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Just one more thing…

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

As long as we’re talking about Lawrence’s review of General Idi Amin Dada, I have a question that’s bugging me, and I know I have some aviation buffs in my audience.

What are these planes? I apologize for the pictures: they are actually screen snapshots from the DVD, and I tried to get ones that showed the best possible angles. Click to embiggen.

vlcsnap-2013-05-15-17h01m58s204

vlcsnap-2013-05-15-17h03m36s240

vlcsnap-2013-05-15-17h07m18s150

Lawrence suggested they might be MiGs, and I know the Ugandan Air Force had MiG-15s and MiG-17s. But both the 15 and 17 have a really blunt open nose, while these planes have a more rounded one. I don’t think these are Fouga Magisters either, because they lack the V-tail. I believe these are some sort of two seat jet trainer, and they may be French. But I can’t tell, and it really bugs me that I can’t figure it out. Maybe if I’m lucky Tam will see this. For some reason, I’ve also got in my head that the good and great Brian Dunbar knows his planes. And, of course, there’s RoadRich…

Okay. I lied. One more “one more thing”, just because this amuses me, and I’m pretty sure it amused Lawrence as well.

The Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band

(Okay, one last thing. It irritates the fire out of me that Apple disabled screen captures from DVD Player in the Grab utility. And they don’t just throw up a “You can’t do this” popup: Grab lets you do the capture, but the resulting file is just a checkerboard grey and white pattern. Fortunately, VLC will a) playback DVDs, and b) even has a built-in “Snapshot” menu option. Hurray open source.)

Posted in Apple, Lazyweb, Movies, Planes | 3 Comments »

Night thoughts.

Saturday, March 23rd, 2013

Some folks may have noticed that I haven’t been doing as much bread blogging recently. That’s because I haven’t been baking as much bread; I’ve been a little tied up with some family things. Nothing serious, nothing health related, and things are winding down. But it has distracted me a little from the bread machine. I’m going to try to do another one of Laurence Simon’s recipes this week, but I’m not sure which one.

In other news, I’m trying to get back on my bike. I have a Trek 7500 that I bought several years ago, and which sat idle pretty much the entire time I was going to St. Ed’s. I took it in last week and had it cleaned, lubed, and tuned; now I just have a series of petty annoyances I’m working my way through. (I couldn’t find my water bottles, so I bought replacements. You can’t have too many water bottles, anyway. Then I couldn’t find my bike shoes: I can ride the Trek in my normal sort of half-boot half-sneaker shoes, but it isn’t as efficient. REI had some Shimano SH-MT33L shoes on the clearance rack at an incredibly low price, so I grabbed a pair of those.)

(Side note: I bought my bike at Freewheeling Bicycles. Why? Lawrence bought his there. I’m happy I followed his lead. The total bill to get my bike out of hock last week was about $104. That price included $8 for a rear tube, and another $45 for a rear bike rack. I want to start making grocery store trips on the bike, rather than the car, so I bought the rack and plan to sling some panniers over it at some point. Since I bought the bike there, Freewheeling gave me a 25% discount on labor, so the whole thing ended up being much more reasonable than I expected. Consider this an endorsement of Freewheeling.)

(Side note 2: F–k Sun and Ski Sports, the horse they rode in on, and any horse that looks anything like the horse they rode in on.)

As a geek, one of the things I’ve always wanted to when I was riding was to log and track my rides. I have a cheap-ass bike computer with basic functionality: current and average speed, distance on current ride, odometer, and clock. But I’ve always wanted to be able to overlay my ride log onto a map and see where I’ve ridden, as well as getting elevation data. My feeling is that being able to do that gives me a tangible sense of progress, which gives me more motivation to ride. But those capabilities require GPS.

I’m still looking for work so I can’t (and don’t want to) spend $330 on a Garmin Edge 510 or $479 on a Garmin Edge 810. (“Social network sharing”?) If Garmin, or one of my readers sent me one, I’d certainly use it, but I don’t want anyone to do that (even as a birthday present). That kind of money will buy you a decent to nice Smith & Wesson, depending on what part of the country you’re in and what you’re looking at.

