston Linux Users Group, aka the HAL-PC Linux SIG, is where you will find like-minded individuals and a quality presentation over something Linuxy. The group meets this Saturday from two to four in the afternoon at the HAL-PC Headquarters, located ever so close to MicroCenter at 610 and San Felipe. Hit www.hal-pc.org then surf to their SIG Calendar for further details and directions.

That’s it for forcasting your financial future and that’s that for BarretTime.

Before the Internet, sayings and memes had to travel by word of mouth, so it’s not surprising that many of the sayings with staying power are still around because they protected their main transmission vector, namely, your mouth.

No one’s familiar with the prehistoric saying, “This is how you taunt a t-rex” because the people who picked up and practiced that catch-phrase didn’t get the chance to use it frequently enough for it to catch on in popular culture before being torn apart by a T-Rex in a tiff.

But when I mention something like the “5 Second Rule”, everyone knows what I’m talking about because that’s advice that has kept its sayers relatively safe for hundreds if not thousands of years. While not every culture expresses this concept in the same manner, they all seem to have a general equivalent. For example, the Russian translation goes “Promptly picked up is not considered fallen.” We now know that five seconds is more than enough time for bacteria to get a foot hold in our freshly fallen food, but at its inception, the other competing phrase was, “Just flick off the flies.”

“Don’t take candy from strangers” has much more notoriety than “Strangers have the best candy ever” for similar reasons.

Another saying that’s been around for ages is, “Don’t touch that, you don’t know where it’s been.” Mothers seem to drop that one a lot. As geeks, we have a natural predilection for anything electronic, regardless of its bacterial history or proximity to raptors. An iPod found in the gutter is still an iPod… Just like an iPod given to me by a stranger in a windowless van is still an iPod. I may be using it to listen to podcasts from therapists for the first few months I have it, but it’s still an iPod. (Ironically, it was the iPod Touch…)

I think the point here is that if someone is tempting you with something like comic books or graphic novels, you need to stay out of the van.

If you are looking for comics or graphic novels, or if you have some that you’d like to put back into the world without the aid of a windowless van, the web site www.wheresthatbeen.com has been launched to help you safely get your hands on new reading material without someone getting their hands on you.

Thanks to the efforts of our own LoopyLow in IRC, you can now accept comics from strangers *and* have a detailed retort prepared for your mother the next time she drops the phrase “You don’t know where that’s been” or otherwise accuses you of accepting goodies from strangers. You can get started this Friday by possibly accepting some goods from the good strangers of the February Geek Gathering, where the launch party will take place. Just like the IRC channel is the show within the show, this will be the party within the party.

wheresthatbeen.com is up now, and if you’re into comics or graphic novels, you’re invited to participate. Actually, I think that the site could be used for all sorts of things from sci-fi books to open source hardware. Really, whatever physical thing that you’d like to put out into the world to share with others could get a new lease on life via this site.

So, the Party that encompasses the Where’s That Been Launch Party, the Arduino Party, the Photography Party, and even last month’s knitting party, is indeed happening this Friday, February fifth, at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston. 2503 Bagby at McGowan is where you want to be.

Things get started around seven, or shortly thereafter, depending on how people do on McGowan. The WiFi and general geekery are free, but the coffee, food, spirits and beer will cost you. No promises as to whether the knitters will show up again, but we will have the usual array of open hardware to play with. Well, half the amount. KD5 has headed to Florida to see the Shuttle launch, so the Arduino army will be at half strength until the March Gathering.

Well, That’s it for Where’s That Been (and where we will be) and that’s that for BarretTime!

Allright. A Happy New Year to all! The Holidays are now behind us and I hope we all got a little of the tech we had been waiting for.

We’re also back into the normal line-up of User Group Meetings, starting with this Saturday’s general meeting of the Linux SIG at Hal-PC. Things get started at two in the afternoon and wrap up by four. The HAL-PC Headquarters is located at 4543 Post Oak Place Drive less than a mile East of of San Felipe and 610. Presentations are targeted at both newbies and gray beards alike, so if you’ve been looking to sharpen you Linux chops, this is the meeting for you. www.hal-pc.org for details and directions.

