So what do I do?  Well, obviously not the above. With shell access to my hosting account (for Windows users, think DOS command prompt), up until a few months ago, I would get the new version as usual, only I’d upload the .zip file (or in my case, the .tar.gz “tarball”), unpack it on the server, and replace the installation in a couple of seconds; the time to upload (which would be vastly shorter because it would be a compressed, continuous file) would have no bearing on the “out of sync” problem above, because I’d unpack the files in a few seconds. This is a tried-and-true workflow that nobody could argue with in terms of simplicity and speed.

However, there is an even more elegant method that I started utilizing as soon as I found out WP supported a version control utility called Subversion. Version control is used in the software industry to track changes on various files so one can roll back to a previous version. People do this all the time with, say, a document in Word by saving multiple copies, but imagine 50 developers all making changes simultaneously to a source tree of hundreds of files. You have to be able to track changes so that you can fix what breaks while not discarding what got better.  Anyway, I don’t want to get overly technical, but I wanted to give a slightly better understanding of what Subversion is more than the simple statements in the video. Speaking of which, here it is:

Video of WP Upgrade

Cool, eh?  It’s important to know that the above was recorded in absolute real-time, no edits, and that it was really, truly my live system. Aside from the file and database backups before recording, you saw my real, unadulterated upgrade process (while I wasn’t worried having done this many times, the fact that it was done on a Sunday afternoon when traffic was low wasn’t an accident, either ). Once your svn tree is in place, tracking updates large and small really is that easy. There are no big installation files to download or upload (the `svn’ client gets the individual files it needs, but it’s a fast server-to-server transfer) and unlike dropping a new installation on top of the old one, the old, deprecated files are cleaned away. Note that this is the workflow for an existing subversion WP repository; how to convert a “standard” (ie, uploaded) WP install to a subversion-enabled one is the topic for a future post (if there’s interest).

Anyway, I this helped, or at least inspired you to look into checking with your hosting provider to enable shell access if you have it. Please, please, give me feedback on this because I have lots of ideas on similar videos on WP ginsu outside of the web dashboard, most notably using MySQL queries (the database that powers 99% of WP instances) and the like. I admit command-line management isn’t for everyone, but for those willing to start adding to their toolkit, it opens up a limitless world of possibilities.

In this case, I have video of a shell session (like a DOS command line) showing how to use Subversion to upgrade Wordpress. I actually I have another unrelated video as well, but they have two things in common: they need their audio replaced with another audio track (recorded on a better mic). Now if it was a straight 1:1 audio swap, that’s trivial. But I do need the help of a video editor w/rudimentary capabilities to stretch out the video on a frame for a few seconds extra, or whatever, to make sure the audio is synced up. Simple stuff that they all can do if the audio/video is muxed together, but not so much if discrete tracks.

iMovie ‘07 (I refused to upgrade to ‘08, which would have actually put me backwards in this too) can do all this easy, except it MUST convert the video to one of DV (720×480)/DVwide or MP4 (640×480). The captured video is not in a “standard” broadcast dimension, so converting into iMovie ruins it, especially because of the text on the screen, in this case. QTPro can do simple video editing but not replacing sound unless it’s a perfect 1:1 swap.

Anybody have experience with 3rd party video shareware/cheap editors that can do basic editing of this kind while allowing for add’l audio track but play nice with QuickTime and non-std formats too? Yeah, I didn’t think so. But I can be surprised.

I probably won’t get one, but in complete boredom I wondered what kind of games could be played with to see what domains could be listed.  Here is a Perl one-liner from a shell CLI querying the UNIX (in this case, Mac OSX) generic words flat-file database. (another common location for this file would be /usr/dict/words):

enrico@AppleCore:~$ perl -ne 'if (/^(.*)me$/) \
{ print "$1me ($1.me)\n"; }' /usr/share/dict/words


