iPhone

The iPhone releases this Friday, June 29. I think it will not be as big a success as people estimate. The shortages will last at most three weeks, if there are shortages at all. It's way too pricey, and doesn't integrate with corporate systems (which could be one way to justify the high price).

It might even be a flop.

Riding the Bus

There are a few rules bus riders should know about. These rules benefit us all, so if you don't follow them, you earn the ire of your fellow passengers.

Getting On

- You're at a goddamn bus stop. Don't act all surprised when the bus shows up. Have your money ready before the bus gets there. Usually it's even within 15 minutes of you getting to the bus stop, unless the stupid bus runs late because of others who don't follow these rules. If you absolutely cannot have your money ready and feel you need to root through your purse, at least let the other passengers waiting at the stop with you get on first.

- Don't try and haul your two 24-packs of bottled beer for your 52nd birthday celebration onto the bus if you look like you're 85 and can't carry a gallon of milk. Sliding them on the floor doesn't count.

- Don't get on the bus before 9pm if you haven't showered in six months. People need to smell good for work. If they smell like they've been in the dumpster in the morning, their boss will think they don't spend money the right way. People also need to smell good for coming home. If they come home smelling like they've been in the dumpster all day, their spouse will assume they are actually unemployed, or that they had the scent of another woman on them and needed to cover it up.

Riding The Bus

- I realize that was OMG THE CUTEST PUPPY DOGG!!!! Take a photo with your cell phone instead of calling up your mentally retarded deaf boyfriend and telling him. There are people who do know how to use the cell phone properly in public, but you don't notice them because they're not shouting.

- If your cell phone rings on the bus and you're a shouter who's following the rule above, I admire your restraint. However, your ring-tone is a shitty toneless version of J.Lo loud enough to wake the dead. When it starts ringing, go ahead and turn the sound off. Or better yet, put in vibrate to begin with. Doubly so if the person calling you is likely to keep trying to reach you, assuming that you can't hear the ringer while you ignore them.

- Speaking of calling back, if you're talking to someone on the phone and you let them go, if they call you back something went wrong. I've been on the bus where you answered, hung up, answered, hung up, answered, hung up, -- the entire time I was on the bus. Clearly your "friend" wants to talk to you and you don't. Turn the phone off, or hand it to me and I'll throw it out the window and take care of the problem.

- Using your PSP to play 30-second clips of music videos is fine, if you want to watch 30 seconds of a video before moving to the next one. But guess what? Holding it up to your ear and turning the volume down slightly is not a good substitute for headphones.

- Speaking of headphones, if you're using some and I can hear your crappy gangsta rock five rows away, you're deaf and music is of no use to you. So turn it off.

Getting Off

- Say goodbye to your friend/neighbor/random-stranger-you-just-met-on-the-bus before the bus gets to your stop. When it comes to a stop and the doors open, you need to be standing at the door ready to hop off. When the bus stops, the absolute last thing for you to be doing is starting to say your 5-minute goodbye. You're holding up 45 other people who need to get to work. I realize that sometimes a conversation is really enthralling and it is possible to not notice when your stop is coming up, but you just pulled the stop request cord! Yes, you old asian lady. The stops are like 45 seconds apart. You certainly didn't pull the cord then get back into your enthralling conversation and forget your stop was coming up, did you? Pull the cord, say bye, walk to the door, and wait until it opens. It really is that simple.

Google Streetview

A lot of people are worried about the privacy ramifications of Google's new Streetview component of Google Maps. Basically they drive a car equipped with cameras through a bunch of streets in six major US cities, and now you can see these photos inside of Google Maps. No big deal, right? Except that the cameras show everything from girls sunbathing to a man scaling a fence (burglary? locked out?). Although it is legal to photograph anything visible from public streets, people are calling for some sort of censorship. But most articles I've read agree that there's no easy way to do this, even for Google.

I disagree.

The solution is simple -- take three pictures at different times (but with similar lighting conditions) of each street. Line them up as best as you can, then remove any element which is only in one of the three pictures. You'll get rid of all the people who're just walking by (and if you take the photos on different days, you'll get rid of any folks just sunbathing for a couple of hours), but you'll preserve the static elements (buildings, roads, infrastructure) which is the whole point of this project anyway.

