Awesome "Evolving" Algorithm

Ooo this is spiffy!

Looks like the beginnings of a new compression scheme... among other interesting possibilities.

So, so ahead of the curve

In order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.

...If you can do this, becoming not only an early adopter, but an early discarder, you will realize greater status rewards than you ever imagined. Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever.

I will spare you the long list of items that I "discovered" well in advance of the madding crowd. Or the brilliant predictions I made which were ignored or pooh-poohed at the time, but which could have made someone (including me) huge portions of fame and fortune had we been bothered to follow up on them.

Bah.

Go read this article by David Brooks, it's amusing. (Thanks for the pointer, David!)

Great Feature, Stupid Limitation

Like a good little Apple fangirl, I promptly updated my iPhone to 1.1.3, and happily and quickly customized my home screen(s), added webclip icons (including making a custom one for THIS blog, check it out you iPhoners!), and thrilled to the *reasonably* accurate location finder in Maps.

Software updates: yay!

But. As we speak I'm downloading a rental of The Simpsons Movie. I'll load it up on my iPhone so that I'll have something to watch on my bus ride this weekend if I get bored of listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me while the scenery rolls by. The catch is that once I start watching it, I have to finish watching it within 24 hours. So, for example, I can't watch half the movie on my way out of town and the other half on the way back.

THAT IS JUST STUPID. Let me repeat: the 24 hour window to watch a rental that is available for 30 days is STUPID. In case I failed to be quite clear: this restriction is DUMB, IDIOTIC, and downright BRAINDEAD.

I cannot see how this limitation solves any concern that either Apple or the movie studios might have about piracy. It's just pointless. And aggravating.

All aTwitter

Cripes. So somebody kewl like Kelly is using Twitter. Hence, I must learn about it and use it myself. So I go and set myself up a Twitter account (tovish). And then I try to get my phone to receive the tweets.

The first verification message showed up just fine. It asked me to send my name. Which name? My twitter name? My phone name? My real name? I try all of them. Nothing works.

I start the verification process over again. Now I can't even get the darn first verification message.

And may I add, the Twitter help system is RIDICULOUSLY BAD.

And, apparently, I am deeply uncool.

Merry Christmas, all!

[Update: Now it's working, apparently. Except I can't delete all the junk messages I sent by accident. It says it's deleting them, but noooo... Grr.]

From my iPhone

Yes folks, this post is coming to you directly from my magical new gizmo! Don't you just love it??!!

Delayed Gratification

Yes, I'm a geeky, dweeby human being. As such, it was incumbent upon me to get in line to purchase an iPhone the moment they became available. That, and my current phone is such a piece of crap that I could HARDLY WAIT to make it redundant.

The Good News: I was about number 46 in line at my local AT&T store.
The Bad News: There was an extremely talkative gizmo guy, who was much more clueless than he knew, who would not shut up for 2 seconds together over the course of the 2+ hours we waited.

The Good News: I made it to the point of purchase without murdering aforemention gizmo guy.
The Bad News: My goddamn credit card was declined (I've had this happen before when trying to make a major techno purchase. They say it's to ensure my card's not being used for fraudulent purposes. What it is, is EXTREMELY INCONVENIENT, VITIATING THE WHOLE POINT OF HAVING A CREDIT CARD IN THE FIRST PLACE.)

The Good News: I had enough money in my checking account to use my debit card.
The Bad News: Now I have very little money left in my checking account.

The Good News: I now own an iPhone.
The Bad News: Transferring my old mobile phone number is going to take a while.

The Good News: I can use my iPhone for outgoing calls and load it up with all my info.
The Bad News: NO, ACTUALLY I CAN'T. AT&T is so backed up with activations that it'll take 24 hours to process all the requests. So, in fact, I have an extremely elegant looking brick sitting on my desk. An extremely elegant looking, very expensive brick.