abrocome (abroco.me)
absume (absu.me)
academe (acade.me)
acetoxime (acetoxi.me)
achime (achi.me)
acme (ac.me)
acrodrome (acrodro.me)
acrosome (acroso.me)
actiniochrome (actiniochro.me)
actinodrome (actinodro.me)
actinosome (actinoso.me)
actinostome (actinosto.me)
adarme (adar.me)
adenochrome (adenochro.me)
adenomatome (adenomato.me)
adenotome (adenoto.me)
adrenochrome (adrenochro.me)
adventuresome (adventureso.me)
aerodrome (aerodro.me)
aflame (afla.me)
aforetime (aforeti.me)
afterchrome (afterchro.me)
aftercome (afterco.me)
afterfame (afterfa.me)
aftergame (afterga.me)
afterlifetime (afterlifeti.me)
aftertime (afterti.me)
agname (agna.me)
agoranome (agorano.me)
agronome (agrono.me)
airdrome (airdro.me)
airframe (airfra.me)
Akhlame (Akhla.me)
aldime (aldi.me)
aldoxime (aldoxi.me)
allosome (alloso.me)
alme (al.me)
ame (a.me)
amidoxime (amidoxi.me)
amniotome (amnioto.me)
amphichrome (amphichro.me)
amphistome (amphisto.me)
amygdalotome (amygdaloto.me)
analcime (analci.me)
anatheme (anathe.me)
ancylostome (ancylosto.me)
androseme (androse.me)
angiotome (angioto.me)
Angouleme (Angoule.me)
anhydroxime (anhydroxi.me)
anilidoxime (anilidoxi.me)
anime (ani.me)
anisaldoxime (anisaldoxi.me)
ankylotome (ankyloto.me)
antialdoxime (antialdoxi.me)
antiantienzyme (antiantienzy.me)
antibenzaldoxime (antibenzaldoxi.me)
antichrome (antichro.me)
antienzyme (antienzy.me)
antiextreme (antiextre.me)
antifame (antifa.me)
antinome (antino.me)
antiprime (antipri.me)
antrotome (antroto.me)
aplome (aplo.me)
apodeme (apode.me)
aponeurotome (aponeuroto.me)
aposteme (aposte.me)
apotome (apoto.me)
appendotome (appendoto.me)
archidome (archido.me)
archimime (archimi.me)
archistome (archisto.me)
archisupreme (archisupre.me)
archmime (archmi.me)
arrame (arra.me)
arteriotome (arterioto.me)
arthrostome (arthrosto.me)
arthrotome (arthroto.me)
ashame (asha.me)
assume (assu.me)
astrodome (astrodo.me)
autochrome (autochro.me)
autodrome (autodro.me)
autosome (autoso.me)
auxochrome (auxochro.me)
awesome (aweso.me)
azoxime (azoxi.me)
azyme (azy.me)
babblesome (babbleso.me)
backframe (backfra.me)
backgame (backga.me)
bairntime (bairnti.me)
barksome (barkso.me)
bathochrome (bathochro.me)
bathychrome (bathychro.me)
battlesome (battleso.me)
Baume (Bau.me)
becolme (becol.me)
become (beco.me)
becrime (becri.me)
bedframe (bedfra.me)
bedtime (bedti.me)
befame (befa.me)
beforetime (beforeti.me)
befume (befu.me)
begrime (begri.me)
bename (bena.me)
bendsome (bendso.me)
benzaldoxime (benzaldoxi.me)
benzantialdoxime (benzantialdoxi.me)
berhyme (berhy.me)
beshame (besha.me)
beslime (besli.me)
bewelcome (bewelco.me)
bichrome (bichro.me)
biome (bio.me)
biotome (bioto.me)
birdlime (birdli.me)
bireme (bire.me)
bitume (bitu.me)
blame (bla.me)
blaspheme (blasphe.me)
blastocheme (blastoche.me)
blithesome (blitheso.me)
blossomtime (blossomti.me)
blundersome (blunderso.me)
boresome (boreso.me)
bothersome (botherso.me)
bottomchrome (bottomchro.me)
Brachycome (Brachyco.me)
brachydodrome (brachydodro.me)
brachydome (brachydo.me)
branchireme (branchire.me)
brawlsome (brawlso.me)
breme (bre.me)
brightsome (brightso.me)
brome (bro.me)
bronchotome (bronchoto.me)
brooklime (brookli.me)
brume (bru.me)
budtime (budti.me)
bunglesome (bungleso.me)
burdensome (burdenso.me)
byname (byna.me)
bytime (byti.me)
cacozyme (cacozy.me)
Came (Ca.me)
came (ca.me)
camptodrome (camptodro.me)
campylodrome (campylodro.me)
capersome (caperso.me)
capsulotome (capsuloto.me)
caroome (caroo.me)
carpostome (carposto.me)
carthame (cartha.me)
caulome (caulo.me)
centime (centi.me)
centiplume (centiplu.me)
centrosome (centroso.me)
cephalosome (cephaloso.me)
cephalotome (cephaloto.me)
chatsome (chatso.me)
cheerfulsome (cheerfulso.me)
chillsome (chillso.me)
chilostome (chilosto.me)
chime (chi.me)
choanosome (choanoso.me)
cholochrome (cholochro.me)
chondriome (chondrio.me)
chondriosome (chondrioso.me)
chondrotome (chondroto.me)
chrome (chro.me)
chromidiosome (chromidioso.me)
chromosome (chromoso.me)
chyme (chy.me)
cionotome (cionoto.me)
cirsotome (cirsoto.me)
clame (cla.me)
clamorsome (clamorso.me)
Cleome (Cleo.me)
clime (cli.me)
clinodome (clinodo.me)
clipsome (clipso.me)
cloysome (cloyso.me)
coabsume (coabsu.me)
coassume (coassu.me)
coenenchyme (coenenchy.me)
coenflame (coenfla.me)
coenzyme (coenzy.me)
coffeetime (coffeeti.me)
collenchyme (collenchy.me)
come (co.me)
conchotome (conchoto.me)
condylome (condylo.me)
Coniogramme (Coniogram.me)
consomme (consom.me)
consume (consu.me)
corectome (corecto.me)
corniplume (corniplu.me)
costotome (costoto.me)
costume (costu.me)
countertheme (counterthe.me)
countertime (counterti.me)
covolume (covolu.me)
cradletime (cradleti.me)
craniotome (cranioto.me)
crawlsome (crawlso.me)
crime (cri.me)
crome (cro.me)
cryptostome (cryptosto.me)
ctenostome (ctenosto.me)
cuddlesome (cuddleso.me)
cumbersome (cumberso.me)
curvesome (curveso.me)
cyclostome (cyclosto.me)
cyclothyme (cyclothy.me)
cyclotome (cycloto.me)
cyme (cy.me)
cystitome (cystito.me)
cystotome (cystoto.me)
cytochrome (cytochro.me)
cytomicrosome (cytomicroso.me)
cytomitome (cytomito.me)
cytosome (cytoso.me)
cytostome (cytosto.me)
cytozyme (cytozy.me)
dacryocystotome (dacryocystoto.me)
dagame (daga.me)
dame (da.me)
damme (dam.me)
dangersome (dangerso.me)
darksome (darkso.me)
daytime (dayti.me)
decadianome (decadiano.me)
decagramme (decagram.me)
decigramme (decigram.me)
deepsome (deepso.me)
defame (defa.me)
delightsome (delightso.me)
delime (deli.me)
deme (de.me)
demidome (demido.me)
deplume (deplu.me)
dermatome (dermato.me)
dermatotome (dermatoto.me)
dermochrome (dermochro.me)
derotreme (derotre.me)
deslime (desli.me)
desmachyme (desmachy.me)
deuterodome (deuterodo.me)
diatreme (diatre.me)
dictyosome (dictyoso.me)
diffame (diffa.me)
dime (di.me)
dinnertime (dinnerti.me)
dinsome (dinso.me)
Dioctophyme (Dioctophy.me)
dioxime (dioxi.me)
diplosome (diploso.me)
diseme (dise.me)
disfame (disfa.me)
dishome (disho.me)
disinflame (disinfla.me)
disinhume (disinhu.me)
disme (dis.me)
dispireme (dispire.me)
displume (displu.me)
distome (disto.me)
dolesome (doleso.me)
dome (do.me)
doorframe (doorfra.me)
doubtsome (doubtso.me)
douzieme (douzie.me)
downcome (downco.me)
dramme (dram.me)
drearisome (dreariso.me)
drome (dro.me)
drunkensome (drunkenso.me)
ducdame (ducda.me)
dullsome (dullso.me)
dystome (dysto.me)
ecchondrotome (ecchondroto.me)
echinochrome (echinochro.me)
echinostome (echinosto.me)
ectoenzyme (ectoenzy.me)
ectosome (ectoso.me)
eerisome (eeriso.me)
eightsome (eightso.me)
elaiosome (elaioso.me)
embryotome (embryoto.me)
eme (e.me)
emplume (emplu.me)
enallachrome (enallachro.me)
enarme (enar.me)
encephalotome (encephaloto.me)
endochrome (endochro.me)
endoenzyme (endoenzy.me)
endome (endo.me)
endosome (endoso.me)
endostome (endosto.me)
enframe (enfra.me)
enneadianome (enneadiano.me)
entame (enta.me)
enterotome (enteroto.me)
enthymeme (enthyme.me)
envolume (envolu.me)
enzyme (enzy.me)
epacme (epac.me)
ependyme (ependy.me)
epirrheme (epirrhe.me)
epistome (episto.me)
epithyme (epithy.me)
epitome (epito.me)
eroteme (erote.me)
Ervipiame (Ervipia.me)
erythrozyme (erythrozy.me)
esophagotome (esophagoto.me)
euchrome (euchro.me)
euchromosome (euchromoso.me)
eventime (eventi.me)
exhume (exhu.me)
exoenzyme (exoenzy.me)
exostome (exosto.me)
extreme (extre.me)
eyesome (eyeso.me)
fairtime (fairti.me)
falltime (fallti.me)
fame (fa.me)
fatiguesome (fatigueso.me)
fearsome (fearso.me)
Feme (Fe.me)
feme (fe.me)
ferme (fer.me)
ferrochrome (ferrochro.me)
fewsome (fewso.me)
fiddlecome (fiddleco.me)
figuresome (figureso.me)
filoplume (filoplu.me)
fistulatome (fistulato.me)
fivesome (fiveso.me)
flame (fla.me)
flavorsome (flavorso.me)
fleysome (fleyso.me)
floodtime (floodti.me)
flume (flu.me)
fluttersome (flutterso.me)
fondlesome (fondleso.me)
forecome (foreco.me)
foregame (forega.me)
forename (forena.me)
foretime (foreti.me)
formaldoxime (formaldoxi.me)
formamidoxime (formamidoxi.me)
forme (for.me)
formoxime (formoxi.me)
forritsome (forritso.me)
forthcome (forthco.me)
foulsome (foulso.me)
foursome (fourso.me)
frame (fra.me)
fretsome (fretso.me)
frolicsome (frolicso.me)
frothsome (frothso.me)
fruittime (fruitti.me)
fulsome (fulso.me)
fume (fu.me)
furthersome (furtherso.me)
gaincome (gainco.me)
gainsome (gainso.me)
gamblesome (gambleso.me)
game (ga.me)
gamesome (gameso.me)
gastronome (gastrono.me)
gastrotome (gastroto.me)
gaysome (gayso.me)
gendarme (gendar.me)
genome (geno.me)
gigglesome (giggleso.me)
gisarme (gisar.me)
gladsome (gladso.me)
gleesome (gleeso.me)
glime (gli.me)
glittersome (glitterso.me)
glome (glo.me)
glume (glu.me)
glyoxime (glyoxi.me)
gnathostome (gnathosto.me)
gnome (gno.me)
gonesome (goneso.me)
gonocheme (gonoche.me)
gonosome (gonoso.me)
gonotome (gonoto.me)
goodsome (goodso.me)
grame (gra.me)
gramme (gram.me)
grandame (granda.me)
greedsome (greedso.me)
greffotome (greffoto.me)
grime (gri.me)
grimme (grim.me)
growsome (growso.me)
gruesome (grueso.me)
grumblesome (grumbleso.me)
grume (gru.me)
gudame (guda.me)
gyrochrome (gyrochro.me)
hadrome (hadro.me)
halesome (haleso.me)
hame (ha.me)
handersome (handerso.me)
handsome (handso.me)
harmotome (harmoto.me)
harvesttime (harvestti.me)
haytime (hayti.me)
headframe (headfra.me)
healsome (healso.me)
healthsome (healthso.me)
heartsome (heartso.me)
heaume (heau.me)
heavisome (heaviso.me)
hecatontome (hecatonto.me)
heliochrome (heliochro.me)
helpsome (helpso.me)
hemachrome (hemachro.me)
hematochrome (hematochro.me)
heme (he.me)
hemidome (hemido.me)
hemochrome (hemochro.me)
heretoforetime (heretoforeti.me)
herniotome (hernioto.me)
heterochrome (heterochro.me)
heterochromosome (heterochromoso.me)
heterosome (heteroso.me)
hexaseme (hexase.me)
hindersome (hinderso.me)
hippodrome (hippodro.me)
histotome (histoto.me)
histozyme (histozy.me)
hogframe (hogfra.me)
holostome (holosto.me)
home (ho.me)
homesome (homeso.me)
homochrome (homochro.me)
homochromosome (homochromoso.me)
homodrome (homodro.me)
horme (hor.me)
horrorsome (horrorso.me)
hugsome (hugso.me)
humorsome (humorso.me)
hurrisome (hurriso.me)
hurtsome (hurtso.me)
Hyakume (Hyaku.me)
hydrodrome (hydrodro.me)
hydrome (hydro.me)
hydrosome (hydroso.me)
hydrostome (hydrosto.me)
hypervolume (hypervolu.me)
hyphodrome (hyphodro.me)
hyponome (hypono.me)
hyporcheme (hyporche.me)
hypostome (hyposto.me)
hypsochrome (hypsochro.me)
hysterotome (hysteroto.me)
idiochromosome (idiochromoso.me)
idiosome (idioso.me)
illume (illu.me)
implume (implu.me)
impostume (impostu.me)
imprime (impri.me)
income (inco.me)
infame (infa.me)
inflame (infla.me)
inhume (inhu.me)
iniome (inio.me)
intercome (interco.me)
interdome (interdo.me)
intermeddlesome (intermeddleso.me)
interrhyme (interrhy.me)
iridectome (iridecto.me)
iridotome (iridoto.me)
irksome (irkso.me)
isocryme (isocry.me)
isodrome (isodro.me)
isotome (isoto.me)
isoxime (isoxi.me)
jerksome (jerkso.me)
Jerome (Jero.me)
jokesome (jokeso.me)
joysome (joyso.me)
jumpsome (jumpso.me)
jusquaboutisme (jusquaboutis.me)
kame (ka.me)
kannume (kannu.me)
karyochrome (karyochro.me)
karyomicrosome (karyomicroso.me)
karyomitome (karyomito.me)
karyosome (karyoso.me)
kelectome (kelecto.me)
keratome (kerato.me)
keratotome (keratoto.me)
ketoxime (ketoxi.me)
kindlesome (kindleso.me)
kiotome (kioto.me)
knuclesome (knucleso.me)
Kome (Ko.me)
krome (kro.me)
kwamme (kwam.me)
laborsome (laborso.me)
lactochrome (lactochro.me)
lame (la.me)
laparotome (laparoto.me)
larksome (larkso.me)
laryngotome (laryngoto.me)
latesome (lateso.me)
laughsome (laughso.me)
legume (legu.me)
leiocome (leioco.me)
lengthsome (lengthso.me)
leptome (lepto.me)
leptosome (leptoso.me)
leucotome (leucoto.me)
lifesome (lifeso.me)
lifetime (lifeti.me)
