Category: General

five minutes with the iphone

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

walked up to the apple store at 58th and 5th during my lunch hour. i figured that today would be a good day to venture there to see the new products, what with the terrible weather.

and it was. the apple store was indeed merely very crowded, and not packed so tightly with people that you could not move. and i saw the new imacs (very attractive — maybe that could replace the hdtv in the living room?) and got a chance to play with an iphone.

i’ve read all about them, but i’ve never actually seen one other than brief flashes. and i’ve never actually held one. my first impression was very good. it felt heavy enough to be substantial without being weighty — it gives one the impression of being a well-constructed singular thing, like it was hand-carved from a solid piece of metal.

and the screen is very impressive. it doesn’t noticeably smudge or get fingerprints on it, and the glare is really no problem indoors, though i don’t know what viewing while outdoors would be like.

i tried surfing the web — it seemed relatively fast, though i’m not sure if it was on wi-fi or the at&t network. i’d guess wi-fi. the iphone version of safari, the browser, was absolutely stunning. the pages were crystal clear, and zooming in and out worked perfectly.

i tapped on the address bar and tried typing “queerspace.com”. i’ve read that you should just keep typing and let the built-in error correction handle things. so i did that. maybe “queerspace.com” isn’t a fair test — what i got was qiwersoveee.com or something similar. it took quite a bit of effort to get “queerspace.com” into the address bar correctly. i’d guess that you’d get better with time, and that it would learn from your mistakes and all. i’ve never used a blackberry, so i don’t know how i’d do with an actual micro-keyboard. but with the iphone touch keyboard, i was all thumbs, and not in a good way.

basically, doing anything that didn’t involve the keyboard was intuitive and flawless. there’s no need for an owner’s manual, i’m sure. you wouldn’t need it. everything just made sense, and just worked.

google maps was cool, but in the end it was google maps. the widgets were cool, but in the end they were widgets.

the ipod worked spectacularly. scrolling through cover view and looking at songs was a breeze, and similarly scrolling through photos was easy and fun. i took a picture of myself with the camera and tried to email it to myself (again struggling with the typing of my email address), but the email wasn’t configured or something, so it wouldn’t leave the outbox. no dice there.

you tube videos played smoothly and were easy to access.

oh, and dialing the phone was easy. i called myself at work, and the sound quality of my voice mail message sounded clear and loud and perfect. much better than my current phone.

so, did i like it? absolutely. were there flaws? except for the keyboard, none that i could see. do i want one? yes, but not enough to shell out $600.

i’m glad i tried one. i’m betting the keyboard would get easier to use over time. someday i’ll have one.

but not yet. the new mac comes first.

things i’m hoping for today

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» i hope someone else besides me comes to work today. there’s absolutely no one else on my entire row of cubicles.

» i hope that that hysterical tourist who got off the 1 train at 50th street with her husband and left her kid on the train gets her kid back safe. i hope that someone on the train took care of the kid. if the kid was old enough, i hope that mom had made the normal contingency plan for such events–get off at the next stop and wait. i know she was a tourist, by the way, because she had a fanny pack. not a single person who lives in any of the five boroughs wears a fanny pack. they did a study.

» i hope that the food at the riverdale garden is as good as everyone says it is. it’s one of two michelin restaurants in the bronx (the amazing roberto’s is the other), and it’s a couple of blocks away from our new apartment. it would be nice to have an awesome restaurant in the hood.

» i hope for world peace and a cure for aids and an implementable solution to global warming and the full and sensible restoration of new orleans. why the hell not, right?

» i hope leopard ships early. i want a new mac, either an updated mini or an imac — not sure which. but i’ll wait until leopard ships, because then i’ll get it free with the new computer, rather than having to pay $129 for it. i’m cheap, or sensible, that way. since we don’t have cable tv, i want a mac to hook up to the hdtv so we can watch internet content on the tv. so we’ll either get an imac, and hook up the old mini to the hdtv, or we’ll get a new mini and hook it up to the hdtv. not sure which — probably the latter. the old mini still works fine for what we use it for — email, web surfing, light photoshop, and garage band.

» i hope you don’t think i’m too privileged. i worry about that quite a bit. not, i mean, what you think of me, but rather that i’m too comfy with my stuff.

