Relevant History

Standage on GTA for DS

Tom Standage has the best line about a video game... ever:

“Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars”, the latest instalment of the most notorious of video games, is available on the DS. It’s like putting vodka in a baby’s bottle....

The action, set in the murky underworld of Liberty City, a stylised version of New York, is rendered in a cartoonish graphic style which cleverly remains true to previous versions of the game without overtaxing the processing power of the DS. And it’s great fun. Better still, you can play it on the train—there’s an extra illicit thrill in doing all this on the 8.39 to Charing Cross.

The player takes the role of Huang Lee, the son of a murdered Triad boss, who heads to Liberty City to deliver a family heirloom to his uncle and finds himself drawn into the conflict between rival gangs. The script, as usual with “GTA”, is cynical, witty and well written. The game world manages to be large and immersive even when squeezed into the tiny DS. As unlikely as it sounds, given the sorts of game usually found on the DS, this is the genuine, controversial, ultra-violent article, with no corners cut.

[To the tune of Radiohead, "Videotape," from the album In Rainbows (I give it 2 stars).]

Philips does sex toys

Interaction Design Umeå writes about the new line of Philips sex toys (note the term "relationship care" in the URL). Though Fast Company asks, "does anyone really want to buy a Philips sex toy? I mean, there are surely some Apple freaks that would love an iVibrator. But is Philips's brand versatile or sexy enough to pull this off?"

[To the tune of Duran Duran, "Bedroom Toys," from the album Astronaut (I give it 2 stars).]

Ultimate example of DIY?

I really hope this is true! DIY helicopter makers of the world unite!

Some guy in China went and made his own helicopter entirely out of wood. Except for the engine. Because wooden engines are stupid. Admit it, maple motor, you are dumb!

20 year old Chinese farmer Wu Zhongyuan built himself a helicopter using only -- according to the man -- what he remembers of middle school physics lessons and "relevant knowledge [found while] surfing the Internet via my mobile phone."

His single-seater conveyance has blades made from the wood of an Elm tree, a frame reinforced with steel pipes and uses an engine from a motorcycle -- all for around $1,600. Wu claims the 'copter can get him as high as 2,600 feet, though it seems he's grounded for the time being as the Chinese government has forbid him to fly because of safety reasons.

(It's more likely than the Mongolian death worm.)

[To the tune of Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, "Superstition," from the album Live Alive (I give it 4 stars).]

T...i...m...e... M...a...c...h...i...n...e

Ever since I installed my new gigantic, space-time bending hard drive in my Mac, Time Machine has been incredibly slow. It takes hours to "prepare" to do a backup. There's no way I'm going to abandon doing backups (it's one of the few things I'm really paranoid about), but I'm trying to find ways to speed it up and so far have failed. Frustrating. Grrr.

[To the tune of Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, "Mary Had A Little Lamb," from the album Live Alive (I give it 2 stars).]

First post from new machine

Not exactly a completely new machine, but tonight I installed a new hard drive in my MacBook (the one the Institute let me have when they let me go). I'd long had less than 5 or 6 gig free on my factory-installed 80 gb hard drive, and had to carefully manage my remaining space-- regularly burn DVDs of pictures of the kids (which I should do anyway, but still), look for attachments and downloads to clean out, etc..

At first I thought about taking it to one of the shops around here, and having them do it for me. Then I figured I knew enough technical people, I could mail order a hard drive and get someone to do it for a case of beer. The new drive, a 500 gb Seagate, and a plastic external enclosure for the old drive (I found a deal online), arrived yesterday.

I started poking around a little at the instructions for doing a hard drive upgrade on a MacBook, and soon realized, I could do this myself. Not only that, but I wanted to try.

