Category Archives: Uncategorized

Driving While Cellphone

Somebody somewhere did a study that concluded driving while using a cellphone resulted in 1,000 fatalities per year.  I don’t know who did it, or what year it was done (nothing, really), but 1,000 seems like an awfully low number.  It’s just not alarming enough to grab folks’ attention have get them to stop participating in mobile conversations whilst driving.  It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t impact a person’s thought process until it affects a person’s life.  (I guess that’s how it is with most death-inducing behaviour.)   Then he goes crazy trying to raise awareness, petition politicians, pass laws, and all sorts of other annoying things to which he otherwise wouldn’t have given two thoughts.

A thousand deaths a year just isn’t alarming enough.  And even if it were, I’m not sure it would change anything.  It wouldn’t even be a big deal if you could just limit the fatalities to just those folks using the cellphones — they probably had it coming.  But other folks get all mangled in the mess and find themselves ceasing to breathe without the help of some assisted-living machinery — that’s just bad publicity.

The point being, people using a phone, or providing themselves with any sort of distraction while driving, have a tendency to slow down without realizing it.  Especially irritating when stuck behind said perpetrator while driving in the so-called fast lane.  “Get off the phone, A-hole!”  The sad part:  I’m not usually in a hurry, but for some reason it still bothers me that anyone in front of me should ever travel slower than I wish to move.

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That Half Has Past

I suppose we’ve made it, at least this far, if we’re all here right now.  It’s been a solid first half to another year, and it always seems to get ridiculously busy just before the fourth of July (which is technically part of the second half) and then we top it all off with a bit of fireworks and good fun before going back into hibernation for a month or so, and then we’re back at it again with all the business we call…well, I don’t know what you call it, but some people call it life.  I suppose we could agree to do the same.

In the meanwhile, remember to say “thanks” and “please” for any delicious cheese.  See ya when I see ya.

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TerreStar-1 Launch Success

We don’t need to spend a lot of time on this, but I wanted to bring it to your attention that a new, potentially super-cool, satellite was successfully launched (probably into space?) July 1st from the Guiana Space Center.  The fact that it took off at all is interesting, but not the reason we’re gathering here today.  No.  The interesting thing is what this new satellite could mean for mobile broadband.  Terre Star is proposing an integrated satellite/terrestrial system with an IP infrastructure with a focus on smaller devices (smart phones) and Internet access for rural areas that have no real Internet broadband option.  (TerreStar-1 claims it will support speeds around 600 kbs, equivalent to what many DSL users experience.)

We’re talking about a new breed of mobile handheld options.  As if to imply you didn’t already have too many options.  Well, it’s not the handheld itself that really matters, it’s that there’s another infrastructure coming along that can prove competitive to our existing carriers like big V and ATT.  (No one really likes either of these groups, mainly because they knowingly cripple our hardware to suit their wants, but also because we don’t really have any other choice.)

I guess the part that really excites me is, we’re getting ready for some new technology.  Something we can hold in our hands and use for downloading crap we don’t need.  But at the very least, folks in desolate parts of North America will no longer be excluded from our status updates.  You dig what I’m sayin’?

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Say Goodbye, Say Hello

Hampton Cruiser This is the semi-nostalgic tale of what came to pass that fate-filled afternoon where I found myself parting ways from my trusted and beloved Hampton Cruiser (pictured there <—) and coming to terms with newly-acquainting myself to a freshly pressed basket-less Electra.  Before we get too far into the melodrama, let me clear the air and admit that the Midtown Drinking Machine is still securely tethered to a tree in my yard.  BUT it has a non-functioning system, most crucial to its ability to role me through the mean streets of midtown.  Not to mention many other, what lay-folks would call horrific, brief yet momentous all original rage induced fits of stupendous, umm…occasions?  So you can imagine.  No, seriously, please do imagine.  I’m a fan.

