Give me some fun titles in the comments, and I’ll make copies of the image with the best ones!
June 2007 Archives
Read this aloud and your inner ear, by itself, will be carrying out at least the equivalent of a billion floating-point operations per second, about the workload of a typical game console. The inner ear together with the brain can distinguish sounds that have intensities ranging over 120 decibels, from the roar of a jet engine to the rustle of a leaf, and it can pick out one conversation from among dozens in a crowded room. It is a feat no artificial system comes close to matching.
But what’s truly amazing is the neural system’s efficiency. Consuming about 50 watts, that game console throws off enough heat to bake a cookie, whereas the inner ear uses just 14 microwatts and could run for 15 years on one AA battery.
Three great things happen today! iPhone, Ratatouille, and my birthday! Yay!
DBSTalk posted an overview of a recent customer chat with Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen. One cool nugget: USB Storage support may finally come to Dish’s DVR:
- USB External Storage available late summer/fall
- USB Storage will have an activation charge but no monthly charge
- USB Storage will support ‘virtually’ any USB drive
Maybe I’ll have a reason to get one of those multi-drive Drobo USB/RAID devices… <evil grin>
While checking out the site for Rands’ new book, I ran across a year-old post (which I had read before) from Rands about the importance of The Cave to nerds (and men in general).
Interestingly, while this is definitely a Nerd thing (and I am a nerd, ask my wife), I believe it’s also a Man thing. Unlike women, for whom every aspect of life affects every other aspect, men compartmentalize life (some might say efficiently, even pathologically). Someone described it to me once that for men, life is like a series of drawers, only one of which can be open at a time. To properly “open” the Home drawer, the “Work” drawer has to be closed. And if we can’t get one drawer all the way open, we’re not going to be productive there or anywhere.
It seems to me that The Cave is a tool to make this compartmentalization work for us, instead of against us - having a physical space makes it easier to get into, and out of that mental space.
Thoughts?
Since we’re working on another adoption that will involve some very expensive travel, we had decided to start looking into deals that would help us rack up some mileage. So, Jodi found out that Dish offers some sort of mileage deal when you sign up. Cool, huh? Well, yes and no.
Jodi spent a hour or so on the phone with Dish yesterday, mostly with individuals who spoke English poorly, trying to determine the existence and/or details of the deal. She finally got a supervisor (or someone from yet another department) who told her to call yet another number to get more information. Jodi did not call that number, as she was steaming at the ears by that point (and who wouldn’t be). Instead she wisely decided to wait a day to cool off and then try getting in touch with the person who signed us up on Monday, and see if that person can help us out.
I’m really excited about our new Dish service, but customer service is a big component of how I choose who I give my business to, and if today’s calls don’t improve, I may be rethinking my decision (I’ve got until 3 days after our Monday installation).
UPDATE: Though it took a long call with several individuals to work out, I think our issue wit Dish has been resolved. To their credit, Jodi reports that everyone she talked to was at least polite and seemingly eager to help. Sigh. Here’s to hoping for good things from the HD service!
So yesterday, Jodi and I decided that we had had enough of being stuck in our Cox bundle, which - while being a pretty good deal - locks us into services we don’t want and, after adding the HD services we want, pushes us into a price range that I’m just not comfortable paying.
So I started looking into Qwest, and bailed early due to a crappy website, confusing information and a memory of horrible customer service from them from our early cell-phone days. I checked out DirecTV (given that Qwest is a reseller, thought I’d check them out) and while their HD/DVR services seem ok, the pricing was hard to find and it took me a while to find the information I was looking for on the site.
Finally, I decided to check out Dish Network. I’d heard good things about them in the past, but never thought of myself as a “satellite” guy. But after perusing their site (which gave me a prominent “Special HD Offer” link for my clicking pleasure) and then reading up a bunch on their DVR offering, I was pretty well convinced.
Dish provides the ViP622 HD Receiver/DVR, which is one of the best DVRs I’ve seen on the market (CNET gives it an 8.7 rating). Here are some of the features:
- Supports two TVs – one HDTV and one SD tv
- Record up to 200 hours of standard-definition programming, up to 30 hours of high-definition programming, or a combination of the two
- Supports 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i on the HDTV
- HD content is down-converted for the SD tv
- Two Satellite tuners allow you to select from two viewing options
- Single Mode: Picture-In-Picture (available on any TV)
- Dual Mode: Independently view and record programming on two televisions
So, Jodi and I called Dish last night and talked with them about our options. I was not certain that the REceiver/DVR would come with the plan - I’m pretty sure that in the past, you had to buy the box yourself. But it turns out that not only does the box come with it, but the plan is a little less than we would be paying for Cox’s HD/DVR service - for a much better product! So we agreed to sign up, and scheduled the install for next Monday. We’ll keep our Cox internet and phone service, but cancel the digital cable service. When it’s all said and done, we should be paying only a few dollars more for all our services than we are now, pre-HD.
