After hearing from some friends that they found the color schemer tool useful, I thought I’d post another one that I use a lot, Ethereal. Ethereal is a tool that can record all network traffic coming in or going out of your computer. While I know that the mere thought of sorting through the many, many packets that come through your computer must just fill you with excitement, let me continue to tell you why it is cool.

I mainly use ethereal for two purposes, checking my computer for malicious activity, and debugging in Flash. When creating applications that need to connect to a server in a reasonably complex way (like a socket connection), it is useful to do a sanity check to see what is actually being transmitted to the server.

For instance, when you use the XMLSocket object, anytime you “send” a packet, it is really just inserting a zero byte in the stream. There actually can be multiple sends in what is actually a single packet. There will just be several zeros to delimit the packet. Also, as you start to deal with special characters it is helpful to know how they show up.

Recently I’ve been working on an a personal project where the bytes being sent in the packet end up being as important as the content that is actually being transmitted. If I get a byte off, or if Flash sends a character as UTF-8 when the server needs UTF-16, then I can have some problems. Flash is a fantastic high-level language, in fact my favorite, but when you are interfacing with much lower-level solutions on the server, getting the reality is nice.

My favorite Ethereal features include:

protocol filtering: There is a lot of noise on the network, let Ethereal filter out the ones you know you never need.

Follow TCP Stream: Packets are complex. A single message can be split on multiple packets and when you add in the back and forth communication with the server it can be hard to follow the “conversation. This feature allows you to find one relevant packet and it reconstructs the whole back and forth.

Common Protocols: For the packets that are pretty common for most people, Ethereal goes a step further and breaks down the binary packet and explains what each part of the packet is for. I noticed recently that a version of Ethereal has started detailing Y! Messenger packets. It is clearly reverse engineered though because well… close but no cigar

I’m looking for a word that has the complexity of “schadenfreude” but is about how you might be thankful or grateful for something but at the same time annoyed, angered, or saddened by it at the same time. Anyone have a good word in English or another language?

Anger:

For the fifth or sixth time in our ten year marriage (yes, I am married), Ray and I repeated a ritual. We got up early, printed out some forms and went on a scavenger hunt looking for a notary public to witness our domestic partnership. Its just a form like the many forms before it where we have to meet some awkward definition of what the state or a corporation feels makes a domestic partnership. As always, we confirmed our relationship standing in a UPS store half-awake with a stranger taking our fingerprints. That really isn’t my idea of romance.

On these forms (pdf) there is generally a list where you must meet x requirements. You always have to have the same address and you have to be “in a caring relationship.” The rest of the rules are pretty fluid, but one form the list was so specific we didn’t qualify! The requirements were all about the finances of our relationship. We had to own a car together, own a home together (lease doesn’t count), or have a joint checking. We each happen to own our own car, we rent an apartment, and for organizational purposes we maintain separate accounts. If I can’t show my love for Ray by having a civil marriage, putting him on my MasterCard is a close second, no?

Beyond the absurdity are the limits these affidavits place on our relationship. For straight couples the definition of marriage after the civil registration is largely a matter of mutual consent and personal morality. For us, if we want to get the benefits of togetherness we have to accept certain requirements imposed by corporations.

• Should we invalidate straight marriages when work makes couples live apart temporarily?
• Why isn’t our relationship valid in many cases until we have lived together for certain amounts of time?
• Do straight people have to sign an affidavit about their monogamy when getting health insurance for their spouse?
• Why do we have to maintain common accounts when we can’t file taxes jointly (even when married)?

Thankfulness:

I don’t want to be completely negative about this. I deeply appreciate Yahoo!’s offering full domestic partner benefits at the same level as legal spouses. The process for proof was far easier and a bit more dignified than anywhere I have worked before.

In fact, the three places I have worked in the SF Bay area have offered domestic partner benefits at some level. The most interesting of these was Enluminent/eStudio. At the time I was hired, I believe I was their first gay employee. As one way of sizing up a prospective company, I always ask about partner benefits in my interview. They had either already given it thought or it was such a no-brainer that they immediately decided to cover it. Either way, I am grateful.

I am eternally thankful for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s support for gay marriage last year. It meant a lot to us, but also to my family and friends that evenly briefly we were actually married. The picture at the top of the post is the spot in San Francisco City Hall where we were actually married.

I am also thankful (mostly) for State Domestic Partner laws. It is less than we deserve but more than we had.

After adding a comment to a friend’s blog today about a tool I use a lot, I thought I would share here.

Color Schemer Online is a tool that takes any color and gives 15 derived color complements. You can then lighten or darken the entire scheme and click and swatch to see that color’s complements. This tool is available online for free or you can download WIN/MAC versions for $40.