Now, just because the holidays are over doesn’t mean that my own personal wants and desires are still on Winter break. Case in point: Google’s Nexus One. I wants it. Actually, the line between want and need is a little blurred. What is for certain is this: Google is the only retailer for the Nexus One and T-Mobile is the currently the only wireless carrier for the Nexus One.

So where does this put me? I’m an existing T-Mobile customer. Score. And I’m close enough to the end of my current contract to qualify for the $300 discount on the phone. Another score. To get the phone, you just have to surf to google.com/phone and enter your current T-Mobile phone number along with the last four digits of your Social Security Number. Score for many, but a fail for those of us with business accounts with T-Mobile. Those accounts are tied to your company’s Tax ID number, not your personal Social Security Number. And while you *can* purchase a new line of service to order the phone, it can only be a personal account, once again locking out users who would rather not foot their own cell bill.

Some advice to Google: If you want to make some inroads into the business market for mobile devices, you’re going to have to sell at least a couple of phones to business users. I dunno… I may be way off base on that one…

Sorry for the rant. I don’t deal with obsolescence well.

There is a positive side to all of this… I spent a lot of time being transferred around T-Mobile. One of the numbers that everyone was very quick to hand out was not to the Google slash Nexus One support number, but to a home leasing agency. I checked again a few hours ago, and the line had been changed to an Out of Service Message. I was also transferred to the new Nexus One handset support department a couple of times. They were very excited to finally have a call, but they could really only help me if I already had the set in hand. I was also transferred out to some rather odd departments that didn’t really have a tie-in to the Nexus One at all. Something akin to Groovehouse screening a caller who has a problem with their graphics card while playing a racing game, then transferring the Caller to Car Talk. Now for the positive part: I had ample time while on hold to think about how our own Technology Bytes call center matches up to that of a multi-national giant’s call center, say, T-Mobile, for instance.

Lets take a look at some basic call center stats to see how we measure up.

ASA or Average Speed to Answer

T-Mobile: 2 rings
Us: A lot

OK, T-Mobile comes out ahead.

Misdirected calls (Calls transferred to the wrong department)

Groovehouse: How many people have you transferred to Car Talk tonight? … None?
T-Mobile: Fail based on personal experience.

Point: Technology Bytes.

Average Hold Time Until Final Agent (How long you’re on hold until you get to talk to the right person…)

T-Mobile: Arguably, I never got to talk to the right person, if the right person was the one who could get me a phone.
Technology Bytes: What’s our longest hold time right now?

OK – Point us.

Professionalism and Courtesy

T-Mobile: Very professional and courteous. They thanked me at every jucture and never gave me the impression that they
had lost patience with me.

Technology Bytes: I know that Groove is gentle with our callers. Peter and phliKtid are OK. Dwight: yep. Me: I’m good, and…

So a begrudging point to T-Mobile.

Problem Resolution

T-Mobile: Zero.

Technology Bytes: Even if it’s not the answer you want to hear, we do generally troubleshoot things as far as we can in one sitting.

Point us.

So, the final tally: 3 to 2, Technology Bytes.

Congratulations, guys… We’ve defeated Goliath with nothing more than a fierce dedication to this show and some fairly shady math.

You can come out and congratulate us in person at the January Geek Gathering, happening this Friday, December 8th, at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston at 2503 Bagby. If you’ve never been before, that address can be slightly deceptive. The corner of Brazos and McGowan is the place you want to be. Street Parking is ample, just don’t do it on McGowan. The January Geek Gathering is notable for all the new gear and gadgetry that is brought in to ooh and ah over. This is the one time you don’t have to make up an excuse as to why you brought something incredibly geeky to a public place. Comic books, blinking lights, laptops and robots will all have a home this Friday night. Hit the Geek Radio site for details and directions.