Here’s the thing: I’m smart. S-M-R-T. Smart. And not only am I smart, but! I have a smartphone! That has a GPS built in! And that runs apps! And, yes, there are cycling apps available! The big ones on Android seem to be MapMyRide and Strava, but I’ve also seen people say that MyTracks works quite well for cycling applications. And I already have MyTracks installed. And I already take my cellphone with me when I ride anyway, in case of emergency. Now all I have to do is get it properly rigged and I should have almost everything I need. (The last remaining piece is some cycling shorts with pockets. I’ve blown out the waistband on the one pair I have; whenever I put them on, they slide off my ass. This is not good for cycling purposes, or for staying off the sex offender registry purposes.)

(I got into a discussion with a friend of mine about Android/iPhone cycling apps. My friend’s position is that the dedicated cycling computers like the Garmin Edge line are preferable to using your phone for this purpose. His feeling is that running the GPS on the phone and logging data eats battery power, and your phone may run out of juice before you finish the ride. My feeling is: I’m not a high-speed low-drag road biker. I’m usually not out for more than an hour or two. If I start out with a fully charged battery, I feel like I should be able to run MyTracks for at least two hours without worry. We’ll test this theory once I get everything rigged for silent running. If I was doing the kind of thing he talks about doing, such as riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route 12 hours a day for ten weeks, I’d reconsider my position.)

Thinking about this some more, I wonder what the market for higher-end bike and running computers like the Garmins is today. Let’s see: I can pay $330 for the Edge 500. Or I can pay $196 for a HTC EVO V 4G Android phone pre-paid (no contract) from Virgin Mobile, get one of those cycling apps, and have two cameras and cell phone service. Or I could buy a cheap-ass used phone with no carrier off of eBay, run the same apps, do everything using WiFi, and not have to worry about breaking my good phone. All cell phones sold in the US are required to connect you with 911 even if you don’t have a service contract, so you’re covered in the event of a real emergency. And if you have a good cell phone you want to take riding with you, mounting brackets are a dime a dozen. Plus, I understand some newer Android phones support ANT+, so you can get cadence sensors and heart-rate monitors that will work directly with Strava or MapMyRide on your phone. No dedicated computer needed, so, again, what’s the market for that $479 Garmin Edge 810? (You can probably even do “social network sharing” from the phone, if that’s your cup of Gatorade.) Yes, you have to purchase the cadence sensor and heart rate monitor separately, but you also have to purchase those separately with the Edge 810: that $479 price does not include either sensor. If you have an iPhone, ANT+ isn’t directly supported, but Garmin will happily sell you an ANT+ adapter for a mere $50, or $40.73 from Amazon..

If any of my readers have experience with cycling apps like the ones I’ve mentioned (or others: I’m still running an Android phone, but iPhone users are welcome too) please feel free to leave a comment, or drop me an email if you’d prefer. Contact information is in the place where it says “Contact”.

Posted in Admin, Android, Apple, Bread, Clothing, Cycling, Endorsements, Food, Geek, GPS, Guns, Shirts | 3 Comments »

The map is not the territory.

Monday, October 1st, 2012

I was going to the destination for Saturday’s Saturday Dining Conspiracy. So, of course, I put the address into the new IOS6 mapping application on my shiny new iPhone 5.

The phone routed me to a shopping center across a major highway and, I’d estimate, about .3 miles from where the restaurant actually was.

Oh, wait. Did I say “IOS6 maps” and “shiny new iPhone 5″? I’m sorry. I meant to say “Google Navigation” and “my two-year-old HTC EVO running Android”.

Point being: Apple’s new Maps may not be up-to-spec, but I’ve personally run into problems with Google Maps/Google Navigation on my phone as well. Apple gets all the attention now, probably because new! shiny! but the claimed perfection of Google does not exist.

(As I said above, I use an HTC Evo on Sprint. Now that I’m off contract, I am considering an iPhone 5, mostly because I’m not totally happy with Android as an environment and as an ecosystem, as well as not very much liking the Sprint add-ons. As I’ve said elsewhere before, I work professionally with Windows and UNIX based operating systems, my main home computers are Macs, and my laptop is a netbook running Ubuntu. I don’t have a dog in the platform wars, and I don’t really give a damn what you use, or what you think of other people who use a different platform.)

