Problem is that RSS import didn’t work so that the posts have to be moved by hand and have their dates changed to match the original posting date. Also the links that linked within the blog don’t work anymore, or until I fix them. Plus comments were lost but there weren’t many; I do read them and still remember and since most were messages to me the info is not lost.

That reminds me that tomorrow I’ll be doing more work on prepping next years hydroponic garden. I’ve been tracking this one from day one to make up a list of parts needed, how much they cost, and where I got them.

Anyway sorry about the mess, I hope the new look is an improvement.

I also might be testing out new features so if weird stuff appears and disappears it’s just me farting around with stuff on the back.

I was practicing my Japanese (in other words watching imported TV) and they had a program talking about the Zephyr Corporation in Tokyo who produces a residential class windmill. The program NHK J-TECH was typical Japanese daytime TV, a lot of pro-Japan talk about how innovative Japan is and how they’re revolutionizing the world. A lot of it is true but if there’s one thing Japanese media never misses is a chance to pat itself on the back.

On a side note it’s cool to see Pakkun and Makkun switch boke/tsukkomi roles when speaking English. In English Pakkun is no-longer the foolish foreigner and plays the straight man to Makkun’s foolish foreigner.

Japanese media difference aside it’s very true that this company had made some great strides in wind power generation, all in a device small enough that to fit above your average suburban home (43lbs, 6ft rotor). I know that there are companies doing this in America and they may be just as advanced or more but they certainly aren’t getting their name and product out. And that may be a social comment on the fact that our TV media likes to play reality TV, and dramas where imaginary “straw man” terrorists are constantly trying to blow up the oceans! Perhaps if we spent more time extolling our own virtues and the innovation that comes from within the US we would spend less time watching Cables News that constantly tells us everything is falling apart. I’m sure the local Green energy solar and wind powered startups would like the publicity as well.

I just hope the US can get over itself arguing whether global warming is manmade or not, and realize that regardless of what you believe the answer to that is, green technologies are the future world wide and that if we aren’t the ones innovating and producing the future we’re going to end up importing it from the rest of the world at our own expense.

Enough philosophy, down to brass tacks; I want one of these windmills.

Gizmodo recently had a small article about a concept of wind powered street lights that was kind of cool. But we all know that concepts rearely become the glittery futuristic reality they portray. Meanwhile these turbines exist now and have been on sale for a few years. They advertise them in much the same way, either small residential generation or powering isolated or low draw installations like lighting in parking garages or bus and train stops.

They start generating power in as little as 5MPH wind and will continue generating power upto hurricane force winds. Most commercial windmills shut off and stop as wind passes 50MPH; the Airdolphin uses excess power to electromagnetically brake the propeller once it reaches 1000 rpm and if winds continue up to hurricane gales it will slow itself to 600RPM to avoid damage (I thought they could feather the blades but maybe that’s too complex for a small deployment). They said they used to have problems with the sound generated before so they copied the feathers of an owl by putting a small ridged edge to the blade and it lowered the sound produced by the turbine to less than 60dB, or roughly ambient neighborhood levels.

The power generated is 1.1kW at 27MPH wind and peaks at 4kW at 44MPH wind. So the windmill can offload roughly one quarter of the average power draw of a home; I think they said the 1kWh rate stored enough power to use a 47” LCD flat screen for 5 hours. The average price I could find for one was about $6000, which means you won’t be making back your money very quickly with one of these little guys unless you’re in a windy area. So you’ll have to be happy with the fact that you’re spending the same amount of money, getting the same amount of power, but being only three quarters of the burden your neighbors are.

But these aren’t really mass produced yet either so the price may go down as demand increases. They mentioned selling 200 in the last 4 years to 31 different countries, which is output you’d expect from a company that hasn’t really moved from walk to run yet. However if they catch on and price comes down these would be great to add into a smart grid to for a community or town; Zephyr already markets a turbine specifically for plugging into the US smart power grid.. In wind power alone a community could offload 1/4 of its power from the grid, add in solar and smart devices on the grid and the community could cut out another 1/4 to 1/2 of that.

They also have an add-on data display server that tells you the wind conditions in real time, how much power you’re making, and it can be connected over IP to provide an accessible page that can reports this information anywhere on the net.

I have to admit I love this stuff, we may never have a future with flying cars and extremely dangerous houses on thin stilts like in the Jetsons, but we already have the technology for a much more futuristic world, if only we can get momentum going for mass production. And while I don’t think that we’ll ever in our lifetimes get to the point where we can completely eliminate the traditional power plant but with the distributed onsite power of a million wind and solar generators helping out we can significantly reduce our dependence on those plants so that they are small enough to not have the impact they do now.

Rewind back to 2001 when Ross mentioned the Handspring Treo. At the time I was rocking a Handspring PDA and had just purchased a new Dell laptop; for me at this point the gap that Steve Jobs referenced was already pretty much gone. The laptop gave me limited mobility with computing and for the times I didn’t want to bring my laptop I had the PDA which took my most needed computing abilities wherever I went. In fact when people asked me what it was I always told them it was a computer in my pocket.

Now I’m talking about computing from a productivity standpoint. I had basic web surfing abilities so long as I had WiFi, but my main concerns were for the productivity “apps” I had loaded on the PDA. So surfing youtube while on the bus was not really a concern.

In the present from a productivity standpoint not a lot has changed other than the small gap that existed for me in 2001 is basically closed now. My Smartphone is more capable than before and my netbook is more mobile than before.

This would explain the problems tablets have fitting in. From a productivity standpoint they’re a niche product because the gap they were supposed to fill has closed. They’re remaining use it recreational, so you can watch youtube from you bed or use the web, movies, and games in situations where the smartphone is too small but you don’t want to whip out a laptop.

In which case the iPad is perfectly positioned but won’t have the ubiquity that the iPhone did. And any tablets that follow will either be deemed a non-tablet by the community (full OS convertible for instance), or just a big smartphone.

Marrying your Nintendo DS girlfriend is so 2009. Real geeks marry their Macs.

I’d like to think this is just a spoof but I’ve met people who were so addicted to the Apple that this isn’t really a big of a stretch as it pretends to be.

So Google is adding the ability to virtually walk around a store the same way we can virtually drive down a road with street view. Obviously Google is continuing to push their service out further and further in the face of competing services like Microsoft’s Bing.

I can see some uses for this but considering how grainy some street view images are I don’t think I want to shop virtually. I’d much rather they spent their time cleaning up existing photos, adding more streets to non-major cities and improving their interface to have the photosynth style transition like Microsoft. (And I wish Microsoft would hurry up and add more streets to its street view).

If this becomes an actual feature we have to ask the question:
Is Google Shop Views useful or did Google just jump the shark when it comes to mapping?

Since I drove roughly 1400 miles to see Polysics I should finally write a new review (I have about 6 shows I’ve seen without reviewing). As I mentioned earlier Kayo is leaving so this is as much a farewell tour as anything else. I know that the band will go on but after this show it’s hard to imagine them without her.

First off it was fun finally taking my new car on a road trip. My sister came along but spent most of the trip napping in the passenger seat. The drive was long but fun; driving around LA is a royal pain in the ass seems like people like to sit in the passing or commuter lane and go slower than the already slow moving traffic.

Anyway the show.

It’s funny that for how different things seem they’re really all the same. At the Roxy, the charge $5 for plastic cup half full of bud and call it a deal; I guess all places are rip offs. I thought it was a bit odd that there is a curtain shutting off the stage until a band is ready. I guess its good since it keeps ignorant fans from cheering when a roadie is tuning up a guitar.

There was also reserved seating which I think was more for the late night club crowd that aren’t there for the show, they just always hang out at at the club.

I didn’t catch the first band’s name, Little red riding hood I think?
Too bad because they had great energy, whole group was onfire regardless of how much the crowd was into it. They eventually got the crowd to at least react which is impressive for a first band of the night.
The platinum blond was hot and sexy, although she was a bit over the top at times. Running your hand over your body = sexy; flat out rubbing your pussy with your hands and the mic is too much. Save that part for the guy’s imagination.
The lead guy had good energy as well and they made a good compliment to the music, although his outfit seemed a bit gay (maybe he is or maybe it’s just a really “artistic” outfit.
They really had a good sound that goes down well with what’s popular in music now. It was independent but not in a boring crybaby emo Iron and Wine sort of way. It was very aggressive and upbeat without being top 40 pop music.
I definitely wish they had been more clear saying their name so I could find them online.

The sound guy for the Roxy is perfect, with ear plugs in the music was just the right volume and just the right balance. After years of suffering through the local SLC sound guys this guys seemed like a master of the craft. Kudos.

2nd band was New Kingdom; first thing I noticed about them was everybody had the same big hair. But once the music started I was pleasantly surprised again. They also had an “indie” sound that is very similar to popular non-mainstream music right now.
The best way I could describe them was like a chilled out more indie sounding band heavily influenced by Jameroquai.

After two great bands like this I was starting to feel bad for how sad the local music groups in Utah were. We have a few good bands of kids who are used to playing in their parents garages but nothing really worthy of grabbing out of the area and pushing for nationwide release, and here were two relatively small bands that seriously need to be “discovered”. All I could do was think back to that crummy local band Vile Blue Shades. Kids in LA are spoiled by too much good talent.

But not all was lost, the third band, Sabrosa Purr, sucked. Indie music treads a fine line between genius and madness, you’re either one of the other. Except in this case madness isn’t like some cool intensity, it’s just shitty ear grating music. It was just slow and moody and it’s hard to tell if they were actually playing music or each in some drug induced trance making noise that sounded like music to them.
Fuck this emo shit.

