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I found that there are a whole bunch of articles shared by various people on Twitter that I wanted to comment on, but with more than 140 characters. Plus, I come across some pretty interesting posts on Google Reader every so often, and I often find I want to write a response. So this is going to be a semi-occasional roundup of various such articles.

1. Via @atmasphere comes Marketers salivating over smartphone potential: Actually I suspect the apparent willingness to see mobile has less to do with what they’ve identified and more to do with: (a) there’s no irritating, resource-intensive Flash ads on most phones, so people’s desire to tune them out hasn’t kicked in as strongly yet; and, (b) there’s no Adblock for most of these phones yet. Once these ads start slowing phones down and eating through the capped data plans causing overage and grief for users, this will change quickly.
2. Saw what is probably the definitive guide to available-in-the-US e-readers over at dealnews.com. While there are a ton more readers out there if you’re willing to look at importers, this is a pretty exhaustive comparison of the various options out there. The thing that I find most interesting about this is how all the screens are 6″ or larger (basically). I, for one, would welcome an e-book reader roughly the shape and size of a traditional mass-market paperback book.
3. Engadget is reporting on the Symbian app store, joining such stores as the Android, Apple, Blackberry and Nokia stores. And in the last of that list lies the nub: given that just about the only people who use Symbian extensively is Nokia, why is there such a duplication of effort? Let Symbian licence the Nokia store for use on any Symbian-powered devices, if the legalities are a problem. This is just a tremendous waste of resources.
4. Via @bperry comes Mobile first: I agree with the the author’s first two points. Mobile use is skyrocketing, and mobile screen real estate is limited and websites designed for mobile devices are often clearer and more function-oriented than their desktop-bound counterparts. But I disagree with the observation that mobile platforms are more functional; in fact, that’s the biggest challenge in designing for mobile devices has always been the huge disparities in device capabilities. Even if you look at the two platforms currently hogging mindshare – iPhone OS and Android – device capabilities are hugely different. The original iPhone doesn’t have a GPS at all; the 3G has a GPS, but no compass. The Android devices offer multiple resolutions. More to the point, these two platforms occupy a very small market share and if you expand your audience to the entire mobile spectrum – feature phones and smart phones – then good luck getting anything beyond the most minimal of pages up.

I’ve been meaning to write a whole bunch of smaller entries over the last few weeks, but judging by the size of the draft queue, I guess I’ve not got them all ready to the point where I want to publish them. So rather than have ten or fifteen longer entries, I’m just going to a spare parts entry, mainly based off other stuff I’ve been reading lately.

