Red Letter Day

Video games are full of sex

2008-02-16T15:05:00.002-06:00

This game of scrabble that Dave and I played is definitely not appropriate for children.

Among our words, we have sex (porn, porno, spunk, and jo), drugs (meth, high, bar, zin, and laced), and once you give up on the sybaritic life, we have religion (god)

He just plays a normal guy on TV

2008-02-10T16:42:00.000-06:00

Apparently, genial game show host Ben Stein is in reality a complete loon.

Another fallen TV hero. Who'd of thunk it that the wisecracking host of "Win Ben Stein's Money" is actually a right-wing nutcase. I knew he used to write speeches for Richard Nixon, but hey, who hasn't? Next thing you know, we'll learn that Big Bird actually is an ex-con who was put away for pecking kids' eyes out or something.

Obama-mania, catch it!

2008-02-06T10:14:00.000-06:00

100% total full-frontal caucus action

Along with my friends Marc, Matt and about 2215 other Kansas Democrats, I piled into the Douglas County Fairgrounds last night for the Democratic caucus.

The night was spent mostly waiting in line to get into the arena, which was a huge dirt area used for livestock shows and such. I suspected a secret Republican plot; once they got all the Democrats in the arena, they would lock the gate and release the bulls! Luckily, nothing so dramatic happened, just a lot of talking, cheering and running into people we knew. The actual counting and speeches didn't take too long at all, and at the end of the night, the count was about 10-1 Obama over Hillary. It came close to being a complete sweep, but after the first round of counting, a few of the Edwards folks joined the Clinton section, which pusher her over the limit and got her a couple delegates. In the end, my district went 9-2 for Obama, and for the first time in the history of Kansas Presidential politics, my actual vote counted for something! It even made the muddy parking lot and the drive home in a snowstorm worth it.

Link Whore

2008-02-03T17:12:00.000-06:00

Dave and I have a new column in the February issue of The Lawrencian. It's about gay people and computers. Well, specifically about Macs and PCs and gays and straights.

Go read it now.

That is all.

A Cable Conundrum (aka "The Digital Cable TV Primer")

2008-02-03T16:09:00.000-06:00

Do you remember the old days? You could just get any old TV and buy it and once you got home, plug it in, hook the cable up from the wall, and you could enjoy dozens of channels of crap from the comfort of your own living room. Life has definitely changed, and spurred on by my local cable company's recent deletion of one of our favorite channels, I have gotten quite an education in the rapidly changing and incredibly complex new world of television. The key thing is, if you want to watch (and especially, record) the boob tube in 2008 and beyond, it takes some real work.

Like most halfway-tuned-in people, I knew that something vague was happening with TV in 2009, that all over-the-air television was going to change from analog (the system used for the past 60 years) into digital. However, I didn't think this really affected me, and in fact, it does not. I mean, who gets their TV over the air in 2008? Libertarians? Everyone I know either has cable or uses a dish.

We have cable, and so I didn't really care. My understanding was that cable TV wasn't affected by this whole analog-to-digital transition. Sure I eventually wanted a cool flat-panel TV set, but I figured I could wait a few years...it wasn't that important. I was happy with my old-fashioned analog cable.

Side note #1: "Digital TV" and "HDTV" are not the same thing. "Digital" refers to the type of signal that comes in over the antenna or cable line. "High definition" refers to the actual size and resolution of the display. You can have a digital signal without high definition, although the reverse is not true - all high definition TV is going to be digital.

Last month, the cable company dropped the Sci-Fi Channel from the cable lineup, quite rudely, without any warning, and of course, without lowering their rates. After some poking around, I discovered they didn't actually drop it, they simply moved its broadcast to digital-only. Furthermore, the Sci-Fi channel was only the first. In the year ahead, many additional channels were going to digital-only. According to the cable company, analog channels take up a lot of room; eliminating one analog channel allows several digital channels to take its place. Eventually, their goal is to broadcast a very limited selection of analog channels (mostly the big networks) and have everything else digital. Unlike their over-the-air brethren, the cable companies are not required by law to switch from analog to digital; rather they choose to do this of their own accord, mostly to gain increased room on their wires for new digital services.

Older TV sets cannot display digital cable by themselves. They need a special decoder box, rented from the cable company, in order to do this. Existing consumer recording devices fail with digital cable as well. This means any VCR or TiVo can't be used to record digital cable without very complex and clunky work-arounds. If you want to keep your existing TV and watch digital cable, your best bet is simply to rent a box from the cable company (and of course pay them extra for that privilege) and forget about using a VCR or TiVo. Cable companies also have their own mediocre TiVo-like DVRs that they will rent you as well, but they are generally of poor quality and are overpriced. Here, you, the consumer run into one of the most unpleasant realities of the new digital cable world: the freedom you used to enjoy of being able to buy TVs, VCRs, TiVos, tuner cards for computers, and so forth and just have them work, out of the box, without paying for anything other then basic cable service, is over....for now

This really sucks. Being forced to rent equipment from the cable company in order to watch even basic digital cable seems like some anti-competitive retrograde policy right out of the old "you have to rent your phone from Ma Bell" monopoly days from long, long ago. And it is. The good news is that the FCC recognizes this and so do most electronics manufacturers. These two parties are going to eventually force America's cable companies to adopt a common standard where you will eventually be able to once again buy any gadget and just have it work with digital cable without needing to rent equipment. The bad news is that these wonderful days are still a couple years away. In the mean time, if you want to enjoy digital cable, you have to rent equipment from your friendly local cable company.

