geoff – Page 12 – Geoff Arnold's Blog

The week's twitterings – 2011-01-16

The new British Library iPad app is just gorgeous. Magnificent. Exquisite. Check out the illuminated manuscripts… #
“@amandapalmer: I just wrote the stupidest. Song. Ever.” < Whoa! Stiff competition in that category! #
“@AMaskedAvenger: Something wonderful will happen today!”< Something wonderful happens EVERY day. Also something crappy. #itsabigworld #
Really puzzled about all the recent LinkedIn and Facebook invitations from people who work at Sun Microsystems. Didn't they get the memo? #
“@russnelson: it's also going to have to decide when NOT to pay for your health care” <And for-profit lowest-bid insurance companies don't? #
"Today has been set aside to honor the victims of the Tucson massacre. And Sarah Palin has apparently decided she's one of them," – TPM #
Setting up a new cert for my zone. The openssl CSR generation dialog sucks – or at least GoDaddy dislikes the result. #
Anyone referring to the BALANCE of violent rhetoric is simply disingenuous. There is no balance. http://t.co/wonDo40 via @NewYorker #
Forceful+erudite refutation of the idea that the cobbled-together Nativity story has any historical basis whatsoever. http://t.co/SfnQl8s #
Correlation is not causation, but pleading pure coincidence would be absurd. http://t.co/S49HMwS via @Telegraph #
“@russnelson: .@geoffarnold and video games cause violence, too. Wait, there's no proof for THAT either, is there?” < That's an argument?! #

The week's twitterings – 2011-01-09

Just watched Chelsea v Aston Villa. As the commentator said, this is the kind of game that captures just why we watch the Premier League… #
Brilliant piece in the Atlantic by Garrett Epps on the constitutional aspects of Health Care Reform suits http://t.co/Fx0GqnY via @AddThis #
OK, I'm no longer a CA earthquake virgin. That M4.1 (13 miles ESE of San Jose) at 4:10pm was a nice shakeup. #

Slicing off probocis to spite visage (AA style)

I’m starting to pull together plans for a business trip. The idea is that I’ll go to the Boston area for a meeting, fly on a couple of days later to Bangalore, then back home to San Francisco. A typical multi-city trip, reminiscent of my days at Sun. Naturally, I begin by visiting the travel sites: Yahoo Travel (powered in part by Expedia) and Orbitz. History suggests that the best schedule will probably involve multiple carriers….
But there’s a problem: each site offers only a few choices. After a moment, I realize that I’m not seeing anything from American Airlines (and precious little from their oneWorld partners). AA has decided not to play ball with the Internet travel sites, and they’ve reciprocated.
Fine: let me try the American website. This is a disaster. (Somebody teach AA about user interface design, quick!) How about their partners in crime, British Airways? That’s even worse: do they really expect me to do SFO-BOS via LHR?!
American may think that it makes sense to try to pull travellers from the aggregator sites to their own website, but doing this means giving up on the multiple city, multiple carrier market. I always though that this was one of the most profitable segments in the airline business. Maybe there are too few of us for American to worry about, but alienating business customers seems monumentally stupid.

Acting on one's beliefs

Over at CommonSenseAtheism, Luke just posted the following question:

Imagine you have a blue pill and a red pill, and you must swallow one of them right now and not the other.
If you take the red pill, you will die immediately. If there is an afterlife, all your sins will be pardoned and you will spend eternity there. If there isn’t an afterlife, you will just be dead.
If you take the blue pill, you will live a long, happy, and fulfilling life on Earth. You won’t die early of illness or injury. You will be an asset to society. But if there is an afterlife, you will not partake in it when you die. When you die you will cease to exist, even if there is an afterlife for everyone else.
Which pill will you choose?

Yes, I know that it’s contrived. And yes, believers will reject it in various ways; one approach is to argue that only a deity could implement this, and their deity would never do so. And one can also view this as a kind of “reverse Pascal’s Wager”, and reasonable people agree that the Wager is a crock.
But I still think it’s a usefully provocative thought-experiment. Obviously non-believers will all take the blue pill, but how about the rest of you?