So today I went to my local Frys, bought a couple tools and an anti-static wrist strap, borrowed an OS X install disk from a friend, and after dinner, cleared off some space on the dining room table. My son joined me, even though he was a little disappointed that he wouldn't get to smash up the old hard drive (he really likes taking things like that apart). We watched a couple videos on YouTube and followed some instructions I found online, and 10 minutes later, we had the drives changed out.

men at work, via flickr

After that, it was a matter of booting up from the install disk, then using Time Machine to do a complete restore of my old machine-- really just a matter of clicking on some buttons and then going for coffee. Or in this case, putting the old hard drive in its new enclosure. (I haven't had something so aggressively transparent since my Palm IIIc, or maybe my iMac.) A couple hours later, the restore was complete, the old internal hard drive was happily working as an external hard drive, and all was well.

old and new drives, via flickr

Considering how much (really how little) work it was, the payoff is pretty spectacular. I have what feels like a new machine, with a boundless amount of memory; and I have the experience of having done it all myself.

I think I'll upgrade the RAM next. Now that it's my machine, I can improve it as much as I want. That's as good a metaphor for my new life as any.

look at the size of that thing! via flickr

[To the tune of John Coltrane & Don Cherry, "The Invisible," from the album The Avant-Garde (I give it 2 stars).]

First picture with the new camera

My camera died over the weekend-- I think I took too many pictures of my son feeding chickens, and I was using it in the rain. (The one before it died when I took the kids to the beach and dropped it in the ocean. I really should quit taking pictures of the kids.) So when I got back home, one of the first things I did was figure out what new camera to get.

The old camera, a Canon SD630, lasted about two and a half years, which for me is pretty impressive, because I took it everywhere and banged the heck out of it (and had it repaired once).

I went with another Canon, an SD880. It's got a wide-angle lens that I think I'll quite like. And I won't skip a beat irritating my kids with countless pictures of them.

Bye bye molar

Had a molar removed this morning. Good times!

Later. It wasn't bad at all. Something I've stupidly been putting off for a long time-- a molar that has been trying to pursue a solo career, rather than play nicely with the rest of the ensemble. Suffice it to say, it was going to come out one way or another, and this was definitely the easy way.

I've spent a disproportionate time this fall in dentist's chairs, catching up on years of what facilities people would call deferred maintenance. It's a good example of how even intelligent people (including ones who think about the future for a living) put off dealing with what they know are problems, because they don't want to face the consequences of bad outcomes-- even if they know that deferral is likely to make those problems worse.

Fountain pen

Is it really that hard, or that unusual, to use a fountain pen?

Nice post, still.

Simplicity

Another example of the death of bling. Damon Darlin, who seems to have taken over the Ping column in the New York Times (formerly written by my friend), notes a growing preference for simplicity in consumer electronics: over the last year, most consumers "chose to buy two inexpensive and simple products, the Wii and the Flip, over competing gadgets bristling with more features.... It is not just the economics of a shopping-fatigued nation at work here. Consumers found the simple devices, which don’t need instruction manuals to set up and use, more appealing."

"This shift in consumer preference to the cheaper electronic device could well be a reaction to the recession," he suggests, another datapoint in the growing trend "to have our wits about us" at all times, and not be dulled by either booze or blinky lights. The downside in this trend-- if you can call it a downside-- is that most companies don't really know how to make things simpler: as lots of good product designers will tell you, it's a lot easier to pack new features into something than to strip them out.

It takes a lot of careful thought to eliminate things, to think hard about what really matters and focus only on those things, and still end up with something that's balanced and usable. (This is as true for a life as it is for a digital camera, now that I think about it.) It's easier, and in some ways more pleasant, to be diverted by plentitude and activity, than to make difficult choices that can pay off in the long run.

Cheap, user-tunable eyeglasses

As someone who wears glasses, I was struck by this report that an Oxford physicist has developed eyeglasses that can be "'tuned' by the wearer to correct his or her own vision." As the Guardian explains,

[Josh] Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

Silver calls his flash of insight a "tremendous glimpse of the obvious" - namely that opticians weren't necessary to provide glasses. This is a crucial factor in the developing world where trained specialists are desperately in demand: in Britain there is one optometrist for every 4,500 people, in sub-Saharan Africa the ratio is 1:1,000,000.

This is one of those small things that could have very big consequences, both directly and indirectly. The development of relatively inexpensive eyeglasses centuries ago, Annales historians argued decades ago, helped reorient European consciousness away from smell and touch, and toward sight. (That this paralleled the start of the Scientific Revolution was no accident: good vision is a prerequisite for good observation.) Closer to home, cheap eyewear has economic benefits that are so obvious-- right in front of our noses, as it were-- that those of us who live in places with relatively affordable eyewear easily miss them.