1. Unplggd had an interesting entry about the downside of digital. I can’t find the other blog post I came across talking about that, but I found myself agreeing that an all-digital world can be … problematic. For example, NASA can’t find the tapes it made a mere 40 years ago of what I consider to be one of the five most important milestones in human history. But we can read ancient Egyptian poetry. My two pence addition to this is that one complication that no ancient Egyptian ever had to deal with was DRM – looking at the past 15-20 years, when data has literally exploded, it’s been accompanied by various forms of draconian digital restrictions – lock ins to proprietary file formats, actual encryption and obfuscation, and a general lack of consideration for the future. I wonder if in a hundred years, historians will look at this time and call our present time “The Hole” – the time between the end of print and the rise of open, interoperable and forward-looking technologies.
2. Speaking of forward-looking technologies, I started wondering about the state of my CDs burned in the early part of this decade; a few days later, Slashdot discussed the asked the same question. In my experience, a surprising number of them actually work okay even today. Unfortunately, the ones most prone to failure were the rewriteable ones – which means that if there were earlier versions of my HS thesis paper or my first-year college documents, they’re all gone. Not too much of a loss, but I’ve started wondering about the limits of storage – and I don’t mean megabytes, but the ability to back up that data. Just this year’s photos alone are 4.03GB – a not insubstantial amount of data to backup.
3. And my perennial backup question rises once again – even on Slashdot! Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good suggestions out of this year’s edition of “how do you backup your data” question. I think I may have to one day go get my parents a toaster and setup a peer-to-peer backup system – their data gets backed up here, my data gets backed up there. In the meantime, Jungle Disk to the rescue, though the question about reliability of the providers, the security of the providers and so on remain valid…
4. Google announced Chrome OS. And none of the details, leaving me slightly suspicious about the timing of the announcement and convinced that there’s a lot of work that needs to yet be done before the OS is ready to ship. The other question is why Google cares about the OS – after all, as long as their web browser (the bit that interacts most directly with their web services) runs on your choice of OS (be it Linux, BSD, Mac OS or Windows), then why should Google care to develop the rest of the software stack? I wonder if this is another ploy by Google, ala their 700MHz auction to foster innovative work in the field of OSes, rather than actually compete. (This guy, though, thinks that it’s the start of an all-out war.)
5. I’ve been using my Canon SX10 IS a lot (1777 photos since I’ve got the camera, though, admittedly, a number of them need to be deleted; see point one above). I’ve also had a chance to compare it to two other cameras that were close runner ups for my money – the Nikon Coolpix P90 and the Sony DSC-H20/B. I have to say, it would be a tough call – all of the cameras succeed and fail in their own ways. For example, the Nikon has the best optics – and the worst JPEG compression algorithm (and no support for RAW), giving weird ghosting artifacts. The Sony has an absurd lens – 38mm to 380mm – but an absolutely breathtaking digital zoom (by far and away the best I’ve ever seen on any device) and unbelievable low-light performance. My Canon is a good compromise between the two, but given the number of random failures I’ve seen of Canon cameras, the sudden whining noise the lens is making is beginning to scare me. A one month old camera should not be making this sort of high-pitched whining noise. Putting my ear to it also reveals some weird, Iomega click-of-death-like sounds, so I’m pretty scared. I also played with a couple of the newer DSLRs and came back very impressed, but realized that this means that those four year old cameras I drooled over are cheap and I should be able afford those now!
6. I also bought a wonderful telescope, cheaply since it came from Craigslist. Unfortunately, I’ve not been at home much, nor have the clouds parted to let me actually use the telescope. Sigh. However, I’ve discovered that a webcam I have fits perfectly into the telescope’s eyepiece, and the camera itself doesn’t heat up too much during use, giving me an inexpensive, and excellent astrophotography setup. Thus, with any luck and some time playing with the scope, I should have a decent chance at taking some pictures of planets. Maybe I’ll catch the next hit on Jupiter?
7. Related to the above: the Patriot Act strikes again! Some years ago, I had read a fascinating novella by one of The Big Three about an earth that was struck by a meteor shortly after genetic material for several humans was stored on the moon; after a cycle of several rebirths and failing to recolonize the planet, the last few humans were resurrected several million years after the calamity. For whatever reason, I didn’t write down the name of the book (nor the author), so I can’t find it. Since I had borrowed it from the Montgomery Public Library, I went to check if they could tell me what it was… only to find that in response to Title II of the Patriot Act, they purge the borrowing information for the libraries immediately and irretrievably so they can’t respond to a subpoena on what I’ve been reading. Sigh.
8. Speaking of reading, I made the jolly attempt to read Dune. After forcing myself through part I, I concluded that I had been erroneous in calling Virginia Woolf the most unreadable writer ever; Frank Herbert is by far and away more deserving of that “honour”. If this book is seriously considered one of the best science fiction novels of all time, I shudder to imagine what the worst might look like. I’ve returned to reading my beloved Alastair Reynolds (but not before making a short detour into old territory by Kim Stanley Robinson).

I think that’s it for this installment. I’ll see about doing one of these sorts of posts every couple of weeks if I don’t post more regularly. Or you could join the conversation at Twitter.

I’ve not done too many “grab-bag” type posts here, since usually I have lots to say about any given topic (some say I can out-Dvorak Dvorak). I’ve now collected a few things that aren’t worth their own posts, so you get a bunch of odds and ends that don’t necessarily go together.