» i hope the mets stay in first place and win the division. the braves have me worried, as do the phillies.

schneier interviews the head of the tsa

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bruce schneier’s blog on security issues is one of my consistent favorites on the web. i love people who can take a subject about which i know little and care even less, and make it fascinating. schneier is one of those people (and rands is another).

anyway, schneier recently interviewed kip hawley, the head of the transportation security administration. to give you an idea of how it went, here’s the first question posed to hawley:

By today’s rules, I can carry on liquids in quantities of three ounces or less, unless they’re in larger bottles. But I can carry on multiple three-ounce bottles. Or a single larger bottle with a non-prescription medicine label, like contact lens fluid. It all has to fit inside a one-quart plastic bag, except for that large bottle of contact lens fluid. And if you confiscate my liquids, you’re going to toss them into a large pile right next to the screening station—which you would never do if anyone thought they were actually dangerous.

Can you please convince me there’s not an Office for Annoying Air Travelers making this sort of stuff up?

it’s a must read — one of the best-written things i’ve come across recently. thanks to daring fireball for linking to it before i got there myself.

mets fan catches historic barry bonds baseball

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here are a couple of stories about it.

unfortunately, i’m not the mets fan, as the ball is supposed to be worth upwards of $500,000. but it was nice to see a guy from queens emerge victorious from what i’m sure was quite a battle for that ball, after it went into the stands in san francisco.

good for him.

and, i suppose, good for barry. i promised to ease up on the barry bonds hating, and i have to admit that i smiled a bit as i watched the video online this morning.

history will judge him, blah blah blah. maybe fairly, maybe not. but for now, it is what it is, i’ll live with it, and you can debate about who the true home run king is. you can make a strong argument for babe ruth, after all, who hit 714 in far fewer at bats than either aaron or bonds, having spent a few years as one of the best pitchers in baseball before becoming one of its best hitters.

but in the end, the number is the number. wonder what number will, in the end, be a-rod’s new target? 800? more than that?

we’ll see if barry plays next year, and which team will have the nerve to sign him.

who made steve?

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

but then who made steve?

here’s the brilliant answer

an excerpt:

This oft-quoted text presents a mystery. If God did not make Steve, then where did this uncreature come from? How did Steve come to be?

God did not make Steve, therefore we must also assume that Steve was never born. If Steve had been born, after all, then he would be “begotten, not made.” Surely we are not meant to conclude that Steve is a little-known fourth member of the Trinity.

short, funny, cogent, and insightful — one of the best things i’ve read in ages.

the pope gets it right

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pope: creation vs. evolution clash an ‘absurdity’

there’s not many topics on which i can agree with the pope. but, my god (no pun intended) did he nail this one (again, no pun intended).

from the article:

The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God.

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

and he expands this concept to stewardship of the earth, and environmental issues.

The pope, leader of some 1.1 billion Roman Catholics worldwide, said: “We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.”

“This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness … than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive,” he said.

too bad the jesus camp crowd won’t be listening. they are too busy planning/hurrying the end of days.

never thought i’d say this, but yay pope. go pope. you da man, pope.

bedtime stories a problem for many parents

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

via digg, a story about how many parents don’t understand the bedtime stories they read to their children.

from the article:

Almost a quarter (23%) skip passages they cannot read or invent words to get to the end of a sentence, the poll found.

well, at least we have this —

…the poll found that reading stories is enjoying a renaissance, with 73% of families preferring it to playing in the park or watching TV.

i’m hoping that the former isn’t true, and that the latter is.

the last move of my life is complete

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

well, the last one if i have anything to do with it. i’ve always thought that i’d love to retire in nyc — i want to retire in a place where i don’t have to drive a car. and since kirk staunchly vetoes sun city center, florida, where i could drive a golf cart to the grocery store, nyc it is.

anyway, yesterday was horrible move weather. torrential rain interspersed with occasional downpours. a string of wackiness made me doubt that it would go smoothly — the movers showed up two hours late, and the moving company kept trying to pull guys off the job to go elsewhere. but the guys themselves turned out to be very careful movers, for the most part, and got the job done well before the building’s 5pm cut-off time for moves.

too much negotiation over the price for my taste, though — one of those situations where cash tips talked loudly. i hate that — i’d not do very well in a lot of cultures around the world. i want to pay the asking price (or not) and have it done with. i hate the dickering.

anyway, the boxes and furniture are in, the cats are roaming freely around the new apartment, the building suffered no damage, a good chunk of belongings were put in storage with more to go, and kirk and i slept on a bed and had clothes to wear to work today. not bad.