The Good News: I own Apple stock. Clearly they were unprepared for the massive influx of activations... which must mean that they are busting every known record for first day sales. This ALMOST makes up for my frustration in not being able to immediately deploy my new toy.

Resurrected!

Oh how nice. An hour at the Clarendon Apple Store and presto: the iMac, he lives!

Mind you, I lost a day and a half of productivity, but thanks to Apple Care (pats self on back) it cost me exactly $0.

Disaster

My iMac shut itself off while I was in the shower.

I turned it back on.
It shut itself off.

I unplugged all peripherals and turned it back on.
It shut itself off.

I called Apple Care. We reset the Power Management Unit.
I restarted it.
It shut itself off.

The iMac, he dead.
Off to Clarendon with dead iMac tomorrow morning. I hope they have right part in stock.

:(

OMG

Watching a text stream from MacWorld... the iPhone is going to be THE new must-have gadget. I will be buying one IMMEDIATELY (and I don't even know what they cost yet)!

[Update: $500 and not available 'til JUNE. June?? How can I wait until JUNE??? Ugh. My technolust has been piqued and will now go unsated for 6 months. Unless, of course, Steve also unveils the ThinBook...]

Booyah!

Apple stock closed over $90 today. Wish I'd had more money to put where my mouth was over these last 6 years or so.

Still, can't say I'm sorry I held onto half my holdings when I took some profits last year.

:)

Zipcodestats

Are you keeping up with the Joneses? Do you even know what's UP with the Joneses?

Check out this absolutely fascinating look at your neighborhood through the lens of the census and other data: Zipcodestats. An amazing wealth of detail is available on all sorts of demographic information.

Server Madness

I've had to move hosts AGAIN.

Expect many things to be broken... I'll fix stuff when I have a chance.

Cooler Head Prevails

You are NOT going to believe this.

Apple releases THIS today. I rush to the Apple Store, credit card in hand...



...and ~ strangely ~ I DO NOT BUY IT.

I know, I know. What happened to my pent up consumer techlust? What happened to my frustration with the ol' iBook G3? Why do I not snap up this piece of computer goodness?

Well, for one thing, it's bigger. And three-quarters of a pound heavier. And it has a shiny screen. (A lovely screen, but highly reflective.) The black one's case is matte, not glossy. And when I start adding the RAM and hard drive space I need, it gets damned expensive, quickly.

What I really want is a portable little appliance. Surf the web, do email, show some pics, play some music. No heavy lifting, in any sense of the word. SMALL. SMALL and LIGHT.

Until I can get something smaller and lighter than my current iBook, ancient as it may be, I think I'll stand pat.

And that is how I turned out to be a remarkably sensible person. You may all pick your jaws up off the floor now.

Colossally Stupid Usability Report

Jakob Nielson strikes again. The man has made a career out of either pointing out the utterly obvious, or missing the point altogether.

This article probably does both. Gosh: the reader's eyes move in an F pattern! On a page with content laid out in an F pattern!

Or in a more solid block! On pages laid out in a solid block!

They don't go to the far right corner... where there's nothing to see! Holy Moses, stop the presses.

Seriously... people pay money for this??

Server Migration Semi-complete

My old host disappeared off the face of the earth with NO NOTICE.

Thanks to the kindness of the lovely Jonathan, I have a new server home. Unfortunately, all my old images went bye-bye with the old server. I'll recreate all the ones I can when I have the chance. Some may well be lost to posterity. C'est la vie.

Reminder to self: Blogger is a swell free tool, but make sure to keep local versions of all files anyway.

[Update: All the pictures, except for one, have been restored. Pleased not to have lost anything truly precious. Somewhat wistful having read back over the previous posts...]

HEART ATTACK!!!

I CANNOT BELIEVE IT.

I am a puddle of disbelief.
Holy Crap.
I am having a cow.
A cow is emerging FROM MY BODY.

Mooooooooooooooooooo.

MacBook PRO. Intel Duo-Core... 4-5x faster than previous Powerbook. Built in iSight!