Windows Vista, yet again
It’s now been something like a year that I’ve been using Vista (or attempting to do so). However, for my new netbook, I decided to get a Bluetooth transceiver, so that I could use Skype, mice and other gadgets without needing cables. Suffice to say, the major discovery that I’ve made is that in 2008, Vista’s Bluetooth stack is worse than the one that my 2003-era Nokia dumbphone sported. Basic telephony requires third-party drivers (which of course, I do not have, seeing as Bluetooth has a few standard profiles and basic telephony is one of them). A Microsoft-made mouse is only partially supported. The third party software that comes with the transceiver – called Bluesoliel – seems to have been written by someone that: (a) never had to use it; and, (b) never read any UI guidelines for any OS ever. I wish you good luck to force it to search for something, since apparently, you’re expected to memorize the Bluetooth ID of every device you have in order to make it find new devices. If this is the very best that Microsoft – and its “valued OEM partners” – can come up with after a half-decade of programming Vista, the future is very bleak for end-users.

Resume
I decided to take the advice of several people both via comments and via email, and decided that I will redo my resume in Open Office; it’s only fair that I give it as much time and effort as I gave my resume in Microsoft Office. So thank you to those of you who suggested so. Now those of you so kind as to email me  get the pleasure of looking over and comparing the versions…

Fring for the iPhone
I love Fring. It’s the only application other than Skype that talks to Skype’s network natively (that I’m aware of). While I’m share the concerns that many people have with Skype – not least the fact that the Chinese are overhearing all the chit-chat about my work, school applications and other such important things – it’s a simple program that does one thing reasonably well. I like it, and my folks use it, so it’s become a standard around the family. After I ran into Bluetooth-ical difficulties while talking on Skype (see above), I switched to using my Fring for the iPhone for the rest of the conversation and it flowed much better. There is a slightly delay, but overall voice quality sounded good to me. Certainly, it makes clear that the iPhone is a good platform for Fring-like VoIP apps. I’m sure like almost all other iPhone OS 2.x first and third applications there are instabilities and I’ll discover them as I go on, but if you were on the fence about spending your $0.00, well… it’s worth it.

Windows monoculture = computer illiteracy
One of the best, most enlightening comments about the problem with the Windows monoculture is here. While there is a good argument to be made that computers are much more complicated beasts than washing machines, DVD players or any other tool, I would respond with the car analogy. A car is a tremendously complicated item, with thousands of parts that have to work flawlessly and hundreds of settings that need to be set perfectly in order to move efficiently and effectively. However, put someone who has only ever driven sedans into a van, and they will be able to operate it – and reasonably well. One becomes car-literate, not “Ford Taurus-literate”. Sadly, it seems more and more, people are becoming “Windows + Office literate” not “computer-literate”. (By the way – the same principle applies to food stocks and crops.)

Washington DC transport
WMATA’s continuing quest to screw up commutes reached a nadir last Friday for me. My train caught fire and had to travel back to the previous station. On that positive note, the Washington Post notes that you can expect your commute to get worse, since somehow in DC traffic planners’ heads, it makes sense that to make commutes easier, one should increase congestion. Yeah, not sure how that works… This is doubly aggravating when one realizes that for a relative pittance, one can travel the length of NYC at any time of the day or night, whilst no amount of money can do the same in DC. (Fun fact: were I to live in NYC roughly the same distance from Manhattan as I do from my house to my work place now, I’d pay a third of my DC commute costs – and I’d get there more reliably around the clock.)