If you had wanted any Arduino or other physical computing gear during the holidays but didn’t get it, tomorrow morning is your chance to rectify all of that. In the spirit of Chris Anderson’s Book, “Free”, Sparkfun.com will be giving away one hundred dollars in gear to the first one thousand households to place an order in an attempt to bring the world of physical computing to those who can’t quite afford it on their own. Sparkfun has been giving away its schematics and designs for quite some time in line with the Open Hardware movement, but this is the first time something tangible other than a CD has been given away in the spirit of Openness.

The Aptly name “Free Day” takes place tomorrow at nine AM mountain time. Surf to www.sparkfun.com to get in on the goodness. One caveat: this is intended for those who would like to get into physical computing but may not have the means. So please don’t exploit it or try to cheat the system. Remember that cheating, among other things, kills kittens.

That’s it for the rant with a silver lining and that’s that for BarretTime.

This Sunday afternoon, come out to Caroline Collective for the “Can-Do Technology Bash”, a celebration of do-it-yourself and hands-on technology. Demonstrations will include a build-your-own water pump, robots, LED projects, a solar cooker, and the Makerbot 3D printer. Or bring along your own project to share with the community. It is a free event, but will be a benefit for a water and power project at a hospital in Kenya. Things go from three to seven this Sunday December 13th at the Caroline Collective, located at 4820 Caroline. More information can be found at www.technology4charity.com. That’s technology, then the number four, then charity.com.

And while the Mac folks have been too busy making tough decisions as to which Apple product will receive their hard earned dollars, the Linux folks are plowing ahead with their monthly meetings as if all their stuff was free. No planning what-so-ever. They just install whatever they want on any old hardware. Seriously, Christmas isn’t about sharing, it’s about buying.

Anyway, if you’re into that whole Free Software thing, the Linux Special Interest Group at HAL-PC is holding thier first monthly meeting this Saturday, December 12th, at two in the afternoon. The HAL-PC headquarters is the place to be, tucked conveniently close to both caffeine and a major computer retailer just off 610 West and San Felipe. The presentation generally runs two hours, and contains an abundance of practical knowledge for both graybeards and noobs alike.

Hit www.hal-pc.org for directions to their headquarters and www.houstonlinux.org to keep tabs on what the Houston Linux folk are up to.

And backing it up an hour, at 1:00 that afternoon, the monthly meeting of the iPods, Smart Phones & Mobile Gadgets SIG takes place. This newly renamed special interest group examines portable media players, mobile phones, GPS receivers, laptops…pretty much whatever digitalia they can affix to their person. Not sure if they’re familiar with that term, though, so be careful… Common issues include setup, connectivity, rate plans, accessories, troubleshooting, importing and exporting data, how to find help, tips and tricks and even how to get vendor discounts. Again, that’s One o’clock this Saturday afternoon at the HAL-PC Headquarters.

You know, this show is cool because a lot of the issues we deal with are applicable not only to the caller, but to a lot of our listening audience as well. In fact, most of BarretTime is geared towards a fairly wide array of people, otherwise I’d spend two or three minutes each week delving into design patterns, server security, and hardware hacking. So most of my stuff isn’t geared toward any one person in specific.

But I feel like that last event is really geared toward one caller in particlar. Again, that’s this Saturday at one o’clock in the afternoon at the HAL-PC Headquarters. These are your people; they can help you.

And backing it up a full day, this Friday is the December “Make-up” Geek Gathering. That doesn’t mean you should go heavy on the rouge, it just means you now have a second chance to geek it up with your peers before the post-holiday tech support calls start rolling in from various family members, immediate and extended, sure that you will be able to help them through whatever troubles they’re having. These calls tend to come in during meals, at critical points in online multi-player games, and right after you’ve gotten all hot and sweaty trying to squeeze into your new Sailor Moon outfit after having a big Christmas dinner. (Dwight knows what I’m talking about…)

The Coffee Groundz offers a light menu, a full bar, and a wide selection of coffee, tea, beer and wine. Free WiFi will warm the air, and electrical outlets abound. And building on our two month tradition, we’ll pack in a bunch of open source hardware to play with. We’re planning to set up a station where people can design their own animated LED snowflakes, then export their design to a stand-alone RGB matrix for the rest of the crowd to check out. And if I can find two Super NES controllers, we’ll be able to put an 8-bit homebrew gaming console up on one of the televisions at the coffee groundz. The console, called the Uzebox, is built on the ATmega644 chip and is capable of running just about everything you would find in an arcade circa 1980, in addition to a ton of community created content.