Now... how much for this little 5.6 lb. bundle of sweetness?
$2499.

APPL now at $81. OMG.

HOLY MAZOLY!!

OK, y'all know I'm pretty much a rabid Apple fangirl. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

Nonetheless, I hereby pronounce myself stunned that Apple has just come out with an Intel-based iMac: same form factor, same price, 2 or 3 times the performance of the G5 model (which I bought in August). Crikey! Everybody thought for sure that, if anything, this transition would start with the Mac Mini and iBooks.

I'm still following the Keynote, so who knows what will be next.

APPL has broken $80.

Heh.

Buy my Cube!

Time to say good-bye to an old friend. If you're in the DC area, or you are willing to pay for packing & shipping, and you're interested ~ let me know!

My Cube and all its appurtenances are for sale on Craigslist.

[Update: Sold! You snooze, you lose!]

w00t!

I was considering buying an eyeTV 200, but was balking at the $299 price tag...

While in the Apple store trying to deal with the non-fitting RAM issue, and I happened to see an eyeTV box. It was a "refreshed" item, on sale for HALF PRICE.

Scoooooooore! I like it, but I need to get an antenna for it. Best Buy, here I come! (And maybe I can get a new battery for my cordless phone at the same time.)

Why I'd Like to Meet Him

Read this.

Apple's Revolution

Okay, since I'm a raving Apple fangirl, I feel duty-bound to comment on today's WWDC announcement.

I was really surprised. I'd read all the advance buzz, and I was all full of rationalizations about it, but I was wrong wrong wrong. Pigs have wings, hell has frozen over, and Apple will have Intel inside in two years' time.

So, do I buy that G5 iMac I've been wanting, or not?
Should I juice up my Cube and tough it out for a couple more years?

Hmmmm. Dunno.

If Apple's smart they'll cut their hardware prices again to keep product moving through the pipelines. I think I'll wait another month or two and see what happens. Although I'd REALLY like a new machine.

Finger and Toes Crossed

After a bit of a stutter, it looks like I'm in bizniz, DSL-wise. I'll allow things to have a bit of a shake-out period, but I think I'm all okay.

Verizon Mac tech support "Daniel" gets credit for this one.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled complaining.

It's going to be another week of dial-up.

And that's the BEST news I've had today.

Change of Address and Other Technical Difficulties

If you're a friend and you haven't received an email from me with change-of-email information, please contact me quickly at my old address and I'll make sure you have the new one.

I'm changing ISPs too, and am currently without internet connectivity at home. (Oh so inconvenient! I feel like I'm missing a hand!) I'm hoping I'll be up and running with the new DSL provider on May 4.

Bear with me through this transition, please.

I sold an iPod shuffle

There I was in the Apple store, picking up some desperate last minute tax prep software (I know, I know). I was queuing to pay, and the woman in front of me picked up the fluorescent green impulse-purchase package by the register. "It's really cute," she said. "And not very expensive." Then she put it back down. "Maybe I'll buy it later."

"Oh, go on," I piped up. "Buy it, you'll love it!" I showed her my shuffle peeking out from my handbag.

"Yeah, why not!" She plopped it on the counter. The cashier rang it up and into the white Apple bag it went.

And thus did I do my part to grow Apple's profits (a fabulous $.37 per diluted share, up 70% this quarter over year-ago quarter). Enlightened self-interest I call it, while trying not to despair about the excessive materialism of it all.

Hey, I still have taxes to deal with.

Le Geek, C'est Chic

In anticipation of the day when I own an iPod shuffle, I've created a playlist of pop and rock music, between 1:30 and 2:40 minutes long, that I can use for running. The idea is that I'll run for a minute at the beginning of each song and then walk for the rest of it.

Now it needs to be said that, at the moment, I'm still sticking to my run 30 seconds/walk a minute and half schedule, in an attempt to be moderate as I return to this practice. And, needless to say, I DO NOT currently own the iPod shuffle (although I have one on order at Amazon with a projected delivery of late March).