lightsome (lightso.me)
likesome (likeso.me)
lime (li.me)
lipochrome (lipochro.me)
liposome (liposo.me)
lissome (lisso.me)
lithesome (litheso.me)
lithotome (lithoto.me)
loadsome (loadso.me)
loathsome (loathso.me)
lomastome (lomasto.me)
lonesome (loneso.me)
longsome (longso.me)
Lophocome (Lophoco.me)
lovesome (loveso.me)
loxodrome (loxodro.me)
lugsome (lugso.me)
lumbersome (lumberso.me)
luresome (lureso.me)
lymphotome (lymphoto.me)
lysozyme (lysozy.me)
macrame (macra.me)
macrodome (macrodo.me)
macrotome (macroto.me)
madame (mada.me)
mannersome (mannerso.me)
Maritime (Mariti.me)
maritime (mariti.me)
Maytime (Mayti.me)
mazame (maza.me)
me (.me)
mealtime (mealti.me)
meatotome (meatoto.me)
meddlecome (meddleco.me)
meddlesome (meddleso.me)
megaleme (megale.me)
megaseme (megase.me)
melodrame (melodra.me)
menacme (menac.me)
Mercurochrome (Mercurochro.me)
merosome (meroso.me)
merostome (merosto.me)
mesenchyme (mesenchy.me)
mesoseme (mesose.me)
mesosome (mesoso.me)
mestome (mesto.me)
metachrome (metachro.me)
metacneme (metacne.me)
metallochrome (metallochro.me)
metasome (metaso.me)
metastome (metasto.me)
metronome (metrono.me)
metrotome (metroto.me)
mettlesome (mettleso.me)
microcentrosome (microcentroso.me)
microchromosome (microchromoso.me)
microgramme (microgram.me)
microseme (microse.me)
microsome (microso.me)
microstome (microsto.me)
microtome (microto.me)
microvolume (microvolu.me)
microzyme (microzy.me)
millieme (millie.me)
Mime (Mi.me)
mime (mi.me)
mirksome (mirkso.me)
mirthsome (mirthso.me)
misbecome (misbeco.me)
misframe (misfra.me)
misinflame (misinfla.me)
misname (misna.me)
misrhyme (misrhy.me)
mistime (misti.me)
mitome (mito.me)
mitosome (mitoso.me)
mixochromosome (mixochromoso.me)
mneme (mne.me)
moilsome (moilso.me)
mome (mo.me)
momme (mom.me)
monochrome (monochro.me)
monorhyme (monorhy.me)
monosome (monoso.me)
monostome (monosto.me)
monotreme (monotre.me)
monoxime (monoxi.me)
morntime (mornti.me)
morpheme (morphe.me)
mothersome (motherso.me)
motordrome (motordro.me)
mournsome (mournso.me)
muddlesome (muddleso.me)
multichrome (multichro.me)
murksome (murkso.me)
myoneme (myone.me)
myotome (myoto.me)
myriagramme (myriagram.me)
myringotome (myringoto.me)
myzostome (myzosto.me)
name (na.me)
needsome (needso.me)
nephrostome (nephrosto.me)
nephrotome (nephroto.me)
nettlesome (nettleso.me)
neume (neu.me)
neurectome (neurecto.me)
neurokyme (neuroky.me)
neurosome (neuroso.me)
neurotome (neuroto.me)
Nevome (Nevo.me)
newcome (newco.me)
nibsome (nibso.me)
nicesome (niceso.me)
nickname (nickna.me)
nighttime (nightti.me)
nitrolime (nitroli.me)
noisome (noiso.me)
nome (no.me)
noncome (nonco.me)
nonextreme (nonextre.me)
nonlegume (nonlegu.me)
nonmaritime (nonmariti.me)
noontime (noonti.me)
nostrilsome (nostrilso.me)
nucleolocentrosome (nucleolocentroso.me)
nucleomicrosome (nucleomicroso.me)
nullisome (nulliso.me)
numbersome (numberso.me)
octodianome (octodiano.me)
octoreme (octore.me)
ocydrome (ocydro.me)
offcome (offco.me)
oftentime (oftenti.me)
ofttime (oftti.me)
oime (oi.me)
oligochrome (oligochro.me)
oncome (onco.me)
onetime (oneti.me)
opisthocome (opisthoco.me)
opisthodome (opisthodo.me)
optime (opti.me)
oriflamme (oriflam.me)
orthodome (orthodo.me)
osmazome (osmazo.me)
osteotome (osteoto.me)
othersome (otherso.me)
othertime (otherti.me)
outcome (outco.me)
outfame (outfa.me)
outflame (outfla.me)
outgame (outga.me)
outname (outna.me)
outrhyme (outrhy.me)
outshame (outsha.me)
overblame (overbla.me)
overburdensome (overburdenso.me)
overchrome (overchro.me)
overcome (overco.me)
overconsume (overconsu.me)
overdome (overdo.me)
overextreme (overextre.me)
overlightsome (overlightso.me)
overname (overna.me)
overplume (overplu.me)
oversublime (oversubli.me)
overtame (overta.me)
overtime (overti.me)
overventuresome (overventureso.me)
owercome (owerco.me)
oxime (oxi.me)
oxystome (oxysto.me)
ozobrome (ozobro.me)
palame (pala.me)
palindrome (palindro.me)
pantochrome (pantochro.me)
pantomime (pantomi.me)
pantostome (pantosto.me)
parachrome (parachro.me)
paracme (parac.me)
parallelodrome (parallelodro.me)
paramitome (paramito.me)
parenchyme (parenchy.me)
paryphodrome (paryphodro.me)
pastime (pasti.me)
peacetime (peaceti.me)
peculiarsome (peculiarso.me)
penintime (peninti.me)
pennoplume (pennoplu.me)
pentastome (pentasto.me)
percnosome (percnoso.me)
perfume (perfu.me)
perilsome (perilso.me)
periosteotome (periosteoto.me)
perisome (periso.me)
perispome (perispo.me)
peristome (peristo.me)
peritreme (peritre.me)
pestersome (pesterso.me)
pharynogotome (pharynogoto.me)
phascolome (phascolo.me)
philosopheme (philosophe.me)
phlebotome (phleboto.me)
phoneme (phone.me)
phonestheme (phonesthe.me)
photochrome (photochro.me)
photodrome (photodro.me)
phycochrome (phycochro.me)
phyllome (phyllo.me)
phyllosome (phylloso.me)
phyllostome (phyllosto.me)
physostome (physosto.me)
phytome (phyto.me)
picksome (pickso.me)
picturedrome (picturedro.me)
pinachrome (pinachro.me)
pinksome (pinkso.me)
pithsome (pithso.me)
plagiostome (plagiosto.me)
plaguesome (plagueso.me)
planosome (planoso.me)
plasmosome (plasmoso.me)
plasome (plaso.me)
plastidome (plastido.me)
plastosome (plastoso.me)
playsome (playso.me)
playtime (playti.me)
pleasantsome (pleasantso.me)
plerome (plero.me)
plume (plu.me)
Poictesme (Poictes.me)
polychrome (polychro.me)
polynome (polyno.me)
Polypheme (Polyphe.me)
polypotome (polypoto.me)
polystome (polysto.me)
pome (po.me)
pomme (pom.me)
pranksome (prankso.me)
preassume (preassu.me)
preconsume (preconsu.me)
predaytime (predayti.me)
prename (prena.me)
presume (presu.me)
presupreme (presupre.me)
prewelcome (prewelco.me)
prime (pri.me)
primoprime (primopri.me)
primrosetime (primroseti.me)
prochromosome (prochromoso.me)
proctotome (proctoto.me)
prodrome (prodro.me)
proenzyme (proenzy.me)
pronephridiostome (pronephridiosto.me)
properispome (properispo.me)
proteosome (proteoso.me)
protocneme (protocne.me)
protome (proto.me)
protoneme (protone.me)
protostome (protosto.me)
prototheme (protothe.me)
pseudochromosome (pseudochromoso.me)
pseudographeme (pseudographe.me)
pseudoparenchyme (pseudoparenchy.me)
psychokyme (psychoky.me)
psychosome (psychoso.me)
pulviplume (pulviplu.me)
Pume (Pu.me)
pyrosome (pyroso.me)
quadrireme (quadrire.me)
quarrelsome (quarrelso.me)
queersome (queerso.me)
queme (que.me)
quicklime (quickli.me)
quietsome (quietso.me)
quinquereme (quinquere.me)
quinzieme (quinzie.me)
quipsome (quipso.me)
quirksome (quirkso.me)
rabblesome (rabbleso.me)
raceme (race.me)
rachiotome (rachioto.me)
rachitome (rachito.me)
radome (rado.me)
ragesome (rageso.me)
ragtime (ragti.me)
rame (ra.me)
rattlesome (rattleso.me)
reassume (reassu.me)
rebecome (rebeco.me)
reblame (rebla.me)
recostume (recostu.me)
rectotome (rectoto.me)
reflame (refla.me)
reframe (refra.me)
regime (regi.me)
reillume (reillu.me)
reinflame (reinfla.me)
relime (reli.me)
relishsome (relishso.me)
relume (relu.me)
rename (rena.me)
reperfume (reperfu.me)
replume (replu.me)
reprime (repri.me)
resublime (resubli.me)
resume (resu.me)
retame (reta.me)
retime (reti.me)
rewelcome (rewelco.me)
rhabdosome (rhabdoso.me)
rheme (rhe.me)
rheotome (rheoto.me)
rhizome (rhizo.me)
rhizostome (rhizosto.me)
rhyme (rhy.me)
rhytidome (rhytido.me)
rime (ri.me)
ringtime (ringti.me)
rochelime (rocheli.me)
rollicksome (rollickso.me)
Rome (Ro.me)
rosetime (roseti.me)
roughsome (roughso.me)
ruesome (rueso.me)
ryme (ry.me)
sacktime (sackti.me)
saeume (saeu.me)
sahme (sah.me)
Salome (Salo.me)
same (sa.me)
samesome (sameso.me)
savorsome (savorso.me)
scaresome (scareso.me)
scheme (sche.me)
schistosome (schistoso.me)
schizothyme (schizothy.me)
schooldame (schoolda.me)
schooltime (schoolti.me)
sclerenchyme (sclerenchy.me)
sclerotome (scleroto.me)
scrime (scri.me)
scruplesome (scrupleso.me)
seadrome (seadro.me)
seedtime (seedti.me)
Selachostome (Selachosto.me)
selfsame (selfsa.me)
semanteme (semante.me)
semateme (semate.me)
seme (se.me)
semichrome (semichro.me)
semicrome (semicro.me)
semidome (semido.me)
semiplume (semiplu.me)
semitime (semiti.me)
septime (septi.me)
serenissime (serenissi.me)
seroenzyme (seroenzy.me)
serozyme (serozy.me)
sesame (sesa.me)
shame (sha.me)
shiversome (shiverso.me)
shortsome (shortso.me)
shuddersome (shudderso.me)
sime (si.me)
siphonosome (siphonoso.me)
siphonostome (siphonosto.me)
siphosome (siphoso.me)
sixsome (sixso.me)
skime (ski.me)
slime (sli.me)
slumbersome (slumberso.me)
smalltime (smallti.me)
smellsome (smellso.me)
somatochrome (somatochro.me)
somatome (somato.me)
some (so.me)
sometime (someti.me)
sparesome (spareso.me)
sphaerosome (sphaeroso.me)
spireme (spire.me)
spiritsome (spiritso.me)
spithame (spitha.me)
sportsome (sportso.me)
springtime (springti.me)
spume (spu.me)
squame (squa.me)
staphylotome (staphyloto.me)
stenochrome (stenochro.me)
stepdame (stepda.me)
stephanome (stephano.me)
stereochrome (stereochro.me)
stereome (stereo.me)
stigme (stig.me)
stime (sti.me)
strabotome (straboto.me)
strome (stro.me)
subacrodrome (subacrodro.me)
subframe (subfra.me)
sublime (subli.me)
subscheme (subsche.me)
subsume (subsu.me)
summertime (summerti.me)
superassume (superassu.me)
supercrime (supercri.me)
superextreme (superextre.me)
superhandsome (superhandso.me)
supersupreme (supersupre.me)
suppertime (supperti.me)
supreme (supre.me)
surname (surna.me)
sweetsome (sweetso.me)
synacme (synac.me)
syncategoreme (syncategore.me)
syndrome (syndro.me)
synrhabdosome (synrhabdoso.me)
syntelome (syntelo.me)
syntheme (synthe.me)
syringotome (syringoto.me)
taeniosome (taenioso.me)
taiglesome (taigleso.me)
Tame (Ta.me)
tame (ta.me)
tanglesome (tangleso.me)
tankodrome (tankodro.me)
tanystome (tanysto.me)
tarsome (tarso.me)
taxeme (taxe.me)
teatime (teati.me)
tediousome (tediouso.me)
tedisome (tediso.me)
telegrapheme (telegraphe.me)
teleostome (teleosto.me)
telepheme (telephe.me)
teleseme (telese.me)
tellsome (tellso.me)
telome (telo.me)
tempersome (temperso.me)
tendersome (tenderso.me)
tendotome (tendoto.me)
tenotome (tenoto.me)
termtime (termti.me)
terrorsome (terrorso.me)
tetraseme (tetrase.me)
tetrasome (tetraso.me)
tewsome (tewso.me)
thallome (thallo.me)
theme (the.me)
theosopheme (theosophe.me)
thiochrome (thiochro.me)
thoroughfaresome (thoroughfareso.me)
threesome (threeso.me)
threshingtime (threshingti.me)
thrillsome (thrillso.me)
throughcome (throughco.me)
thyme (thy.me)
tichodrome (tichodro.me)
ticklesome (tickleso.me)
timbersome (timberso.me)
time (ti.me)
tiptopsome (tiptopso.me)
tiresome (tireso.me)
tocome (toco.me)
Tohome (Toho.me)
toilsome (toilso.me)
tome (to.me)
toneme (tone.me)
tonsillectome (tonsillecto.me)
tonsillotome (tonsilloto.me)
toothsome (toothso.me)
topchrome (topchro.me)
torturesome (tortureso.me)
toysome (toyso.me)
tracheotome (tracheoto.me)
traintime (trainti.me)
trame (tra.me)
traveltime (travelti.me)
trichome (tricho.me)
trichrome (trichro.me)
tricksome (trickso.me)
tripsome (tripso.me)
trireme (trire.me)
triseme (trise.me)
trisome (triso.me)
trophosome (trophoso.me)
troublesome (troubleso.me)
trypanosome (trypanoso.me)
tume (tu.me)
tunesome (tuneso.me)
turbinotome (turbinoto.me)
twaddlesome (twaddleso.me)
twaesome (twaeso.me)
twasome (twaso.me)
twigsome (twigso.me)
twosome (twoso.me)
uglisome (ugliso.me)
ugsome (ugso.me)
ume (u.me)
unbecome (unbeco.me)
unbendsome (unbendso.me)
unbowsome (unbowso.me)
unburdensome (unburdenso.me)
uncome (unco.me)
uncouthsome (uncouthso.me)
uncrime (uncri.me)
undelightsome (undelightso.me)
underchime (underchi.me)
underconsume (underconsu.me)
underflame (underfla.me)
underframe (underfra.me)
undername (underna.me)
underntime (undernti.me)
underscheme (undersche.me)
undertime (underti.me)
unextreme (unextre.me)
unframe (unfra.me)