hot water would have been nice. it was shut off during the plumbing renovations, and we couldn’t figure out how to get it back on. hopefully that will be fixed tonight.

the unpacking will go pretty quickly, i think. more than half the boxes are books, so once we get the bookshelves in place a lot of boxes will be emptied quickly. and that will give us room to work to get the rest done. we unpacked the four enormous wardrobe boxes last night, which gave us comparative acres of room in the bedroom.

new couch is delivered friday, along with the sink that ikea forgot the last time. then we can finish putting the kitchen together — it’s done now except for the sink installation.

it’s definitely starting to feel like home.

if you don’t like the weather

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…then just wait, because it will change. or so the saying goes.

at this time last week, i was bemoaning the heat and humidity. we were painting the new apartment, so you can’t close up the windows and turn on the air conditioner. fumes, and being overcome, and all.

this week we are having the floors refinished. and while heat and humidity isn’t ideal for that, i sure would settle for that weather right now.

because it’s raining.

in torrential downpour style, with no end in site for several days. and the only weather worse for refinishing floors than hot and humid is raining, which is of course 100% humidity.

aaaaargh. the weather means that we probably aren’t going to be able to get into the apartment until after this weekend, because the floor will most likely not be dry until then. and with the move date on monday, that means we are moving into a largely unfinished apartment.

but, as i keep telling myself, it’s our very own unfinished apartment.

benjamin moore aura paint: an unsolicited recommendation

~ jamie ~ 8 Comments

i thought kirk had lost his mind when he said we should buy this special paint from benjamin moore.

i went along with getting our friend deana, the color specialist, up to the apartment to choose paint colors. up until this point i had been an enthusiastic advocate of ceiling, trim, and walls all in the same color, preferably white. but i knew i was time to break out and get some color on my walls.

so she brought her voluminous paint sample books, and we chose several colors:

» jalapeno pepper eggshell finish 2147-30 for the bedroom walls
» moroccan red eggshell finish 1309 for the kitchen, one living room wall, the front door, and under the archway
» dash of curry eggshell finish 2159-10 for the living room walls
» driftwood eggshell finish 2107-40 for the bathroom walls
» sandlot gray eggshell finish 2107-50 for the hallway walls
» pale sea mist matte finish 2147-50 for the bedroom ceiling
» alpine white matte finish 2147-70 for the rest of the ceilings and all of the trim

whew.

that’s a lot of color for someone who liked his white walls so much.

and kirk really wanted this aura paint. i guess you can get less expensive benjamin moore paint, and i’m sure you can go to home depot and have them mix up an approximation of the color, but kirk really wanted this specific paint. it’s their best, and it covers well and is more environmentally friendly and has fewer fumes and needs a special machine to make it and blah blah blah.

fine.

and when, in the store, i found out that the paint was $60 a frigging gallon, i gulped but just whipped out the amex. i’d never paid more than $10, maybe $15 a gallon for paint. and, when my ex caitilin and i painted our house in st. augustine, caitilin’s dad got us the paint in 5-gallon industrial buckets, and i’m pretty sure he “borrowed” it from a construction site.

let me tell you. that paint is worth every penny of $60 a gallon, and more.

it went on smoothly, covered a myriad of wall problems, didn’t run down the wall or drip off of the ceiling, or off of my paintbrush onto the floor. the quality of the paint made it a pleasure to paint, and i hate hate hate to paint. the paint made it easy for an amateur painter to get professional-level results.

and the colors are absolutely stunning, and vibrant, and chameleonic. by chameleonic, i mean that the color shifts subtly in various levels of light. the sandlot gray in the hall has an eggplant-y hue in one light, a grayer hue in another light, and a greenish cast in yet another. it’s amazing. you can’t imagine how good they look. i’ll have to post some pictures when i get a chance.

so, benjamin moore. you made me a believer. i’ll never buy cheap home depot paint again.

and really, you shouldn’t either. the extra money you spend is more than mitigated by your spending less time painting. and your time is worth something, right?

and the results. my god, the results.

outstanding.

easing up on the barry bonds hating

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

maybe i’m getting more forgiving as time goes by.

or more lax.

anyway, i’ve been a barry bonds hater for quite some time. to save you clicking through, here’s a relevant bit of what i said:

if he plays and passes hank aaron, and baseball honors the record, that’s it for me and baseball. seriously. one of the few things that keep baseball sacred is the years and years of impeccable apples-to-apples stats. and to honor a steroid-laden asswipe’s breaking of a record that important would dishonor hank aaron’s real accomplishment, and i won’t stand for it.