It all started one Saturday when that guy JoshGZ called to tell me he and his financier (I mean fiancée ) were on their way to gather their bicycles from my yard and I should thus ready myself for a trip we’ll call a pedal <insert noun here> crawl.  blah blah blah, I get to gearing up my bike which I’ve neglected most of the winter months and realize it needs a new tube on the rear wheel.  A bit of grease on the hands, a few dead bugs living in the tire, and several minutes later, I’m ready to inflate the new tube.  No problem.  Except, in my haste, I failed to realize I’ve used a substandard piece which, when inflated to pressures acceptable to the old tube, cause the new tube to explode.  Literally, explode.  It was loud and exciting enough for both my neighbors to the east and to the west to peak over the fence and assess my well-being (they’re what average people would call "responsible" adults).  Needless to say, I was in a hurry and now further aggravated with my lack of preparedness for said impending adventure.

Enter brain’s idea to walk the two and a half blocks to the bike shop and buy whichever single-speed cruiser is least expensive  (and I don’t know what it is about the folks pedaling the flat streets of Sacramento that makes them believe they require more than one gear to get around, but please all be to WTF that we can’t carry more than one single-speed cruiser that isn’t meant for the non-junk having female rider.)  My brain isn’t always at its best, but it was the best idea I had at the time.  As if to imply it was too much work to purchase the correct tube and spend another few minutes switching it out.  Uhh…yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

Enough rambling, and long story short.  I’d been dreaming up excuses to buy an Electra since the summer of 2007, and here we are on the cusp of summer 2009, so it was inevitable.  I made an impulse decision to make an impulse purchase and settle for a shiny new plain bicycle (pictured below) for which I overpaid.  So it goes.

Electra Rat Rod

Don’t get me wrong, these Electra bicycles are of higher quality than my Hampton Cruiser, but they lack character.  It’s backwards.  You can’t buy character, it’s created.  Electra, outside of their basic models, panders to an imaginless audience (wait, I mean an audience that lacks imagination), incapable of creating interesting behaviour.

Don’t be boring.  Express yourself.  Say "goodybye". Say "hello".  And throw something.

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Don’t Stand For Being Seated

It’s true, I can’t handle folks who speak from a seated position when presenting to an audience from what should be an authoritative stance.  If you have the stage, then you should control the stage and all the space that goes along with it.  I suppose this is a problem more for panel presentations where there are a few, um…experts, sharing the spotlight.  But if it’s not the Q&A portion of the show, whoever is speaking should stand up and shout to the back of the room, even if there are only seven people in the audience.

When it’s my turn, I’ll ask (for the sake of being polite) the moderator if it’s okay for me to stand because "I have a proclivity for exaggerated gesticulation when I present that is greatly hindered from a seated position."  In which case everyone is confused and the moderator replies, "yes, that would be fine."  (Well, many people are confused most of the time by nature, which has little to do with my presence or line of questioning.)  So I take the floor, the mic, the remote (PowerPoint), and whatever else I need so as to ensure everyone is not only watching, but also listening, because I’m the expert and you all better be paying attention.

Let’s get serious here for a minute, this is an issue of confidence, not to be confused with arrogance, that by standing to demand attention tells the audience you’re worthy of their time and attention.  (Or at least you believe yourself worthy, and most likely rightfully so.)  The truth being that everyone knows something other people don’t.  And if someone has invited you to present your knowledge and experience, then that person values your time and attention.  So don’t cower to the crowd and hide in the shadows.

The same can be said for the audience.  Please get off your ass and stand up to ask your question so that the entire room can hear what you’re saying.  (We have two hundred people in the room tonight, can you please repeat the question.)  There’s a pretty good chance that your concern is shared by others, and if it’s not, then you should be pelted with rotten tomatoes.  But don’t take it personally.  Learn.

And I could go off on another tangent (but I realize I’m already rambling on) about how people are too…well, let’s just leave it at that.

Your knowledge is valuable — stand up and share it! Kick your chair, too, if you’re really feeling the power of controlling center stage.  Oh yeah

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FriendFeed Your Facebook, Or Eat People

Before we get to getting on, let’s be clear that I’m in no way condoning cannibalism, but I’m also not condemning it.  Folks gotta do what they were programmed to do, and if that involves physically dining on people, then, let’s just hope it’s not you or me.  Either way, I’m not here to judge the eating habits of my web browsing brethren and, umm…what’s the female version of the word ‘brethren’?