unfrolicsome (unfrolicso.me)
unfulsome (unfulso.me)
unfurthersome (unfurtherso.me)
ungainsome (ungainso.me)
ungladsome (ungladso.me)
ungruesome (ungrueso.me)
unhandsome (unhandso.me)
unhealthsome (unhealthso.me)
unheartsome (unheartso.me)
unhome (unho.me)
unireme (unire.me)
unirhyme (unirhy.me)
unkensome (unkenso.me)
unlame (unla.me)
unlime (unli.me)
unloathsome (unloathso.me)
unmaritime (unmariti.me)
unmeddlesome (unmeddleso.me)
unname (unna.me)
unovercome (unoverco.me)
unplume (unplu.me)
unprime (unpri.me)
unquarrelsome (unquarrelso.me)
unrhyme (unrhy.me)
unsome (unso.me)
unsupreme (unsupre.me)
untame (unta.me)
untimesome (untimeso.me)
untoothsome (untoothso.me)
untroublesome (untroubleso.me)
unwearisome (unweariso.me)
unwelcome (unwelco.me)
unwholesome (unwholeso.me)
unwinsome (unwinso.me)
upcome (upco.me)
updome (updo.me)
upflame (upfla.me)
upframe (upfra.me)
urethratome (urethrato.me)
urethrotome (urethroto.me)
urochrome (urochro.me)
urosome (uroso.me)
uvulotome (uvuloto.me)
vacuome (vacuo.me)
vagarisome (vagariso.me)
vaginotome (vaginoto.me)
valvulotome (valvuloto.me)
velodrome (velodro.me)
venomsome (venomso.me)
venturesome (ventureso.me)
viewsome (viewso.me)
volume (volu.me)
waddlesome (waddleso.me)
waesome (waeso.me)
wagsome (wagso.me)
wailsome (wailso.me)
waketime (waketi.me)
wame (wa.me)
wartime (warti.me)
wearisome (weariso.me)
weedingtime (weedingti.me)
weirdsome (weirdso.me)
welcome (welco.me)
whame (wha.me)
wheedlesome (wheedleso.me)
wholesome (wholeso.me)
wildsome (wildso.me)
wilsome (wilso.me)
wime (wi.me)
winsome (winso.me)
wintersome (winterso.me)
wintertime (winterti.me)
woesome (woeso.me)
wondersome (wonderso.me)
worksome (workso.me)
worktime (workti.me)
worrisome (worriso.me)
wranglesome (wrangleso.me)
wrigglesome (wriggleso.me)
wrothsome (wrothso.me)
wunsome (wunso.me)
xenotime (xenoti.me)
yoretime (yoreti.me)
youthsome (youthso.me)
zimme (zim.me)
zoanthodeme (zoanthode.me)
zoothome (zootho.me)
zyme (zy.me)
zymome (zymo.me)
All the code does is check to see if a word ends in ‘me’, then if so, rewrites it and the version with the ‘.’ dot in between. Have fun domain hunting!