Wii

Why is the Wii crushing the competition? Why are shortages expected to last through 2008, more than a year after the release of the console, and through two holiday shopping periods?

The naive answer is that the Wii is a simple machine with fun games and an nice innovative controller. The naive answer isn't wrong.

If we dig a little deeper, however, we realize that back when it was still called the Revolution, we kept hearing little tidbits here and there of how the game machine would be awesome. At E3 we discovered that there was motion-sensitive control and that the controller was wireless. Then we found out that the controller would have built-in rumble. And finally a speaker. These are impressive features, and the reason the Wii sells so well is that not only does it have these features, but they are done well and correctly.

Comparing with another "revolutionary" product, Windows Longhorn ("Vista") which was supposed to revolutionize storage with WinFS, UI with Avalon, and countless other features. It sounded great, but as time dragged on and on, these features turned out to be poorly implemented, and soon removed from the final release. When a company does amazing things well, the result is good. When a company promises amazing things, doesn't do them well, and ultimately doesn't deliver on its promises, the result is not good.

Prince Harry and Iraq

Contrary to all previous reports, Prince Harry will not be allowed to go to Iraq, because of specific threats against him.

Umm... aren't there specific threats against everyone in the coalition armies in Iraq? Why is Prince Harry's life any more valuable than any other private? And if he can't go with his squad, then he shouldn't be a commanding officer.

Woman Veteran

So I was driving this evening and stopped behind this SUV at a red light:




The first thing that caught my eye was the SemperFi and Marines bumper stickers, but I soon realized that this person was proud to be a woman veteran.

My next thought was that I was also a woman veteran, as is anyone who's ever survived a relationship with a woman. The problem here, ultimately, is that this proclamation is entirely incorrect as both "woman" and "veteran" are nouns, and what they really want is an adjective to modify "veteran". That adjective is "female", as in "proud to be a female veteran."

Perhaps it's no coincidence that this person with her poor grammar was a Bush supporter.

RSS

I've finally figured out why people use RSS and a reader instead of going to individual blogs -- most blogs don't post on a daily basis, so when I go and check your blog every day and it isn't updated, I get discouraged. With a nice RSS reader, I check that daily, and if your blog was updated, I read your post.

For blogs which are updated daily, however, a reader is mostly useless.

Finally, a disclaimer: I hate it when the RSS feed for a blog doesn't include the entire blog entries, and makes you click through to the actual blog. Then you're increasing the amount of work I need to do when I read your blog. I honestly have no idea about the behavior of my own blog. If anyone reads this, then feel free to drop me a note and let me know.

Flickr & Stock

A lot of rumors lately about Flickr monetizing photos by allowing users to sell them (and grabbing a piece of the payment, a la traditional microstock companies). Here's why it won't work.

Quality. Sure, there are great photos on Flickr. Stop browsing by "interestingness". Start browsing random people's entire portfolios. Most photos are of poor quality, either technically, compositionally, or something else. There certainly is a small demand for poor quality photographs, but the majority of stock purchasers (ie, designers) demand quality, and they don't have the time nor inclination to browse through a bunch of coal to find the one diamond.

Quantity. Again, there's just too much to sort through that's irrelevant.

Tags. I personally don't like the "controlled vocabulary" that iStockphoto.com uses, but Flickr's users tag their photos poorly. Some photos are just tagged "unclebob", other photos of a lake are tagged "industrial". This mis-tagging and inconsistency makes it hard for designers to find the photos they want.

LinkedIn

I've had a LinkedIn profile for a while now -- perhaps 3 years or so. I never really did much with it, but clearly I've underestimated its importance. If you haven't searched for your coworkers on it, and you work in a technology company, you'll be surprised just how many of your colleagues have a profile.

I certainly was astounded.

Ferries Redux

As I mentioned before, Seattle is prime territory for more ferries, especially ones across Lake Washington. The Seattle-PI reports this morning that a new ferry district has been created and is considering a route between UW and Kirkland. Woo!