i’m taking that back. with barry bonds approaching the record, i’ve been doing some thinking. here’s where i am now.

performance-enhancing drugs have been a part of baseball for decades. what do you think amphetamines are? baseball players have been popping speed forever. and no one disputes the records set while players used them.

if you throw out records tainted by steroids, then an appropriate extension of that logic would suggest that you should throw out records from, say the forties on. all those records are tainted too, you know. did hank aaron pop bennies? you’ll never know, and of course at this point he’d never admit it. but if you investigate bonds and throw out his record, then you open a can of worms. should you then investigate hank aaron and throw out his record as well? where does it logically stop? did babe ruth cork his bat?

and how exactly did steroids help bonds? maybe he recovered a bit more quickly from injuries. maybe the strength he gained gave him a few more feet on some home run hits. how many home runs did that add to his total? impossible to quantify, but given that there are so many intangibles in the ability to hit a home run, lets say for arguments sake that the extra time and extra few feet gave him 20 more home runs.

big deal. all that means is that he’d be a bit farther away from the record. he’d still hang around long enough to break it.

and i’ve also come to believe that bonds is the poster boy for an activity in which scores of baseball players participated, but few got caught.

finally, as a mets fan i’ve largely ignored the return of guillermo mota, the mets pitcher suspended for steroid use last season. and, given his dismal performance this year, i don’t think the steroids did him much good.

in the end, i think that talent, coordination, concentration, experience, and willpower are probably far more important to someone’s ability to be a major league baseball player than a few performance-enhancing drugs here and there. you can give me all the steroids you want, and the chances of me hitting a home run in a major league park are up there with those proverbial monkeys trying into infinity to type shakespeare.

am i glad that steroids, speed, and the rest are gone from baseball? you bet. and i look forward to an old age where players who began their careers under the ban break all the records, establishing indisputable legitimacy.

ryan howard’s 800th home run will be a big celebration for me.

in the meantime, let’s let bygones be bygones. let’s not be hypocrites. and let’s not be haters.

let barry bonds have his moment. he deserves it.

Olbermann: Bush, Cheney should resign

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read it or watch it.

i started crying about halfway through this, and couldn’t stop. it’s the most powerful, reasoned, cohesive, intelligent, and provable statement on this issue that one could possibly make.

i won’t spoil his logic for you, but it’s airtight.

i sometimes wonder if our free republic can survive these men. if the next president continues down this same road of consolidation of power around the executive branch, it may not.

can’t stand the inactivity

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a month ago, i was complaining that there was so much to do to close on the apartment, but because of timing there was nothing i could start on.

i don’t wait well. i have a list in my head of what needs to be done, and i know what the deadline is, and i see the clock ticking, and it drives me bonkers that i’m just waiting, with no ability to get things done, because other people have to do what they are doing first before i can begin.

i’m back there.

a month has gone by since i posted that, and we’ve closed on the apartment and torn it apart.

and, as soon as the ceiling, the kitchen wall, and the floor are done, we can start our work — the painting, the installation of appliances and kitchen cabinets, the choosing of new faucets and light fixtures, the replacing of ugly light switches and power outlets, and so on.

we visit every day, and there’s progress every day. and our new super has been, well, super, and has worked and coordinated and sweated along with us to help get it all done.

i. just. want. to. be. done.

now.

aaaaargh.

i’ve gotta be more patient.

iphones sold — 0 to 700,000

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goldman sachs says 700,000 — piper jaffray says 500,000 — global equities research says 525,000 — blackfriars says it could be a million.

it all reminds me of the old sparks song, “i predict”:

You’re gonna take a walk in the rain
And you’re gonna get wet
(I predict)

You’re gonna eat a bowl of chow mein
And be hungry real soon
(I predict)

in other words, no one knows what the hell the real number is. what we do know is that it’s an earth-shattering number, one that doesn’t include me but will someday, perhaps soon.

and when we do know the number, it will be an actual number of iphones actually sold to actual people, instead of the fake-y pretend numbers of “products in the channel” that you get from most companies like microsoft and sony.

nintendo reports actual numbers sold for the wii as well. you have to read these references carefully. for instance, here’s a quote from a story that went out on the wire today — Nintendo Wii outsells Sony PS3:

Nintendo has said it sold 5.84 million Wii machines worldwide in the five months since its release in November, 2.37 million in the Americas, and 2.0 million in Japan. The Kyoto-based company said it expected to sell 14 million more Wii machines in the fiscal year ending in March 2008.