This is true even if you have a brand-spanking new flat panel HDTV with a digital tuner and everything. That's because the digital tuner in your new TV will pick up over-the-air digital TV (the kind you need an antenna for). Some of these new TVs have what is known as a ClearQAM cable tuner as well, which in theory can be used to watch unencrypted digital cable, but for a variety of technical reasons, not really very well (most digital cable is encrypted by the cable company anyway, and the unencrypted digital cable often changes frequencies without warning, making it difficult to find a particular channel). The workaround for these troubles is, of course, the dreaded set-top box...or, a technology called cable cards.

New TiVos, and any decent new TV will support cable cards. These are essentially miniature set-top boxes, about the size of those PC cards that slide into laptop computers. Like set-top boxes, they let you view all digital cable content and you have to rent them from the cable company, but unlike set top boxes these cards slide into the back of the TV, meaning you have one less box to plug in and one less remote control to keep track of. Modern TiVos also use cable cards, which means that for TiVo addicts such as myself, there is a way to use TiVos with digital and HD cable.

There are a couple down sides to cable cards besides the annoying fact that you still have to rent them from the cable company. Cable cards do not support the "interactive" features (like video on demand) that some people want, and the actual installation of the cards can be very tricky. It's still not as easy as the old days of just plugging in a cable and watching TV. Once a cable card is inserted, you have to contact the cable company to "activate" it, and some cable companies insist on having one of their technicians come out to do the install.

Anyway, given the fact that I hate set-top boxes, yet want to watch digital cable, the cable card is the best we've got for right now, and is going to be the gateway to the triumphant return of Stargate Atlantis to my television set.

"Going to be" is the key phrase; Dave and I are currently in the middle of the relatively complex transition to the digital cable world. We've bought a new TiVo, but our new TV hasn't yet arrived (technically, we do not need a new TV, but if we have to update equipment, might as well make the jump to a flat screen and HD at the same time!). So, I can't tell you if everything will work out (ask me in two weeks). However, I have learned a lot, and hopefully this knowledge will be useful to others.

So, anyway, here's the Readers' Digest guide to making the move to digital cable....

1. First, make sure you even have to make the jump. Contact your cable company and ask their schedule for switching from analog to digital. If you are satisfied with your current TV and your cable company is going to keep broadcasting all their channels you watch in analog, then be happy and don't worry!

2. If they are going to make the switch, decide whether you need or want a cable set-top box or not. If you just watch TV without ever recording anything, or if your recording needs are very light, it probably just make sense to rent a DVR or set-top box from the cable company. You can do this whether you keep your existing TV or decide to buy a new flat panel TV. Honestly, most people probably can stop here. This is the easiest way to go, and is your only real choice if you don't want a new TV.

3. If your cable company is going digital, and you do not want a set-top box, or if you are a serious time-shifter (i.e. TiVo fanatic), then you will need to call the cable company and get cable cards. Cable companies are required by the FCC to provide these to subscribers, although they are allowed to charge for them. You will need a new TV (unless your existing set is a decent flat panel set from the past couple years - most of those already have cable card slots).

4. Turn on "American Idol" and decide that you really don't need TV after all.

Irony

2008-01-23T20:21:00.000-06:00

I just purchased a book called Against the Machine, which is a short book-length essay with a very negative view towards the effect of the Internet on our culture.

Needless to say, I bought the book using Amazon.

Speaking of books, I just finished a very good work of fiction, a book by Dan Simmons called The Terror which is sort of a combination of historic fiction and horror with a touch of the fantastic and mythic. It concerns the lost British Franklin expedition of the 1840s which tried to find the Northwest Passage and ended up getting stuck in the polar ice for years on end. The Terror is amazing in the breadth it covers, everything from British naval life to Inuit (Eskimo) mythology, but at its heart it is a story of survival in brutal conditions and a story of transcendence and redemption in the face of unimaginable horror. It is long (over 700 pages) but is well worth the effort.

Ugh, Hillary

2008-01-08T22:10:00.001-06:00

So Hillary Clinton narrowly won the New Hampshire primary. I just don't know what anyone sees in her. Are there really that many Democrats eager to vote for someone who automatically will enter the general election with a 10 point negative handicap versus anyone the Republicans decide to run against her?

What do people see in Hillary? She just strikes me as a a tired, old politician, the ultimate insider. She represents the worst of pandering, phony pseudo-liberal nanny-like outrage, and stale political ideas. I am sick of Bushes and Clintons. I am eager for the Bush years to be over, and the Clinton years should stay in memory a time of happy nostalgia for a period when the economy was booming, the world was at peace, and the Internet was a new frontier.

We can't have President Obama soon enough!

One laptop, poor child

2007-12-21T17:37:00.000-06:00

Sting will not be able to save the rain forests, and Bono can't do shit for Africa, but nonetheless, idealists, no matter how earnest and annoying they can be, really have made this a better planet upon which to live. I admire the people behind the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, and believe that a program which has as its goal increasing the penetration of inexpensive and easy-to-use networkable computing power to those without access to such things is an unabashedly Good Thing.