Vulnerablilities

The media is abuzz today with discussions about the tanker truck which caught fire and destroyed a bridge in the San Fransisco area. I've seen all sorts of comments ranging the whole gamut, from those that express shock that concrete and steel can collapse under intense heat, to how absolutely vulnerable the entire transporation system is. It's this latter comment which bothers me.

First, a missing overpass isn't a catastrophic failure of the transportation system. It's inconvenient that the commute might take a bit longer (this morning's did not), but hardly a problem. If you take any highway in any major city and close it due to a wreck, and you'll have a nasty traffic problem. That's not a catastrophic failure -- trains (both freight and passenger) can keep running just fine; detours are found for those who drive.

Second, having a network of highways isn't a vulnerability. You either need an overpass, a tunnel (underpass), or an intersection. All of these can be destroyed just as easily I imagine -- the burning truck would have caused a tunnel collapse and likely melted the pavement of an intersection. Though an intersection could be more readily repaired than the other two options, the point is all of them are vulnerable.

Third, heaven forbid people telecommute, carpool, or pay for the bus. Of course, Arnold made today a ride-free day on all public transport, which I personally don't understand. If you encourage everyone to take public transit today, what will they do tomorrow? I see the following options:
1. They take public transport again, paying for it. The question is, why wouldn't they have paid for it today?
2. They don't take public transport because it's not free on Tuesday. They drive to work, causing traffic jams. The question is, what's the use of delaying the traffic jam from Monday to Tuesday?

Violence

32 die in multiple attacks.

170 die in multiple attacks.

One of these happens almost every single day. The other happens once every few years, if that often. Yet it is the infrequent which shocks. Why? There is no difference. In both innocent people are killed. Both are despicable. We should do something to prevent both in the future, yet I fear we're only going to take steps to try and prevent the event in which 32 died.

Art

Have you ever found yourself in an art museum looking at some very famous artist's work, thinking to yourself, "Hey, that looks just like the crayon-on-construction-paper my 3-year-old made that's taped to the refrigerator!"? Turns out that art isn't art unless you're told it is. At least that's the moral of an experiment done by the Washington Post wherein Joshua Bell, one of the world's greatest violinists, played his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin in a Washington subway station. Out of the thousand commuters who passed by, it was thought 75-100 would actually stop and listen. Only 7 did, and only two of them thought anything particularly special about the performance. But if you took these same thousand people, placed them in a concert hall with $100 admission tickets, they'd surely think the music was absolutely phenomenal.

Similarly, if you take a million-dollar painting out of its frame, walk it two blocks down the street from the museum it resides in, and place it in a cafe's collection of $100 paintings for sale, it's unlikely anyone would buy it. Clearly, we are trained to admire art, but only if we know, from someone else, that we should be admiring the art.

So the question is who gets to decide what's worth admiring?

Avalanche Beacons

Having recently aquired an avalanche beacon at a princely sum, I figured I was well on my way towards backcountry skiing and exploration. I had always assumed that all the people I'd seen leaving the Alpental backcountry gates had all the necessary equipment -- after all, the requirements seem to be the pretty standard "forecast, beacon, probe, shovel, and partner" deal that you see at every backcountry gate at every ski area.

Snowshoeing a few weeks ago I had run into a few groups of skiers. While they had passed my, I briefly switched my beacon to search to play with it. To my utter surprise, not one was transmitting.

Standing at the backcountry gate at Alpental yesterday, I did the same test -- this time rather than to play with the beacon, I wanted to see how many of the large group of 10-15 people currently heading out had a beacon. It should have been no surprise, even given their backbacks and shovels, that not one had a beacon.

In Which "Do No Evil" Buys "Evil"

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google, of "Do No Evil" fame has bought Doubleclick, the absolutely evil track-you-everywhere pop-under pop-up advertising company.

Is this sort of like matter and anti-matter -- very shocking when it happens, but in the end it all just cancels out? Or maybe it's more like a proton and an electron -- no charge left?

Microstock Photography

If you look at any online forum where professional stock photographers congregate, you'll notice a lot of hateful attitudes towards "microstock", or stock photography sold for pennies as compared to the typical $250. These pros argue that their livelihoods are going to go away. They argue that any picture worth buying is worth more money. They argue that my time spent shooting, uploading, and keywording, and of course post-processing, is worth much more than the pennies I get.

