Author Archives: Ron Bieber

Concerto Suite For Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E flat minor Op.1

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Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar & Orc Today on the way to take Kelsi home we stopped at the mall and as I was browsing through CD’s I came across Yngwie J. Malmsteens Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E flat minor – Op.1.

Needing a change of pace, I picked it up.

This album is extremely cool. Its a full concerto, written for an orchestra with the electric guitar as a solo instrument. Before you shrug it off as just another orchestra CD like Kiss Symphony or Metallica S&M, it isn’t. This is a completely different animal. This is an actual classical piece of music, written by Malmsteen himself, with the guitar as the lead solo instrument — not a rehash of existing songs with an orchestra behind them.

The only albums I’ve really liked from Malmsteen are his first, Rising Force and Trilogy. All of his other albums seemed “more of the same”, where you are essentially beaten over the head by how fast he can play and how much he can dominate the song. This album, however, is amazing, and its quite obvious that this is the type of music Yngwie was meant to play. I think this is by far his best album to date.

If you see this in the store, pick it up. It is, dare I say it, a masterpiece. On a scale from one to five in both originality and just plain beautiful music, I give it a seven.

A Genius Explains …

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Browsing slashdot this morning, I came across an article called "A Genius Explains" in The Guardian. Its a pretty inspiring article about a 26 year old autistic savant who is a mathematical genius and can speak seven languages (including one he is creating on his own).

The cool part of this particular story is that the subject of the article is extremely articulate and can explain what goes on in his head as he is doing math problems and the reasons for the routines that he has to go through in order to feel comfortable. In addition, his ability to create a career teaching and writing online courses is amazing.

The article also talks about his friendship with Kim Peek the man who inspired the character of Raymond in the movie "Rain Man". One interesting fact about Peek that I did not know was that he has the ability to read two pages at one time (one with each eye) with a 98% retention rate.

This is a long article, but really worth the read. Its a truly amazing story.

There is apparently a book written on Kim Peek called The Real Rain Man: Kim Peek that I might pick up. It looks facinating.

Some related stories

Steve Vai: Real Illusions Review Section Opened on Vai.com

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The folks at Vai.com have opened a section of the message board dedicated to reviewing the new album, Real Illusions:Reflections.

The album is due out on February 22. Check out the reviews and when your done, click on the Amazon link down to the upper right of the page if you want to order it.

Update: February 20, 2005:
The April 2005 issue of Guitar World Magazine is “The Virtuoso Issue” and has a really good interview with Vai and a lesson on playing “Freak Show Excess” off of the new album. Pick it up if your a Vai fan.

This issue also has a pretty good interview with Zakk Wylde as well.

Site upgraded to WordPress 1.5

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The site has been upgraded to WordPress 1.5. Everything seems to work fine, except the WP-Amazon Plugin.

When I get some time, I might debug it, but until then, I guess I’ll have to do my Amazon links manually.

The upgrade was completely painless. The main thing that slowed me down was keeping my new vendor branch up to date and merging it in with the main codebase. It also took some time to figure out where to put the customizations I’ve done to the site like the FireFox button, and Google Ads. Otherwise, it was a breeze. What a great product!

Some things I really like about the new version, after playing with it or a few minutes:

  • The templating system – not only is Kubrick built in now, causing less customization, but you can switch through themes seamlessly. Absolutely beautiful.
  • The dashboard – All wordpress news and site statistics on one screen. Very cool.
  • The ability to manage “non-blog” pages.
  • New spamming features – I haven’t gotten into these yet, but those online poker people are in for some trouble!

I’m really looking forward to sitting down at some point and going through the details of the codebase. I have a feeling I’m really going to miss the Amazon plugin though, so I hope I can either find time to debug it, or that there is an update coming out soon!

I still have to take some time to integrate the AuthImage plugin into the site. This is one plugin that should have become a part of the overall product.

Update: February 19, 2005

I have gotten the WP-Amazon Plugin to work under WordPress 1.5 with the following changes to wp-admin/wp-amazon.php: 

==================================================
--- wordpress/wp-admin/wp-amazon.php	(revision 36)
+++ wordpress/wp-admin/wp-amazon.php	(working copy)
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 < ?php           
+require('../wp-config.php');
+
 /*
 WP-Amazon Plugin for WordPress 1.2+
 Version 1.2.3 2005.01.25
@@ -66,12 +68,12 @@
 
 $areMagicQuotesOn = get_magic_quotes_gpc();
 
-require_once ('../wp-includes/wp-l10n.php');
+require_once(ABSPATH . '/wp-includes/wp-l10n.php');
 
 $title = 'Insert item from Amazon.com';
 $standalone = 1;
 
-require_once ('admin-header.php');
+require_once (ABSPATH . '/wp-admin/admin-functions.php');
 
 parse_str($_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"]);

I’ll be sending a patch to the author within the next couple of days.

Update – Februrary 20, 2005
The patch I posted yesterday showed the admin menu on the popup window. I have updated the code with the final one, that looks like it did in WP 1.2 without the admin menu. You can also download the patch here.

One note: This patch is based on WP-Amazon version 1.2.3, which you can find at the authors site.

Update – March 23,2005
For those who don’t want to much with the patch, I have put the file full file here for download. Just copy this into your wordpress/wp-admin directory and everything should work fine.