Unfortunately, when the rubber hits the road, so to speak, OLPC falls on its face. Continuing the Western tradition of sending its garbage to the Third World, the OLPC can charitably be described as, well, not very good - a grossly underpowered computer with perhaps one of the worst user interfaces ever seen on a device meant to be used by ordinary people. The slowness of the device is not a deal-killer. If the choice is between a computer or no computer, waiting 15 seconds to switch between applications is not a big deal. And on a pure hardware level, the OLPC is an impressive thing for $200 -- with a rugged, water resistant case, wifi, a small but decent color display, innovative landscape and eBook modes, and even a video camera and microphone.

However, all this innovation is destroyed by the UI. There is no way around it. It is horrible - menu-based DOS systems had easier to understand interfaces. Nobody who has ever used a computer will be able to understand the UI, and I would wager that even those who have never touched a PC will be lost. A traditional windowing system was not used for the logical reason that the display was too small. I understand this. However, the alternative would seem to be big, colorful icons that are easily understandable. Instead, though, the main OLPC UI is a confusing collection of tiny abstract shapes, little X's and O's of various colors randomly strewn about across the screen. There's an application launch bar, but it is hidden in the default view. Even once you manage to launch an application, there's no obvious way to control it, no menus, icons, or anything. The OLPC comes with a lot of interesting applications, including various music, web surfing, painting, basic programming, and writing tools, all of which could be useful for children, but each one suffers from the same horrible basic UI that makes any kind of actual use nearly impossible.

Tell me, Dave, which one is the OLPC PC, and which one is Robotron 2084?

The operating system (and UI) are open source, but I do not think this is a problem; after all, Ubuntu Linux is open source and its collaborators have managed to create a beautiful and functional UI. Rather, I think the development of the interface was done ad-hoc, without any real-world testing, by people who operated under completely misguided perceptions of what makes a computer easy or hard to learn. And, because of this, the OLPC initiative now has a huge boat anchor wrapped around it, which will drag this project down, in spite of its innovative hardware and good intentions.

There's nothing that says a semi-charitable computer has to suck. It's a bit more expensive, but ASUS's eee PC addresses all of the OLPC's shortcomings, so it can be done. I think the OLPC folks have solved half the problem - they have designed a good piece of hardware; they just need to swallow their pride, and build a UI for the device that is useable by human beings, and then, perhaps, some of their goals might be within reach.

Update: Dave checks in with a great, detailed review of the OLPC unit.

Andrewlanche

2007-12-18T16:12:00.000-06:00

I got an incoming link by Andrew Sullivan who shares my lukewarm reception of I Am Legend. This is probably the most people who have been by my blog since the olden days, when it was hand-written on papyrus or something.

Some of today's visitors have left some really good comments on the Legend post below, so go read 'em if you haven't already.

Anyway, welcome, and watch out for zombies.

Why can't I just enjoy the damn movie?

2007-12-16T15:15:00.000-06:00

OK, a warning...this post contains massive spoilers for the movie I am Legend. Do not read any further if you do not want to read about events that happen in the movie. I will add some white space and additional warnings in case you are reading this is a news feed.

Spoilers ahead.....go on to the next URL now unless you want to ruin it for yourself....

Last warning.....

OK.

I liked the movie; it was an entertaining hour and a half, but there was so much that just didn't make sense, so many logical inconsistencies that thinking about them came very close to ruining the suspension of disbelief. Here are some really obvious ones...in random order...

1. What is the point of blowing up the bridges off Manhattan? This make little sense as a method for quarantining an airborne virus, especially in such a porous location as Manhattan? If you want to prevent people from leaving, a huge cordon of tanks and soldiers on the bridges would have worked just as well and been easy to reverse (we assume that at this time in the story, the government still thinks it can beat this thing). And what about all the additional ways to get across the rivers? Boats, rafts, even a risky swim?

2. Where are the bodies...or the bones? According to Wil Smith, about 90% of the population is killed outright by the plague. This would result in about 5 million bodies strewn throughout Manhattan. Even if we assume the zombies ate most of the corpses, they couldn't eat the bones, and you would expect human bones to literally litter pretty much all of the island...but in the movie, there is no sign of the former human population of the city.

3. So the zombies...there are so many things wrong with them. First, how do they stay alive? Assuming they ate the dead, maybe that gets them through a year. But three years later, there's nothing alive on the island except Wil Smith and a bunch of wild animals. Given how common the zombies are (their howls echo through the night) what exactly are they eating?

Some other zombie musings....

... Are they intelligent or not? Sometimes they seem to have all the thought capabilities of a rabid animals, just hurling themselves randomly at their prey. Wil Smith himself say they no longer have any signs of humanity. However, throughout the movie they also show signs of significant intelligence, particularly their construction of the baited trap Wil Smith gets ensnared in; they also appear to have control over the zombie dogs, with the leader siccing the dogs on Smith; this same zombie leader appears in several other scenes exhibiting a human level of cunning, hatred and vengeance.

... Physiologically, the zombies make no sense. Even assuming that somehow they are able to sustain their ridiculously overheated physiology's (super sped-up heart rate and respiration) that would kill a human after more then a couple hours, and that they somehow had super-human strength and durability (even the strongest man alive would not be able to rip apart the roof of a building without tearing himself apart at the same time) this massive expenditure of strength and speed (and the extreme metabolism) would require an extraordinary input of calories (there's a reason squirrels, mice, and hummingbirds spend all their time eating)...which takes me back to my earlier point...what are they eating?