I don’t mean to dwell on the negative and I know some people really like this stuff (the same people that think Pitchfork Media is the gods of reviewing good music). I’m sorry but if you like this you’ve been brainwashed by the shitty indie overlords who want to destroy music. 20 years from now your kids will ask you why you liked a band that faked its talent by playing really slow AC/DC chords and screaming 14 year old poetry into the mic and you’ll have no response other than you were just trying to fit in (It’s so ironic that people try to dislike the popular so much that they’ll let people convince them this is good music.) Screw this pretentious bullshit.

–Re reading this I realized that everybody drumming at the finale was nice but not revolutionary enough to make up for the crap music. Oh, and the chick playing was kind of hot.

Polysics were Polysics; amazing in just about everyway. Many bands seems so cool when you watch a music video, or look like their shows are amazing; then you see an actual show and it’s utter crap. Polysics are just as energetic and out of control on stage as they are in music videos; maybe more so, in the music videos it’s a bunch of cut scenes with makeup and cool down time in between, live it’s just a marathon of music and energy, it wasn’t 2 songs in before Hiro was already covered in sweat from bouncing all over the place belting out lines and guitar riffs.

While I was watching I realized that the band has an almost perfect setup for the music they’re doing. Masashi in the back, relatively emotionless as the drummer anchor. The two girls to either side doing mostly backup vocals, Fumi is a bit more energetic but Kayo with her robot impersonation. And Hiro trapped between them and the audience bouncing around all over the place. The setup is great, it’s not like justa band crammed up on stage, you could setup a camera and every performance would look like it was setup to be a music video.

Only Hiro attempted any English and it was limited at best, considering all Japanese go though a couple years of english I’m sure they have a bit more understanding then they let on but it was still fun watching them try to break down the language barrier. God know how tough it is, I learned myself from the time I spent in Japan trying not to sound like a fool.

Anyway, well worth the time and gas to head down to see the show. If you have a chance to see them make sure you take it. And that’s not counting the 4-6 hours or so that we had to be tourists the next day before we headed back home. 24 hours driving, 4 hour show, 6 hours car camping, all in about 42 hours. Not bad at all.

New CDs Bought at the show:

I also like the relationships between smellements, like the 4th period appetizing transitional being all breads; starting with the basic Br “Bread” and progressing in to the heavier Cb “Cinnabon”.

Click for larger Smellements

Natalie Dee

Lehi Microchip Plant

The automated overhead robots are pretty cool.

Via Engadget.
ST86UMRJXQ95

I’m also having a hard time not seeing him as Picard because i just watched the TNG Star Trek movie reviews on RedLetterMedia.com. If you’re looking to waste some time at work check them out.

RedLetterMedia reviews

Checkout the video starring Infrastructurist’s gorgeous editor.

Most of the stimulus money given out to HSR projects were given to projects that are already quite mature and have most of the pre-planning done so there won’t be time to ramp up development and production in country. This of course means we need to bring in foreign countries to get it going and when jobs are hard to find that raises some heckles.

I liked the version that Click and Clack of Car Talk put out about a year ago when the Auto bailouts were being made. GM and other US auto manufacturers should create new daughter companies that build HSR tech. Partner with overseas HSR companies to bring their tech to our factories.

1. US auto factories are being abandoned and auctioned off production equipment and all.
2. There is currently a lack of HSR factories in the US.
3. GM et all are looking to build new transpiration option that will appeal to the consumers now that oil isn’t dirt cheap.

Is it just me or does this seem like a perfect storm of events to create jobs, save failing companies, and improve US travel infrastructure all at the same time?
Although to covert quick enough we may need to buy non-US and used equipment of overseas until we ramp up local knowledge and production.

However the point I wanted to add was that this is proof of why the US needs to focus on green technologies now. No matter what you believe in global warming the world is going to demand windmills and solar panels in the future. If America doesn’t position itself now as the leader of this tech we will find ourselves buying it from European and Asian companies down the line.

Treehugger had a great post talking about how the green movement often parallels extremist religion in getting its message out. It’s a really interesting take and I agree totally that perhaps the reason that people believing in Global Warming has dropped below 50% is because the people pushing green ideas and conservation do sound like they’re trying to push their cult like beliefs on you.

“You shouldn’t eat that, it’s meat not kosher.”
“Mother Earth God suffered for your sins!”
“Aren’t you ashamed you’re destroying the planet going to hell?”
“Your wasteful consumerismsins will send us all to hell!”

I have to admit, listening to a lot of people who share the same beliefs as me proselytize about how we need to “protect mother earth” is such a turn off I want to join everybody else in denouncing them. One of my favorite bands even has a song about being sick of being preached to by celebrities.

I see this rejection of the green movement all over Utah, ironic since Mormon missionaries are experts at trying to force their beliefs on others. MANY people I know want to destroy the Earth faster just to spite people who preach a green lifestyle. And they’re dismissed because greens think that they must just be a “lunatic fringe.” But I agree with the green movement and at times even I want to spit in the face of people telling me how to think and what to do. Obviously there is a problem in how the message is getting out, not in how poorly people are receiving it.

I think I have a unique line on how to improve the message. Like I said I agree with most all of what the green moment preaches; however my appeal to it is my desire for efficiency in how we collectively impact the world as an organism. I want the same end result as the green movement of zero impact, but I reject the pushy messages same as red America.

Let’s face it Americans don’t like being told what to do. The first problem is saying, “You need to stop wasting resources.” Second problem is we don’t like being forced into having sympathy, “You need to quit using paper bags because logging is destroying the North Western Tree Rat’s ecosystem.”

Most Americans respond with, “I don’t care.” and the worst respond with, “Fine, I hope they die, and I hope they burn in hell!” The solution is to hit people in a softspot that even the most hardened beer swilling, rifle-hunting, red state American feels it; in the wallet.

I’ve always believed that the way to create converts to a green lifestyle is the same way Christmas was stolen from Christianity… Capitalism.*

Me:Us: “You should get a more fuel efficient car. Using less gas means you buy less gas, and that’s more money in your pocket.”
“Turn down your thermostat in winter. Your gas bill will be much smaller.”
“Use CF bulbs and turn them off when not in use. Using less electricity means you pay the electric company less.”

Them: “Doesn’t all that stuff cut down on pollution and lower humanities’ carbon footprint.”

Us: “I think so. But do you really care so long as you have more money for yourself? Think of the lower pollution as icing on the cake.”

Watch people flock to the green movement and an efficient earth friendly lifestyle after that.

*Capitalism is really just another religion, the ATM is the altar and I’ve seen many people pray before it to, “Please have money!”

Question to the religious: How many times have you visited the ATM and now many time have you gone to church in a week?
How much of your day do you dedicate to making money?
How many times have you decided to keep money for yourself when you saw situations where others needed it more?

Well it’s the end of the day and the initial reports of the iPad are out. Many people including me said this would define what a tablet computer is and I still believe that. And like I also mentioned earlier, it’s disappointing because a tablet should be more than this.

It’s just a big iPhone, minus a few features; and other than a larger screen it adds nothing. While many of the “faithful” are trumpeting it, BGR called said that it “changes the course of history”, I think everybody is getting scammed paying for this when other devices do so much more.

Across the tech-o-sphere it seems that people aren’t as enamored over it as they have been with other new apple devices, however the original iPhone was similar. As people get some personal hands on time with this they may fall in love, it just may take 5-6 months to get the ball rolling (after sales begin).

Some gripes and suprises:

-THERE IS STILL NO FLASH. I know Apple doesn’t like flash but being compatible with the internet is a BIG deal. Even if Adobe AIR or Microsoft Silverlight take over you still need to be backward compatible. Not to mention that flash is still ALL over the internet and IF it does get overtaken it won’t be years still it’s phased out.
Major, Major, Oversight.

-NO MULTITASKING
Really!?!

-No USB connectivity or SD card. Not a big deal but at the same time it’s so easy to add you just throw it on for pennies and the additional functionality of the device is boosted far beyond parts costs. This was left off to limit what the device can do and kepp control in Apple’s hands.

-The standalone price is nice but more than a netbook, much more ($700) if you want even 64GB onboard which is standard in the $400 netbook range.

-3G is available but is ANOTHER BILL on top of your iPhone.
This is also unacceptable, the iPhone contract should cover the tablet. Nobody who owns both are going to use both concurrently but they will be charged for both concurrently, a net win for AT&T.

-Its interface is pretty but nothing that any other developer couldn’t have done on other tablets. People say windows or Linux is bad for tablets; people who say this WANT a tablet to be a big smartphone. And even if you think the Desktop OS is bad for tablets it’s not hard for any third party company to skin it with something that has big glossy buttons for people with no eye-hand coordination.

-Making the processor in house is cool. But it also means this thing can be locked down and never hacked or played with by modders. Not a big deal on sales corporate level but it is a big deal with the hardcore user community.

-I can’t believe there is no camera for impromptu video web chats over skype, that idea seemed very “Apple” to me, oh well. I never would have wanted a camera on the back to take pictures, that’s really not the job of a tablet.

-I’m glad it’s compatible with bluetooth keyboards but charging $70 for a Apple keyboard+dock is highway robbery. However Apple peripherals have always been pricey.

-Not really sure what what GPS capabilities are. Haven’t seen anything saying “It has GPS!”.

-Not really sure if it has a mic input anyhwere (the 3.5mm jack may be headphones only). Skype and voice communications or recording of any kind may be impossible either way you cut it.

Compared to my earlier predictions on the 19th I got 77% percent!!!

I went back and numbered my prediction list without changing the predictions. True or false 1-18 the results:
TTTTTFTFTTFTTTTFTT
14 true
4 false
77% accuracy, Nostradamus level!

I only used the first 18 predictions since those apply to release day although 20 and 21 have already come true. Fun game, too bad it’s a work night or I’d turn it into a drinking game.
UPD: the AR comment as well.