There were lots of things that happened, and I could write tomes on each, but let’s do a quick roundup in the interests of speed and coherence:

1. I was forced to change my Xbox Live Gamertag, because my name was either: (a) offensive; or, (b) a security risk. So if you don’t see me on Xbox Live anymore, and see some dude named “MixedStrategy” that you’ve suddenly befriended, that would be me. Personally, I wanted to be “GrimTrigger“, but that was apparently taken. Gah.
2. I’ve been learning how to program in Lotus Notes of late for work. Far from being an irritating VBA-type script that I feared, it’s actually pretty powerful and probably a lot more extensible a tool for RAD-ing a quick solution of some sort or another. Particularly when your company has most of its data stuck in Lotus Notes to begin with – then it’s especially useful. The only really annoying thing I’ve discovered so far is that someone at IBM made the mistake of letting a marketing type get near the Notes 8 interface, so I’ve spent a lot of time learning new terminology for things. My project is interesting because essentially, Notes supports a lot of database-like operations, but one major shortcoming is the lack of an equivalent to the SQL “UPDATE” statement. And given the retention policies at work, to update, say, the date of a task manager’s meeting, you have to reload all 5,000+ projects into the database. Not good, if I may say so myself. So I’m writing a little script to handle that. It’s pretty interesting work, but it’s taking longer than I had hoped.
3. I came across this link today, explaining how to get around one of the more annoying problems with feed reading. Unfortunately, it does not work quite as I had hoped, so I’m still stuck visiting LiveJournal.com and other sites once every couple of months.
4. Facebook launched “Chat” on my network. On the plus side, it’s pretty well integrated and doesn’t quite get in your way like I had feared – even Gmail’s Google Talk client sometimes does. On the minus side, it doesn’t allow you to connect using a non-web or different interface. I’m surprised, since I thought the back-end was all Jabber. I suppose it won’t be too long before someone writes a Facebook application to talk to the client… maybe it already exists!
5. Raymond Chen is one of Microsoft’s longtime developers, and someone whose blog I read daily. So I wanted to point out three really good books that he likes, and just wanted to add that even if you’re not a developer of any sort, or have anything to do with engineering, The Design of Everyday Things (née The Psychology of Everyday Things) is amazing. Just the number of annoying things that I’ve faced in the world makes me appreciate how stupid unintuitive things can get design awards. Until you have to use it, things seem elegant. Then not so much. (Bonus example: the Windows standard key to insert a hyperlink is Ctrl+K. The developers of WordPress 2.5 decided to arbitrarily remap that to Alt+Shift+A, so now my muscle memory is wrong, and it’s an extra key stroke. Annoying. Will be changed soon.)
6. My kitten cat turned 1 year old on Friday last week. That marks the milestone where he stops being a kitten and becomes a cat. Wow. They really do grow up quick!
7. I went to a Library of Congress concert that I’ll write more about. But in case Europa Galante is performing in a house near you, I strongly urge you go see it. I’m not usually a fan of Vivaldi, but this may change my mind yet. And bonus points for anyone who plays Gluck and Telemann in the same concert!
8. I’ve found someone else who is working on a Lego Mindstorms NXT biped walker similar to mine. I will have to take a good look at it, but it seems to solve the issue I’ve been having with the stability of the walker – mine has a Star Wars-like tendency to flip over on one side.
9. The weather is bright and sunny and 24 degrees! That’s today. Yesterday it was cold and overcast and -1 degrees. I love how these new wild swings in weather are now considered normal. Hey, maybe I can write a book about climate changed called “The New Normal” with an appropriately long subtitle… maybe something like “Evidence You Can See of Climate Change”.
10. And finally, if you’re in the UK and feeling nice, could you please buy me the latest Goldfrapp single, Happiness, and mail it to me?

Good night!

I started making a list of things that I wanted to do in 2008. I suppose some people would call them “resolutions”, but for me, this is just another list of thigns to do, albeit a little more long-term and ambitious in scope than most of my to-do lists. In the interests of forcing myself to do everything on it, I decided to share it, and have people watch and check off things with me.

Education/work:

• Get into a master’s program either part-time or full-time.
• Find a full-time position.
• Redo my GRE and nail that 800 that I so narrowly missed last time.

Things to learn:

• Learn either Spanish or German.
• Learn to sight read music.
• Learn to play the piano.
• Learn one new programming language – Python, perhaps?