Bags:
As I wrote on Twitter the other day, I have a serious thing for bags. I am, in fact, completely indistinguishable from a woman shopping for purses with the level of scrutiny that I investigate pockets, seams, zippers and compartments. However, the presence of my Y chromosome does mean that I must depart somewhat from my inner female in that looks and it matching anything else I have are nearly irrelevant. I don’t care if the bag looks like a freak accident that escaped the Coach genetic testing labs–I care about function,form, and feel, ONLY and in that order.

So my brother was here last week, and I saw a bag he had that I don’t recall his having this last Christmas. I asked what it was, and he said “Weren’t you the one that told me about this?” Disgustedly, I gave a look like, “You fool! Do you think I’d forget something like this?!?” as I pawed The Precious.

Here is the object of my desire. It’s different from my brother’s, but our gear needs are different. Yes I know the orange isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing color, but just look at that removable DSLR camera bag attachment. Yes, I know the whole “snake” theme is a bit odd, but that’s some sexy stuff. YeSSSSS!

Obviously, I’m not getting this anytime soon, but my current eBags laptop backback is not doing too well (in fact, it’s nearly unrecognizable from the online pictures). It’s also surprisingly heavy all by itself–something I found recently as I emptied it to have it be managed by Claudia when I was last in the hospital. “Honey, I need this because, like, you know, the next time I might be in the the hospital–what? yes, I know the doctor said all would be fine, but you never know…ok!–I’m just saying, the next time, if I have this, it won’t be as heavy for you when you have to manage it,” just isn’t very convincing. I’ll work on it.

Social Networking:
In my previous life, I was a senior-level IT person/consultant. It should come as no surprise, then, that when faced with a “SIGN UP NOW” email from a relative, friend, or annoying co-worker–it matters not–in order to see their pictures or whatever online with some proprietary service, I normally would hit “delete” without a second thought (and might even be annoyed that thanks to them, they at least have my email address). Why on earth would I want to give away my information to a business that I have nothing to do with who, upon trying to make ends meet, will be like so many others and whore their user data to the highest bidder, maybe even sinking so low as to start putting up yarn ads. (If you got that reference, you’ve read this all the way through and I thank you from the bottom of my ad-less heart)

Maybe it’s the sweltering Texas summer heat, maybe it’s having some burnable time on my hands, but I seem to be trying out new services sites like it’s going out of style. Normally meticulously recorded in SplashID on my Blackberry (encrypted of course), I have yet to keep up with all the usernames/sites I’m registering. It’s like I have Daddy’s credit card and going on a registration/shopping spree and don’t care about amounts or receipts, wadding them up and throwing them on the floor as I search the next target. There’s a ton of redundancy and overlap in these things, and I think I’ve reached the limit of what I’m willing to try. I think with each useful service, there is a “best of breed” product; that’s the one I’ll sign up with.

And what it is with the lack of vowels in these names? Flickr. Stumblr. Feedlr. Tumblr. Mastrbatr. I gotta pull back before some 21-year-old CIO in the Bay Area tweets to his other entrepreneur buddies and with all their collective information figures out the exact position of all the constellations at the time of my birth. On their iPhones.

(Medical stuff–personal and news/commentary–coming in a jiffy, I promise!)

I may yet continue as a Mexican medical student at another school, so I haven’t given up the domain yet, but it’s time for some serious housecleaning around here. If your blog is not on my sidebar and we’ve commented/emailed in the past, let me know–it’s just on oversight on my part. OK, time for me to start scrubbin’!

Here’s the funny part: there is no HDTV in any of our family members to be found. Oh sure, the computer monitor can serve that purpose, but who wants to watch a movie on a 20″ monitor? After the firesale we had in Mexico to move back, the only TV we have is this bargain basement 21″ Magnavox which does a shitty job of showing standard definition without problems much less HD. So why bother with HD at all? Simple: futureproofing. I have yet to see my daughter’s 2nd birthday last month in its full HD video glory, but it’s on digital tape (HDV format) whenever that time comes…

…which leads me to another quandary: this whole process has underscored how much I need to upgrade my computer system. Handling HD video is seriously CPU/GPU intensive. The raw video (1920×1080) doesn’t even fit on the computer screen. The disk space requirements are enormous as well: going from HDV->Apple Intermediate Codec will cost almost 75gigs/hr of hard drive space. Ouch. Now I need a RAID array as well, because I sure as hell ain’t going to trust a single drive to be slammed with that much I/O, project after project, and survive for long.

But what a cool camera. In truth, I can record in HD and export in downsampled SD DV like any other tape-based consumer camcorder. The difference is that 1) I have the original footage in HDV format on tape for future re-import, and 2) the image quality is STILL a product of a superior CMOS image sensor and all the functionality the camera provides leveraged to make a much better video product. I’m still learning everything, and I’m scared that the more I learn, the more I discover things like “if I had this kit to use a 35mm lens adapter, imagine what depth of field control I could have!”

I am not a filmmaker, and I have no plans to change careers to become a cinematographer or movie editor. I think I am drawn to this new (and inevitably expensive) hobby because it channels the dormant parts of myself that are creative, that do yearn to create something brand new, or at the very least, transform the ordinary into something special. Just as a picture can be worth a thousand words, a visual story can be worth a thousand pictures.