Although Microsoft has typically been loath to make major changes to the desktop version of Windows at the expense of compatibility, the software maker appears ready to make a bigger break with its mobile past–a sensible move given its declining share of both the market and developer interest.

Bummer since about 30% of my apps stopped being supported before 2006 but I’ve hung onto them through each upgrade. Luckily they’re all pretty minor. Plus I was contemplating changing OS’s so it’s not like this wasn’t a possibility all along.

However a re-write major enough to break compatibility is a big thing. Possibly major Kernel changes, interface changes, everything you can think of is possible.

Microsoft may be re-writing their phone OS taking into account all their previous history on phones and PDAs and incorporating more recent trends like iPhone OS, webOS, Android, Zune, etc.

Called it!

You have to be kidding me.

Looks like big iPhone.

Big keyboard, takes up half of screen. Getting used to this will be like getting used to 9” netbook… Painful.

My first impression is that the bezel is pretty dang big.
But now you can browse full size webpages instead of smartphone scrolling. And while HD Youtube was mentioned I want to see HD video H.264, and is the tablet missing flash?!?!

Thanks to Engadget. Sorry for adding 300 extra views to your bandwidth.

I’d make fun of it for being yet another pointless “fart app” for the phone, except that it actually seems to be pretty well done. It looks like it’s aging video and not just throwing a Photoshop type filter over a face. The programming to make the aged face overlay the normal face it pretty impressive. Even more impressive if this is done in real time “augmented reality” style (but I don’t think it is).

Second is the fact that this simple iPhone app is already doing a better job than the FBI is for tracking down the worlds most wanted man.
Their app looked more realistic and didn’t resort to splicing together a terrorist with a Spanish Politician who criticized the war on terror.

But I still don’t know about the name. “Hourface” reminds me too much of 1-900-OKFACE.

I’ve posted many times in the past that while I think a lot of cool innovations are out there waiting to be put into practice a lot of other “innovations” are actually far more tedious than they look at first. There are two specific articles I want to counterpoint here both are great but at the same time they point out exactly what I’m talking about with over engineering how we interact with computers in exchange for “Gee-wiz” effects that aren’t actually productive and become overly complicated or relatively useless once the initial gimmick wears off.

First we’ll start off with Gizmodo’s The Tablets of Our Dreams by Wilson Rothman.

The video they made is pretty cool but I agree with one of the commentators that the best tablet was commandments 11-15 that Moses “lost” on the way down Mount Sinai.

Seriously through as much as I like the computers in Avatar and Minority Report they just aren’t practical or simple as computers in real life. This comment from he site sums it up best:

I’ve come to the sudden realization that the ONLY reason to make a see-thru display is so that you can be filmed working on the computer, and still have the your worried expression on your face be visible.

It’s so true. Just adding a little transparency to windows so I can see the desktop image behind is far too distracting except for programs I’m deliberately trying to ignore.

I remember on Avatar one person at a computer station had a 120 degree wraparound screen; and to scroll left or right the whole chair, desk, and screen rotated and the image stayed still. It was so backwards from any logic. It’s like trying to move a car by moving the ground under it rather than moving the car itself. See, my computer comes with little scroll bars on the bottom so I don’t need a motorized chair to look at a panoramic image. That reminds me of something.

The Head: I see you’re lookin’ at my watch.
Liz: What?
The Head: It’s cool, isn’t it? That’s a Japanese pie watch.
Liz: Oh, okay.
The Head: It tells time with those little pie pieces. Each piece is six minutes, so right now it’s… six times four… 5:30? That can’t be right.
Liz: My watch has these little hands that go around and point at numbers.

I could come up with about 20 reasons that chair computer would make sense, keeping spatial awareness while virtually operating a turret on a cool space cruiser in an epic space battle etc. But none of what was on this movie or what would be applicable outside a geeky sci-fi movie. She had the transparent screen too…

Minority report had a tablet as well, an especially pointless one that reproduced sneakernet. I’ve got a better deployment connecting computer to computer in my bedroom, it’s wireless, and even if the network goes down I can use a $5 USB key to move profiles on Pre-crime suspects from one computer to another without spending whatever a glass screen tablet costs.

Iron Man is another great example of our imagination outpacing practicality. Gizmodo uses an awesome clip where a holographic representation of a suit component is displayed and reacts to Tony Putting his and in and reacts if it physically existed. Ultra cool and actually maybe possible someday. However in the movie about 5-6 montage cuts before that he’s looking at a diagram of his destroyed suit (don’t ask how the computer got the 3D representation of a suit destroyed in Afghanistan). To remove the unneeded components he waves his hand in a circle and swipes it to the trash. You can try this at home, drag a lasso around all your icons and hit the delete button.

The computer somehow magically knows what equipment he didn’t want and selects only those components and trashes them, leaving just the components he wants to keep. This is perfect example of impossible technology yet all these futuristic implementations depend on it to work. Minority Report was the same where Tom Cruise could do simple gestures in a general direction and the computer didn’t only know what windows he wanted out of many but it opened it to the specific evidence he needed. Just hold your arm out and twirl your wrist, the computer does all the thinking for you!

Notice any real implementation of technology in that gizmodo clip is as simple as pinch to zoom effects or pointing and dragging an icon from one place to another. And not only did it contribute nothing to displaying information better but it was most likely timed, tested, and practiced before going live to make sure that the right effect would show when Rasheed Wallace was dragged to the middle of the screen. As the newscasters all smile and cheer the effects all tech people watching can do is groan that these newscasters would probably be extremely happy to play with a ball of string or a shiny piece of foil.

Which brings us to Engadget’s editorial by Paul Miller “10 outdated elements of desktop operating systems”. Again it’s a great article with many good points but some major things were overlooked in the tech junkie excitement we all fall prey to from time to time. Let’s run through his 10 outdated elements.

1. Windows Management
This is one I wholeheartedly disagree with, especially now that I have a huge 23” flatscreen with tons of real estate for multiple windows. If you have more than 20” and still run windows in full screen you should seriously get used to moving smaller sized windows around, for one thing web pages are optimized much smaller than you’re getting at 1920×1200.

And this is why I disagree with Paul’s affection for individual screens that you slide from left to right like Web OS. It works great on 4” phone screens but not on desktops. The alternate GUI mentioned later, 10/GUI, works the same way with the same argument. But both are steps back not forward, they make sense if you spend a lot of time looking at a small screen but on large screens individual windows rule.

As I type this I actually have about 4 things going on at once and I can monitor all at once thanks to a window based GUI, not to mention all the cool addons that Win7 added to improve window based interactions.
In fact I haven’t got anything to hide… So here’s a screenshot of right now. It’s a bit more cluttered than normal but it’s late and I start multitasking while blogging, besides with Windows 7 all I have to do is click the bottom right corner to minimize all. Most Desktop OS’s have something similar

No number of multi-touch gestures can make up for only showing one screen at a time when compared to a windowed desktop. And I don’t even twitter, facebook or AIM. Imagine if I could just pack my feed or chats off to the sides instead of having to keep swiping through 7-10 screens just to see a new message.

2. Inappropriate Touch.
Again, I like multi-touch but only in small to moderate quantities. Paul has the same opinion of most everybody that fell head over heels with the iPhone when it came out with multi-touch. When new equipment comes out people fill the comment boards with “Multi-Touch or fail”.

This ignores the fact that pointing at what you want is the simplest, easiest to understand gesture in the animal kingdom. Even chimps can do it. To say that point and click is outdated is foolish. You want to open something reach forward to the icon and tap it, that’s how a mouse works and now that we have touchscreens you can do it with your finger.

But I do like a few additional gestures on top of point-click. Pinch zoom is nice even if scrolling a mouse wheel is not any more work (in fact it’s less). And the two finger scroll swipe on my netbook is a life saver. But it can go too far. Watch the video for 10/GUI, the alternate GUI that is mentioned by Paul at the end of the article. It’s a cool idea and they make a lot of good points, however they take gestures too far.

About half way through if you feel lost or as if you’re back in college and you have to take notes so you can pass the quiz at the end don’t feel bad. By the last 1/4 of the video you realize you’re watching an “inappropriate touch”, any system that requires you to study to use it is not intuitive. I call it the Linux conundrum, I shouldn’t have to consult a book full of gestures to perform simple commands on a computer like sorting through windows. Without watching the video again do you remember the process to “alt-tab” to another window? Was it more complicated than hitting two buttons with your left hand?

3. Lack of integration with browser, websites and webservices
I agree with this one.
I love having a browser that can take me to any tool on the internet but then I need a huge list of bookmarks to get to all of them. Dedicated simple apps for common actions is great. Just don’t overdo it and end up with 10 pages of apps so that you can never find the one you’re looking for.

4. Power management, graphical hardware management
Desktops don’t have this problem. If you think they do you haven’t been learning your computer’s potential or are still using an OS from 2000 or earlier.

Some programs even skin the interface and features for added abilities. Not only can my netbook setup as many custom power profiles as I want but I can use the proprietary software which switches me to low power mode while on battery and high power mode when plugged in automatically. I’ve even seen programs that change your settings depending on your appointment calendar.

Again this is a problem that only people who spend too much time looking at a smartphone screen or typing up blog entries while sitting at the coffee shop experience; desktops themselves don’t have this issue. I myself would easily fit in the top 5% of mobile power users of computer users and I no longer have this problem as Paul describes. Both my phone and netbook can last a whole day with moderate to heavy usage and they charge while I sleep. Ready to be unplugged and run on battery as I leave in the next morning; and as an added bonus they sync and backup their data as I sleep.

5. No unified notification tray
I agree with this too. Each OS should have a standards based tray that notifications and basic info can be sent to. Mix Growl and widgets together, standardized cross platform support and I’m happy.

6. Lack of standardized hardware targets for gaming
I choose games I like, I don’t really care if they make the most of my computer hardware, and I can rad the Minimum requirements on the box to see if the game is too much (it never is). So I don’t really care one way or the other.