...In three years the zombies have not managed to track down Will Smith to his house? Keeping in mind that he would have to run his generators 24/7 to keep the power to the lab (and other things) going, I don't think it would be too hard for even the most dim-witted zombie, out wandering late at night to sense that something tasty might be living in this one house on the whole island that isn't silent as a tomb at night.

OK, I'll stop for now. I still liked the movie. The scenes of Manhattan in all its decaying glory were wonderfully imagined, and made me think of the ruins of Rome or other great civilizations, and I do always enjoy zombie flicks...and that is what the movie was, not a scientific documentary, so please take my critique above with a grain of salt. But still...

Color Decoder Reviewed

2007-12-08T22:43:00.000-06:00

Color Decoder 1.0 by Stray Cat Technology

"Colors" are not just the theme of a mediocre 1980s gang movie starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. We mammals perceive the world in color, including our computer screens. However, a significant portion of the population experience color vision deficiency (popularly and somewhat inaccurately known as "color blindness") where certain shades of color are unable to be properly perceived. Given that this is a fairly common phenomenon, and given how important color is in the Apple user interface, it seems rather surprising that Apple has neglected to handle color vision deficiency in their otherwise thorough Universal Access preferences. Luckily, Stray Cat Technologies has stepped up to fill this gap with their initial software release of Color Decoder.

Color Decoder is a simple application that does one thing - it tells you what color the screen is displaying underneath the mouse pointer. Color Decoder does this one of three ways; via a pop-up bubble the displays the color name, by speaking the color name out loud using Apple's voice technology, or by flashing all pixels on the screen that share that specific color. Any of these three methods of color notification can be used by themselves or combined, so for example you could have the computer speak the color's name and display it's name in a bubble, but skip the flashing, or vice-versa. These preferences are controlled from a small palette on the screen which is the application's entire user interface. Color Decoder's recognition system can be turned off or on entirely via a hot key in case you only need it on occasions. The only other user interface option is the ability to turn on a magnifying glass to see exactly where the mouse pointer is pointing, which can be very useful when trying to find a single colored pixel in a huge image.

In actual use, Color Decoder works exactly as advertised. After launching, the palette opens where you can select your settings (you can hide this window once you have things set up as you wish). I tried out all three of the methods for communicating color in turn. The color name display only is a very minimalist method of showing the color, and is very useful when you have images on the screen where color is important, especially things like charts, graphs and other documents which use color to communicate data. The "flash colors" feature works well on images that are more complex with many colors mixed together such as gradients, weather radar displays and similar items. For most daily use, naming colors, supplemented by flashing colors works well. Magnification is usually not needed, although it is nice when you are looking at very complex images where there may only be a few pixels you need to track down or see (in these cases, the flashing feature is excellent as well).

I wasn't as excited with the speak color name feature, where Color Decoder uses Apple's speech synthesis to actually say the color names out loud. I can see this be very useful to someone with severe vision deficiency, but in actual use, having this feature on resulted in a continuous stuttering stream of half-spoken color names as I moved the mouse around the screen. I think this feature would be much more useful if there was a longer delay between mouse movements and the color being spoken, or even better if you could assign a separate hot key to speak color names on demand without having to leave the feature on all the time.

This minor quibble aside, I found Color Decoder to be a very functional and useful piece of software. Those with color vision deficiency will absolutely want to check this program out, but I would also recommend that anyone who works with color on a regular basis give Color Decoder a test drive. It fills an important hole in Apple's OS and makes using a Mac easier for a large segment of the population, in a clean and elegant way.

Plusses: A great way for those with color vision deficiency to recognize and differentiate colors on the Mac; useful for designers and other users to find all examples of a particular color on a busy screen

Minuses: The spoken color feature could use some polishing

Summary: Color Decoder fills a gaping hole in Apple's otherwise fairly complete Universal Access accessibility preferences and is definitely worth a download for those with color vision deficiency or who work with colors.

Color Decoder by Stray Cat Technology.
Price: $21.95; fully-functional demo version works for 1 week
Requires MacOS 10.5 or higher

iMac 24 inch review

2007-10-21T15:28:00.000-05:00

It certainly has a pretty face, but like it's celebrity brethren, does the new iMac have some brains behind her good looks?

Apple recently introduced their newest revision of the venerable iMac line of MacOS computers. The iMac is Apple's mainstream home desktop computer, designed to cover a wide variety of consumer needs. It truly is the computer for the masses, but how does it stack up? I recently purchased a new 24 inch aluminum iMac and after using it for nearly a month, I believe Apple has definitely scored another winner.

The iMac comes in two screen sizes, 20 inches and 24 inches, the latter being as large as Apple's 23 inch cinema display (remember how big those looked a couple years ago -- now that resolution is available on a relatively inexpensive consumer Mac!). All the iMacs have the same processor, Intel's zippy Core 2 Duo, with the only differentiator being your choice of 2.4 or 2.8 gigahertz speeds. Mine came with the 2.8 chip. Unfortunately, in an effort to shave an extra $50 off the price, Apple still shortchanges the iMacs with RAM, only shipping them with 1 GB standard. Luckily it is cheap, and easy to add additional RAM. You will want to put at least 2 GB if not more (up to a maximum of 4 GB) if you plan to do any more then basic web surfing.