This should be fun.

Speaking of Starbucks (yes, they have quite a few here), they actually have holiday cups and some Christmas decorations, as well as their “Holiday Blend” coffee. However, gone are any real holiday flavors–no gingerbread latte, pumpkin pie spice or other seasonal favorites–just a lame vanilla and/or toffee something-or-other. That’s not a special–those syrups are there all the time! I actually hardly ever get the “candy-in-a-cup”-type drinks, preferring straight-up coffee. During the holidays, though, I do indulge a few times with a beverage treat that only comes this time of year. Too bad it’s not here.

Compared to the tin-can-and-string technology I’ve been using for the last week to get online, not having a flavored coffee is nothing.

Unfortunately, I was not able to recover all the data. Between data recovery efforts and backups, I got more than 80-90% of everything, and I’d say that almost everything that was important (since I backup that stuff more often) is still with me. It was a classic case of diminishing returns: the first day of full-on effort yielded by far the most data, the second day a bit more stuff but at far greater time and effort, and by Day 3, I had to just chalk the remainder up as a loss. I had a HUGE project at work that required me to work almost all day this last Sunday (another reason I hadn’t updated), so I didn’t have oodles of time to burn with my system in lala land.

The laptop was obviously fine from the start after I wiped it clean since its problems were always more superficial and was a result of my being overcautious than anything. It was “home base” for everything and turned out to be a trooper. What was massively cool is that my MPB has an 80G drive–adequate but small by laptop standards nowadays. It has one Firewire port which was connected to my desktop, which has two physical internal drives. The freaking awesome cool thing I had never tried in target mode is hot-connecting more physical drives to the slave machine. In this case, I added two more external FW drives to the G5, so my wittle bitty Macbook now had 5 physical drives mounted for a total of 880G of total raw space at its disposal!! Mwahahaha!

Ok, enough geekery, I promise. I just wanted to post a quick update before the posts that are about to go up because I got some comments (thank you) and wanted to bring the minimelodrama full circle.

To make this part of the long story short, I got it working…sort-of.  It’s the same in medicine–you know something is wrong, but all the labs say things are fine–except in medicine you can’t say, “OK, we’re going to just erase you and start from scratch.” LOL!  I was reading articles online on my desktop to help w/the laptop situation, and then–after the laptop is pretty much behaving oddly enough to say “screw it, I’m wiping it,”–my desktop started chunking. There was no noise, but the fan started revving and the CPU seemed pegged.  It took seconds just to switch windows, probably a minute to switch to a different app, and just general badness. When I looked at the system logs, all I saw was “I/O error” over and over, and it corresponded to my boot disk–you know, the one that has a bunch of important stuff on it.

Booting from install CDs to run disk utilities was an exercise in futility. 2 out of 3 times, I couldn’t get the disk to even be recognized.  It was then that I had my “Oh shit!” moment: thanks to the laptop fiasco I realized I had no working computer to fall back on.  The cruel irony that sadistically played out in my head over and over was that I intentionally left my G5 alone, pristine because information on it was too important until Leopard proved its spots.  My karmic fortune makes me wonder if I clubbed harbor seals in a former life.  

Besides sharing my woe (and on the 31st, no less), the other important update is that I had no less than 5 blog drafts >90% completed to post.  One of them was on MRSA, another was on emergency medicine….it sucks that I lost all that work, but that’s still not even the worst of it.  I am still trying some voodoo to see if I can at least salvage some recent data, if I can even get the sucker to mount. (don’t mind the goat skull on my CPU and the salt circle on the floor)  I do have backups, but my iTunes library alone is >40G, so it gets kinda hard sometimes.  I might have lost everything in the last 7-10 days in terms of documents, collected data, bits and pieces, etc., but I have a 2nd internal drive which stores most of my multimedia (Aperture for digital photos, some video movie projects, etc.).

So as to not lie on the bed crying like a girl, I remind myself that I’m not a graphic designer that lost his entire portfolio and will affect his financial future; this was not a case where my groundbreaking research into blah-blah went up in digital smoke.  I have a reasonable collection of backups across different external drives, but it’s going to be a major pain in the ass to figure out how to put Humpty Dumpty together again (and where to get another sATA drive of any decent size down here w/o paying practically double price).  

One step at a time….more soon…    BACK UP YOUR IMPORTANT DATA! 

Ok, background done–I mentioned all the above so you can make complete sense of what follows. My main point is that the author listed several lessons learned in his torrid language love affair, and this one really stuck out:

#7 – PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES ARE LIKE GIRLFRIENDS: THE NEW ONE IS BETTER BECAUSE YOU ARE BETTER

Rails was an amazing teacher. I loved it’s “do exactly as I say” paint-by-numbers framework that taught me some great guidelines.

I love Ruby for making me really understand OOP [object-oriented programming]. God, Ruby is so beautiful. I love you, Ruby.

But the main reason that any programmer learning any new language thinks the new language is SO much better than the old one is because he’s a better programmer now! You look back at your old ugly PHP code, compared to your new beautiful Ruby code, and think, “God that PHP is ugly!” But don’t forget you wrote that PHP years ago and are unfairly discriminating against it now.

It’s not the language (entirely). It’s you, dude. You’re better now. Give yourself some credit.

Programming and geekiness aside, I thought that point was very insightful. How many things in our lives do we come back to something, full-circle, and have a vastly different view? By definition, when this happens we have a greater experience base to draw from, and the “time-out” we took allowed us a perspective that would have been otherwise impossible. I think of my impending return back to school and bet that this will factor in somehow.

We all need to experience something different, something that jars us from our current point of view. I’m not suggesting a real torrid love affair (at least not for the married/committed people) to gain perspective or do anything irresponsible, but there is something special in losing oneself in a different activity or interest, pushing boundaries, challenging one’s views, and coming back “home” a better person for it.

So, if things don’t work for whatever reason, let me know. Otherwise, things should be exactly how they were. I will be changing themes soon, mainly to take advantage of the new tagging and sidebar widget features. I’ve had this one for over a year and a half, and the reason you’ve seen it nowhere else but here is because it’s a horribly hacked copy of another theme. I’m a techno-geek, not a designer, so when I start blindly experimenting with CSS, black clouds loom overhead, birds fly out of the treetops, and that ominous foreboding of what visual havoc I may wreak fills the ether.

Luckily for all, I do all my tinkering on a dummy instance of Wordpress on my own computer. The disfigured alignments, twisted typefaces and ghastly graphics of my CSS carnage never leave my workstation. (Halloween is coming up–I’m just getting in the mood…heh.)

Here are some recent, helpful Wordpress links until my next post:

• Updating Wordpress with Subversion
• Template hierarchy (really useful if you edit your theme)
• Template tags (using WP functions to display dynamically-generated data on your pages)
• Retrofitting your “old” theme to use the new tagging system

“No problem,” I thought to myself. I just needed a tool to “normalize” the audio so that the mostly classical music doesn’t have the all the dynamic range of the natural louds and softs. Right now, a median volume would mean that soft passages would be unhearable and louder passages (though musically appropriate) would potentially wake her up. Then, I thought, “Wait–I can’t be the only person to have needed this. Let me Google this…”

I could have sworn what I was going to use was a tool/plugin that does “normalization.” After beating my head against that wall for a few days with no good results, I found that what I was looking for is what’s called dynamic compression. “Compression” seemed totally the wrong word to me, because to compress is to remove redundant data to fit a smaller space (and “decompression” would fill it back in). But NOOOO–some crazy group of audio engineers decided to call a limiting of dynamic range–that narrowing the gap between the difference of louds and the softs–”compression.” That’s what radio stations have been doing for years so you can hear everything in car w/o having to ride the volume control, as well as giving extra “punch” to certain audio frequencies so you think one station sounds better even though they play the same recordings.

Jacking with the dynamic range of the latest “Arcade Fire” track is one thing, doing it to a symphony or a string quartet is something different. Classical music is the domain of serious audiophile engineers analyzing acoustics in concert halls, obsessing over the minutiae of different polymer tiles, their placement, etc. all to provide the best aural experience for a live performance. When recording, mics are placed strategically to capture the ambience of the hall, but also throughout the stage. You want to hear the crispness of a freshly rosined bow on a string, the collective breath before a horn section’s opening, the higher frequencies in the “blat” of a low-brass instrument. Trying to dampen these subtleties is blasphemy.