7. Cost
Yeah, we all wish Microsoft wasn’t a virtual Monopoly, but all the free alternatives still suck. Besides thanks to deal watching I haven’t spent more than $100 in OS’s since Windows 98. And I’ve done it all legally and running Professional or other Advanced/Ultimate/DataCenter versions.

8. Complexity leading to click abundance
Agree 100% +1 +1 +1
Photoshop and the new MS Office suite piss me off trying to find what I want to do. And it’s always simple stuff, like trying to find the setting so that Word doesn’t double space for this frigging post.

9. Independence from mobile phones
Skype, Google Voice, other VoIP options kind of do this already.
The big hold up here is the fact that nobody I know has VoIP solutions or like most of us are tied to the Cell providers because they run as a consortium making sure competition to their monopoly is un-challenged. I agree with Paul here too but I’m a realist, this will never change, you’ll always have a cell provider ripping you off for either phone service or mobile data service. As Austin Powers said, “Yay Capitalism!”

10. Lack of purpose and excitement
I was excited with Windows 7. It improved just about everything it could.

The Problem that Paul and many others who want something “New and Better” is that:
A – They don’t know what they actually want, they’re just hoping Jobs will tell them. And
B – when it actually comes it will be a whole new learning curve that will contrary to what they know and like.

The second point is the key here. Microsoft did it with Office 2007. We were finally getting used to finding everything with Office 2003 then they changed everything in a relatively small way and now we all have to retake those moronic Computer Basics college classes just to find where they put the Spell and Grammar Check section (seriously, why are so many frequently used settings not on the main toolbar!?!)

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the tech industry is that when you put out a major change that you think will “excite people” they’ll revolt because it’s different than what they’ve learned over so many years, just read the feedback on facebook whenever they make an update.

Now I know that it sounds like I’m just pessimistic about change and innovation and who knows maybe my 30’s will be the start of the grumpy old man phase of my life. In reality I’m really excited with all the technology developed in the last 10 years and the potentials just beyond the near horizon. But as tech geeks lets not get too involved in hoping that our Hollywood techno worlds come true. And definitely don’t fool yourself that Steve will make it come true next week, you’ll only be either disappointed or you’ll end up forcing yourself to believe it’s all that when it aint.

Like the adage we had in the Army, “Remember that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.” in the tech world we need to remember that Hollywood sci-fi tech was designed by a prop artist for the purpose of plot development. It’s in no way tied to reality or practicality. No scientists have researched it, no programmers have beta tested it, and no company in their right mind would try to market it knowing how much it would cost when compared to a desktop and mouse.

The world as we know it runs by one rule, whatever is cheapest and simplest will be what people prefer.

Still I’m excited, cheap touch screens have finally brought us to the point where the keyboard and mouse will finally be joined with direct input into the computer. And while I predict that Jobs won’t revolutionize the computing experience as much as most zealots would like to think, it will still be more cool new toys and ideas to work with. And even if the next year is not one of revolutionary change it will be a great step forward.

I can’t believe I’ve never seen these before, it’s basically an electronic whiteboard. But it’s not like a full touchscreen device, it doesn’t use power to keep it’s image, just to covert and erase. So it uses a watch battery for power that lasts 50,000 erase cycles.

The thickness if 1/8 of a inch and it’s half the size of a piece of paper. Because of the nature of how it works it’s not good for long term notes, any additional pressure will cover your existing notes (don’t put it in a bag). But that’s exactly the same problem of a dry erase board.

At home we have a dry erase board on the side of the fridge that we write what is needed from the grocery store. Then when somebody makes a trip they can add those items to the list then clear the list.

Next to my computers I leave a pad of paper as a quick scratch pad to write registration codes or IP addresses when I’m fixing computers.

Both situations I’d love having a device like this. Replacing 50,000 sheets of paper with a cool electronic gadget is what I’m talking about!

For sale on Amazon: Boogie Board LCD Writing Tablet – USA Version
Thanks to Gizmodo.

Of course the comments are a thinly veiled threat at China and their firewall blocking anything that paints the country in a negative light. China has already reacted, probably because of the stir Google caused earlier, by denouncing Clinton’s statements as damaging to bilateral ties between the country calling it “information imperialism”.

Boy, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Ma defended China’s policies promoting the Web, saying the nation boasted more than 380 million users, 3.6 million Web sites, and 180 million blogs.
“The Chinese Internet is open and China is the country witnessing the most active development of the Internet,” Ma said, adding that China regulated the Web according to law and in keeping with its “national conditions and cultural traditions.”

The mind boggles. Somebody needs to tell them that the number of people using the internet has absolutely no bearing on how much freedom those people have.

It’s amazing that China has effectively been able to rewrite their own history through information control. Most Chinese don’t know the significance of Tiananmen Square, the protests there, or the massacres that occurred in the area in 1989. I remember watching a show where they interviewed students at the China University of Political Science and Law, where the protesters originated from, and showed them the iconic picture of the man standing in front of the tanks the day after the massacres asking them if they recognized it.

None recognized it, and only few knew that it was tied to an important event in China’s history. Most thought it looked like a parade, exhibition, or some celebration.

To think that even with the masses of information the internet makes possible, the Chinese state has been able to keep its citizens from learning recent history. The anonymous man who is seen as a hero for freedom and peace through the world is unknown in his own county.

The second thing that amazes me from a technology standpoint is how much power google has now where their actions and simple refusal to continue to bow to the government of China can put the Chinese and American Governments so much on edge that simple discussions on the freedom of the internet by the US can be damaging to bilateral ties.

Clinton is right, the internet is a new world where people can freely come together. The power of the recent events with China is proof that freedoms in the real world need to be carried over to the virtual world.

I won’t go into it too much, it’s shocking that Apple would integrate a Microsoft product into their market dominator bla bla. I just wanted to point out that I’ve seen alot of positive feedback on Bing recently in addition to my own. They’re quickly catching up to Google in terms of product, then it’s just a matter of drawing customers away. It’s hard, firefox still has less market share than IE when it’s an arguable better product.

Still, even if Apple and Microsoft are able to strike a Bing-on-iPhone deal, Apple may have its own search solution up its sleeve. A source for BusinessWeek said that Apple has a “skunk works” to build its own search, and that a deal for Bing is merely “buying itself time.”

The point is that bing isn’t just a failed attempt, it’s a legitimate product worth checking out, enough that Apple will let it sit on the iPhone until they have another alternative to google.

Almost everybody assumed that iTunes would integrate lala’s 1 full play, then 30 seconds for every replay after that. However:

Lala will play a critical role in Apple’s music future, but not for the reasons cited above. Lala’s licenses with major labels are non-transferable, so they’re not usable for any new iTunes service. The 10 cent song rental model never gained traction and does not cover mobile devices thus is of little value to Apple.

That is an excellent point.

I am was a long time lala user and when the new streaming features came I really wasn’t interested in it. Last.fm handles all my music streaming, and even Pandora has a better service IMHO. Lala is a bit more on demand but I don’t like taking the time to make playlists and usually listen to my own music on shuffle anyway. Last thing I’m going to do is rent songs for 10 cents.

And the fact that the streaming license doesn’t carryover is something I totally overlooked. Of course the big labels would never let their music be streamed free over the net to a mobile device, it’s so obvious now that it was never a possibility.

That just leaves the odd ability for lala to work as a cloud storage for your personal music as a potential benefit to Apple.

When this first came out on lala I was skeptical about the legalities and the privacy concerns for individuals uploading the music. Here’s how it works (or how it worked when they rolled it out).

Everybody doesn’t upload their full collections. There doesn’t need to be 1.5 million copies of “Toxic” by Britney Spears, just one copy that is registered to 1.5 million people. So when you’re uploading your music you’re really only uploading what music isn’t already in the cloud, it makes things easier on lala and is actually quite logical. Much like multicast vs. broadcast it makes use of the design of the internet to make more optimal use of data. Unless the uploaded copy is crap, in which case everybody with good music is forced to make do with bad music because somebody didn’t know how to rip.

All this works great if you listen to top 40 radio. If you’re like me and 20,000 of your 40,000 songs are from overseas and not available in the US, you’ll be uploading a lot of music. Which is how I found out that you can only upload 5000 songs before it quits (hopefully they removed this cap, or else you may only have A-C of your library in the cloud).

Add to this the fact that the lala software didn’t ask me to upload my music, it just assumed and started uploading without my consent. Now we see where my legality suspicions come in.

-First off I’m not sure from their description but they made it should like this pool of uploaded music was where their streaming service pulls from. Thus if I upload a Japanese indie band that is not available anywhere online, lala now has a copy and can stream their music in the radio (in addition to me and others who “upload” their libraries).

-Second, it seemed shady to take peoples music without their knowing. It’s like what got Kazaa shut down but in reverse, automatic sharing.

-Third a lot of people have music on their computer that they didn’t acquire legally. So if I rip my legally purchased copy of “Cosmogenesis” by Obscura, another person with a downloaded copy will be able to listen to my nice legal rip free of charge. Also people who download illegal music will be able to upload it to lala for themselves and others to listen to, thus lala is streaming illegal music.

The first point may not be illegal based of the way music royalties are paid, which contrary to logic or common knowledge is so backwards and double handed that it makes RIAA’s arguments against piracy seem incredibly hypocritical. So long as you pay your royalty to Sound Exchange you can play any music you want no matter what or who the artist is because theoretically the artist should get paid for it (but often doesn’t).

The second and third point may get under peoples skin when it comes to privacy. Basically lala’s cloud storage is creating a giant list of what music you have, and previously was doing this even without your knowledge. If a virus ran without your knowledge and catalogued your system’s files, then uploaded the info to a private business to use for their monetary gain would you approve of the action?