So that’s 7:00 this Friday at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston. 2503 Bagby @ McGowan. We were snowed out last week, but the weather for this Friday evening looks like it will be in the lower 50s with a 60% chance of showers. An overnight low of 46, with morning clouds on Saturday, followed by afternoon sun. Highs in the mid 60s and lows in the mid 50s.

That’s it for this RTFWM Weather Update and that’s that for BarretTime. Jay, back to you!

All right – the weather outside is getting colder, and the holiday season is now fully upon us. Decorations and gift giving definitely seem to highlight this time of the year, but that wasn’t always the case. Gift Giving in the modern sense didn’t really get underway until the 1820s. The first advertisements for Christmas gifts hit the US in 1804, and it wasn’t until the 1840s that it had become an integral part of the American Christmas tradition.

And just like our grandparents and their parents before them walked to school in the snow, uphill, both ways, each generation seems to state that gift giving was never that important when they were a kid. Harriet Beacher Stowe wrote in 1850 that, “the very idea of a present was new!” and that “there are worlds of money wasted at this time of year.” Stowe was a member of the last generation to be able to legitimately make that claim. If you’ve heard similar words escape the lips of anyone under 150 years old, they probably didn’t notice all the commercialism as a kid because they distracted by all the presents they were getting.

However, calling grandpa out on Christmas Eve is not what this BarretTime is about. If you want to go that route, you go it alone. I need to check out Snopes for the real deal, but I suspect that Grandma getting run over by that reindeer was directly related to her always correcting grandpa’s snowy, giftless, Christmas recollections on Christmas Eve. But unlike stories past, Grandma won’t be around to refute the reindeer story and it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever be able to produce Santa in court.

So rather than implicating grandpa, I’d like to ask the Technology Bytes crew if they remember the first electronic toy, gadget or game that they received for Christmas. We should probably be pretty loose with what constitutes electronic, as some of us in the room may have received gifts before the birth of the integrated circuit. That’s 1956, for those keeping track.

We could probably open that up to our callers the last half of the show as well…

And speaking of free things, If you’ve heard the comparisons between free as in speech and free as in beer when it comes to Open Source wares, you’re probably aware that speech usually trumps beer. Sadly, there isn’t a lot of free beer going around these days, but that could change tomorrow night, depending on how quickly a firkin of Fireman’s Number Four is drained tomorrow evening at the Petrol Station in Garden Oaks.

The Petrol Station is the new Kaveh Kanes of early Geek Gathering fame and a firkin is an old English unit of volume, equal to nine imperial gallons or seventy two pints. If the crowd at the Petrol Station can drain a firkin of Fireman’s in under seven minutes, Real Ale will open up a free as in beer firkin of Coffee House Porter. You’ll want to arrive a little before 8:00, because by 8:07, it could all be over. The Petrol Station is at 985 Wakefield near Golf just north of the 610 loop.

Another Free as in Beer activity is the Geek Gathering this Friday night at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston. Bundle up or plan on spending some time indoors, as things will be chilly regardless of any frozen precipitation. Things get started at seven o’clock at 2503 Bagby at McGowan. And be sure not to park along the street on McGowan, or you may be starting to run after a tow truck by eight.

WiFi, Geeky Comaraderie and side hugs are all free. The beer, spirits and food will cost you.

Hit www.geekradio.com for details and directions.