“Baby Einstien” sells 22 minutes of toybox-synthesized classical lullaby crap for $10 on iTunes Music Store. That’s a serious cash-cow; even pop CDs are at least 50 minutes or so. Even if I bought both volumes, that’s not even 45 minutes of non-repetitive music. It is, however, homogenous in terms of timbre and volume, which, along with clever marketing, is why it sells. I’d rather have my daughter listen to the real thing, but I also have a practical need here as well. So imagine my own self-loathing when I subjected many wonderful pieces to a transmogrifying audio laboratory like a Maestro Mengele, removing the artistry, audio quality, and individuality to make a homogenous, similar, and ultimately inferior final product.

I’ll give an example: the “Adagietto” movement from Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. People in the know will gasp, “You’re putting her to sleep with Mahler!??” because Mahler is known for wide variations in dynamic expression, extremely long symphonies (>100 minutes), very busy and thick scoring (over 120 members in the orchestra, plus a choir at times), and did I mention long symphonies? Relax–this is a slow movement that is scored simply for strings and harp. I even have the relevant excerpt from the score here to follow along for those that want to for the musical sections below:

Note all the instructions Gus has provided above; the score is full of details, all about to be lost. This is the final 18 or so measures of the movement before heading into the buckle-your-seatbelts finale that comes immediately after. In this excerpt, 8 minutes into the movement, we go from quiet yearning to a final gushing emotional outpouring, to a complete fade to nothing. Gorgeous, heart-tugging, and although sublime, completely unworkable to put a child to sleep. Here is a picture of the original waveform in the audio editor (Apple Soundtrack Pro) and the playable excerpt below it:

Now, the bastardized, compressed audio. Note that there is a lot of artifact bringing up the volume from the low-amplitude sections, which you can visually see in the following graphic. This is the price one pays:

Upon finishing compressing 2h of music selections, they were transferred to a minidisc set on “Repeat,” and applied that night. I happy to report it was an unqualified success. I met the dual objective of both blocking out more external noise and giving daughter something to listen to that she can carry with her, even if only subconsciously, as she grows older to appreciate it more. Part of me feels bad for blasphemy I’ve wrought (ok, I’m being a bit facetious here), but Claudia and I certainly get more quality time as daughter gets more sleep, so too bad.

I want that too.

One of the components of the system, and one of the powerful concepts in this being a safe community for interaction, is that we built a real-time authentication and credentialing system. If you are an MD, you can gain access to the system by answering a few challenge questions, and we will verify who you are.

This is so incorrect, it’s hard to know where to start. To use words like “authentication” and “credentialing” and not be referring to information tokens that due diligence would expect only that person to have, is misleading at best, outright lying at worst. When the festering abscess that is Sermo’s security model was cut open and exposed by Medgadget’s scalpel, “Sermaphrodites” circled the wagons to protect Sermo! Rather than the Sermo physicians appreciating this potential save to their community by forcing the issue to the forefront (and calling for Sermo’s CEO, Daniel Palestrant MD, to explain how this could be allowed to happen while sitting on so much money), they saw this intervention as a “how-to” for druggies to get DEA#s (news flash: this doesn’t affect the street wino any more than it affects the white-collar drug seeker who already knew this), calling Medgadget’s authors out and turning on their own. However, another blogger independently showed that Sermo could easily be penetrated by anyone, publishing the results. Yet there was no riot on this psychologist’s blog. Sermo physicians threatened to turn Medgadget authors in to their respective state medical boards (for what, publishing public information?!?) and called for advertisers to remove their support, making me wonder if the overly-strong reaction was as much about a fellow physician breaking the “good-ol-boy fraternity mentality” than what was actually disclosed.

This was a known issue (by Sermo’s own admission) and they did nothing about it. However, this post isn’t about the drama above. Unlike many of the flamethrowers and trolls out there, I actually have framework for a solution. I’m not an MBA or looking to quit medical school and form a company, so this has nothing to do with being anti-Sermo in concept. I am passionate about information security and how it relates secure electronic physician-patient communication. I couldn’t care less about Sermo as a company or a site; like I said above, why would I care about a site I can’t even join? I’ve joined these threads online because of a genuine interest in the underlying technology, and what I see in Sermo’s gross security mismanagement is a threat to physicians’ trust of its implementation and use.

Some background on me, I was all but ready to sit for my CISSP exam in information security when my father, who had end-stage liver disease, became continually and critically ill. I already had been accepted into medical school, but rather than work up until the day I’d leave, I decided instead to take those months and help family and my dad (who eventually–thank God–had a transplant and is doing quite well). In systems administration, I was one of the first Red Hat Certified Engineers (in fact, I took my exam on their Raleigh campus because they hadn’t even begun to outsource the exam yet) and have two Sun Solaris SA certifications. I only mention all of this to give readers an idea of my status as a serious computer professional. In my few attempts to discuss these matters on comment boards so far, people see “medical student,” and it screams out like a naive 20-something. I’m nothing of the sort, especially in this field.

What follows is going to be long and technical (I’ll do the best I can on making that as painless as possible), but it’s because some groundwork is necessary to understand key concepts first. You’ve been warned…if you’re still interested, let’s go!

1. The signer is indisputably involved. To properly sign a document/file/message digitally, intervention is required–namely a passphrase against a cryptographic key. Therefore, there is no “rubber stamping” in this arena, a la a nurse stamping a prescription pad or “verbal orders” that were allegedly never given.
2. The signer is indisputably who they claim to be. This is done by prior verification/escrow of the cryptographic key and the foreknowledge that the identity can not mathematically be forged. When the signature occurs, the exact time and date become part of the signature. Taken as a whole, #1 and #2 provide the principle of “non-repudiation,” or the inability of the signer to “back out” by saying they didn’t mean it or that it didn’t happen at the specified date/time, etc.
3. Document integrity. The contents are guaranteed to be tamper-proof–there is no retroactive changing of anything. The document as a whole undergoes a one-way hash algorithm, a fingerprint of sorts, and the alteration of single digit, character or space renders the hash invalid. To illustrate what I mean, the hash algorithm MD5, when applied to the text of the Preamble of the US Constitution returns “d16d01f300b43c68b720698bedd5b9e3”

This computational output is a string of only 32 hexadecimal digits, so there is no way that I can take this short string and reconstruct the original, “We the People…” This is why it’s called a “one-way” hash. In fact, I can take the entire Constitution–the entire Library of Congress, even–and generate a similar, but different, unique hash. This is why I use a fingerprint analogy: you can’t extrapolate a fingerprint to a make a person, but the “mark” left behind definitely identifies where it came from. Change the document one iota and you change the fingerprint; have a different fingerprint in hand, and you know it was not from the same, unaltered document. This is essential.

PART II: Public Key Cryptography

Ever since there has been a need to keep information secret, there have been methods of doing so. Egyptians utilized a special staff where papyrus was rolled around its circumference, a message was written linearly, and other characters filled the gaps afterwards. If this papyrus was intercepted, it would be useless without the special staff which corresponded to the right helical turn length. Julius Caesar used a frameshifted alphabet, where A corresponded to, say N, B to O, C to P, etc. Unless you knew what the offset was, the message was gibberish. Of course, there’s the story of the “Enigma machine” of WWII, and now with fancy computers, the possibilities are endless–both to create new cryptosystems and to do “brute-force attacks” to break them. But that’s another book, actually.

The point here is all the examples above illustrate “symmetric key” encryption. The same “key” used to encrypt is the same key used to decrypt. The encrypted result can be iron-clad, but obtain the key and your done for. For example, if the other party got a hold of that Egyptian staff, all bets were off. So if securing the encrypting key is all-important, how do you encrypt things on the wild-west of the Internet without sending that all-important key over insecure lines? Enter public-key, or “asymmetric” cryptography.

Asymmetric keys mean that I have two keys–one public, one private–that were generated simultaneously and are mathematically, inextricably interconnected. The secret key says safe with me, but my public key can be broadcast anywhere. If someone wants to send an encrypted message to me, they don’t use some super-secret device, they use my PUBLIC key combined with their SECRET key, and the two make a message that we both can read. My secret key is safe and secured physically (my computer) and digitally (by passphrase). My public key, on the other hand, is downloadable and free for the world to use. If you tried viewing the key from the previous link, it is an example of what’s called “ciphertext,” or encrypted data transmitted by plain letters and numbers. This makes it platform neutral, easy to embed in email, chats, Sermo posts (oops, I’m foreshadowing…bad Rico!)