Illinois proposes to raise cigarette tax (again)

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So I’m sitting here this morning, minding my own business as everyone is getting ready to leave and as I get up to go to the garage to have a cigarette (I don’t smoke in the house), I hear a news report that Illinois Governer Blagojevich is proposing yet another tax hike on cigarettes – an additional $.75 a pack charge. There’s a story in the Chicago Sun Times on it as well.

Now, I fully understand that smoking is a disgusting habit and that if you smoke you should quit. I get it. I also get that it is no longer in vogue to be a smoker. However, I’m getting a little tired of constantly being penalized for a choice that is unpopular.

Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t be opposed to it if I got something out of it — and fixing roads and opening schools doesn’t do that for me because I already pay taxes for that. For example, requiring employers to build shelters for us lepers that need to go outside in order to smoke, so that we don’t have to stand in the only area of the property with no wind cover. Maybe we can create smoking shelters like we do for homeless people.

Or maybe we can use the funds to create our own ‘colonies’, so that we are away from the mainstream of society and we do not bother anyone. I’m sure this would reduce the occurances of ear infections, second hand cancer, and the other horrible illnesses that second hand smoke causes that I never suffered from growing up with smoking parents.

The next step of discrimination is on its way, where employers can deny employment based on whether you smoke or not.

Here’s a question. If Ron started a company in which he refused to hire anyone that did not smoke, how quickly do you think he would be dragged into court for discrimination?

This completely irritates me. If I am to be taxed for my behavior, I want the following people taxed as well, just because they bother me:

  • People who still write checks in the grocery line
  • People who still don’t know how to use an ATM
  • People who still don’t get that they have to learn how to use a computer
  • People who drive under the speed limit
  • People who push their views on other people, whether they be views on smoking, religion, or what should be seen on TV or heard in music

If we tax these people, I’ll be ok with the additional cigarette tax. After all, its only fair that people be penalized for ‘bothering’ me if I have to pay for bothering them.

Trac: Integrated SCM and Project Management

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This post is more a reminder to myself than anything else. As I was browsing the wordpress plugin repository I saw they are using version 0.8 of a product called Trac that integrates with Subversion and provides basic project management and defect tracking.

The site says the software does the following:

  • An integrated system for managing software projects
  • An enhanced wiki
  • A flexible web-based issue tracker
  • An interface to the Subversion revision control system

This looks really interesting and I need to remember to check it out. I tried to download it this morning, but it seems the download area of their site is down.

Update: Edgewall.com is not down. For some reason, FireFox was giving me zero reply error. When I went to a Windows machine with IE, I was able to download the software.

Upgrade to WordPress 1.2.2

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I have upgraded the site to WordPress 1.2.2. This also required me to synch up all of the changes I’ve made to the code since I originally installed WordPress 1.2 with Kubrick and finally bring my Subversion repository up to date with the current production code. I’ve not been following my own advice and have been making modifications directly on the web site.

So, I have everything updated, and a development server created that I can change things on and then move the changes to production after I’ve tested. A lot of work, but in the long run definitely worth it.

I think I got everything, however I might have missed a few things. If you run into problems, please email me at ron_at_bieberlabs.com and let me know what the issue is.

The Excitement in the Early Days of the PC

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While browsing around this morning I found a cool article that outlines the history of the ZIP archive format and, more specifically, the guy who created it, Phil Katz.

I’ve posted about this before on previous incarnations of the web site. The “compression wars” are one of the things I remember most about the early days of the PC. It was, for computer geeks, the equivelent of the O.J. trial. Everyone tried to keep up on what was going on, and everyone had an opinion.

Patrick Grote also wrote a great article describing the environment in those days. Patrick, during this time, was actually writing shareware software reviews and had reviewed a program I had written and released as shareware at the time. I still remember how great it felt to get a 9.2 rating out of 10 “for the promise of being better than Norton and following through”. What a great thing for a young kid to read as he’s learning C!

As I was writing this I looked around and found the original (1989) documentation for this program, which might be fun to read. When I can get to it, I’ll post the source code as well. It’s not pretty, but I was just learning.

I had a great time reading Patricks article, as I can remember the excitement in the air when all this stuff was going on. What an exciting time in computer history!

The computer industry is no where near as exciting from a cultural level as it was back then, when you could change the world from your garage.

By the way, I did receive one check for $10.00 for this program, in case anyone was wondering.

Update: The source for QF800 is on ibiblio.org. Working binaries for DOS can also be found there. I realized when I started looking around that I had donated this stuff to the FreeDOS project a while back, though I don’t think they’re using them.

Am I getting the most out of my people?

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Andy Kaufman of the Institute for Leadership Excellence and Development has a great blog entry on his blog on getting the most out of your people.

Some excellent points. I’m currently wrestling with metrics and how they effect productivity in groups. There’s a fine line between measuring the “convenient” rather than the “important”. The former can have really damaging effects on the morale of a team, if nothing else just because it doesn’t make sense.

I read Andy’s site religiously. He obviously spends a lot of time thinking about leadership and takes many things from his own life to illustrate the points he is trying to make.

I spend a lot of time reading business and leadership books. Some of them have a huge effect on me. Some sound nice, but you don’t know whether they will work or not. The nice thing about reading Andy’s stuff is that I have worked for him twice in the past and know he practices what he preaches. He is one of those managers that stick out in my career that I really admire for the productivity he was able to squeeze out of me during the times we worked together. Working with him was definitely the highlight of my career so far.

Give his site a read. You won’t walk away disappointed. You may also want to pick up his book, Navigating the Winds of Change if you get a chance.