The first thing anyone notices about the iMac is the screen. Controversially, Apple added a glass panel over the LCD itself, resulting in bright eye-popping color, but also introducing a possibly-annoying glare. I haven't noticed any glare myself, but still, perception of glare is a very personal thing, depending on your own eyesight and the lighting in your office or room. I would recommend finding a friend (or traveling to the Apple store) and spending a half hour using the iMac before making your decision. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't provide an option for a matte screen, although I expect eventually there will be third-party "enhancements" (the glass panel comes off easily, although I wouldn't try it at home!) Ironically, my own iMac arrived with a distracting speck of dust caught between the glass and the screen, necessitating a trip to the Apple Store in Kansas City.

So how is the iMac in day to day use? Very fast and very nice. It seems zippier then my "old" 2 ghz Mac Pro, and benchmarking tests bear this out, showing the iMac to be about 20% faster. Web surfing, using email, listening to music in Tunes, and editing photos in iPhoto are extremely fast, and the perception of speed is palpable. I also was very pleased with how fast Parallels ran on the iMac. Watching movies and TV shows on the huge screen, especially sitting back with the included Apple Remote is a pleasure as well. I use an Elgato EyeTV to record live television and combined with the iMac, this gives you a legitimate home entertainment center.

One unique feature of the new iMacs is that they come with a very different Apple keyboard (also available separately) which looks (and types like) the keyboard on the Macbooks. I have found the keyboard to be very pleasant to use, but like with the screen, I recommend trying out yourself first. Of course, if you don't like it, you can plug in any USB keyboard.

Other nice touches in the iMac include a firewire 800 port (new to this generation of iMac, and very useful for adding fast external storage), extra fully-powered USB ports on the keyboard, and built-in Wi-Fi and bluetooth, and of course the video camera, useful for iChat as well as fun with Photobooth.

What is the iMac missing? For a consumer machine, very little. The only obvious oversight by Apple is the continuing omission of a built-in card reader for the most common digital camera memory cards. Attaching an ugly external reader ruins Apple's clean lines, and given the design attention paid elsewhere, seems like an oversight. I also would like at least one USB port tucked away on the side of th iMac rather then the back, to make it easier to quickly attach a removable device. The workaround for this is, of course, a hub, once again, cluttering up the view! I should also note that, other then memory, the iMac has no user-upgradeable parts (most previous iMacs were this way too); if you ever think you might want to upgrade processors or hard drives, go with a Mac Pro.

In summary, despite some minor quibbles, the aluminum iMac is a winner. A powerful, fast consumer Mac that has long legs and will make a great Leopard machine for several years to come. Anyone in the market for a new Mac who doesn't require the portability of a laptop should consider the iMac.

Aluminum iMac
$1200 - $2300 depending on configuration and screen size

Plusses:
- Extremely fast and powerful mainstream desktop Mac
- Gorgeous screen and all-around good looking machine
- lots of built-in extras

Minuses:
- Standard RAM is barely adequate
- No built-in memory card reader

Best for: General consumer and home/family use, students, office use, public-facing areas, consumer-grade digital photography or video editing
Consider a laptop instead if you require portability
Consider a Mac Pro instead if you do commercial-grade video/graphic design work or engineering

(this post cross-posted to the LAUG blog)

Random thoughts after six weeks

2007-10-14T15:56:00.000-05:00

So Metroid for the Wii...not surprisingly, it turned out to be awesome. I am now sitting at 97% item gathering, and with just the final boss to beat. My 6-week odessey to beat this game hasn't been helped by a rather serious case of "wii-itis" which has actually bothered my wrists enough that not only did I have to stop playing for a couple weeks, but I wasn't even able to lift heavy objects without pain.

During September, I purchases a new Aluminum iMac, opting for the 34 inch model with the 2.8 ghz processor. I have upped the RAM to 3 GB, and so far I am very pleased with the system. It is beautiful and very fast; anecdotally, it feels faster then my old 2 ghz Mac Pro (which Dave inherited, after upping it to 4 GB of memory). The only down side of the experience came with the out-of-box: a large piece of dust was stuck between the glass and the screen itself, requiring a trip to the Apple store for them to remove the dust in some kind of clean room procedure.

I can't say enough good things about the newest John Fogerty album. It's his best work in decades and matches up to some of the Creedence stuff. Short, sweet songs that get stuck in your head in a good way. Speaking of music, I am eagerly looking forward to being in Chicago in two weeks for a special two-night Decemberists show; they are playing two shows over two nights, one consisting of long epic songs and the other of their short, poppy tunes. I feel smarter and more pretentious just thinking about it.

I almost never talk about sports here, which is just as well, but I am actually somewhat of a fan of the manly art of college football. I also grew up in Omaha, which has cused me with being a fan of the deteriorating Nebraska football team. Luckily, I escaped Nebraska and am now in Lawrence, where new football powerhouse Kansas is playing. Every computer user knows the importance of a good backup, right?

So one thing you may have noticed is that I do not write as much here when I get very busy or life sucks more then usual, and the past month has seen a lot of suckiness. Most immediately, our dog Tova has been very, very sick, with nasty bowel-related ailments that are not easily diagnosable, albeit similar to another mysterious monthlong illness she suffered back in June. She is currently on steroids which have brough her bowels under control but have their own bad side-effects, most notably they have made her morose and sluggish as well as causing her to urinate like a puppy (frequently and often in the house). Having a very sick dog is awful, emotionally draining, expensive, and depressing. Tova isn't a kid, but she's the closest we'll ever come, and it sucks all around.