I know that some folks (including my friend Bill) have had issues with Dish, but I’ve also read very good reports of their products and services, and at the end of the day it seems you get that same experience with anyone. Jodi and I are really happy with our decision and can’t wait to try out our new gear!
I want to fire Cox Communications.
We currently have our phone, internet, and digital cable service through Cox, and have been largely happy with them. But we are now interested in getting the HD/DVR service (we have TiVo now and we are NOT going back to a life of watching tv in real-time :-P) and the cost of our current bundle plus the new services is climbing past what I’m comfortable paying.
What I really want is less phone service (the bundle we have includes a bunch of phone services we never use) with a proportionate decrease in cost. But the way Cox’s bundle is designed, any change in any of the 3 bundled services (other than adding additional services) nullifies the $27 “savings”, which means you pay $27 more for your 3 services and any decrease in cost you might achieve by choosing a lower level of service is eaten up by the increase in cost for the other services.
This makes me nuts. This attitude that Cox has a right to my money (“you can pay $n for more services or $n for less services; either way you pay $n.”) is insulting.
So I find myself wanting to escape Cox’s monopolistic behavior, but I don’t know where else to look for my services, and I don’t know If i can get what I want anywhere else. Here’s what I’d like:
- Broadband internet. I have ~6mbs cable from Cox.
- HD TV service with a DVR.
- Basic phone+voicemail
I’m going to look at Qwest, though I’ve heard horror stories about their customer service. Qwest seems to have a digital tv service, as well as some relationship with DirecTV, which appears to have some sort of HD/DVR service, but I have not figured out yet if you can get the whole HD/DVR combo through Qwest. Other than Qwest I have no idea what my options are. Dish Network perhaps? Leave tips in the comments.
Jodi and I have been fans of the Stargate series (first SG1, then Atlantis) for years. This past Friday, Stargate SG1 ran it’s final episode. I put off watching it, unwilling to say goodbye to a show that we’ve grown to love over time. Last night we finally watched it, and it was fantastic. Much, much, better than I could have asked for, and to me, it struck all the right notes.
Goodbye, SG1. You will be missed.
cheesezombie2
Originally uploaded by redmonk
Shailesh snapped a picture of me this weekend in full cheese zombie mode. I don’t know, I see a big pot of queso and I lose the capacity for rational thought.
What is that “Share” button doing in Safari on the iPhone? It only seems to show up in the demo during web searches or when entering a new address. Anyone have a theory? (I’m suspecting “Email this page”.)
John Gruber on YouTube on the iPhone
Here’s what I’m thinking: If you can download YouTube content directly to your iPhone, why not iTunes Store content? I predict that direct-from-the-iPhone iTunes Store integration will be announced (at a special event?) next week.
And since iTunes now supports reverse-syncing of purchased content to an authorized Mac, you could download to your iPhone and then later sync it with your desktop. Yeah baby!
Dave Winer has an idea for a conference session:
Gets to the point
An idea for a conference session…
A-list blogger sits at table in front of room.
Participants line up. Each, in turn, dictates a 140-character blog post, which the blogger dutifully enters, verbatim. Two or three links. Next.
Sort of an open blog.
Only works for bloggers with a certain amount of flow, or A-list goodness to bestow.
I know Dave likes to think “out-loud” on SN, but my reaction to this was that it seems to go against everything blogging means, and everything Dave has stood for in the past. I mean, to me the point of blogging was that everyone could do it? That it was dis-intermediation in action? What Dave is describing here seems like a re-hash of the current journalism/media model: You (the citizen) can only be heard if you tell your story to the appointed representative of the media (the A-lister) who will tell others that they should listen.
If I may diverge: I wonder sometimes what the existence of the A-list means in the blogging world, and I do think that one way A-listers can “give back” is to give flow to others. In general, Dave still does a good job of this. But I don’t know that the A-listers have a “responsibility” to link to you or me - I don’t want to be told who or what to link to, I don’t imagine they do either. I’m generally content to live and blog in a different ecosystem than the A-list.