The week's twitterings – 2011-01-02

Good grief! England bowls out Aussies for 98, finishes day 1 of the Melbourne test on 157-0! #australiancollapse #ashes looking safe #
Pedophile priests, emergency hospital care: will the Catholic Church ever accept that it is subject to the law? http://nyti.ms/e35P2C #
Went to see "The KIng's Speech" this afternoon. Wonderful movie! Off to Carmel/Monterey tomorrow for a couple of days. #
Book of the moment: Sarah Bakewell's "How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer" #
Just test drove a Hyundai Genesis Coupe 3.8. Remember RWD? Wow! Tomorrow I'll try the 2.0T; see if the extra 96 BHP is worth the money. #
I just got a $5 credit for movies and TV shows @amazonvideo. Click http://amzn.to/hh8gTP to get yours. #get5 #
Just finished a wonderful book: "The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England" by Ian Mortimer. Great perspective on 14th century England. #
Day 2 of car shopping: test drive Genesis Coupe 2.0T. Then compare with 3.8. Last day of the year: should be a good time to make a deal! #

New year, new car

For me, driving is a question of balance. Over the last 30 years, I’ve owned many cars (that’s the subject of another post), and I’ve tried to balance the practical and the playful, the economic and the expressive. At one point I tried to cover the bases by having two cars: a sensible one (for commuting, shopping, passenger-hauling) and a toy (for scooting around with the top down and the wind in my hair). Alas, such an approach doesn’t work well in New England except in summer. In my final Boston-area car, I tried to have it both ways, with the Subaru Legacy GT: a practical four-door sedan with excellent power and handling. That was a good car; I hope that my son Chris is still enjoying it.
When I moved to Seattle, I was living in the city, and I didn’t need a car. A ZipCar membership (or was it Flexcar then?) meant that I could use whatever kind of car I wanted when I really needed one, from a Mini to an SUV. That was neat. But in 2009 I came to California, where a car is essential. The question of balance returned with a vengeance. After looking at a number of cars, I decided to buy a Toyota Prius, as a way of combining geek technology and prudence about “peak oil”.
The Prius served me well. It’s a good, efficient, economical car. But it has to be said: it isn’t fun to drive. Acceleration, handling, stability (especially on poor pavement in the rain): it always felt “just enough”, with no reserves. A week ago, we were in Monterey for a short break, and I drove up Carmel Valley Road and then across the Laureles Grade to Laguna Seca. That’s always been one of my favourite drives, but when I lived in Massachusetts I could only experience it in rental cars. (Unfulfilled dream: I always wanted to take the Miata across the Grade.) Alas, the Prius couldn’t really do justice to the swooping, twisting road. It wasn’t fun.
And so yesterday I drove up to Burlingame and bought a new car: a Hyundai Genesis Coupe. I test-drove the 3.8 V6 and the 2.0 I4 Turbo; both were really nice, but the equipment level on the (Grand Touring) 3.8 was outstanding, so that’s what I bought. It’s the first rear-wheel drive car I’ve owned since the Miata, and it really feels like an outstanding value.
Is it fun? Yesterday all I did was to drive it home and read the manuals. (A big manual for the car, a slightly smaller one for the navigation system, and quick reference guides for both of them!) Today was grey and wet, with low clouds and drizzle: not the ideal conditions for cruising in a sports coupe. But what the hell… let’s see what it can do. So we drove down to Santa Cruz, including the challenging twists of Highway 17. (We didn’t see much of the scenery, because we were in the clouds most of the time.) Then up Route 1 along the coast to Half Moon Bay, stopping briefly at Pigeon Point to see if there were any whales inshore. (There weren’t.) Lunch at Cameron’s (the pub with the two English buses outside), then home on I-280. Traffic on 17 was moderate, and everybody was cautious because of the mist and the every-present Highway Patrol. By contrast, route 1 was wide open, and I was able to cruise at a steady 65. And yes: the Genesis Coupe is fun. Plenty of power, precise steering, excellent suspension, and a decent 6-speed automatic transmission (with paddle shifters and a limited slip differential). And comfortable: I really like the driving position. (I’m not sure how Hannah will feel about the vestigial back seat, though…)
The geek factor is also high. When I paired my iPhone, the car sucked in the address book, and I was able to voice-dial entries by name from the address book. I was also able to browse the iTunes tracks on my iPhone using the car stereo UI. The navigation system is very nice; it gets traffic info through Sirius XM, and the UI is excellent. (Recalc is almost instantaneous – in fact a less hasty response might be easier to absorb.)
Why the Genesis Coupe? Well, what other choices are there for a RWD coupe under $30K? The Camaro is really ugly, the Mustang is technically OK but I don’t really like the 40-year old retro styling. (Can we declare “retro-everything” over? Please?) The Dodge Challenger? Sorry, I can’t bring myself to suspend disbelief and buy a Chrysler. That’s it. (Sad but true.) And Motor Trend’s four-way shoot-out is pretty compelling: their verdict on the Genesis Coupe:

The only one that looks and feels like a sports car. Surprise, we liked it best.