Speaking of dogs, our two neighbors, each two houses down on either side have perfectly healthy dogs, and I know this because they leave them outside, unattended all day long (and all night long sometimes) where they bark and bark and bark. We've called the cops, which has been worthless. The next step, as we have been advised by Animal Control, is to log every time when the animals are barking, then after a while, they can be issued a ticket and the log can be used as evidence. I've never understood why someone would get a pet dog and then keep it outside...people who keeps animals outside in a city aren't pet owners, they are farmers, and the animals aren't pets, they are livestock!

Metroid for the Wii: First Impressions

2007-08-29T21:30:00.000-05:00

After two hours of play...

...too linear, actually, completely linear. Wonder if I will get to explore?
...too easy, what other Metroid game gives you the grapple beam, missiles, and two energy tanks in the first half-hour?
...still has the annoying bug where you can't scan enemies unless you want to sit still and get blasted while you do it
...exhausting; after two hours, my right wrist feels like I have been lifting weights...the requirement that you have to turn by pointing the wiimote at the screen may be intuitive, but it is exhausting. I'd rather let the c-stick turn me and use the wiimote for strafing rather the the reverse
...too damn social; the joy of previous Metroid games was the sense of solitude. In this game I feel like I am in the damn Army.

I hope that there's some good open-ended planet wilderness exploration coming, and I get used to the (so far gimmicky) control system. It would be ironic if the game I have looked forward to ever since I got a Wii turns out to not even come close to the "real" Metroid experience.

Gmailman

2007-08-22T14:09:00.000-05:00

So for the past month, I have been trying an experiment of using Gmail exclusively for my email. I still receive messages sent to my mac.com and mikesilverman.com email addresses, but those mailboxes are accessed via Gmail. There are several advantages to using Gmail and a few disadvantages, but so far I am liking it and plan to keep the experiment going for a while longer. Ironically, the longer I use it, the worse Gmail's one huge disadvantage becomes (see below).

So what are the main "cool things" about Gmail?

1. Instant email access everywhere. I can instantly get to my email, both to read and reply, from almost anywhere; home, work, my cell phone, public computers, any place with an internet connection. No more do I have to Timbuktu home to check personal email, or have to check several different web sites to view email. It's all in one place. For the Macs I regularly use, I have downloaded Gmail notifier, which will alert me whenever a message arrives. Actually using Gmail is pretty good. It is still a web browser, but is flexible and interactive enough for most tasks that I have not really noticed the shortcomings of the web application versus a traditional email client, yet.

2. Conversations and tagging. Both of these are unique to Gmail and both take getting used to. Each helps tame the massive mess that emails can turn into. Conversations essentially collapses all emails in a single subject into one "line" in your email box. For example, a messy four-way conversation, sprawled out over a week between my friends and I about getting together for a concert shows up as a neat single line in Gmail, and when I read it, the entire conversations expands to show who said what when. It is essentially threading done very well. Tagging is another way Gmail lets you organize things; it works like folders in traditional email, but you can assign multiple tags to a message, so essentially you can place messages in multiple "folders" at once. It does take time to get used to Gmails non-use of traditional folders as a method of filing. To effectively use Gmail, you need to tag all messages you plan to keep (this can be automated) then "archive" them. AFter this becomes second nature, it really works well.

3. Effective spam filtering. Perhaps because of the huge corpus of spam Gmail users get and mark, Gmail's spam catching seems very effective, catching about 99% of all my spam. I get about 400 messages a day of spam, so that means 4 will get through per day on average, which is not bad, although like most automated systems, Gmail sometimes allows incredibly obvious spam messages to get through.

There are a few weaknesses in Gmail that you might want to keep in mind if you want to follow my experiment and try it yourself. Obviously, you have to trust Google to store your personal email. I am not to worried about this; any more then I worry about online banking or online shopping, but if it bothers you, then Gmail is probably not for you. There's also the targeted ads that show up when you read mail. Perhaps I am so jaded and used to advertising that I don't even notice.

As far as functional weaknesses, there are two major ones I have found. The first is that Gmail is a one-way process. You can import old mail into Gmail, but there is almost no way to effectively export mail out of Gmail back to your desktop (beyond kludges like forwarding all the mail to an external account). I like having a local backup of all my mail. The only way around this I have found is to turn on Gmail's own POP and use a local mail client to suck down all of your Gmail messages periodically. This sucks because it doesn't preserve any of your Gmail organization such as sent items, labels, and so forth. Gmail needs to provide an easy way to download all mail via a simple export command.

The second functional weakness is filters. Gmail allows for basic filtering to be set up, but it is rudimentary at best, allowing filtering based on only a couple criteria. You cannot build compound filters, or any kind of routing beyond the basic "if it came from Mom, label it family" kind of thing. This itself is probably a deal-killer for anyone who uses email in a hard-core, super-organized way, as opposed to people like me, who use email for basic correspondence. Gmail really needs to make filtering better, allowing the user to filter based on any header, and string filters together to make more complex recipes. Gmail should also allow the tagging and filtering of outbound mail.