And one last free as in beer related item, though I’m going to make you come out to the Geek Gathering to collect. Open Source Hardware, like the Arduino platform, is free as in schematics, but often falls under the same category as beer. Not this season. A US based Open Source Hardware vendor is giving away $100 of the gear of your choice to all practicing or aspiring tinkers and hardware hackers. The catch is that it is one day only, they’re capping it at $100,000 in total giveaways, and you’ve got to pay your own shipping. This is a really awesome deal from some good people aimed at the hardware hacking community. Ask me about it at the Geek Gathering and I’ll give you the company name, the date and the link.

Knowing that not everyone can make it out to the Geek Gathering, I’ll give a hint to help track down the company. They were recently mentioned in a Canadian newspaper when one of their bluetooth to serial devices was discovered in a mobile credit card processing machine at a restaurant. The photo, intentionally or otherwise, prominently displays their company logo on the nefarious device. Rather than shy away from the news release or burying it, they’re embracing it. After all, serial to bluetooth converters don’t debit card numbers and PINs, people do.

That’s that for your holiday Free One One and that’s that for BarretTime.

We’ve spent the last three weeks asking you to give a gift of support to KPFT. You can consider that a warm-up for the next few weeks of pleads for your hard earned money. Only they won’t be coming from Jay or Peter, but rather the thousands of advertisers all clamoring for your holiday dollar.

There was a time in America when hand made gifts were the norm. There wasn’t any ‘store bought’ anything. At least that’s how the graybeards in the server room tell it. I tend to agree. Gift giving has gotten too easy. With things like Amazon and eBay, you don’t have to go any farther than your front stoop to send someone something material. And if you have it delivered directly to the intended recipient, you don’t even have to do that. Maybe we as geeks should go back to making our own gifts…

If a macaroni portrait of Steve Jobs or a hand sewn black turtleneck with three sleeves doesn’t embody the message you’re trying to convey, not to worry: we’re here to plant a few gift ideas in your holiday head.

A spin on the classic coupon for hugs, kisses, or housework, you could put together a few Tech Support coupons good for short sessions of help. You definitely want to limit the scope of the coupons. Each coupon could be good for one tech support instance or for one increment of time, say 30 minutes. Seriously, if you’re already doing a ton of tech support for a family member, this is a good way of assigning a little value to it or even making them think twice before they call you. It is especially appropriate gift for anyone who tends to call you throughout the year looking for free tech support, anyway.

“Ok, aunt Edna… It’s Jauary 12th and you’ve already used up half of your coupons… Better slow down…” Of course you’d be joking. Kinda.

O’Reilly’s Maker’s Shed carries both LED menorahs and Christmas trees, both just a couple of solder joints away. Chumby guts and toys from Japan also grace their website. Surf to www.makershed.com to check out the goodies before they’re gone. That’s the downside – as most of their fare comes from individual makers, the cooler items can often run out before December 25th.

The world of Open Source Hardware has opened up all kinds of doors as far as gifts go. Sites like Adafruit Industries at www.adafruit.com carry both kits comprised of all the electronic components you need to build a game, an electricity usage monitoring system, or the infamous TV B-Gone. Think of Adafruit Industries as a clearing house for Open Source projects. Just like RedHat or SuSE may package a Linux Distribution for you, Adafruit packages all of the necessary parts. If you don’t want to go through Adafruit, you can always hit the site for schematics and the parts list necessary to source your own.

Many of the Open Source Hardware kits require some soldering, but even that can be remedied with the gift of soldering skills via the “learn to solder bundle” from the Maker Shed. The ability to control molten metal and the flow of electrons around a circuit board is definitely a gift that can keep on giving.

Another gift option is a vanity URL. Sites like gandi.net let you take actual ownership of a domain, or let you assign that ownership to someone else. This is more a gift for a technically natured friend or family member, otherwise you may want to consider bundling this gift with a limited supply of tech support coupons.

If you have an electronic music lover in your life, Curious Inventor.com carries a line of audio gear titled The Voice of Saturn. Open Hardware components like a sequencer, a modulator, and synthesizer will enable them to create chop up all the music or noise they want. This may not be the best gift for roommates or anyone who lives within a few hundred yards of you.