Getting to the point.  I’m no stranger to Facebook connections telling me in real-time (real life?) that I either A) have a unique way of using the service, or B) that I update all the time, so I must C) always be logged in.  At least one or two of those three things is/are technically true.  And we’ll order it as so, to keep things simple:  I am not always logged into Facebook in the sense that folks are implying when they ask the question.  I do update frequently, or often, depending on your use of the English language.  And, I do have a semi-unique way of interacting with Facebook relative to those connections I’ve gained via the service, only in the sense that most of the connections I have are not, how do you say, early adopters?

Introduce friendfeed, the quote-unquote easiest way to share online.  The service that "enables you to discover and discuss the interesting stuff your friends find on the web."  (The major problem I have with that, is that none of my real-time friends, as far as I know, use the service.)  Done so through the simple process of signing up for and creating a friendfeed account and then connecting it to any and all other online services you choose to interact with.  Friendfeed keeps a steady stream of all your online activity, in one place, and feeds it to all your supposed cohorts, if you’re willing to call them that.

But I don’t use friendfeed for the friending feature; although, I do have folks that I follow, and some that have followed me.  No.  I use the service specifically to load up my Facebook, uh…wall?  I guess you would call it, to update my connected world about things I’ve found interesting on the web.  Well, mostly interesting.  I’ve also connected my friendfeed to these various accounts for a variety of reasons: picasaweb, flickkr, twitter, brightkite, my blog’s RSS, and, most importantly (also the reason I appear to be so active on Farcebook), my googleReader shares.

There you have it.  Once a Facebook eats a friendfeed, a Facebook user never really has to log in again.  The friendfeed maintains a constant connection while continually monitoring a user’s activity around the InterWeb and makes updates accordingly.  The one caveat being that you’ll have to access your FB account to find new connections.  If those connections find you, they can be confirmed via a mobile application on a cellphone.  (Very handy.)

The flip-side being, of course, that most users of Facebook require constant attention and if you don’t routinely post publicly to address their narcissism, then they will more than likely refrain from attending to your feed.  Hardly a concern, if you know what I mean.

Enjoy!

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Don’t Write These Words

In my college-going days, one of my Software Engineering courses had a professor who put a sound deal of emphasis on the documentation side of programming — the written description of the solution to the problem our software was trying to solve. For a wannabe English minor with a focus in grammar like myself, his courses were a nice break from all the number- and theory-oriented course load required of the curriculum. I don’t know if said professor is still teaching, and I’m not that concerned, but he was one of the ones who left me with something worth remembering, and that was his list of words we weren’t to use in our writing, the "bad words list." (Surprisingly or not, it’s one of those handouts I’ve held onto all these years later, and I still make some kind of effort not to include those words in my writing, but then I also chuckle a bit when I notice that I have included one.) Long story short, here’s the list as last updated in November 1997:

Bad Words List

Avoid using these words in documents and on tests. They convey little
information and won’t help the reader understand.

  • and/or, etc., misc.

    • It is always possible to re-write the sentence to remove these vague terms.

  • basically, basic

    • A common speech filler; in a document, it is of the same genre as generally and is basically unclear.

  • compatible

    • These are hundreds of different opinions on this word. Say what you mean.  (e.g. The computer must be able to run Doom.)

  • easy, easier, easiest, easily, simply, hard, harder, hardest

    • These are impossible to test. State some specific number to write a clear sentence.

  • efficient, more efficient, less efficient

    • Unless you are discussing furnaces, this word is vague. Say
    what you mean.

  • flexible, flexibility

    • Unless you are discussing gymnastics, this word is vague. Say
    what you mean.

  • quickly, more quickly, less quickly, fast, faster

    • Same problem as easy.

  • maximize, minimize, optimize

    • These are precise in mathematics; in English they are basically unclear.  State clearly what parameters you are trying to maximize or minimize.

