Author: geoff

The week's twitterings – 2010-04-04

  • Shake, Rattle, Seattle – http://nyti.ms/bGHtAM Good thing I moved – even if I am now a few miles from the San Andreas Fault #
  • If you want to join the iPad party… we will be at the Palo Alto University ave store all night starting at 6 pm Friday. (RT @Scobleizer) #
  • OK, it's April, so it's probably time to schedule my next trip to China at the end of the month. #
  • Bought HP laptop in November; returned for service (same defect) 3 times since then. Got it back today, plugged it in: flash, sizzle, smoke. #
  • RT @Carnage4Life: Love @gruber's response to Doctorow's anti-iPad screed – http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/kids_are_all_right #
  • Everybody being photographed with everyone else at the iPad party in Palo Alto…. http://twitpic.com/1cwi6z #
  • Sitting in front of a cool iPad sign; all the photographers are asking our names for attribution/release purposes http://twitpic.com/1cwrgf #
  • The no.1 #ipad question: does anyone know of a commercially available USB hub that implements the "Battery Charging Specification"? #
  • Any #ipad users with a Targus ACH81US USB hub? It claims to have two "Always On" ports with "twice the power". Can it charge the iPad? #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Yes, I did get an iPad

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have an abiding interest in portable network devices, dating back to the MS-DOS based HP 100 with a packet wireless modem in the early 1990’s. Things like the Sharp Zaurus showed promise, but quickly disappointed as they failed to garner adequate market share to create a viable ecosystem. Recently I’ve been relying on mobile phones: iPhones in the USA, and a G1 Android in China and Europe. I’ve also untethered my MacBook Air by equipping it with a 3G USB modem, of which more anon.
This morning at 7am I lined up with the other faithful at the Apple store in Palo Alto, and around 9:05 I was clutching my 32GB iPad and tendering my long-suffering Visa card to the applauding (really!) Apple employee. And right now I’m composing this blog entry on the iPad using the WordPress app.
My first reaction is that Apple have got it pretty much dead right. Sure, there are some areas that could be improved, but in general it feels natural and harmonious. As Stephen Fry wrote in his review in Time, this is the kind of device that Douglas Adams would have approved of. Don’t Panic. The FOSS bigots have got this wrong: I don’t care that this is relatively closed, any more than I care that my DVD player is closed. It’s an easy to use information appliance.
How about the applications? iBook is sweet, though it’s no Kindle-killer – indeed the Kindle app for the iPad has most of the same usability features. The Netflix app is wonderful, and is going to change the way I watch movies. The ability to run existing iPhone apps is a nice bridge, but after a while I found myself going through and removing a large number of apps that iTunes had brought over for me. This isn’t a phone, and I don’t expect presence- and location-based apps will be very important. (However I was pleased to see that Skype just worked!)
So what about communications? You’ll note that I didn’t wait for the 3G version of the iPad. The key for me is that I want to be able to use this device anywhere in the world, especially in China. So I’ve taken my AT&T USB 3G modem, paired it with a portable WiFi hotspot from Cradlepoint, and I can use this to provide net access for any of my WiFi devices (and those of colleagues). When I get to China, I will substitute a China Mobile 3G modem, and my iPad and laptop(s) will be able to connect without fussing with SIM cards.
Best touch: the “rotation lock” switch. Most annoying: the fact that it’s almost impossible to get the iPad out of the rubbery (and rather ugly) Apple case.
UPDATE: In response to a couple of queries:

  • I’m currently on a 5120 MB/month plan from AT&T which costs me $60. The modem was effectively free after rebate. I don’t expect to use that much data, but we’ll see.
  • All the PDF files I’ve tried display just fine in portrait and landscape modes.There are several reasonably-priced PDF reader apps which claim to give a more iBook-like experience.
  • As for viewing AVI files, I haven’t tried – see this thread at MacRumors.

Weird Apple pricing

One of the side effects of switching digital cameras has been that stuff takes longer. More pixels per picture (and new modes that generate more images) means that it takes a lot more time to do even basic photo management. And I’m not actually very well equipped to handle this: for perfectly good reasons, it turns out that although I have quite a few computers, they are all pretty puny by current standards. I have a Mac Mini and a MacBook Air, both with CPUs in the 1.6GHz range, both with fairly slow disks. The MacBook Air has 2GB of RAM, the Mini just 1GB. (The fastest machine I own, my accursed HP DV4-2045DX laptop, just went back for service – AGAIN!)
So naturally my thoughts have been turning to getting some horsepower. A Mac, of course – that HP has cured me of any interest in Windows. I figured that I wanted something like this:

  • At least 3GHz 2+ core CPU
  • 4GB RAM
  • 500GB HDD
  • Superdrive

My first impulse was to simply get a new Mac Mini. However after maxing out all of the options, I got:

  • 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo
  • 4GB RAM
  • 500GB HDD
  • SuperDrive
  • Wireless Mouse and Keyboard
  • Total price: $1187

That felt quite a bit more expensive (and slower) than I’d expected. Out of curiosity, I looked at the minimum configuration iMac:

  • 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo
  • 4GB RAM
  • 500GB HDD
  • SuperDrive
  • Wireless Mouse and Keyboard
  • 21.5 inch LCD
  • Total price: $1199

So instead of buying a Mac Mini I can spend an extra $12 and get an iMac with a 15% faster CPU and a stunning 21.5 inch LCD. Something doesn’t make sense here….

Sleepy hummingbird

A sleepy (but not quite torpid) hummingbird alighted on our feeder, and remained sitting there even as I opened the sliding door and crept up to her with my camera. I rather like this shot:
Sleepy hummingbird
(Warning: the thumbnail above links to the full-size 12MP original.) More here.