And if you don’t want to give an entire gift, you can always give someone something to accompany what they already have. There are all kinds of creative hacks out there, from TiVos to phones to Roombas. These gifts are best for people who could actually install and use them, so be careful to avoid any Gift of the Magi situations with like-minded geeky friends.

That would be like phliKtid saying “I eBay’d my Wireless Access Point to buy you this serial cable for you to hax your Roomba.”

Then Groovehouse saying “Oh No! I eBay’d my Roomba to buy you this serial connector so you could hax your Wireless Access Point.”

If you’re not familiar with Gift of the Magi, I believe it’s a remake of the Sesame Street Christmas Special with Ernie and Bert.

That’s that for your geeky gift guide and that’s it for BarretTime.

Allright!

We’ve been in Daylight Saving Time all summer, so now it’s time to autumn back. Isn’t that the saying? Spring Forward, Autumn back? Huh. Either way, Daylight Saving Time, an annoyance to many in the world of IT, is nearly at an end.

Aside from the fact that it attempts to address a problem that no longer exists, my main issue with Daylight Saving Time is this: Spring Forward and Fall Back aren’t really relevant in a Southern state with two seasons: summer and not summer. We need a nemonic that’s much more applicable to our own seasonal situation. Maybe “Early Summer Forward, Late Summer Back?” That could probably use some more work… I’ll try to have something before it’s time to Early Summer forward again in twenty ten.

If any of our listeners mysteriously gained an hour last weekend, no matter how short lived, chances are you were checking out a digital clock that was produced prior to 2005, which is when the new dates for the United States Daylight Saving Time were announced. So who’s actually in control of Daylight Saving Time, or DST, as it is commonly known?

Well, in 1883, the U.S. railroads were the first to adopt time zones, so that national railroad schedules could be published. Until that point, most localities had been setting their own time. It took nearly 35 years for a Federal Law to be passed mandating that DST be observed nationwide. Apparently, we don’t like the government’s hands in our pockets, regardless of whether they’re after our watch or our wallet, because it only took only a single year for that piece of legislation to be repealed, thus leaving the observance of DST to the discretion of the local politicians.

DST Ownership was given to the only federal regulatory agency in existence at that time, the Interstate Commerce Commission. For the next 50 yeasrs, World War II was the only period in which the nation could pull it together on a unified start and end date for Daylight Saving Time.

In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized the start and end dates of DST, but left it up to the individual states as to whether or not to observe DST at all.

In 1972, things got even murkier with an amendment that allowed states with two time zones to make separate selections in each. Thus, Indiana has can have up to four different times on the populace’s wrists at any given moment.

Things stayed pretty much the same until 2005, when congress decided to muck with the start and end dates of DST again, this time in the name of saving energy. Those changes took effect in 2007, making life difficult for millions of date and time keeping devices manufactured prior to 2005. Since no one had changed the standard in fifty some odd years, manufacturers felt safe in hard coding the dates into the devices across the nation.

Problems with the new DST dates also cropped up in many operating systems. But, unlike embedded devices, those were easily repaired with software patches that happened automagically for most users. I’d be curious to see if anyone has studied the cost in IT time and labor and mapped it agaist the supposed energy savings that this was designed to bring about.

In any case, it boils down to this: You’ve got an entire extra hour this weekend in which to geek out.

Of course, if you’re streaming from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, or the Virgin Islands, none of this is applicable to you.

The official time to change your time is 2:00 AM this Sunday Morning. Hit www.time.gov to synch up with the atomic clock and to get more information about why we do the things we do, temporally speaking.

We’re just a couple days away from the kickoff of Oni-Con, Houston’s anime festival slash convention, taking place on the West side of Houston at the Houston Marriott Westchase on Briar Park Drive.

One of the cooler and somewhat more accessible parts of any competent con, is the cosplay contest. This is where con goers dress up as their favorite anime character, then get anything from a single pose to a short skit to show off their hard work. Oni-con’s upping their cosplay game by holding the Hallows Eve Cosplay contest, taking place the night of the 31st.

In addition to this, a slew of special guests, vendors, games, and goodies will all populate the hotel through the 1st. Hit www.oni-con.com for details, directions and registration info.