The implications of bringing glasses within the reach of poor communities are enormous, says the scientist. Literacy rates improve hugely, fishermen are able to mend their nets, women to weave clothing. During an early field trial, funded by the British government, in Ghana, Silver met a man called Henry Adjei-Mensah, whose sight had deteriorated with age, as all human sight does, and who had been forced to retire as a tailor because he could no longer see to thread the needle of his sewing machine. "So he retires. He was about 35. He could have worked for at least another 20 years. We put these specs on him, and he smiled, and threaded his needle, and sped up with this sewing machine. He can work now. He can see."

Lego exhibit at MOAH

The Bay Area Lego Users Group winter exhibit at the Palo Alto Muse of American Heritage. Very popular with the local kids, or parents looking to get the kids out of the house!

Battery life

I'm impressed on this flight how much better the battery life on the iPhone is when it's in airplane mode. Turning off thel phone part of the phone makes it pretty economical.

My iPhone

I've had an iPhone for just over a week now, and generally quite like it. But a couple things puzzle me.

First, why aren't there more modes? There's an airplane mode, which is useful, but I've been able to create other modes-- silent, meeting, etc.-- with other cell phones. This would be especially useful for an object with so many different possible combinations of functionalities, because you're more likely to want combinations of things at different times. For example, when I'm driving, I'd like to be able to turn off wifi (around here, I'm finding a new network every two blocks) and alerts for incoming text messages; in the library, I'd want the wifi, but no sounds for any incoming communications; etc., etc..

Even more mystifying is why doesn't talk more to my Mac. I really appreciate the iCal-iPhone syncing (though since I use Google calendars I've had to use some workarounds to make them all talk to each other). But in some ways my Nokia N95 could integrate more fully with the Mac, thanks to BluePhoneElite. With the Nokia, I can copy text messages from my phone to hard drive, use my full-sized keyboard to send text messages, dial numbers on my phone from my address book, and move files back and forth. I can't do any of that with the iPhone, and it's kind of a pain.

Otherwise, it's been pretty cool. And I swear, if I could use a Bluetooth keyboard with the iPhone, and if it supported Google Docs, I could leave my laptop at home 90% of the time.

Zunegate

Oh, no: Obama was spotted listening to a Zune.

Internet commenters went ballistic. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO," cried one user at the popular blog Engadget. "I want my vote back!"

On NPR

Cyrus Farivar quotes me at the end of his latest NPR Morning Edition piece, "High-Tech Pen Makes Note-Taking Easier."

In my sound bite, I reveal that I like paper because it's harder for me to break paper than the screen on my Nokia N95.

I played the piece for my kids this morning before I took them to school. At the end of it, my son came up to me and said, "You know, Dad, you really do drop your stuff a lot." Gee, thanks kid.

[To the tune of Handsome Boy Modeling School, "The Projects (PJays)," from the album "So...How's Your Girl?".]

Technorati Tags: end of cyberspace, media

The greatest achievement of my life

I now have a score of 2075 in Nintendo Wii tennis. My kids can spend the rest of their life in therapy, I can go broke, I can crash the car into a bus full of nuns and orphans-- none of that matters now.

via flickr

At this stage, it's not enough to beat the machine; you have to win decisively in order to even maintain your score. Which is kind of a pain, but if keeps you interested. A trophy would be nice, too. Even a virtual one.

[To the tune of Lee Ritenour, "Ipanema Sol," from the album "Rio".]

Technorati Tags: games, sports, Wii

Mouse with iPod

Another ho a long line of my daughter's iPod creations.

Words to live by

 

Cool present

Tue 12/25/2007 07:02 12252007425

An excellent tripod for my digital camera. I married into a family with frighteningly good taste in gifts.

The Nokia is back

Just in time for Christmas-- my long lost cell phone arrived today, good as new. Now i need a titanium shell, a case made with carbon nanotubes woven into the fiber, or something. I don't want another thing dangling from my belt, but I want to send it back to the repair center even less.