This doesn’t really bother me, but the “Tin Foil Hat” part of me doesn’t want to give that info out to a company. Especially a company that is so desperate to keep its license for streaming that it may make a deal with the record industry to share its database of ownership.

That is that valuable market research data that I don’t like being given away without letting me wet my beak with the money it makes. And imagine if you’re unfortunate enough to be one of those people who are served with a cease and desist or are sued for illegal downloading. A simple subpoena to lala and the record industry has proof that not only were you on a torrent tracker for a new album, but you downloaded it, kept it, and listen to it regularly.

Still, for apple to harness the power of every iPod, iPad, and iTunes connected device into a giant online cloud of accessible music is a massive achievement. This doesn’t just cement its position as a media provider it sets Apple up to be the media hub for the distribution of content to the world.

Considering that advertising while distributing is traditional media’s bread and butter this has to be have content holders shaking in their boots. Or at least they will when they realized that jobs can clinch even more control than he has now.

With the big news just a week or so away I wanted to get all this down and time stamped so I could play “How right was I?” later on.
90% or more = Minority Report Precogs
75% or more = Nostradamus
50% or more = Miss Cleo
25% or more = Nicholas Cage in that stupid movie where he sees 2 minutes into the future.

My Apple iPad predictions:

1. Name, iPad. I predicted this a few months ago based off the Padd Star Trek TNG reference. It’s silly but logical. And maybe true now???

2. 10” screen plus or minus a fraction of an inch.

3. No OLED

4. Thickness of .5 inch or less.

5. WiFi + Bluetooth. WiFi may required for certain web streaming features (to appease service providers)

6. iPhone to iPad Bluetooth tethering so that people don’t need to get a second data plan.

7. Optional 3G slot in case people want data only plan but don’t have iPhone.

8. MicroSD slot for storage expansion.

9. No USB ports. Dock/charger only. Headphone jack of course.

10. No video out. HDMI would have been awesome but “content must be controlled”

11. Front facing camera and mic for internet video calls. Well if a netbook can pull it off why not the iPad?

12. iPhone based OS, possibly identical to phone OS (think of version 4 being updated to handle resolutions larger than the iPhone but otherwise basically the same).

13. iPad will be able to handle HD video, but screen will likely be only capable of 720p (1280×768). 1080p will be shrunk to fit.

14. Main focus of the iPad will be multimedia. Video, music, TV (through appleTV or something, no integrated tuner), games, and e-reader stuff like magazines and newspapers. Major emphasis on video and games, secondary emphasis on e-reader functions.

15. iPad will also have full internet browsing functionality, not just iPhone optimized screens.

16. iPad will have Flash support. This will be a main focus of the device unveiling.

17. App store will allow apps that run on both, but existing apps would obviously need to be updated for larger interface. The store will list iPad compatible apps, so you will have iPhone only, iPad only, and both.

18. Non-iPad apps will run in a small interface, or 1/4 screen or something. With the Os so similar it’d be so easy to do that if Apple doesn’t it will be a missed opertunity.

Future Predictions in the week that follows announcement:

19. Jobs will hype phone to tablet tethering like he invented the idea. Although the reality is because people barely tolerate the plan prices on the iPhone alone and won’t spring for another data plan for a tablet.

20. High DPI (149 DPI by above HD resolution) will cause people to say “It’s the most beautiful screen on a portable device” even though many smartphones do better (mine has a DPI of 285, iPhone has 164).

21. In commercials and press images there will be many pictures of people in bed with their knees up and the iPad on their thighs. This is the only comfortable way to watch movies on a tablet for very long. Otherwise you may as well use a normal screen.

22. Everybody will ignore the elephant in the room that typing on the iPad soft keyboard screen is a bitch and a half. You not only have to set the tablet down on a flat surface, but the glare makes typing hard unless you hover directly over the tablet.

23. Similarly, people who badmouthed cramped keyboards on netbooks will be mum on the fact that two handed “ASDF JKL;” typing is hard as fuck on a touchscreen. But won’t stop touting that apple’s error correction algorithm makes up for it.

24. Apple’s typing error correction algorithm will be great and people will wish normal keyboards had it.

25. People will wail and moan how cool “augmented reality” would have been if the iPad had included a camera on the back.

26. Regardless of anything bad about it it will sell like hotcakes and become the bar upon which all tablets are measured.

27. I will continue to bad mouth the over-hyping of the iPad even though I post way too much on it. Hey, even I realize it will be a game changer, even if I don’t like it

And on that note I’m out (hopefully this is my last post on the damned thing till we actually see it).

Edited to add numbers. Predictions weren’t edited.

Basically he’s saying that the 3.5’ iPhone and 10” iPad define what people want so if any company comes out with something different from the mold they must be idiots.

I may be putting words in his mouth a bit but read it yourself; it’s very much to the tune that anything to different from apple is destined to fail. In other words don’t “Think Different”.

And from a sales perspective he may be right, PMP’s and small computing devices have traditionally sold like crap. A lot of people think this may even be the failing point with the Apple Tablet since so nobody has been able to make that form factor mainstream except maybe the Kindle.

But he makes a lot of the same wrong assumptions that other tech journalists have been making; let’s break a few down.

Small size and small price are coming together.

First off is the general ideal that PMPs are always destined to fail; while this has traditionally been true times are a changn’. Netbooks and smartphones have created a perfect storm for the era of the PMP and mid sized computing devices.

Historically it was very expensive to shrink full computers into sub-laptop sizes; nobody did it with much success other than a few expensive Sony devices. And then you’re stuck with a slow computer that costs more than a laptop. However now people realize that when mobile they don’t need full gaming computer functionality, just the basics of your average office computing and internet surfing. Average processing power and good battery life can now pack more feature than you need into a tablet sized device.

Second people didn’t think they needed advanced capabilities in a portable device. I remember showing my HTC Wizard to friends in 2005 and how I could surf the internet from anywhere in the US without a computer. Their reply was, “Why would I surf the net on such a small screen? All I need my phone to do is make calls and send texts.”
Two full years later the iPhone came out and now the same people rave about how much they can do with it. People want more than SMS in their pocket now.

Usage and interface

I’m not sure exactly what the draw is to small-screen devices like this. With phones and PMPs, the idea is that you operate them like an iPod: in your palm, with your thumb or the index finger of your other hand. Usually there is one point of contact, so UIs are designed around that.

Actually I use mine “Blackberry Style” thumb typing. Since my phone has a slide out keyboard it spends more time in landscape than in one hand stabbing at it with an index finger.

5” and 6” are the PERFECT size for this.

I could kind of do it with my 9” netbook but it was awkward. If you want to type on a 10” device you need to set it on your lap or something.

Optical track nubbins? Stylii? You’ll never break through with that kind of anti-fun going on with your device

I think anti-stylus sentiment is the mark of somebody without much imagination, or more likely just an iPhone junkie. If a stylus is REQUIRED for input it sucks donkey balls. But if it compliments a touch screen interface as a secondary input it’s far superior to a fat finger, much like adding a touch screen interface to a desktop OS is a nice added feature. It’s nice to have the alternative to use a stylus for delicate work, which is needed on small touchscreens no matter how nice the finger interface is. Plus my current phone has double the resolution of the iPhone in a .7” smaller screen, so a stylus allow much greater interaction when drawing or writing. When I quick sketch a diagram in One Note it doesn’t look like a 3 year old’s fingerpainting.

The reason I can play XCOM:UFO defense on my phone is thanks to the stylus. On an iPhone or finger only phone you don’t have the precision for RPG gaming. It also makes complex kanji on my Japanese input possible.

Most people bash WinMo because things like the close button are too small to hit without a stylus. But this isn’t true, you can still fat finger the button and the software estimates the center of pressure, just like capacitive phones. I’ve been thinking of making a video just to put online so that people can see that the difference between capacitive and resistive is minute.

People say putting a full desktop OS on a tablet will cause the same problem but it’s mind numbingly easy to remedy that, even without skinning the phone with a new interface. Just adjust the fonts size and accessibility settings and you can make those icons big enough that any monkey can hit them with their finger.

I agree, Apple WILL define what a tablet is…

…But I think it’s a bad thing. They’re under powering the tablet with a Phone OS. Many including Devin are already setting up Apple for the win by trying to convince people that this is a good thing and that only a 10” Apple iPhone Tablet can truly be defined as a tablet.

Other tablet-like products out there — convertibles, Windows 7 tablets, MIDs, high-end smartphones — either shrunk the desktop OS or added some functionality to a mobile one. So you’ve got a TG02 with a nice big 4″ screen (it’s gorgeous) — is that a tablet because it’s bigger than any other smartphone? No, it runs WinMo. Similarly, is a 6″ MID running XP a tablet? No, because XP and its applications aren’t tablet-friendly; maybe 7 is more so, but it’s still a desktop OS at heart.

Guess what Devin, Apple is likely going to be running iPhone OS on their tablet. So will this be a tablet because it’s bigger than the iPhone? By Devin’s own criteria, no, it’s just an iPhone, albeit a big frickin iPhone (I’m sure to him because it’s a still a tablet because a 10” iPhone is different than a 10” WinMo).

Using a full desktop OS on a 10” screen isn’t hard, many people have done it before in the days when VGA graphics and 13” screens were the standard on the desktop. Most people used XP on screens that had less resolution that many new tablets have. Squeezing that into a tablet isn’t a bad thing, and now that Desktop OS’s are a bit better at scaling to different screen sizes you can easily make icons finger friendly.

However many people are mistakenly thinking that tapping an icon is gong the way of the Dodo and multi-touch swipe gestures are the new thing. This is a load of crap, add too many types of gestures to learn and it’s no longer intuitive. Tap and Double tap make sense, pinch zoom is good, even two finger scrolling makes sense. But when you have “three fingers rotated 1/4 counter-clockwise while swiping up to maximize” you’ve gone too far.