In spite of these problems, I am liking Gmail for the light use that is my email, and I will keep using it at least in the foreseeable future. I just hope they continue to make improvements in the product and don't just rest on their laurels.

Registration nation

2007-08-01T14:05:00.000-05:00

Dave and I went to City Hall today to register for the domestic partnership. It was quite easy, just filling out a form online and paying $75.00 to the city via PayPal. It almost felt like buying something on eBay! The actual legal aspect of the registry wasn't the highlight today, rather it was the amazing atmosphere at City Hall. It was like a wonderful party...you know those videos of City Hall in San Francisco three years ago when their mayor started marrying same-sex couples, just the amount of joy and support and happiness in the room...that is what it was like here in Lawrence this morning, kind of a tiny bubble of San Francisco transferred to Kansas. The crowd cheered after each couple finished registering (there were computers set up there by the Kansas Equality Coalition for this purpose), and there were lots of cameras and media folks around taking pictures and interviewing people, as well as dozens of supporters mingling about in the Commission chambers. Among the supporters were two of our elected officials, Senator Marci Francisco, who brought heart-shaped candy tins to hand out to all the couples who registered, and Mayor Sue Hack, who talked wonderfully about how this made Lawrence a better place. Dave even got to do some impromptu tech support when the browser on one of the computers kept messing up! There's a ton of emotion and it was really a wonderful event. No matter what the future holds, Lawrence made Kansas history today and it was awesome to be a part of it.

Thanks to the City Commission, the City of Lawrence, Kansas Equality Coalition and so many other folks who made today happen. Stay tune to Diane Silver's blog, which promises to have a bunch of pictures and more coverage of today's festivities. And if you are reading this on Wednesday afternoon, check out the front page of the online Journal-World for a nice shot of the back of my head.

A lot of nothing means something

2007-07-31T15:34:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, the City of Lawrence will become the first public body in the state of Kansas to register domestic partnerships. The registry is notable for what it doesn't do -- much of anything. It provides no new rights or protections for couples, and to add insult to injury, the cost for registering is $75 - which is $25 more then the state charges for a marriage license (although domestic partners will get nice laminated wallet cards!). At best, the registry will provide folks proof of their relationship so that they can qualify for health insurance at some employers. This will obviously help people needing insurance, and will make for a more business-friendly environment in Lawrence and attract higher-paying jobs and smart people, which is good for all of us.

Still, please do not think I am complaining about the price or lack of concrete benefits! On the contrary, this registry is the most significant step forward in civil rights in Kansas in over 10 years, and is an important symbolic statement that Lawrence is different from the rest of Kansas. We are the city that voted overwhelmingly against the anti-gay marriage amendment two years ago, after all. The fact that this passed here in Lawrence means a lot, and whatever the future of the registry, the fact is, the City of Lawrence stood up for what is right. 130 years ago, they got burned down by Confederate terrorists for doing the same thing. At least we don't have to worry about that any more!

Dave and I will be at City Hall at 10 AM tomorrow. We might even be in the Kansas City Star (a photographer came by to take our picture today). So, stay tuned and I will blog tomorrow after the event.

UPDATE: The Kansas City Star story is online now.

It must be the invisible donut waves

2007-07-25T16:50:00.000-05:00

Second-hand obesity exists, at least according to this idiotic study. I'm sure it will be followed up by a study showing that Jewish people tend to have Jewish families, and black people are often friends with other black people.

Out of service

2007-07-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

A good public transportation systems can be a thing of beauty. When I have travelled to cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, it has always been great not to need a car, and to realize that pretty much any hour of the day or quite late into the evening, I can pretty much get anywhere in the city by hopping a bus or train, for a couple of bucks. At worst, maybe you have to wait 15 minutes or transfer somewhere, but it is very nice to basically be able to go anywhere you want at any time without needing too much planning.

Lawrence, the smallish college town where I live has a fledgling public transportation system. It suffers from some problems, notably that busses run only every half-hour and the system shuts down early in the evening. One of the major obstacles to growing the public transportation system is that it is just under the threshold of being useful the way systems in larger cities are -- the routes and times are infrequent and scattered enough that you really need to plan in advance your whole trip and time things; you can just walk a few blocks and hop the next bus that comes by. All of this is why it is sad to see that the city government of Lawrence essentially voted last night to kill the bus system in Lawrence for good, but cutting its hours so it stops running at 6:00 PM. This will make the system useless for anyone who used it to get to and from work. Ridership will decline further, and the system will lose more money.

The city should either increase the bus system by running more routes at longer times, in order to make it something that people can rely on and actually use, or they should be honest and shut it down entirely, because a vestigial, weak, worthless bus system is actually more harmful then none at all.

Ironically, two obvious solutions to Lawrence's transit problems are off the table. First would be a small increase in property taxes; amounting to about $50 per year for the average $300,000 house. That would cover bus improvements and a lot of other city budget problems we're having. The other solution would be a merger of the city system with the university's bus system, which would benefit everyone, but the university and city have gotten into a pissing contest and this probably won't happen either.

Oh well.

No strikes and you're out

2007-07-20T15:00:00.000-05:00

I feel sorry for KU students, who now have to deal with a draconian regime for alleged copyright violations.

Basically, if the university thinks you are downloading copyrighted materials, then you lose your KU computer privileges forever.
No warning, no chance to plead your case, no avenue for appeal. And who knows what is the standard of "proof" that KU will accept. Hopefully they will require more then an anonymous letter from the RIAA!