Cyclic things:

• One blog post a day, excepting a break a quarter.
• Read at least one book a week.
• Learn to cook one new dish a month.
• Build one new Lego robot a quarter.
• Teach the kitten one “trick” a quarter.

Travel:

• Go to Manila once.
• Go to Delhi once.
• Go to Chicago once.
• Go to San Francisco once.
• Go to New York at least twice.
• Plan a late-December 2008, early-January 2009 Eastern Europe tour.

Other things:

• Sell or otherwise halve the number of gadgets in my possession.
• Sort out all the clothes in my closet and give away what I don’t need.
• Finish reading every currently unread book in my library.
• Save at least 30% of my earnings each month; 50% preferable.
• Develop and use some way to manage parts of my life better.
• Develop a new backup system that requires less conscious thought.
• Start using at least two new FOSS applications on a daily basis.

Potential things:

• Investigate and possibly buy a car for not more than $5000 by July.
• Not owe any money on the car by December, if I do buy a car.
• Investigate a flying club.

That’s it for 2008. It seems like a lot, actually, now that I think about it, but one way or another – it shall be done!

I’m going to take a break until January 1st or so. I need to get some other work done, recollect my thoughts and rewrite the three or so entries which got eaten by a data corruption bug of my making. So I’ll be back then. Until then, some blogs to read picked from my favourites in my Google Reader:

• Applepeels – approx. weekly writings from a former Apple employee.
• Atmaspheric Endeavours – the feed with daily links is as interesting as the writing.
• Ionarts – classical arts review in and around Washington, DC.
• Modern Mechanix – scans and transcriptions of old “futurist” magazines.
• Mobile Opportunity – some of the best analysis of the mobile industry.
• No Impact Man – written by a family which decided to zero their carbon footprint.
• Sepia Mutiny – a very American look at South Asia.
• Symbian Guru – some site difficulties right about now, but otherwise interesting stuff.
• The Old New Thing – a sarcastic and witty old-time Windows code-writer.
• Zero Punctuation – very NSFW weekly gaming review out every Wednesday.

And there are more in my blogroll to the right. Until then, ciao and best wishes for the upcoming year.

I was trying to think of a post that I’d want to write between now and Sunday which I’m trying to get my backup post ready for and I couldn’t think of anything I’d want to write about. So instead of writing nothing, I’ll get a couple of different things out in one post. Cool, eh?

Music: Halo 3 Soundtrack

If you’ve heard the played any of the Halo games, you’ll recognize the amazing work that Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori put into creating just the right music for Halo. If you have bought the soundtracks for either of the previous games, though and liked it, well you’re in for a treat. Unlike Halo 2‘s music which changed radically from the original Halo‘s music – most notably the instruments – Halo 3 takes the existing excellence of Halo 2 and tweaks it with both interesting and radical variations on a theme. For example there is a piano refrain that dates back to the original Halo that goes “da-da-daaaa, da-da-daaaa” and has been used in almost every heavy action sequence in the Halo games and almost every piece of advertising for the game. Now the middle note in the refrain has been moved an octave lower and is more punctuated, making what was an otherwise a great instantly recognizable tune just a little bit more varied and interesting than the original.

Halo 3′s music release is similar to that of the original Halo soundtrack and contains all the actual in game music – some 140 minutes of heart-pounding and emotional music. This is unlike Halo 2, which saw two CD releases, one of which was a general atmospheric CD and the other the actual in-game music. However, there is a hidden track at the end of the second CD by some amateur band about the Halo experience that is probably not worth listening to, so stop after the 16th track on the second CD. If you liked the earlier Halo soundtracks, this is pretty much a no-brainer: you’ll love it. If you didn’t know there were earlier soundtracks, then this is a good place to begin – and work backwards. And if you’re a virtuoso, then feel free to download the sheet music, sans charge. Verdict: Buy.