When I say Apple will define the tablet, I mean that literally: it’s going to create definition. It’s actually much the same as with the iPhone: a stagnant device class with lots of potential, weighed down by traditional UI and input elements. Apple comes in like Alexander and cuts the Gordian Knot, defining an entirely different experience that resonates with consumers. Apple didn’t create the smartphone, but smartphones are now defined in terms of the iPhone.

And again I agree but while it excites Devin it saddens me the same way the iPhone’s popularity did.

The phone I had BEFORE the iPhone was released was a more capable device, it literally was a computer that was shrunk down to fit in my pocket. The PDAs I had before that were even more capable, the Dell x51 had a larger screen than an iPhone, double the resolution, a separate 3D graphics acceleration chip. I could telnet into routers through WiFi, stream music and video across my network, play games, surf the net, sniff and hack wireless APs. The only thing it was missing was a 3G mobile phone connection (and GPS but that’s less important).

iPhone came and set a standard but it set the bar low, unlike PDAs which were shrunken computers the iPhone was just a beefed up feature phone. Even now with the app store I’m frustrated with how limited they are in the way of capabilities and the locked down nature of or the OS itself, you can’t customize anything. At least if you don’t like Windows Mobile you can load a thirdparty program that skins it into an interface you like.

With the tablet Apple is looking to do the same. We can fit the full features of a desktop OS in a tablet, my Netbook runs Win7 professional for goodness sake. Why in the name of all that is wonderful would Apple port the already limited iPhone OS into it?! Even adding a few features like Flash, HD video, and a full browser doesn’t make up for it if it can’t be customized into MY device. It will always be what Steve wants to you to use.

“But Dustin! You will have more multitouch gestures to memorize use!”

Meh. I’d give up pinch zoom if it meant I could copy/paste install my own apps, or customize the interface.
Or synch with third party software.
Or interact with open source frameworks.
Or add software that uses hardware on the phone.
Or add software that improves upon the phone’s software…

Old internal links might not work so well, and images may be lost until I can fix them.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to start trying out Microsoft’s bing search at work as the default search field in firefox. I’m starting to like it, enough that I’m converting over my home computer browsers as well. Apparently they’re getting more market share now and while it’s hard to say if most of that is because MS pushes it as the default in their OS I think some of it must be others like me who see some definite advantages over the almighty google.

I like the look a little bit better, I hate to think that it’s just a little background picture that is making such a big difference but the single column of google against all that whitespace is kind of irritating by comparison. It bugs me because I don’t watch TV much and the one Bing commercial I saw made a big deal out of this. The commercial was stupid but it was right.

Same with their tag line, “Make a *decision* with Bing” or whatever it was. I’m a master of finding what I need on google but it usually takes some time to trackdown useful data; like pouring through raw data to find hidden nuggets of useful info. Bing seems to parse what I need a little bit better without being an epic fail like Wolfram Alpha was. I’m not sure if it’s google’s popularity ranking for searches but they seem to bring a lot of the pointless chaff to the surface, when what I’m looking for is the actual data the chaff is based on (sorry if that is a bit confusing, it’s hard to describe).

The layout is a bit nicer with Bing; having a lefthand column again was cluttered at first but indispensable one I was used to it.

The video section plays an excerpt of the video when you hover over it, that’s a nice feature. It’s low quality preview thumbnails but that means it doesn’t take 20 seconds to download a preview. Type in your favorite band and try it out.

I don’t like the image search section as much as google, but mostly because I’m not used to the way they open the image back in the same window. I have to train myself not to middle click images into new windows, very annoying.

Google maps feature beats Bing hands down. And my two most used sections in Google, iGoogle and Google Reader don’t even exist in Bing.

I always liked google because it was a simple search engine but at the time things like Yahoo’s annoying ultra sponsored search was the comparison. Google is always making their search seem more simple but it’s still actually quite complex, all they change is the looks and frankly making your search engine into a giant whitespace is visually irritating to me. And even with the results all you have is a single column of result, the only other column is sponsored ads. Bing is still simple but a bit more visually appealing and the results seem to fit what you’re looking for a bit better.

Which is ironic because Google just started making their searches more location specific and it seems to have made searches worse in my opinion. Another instance of them over thinking a basic job and making it worse, maybe I’ll write a post on that later.

But for general web search, video, and possibly image search I think Bing actually has the better engine. I think people should give it a try for a couple weeks, they might be pleasantly surprised.

The story follows John Hantz and his idea that piques my interest in two different ways.

In fact, Hantz’s operation will bear little resemblance to a traditional farm. Mike Score, who recently left Michigan State’s agricultural extension program to join Hantz Farms as president, has written a business plan that calls for the deployment of the latest in farm technology, from compost-heated greenhouses to hydroponic (water only, no soil) and aeroponic (air only) growing systems designed to maximize productivity in cramped settings.

Did somebody say Hydroponic?
“Ah, now the ball’s in Farnsworth’s court!”

Even before reading this I was thinking of urban hydroponic farms. Here in SLC there is a huge parking lot taking up a full city block that is never used by more than 5-6 cars. They had to tear down a bunch of longstanding and popular bars, venues, and hangouts plus demolishing a hotel to turn it into an unused parking lot that spends all day doing nothing but heating up under the summer sun. With a moderate initial investment the same area could likely feed hundreds with fresh local produce using no more water than what we get in natural rainfall.

There is another quote in the article I’d like to point out:

This is possibly not as crazy as it sounds. Granted, the notion of devoting valuable city land to agriculture would be unfathomable in New York, London, or Tokyo. But Detroit is a special case.

Unfathomable my ass, I actually just watched a TV program from Japan that was touting urban farming in Tokyo as a modern way of making use of land in a country that has little land to spare. They referred to it more as a food factory where everything was grown under lights inside a building that for all intents and purposes from the outside looked like a 4 story factory. The idea of greenhouses in Detroit actually makes more sense, no electricity issues with lighting unless you want to extend the growing season even more than the greenhouses provide.

Detroit makes more sense for urban hydroponics, more land is going to waste and the city is desperate finding ways to make it more productive. Ideally it would be more profitable to fill the land with high density office space; but when what you have is blight, upgrading to clean farming is still a much better option.

However Hantz is a little misguided.

Hantz thinks farming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and — most important of all — stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in.

I agree with everything there but the tourist attraction, this is a farm not Disneyland. Don’t factor tourist income into this investment in any way. But all the other benefits are spot on. Hydroponics requires an initial upfront investment which Hantz is apparently willing to pay in cash. Then it’s just a matter of monitoring the crops, harvesting, and shipping to where they’re needed. The system is incredibly low maintenance, and the land can be tied up in a productive way until the city starts growing again.

There is a second reason this article is interesting to me.

Houses in Detroit are selling for an average of $15,000.

That sounds like a buying opportunity, and in fact Detroit looks pretty good right now to a young artist or entrepreneur who can’t afford anyplace else — but not yet to an investor.

Damn straight $15,000 looks pretty good right now. I was looking at getting a condo downtown here and they wanted $250,000 for a loft! A quarter of a million dollars and you don’t even get a separate bedroom!

Hey, Mr. Hantz! You need a guy to help with your farms? I’ll start tomorrow and using the “first time home buyer” clause of the 401k I can even afford a home TODAY!
I mean Holy Cow, I can’t believe that I could be owning a car and home free and clear right now along with a steady job. All I need is enough money to buy food and utilities, anything else is icing on the cake.

The economy and the world itself are in a serious state of flux right now. That means this is the perfect time to change the status quo when it comes to our infrastructure. There is a possibility for failure but this is also the time when you can get in on the ground floor. And when it comes to investing and development there are two constants.
1. People need food to eat.
2. People need a place to live.

The situation in Detroit create a lack easily accessable #1 and an over abundance (read: cheap) of #2.

While hiking the local mountains a few years ago I looked out into the valley of warehouses and through that all those bright reflective roofs would look better and probably make the building cooler if they had greenery on them.

They I thought it would be even better if they had solar panels the powered the building and sold excess to the surrounding residents. The added benefit would be a cooler building since the entire roof is now shaded so the power draw of running AC during a hot summer afternoon is reduced as well.

But I was just a poor college student and didn’t have the money to invest in a project like that. Solar pays off over long periods of time which means alot of upfront money is needed for a long payout.

Luckily it looks like some other people had the same idea and have a bit more resources to make it a reality.

Most people I know of are the “watched too much 24″ group and fear that Iran will sell nuke to a terrorist who will hide it in their shoe and will use to blow up the Sam’s Club where they shop. So to protect ourselves from this threat we should all carry firearms. Which is funny, their criminal deterrent using the THREAT of civilians having a concealed weapon is the exact same idea that makes the possibility of a country using a nuke in anger almost an impossibility.

Moreover, Iran will most likely “use” any nuclear capability in the same way all other nuclear states have: for prestige (or ego-stoking) and deterrence. Indeed, as strategist and Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling suggests, deterrence is about the only value the weapons might have for Iran. Such devices, he points out, “should be too precious to give away or to sell” and “too precious to ‘waste’ killing people” when they could make other countries “hesitant to consider military action.”

I’ve got kind of an obsession in Nuclear weapons and cold war policies and technologies. And the more you know about nukes and global politics the more you realize that their power is stronger when they’re not used. The controlling factor in our globalized world is interaction with foreign economies; by using a nuke against another country you’d simultaneously bring down the wrath and sanctions of every other country on the planet. Using a nuke against others is suicide for garnering the power anybody developing nukes wants.

The only people that may use them are people with nothing else to lose, like terrorists. Luckily you can’t just buy a nuke in a public square, stick it on a bottle-rocket at the mouth of your afghan cave, and launch it at a target.