I am not going to defend university students using public resources (i.e. the university network) to download material illegally, but is it too much to ask that there be a burden of proof for KU before shutting off what is an essential academic resource, and allow for some type of appeal process?

Funniest thing I have read in weeks

2007-07-20T10:44:00.001-05:00

I am usually not that excited by Slate, but sometimes, they surprise, like with this laugh-out-loud piece on questions that really need to be asked at the next Presidential debate. Take 5 minutes and prepare to laugh.

Barely better then child molesters

2007-07-18T10:45:00.000-05:00

Michael Vick indicted for dog fighting.

If he is guilty, I hope he gets locked up for a long time. People involved in dog fighting are just a degree better then child molesters....and that only barely. If guilty (and it sure looks like he is), Vick deserves a very long stretch in jail.

You always hear about celebrities and athletes who can't handle the limelight and are victimized (or self-victimize) with drugs, adultery, and so forth. As bad as any of those are, they are personal, human failings, and for those, there is always rehab. Vick is much worse; he is a violent felon who apparently relished killing animals. He has forfeited his right to live in a civilized society, forever.

Two months later: Toyota Camry experiences

2007-07-11T14:01:00.000-05:00

So you may remember that a couple months ago I got a new (well new to me) 2007 Camry (the 4 cylinder SE model), and in the past couple months I have put a few thousand miles on it, both in the city and one long driving trip, and have definitely formed a few impressions of the car. The early verdict is mostly good, and a definite improvement over my old car, but it is not perfect either and has some flaws.

So, really briefly...

The good:

Style: I do not get tired of looking at the thing. It is stylish enough to stay interesting but not outrageous enough to get tired quickly, the way I did of the ridges on my old Grand Am.

Handling: The car handles well. The steering feels really tight, and I feel very in control of the road when I drive. Recently when I was in the Ozarks region I traveled on an incredibly twisty county road for a few miles and the car proved its mettle here. It doesn't feel like a boring sedan.

Suspension: Well-tuned...you can feel the road and you are not isolated, but at the same time it doesn't jar you to pieces like an economy car.

Interior storage: Lots of it. Compared to the single storage area in my Grand Am, it feels like I have moved into a larger house or something; there are numerous storage areas as well as two cup holders. And extra credit for Toyota's ability to put lids on everything, which will keep things like the cup and coin holders from turning into grimy messes as the years wear on.

"Solidity": Not sure how to qualify this, but the car just feels very mature and solid, almost dignified, at least in comparison to what I have driven before. I have no idea if this will be ephemeral or not, but for now that is my impression.

Built-in aux. audio input: Why this isn't standard on every car built, I do not know.

The neutral:

Power: It's a four-cylinder so I am not expecting the acceleration of my old Grand Am, but generally, the car has been OK but not spectacular here. I feel I have plenty of power for most tasks, but sometimes I miss the old power when trying to accelerate up a hill. Still, nothing to really complain about.

Mileage: It has been good. About 30+ on the highway and 25 or so in the city. About spec. The big (18 gallon) tank is nice, as I can drive it forever between fillups.

Air conditioning: The AC seems a bit weaker then I would expect, but not enough to really be a negative. My car has black cloth seats, which probably make it work harder then it has to.

The bad:

Cruise control: The cruise control is very fussy, constantly downshifting and upshifting to try to maintain the exact speed on even the tiniest hills. I think this may have something to do with the drive-by-wire throttle system, as it is entirely computer controlled and way too fussy about keeping the exact speed, causing all the shifting around rather then smoothly anticipating change like a human driver or an analog system with some "give" to it would do.

Transmission: This is the Camry's one real flaw: the Camry automatic transmission simply sucks. There's no way around it. 95% of the time it works normally, but those other 5% of the time annoy a conscientious driver. The tranny is computer-controlled and sometimes it just shifts in bizarre ways, especially when going down hills, or when you gradually reduce throttle as you start to coast or use engine braking. When this happens you may get unexpected shifting and at its worst it feels like you are a passenger in a car being driven by someone learning to drive a stick for the first time. At least that is my impression -- Dave drove it and didn't feel a thing, so this may be more of a perception issue for drivers who are in tune with the mechanical feel of a car.

Overall:

A very good car. It looks decent, it drives decent, it is comfortable, and can occasionally even be exciting. I don't know if I would call it a car of the year like Motor Trend magazine, but it is clearly a solid car.

Like lipstick on a pig

2007-07-10T14:31:00.000-05:00

The other day, I put all of the iPhone's ringtones on my own crappy cell phone.

Didn't turn it into an iPhone.

Damn.

The long month

2007-07-09T16:03:00.000-05:00

Sunset over the Lake of the Ozarks

June was a long, hard month, filled with a combintation of difficult events, including the passing of my grandmother and Tova suffering an bout of severe illness that required extended hospitalization. Add to that the fact that I spent over a week during the month traveling on business and it seems like there was almost no time to catch my breath or do much of anything.

Still, June is finally over, and July, at least, has started off well. Tova is healthy again, and Dave and I just got back from a relaxing week with the family in the Lake of the Ozarks, where I got to spend quality time with my family and my niece and nephew. My father bought a new toy for the family, which we thoroughly enjoyed too!

Anyway, I am back in Lawrence now, and hopefully I may even start posting regularly again.