TCM: Stage Door

How had I never seen this 1937 masterpiece? Katherine Hepburn, radiantly beautiful (and impossibly slim!); Ginger Rogers showing that she was a top-flight comedienne; Lucille Ball doing a wonderful job (but giving way to Ginger); Constance Collier, the great silent movie star (and playwright) as Katherine Hepburn’s coach; and Ann Miller, aged just 14, dancing beside Ginger Rogers. (She had claimed to be 18 when Lucille Ball discovered her a year earlier.) The one-liners crackle and zip, and you quickly realize that although there are several male characters, this movie is all about the girls: their dreams, their rivalries, their hopes and despairs. Unfortunately neither Amazon nor Netflix have it available for streaming, but TCM delivered the goods.`

Shockwave traffic jams


(Via Abstruse Goose.)
In my first year at Essex University (1969) I took a maths course which introduced us to the topic of partial differential equations. I had studied ordinary differential equations at the RGS in High Wycombe (part of the syllabus for “A” Level Maths), but PDEs were mind-blowing by comparison. (No, I don’t think this was due to any other mind-blowing substances that we were playing with.) Anyway, I remember that the lecturer started with the role of PDEs in fluid dynamics, and then switched to modelling shockwave traffic jams. Today it would be easy and natural to visualize the wave propagation on the computer, but in 1969 such techniques were still pretty esoteric.
Nice to see that the experimental side of applied mathematics isn’t being ignored.

Pigeon Point, the elephant seal, and beer with buses

This morning we drove across to the old lighthouse at Pigeon Point, south of Half Moon Bay. It was foggy going over the mountains, and when we reached the coast we were unimpressed by the NWS forecast of sunshine. It was high tide, the waves were pounding, spray was flying, and the clouds were low and threatening. In the bay just south of the lighthouse we spotted an elephant seal playing in the surf; occasionally he would swim out around Prisoner’s Rocks, before returning to the beach. I managed to get some nice shots of him. After a while, the sun came out and the seas moderated. We saw a pair of Harbor Seals just offshore, but I couldn’t get a clear photo.
For lunch we scooted up to Half Moon Bay and went to Cameron’s Pub: the one with two “London buses” parked outside. Of course neither of them ever saw service in London: they are a couple of Bristol FLF Lodekkas. Both are in pretty shabby condition, and neither will ever run again. As to their actual provenance, one seems to be ex-Thames Valley, based on an annual inspection checklist in the cab.
Photos from both Pigeon Point and Cameron’s can be found here. Herewith a few samples:

"Logorama" is brilliant

This weekend the Aquarius cinema in Palo Alto is showing the Oscar-nominated short subject films for 2010, along with some “honorable mentions”. We decided to checkout the animated films, and were blown away by the brilliant contenders. The longest film, and the one I expected to enjoy most, is “A Matter of Loaf and Death”, the latest Wallace & Gromit creation from Nick Park. Beautifully made, as funny as ever, but perhaps a bit predictable. It was followed by Nicky Phelan’s “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty”, a much shorter but hysterically funny piece, which was distinguished by the interleaving of two quite different animation styles. Two other films caught my eye – Javier Recio Gracia’s “The Lady and the Reaper”, and Frabrice Joubert’s “French Roast” – but neither achieved the heights of Nick Park and Nicky Phelan.
Then came the last film – and before it was shown, there was a warning that it contained strong language and violence. A few parents shooed their children out of the theatre. And then it started:

We’re talking about “Logorama” by the H5 Group from France. Energetic, subversive, startling, cynical, politically savvy… It’s just brilliant. Quite apart from anything else, I hope it sets the bar for “fair use” of copyrighted visual material from now on. Every familiar logo in our advertisement-drenched world seems to be skewered.
One reviewer of the 2010 Oscar contenders concluded that:

“Logorama” stands out among this year’s nominees, but a likely winner is a usual suspect, this year’s Nick Park concoction.

I hope she’s wrong. I think that it would be a healthy sign if the Oscar went to the most subversive candidate. It’s happened before…
In the meantime, if you get the chance to see these films, carpe diem! (The whole of “Logorama” seems to be online here, but things change….)

Rockford Fosgate "Punch Plugs" Headphones


What follows is the review I posted to Amazon.com as part of the “Vine” program. Disclaimer: I received the item in question for free, but those who follow my reviews will know that this doesn’t affect the objectivity of my assessments.

Over the years I’ve tried (and reviewed) many headphones. I travel a lot, and so I need headphones that will work well in planes, when I’m listening to the movie or simply playing soothing stuff to help me sleep. I also find myself walking through strange cities, with the soundtrack provided by my portable music device du jour. (These days, that’s my iPhone, of course.) And when I’m trying to crank out a document, or some code, I’ll often block out the world with the right kind of music.
None of the headphones that come for free – with devices, or from airlines – seem any good at all, so naturally the after-market is vibrant. I’ve swung back and forth between in-ear and over-the-ear phones: from the Bose QC2 to the Philips HN060/37. Those are both noise-cancelling units, but I’ve also tried passive devices like the Rivet phones. On my last trip to China, my cheap Skullcandy Earbuds died and I picked up a pair of overpriced Sennheiser CX300-B’s. Frustrating.
But then Amazon sent me a pair of the Rockford Fosgate Punch earbuds. And I’m in heaven. Superb fit, glorious full sound, crunching bass where appropriate. The flat “ribbon” cable is really different: obviously it doesn’t tangle like regular wires, but I also expect that it will be less likely to fray under repeated flexing. We’ll see.
No, there isn’t a microphone, so I can’t use this to make or take calls on my iPhone. But that’s a small price to pay for such wonderful sound and comfort.