The basic idea of how a nuclear weapon works is pretty simple in theory, but nearly impossible to easily create in reality; the Manhattan Project didn’t cost billions of dollars for no reason. North Korea has the third largest military budget in the world and in decades or development they still can’t pull of a working nuke or way to deliver it with any accuracy.

The world would be better without nukes but the reality is they will never go away. Luckily for all the worry they cause, nuclear weapons will never be the biggest threat to your life. Much like terrorism there are millions of of other things that are millions of times more likely to be what gets you in the end. And unlike nuclear weapons most of those things more likely to kill you are things you actually have control of and can avoid.

Maybe instead of worrying about the bomb you should worry about your health and diet, wash you hands before you eat, try not to spew quite as many toxins into the air you breath, and make nice with your neighbors so they don’t feel the need to drop a bomb on you in the first place.

Anyway despite the potential for learning Biosphere 2 was a mis-management boondoggle brought down by the ego of the humans in and running it as much as anything else. Thus it ultimately failed as an experiment. Now it sits derelict waiting to be turned into suburban sprawl.

Check out the Pics and writeup here.

A couple weeks ago I posted what I want my next netbook to be and now it looks like HP is releasing it in the form of the HP mini 2102.

It’s not perfect, although as more detailed specs come out the TM2 (or tmT2) may be the perfect one, but it’s pretty damn close to what I requested.

Gizmodo doesn’t give the screen size but the 110 was a 10 inch and so following the HP numbering scheme the 210 would be the second gen 10 inch. Gizmodo hints at a broadcom video accelerator and the official site stated the 210 HD (possibly the 2102?) having a crystal clear screen, maybe the HD stands for High Definition?

10″ with HD/Video acceleration is the main thing I want although a swivel screen would be nice too. The TM2 has the screen but I haven’t heard anything about video acceleration yet or that could be the one. Also HD video out in the form of HDMI would be nice too but specs are a bit short right now. Maybe as CES goes on more details will surface.

Update: Engadget has some more images of the HP netbooks 210 and 5210.

One is the overuse of the “citation needed”.
I understand the need for accuracy and that’s what that tag is for, however some people go on sprees throwing it at any sentence that doesn’t have a link to an external reference even when the comment itself is speculative. An example is a sentence like, “Some people even think the moon landings were faked by the government “.
Besides the fact this can be proven by reading the idiotic comments on youtube, how about the guy who made the edit? There citation made, no need to get equally unreliable proof linked off the internet.

But what got me riled up this time was how some people feel the need to see inferences and connections where none exist and then spew the nonsense online like having it on wikipedia somehow validates their idiotic ramblings. It’s those same people you see in a coffee shop spouting false pseudo-philosophy to an ignorant wide eyed freshman girl because he just watched “What the Bleep do we know?“. Although in the girl’s defense she’s probably just playing along because she knows the guy is a virgin desperate for attention and will be an easy lay.

Anyway in the entry for Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll left the following references to the field Mathematics:

In chapter 1, “Down the Rabbit-Hole,” in the midst of shrinking, Alice waxes philosophic concerning what final size she will end up as, perhaps “going out altogether, like a candle.”; this pondering reflects the concept of a limit.

Yeah it COULD be a mathematical reference to limits or just a simple comment that she doesn’t want to shrink to death.

In chapter 5, “Advice from a Caterpillar,” the Pigeon asserts that little girls are some kind of serpent, for both little girls and serpents eat eggs. This general concept of abstraction occurs widely in many fields of science; an example in mathematics of employing this reasoning would be in the substitution of variables.

I know that substitution of variables is common in math but it’s more common in real life, even by people (children) who have now idea of the mathematical concept of variables. Just like when how all mathematicians I know apply math to things that don’t warrant it, thus when I meet somebody making making more out of circumstances than there really is I ask, ” By chance are you a mathematician?”

The Cheshire cat fades until it disappears entirely, leaving only its wide grin, suspended in the air, leading Alice to marvel and note that she has seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. Deep abstraction of concepts (non-Euclidean geometry, abstract algebra, the beginnings of mathematical logic…) was taking over mathematics at the time Dodgson was writing. Dodgson’s delineation of the relationship between cat and grin can be taken to represent…

God, please just shut up!

Sometimes somebody slips in a math reference for the nerds out there and sometimes a story is just a story.

By the way did you know that the upcoming Tim Burton “Alice in Wonderland” movie with Johnny Depp is not a remake or an adaptation but a sequel to the books? I didn’t. In them alice is all grown up.

I’ve been playing Foursquare for a few months now. It’s not big enough here to be competitive but it’s fun to play against yourself as an excuse to get out of the basement and away from the computer now and then.

Yesterday when I checked into a restaurant I noticed it had changed me location to Park City and the place to change it was a field not a dropdown. Today I found out why, Foursquare is open to the entire world now.

You enter your location and input any venues that aren’t in the database. Very cool but as of Sunday they still seem to have the very major problem of not being able to separate places with the same name and different locations, like the billions of Starbucks worldwide and in every city.

Again it’s not much fun competing locally since there is always somebody gaming the system but adding asinine locations they always go. Either always logging on at work, or becoming mayor of a bus stop. But among friends or against yourself it’s a fun way to encourage more social behavior so long as your friends all play the same rules and only check in when at “social” destinations like eateries, bars, clubs, and I guess the gym (I first saw the mayor of a gym and thought it was stupid then realized that 50% of the people there are looking to hookup anyway).

Just don’t be one of those people who get a badge for most checkins at the supermarket, is mayor of the home depot, or checks into the main street train station 10 times a week.

Apple announced that it had sold over 3 billion apps in their app store.

Pro-Apple blogs and iPhone fanboys proceeded to download their favorite fart app or lightsaber app and have impromptu iPhone saber duels (also known as an “iPhone circle jerk”). More level-headed people have overlooked the announcement the same way we overlook the fact that McDonalds is always bragging about “billions served”.

Who cares how many have been sold. The hamburgers still taste like shit.

Edit: Thank god I’m not the only one tired of seeing hipsters show off the latest popular app waste of money.

Before I dive into this (I’m lucky today is a slow day) I want to clear up some minor misconceptions:

1. AT&T is NOT talking about removing physical wiring and running everything over wireless or cell networks!!!! (!!Very important misconception!!)
2. This will have no impact on your DSL or cable internet. It is merely moving analog circuit switched POTS lines to the same technology that the internet runs on.
3. POTS is technically already mostly digital from end to end. Only the final mile is converted back to analog. But it’s in a (nearly) lossless conversion and still circuit based, not packetized.

Now some quick definitions:

POTS – Plain old telephone system. Using switched circuits it creates a single end to end connection between two points (usually phones).
PSTN – Public Switched Telephone network. The network that runs the POTS.
LEC – Local Exchange Carrier. Basically your local phone company.
“Final Mile” – This refers to the connection from your neighborhood switch to your individual home. Once you leave the final mile you’re into the LEC’s network of phone connections.
Backbone – The main connections that connect all the neighborhood switches together and link all the LECs themselves together. AT&T and the few other long distance carriers control most of the backbone connections between regional LECs.
VOIP – Voice traffic that is divided into packets and transmitted in the same manner as internet data.

So where are we at?

Basically AT&T is tired of maintaining the POTS network. POTS requires an end to end connection between the two communicating points. In the past human operators connected the physical wires based off the circuit a person was calling (people over 50-60 years old might remember phone numbers that were like “KL425”). Later automatic physical switches made connections based off numeric a phone number. Most recently digital switches use computers to redirect calls based off the number. But even though it’s digitally switched the effect is still creating a single, 64kbps of data sized, end to end circuit.

This is what AT&T wants to change.

Now in the era of internet we don’t use a fixed circuit, the data stream is chopped into packets, each is individually addressed, and then sent on their way. The stream often follows the same path but doesn’t need to. It can arrive through different paths across the backbone, be put back in order and re-assembled at the other end. Any lost packets can just be resent.

Voice can be compressed and sent along the same as internet data in a VOIP connection, but some of the above situations can break VOIP. VOIP is a streaming technology, if a VOIP packet is lost that part of the conversation is lost, unlike loading a webpage you can’t wait for the data to be resent. The VOIP traffic is also compressed, depending how much it’s compressed the quality can drop significantly as parts of the voice stream are eliminated. G.711 basically just digitizes the stream and does almost no compression so the stream is 64kbps. G.723.1 can compress that down as far as 6kbps but call quality loss can be noticeable.

Now some reasons for AT&T’s desire to eliminate POTS become clear.

First is the fact that even through IP and circuit switched voice can run on the same equipment and same cables, they are two completely separate and incompatible networks. They need to go through special converters called DSP’s to be made digital and packetized (or un-packetized), and special systems need to be programmed to re-address for the new network. It’s much easier to consolidate everything into one system to maintain and monitor and adjust.

Second, compression make better use of the backbone bandwidth; instead of using up 64kbps of a fiber line per call you can get away with 16kbps or as little as 6kbps. That means for every one circuit switched call taking up fiber bandwidth you can fit 4 VOIP calls.

But there are some problems too.

Voice can be packetized into an IP network with no problem but it needs high priority to maintain the voice stream since voice needs to be a consistent stream and voice packets can’t arrive out of order or late. Too many dropped packets cause the voice call to stutter, and too much compression distorts the sound (usually sounds “tinny”). VOIP calls have a margin for error of about 200ms before the connection will likely drop.

That old POTS line has also been backwards compatible with equipment made as far back as the 1940s. If you get a simple old phone from before 1990 you’ll probably notice it doesn’t have a power cord. The power was actually provided at the phone company and backed up using massive banks of batteries in its basement. That means in a power outage most old POTS lines and phones will still work, great for emergencies and natural disasters.