Posted in Android, Apple, Geek | Comments Off

-1 day DEFCON 20 notes

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

Lawrence observed yesterday:

Save a mention for the serial number hacking panel, I’m sort of surprised there seem to be no Apple products on any of the panels this year.

So this is interesting:

…Dallas De Atley, manager of Apple’s platform security team, is scheduled to give a presentation on key security technologies within iOS, the operating system for iPhones and iPads.

N.B.: This is at Black Hat, not DEFCON. For those who might be confused, I like Borepatch’s description of Black Hat as “more corporate and buttoned down”: basically, they are different conferences, but with considerable overlap. Looking further into the Black Hat schedule, though, it looks like De Atley’s presentation isn’t the only one on IOS security issues.

My understanding is that the organizers try to keep a certain level of separation between Black Hat and DEFCON: why pay $1,500 for Black Hat if all the panels are duplicated at DEFCON for less? Not that there aren’t panels common to both, but it seems that your presentation has to be pretty high quality, sensational, or both in order to get accepted to Black Hat and DEFCON.

Which in turn makes me wonder: given the popularity of IOS devices, did the organizers segregate all the Apple panels at Black Hat, in an attempt to give folks more of an incentive to attend?

I don’t know: this is all purely speculative, and there’s nothing wrong with it anyway. I’m just wondering…

Posted in Apple, DEFCON 20, Geek | Comments Off

A thought on application development.

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

As noted previously, I bow to no man in my admiration for John Moltz. It makes me very happy that he’s lined up a lucrative sponsorship deal for Very Nice Website.

But.

This week’s sponsor is a list-making application called “Ita”.

You can drag items to rearrange them, tap to mark items completed, and add multiple items quickly, all from the main list view. If you make lists, you’ll love how fast Ita makes it to collect and complete your stuff.

Well, that’s neat, but pretty much what I’d expect from a list-making application on the iPhone, as opposed to, say, a physical piece of paper. Indeed, I’d be willing to say this is the minimal level of function I’d expect from a list-making application.

Ita is beautiful, taking inspiration from high quality paper notebooks and classic typography.

Well, I’m kind of a type geek, and I think applications should look good…

And as you use lists, they’ll show signs of wear, just like a piece of paper.

Why? For Ghu’s sake, why? Isn’t the whole point of this application that it is superior to a paper list? Then why try to emulate the look and feel and wear of paper? What’s the point?

I’ll admit I haven’t used Ita; I don’t have an iPhone or iPad. I’d try the app if becomes available on Android. But I think the question is legitimate. Why are the developers trying to emulate some of the worst aspects of the thing they intend to replace, rather than…oh, I don’t know, maybe putting efforts into improving the app, or developing something new and cool?

Posted in Apple, Geek | Comments Off

Callooh! Callay!

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

John Motlz, one of the small number of authentic geniuses the Internet has produced (right up there with Kibo, Roger David Carasso, and Jim Treacher), is back with a new website.

You may remember Mr. Moltz from such websites as Crazy Apple Rumors (and I swear some day I am going to visit Tacoma and stay at the Silver Cloud Inn), American Drink (which I don’t visit nearly as often as I should), and the occasional post at In The Line Of Duty.

But what of his new site, you ask? It’s very nice.

…money can only make you so happy. And writing, well, that can make you miserable forever.

Posted in Apple, Clippings | Comments Off

Random notes: March 19, 2012.

Monday, March 19th, 2012

The “This American Life” retraction episode went up Friday night. You can download it or read the transcript here.

I listened to the whole thing over the weekend, and frankly I recommend listening rather than (or in addition to) reading the transcript. The transcript does not convey just how Mike Daisey comes across in Ira Glass’s discussion with him:

One thing that bothered me about this episode, though (and both Lawrence and Matthew Baldwin have made this same point).

Ira Glass says, “At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” when they found out that Daisey couldn’t (or wouldn’t) give them contact information for his interpreter.

Glass goes on to say “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”

That’s not good enough. Someone should have been there and asked Glass: “Why didn’t you kill the story at that point? What were your reasons for going on with it? If you felt like it was an important enough story to run with, what were your reasons for going with Daisey, rather than someone like Rob Schmitz or the NYT reporters you spoke with?”