But Dave’s thought exercise worries me in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. Bloggers recently are pushing into journalistic territory, pushing for recognition as journalists, perhaps wanting some of the cachet that comes with being recognized as a member of the Fourth Estate. I’m not sure. But as bloggers start seeing themselves as journalists, will they start seeing themselves as the arbiters as well - with the right to determine what is news-worthy?
I like to think that in the grand scheme of things, the proliferation of the blogging and bloggers outside of the existing media model will prevent this sort of co-option of our medium.
After a long dim spell, finally the SiteLight shines again! Brand New is a design blog dedicated to dissecting corporate re-branding efforts and bringing you the autopsy.
Quick observation: it’s funny how our early years in a community shape our views. For example: In my brain, Dave Winer is the default “Dave” on the internet. Wes Felter is the only “Wes” on the internet, and Jim Roepcke is the default “Jim”. Any time I see any of these names in isolation online, these are the guys my brain puts up on the viewscreen.
Is that weird?
I’m currently beta-testing two new Mac apps that I love and at least one is approaching “can’t live without” status.
Mailplane is a desktop wrapper around GMail that used webkit and provides all kinds of Mac-like spit-n-polish for Google’s ubiquitous webmail platform. There are ⌘-keys for new message, discard, archive, star (a favorite: ⌘-*). etc. You can drag files onto the Mailplane compose window to attach them to the document, and it even has a shortcut for taking a screenshot and emailing it to someone. Using Mailplane means that I can close/open new browser windows all day long (and being a web developer means I am) without having to remember to re-open Gmail when I accidently close that window/tab. It also means that clicking mailto: links open in Mailplane/GMail. W00t!
The other is Plasq’s Skitch, which I was turned onto after Merlin Mann mentioned it on Macbreak Weekly.
I’ve been using Skitch for all my screenshots on this site for a few months now, I’ve used it at work for processing screengrabs for our applications, and it’s a huge timesaver. While Plasq provides a “MySkitch” web service to host your screenshots, I setup SFTP so uploading an image is as easy as clicking “upload”, then “copy” and pasting the html into a blog post.
Yesterday on the Surfin’ Safari blog, it was announced that the webkit nightlies have a new web inspector. This new inspector is vastly improved over the previous web inspector and is actually approaching Firefox’s Firebug extension in usefulness.
The new inspector (like the old one) is enabled along with the Debug menu, and is accessed by right-clicking on the page and selecting “Inspect Element”. The inspector can be docked to the bottom of the current window (ala Firebug), or left as a floating (and now non-transparent) window.
So what else is new? In addition to the outline-view-based DOM tree the previous web inspector provided, the new inspector lets you switch between a browsable DOM tree and a syntax color-coded view of the page source. It’s a vast improvement over Safari’s built-in source view. Clicking an element in the DOM view darkens the webkit view, with the element highlighted on the page, and a pane to the right of the DOM view shows all the styles applied to the element, including browser-default styles.
The web inspector also now provides an iTunes-style sidebar with Documents (the current doc and any iframes, etc), Stylesheets, Images, Scripts, and Other. Clicking a stylesheet shows the source of the css file, clicking an image in the list shows the image and a few useful properties. There is also a search field, so you can find instances of a class, tag, or element on the apge quickly. Clicking a line in the search results highlights the element in the source or DOM view, as well on the page.
So, is it all wine and roses? If I have to ask the rhetorical question then you already know the answer… no. The biggest omission in my mind is the ability to edit the HTML, CSS, or individual element properties and see the page re-render in real time. For web developers (and who else is the target here - I mean really) this ability is Firebug’s coup-de-grace and what makes it an invaluable tool for debugging or for pre-flighting some change to your CSS before getting into your editor. The good news is that a bug has already been filed (Web Inspector should have Firebug-like CSS editing) and it looks like patches are on the way.
Overall, the new web inspector is a great step toward making Safari much more developer-friendly; and while Safari is not as extensible as FireFox’s, based on a note in the blog post, the new inspector should be easy to upgrade over time:
So show up in #webkit or on the mailing list and suggest new ideas or implement them yourself (remember everything is HTML, JavaScript and CSS)!
Go WebKit!
I’ve moved some of my longer, article-style content over to Wordpress from my Drupal site. All this stuff is also linked in the “More Monkinetic” sidebar, and points to the new locations:
Jodi and I and the kiddo went to a sneak peak showing of Ratatouille Saturday night, and I cannot encourage everyone enough to go see it. It was FANTASTIC - easily the best movie I’ve seen in ages. The writing is excellent, the story is both conceptually simple yet complex in its depth. Jason Kottke captures a lot of my reaction to the film in his review of Ratatouille (my apologies for the large-scale quoting, but I want to preserve these bits):
With its latest film, Pixar manages to achieve something that few other big Hollywood films do these days: a convincing reality. The body language & emotions of the characters, the machinations of the kitchen, the sights and sounds of Paris, and the dice of the celery, Ratatouille gets it all right, down to the seemingly insignificant details.