  • module, modular, modularity

    • These terms have a wide variety of definitions, probably more than compatible.

  • user friendly

    • Are you kidding?

  • usually, generally, should, probably

    • These are all of the same, unclear, genre. Write what you mean.   Document readers hate these words.

  • very

    • If emphasis is needed, use a precise word.

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Twitter On Oprah, Ashton Kutcher Vs CNN

Some wild and crazy times have fallen upon the Twitterverse, and all the Twits are following to see who will win the race to one million followers — @aplusk or @cnnbrk ?  By the time you read this, the verdict will surely have been determined and Ashton Kuthcer will be on the Oprah show to talk about his Twitter experience along with Twitter CEO Evan Williams.  Together, the two will help Oprah make her first tweet live from the show.  She’s recently created her account @oprah and already has more than 50 thousand followers, and she hasn’t tweeted a peep.  Wow!

The actual interesting part isn’t that these clowns are amassing celebrity-like followings (because, you know — they’re, like, celebrities), but that Twitter is getting a ton of exposure to the, quote-unquote, real world.  More than 5 million new Twitter accounts were created in March alone, so imagine what Oprah will bring.  That’s right, probably a lot of folks you’re not going to be too interested in following.  Which says more about the fact you’re here reading this than it does about the millions of people soon to start tweeting their daily afternoon housecleaning activities.  Oh golly.

No, none of that.  As Twitter grows its user base, so grows the streaming real-time conversation of what’s happening at any given moment in real time.  The value in this is so amazing that I can’t quite get my head around it.  Third party tools are just starting to tap the near infinite resource to maximize all the glory that is…well, I don’t know what it is, but it’s huge.  Trust me.  All these guys – Twitter Search , Twitt(url)y , TwitterFall , (and my favorites) OneRiot , and StockTwits – are quickly having their existences validated and being given greater purpose as they continually refine their algorithms to sift and filter the larger and larger stream of chatter.  Without these groups of programmers, Twitter is a wasteful time sink.

The information is freely out there – on Twitter on the Interweb – find and support the tools that properly exploit it to meet your needs.

Update: Ashton pushed through for the win, check it out .

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Chrome Breaks Google Or WebBroswerSaysWhat?

I couldn’t say for sure if it’s just a late April Fool’s post, but Alex Chitu at Google Operating System has searched the Chrome help forum and compiled a list of humorous quotations from users seeking help .  My favorite from the list:
"Should I remove my original Google now that I have installed Google Chrome?"  At first read, it gives me reason to chuckle.  But then I realize these people really exist with their limited computer-use knowledge base and that I often assist similar folks in real life, which will some day bring me baldness and all its glory.

Bringing us back to the basic problem: how are people that aren’t interested in software or computers supposed to know the difference between an email client and a web browser?  Confuse the matter more by using a web browser to read email and it’s reasonable to see how anyone could get mixed up with all this.  Most people just want it to work, they don’t have much use for how or why it works.

There’s no easy answer for how to fix it, if there’s a fix at all.  (I’d argue that some day this won’t be a problem, but let’s stay on topic for now.)  The easiest answer would be to stop all software updates and new software releases while simultaneously educating all users to a minimum standard.  Not exactly realistic nor ideal, I want my software updated, and I get a kick out of useful new applications.  But I don’t have time to educate the world.  So I’ll do what I can for the folks nearest me, and you do your part to educate those nearest you.

At the same time, I find it hard to believe there are many folks who both know how to exchange information via an oline forum and can’t tell the difference between Google the search service and Google Chrome the web browsing product.

Nano Blogging, The New Mirco Blog

When 140 characters is just too much to read or furnish, there’s the new 26-character, nano-blog alternative. Flutter.  Take a peak, leave a Flap:

If Flutter’s too much, take peace of mind in knowing we’re months away from Flutter intern Laura’s new 10-character service Shttr.  All the benefits of Flutter, but without the vowels.  Talk about quick, efficient communication.  No longer will quips be outdated by the time you finish reading them!

All seriousness aside, "share your thoughts – brie"

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