The current list has 3 hours of material in it, which is more than enough to keep me from getting bored in my current training regime. Later, as my training improves, I can widen my selection of tunes to include those that are, say, up to 3:30 minutes long (and increase the length of my 'run' segment). I have enough of those to get me through an entire marathon.

But here's the best part. First I created a Smart Playlist to fit the criteria mentioned above (no jazz, world music, classical, etc.). Then I randomized the list order and created a regular playlist from it. Then at the beginning I placed "Gonna Fly Now" (the original Rocky theme), which is almost four and a half minutes, and at the end I placed "Eye of the Tiger," which clocks in at four minutes. So the beauty of the deal is, when I get the mythical shuffle, I can start at the beginning and get a dose of inspiration ~ then switch to shuffle mode for the meat of the workout ~ then, when I'm finishing up my run, I can switch back to regular play and quickly navigate to the last track for a wow finish.

Heh. Bookended by corny Rocky tracks.

Can't wait.

"TV's Craig Ferguson"

Okay, I have to confess. I find Craig Ferguson, the new Late Late Show host, very amusing. I saw his 'audition' show, when they were looking for a replacement, and said to myself, "They'd be idiots not to hire him."

Scottish accent, larger than life features, and a genuinely goofy sense of humor. He is perfectly prepared to be silly. He's much better off-script (his monolog writers are not particularly keen), when he's just rattling on.

I know I shouldn't be staying up this late. But the guy is entertaining as hell.

I did the math

And, alas, it doesn't make much sense for me to buy the Mac mini.

I'd want a 80 GB drive. I'd want a Gig of RAM (which God knows I wouldn't buy from Apple, where it costs over $400). I'd want the SuperDrive. I'd want Airport. And I'd want to use my 17" Cinema Display, which means I'd need to get a DVI to ACD adapter.

When all is said and done, I'd be paying over $800 (and that's without the RAM), for a G4 system that while, admittedly, faster than the one I have currently by a factor of at least 2 still wouldn't carry me comfortably for the next several years. Nope, when push comes to shove, I'd be better off hawking my complete Cube package, together with the display, and getting myself a G5 iMac. Yeah, the 20" one. You gotta problem with that?

So, I wait. Which is good. I wait until Tiger is out ~ by which time I hope to have truly gainful employment and even some spare cash ~ and thereby get the upgraded operating system and iLife suite without having to pay extra for them.

In the meantime, I may just go ahead and get an iPod shuffle anyway. :D

Mac Fever

Yes, I am totally a geek Apple fan-girl. I am breathless with anticipation over tomorrow's Macworld keynote by Steve Jobs. Which will NOT be webcast or available via satellite live this year. (FEH! I wrote an annoyed note to Investor Relations.)

Having utterly saturated myself in rumors, I don't know whether to expect to be wowed or disappointed. I think I can safely say, however, that I will get nothing useful done tomorrow until after 3 pm. And quite possibly not even then.

Yes, I have no life.
Pity me.

Which company would you rather be affiliated with?

This one:


or this one?



Also, kudos to amazon.com for making it incredibly easy to donate to the Red Cross. I did. How about you?

Cooling My Heels & Paying Through The Nose For The Privilege

Well, here I am in Logan airport, where my 10:30 pm flight to Washington has been pushed back to 12:02 am. In order to while away the hours, and to keep from going stark raving mad with only CSS manuals to keep me occupied (they have LARRY KING on the TV monitors instead of the World Series... go figure), I have paid an extortionate fee for WIFI access. There's not an open bookstore to be found anywhere in this wing of the airport.

This snafu kind of caps a fairly snafuful weekend. My aunts both packed up and left Boston before I even got there. I arrived on Friday afternoon in Boston to find nobody home at the studio in Cambridge. My father never showed up to the birthday dinner for my niece on Saturday night. The dinner we had with my Dad tonight was a painful experience. The whole trip is another lesson in learning to let go of expectations and try to find grace in whatever transpires. I'm still working on that.