If you are like me and have just enough design sense to get you into color trouble, this tool is fantastic. My designs often start out by wanting to go in a new direction, and then I pick some overall colors to set the mood. At that point I’m already sunk because I’ve then spent two more days tweaking colors and am still not happy so I just go to gray with maybe one color (can’t go too wrong there). This let’s me get into the ballpark and then find out some good values without the wrangling. The best part is that it comes up with choices I might never have even thought of but add a certain interesting quality to the finished product.

So here’s to less pulled out hair and freedom to go in new directions with the color-sense that god gave my cat.

A big “Thank you!” to the fine people that make NyQuil and DayQuil. For the 5th or 6th time this spring I have a cold or flu. This really bites. I almost never get sick otherwise but I seem to be catching every cold that has gone through the office. I have survived this spring through liberal dosage of both of these medicines.

A couple of amusing things though. Check out Vicks’s website. Is this the NyQuil talking or is there seriously a map of the world AND a dropdown to choose your country BETWEEN TWO COUNTRIES?? The two dots just sitting there is pretty funny. And just why is the Dutch site so much better than ours?

Oh yeah, the Dutch site seems to indicate that they make something that tastes good. I’ve never had a good-tasting Vicks product. Ummm… Have you ever tried the green NyQuil? How about we take a bit of that good-tasting pleasure and trot it on over to America. Looking at the pictures on the site, the pleasure is to the orgasmic level. They clearly have some to share!

I know the Dutch like their drugs and all, but man, somebody was on a major trip when making the dutch version of the site. Clicking random pages I ended up at this page which should really not be visited while partaking of any Vicks product. it is just too strange (and a creepy use of Flash). If you are using Firefox, click here. The site shows a jpg instead of the Flash if you aren’t using IE.

Also, from two versions of the flu ago which coincided with Flash Forward SF, my apologies to the people that I may have run into stepped on, tripped over etc. when fleeing the search engine optimization session. Seeing that there is a decent chance that someone out there is reading the blog, I figured I should offer the apology just in case

Also, a big thanks to our President on the whole flu shot thing. For the first time in probably ten years I didn’t get a flu shot. These were the first three flus I’ve had in that time. I’m sure I’m not alone. I wonder what the actual national loss is due to lost productivity for those that normally would have been healthy this year.

Tonight I am going to be visited by a young co-worker of the tooth fairy who will see my agedness, call me an “old person” and kick my butt out of the twenties and move me into the decrepitude of my third decade. Or so goes the story from several post-30 friends anyways.

Yes, tomorrow I am 30. The number is big and round so of course it has meaning! What that meaning is, I will have to let you know tomorrow.

So what do I do with my last day of my advertising-study-demographically-granted youth? Well, so far I’ve cleaned out my youthful email, awaiting my already old email, I ordered new business cards (Fittingly the Y! business card changed to a bland design. ), I wore my Flash Gordon shirt (my older friends tell me I won’t be moving fast from now on), and I am finishing my plans for my birthday party tomorrow.

Yes, the party is the real point of the post. For the first time in my adult life I am having a real birthday party! I actually like birthdays, and it is a better than average reason for having friends over. If you are in the Bay Area and want to come, be sure to email me!

Also, in celebration of the Messenger Beta release, my old team is going to see Star Wars en masse and they have kindly invited me to go with them! As the Star Wars movies have had the habit of coming out on my birthday, I choose to see the series as a parable for my youth.

For a few years, despite bad acting and my innate curmudgeonness, I have stayed young. From what I have heard about episode III though, my youth may be coming to a halt and I may be going over to the dark side. While the extra powers look cool and exciting, the whole wrinkly emperor thing isn’t as appealing. I guess I will have to watch the epic struggle of my aging play out on the screen (I’m sure that is what all the other patrons are thinking too).

Maybe I too can digitally enhance and revise the inner-yoda of my youth one day. I guess we shall see. Perhaps that will be for episode 40 in 2015.

Last night we received and hung a new painting, Orientation Beta, by Bratsa Bonifacho. Over the years his style has varied quite a bit, but his latest trend has had me captivated. When Ray and I went up to Seattle to see some paintings by Dale Chihuly, I think I spent as much time staring at some of Bonifacho’s paintings from his “Habitat Pixel” series.

The Habitat Pixel series is his view of technology, language, and security. This snippet from the gallery says it better:

Bonifacho’s newest works expand his interest in technological advancements. Habitat Pixel moves forward to deal with the negative side of these advancements, such as threats to personal security, deconstruction of language, or on a large scale the demise of economic systems. In the simplest terms, Bonifacho imitates the effects of computer viruses and worms by scrambling letters and messages in his paintings. His works are heavily textured, and deep with layers of vivid colour.

When technology meets language art and some very bold colors, I’m there! Since seeing his work a year ago, I found that I kept thinking about it. When I got a gallery mailing about an upcoming new exhibit by Bonifacho I was very, very excited. Here are some more paintings by Bonifacho from the exhibit.

Oh! and if you are a Sci Fi Geek and watching the 4400, in season one when they are having a reception for the taken at the rich guy’s planned community, There is a Bonifacho painting hanging in the background.