After this most recent mishap, I wonder how long it will be before cell phones are made like watches. How long before designs and especially interfaces are standardized enough so phones can be built for durability

Phone update

$100 to put a new screen on the phone. Of course I said yes.

And today I'm listening to nothing but Zeppelin. The reviews make the concert sound incredible.

[To the tune of Led Zeppelin, "Ten Years Gone," from the album "Led Zeppelin (Disc 3)".]

Technorati Tags: N95

MOO cards are here

Got my latest set of MOO (I notice they use all caps) cards today. They look quite nice-- the company does excellent work.

I chose a mix of pictures that have worked well on previous sets, and some new ones from my last trips to England and Budapest. I think that while the picture Anthony took on Raday Utca is pretty amazingly archetypal-- and works really well in the narrow format of the cards-- I'm going to keep mixing up the images.

[To the tune of Radiohead, "Reckoner," from the album "In Rainbows".]

Technorati Tags: Moo

The phone is in the mail

I sent my broken Nokia 95 off today to be repaired. One of my colleagues described it as a "Brokia N95."

Sometimes I feel less like a professional and more like a camp counselor, or the cool uncle who lets you stay up late and play Grand Theft Auto.

[To the tune of Paul McCartney, "Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey," from the album "All the Best".]

Technorati Tags: N95

New phone is now... a phone

Friday afternoon I took the kids rollerblading at Stanford. On the way home, I stopped at the T-Mobile store and bought a prepaid SIM card for my Nokia N95. Mainly I wanted it so I could get a Fring account, and use the phone for VoIP calls; but I figured it would be nice to be able to use it as a phone if I really needed.

For the last couple years, I've carried around a cellphone, iPod, and digital camera. I don't leave the house without the first and last, and usually I've got all three (plus headphones, obviously). The more I spend time with the thing, the closer I come to believing that under some the right circumstances I could be happy carrying just one device.

Of course, specialized devices are probably always going to be better than combination devices. And as an MP3 player, the Nokia is definitely way behind an iPod: it has a much smaller memory, the sound quality strikes me as a bit below the iPod's (a tiny bit of persistent background hiss), and lacks the ability to handle all the playlists and so forth (not to mention the inability to play music bought from the Apple store). However, I can get a respectable seven hours' music on the 1GB micro SD card, and have loaded it up with songs that I like, but haven't listened to much recently (in smart playlist-speak, fulfilling all of the conditions: not played in the last 14 days, not played more than 30 times, rated with four or five stars, selected at random).

The camera is very good for everyday use, though I notice two issues with it: the latency is quite a bit higher than with my Canon digital camera-- about 7-10 seconds, compared with under 2 for the Canon-- and the night photography isn't nearly as good.

There's also no way to get a wrist strap on the N95, which for me is a significant thing, as for me not putting the wrist strap on leads to disaster.

The thing I'm using it most for is a mobile blogging device: basically, a digital camera with wifi. It's great when I know I want to throw a quick update up on the blog (though just why I want it immediately, I'm not sure), a quick post that I can follow up later. The speed is nice, but I do feel like it comes at a price: while the predictive typing is pretty good, even with it I don't seem to want to write anything longer than a couple sentences-- and obviously I'm not someone who's afraid of long posts. Still, I can imagine than when I'm on the road, it could be a cool thing: if I'd had this in Budapest, for example, I could have pretty much live-blogged every minute of the trip (there's wifi all over the place in Budapest).

Actually, I did do that, because I was carrying around my laptop and cell phone everywhere I went. And since it was a working trip, and I trust my ability to take really good pictures with the Canon, I'm not sure I would have given them up for a single, slightly inferior device-- inferior not so much in technical terms, but in terms of a couple specific performance criteria, and in terms of my ability to use.

I'll see if that changes with next year's travels.