That’s it for this break from pleading for pledges, and that’s that for BarretTime.

Allright. Something to go check out AFTER we’re off the air:

The Independent Film Channel is midway through it’s Monty Python-athon. In what is probably a nod to the troop’s birthday, the channel is running several hours of Python fare each night, including episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, interviews, and most (if not all) of their movies. Python fans already possessing their own personal Python library may not need to run to the DVR right now, but this is a great chance for the noobs to indoctrinate themselves in Python fare.

And getting back to our birthday tradition, this week marks the 125th anniversary of the International Meridian Conference which decided that the Prime Meridian would run through the United Kingdom and that Greenwich would sit at a Longitude of zero degrees, zero minutes and zero seconds. At the time, over 70% of the world’s shipping charts keyed off Greenwich as the initial meridian, so it was a natural fit. This was also the conference that shot down Sir Stanford Flemming’s idea of having a single world time. Contrary to popular belief, while the idea of cutting up the world into timezones was introduced, it wasn’t actually voted on at this conference. We fall back an hour on November first, so take my advice and mark your calendars now.

Now, I don’t know if anyone took my advice last week on attending the Linux Workshop that wrapped up an hour or so ago, but if you didn’t: not to fear. The workshop happens every Wednesday evening from six to eight at the Houston Area League of PC Users Headquarters, aka HAL-PC HQ. It’s situated oh-so-conveniently close to Microcenter, for those of you who navigate by way of circuit board dispensaries. You’re welcome to bring both questions and hardware to the workshop, but if you are bringing your desktop box rather than a laptop, be sure to bring all the necessary cords and a keyboard and mouse, as generally just the monitors are supplied in the lab. So that’s everything except the monitor.

If you want some more info on the workshop, surf to www.hal-pc.org and check out the SIG Calendar.

Crypticon happened last weekend, and with both Oni-Con and Halloween right around the corner, costumes may be on your mind. If you have enough time, cardboard and paint, you can create some pretty impressive anime fare. This is an especially good choice because of the double-duty the costume can put in at both Oni-Con and at other activities (door to door or otherwise) you may attend over the Halloween weekend.

With enough *luminescent* paint and a willingness to slather it all over your body, you could be Marie Curie. Or is that too soon to be funny?

OK, with enough *blue* paint and a willingness to slather it all over your body, you could be the Blue Screen of Death.

And don’t gloss over found costumes; you’d be surprised what kind of geekery you can pull off with an old pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. For instance, if you’ve got an old pair of 501’s, a black mock-turtleneck and an iPhone, Fake Steve Jobs is a costume possibility for you.

If you have the ability to talk in a very monotone voice about very mundane things, then the scientist Neils Bohr should be at the top of your list. It’s kind of a stretch, but we’re on a budget here. Luckily, having to repeatedly explain your costume will give you plenty of opportunity to get Bohring part down cold.

If you can meet the aforementioned requirements for Neils and you happen to be exceptionally hairy to boot, then maybe this is the year you break with tradition, leave the Hobbit costume in storage, and don the monotone to become Neil’s brother, Harald Bohr. For all of our science school dropouts, that would make you a Harry Bohr.

Access to a wheel chair and a speech synthesizer? Stephen Hawking.

A blue dress shirt, khaki slacks and a small spray bottle to keep the sweat stains fresh? Steve Ballmer.

Something with which to cover your face and a command of all things BSD? Our own phliKtid.

A laser, a head band and a shark fin? You get the idea.

You’ve got nine or ten days to get something together before the Oni-Con anime convention that kicks off Friday, October 30th at the Houston Marriot Westchase. The con will bring in voice actors, animators and script writers from anime such as Desert Punk, Samurai 7, Speed Grapher, Burst Angel, Full Metal Alchemist and One Piece. I’ll give you some time to get your costume together before breaking down the highlights of the con next week.

For now, hit www.oni-con.com for details and directions and costume inspiration.

That’s it for your secret to becoming a costume contender and that’s that for BarretTime.