Opera: American Opera Theater does Handel’s Messiah

If I had a penny for everytime someone told me they liked Handel‘s Messiah oratorio and I scowled, I’d have enough money to do a load of laundry. Messiah is an Easter-time performance that apparently is popular around Christmas time in the US. Not sure why. It’s also not a particularly good work by Handel – you should see Giulio Cesare if you want to hear a great Handel work – but it has its moments when performed by a competent orchestra at a rapid clip. American Opera Theater‘s orchestration was probably closest to this ideal, but why thus it’s so popular, I do not pretend to know or guess at; some theories include the American fascination for the Hallelujah Chorus from Act II. Unlike most versions of Messiah, this production staged it, albeit on a very bare stage filled with recently-purchased IKEA furniture. It was… odd. If you’re interested in a traditional singing performance, this is not for you. If you’re interested in Messiah but want something more interesting (read: controversial), this maybe your performance this season and it’s on again on Saturday the 8th of December and Sunday the 9th (i.e.: tonight and tomorrow night) at the Gonda Theater in Georgetown. However, there was much more interesting entertainment that came out the same day which would be a better use of your time. Both Michael Ludico and Tim Page were there, so you’ll see a review pretty soon at Ionarts (with an entertaining title if it gets past the Charlesitarium if the party allows it if he’s allowed to use it) and perhaps one at the Washington Post too.

More Amateur Feline Behaviour Analysis

I’ve continued trying to map the noises my now 8-month old kitten makes to what he wants. He does try really hard to speak when he wants something desperately, but he doesn’t quite have the capacity to say words exactly so. One long-term mystery was solved recently, so that’s worth sharing. This kitten came very well trained from either the shelter or his birth family. One of the things that in particular he does well is go to the litter if he has any urge to go at all; in all these months, even during the first few days, he has had no accidents and with luck it’ll remain that way.

However, his trainer seems to have taught him (or he has rationalized) to only go when a human is present and preferably just before eating. He still does the latter, which I appreciate, but the former is more of a problem, because he really doesn’t go without a human present. This creates problems – such as when I am in my room and my flat mate is not around; he squeaks and whines until you come out and then he promptly runs to the toilet. At least, that is how it used to work – now he squeaks for other reasons too, such as “come play”. I just figured out, however, that when he just wants someone to come out and play, he vocalizes starting with “m”, so we get “miau” or “myaa” and such. However when he starts with a “w” as in “weh” then he needs to go so he needs either me or my roommate to escort him to the loo.

It’s fascinating to see him try to communicate. I’m almost considering giving up economics for linguistics!

Phone Beeps and Boops

I’ve discovered that the two sliding portions of my Nokia N80, which are connected by a long, flat, ribbon cable, are coming apart and slowly causing the screen to fail. Either I can’t hear through the headset speaker, or the screen washes out, comes out blank or garbled. Looks like I will be out in the market for a new phone in the next few months when this fails entirely. Any suggestions?

On the flip side, I didn’t realize how loud the alarm was until Friday afternoon. I measured it at approximately 85db at 1m after about 15 seconds of beeping. To put it into perspective, that’s close to the limit of hearing damage. And I usually keep it less than 1m away, so probably not the best situation all around. But for what it’s worth, if having a good alarm clock in your phone is something of a key consideration, then the N80 is a good bet, even if it is slightly dated.

Meta

Posting will be a little light after the big backup post tomorrow or so. I have some work to get done quickly, and after that’s done, I’ll have time to play around with a few things and write a few more posts. I’d like to play my way through Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect, but it’ll be a while, particularly Assassin’s Creed, since I’m getting my rear kicked on one of the training missions. Yikes. There’s also this tiny game called Super Mario Galaxy that I’d like to play. I plan to read more from my ever growing list of books which now includes a few more Kim Stanley Robinson novels, Jack McDevitt‘s The Engines of God, and a half-dozen others and re-read Dan Simmon‘s Hyperion Cantos. And I need to do some of those gadget resets and reformats and all that soon too! Once I’m done with that, I’ll have more time to post, and, as a bonus, I’m sure I’ll have stories to blog about as well.

Fun Fact: Most categoried post ever!