Technorati Tags: blogging, camera, mobility, music, N95, phone

Trying predictive typing

I decided to try out the predictive spelling feature on my Nokia genius phone. Its pretty interesting. Normally, to spell, say, the word interesting, you have to push a total of 24 keys (i.e., 4 three times to type the letter i, 2 twice to type the letter n, etc.). Instead, you tap the following keys:

46837378464

The phone starts guessing with the first number:

i
in
got
inte
inter

And so on. It does a rather good job, too. Though it feels odd: you almost HAVE to not look at the screen as you type, and he you make a mistake the result is not a misspelled word but the wrong word spelled right. Definitely requires ignoring some familiar habits.

Very cool minimalist bookshelves

These look really neat.

Technorati Tags: books, design

How long before there's an Instructables version?

This helium balloon lamp is cool, but at $1000, it's also insane. Especially if a household that has cats. It's made to be recreated on Instructables.

In its defense, however, the Swedish Web site that sells the lamp has some jaw-droppingly beautiful minimalist stuff.

Technorati Tags: design

MoodBlast

In the course of trying to figure out how to have my Twitter status update to Skype, I discovered MoodBlast, a little Cocoa app that will send updates to Adium, iChat, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, and various things I don't actually have.

I've only been using it for about 5 minutes, but it seems pretty cool.

[To the tune of Genesis, "Abacab," from the album "Turn It On Again: The Hits".]

Technorati Tags: social software, Web 2.0

Opening search results in new tab in Flock

One thing I'd gotten used to in Firefox is that search results open in new tabs. Flock doesn't do this, and it was driving me a bit batty. Fortunately, it turns out it's not hard to change the setting.

I love my Nokia N95

A couple weeks ago I moderated a panel at Mobile Mash-Up 2007. It was a terrific time, as my panel consisted of four excellent people, and all I had to do was get the ball rolling at the beginning, watch the clock, and try to keep Robert Scoble's questions to a maximum of four or five.

The event was sponsored by Nokia, and last week they delivered a bunch of N95s-- their super-camera-phone-GPS-Wifi-MP3 dynamo for the presenters and moderators (thanks Joe!). I ran over and picked mine up on Friday morning, and have been playing with it ever since.

Since it doesn't work with my Verizon account, it's basically a digital camera with Wifi, GPS, and Web access. This may sound kind of crippled, but for me it's great: it means I can take pictures, then upload them immediately. Not a bad thing when on the road, or when out with the kids and they do something priceless.

Of course, the big question is, how will blogging from a little device be different from a laptop? And how will doing so in near real time differ from doing so at one's leisure? I certainly write much shorter posts: it's a bit more like illustrated Twittering, though I find I tend to use Twitter to describe states rather than events. And I think the pictures I'm taking are a little different, too, and it's just just because of the technical specs (the 5 MP camera on the N95 is not that different from my Canon, and I suspect the Zeiss optics might even be a little better); I certainly am taking pictures with the N95 with the idea that they'll go online immediately.

Since it does SIM cards and handles every mobile phone protocol invented, I'll be able to use it in Asia and Europe, which'll be good because it looks like I've got a lot of travel just over the horizon. While the kids aren't crazy about talking on the phone when I'm on the road-- they much prefer iChat video-- it's still useful to be reachable.

Now to install ZoneTag and play around with that (the ability to simultaneously post to Flickr and blog a picture seems very promising).

[To the tune of David Bowie, "Black Tie White Noise," from the album "Black Tie White Noise".]

Technorati Tags: blogging, conference, Mobile Mash-Up 2007, mobility, Nokia Research Center, Web 2.0, ZoneTag

Digital camera standoff

My son and I taking pictures of each other. He has the N95. I have my Canon. Yes, I am a geek.

Technorati Tags: camera, N95

Nice mail app

Via Lifehacker and Jason, Bronson Beta's Mail.appetizer, which gives you a quick view of new mail-- and lets you delete unimportant stuff-- without having to switch over to Mail.

[To the tune of Grateful Dead, "Playing in the Band," from the album "1977-02-26 - Swing Auditorium".]

Taking a leisurely stroll through a great European city....

Anthony took this.

via flickr

In my defense, I was looking up an address, not just randomly walking around, looking for an open wifi network.