The two most common public key systems used for Internet communication are PGP (”Pretty Good Privacy”–now a commercial enterprise, but the founder, Phil Zimmerman started it all at MIT) and its freeware, open-source counterpart, GPG (”GNU Privacy Guard”). To see all of this in action before you get too lost in the background and theory, a digitally signed message is shown below. The original, as I wrote it, is the English text from “This” to “keyring;” everything that enveloped it above and below came from the signature process. This process here was simply invoking GPG to sign the text, and upon prompting me for my passphrase to unlock my secret key, GPG produced this output:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

This is an example of a signed message.  Above, the hash
algorithm should be shown (SHA256) so that the recipient
can verify with that same algorithm that every character
in this message has arrived, unaltered. Moreover, although
you can't tell by the gibberish below, this is also digitally
signed with my private GPG key, and this is verifiable if
you have my public GPG key on your keyring.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin)

iD8DBQFHAAjdozJz1Dh2WKURCKu3AKDC2WQfSMxhhW382wsslrBDNiF+/QCfa026
4gPie5pNTyXN5RFMCDej3dA=
=7DOW
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

PART III: Web of Trust

All the PGP/GPG stuff is well and good except when you consider that the ID in the key is a name and email address–hardly something that can’t be forged. What prevents me from generating a keypair that corresponds to “George W. Bush <president@whitehouse.gov>” and sending/signing emails and messages pretending to be Dubya? Absolutely nothing. This is solved by a model called the “web of trust.” Let’s say there are two people, Bob and Alice (in security, it always is “Bob and Alice,” don’t ask) who know each other in real life. Bob can get Alice to “sign” his public key such that when others see his public key, they see Alice’s signature there, too. Alice agrees to sign only because she can attest that Bob really is who he says he is, and vice versa. When “Carol,” Alice’s friend, sends Bob a signed email, Bob has no idea if she’s really a friend of Alice’s. However, if he sees that Alice–a person whom he knows and trusts–has signed her key that was used for the email to Bob–Bob can reasonably assume that Carol’s idenitity is credible. If there are two people on Carol’s keychain that Bob personally knows (and also has their digital public keys), then Bob really has much better assurance of Carol’s identity.

Now, If the contents of the communication is “Hey, nice to meet you,” then all of this is rather silly. However, if the content of the communication has some request that requires a commitment of time, energy or money, then the bar is raised. Now let’s zoom to the present situation, and the communication is a physician requesting information on a patient. Now there’s a legal component to consider as well. The more people gather to voluntarily sign each other’s keys after verifying identity, the stronger this web becomes and the more it can be trusted.

The explosion of the internet “to the masses” is exactly what made this model fail. When the bulk of the Internet users were those affiliated with universities, colleges, the government and specialty technology companies, you had a select enough group to do this with. 10 years later, when disgruntled radicals, convicted felons, and my grandma all have broadband, the idea of “voluntary trust” among like-minded individuals is laughable.

PART IV: Of Triangles and Tradeoffs

The following graphic is the classic “security triangle” (there are many variations) that shows that you can’t have all three things at once completely:

In order to make a system secure, it’s going to cost money and it’s going to have to have some hassle associated with it. Whether it’s having to remember passwords, carrying a swipe badge in the case of physical security, there’s a component of inconvenience–always. In order to make things secure but easier to use, you’re going to have to sink proportionally more money into it. Using the PGP vs. GPG example above, GPG is free, but using it is not intuitive. There are graphical “wrappers” and plugins for email/chat clients that allow one to mouse click this or that, but most are kludgy, and there is no consistent interface at all. PGP, on the other hand, uses 95% of the same underlying technology, but as a polished corporate product, it provides stable, reliable solutions ranging from personal software to enterprise tools to secure entire infrastructures. This obviously is not going to come cheap, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to use and deploy. Not being able to “have it all” is essential in managing both users’ and managers’ expectations regarding security solutions.

Sermo sacrificed security to make a system that was cheap and easy to use, or more to the point, easy to sign up. With all the VC money that Sermo had, this is inexcusable.

PART V: Wherein I actually get to the point

While the Web of Trust model above could not be sustained with the Internet at large, it works beautifully among a tight-knit community–like physicians on a social network! Doctors are a naturally suspicious, overly cautious, and a fiercely protective group. Especially if “signing one’s name” to something, physicians in these overly-litigious times understandably need a lot of reassurance. I say, “PERFECT!” What better self-policing model than to have that suspicion, that scrutiny to ensure a secure, physician-only social/medical network? The ever-present sentiment of “I went through hell-training, gave up 10 years after college for shit wages…” doesn’t lend itself well to being “spied” on by slimeball, used-car-salesman drug rep types posing as doctors to listen in on discussions and reporting back to their Mother Ship.

It’s self-policing in every way. Here, it doesn’t matter if you have MD, DO, PhD, PharmD, etc. after your name; it matters if you have other peoples’ digital signatures attached to your own. If some ‘newbie’ comes in and claims to be such-and-such and really doesn’t have much in the way of referring signed sigs, they’ll naturally be less trusted, perhaps not included into certain forums until they’re vouched for–just like it is in real life. In cyberspace, people have these disconnected expectations of human behavior, like some forum doesn’t treat them as one of their own after two postings, but here in “meatspace,” doesn’t it work the same way? You go to one or two meetings or the like by yourself, and you might get a lukewarm reception. You go with 2-3 “regulars” that introduce you to people, and you’re going to have a much different, much more rewarding, experience. If this is going to be a social network–a social network that needs to have the requisite security where members are truly vetted–then it’s going to have the same issues, concerns, and dynamics of ANY social network, as far as the people dynamic is concerned.

But let’s be honest. Sermo isn’t trying to create a social network for physicans, much less try to make it secure place any more than it needs to keep operational. Looking at the Sermo graphics and market propaganda, you’d think it was trying to make Facebook for physicians. The real point of Sermo is to make money for its stakeholders, which it’s poised to do, hand over fist. Sermo’s free membership and ad-free content is paid for by revenue from “clients” who will pay to either monitor discussions in nonspecific fashion for a subscription fee or pay a large sum to have a question put out there, (eg. Merck asks, “If Vioxx were to come back on the market, would you prescribe it?” — Sermo just made $50,000 for a yes/no poll). Sermo claims that it only shares aggregate data and that no personally identifying information is shared with third parties, but how much can you trust a company that already has shown such disgustingly lax security practices?

Everything I’ve outlined above is a framework, a skeleton on which one can lay a foundation for a better, more secure way of communicating. Sermo could have and still can implement any of this at any time. I used PGP/GPG as examples only; there are many implementations of the cryptographic and security principles that lie behind these. I say build a new network, one that from the ground-up is a collaborative effort of physicians, not the money-making vision of a single physician. Build a network that is truly socially policed, where members are vetted according to agreed-upon standards, where discussion can take place in appropriate forums with reasonable assurance that the information will not be shared by others in any fashion, aggregate or not. The security technology is there to use however desired. It can be a zero cost solution with a steeper learning/usage curve or a paid-for solution to make life easier for everyone; the community will decide what’s best. Build a social network that is based on a meritocracy where members that give the most get the most decision-making authority, rather than a autocracy that doles out $75 to a poor resident for answering a poll question that Big Pharma paid tens of thousands for. Have complete transparency in business practices, privacy statements, etc.

Just don’t build another Sermo.

Regarding the trip back, it was nice spending time w/Claudia alone. We had a flat tire 3 hours into our trip and the densest fog I’ve ever seen about 3 hours from the border in the mountains outside Monterrey, NL.  By the time we crossed into the US–4 hours late after a 16+ hour trip–I gotta say: Mexico never looked so good than in the rear-view mirror. It’s precisely for this reason that I shock myself when I admit that a part of me wants to go back.  I hate calling myself a homebody, but the truth is that I need my own private space, a refuge, a Bat Cave^tm if you will, to be happy and collect my thoughts to not feel so scattered.  Most classmates, being of the younger, 20-something variety, make the transition home with ease, sinking back in their old, comfy bed with their rooms just as they left them.  Others may have moved out some time ago, but being single, they find a good spot in the house and call it theirs.

Married with a kid sharing a bedroom for almost a month with nowhere else to go in the house except to commune with the parental units?  Pass the Xanax, please.  Add to that the fact that we have to share time with both sides, and packing baby gear every time gets, um….old.  Simple checks like ”Honey? Did you remember to bring the Orajel for her gums?” quickly turn into “What the hell do I have to do, tattoo ‘ORAFUCKINGJEL’ on my forehead?!  The crying and 3 fingers in her mouth wasn’t enough of a reminder?!?”  Of course, I exaggerate (mostly) but you get the idea.

Internet connectivity has been spotty because of all the moving around and no wireless at either house, so I haven’t written on the blog and was in email read-only mode for the most part. If you’ve sent me email, you’ll get a reply shortly.  Otherwise, as soon as I get my RSS reader on my laptop updated with my .ompl files from my desktop which stayed in Mexico, I’ll be back commenting on the blogs.

P.S.  If anybody has any suggestions for offline newsreaders for Windows (ick), I’d appreciate the help.  Bloglines and other excellent online aggregators don’t help with the spotty connectivity I have here.  Danke.