These photographers are all, every single last one of them, entirely and completely wrong.

When I shoot for iStockphoto.com, I don't do magic post-processing. I do spend some time editing to occasional photo, and I of course spend time keywording. And yes, it probably wouldn't be worth my time for $0.20. The fact is, however, that I never get just $0.20. The minimum I can earn is 25 cents, and that's just for a tiny photo not much bigger than the samples on the site. More often than not, I earn upwards of a dollar per sale. However, this is not my primary source of income. My photography just doesn't command thousands of dollars per photo, though someday I hope it might. The prices, ranging from $1 to $100+ (and I have earned commissions of $20/sale from time to time) encourage more people to license my photos than would choose to do so at higher prices. I make up a fair bit of the low price in volume.

This is the point where most professional photographers bring up the old joke about the businessman who sold his goods at a loss, but made it up in volume. But that doesn't apply to photography. In business, if you sell goods at a loss, then you take a loss each time you sell something. Photography is much more akin to the software industry -- building Windows Vista took 5 years and hundreds of millions of dollars, but every sale Microsoft makes simply brings in more money without increasing the development costs. Similarly, once I put in the time to make a photo available online, each subsequent sale doesn't cost me anything -- I gain each time the photo sells.

Another popular argument against Microstock is that the images are of lower quality. You can see counter-examples for yourself, or you can look at NPR's story about Mt. Everest and Mt. Chimborazo with a photograph of each mountain. Without looking at the captions, try and guess for yourself which one is the professional photograph sold through Corbis, and which is the "amateur" photograph licensed through iStockphoto. Go ahead, I'll wait.... There's no real quality difference now is there? In fact, I suspect the only reason NPR used the Corbis image was because iStock only has two photos of the mountain.

The professionals who are complaining about Microstock aren't idiots by any means -- they simply realize their old model of stock photography is going to lose. The problem with these pros is that they don't want to adjust to the new marketplace.

Secularization of Christmas

Christmas really is a religious holiday, that's why so many Jews leave the country in December. But to me it isn't -- it's simply an excuse to give gifts. We're currently in the process of secularization -- like the first day of winter, which stems from the winter solstice, which was a pagan holiday.

We get to currently witness something going from a religious sacred ritual, to a yearly occurrence with no religious connotations -- only we haven't yet shed the last of those.

Growing Sugar Crystals on a String

Fundamentally, the concept is simply. A supersaturated solution will crystalize spontaneously if it can. So what you do is dissolve sugar into boiling water (since boiling water can hold more dissolved solids than can cool water). Then you dip a string into the water, which provides a nice rough surface for sugar crystals to form, and you let the water cool, causing it to be supersaturated with sugar.

Yum!

Volunteers

I came across a very interesting idea recently about people who volunteer at work. That is not to say they contribute to the company's habitat for humanity crew or that they bring in canned foods to share in the bin next to the receptionist. Rather, they are volunteering at their jobs. Of course, they're getting paid, just like everyone else. However, these special people are so in demand because of their ability to do their job that they can get a job at any company, at any time, in any business climate. They're not concerned with a recession nor with hiring freezes. If they apply to work at a company, the company will make room for them. So in that sense, these people are volunteering their time to come into your particular office, as opposed to any other office at any other company. If they didn't want to come in, they wouldn't -- they'd simply get a job elsewhere.

Are you a volunteer?

Wartime Presidency

A lot of the news media keeps referring to the Iraq war, or to the "wartime president". This really bothers me. We're not at war in Iraq. Only congress can declare war. We're in Iraq bombing the crap out of some civilians who are fighting back. They're doing a remarkably effective job, which makes me wonder why no one thought they would.

An old college roommate majoring in political science once told me that the reason the US would never be taken over by a foreign government is because of the second ammendment. He said that an armed populace would fight any invaders if the military lost the battle for some reason. The foreign troops would be subject to attack at every small town, at every gas station, at every house they entered. We'd call it patriotic, this guerilla defense of the country. The invading government would call it rebel insurgency.

Amazing what a bit of perspective can do, isn't it?