[ Posted from the end of cyberspace via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary, mobility, travel

Google Docs doesn't work on the iPod Touch

I spent some time at the Apple Store this afternoon, test-driving the iPod Touch. Pretty nice, but I decided against it, because despite expectations to the contrary, the version of Safari that the iPod runs will read and display Google Docs files, but not edit them. Apparently it's a Java issue.

Ah well, a nice idea.

Playing around with the iPod Touch. it's not bad. Not bad at all. I may get one.

Got my other converter

I went back to the Academy, and my old converter was waiting for me. Apparently they take all the converters, extension cords, etc. that are left behind after conferences, and all plug them together: I had to identify mine in a small train wreck of little electrical devices.

So all's well that ends well. And now I have a backup.

[To the tune of Guns N' Roses, "Welcome to the Jungle," from the album "Appetite for Destruction".]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary, travel

Tourist day

I spent the day playing tourist, going to the Royal Palace (now some very interesting museums) and the Gellert Baths. Both were great.

I also ran around a little looking for a power adapter for my laptop, as I left mine at the Academy of Sciences yesterday. I walked around to a couple electronics stores, but they were all closed; I even went back to the Academy, but the security guards blew me off.

It's interesting: I could have solved this in Singapore or Seoul in maybe 5 minutes, even on a Sunday morning. Singapore has several electronics stores on every block, while Budapest has cafes and leather goods stores in equal abundance. Tomorrow.

[ Posted from Hotel Art, Budapest via plazes.com ]

Technorati Tags: Budapest, Hungary, travel

The iPod Touch gets more attractive

Typepad has an iPhone/iPod Touch-optimized editorial interface. That's cool.

Useful Firefox trick

I love tabs, but only just discovered the keyboard command to toggle between them, much in the same way you can move between different programs by using command-Tab.

It's alt+command+left arrow (or right arrow).

[To the tune of Gary Numan, "Dead Heaven," from the album "Scarred".]

The one thing I don't like about the MacBook

It's just barely too big to carry around with the lid up, so I can't walk and compute at the same time.

Though that's probably a good thing, all in all.

Technorati Tags: computer, mobility

Back in business

I've got Ecto and 1001 working on the new machine, and most important, have recovered my categories, old drafts, etc. I don't have my Technorati tags, but I'm working on those. So I can now feel more or less complete.

[To the tune of The Rolling Stones, "Memory Motel," from the album "No Security (Live)".]

Technorati Tags: ecto, blogging

New computer

I now have a new machine, a MacBook. I'd been nursing my old G4 PowerBook since late 2004-- I got it right before going to Denmark-- I was pretty behind the technology curve this morning. But no longer. This thing is so fast, it hurts. It's truly a thing of beauty.

The thing that really blows me away is how quickly it copies pictures from my camera on to the hard drive. This took forever on my old G4.

"Now I'm going to take even MORE pictures!" I declared to my wife after seeing the transfer time. She quite rightly rolled her eyes.

I've got to move some 3rd party software and licenses off the old machine tomorrow, and also deauthorize it to play iTunes purchases. But I can spend an evening without Ecto and NetNewsWire. Two evenings, maybe not. But an evening, sure.

Without my laptop

I'm getting a new laptop today, which means I don't have my laptop for the next several hours. Of course, all my data will move onto my new machine, and I can get plenty done on the loaner-- it's not like I'm totally cut off from the Intertubes and my own work-- but still it feels kind of weird, like sending a kid off to camp. Actually, THAT feels liberating.

Thank goodness I synced my iPod this morning.

I went through a couple experiences earlier of losing all my data-- all e-mail, music, etc.-- either through theft of my own stupidity, and so am now more than a little obsessive about backing up data. More than that, I like having it with me all the time. I look at the new iPod classics with the giant hard drives, and mainly think, "Hey! Personal server!"

The upside is I finally get to move to an Intel-based Mac, just in time for the fall travel season.

What I thought when I saw the iPodtouch

John Massie says it well:

I didn’t focus on the cool CoverFlow interface, multi-touch, or the fact I can play video, view photos and play music. I saw Wi-Fi, Safari, Same Add-on Interface like the iPhone and THE CALENDAR AND CONTACTS BUTTONS. See, this is perfect, I don’t need my e-mail (but I’m sure someone will make an add-on or hack for the iPodTouch for mail) and I could then ditch the laptop, iPod, and PDA for the iPodTouch.