Yankees fan (well, nobody’s perfect) John Gruber has been all over the story since it broke on Friday as well. I’d suggest just going over to Daring Fireball and scrolling down from the top, clicking on whatever Daisey links interest you.

In non-Daisey related news: I gave up on Slate a few months ago. I felt like it had reached the point Salon came to quite a while back (when I gave up on them): saying outrageous and stupid things just to get page views, increasingly dumb writing (“Dear Prudence” in particular seems to have gone nucking futs), and generally not worth the time and effort involved in paying any attention to it.

However, I did see some good word of mouth on one Slate article recently, so I decided to click over. I’m happy that I did, as I can enthusiastically recommend Annie Lowrey’s “Where’s _why?”, a long article that simultaneously covers three things:

  • the culture surrounding the Ruby programming language (with a good explanation of what Ruby and Ruby on Rails are, and why they matter)
  • the author’s attempts to learn programming using Ruby as her first language
  • and the mystery of what happened to “Why the Lucky Stiff” a beloved figure in Ruby culture.

Posted in Apple, Clippings, Geek, Media | Comments Off

Daisey, Daisey, give me your answer do…

Friday, March 16th, 2012

I wanted to break this out into a separate piece rather than adding updates.

Marketplace’s story on the Apple/Daisey controversy is now up. Long quote follows:

Rob Schmitz: Cathy says you did not talk to workers who were poisoned with hexane.
Mike Daisey: That’s correct.
RS: So you lied about that? That wasn’t what you saw?
MD: I wouldn’t express it that way.
RS: How would you express it?
MD: I would say that I wanted to tell a story that captured the totality of my trip.
Ira Glass: Did you meet workers like that? Or did you just read about the issue?
MD: I met workers in, um, Hong Kong, going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been, and it was a constant conversation among those workers.
IG: So you didn’t meet an actual worker who’d been poisoned by hexane.
MD: That’s correct.

“I met workers in, um, Hong Kong, going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been…”

“My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.”

Posted in Apple, Clippings | 2 Comments »

This week in journalism fraud.

Friday, March 16th, 2012

One great story that is just now breaking, and one sad story.

The great story: remember that “This American Life” episode about Apple’s factories in China? Aired back in January, I think? “#454: Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory”? (Amazon link provided for informational purposes only; I have removed my affiliate ID.)

This American Life and American Public Media’s Marketplace will reveal that a story first broadcast in January on This American Life contained numerous fabrications. This American Life will devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors in the story, which was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s critically acclaimed one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

More:

During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey’s story, This American Life staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter’s contact information. Daisey told them her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn’t work any more. He said he had no way to reach her.

 “At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” says Ira Glass, Executive Producer and Host of This American Life. “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”

Excerpts are from the press release attached to the story on Jimbo’s website: the TAL website is currently inaccessible (it looks to me like they’re getting hammered).

Mike Daisey has a statement on his website, which is accessible:

My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity.

ETA 3/16 1:53 PM: TAL website seems to be accessible now.

ETA 3/16 2:05 PM: Selected shorts:

The China correspondent for the public radio show Marketplace tracked down the interpreter that Daisey hired when he visited Shenzhen China. The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show.

Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast.

Daisey’s interpreter Cathy also disputes two of the most dramatic moments in Daisey’s story: that he met underage workers at Foxconn, and that a man with a mangled hand was injured at Foxconn making iPads (and that Daisey’s iPad was the first one he ever saw in operation).

The sad story, also by way of Jimbo: You may have seen the first part of this story earlier in the week. I didn’t cover it because it was well linked everywhere. Briefly, editorial editor Bob Caldwell of the Portland Oregonian died over the weekend. After some initial confusion, it came out that he hadn’t been found dead of a heart attack  in his parked car, but had passed away while engaged in a sex act with a 23-year-old woman.

That’s sad, but not the sad part I want to talk about. The initial information (that he’d been found dead in a parked car) was provided by a friend of the family who also worked for the Oregonian. That friend has been fired.

I understand both sides here. From editor Peter Bhatia’s summary of what went wrong:

…while we are used to sources lying to us, it is difficult to swallow when the source is a fellow Oregonian journalist.