…I’m not quite sure how this is possible, but the people in Ratatouille acted more like real people than the actors in many recent live action movies (especially the rats), like they had realistic histories and motivations that governed their actions instead of feeling scripted and fake. The world of the movie felt as though it had existed before the opening credits and would continue after the curtain fell.
Pixar’s search for this quality in the making of Ratatouille is impressive. And in a way, necessary. In order to draw the audience into the film and make them forget that they’re watching animated characters in an animated world, the filmmakers need to get everything right. Motions too exaggerated, motivations glossed over, plot too uncoordinated, and the whole thing loses its sense of authenticity. People need to act like people, omelettes need to sag off of spatulas like omelettes, and the only woman chef in a haute cuisine French kitchen needs to behave accordingly.
Jodi and I laughed all the way through the movie - not the sniggering laughs you get from off-color jokes in Shrek and the like - but uncontrollable belly laughs, the kind that Donald Duck and Goofy used to be able to draw from our little hearts as kids. Even Adelina, whose hearing and language are not on par with her peers, was rolling. Ratatouille is a visual feast (pun intended) that never relies too much on it’s looks and is satisfactory down to the last scene.
PS. I should stop on that note but I have to give huge props to Brad Bird and his voice character casting. I knew going who a couple of the voice actors were, but was never caught up in hearing them instead of the characters. There are even a couple of voices that I had to look up later and was shocked to find that I knew the actors - their voices were unrecognizable in the roles, and yet were perfect for them.
5 out of 5, um, whatevers. Go see this movie, take your kids, grandkids, cousins, neices, nephews, or random strangers. You will come out a better person!
- It’s called Bajooter. How cool is that name?
- He has fingerprints in his logo. Fingerprints FTW!
- He’s a young, indie web developer, and is writing about how to make a small web development shop work.
- He’s also writing to educate clients, which is something we web developers generally suck at.
- He’s a musician with a really cool band name.
- He’s educating me about SEO, without shoving that stupid acronym/term down my throat.
- Fingerprints yay!
(Disclosure: Dustin is one of my best friends, our daughter’s godfather, and is getting a ribbing for pointing me at that site that explains why 7-item list posts are great for getting blog traffic. :P)
Jim Roepcke has a new development blog, Willing To Fail (“Fearless Research & Development”), and he’s been writing about a new project he’s working on, Rails on Rules. It’s an implementation of a rules engine for Ruby on Rails applications, based loosely on the engine in Direct To Web, a rules-based application framework for Apple’s WebObjects.
Jim explains how a rules engine would fit well into several of Rails’ core concepts:
- DRY - don’t repeat yourself.
- Convention over Configuration.
- Immediate feedback.
if you’re a rails developer looking for an interesting project to follow, check out Jim’s work.
I can’t remember if I posted about this when I put up the “On This Day In…” widget, but I finally got my widgets (both On This Day In… and the hCard About Box) into the public monkinetic widgets repository. Browse the repository here.
I was looking at that last post, and noticed a change in applications menus:
Note the bottom corners of the menu, it’s rounded… good or bad?
Transparent menubar? Meh.
3D shiny dock? Meh.
Stacks? WAY COOL DO WANT.
“FinderTunes”… The jury’s out.
“FinderFlow”… Pretty cool.
There is no doubt in my mind that Apple is headed for a touch-screen interface. While Finder windows get less and less spatial, general interaction is getting more spatial. Coverflow, Stacks, Spaces and Time Machine are all made for fingers, not mice.
We officially can’t hear this song anymore without instantly feeling like we’re at a Stevenote.
About 3 months ago I was transferred to a new group at work, to help them finish up a release, then to start in on some new features. Well, we are about one week from release, and we’re in crunch mode. Because of the increased focus, and stress, posting here has almost dried up! Sorry about that.
I’ve got a few posts rolling around in my head, as well as 4 or 5 drafts waiting for attention, so once we release I hope to get some time to pay some mind to the old blog. In the meantime, here are 3 sites you could be reading:
- Daring Fireball
- The Macalope
- for the productivity-minded among you, Merlin Mann.
The iPhone wannabes have already started. This one has “TouchFLO™”. smirk
(endure Flash idiocy to get to see it.)