Some things require high quality audio for communications, notably modems and fax machines. That squealing sound you hear when a fax or modem connects is 1s and 0s converted into an analog sound and blazing out a thousands of bits per second, usually 56 thousand per second to be exact . When VOIP compresses with the idea that it’s compressing voice data and will eliminate the sounds it doesn’t think the human ear can hear, unfortuenately modems use a much broader frequency range for data. Plus modems and faxes don’t know what to do when a stream of data arrives late or doesn’t arrive at all. A lost VOIP packet can screw up the data stream and cause the modem to disconnect.

So when AT&T talks about eliminating the POTS line we’re talking about some major changes. Not just changing how voice crosses the backbone, or how AT&T does business with other LECs but eliminating modems, faxes, and all those non-VOIP phones.

I know many people won’t mourn any of the above but let me fill you in on some of what I do for a living (for AT&T no less).

I setup and upgrade business class internet connections into AT&T EVPN MPLS cloud. Don’t worry about all the acronyms, simply put we provide connections between the multiple sites of a business. If you work at branch store or office and connect to a corporate site then we connect you together over AT&T’s backbone. Once up and running we literally are the “internet cloud” and transparent to the users. A customer doesn’t see any of our massive network, just a direct line to all their other company sites and connection out to the internet.

My job specifically is configuring the AT&T equipment on the customer site. I don’t physically go there and install it, there’s a separate onsite tech who puts it in and turns it on then my team connects in and configures the equipment.

The problem is that since the equipment isn’t setup just plugging it in and turning it on won’t connect, you need another way in that isn’t dependent on that data connection working. So by using a POTS line and a modem you can connect into a router as if you were physically there. No matter what is wrong (other than the power out) you can get access through the modem from anywhere in the world just by dialing the number (and going through massive passwords and encryption).

In fact the modem is integral to the reliable up-time for the router and is required by AT&T to have in addition to the data line itself. If any emergency or outage happens to the onsite router for the customer; first it should be able to reload and fix itself, but if for some reason it’s erased itself AT&T will see it disconnect, will connect through the modem, reload the configuration, and be back online in minutes. Without the modem we’d need a tech to go onsite, directly connect and fix the issue. Factoring in time to call for a network down, schedule a tech, travel out to the site, and fix the issue, you can be looking at anywhere from 4 hours to 48 hours of down time.

When dealing with government entities and Fortune 500 companies the difference between 10 minutes and half day downtime can millions of dollars in lost production and sales. The difference is having a modem onsite so a tech here in Utah can fix the site remotely.

So it’s pretty ironic that AT&T itself is calling for land line elimination when my AT&T department requires them for service. Obviously a situation of a company being so big the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

The switch from POTS to IP is inevitable

I do think that some day the circuit switched and packet switched networks will be merged. But a lot will need to happen to make that possible:

Everybody needs to replace their phones with VOIP phones, or providers need to put massive conversion facilities in the final mile.
Providers need to find out how to provide local 911 and emergency service when power goes out and the infrastructure is damaged.
Modems and faxes need to be replaced with a similar reliable technology that is compatible with VOIP compressions and missed packets.

Basically what AT&T wants isn’t impossible and it is inevitable. But the switchover would make the Analog to DTV switchover look like nothing. It’s one thing when you’re changing over something recreational like watching TV. POTS landline elimination is a deeply ingrained infrastructure technology that will be a pain to switch over. It’s like saying that we’re not going to use asphalt on our roads anymore, all asphalt roads would need to be changed over to concrete because new cars don’t work on them.

But the technology is there, and once a few issues are resolved it’s much better to make the switch instead of clinging to old technology.

When Google gave away free “Super Phones” to many of their staff the rumor mill went into high gear*. In usually fashion for new Google or Apple rumors or leaks some blogs began posting how we were on the brink of a revolution where the world of phone sales as we knew it was about to be turned on it’s head!!

You see the Google phone was rumored by these blogs and user coments (based on nothing other than their own speculation) that it would be sold at cost to the public without a carrier plan. Thus one phone would run on all networks, you could choose your own carrier and not worry about being locked into a 2 year contract. The price of the unlocked phone would still be competitive with subsidized phones and Google would lose money but would make up for it by having more people online at their sites getting ad revenue and traffic to the Google domain. It was supposed to be the beginning of many people’s dream of full access and integration into the cloud with the new Google phone as the access point.

However like most of these revolutionary rumors it bypasses a lot of basic realities of how non-techies see the world and big business do business among themselves. First off a phone needs a lot of extra crap on it to run on all phone networks crap that costs money and increases the price of the phone. Google would effectively be competing with the networks that were expected to provide service for the phone alienating the very people they’ll be relying on for the phone. And Google was competing with it own android phones already out there but not on a network.

Gizmodo today released a leaked sales page that outlines the reality of how the phone is going to be sold. Simply put, it’s being sold like any other phone by HTC; you can either pay a huge upfront price for the phone unlocked and unsubsidized then choose your carrier and plan. Or buy it on contract for a much reduced, subsidized price; but without the 2 year contract.

The good news is that it’s still a great phone and not just an experimental phone for Google employees. The market could use more good phones and more good ideas.

It’s just not going to be telecommunications revolution most people were misguidedly dreaming of.

* Case in point: Now that the revolutionize the business of smart-phones has been overturned TechCrunch is now rumoring that the phone has automatic backup software based off the sentence, “Charge your phone while streaming music and backing up your data”
Notice that that one line says nothing about automatic anything and that any phone that backs itself up can do so while in a dock to the computer.
This is a prime case of letting speculation get ahead of itself. The phone may automatically back itself up or it may not even come with integrated backup software, but because of a major tech blog’s speculation much of the tech community will assume that it now has automatic backup.

They’re also trying to keep the revolution line open with another article saying that the unlocked Nexus will work on any network. Again this is speculation based of an already sketchy leaked document. The document mentions working with T-mobile, so the hardware will only work with T-Mobile and AT&T but likely not AT&T’s high speed HSDPA network which runs on a different technology from T-Mobiles 3G network. That would relegate the google phone which relies highly on internet access for cloud based services to dial up speeds.

Like I’ve said again and again, don’t let rumors outpace common sense. Right now all we likely have is a nice new HTC Android phone for T-Mobile.

Via Boy genius Report.

Astronomy has been a passing interest of mine since childhood, so it’s always cool to see a simplified version of the dynamics of gravity so it’s a bit easier to wrap your head around.

I like the description of Deimos and Phobos, if man ever makes it out there I think being the first person to throw a baseball into Phobos’ orbit is just as cool as being the first person to land on the moon or a planet.

The Earth has a huge moon for its size and is pretty unique in that regard. All other minor planets have little more than rocks orbiting them. The only other heavenly body with a closer ratio of planet to moon is Pluto which technically isn’t a planet anymore.

Pluto and Charon are so closely matched in size that the center of gravity between them is above the surface of Pluto. Imagine linking hands with somebody twice your weight and then the two of you spinning around. Your hefty friend will orbit the center of gravity in a smaller loop than you will.

Jupiter is sometimes referred to as the “Star that almost was.” Its gravity isn’t quite enough to compress hydrogen enough to begin the process of fusion. Gas Giants between the size of Jupiter and actual stars are referred to as “Brown Dwarfs”, referring to the fact that they don’t have high enough gravity to sustain fusion. If additional mass falls into them they can “ignite” and become stars; this was used as a plot device in 2010: Odyssey Two, where the Monoliths reproduce in Jupiter lowering the density and causing the planet to ignite into a second sun.

Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine are technically retired now, Dick is doing some other projects and is basically taking a year off so his music and influence isn’t gone, just on hiatus or in transition to a new project depending on your interpretation.

However there are still some new CDs coming out in the next few months including the new studio album “Ok Bartender”. Hearing this I ran to his site to pick it up directly and found out they have a great deal going to join his “Super Fan Fun Club”.

I know you’re rolling your eyes hearing the word “fan club” so let me translate it to something you’ll understand.

6 Richard Cheese CDs for $41. Or $6.80 a CD.
(The site looks like it was made in 1997, I’m not sure if that’s fitting RC’s comic mentality or indie nature of the group.)

Now I’ve been meaning to buy his CDs for a long time. I have two at home, but I admit I have his entire works in mp3 form as well. Sorry Richard, but as I stated in a treatise at last.fm once, online downloads are my music preview method. The whole reason I bought 2 CDs in the first place was because I liked what I heard online, now I’m collecting the entire discography as I can find CDs.

Which brings me back to the Super Fun Fan Club. The price for 6 CDs is cheaper than any store you can get them from unless you get them used, and Richard Cheese is too popular to ever be in the used bin. On the rare occurrence you find a used CD is you’ll likely be paying more than $6. They throw in some stickers and stuff too because it’s a “fan club” thing but the CDs that are out will ship ASAP, the new ones are shipped before official release dates.

The main point is $41 for 6 CDs purchased directly from the man himself, to support the band and their endeavors. I know a lot more than just me have their music already but few have taken the extra step to support the band they found the love.

So act now, deal runs out Jan 5th.

PS for those who haven’t heard of Richard Cheese, head over to last.fm, youtube or your favorite preview site and check out a few tracks. The band does covers in a hilarious lounge act style. Kick up your feet with a martini, pretend you’re in the Las Vegas Holiday Inn Lounge, and enjoy the music.

One thing I miss from Japan was the themed restaurants bars shopping centers pachinko parlors love hotels gaming centers.

The weird drinks in the bottom right looks like the strange “cure all” vitamin C drinks they sell there. The commercials claim results similar to taking some Mentats.

via gizmodo

Better than being stuck in line at Best Buy
Originally uploaded by Kerensky97

Time for a twitter “what I’m eating now” style post.

Chicken Pesto Pasta, with Roma tomatoes, fried mushrooms and asiago cheese. $10 at Faustina.
Spend Black Friday doing something fun.

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