Sony has shipped 5.5 million PS3 machines in the fiscal year through March.

note the wording? nintendo: sold. sony: shipped. that means that while 5.84 million wiis are in homes being used, 5.5 million ps3 boxes are god knows where. still in the store, unsold? i’m betting that most of them are.

glad that the companies i support with my dollars, apple and nintendo, don’t play these mindshare games.

and i’m betting that the first announcement you’ll hear from apple is that they have sold one million iphones.

and that announcement will come this week, or early next week.

and to that, i unabashedly say, go apple.

fake steve on the iphone, consumerism

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

day in and day out, fake steve jobs for my money has the funniest blog on the web. even if you aren’t an apple fan, it’s still worth a read. his takes on apple, technology, current events, and miscellany are consistently hilarious.

and often insightful as well.

as was the case with a recent post: 29 june 2007, the day the world changed. it’s set up as a fake message to the apple faithful, on the occasion of the release of the iphone. but here’s what he has to say about the thousands of people lined up for hours, or days, for their iphone:

It’s about saying, Look, I realize there’s something bad happening in Darfur, and there’s some kind of AIDS epidemic in Africa, and there’s some crazies who want to blow us all up, and there’s a war in Iraq where thousands of people are dying for no reason — and yes, those things are important, and someday we may take to the streets to say something about them, if we can think of anything to say about them, but for now we Americans take to the streets for this cause.

i can’t recall reading a better summary of the times in which we currently live.

iphone: want, not buying

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

i’m not going to bother to link to any of the 35,000 articles flogging, explaining, bashing, hyping, or excoriating the iphone. google iphone if you want. there are lots of reviews and opinions out there.

here’s mine.

it [seems to be] revolutionary, user friendly, cost-effective (when you consider the total investment of more expensive phone + less expensive monthly plan), ultra-cool, and a great all-in-one replacement for a lot of separate older gadgets i have. i like that it is basically a small computer, so upgrades will be software based — that means that improving the phone won’t mean replacing the phone, as it does now. i like the form factor, the idea of the touch screen, the utility of the included apps. i’m on at&t (the new cingular) anyway, so i wouldn’t have to switch phone providers.

it all makes sense. the sole major drawback, the slow speed of at&t’s edge network, is not an issue for me in new york city, as i’d be on speedy wi-fi nearly all the time i’d use it.

i’m not getting one anytime soon, though. three reasons:

» i just bought a coop. no extra money in the budget right now for a frilly phone.

» it’s 1.0 hardware. never, never, never buy 1.0 hardware. that’s my personal rule. let the early adopters sort out the issues.

» i get a corporate discount through my employer on my at&t cell phone service. that’s a no-no for the iphone…you lose your discount. that’ll change eventually, i’d bet.

so, strike three. iphone is out. for now.

6 months from now? we’ll see.

of course, i work with some people who’ll get one pretty quickly. if i see one in person, i reserve the right to satisfy my wanton iphone lust at any time.

new apartment–exhausted and exhilarated

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

well it happened. we closed on thursday and have spent the last two days tearing out the kitchen and getting ready for the renovation.

we’ve pulled out all the kitchen cabinets and flooring, we’ve prepped the walls for priming and painting, we’ve scheduled the plaster guys to come in next week and redo the ceiling, we’ve scheduled some tile guys to come in and redo the kitchen floor, and we’ve scheduled a floor guy to come in and redo the wood floors.

whew. not bad for two days, but that’s the exhausted part.

the exhilarated part? we’re doing it all for our very own home. amazing.

you want details? kirk wrote a great post about the closing process, and we have pictures of the empty apartment before the renovation started, and pictures of the apartment after everything was pulled out. along with some bonus pictures of the view, the closing and some other stuff.

tomorrow we take the day off (sort of) and go to ikea to buy kitchen cabinets. and in the afternoon we have a block party with our new neighbors. good timing for us.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

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via digg, a wikipedia story about this grammatically correct sentence using only the word buffalo.

from the site:

Preserving the meaning more closely, substituting the synonym “bison” for “buffalo” (animal), “bully” for “buffalo” (verb) and leaving “Buffalo” to mean the city, yields

‘Buffalo bison Buffalo bison bully bully Buffalo bison’, or:
‘Buffalo bison whom other Buffalo bison bully themselves bully Buffalo bison’.

needless to say, i absolutely love this.