But I understand the fired editor’s position, too. In a moment of grief and weakness, she chose to try to shield the family from the pain that would be caused by the circumstances of her friend’s death becoming public. I think she was wrong. I think she shouldn’t have lied. But I also think the paper could have had some compassion and sympathy for the position their editor was placed in: a one or two week unpaid suspension seems more reasonable to me. It may be that I’m a wimp. It may be that I’m not a serious journalist. But I feel a great deal of compassion for the fired editor, even though I think she made a mistake.

Posted in Apple, Clippings, Media | 1 Comment »

Some things that have been rattling around that I’d like to point out.

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

A few days ago, the News @ Y Combinator Twitter feed linked to this article, misleadingly titled “24/192 Music Downloads…and why they make no sense”. I say “misleadingly” because the article is actually a very good introduction to the theory of digital audio, touching on such subjects as the human ear and how it works, how we know that humans can hear between 20 and 20,000 Hz, Nyquist sampling, and ABX tests.

ABX is considered a minimum bar for a listening test to be meaningful; reputable audio forums such as Hydrogen Audio often do not even allow discussion of listening results unless they meet this minimum objectivity requirement.

Holy cow! You mean, there are audiophiles out there who actually believe in science and double-blind testing? My faith in humanity is restored.

The Hon. John Gruber pointed out a post by Chris Hofstader about disability advocacy groups (in particular, the National Federation of the Blind) and how they treat corporations:

At last years NFB convention, ebay was the lead sponsor. Guess what? The ebay web site had, at that time, dozens of accessibility problems . NFB took ebay’s sponsorship dollars while ignoring their poor accessibility. Those of us who would say that any group advocating for our community should require accessibility before rewarding a company by splashing its name all over their convention like they were a friend of our population.

It isn’t just ebay: Hofstader points out that the NFB has been harshly critical of Apple (a company that has done a great deal to promote accessibility) while promoting Google’s Android (which, per Hofstader, has poor accessibility).

I’ve been seeing a lot of promotion of something called “Kony 2012″, which appears to be tied to a campaign by a charity called “Invisible Children” targeting Joseph Kony and his “Lord’s Resistance Army” in Uganda. From what I can tell, Kony is a scumbag who recruits children to fight his battle against the Ugandan army. I think he deserves to be killed; and apparently, we (that is, the United States military) have sent forces to kill him in the past. But the whole “Kony 2012″ campaign seems to be, from what the supporters state, about raising money and “awareness”. As far as “awareness” goes, what good is that going to do? As far as money, money for what? Hiring mercenaries to kill Kony?

“Kony 2012″ may be a worthwhile cause. But before you jump on the bandwagon, I’d like to suggest that you read the “Visible Children” Tumblr blog, which offers an alternative and skeptical take on the cause. (I will point out one problem with Grant Oyston’s entry: Invisible Children currently has three stars on Charity Navigator, not two Edited to add: I misread Oyston: IC has three stars overall, but he is correct in stating that they only have two stars in the specific subcategory of “Accountability & Transparency”.)

Posted in Android, Apple, Clippings, Geek | 1 Comment »

And yet, Apple is evil.

Friday, February 17th, 2012

…four advertising companies — Google, Vibrant Media, WPP PLC’s Media Innovation Group and Gannett’s PointRoll — have all been using code to work around privacy features in Safari’s iPhone browser. The search engine giant intended to place a temporary cookie on users’ devices to see if they were logged-in to Google services, but the research found that other cookies were also being placed on devices through the workaround.

Google is removing the cookies. Here’s a direct link to the actual work by Jonathan Mayer. And here’s the WSJ report, which does not appear to be behind a paywall.

Edited to add: LAT:

In the wake of evidence that Google Inc. circumvented privacy protections on the iPhone, federal lawmakers are asking if the company violated the terms of its broad privacy settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.

Posted in Apple, Clippings, Geek | 2 Comments »

Desert Bus update.

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

You can now get Desert Bus for Android and iOS. Yes, this means you can play Desert Bus on your iPad.

It is 99 cents, but the money goes to Child’s Play. So you can feel virtuous while you pretend to drive between Tucson and Las Vegas. At 45 MPH. In real time. In a pretend bus that keeps drifting to the right.

Posted in Android, Apple, Geek | Comments Off

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