If iChat and Skype are available on the iPodtouch, I think it'll be irresistable. I still have dreams of reviving my Apple Newton 2100, but am not quite technically adept (or obsessed) enough to make a Japanese driver work with an older Wifi card bought off eBay, or spend the time to figure out what memory cards will and won't work in the Newton's PCMCIA slot. Still, the Newton was great for writing: it had an excellent keyboard, and once I figured out how to make a little stand for it (a piece of cardboard and two rubber bands to give it some traction), it stood up nicely.

[To the tune of Peter Frampton, "Lines on My Face (Live)," from the album "Frampton Comes Alive!".]

New keychain (or neckchain) drive

One of my birthday presents this year was a 4 GB keychain drive. Given that I got one about a year and a half ago, and have pretty much worn it nonstop and worn it out, this came just at the right time.

I'm copying the files off the old drive, and it's taking forever. The old drive must know this is the equivalent of the last walk in the woods....

[To the tune of Elton John, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," from the album "Greatest Hits Volume II".]

What I want for my birthday

This. In black. From a little leather company in Idaho.

Update: Though Paul says to get it in the original English Kip, without the dye.

[h/t to Paul Saffo]

Technorati Tags: media, moleskine

The future of the Swiss Army Knife...

...appears to be in doubt.

The Swiss army, which is to order a fresh batch of 65,000 of the pocket knives with new specifications, has caused nationwide consternation by declaring that under World Trade Organisation rules, the tendering process must be opened to companies worldwide because of the high value of the contract.


China, which has been producing pirate copies of the knife for years, is thought to have the best chance of winning the contract, which is estimated at 1.7m Swiss francs (£695,000), followed by Taiwan and Bulgaria.

The issue has become one of the hottest political topics of the summer, with far-right politicians saying that national pride is at stake....

It is credited by everyone from balloonists and astronauts to surgeons and pilots with saving lives and is the official pocket knife for 16 armies around the world, including the US military.

It has also prompted many jokes, perceived as it is as the weapon of choice for the military of neutral Switzerland. The US comedian Robin Williams once quipped: "How can you trust an army that has a wine opener on its knife?"

I love my Swiss Army Knife, though thanks to regular travel and a measure of forgetfulness, I'm one of their better customers-- I've had to throw away at least two of them in the last two years, right before getting into airport security lines.

[To the tune of Bryan Ferry, "The Right Stuff," from the album "Bête Noire".]

Anyone have any experience with Tagbot?

I ran across this program yesterday, and wonder if it's worth trying. I'm pretty blown away by Spotlight, and am not sure I need to tag stuff on my Mac, or would really use the tags. Still, I love being able to tag stuff in other contexts, so maybe I would (particularly if there were a way to standardize vocabulary across my del.icio.us, technorati, flickr, blogs, and files on my computer).

Palo Alto Apple Store, 3 p.m.

People waiting in line for the iPhone.

via flickr

Notice the TV trucks there, too. Today, the line is the point. And now that Paris Hilton is out of jail, I guess the TV people have to go cover something else.

via flickr

[To the tune of Electric Light Orchestra, "Telephone Line," from the album "A New World Record".]

Technorati Tags: Apple Store, Palo Alto

Deceptive design

As part of Operation "keep my son entertained while he recovers from surgery," we bought one of those cheap video games that you plug into the TV-- the kind where the ROM is actually in the joystick.

In this case, it's a racing game, and the controller is shaped like a steering wheel. This is deceptive, because the actual controls are buttons. It's a bit like having a steering wheel in a car, but actually controlling it by honking the horn.

I showed it to my son, and asked him what he thought it was. "I know!" he said. "It's one of those games where you have to jump up and down to control it!" The fact that his first thought was that it was a haptic interface is revealing of just how quickly the notion of playing virtual games in the real world-- or real games in the virtual world-- has become commonplace.

Or maybe it's just an unsubtle attempt to guilt me into buying him a Wii for the family.

Technorati Tags: children, games, interface, video