The week's twitterings – 2010-12-26

Abstruse Goose on the coming apocalypse – http://t.co/dQizhJj #
Scalzi on SciFi Films of 2010 http://t.co/GXJzefS I agree about Inception; interesting that Iron Man 2 did better in US (but not worldwide) #
WTF? #Twitter suddenly reports I'm "Following 0, Followers 0". Wrong, wrong, wrong. #
Logically, I must have experienced a haircut which qualifies as "worst in my lifetime". But why did it have to be yesterday's? #
Very gusty winds and rain for Christmas: the hummers are having difficulty holding on to the feeder while they suck down the syrup. #

The week's twitterings – 2010-12-19

Insightful piece on the pernicious myths of "the Fall" and "purity" in religion: (It's even more blatant in Buddhism.) #
Good news: no painful after-effects of blasting kidney stones. Puzzling: almost no gravel coming through. Keep drinking! #
The numbers are clear: Fox == Republican propaganda http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/12/the-propaganda-channel.html #
RT @Maragretuwo: RIP Cap'n Beefheart RT Oh, dammit. So long, Don Van Vliet. http://j.mp/ghmJLK #beefheart #
“@chrisgerhard @cowperandrewes "if [the Roadrunner] was in tron then @geoffarnold should have been credited.”<Many others more worthy than I #
Our broadband woes are due to old & damaged coax that got soaked in first rains of the season. It's going to take several days to fix it all #
Fortunately we have multiple resources: my iPad 3G, the 3G USB dongle I got when Palo Alto lost power, iPhone 4 tethering… #

Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy

At the end of October, I blogged about the fact that a recent routine check-up had led to the discovery of several large (but symptom-free) kidney stones. I wrote then that I’d be discussing the next steps with my urologist. Time and a half later, the “next steps” have arrived: tomorrow morning at 7:30 I’ll be having EWSL to blast three stones in my right kidney (two 2.0cm, one 0.6cm) into fine gravel. And then for the next few days… well, I’m told that painkillers are a good idea. Painkillers, and lots to drink.

Using my 3G iPad in the UK

I spent several days at the beginning of the month visiting my family in England. Since I was staying with my mother in Oxford, and she doesn’t [yet] have any kind of broadband, I had to decide how to stay connected. I elected to take my new 3G iPad with me, and to replace the AT&T SIM with one for a UK-based pay-as-you-go service. I thought about using my iPhone 4 instead, but I wanted to keep my US number “live”, and iPads are shipped unlocked, so I wouldn’t have to do any hacking.
A couple of hours after I arrived at Heathrow, I went into central Oxford to get a SIM. It’s tough: there are mobile phone stores every few yards, and most electronics stores are also carrying the 3G iPad. I eventually picked Vodafone, and was enthusiastically greeted by a young staff member who explained that they’d only just received the iPad data plan kits, and that I would be their first customer. I thought about leaving, but decided not to….
The basic scheme was very simple: 250MB for £10. No alternatives. I wasn’t sure that 250MB would be enough, and asked if I could get an immediate top-up. The answer was “no”; I would have to wait until I’d used most of that allowance before I could apply a top-up. I was pretty sure that other companies were offering better deals, but I decided to stick with it. (As it turned out, 250MB was plenty: I used less than 200MB during the five days I was there.)
Since this was the first time they’d handled this particular transaction, the two Vodafone representatives used it as a training opportunity, and worked through a checklist to get everything registered. Once they had done this, I asked them to replace the SIM while I waited. This was a prudent move, because it turns out that the documentation in the SIM package did not include the username and password corresponding to the APN. Fortunately the training checklist did include the necessary data, and 20 minutes after I arrived I was online. And it was completely anonymous: I paid in cash, and never provided my name or address. (Presumably they could trace my iPad, but even so….)
With my 3G-enabled iPad, I headed off to a nearby pub for beer, food, and email. All three worked perfectly. Unfortunately, when I got back to my mother’s house on the western outskirts of Oxford, I discovered that I was in a Vodafone “dead zone”. Coverage flickered from 3G to EDGE and (most ofter) GPRS. Async email was OK, because the iPad client was quite good at detecting moments of good connectivity and grabbing any pending messages. Twitter was hit-or-miss. Web surfing was horrible, though. (And to rub things in, my iPhone proceeded to roam to Orange, and showed five bars of 3G connectivity the whole time. Obviously I had data roaming turned off….)
During my visit, I used the iPad up and down the country, from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Heathrow, and apart from west Oxford it worked fine. I didn’t test the bandwidth (I wasn’t sure how much traffic a speed test would generate), nor did I try using Skype. When I returned to the US on Wednesday, I replaced the AT&T SIM and was about to check online to see what APN I should configure. I needn’t have worried: it looks as if the iPad remembers the APN for each SIM that it’s seen.
Before I return to Oxford, I hope that BT will have installed a Home Hub, so that I can get WiFi broadband access. And then I need to find a voice-dial phone for my mother – not a mobile, but a voice-activated desktop phone, preferably with a speaker.