It's great to see Odessa looking healthy and happy, with a positive outlook for her future and an expressed desire to give something back to a system that ~ while hardly perfect ~ did provide a safety net for her in an hour of great need. I hope she'll find a way to do that, one way or another. We did a tourist spin at the Aquarium and the iMax theatre, which we both enjoyed. I hadn't been there in at least twenty years, and it seemed in much better repair than I remembered it. It's very cool to get eye-to-eye with the underwater set.

Margo and Calvin extended kind hospitality despite both being overextended with work obligations. The four of us watched the first game of the World Series together on Saturday night, a fun ~ if atypical ~ experience for us all.

I also managed to squeeze in about an hour and half with Joanna in Harvard Square, where we stood on the riverbank clutching coffee cups in the cold drizzle and watching a bit of the Head of the Charles regatta. She explained some technical stuff about rowing. It's a sport that I would never in a million years take up myself, but which I can now appreciate a bit more (from a safe distance). As ever, I was reminded how lucky I am to have wonderful friends.

I took one NIA class and walked to Harvard Square and back. The ankle's a bit sore, but not too bad. I'm hoping and praying that it'll continue to heal, because I really want to start running again.

I'm eating regular food again, trying to moderate my instinct to eat everything in sight at the rapidest possible speed and in the largest possible quantities. It amazes me how incredibly difficult it is to remain mindful about eating. For example, I keep forgetting my intention to not do anything else while I eat (for example, like reading or watching television). I keep forgetting to give thanks before I start stuffing my face. I keep forgetting that I've decided to stop eating when I'm not hungry any more (no matter how tasty the food is) and that I've given myself permission to not eat everything on my plate. You'd think these few rather simple intentions would be easy to follow through on. Apparently not. Years' and years' worth of ingrained habit is pretty hard to break.

The lovely Andrew was going to meet me at the airport at midnight. Since my flight out is NOW scheduled for 12:50 am (it's been pushed back another fifty minutes while I've been writing this!), I'm going to give him a call and tell him to just get a good night's sleep. God knows when we'll actually leave.

More Room for my Stuff

Apple's just added significantly more disk space to .Mac, which makes me feel better about hanging onto the service. If you're considering whether or not to re-up, or to sign up in the first place, check with Amazon first to see if they still have the discounted deal. Hey, saving 20 bucks is saving $20.*

I just know that one day .Mac's Backup alone will make it worth the price of admission. It's very comforting for me to know that I have automatic off-site back-up of critical files.

Do you?

[*And if you're going to be NEW to .Mac, for god's sake let me refer you first, so that I can get a discount!]

I've moved.

Maybe you noticed that you got redirected from my .Mac homepage to my Lucid Design domain. Well, my feed's changed too, so you might want to update if you're aggregating.

As part of my supreme laziness, I decided that I wanted to be able to blog from whatever machine, whenever, and ~ believe it or don't ~ Blogger actually makes it very easy to do that and host the pages yourself, rather than on their machine. It's free, and I'll still have the content where I can control it. This seems like a satisfactory arrangement, for now. I can even fiddle with the templates when I have the time and energy for it.

I'm still trying to decide whether to retain my .Mac subscription. At $99 a year, it's a dubious proposition. It is, however, convenient sometime, and the Backup and Sync features might be worth the cost of admission. If I do renew, I'll do it by buying the discount retail version ($79) through Amazon though.

Apple needs to do something really magic to have a persuasive value proposition with .Mac. Like calendars you can edit online. And good blogging software that creates a blog you can edit from anywhere...

[Update: I bought the Amazon retail version. Not quite ready to give up the .Mac goodies.]

Free Internet Phone Calls with Skype

Let's try it: call me. Apparently you can also call landlines and mobiles, but that's not free (although the rates, in Euros, look pretty reasonable for Europe and, oh, I dunno, CHINA).

Or get Skype and let me know...