July 21, 2008
07:18 pm
Ahoyhoy
There it is, my new old phone and my old new phone. 1937 meets 2007. A meeting of two eras; circa the year my house was built and today.
I picked up the phone on eBay, trepidaciously because I’ve been burned on that particular free-for-all before. I bid on several but was always outbid at the last moment by literally a hundred dollars each time — so winning this one for less than half a c note was cause for worry. But surprise, it arrived intact. Once I puzzled over the bizarre wiring and a conversation with my phone installer stepfather, I wired it up to the wall and lo, communications, Plain Old Telephone style!
The ringer is really loud.
Of course, I am old enough to remember rotary dial phones, unlike many of you youngsters reading this; what I didn’t remember was how freakishly long it takes to dial a number. Especially long distance.
And it is very telling that one can just hook up a 70-year-old telephone to the 2008 network and it works. This is both evidence of a simple but brilliant invention; and an indictment of how little the telephone company has changed in more than a hundred years (while still charging us more and more and more).
I replicated the center number disc with my own number on it; turns out that my exchange is properly “BIttersweet 8”. I love that.
I have an irrational, bizarre urge to lay on the living room floor, paint my nails, and yak on the phone with Ethel.
There it is, my new old phone and my old new phone. 1937 meets 2007. A meeting of two eras; circa the year my house was built and today.
I picked up the phone on eBay, trepidaciously because I’ve been burned on that particular free-for-all before. I bid on several but was always outbid at the last moment by literally a hundred dollars each time — so winning this one for less than half a c note was cause for worry. But surprise, it arrived intact. Once I puzzled over the bizarre wiring and a conversation with my phone installer stepfather, I wired it up to the wall and lo, communications, Plain Old Telephone style!
The ringer is really loud.
Of course, I am old enough to remember rotary dial phones, unlike many of you youngsters reading this; what I didn’t remember was how freakishly long it takes to dial a number. Especially long distance.
And it is very telling that one can just hook up a 70-year-old telephone to the 2008 network and it works. This is both evidence of a simple but brilliant invention; and an indictment of how little the telephone company has changed in more than a hundred years (while still charging us more and more and more).
I replicated the center number disc with my own number on it; turns out that my exchange is properly “BIttersweet 8”. I love that.
I have an irrational, bizarre urge to lay on the living room floor, paint my nails, and yak on the phone with Ethel.
09:47 am
A quick precis
You know, I used to blog every day, sometimes more than once a day. Chatty, chatty, chatty; always had something to whine about.
Well, I still always have something to whine about — in fact, it’s that incessant whining that is taking up so much of my time that I never have a chance to blog these days.
So, let’s get caught up on what’s been going on in the last five days.
And now you’re up to date.
You know, I used to blog every day, sometimes more than once a day. Chatty, chatty, chatty; always had something to whine about.
Well, I still always have something to whine about — in fact, it’s that incessant whining that is taking up so much of my time that I never have a chance to blog these days.
So, let’s get caught up on what’s been going on in the last five days.
- Craziness at work
- Went out with a cute guy
- 90% finished digitally mastering 103 short films for the DC Shorts Film Festival
- Insanity at work
- Subscribed to the Mercury News and the SF Chronicle, only had time to read one of them last Saturday, so that’s money well spent
- Saw that cute guy again
- Worked on the first 40 seconds of the DC Shorts opening title graphics, which always seem to tax both my computer processors and my time
- Absolute barking madness at work
- Planted new roses in the backyard
- Joined Loopt despite the privacy implications; please don’t stalk me
- Met Jann & Mike’s wedding officiant, she is a real-life Vicar of Dibley
- Pruned old roses in the front yard
- Realized that my office is ripe for workplace violence of some sort, probably emotional
And now you’re up to date.
posted by Gene Cowan | category Life… Don’t talk to me about life.
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July 16, 2008
08:32 am
iPhone 3G Impressions
Trust me, I’m pretty much over the iPhone hype — as evidenced by the fact that it took me 5 days to go get a new one — so I won’t be blogging about it incessantly or spending any significant time discussing it. The time for that was a year ago when the first one debuted, and the new one isn’t an earth-shattering change.
Instead, I’ll periodically update this entry with some notes and impressions.
3G
The biggest problem with 3G is its unavailability. AT&T’s 3G subscribers pay a premium price to access data via this speedier system, but if one lives in an area without coverage — which is most places — they still must pay anyway if they have a 3G phone. My experience with 3G in the San Jose area, first with a Blackberry and then with a iPhone 3G, is that coverage is pretty good… if you’re in a car on a freeway. Turn off on to a residential street, and you lost 3G — if you go indoors, forget it. You often don’t even get EDGE, the default slower system.
My assumption is this: when phone companies began to build out the cellular infrastructure, they made a fatal assumption: that the only place people would use cellular phones was in their car. After all, back then cell phones were still installed in cars, and portable phones came with a battery and transmitter in a big bag.
Over time, as phones got smaller and personal, it became clear that people would use them everywhere. But by then, NIMBY groups decided they didn’t want any cell towers in the neighborhoods.
So here we are. In an era where more and more people are dumping landline phones in favor of mobiles, they can’t get signal in their homes.
GPS
This seems to work really well — again, when you are outdoors. It is pretty quick, no doubt because of the “Assisted” nature of the system. It tracked me consistently and smoothly while driving and on the highway the 3G system fed the map data quite well.
The GPS is so accurate that it pinpointed me in the back bedroom of my tiny house; now I understand the paranoid alert boxes asking for permission to access current location data. While I enjoy the feature in Twitterific that posts my current location, I’m not so sure that I want the precise coordinates of my backyard broadcast on the internet.
Lack of any live turn-by-turn routing means that the phone won’t be replacing my GPS navigation device. But it will certainly be useful outside the car.
Battery
Power usage was the reason given for not including 3G in the original iPhone, and I have to wonder how incredibly bad it must have been a year ago because today’s 3G iPhone has horrible battery life. I’m still trying to find the right balance between the various power-sapping services like 3G, push data, and GPS. I’ve been experimenting with different push settings to see if it helps; for instance, I’ve turned off push for my calendars and contacts and instead put them on manual. Turns out that by doing this, my calendars only sync when I open the calendar application, which is fine for me — others may need to background updating so that they get notifications of changes from the office so this isn’t necessarily a solution for them.
[Update] Apple has posted a page about optimizing battery life. In the small print at the bottom, they explain how they arrived at their battery estimates through various tests, and the settings they used in those tests. I’ve recreated their settings, from turning off “Ask to Join Wifi Networks” to disabling auto brightness, location services, push, and setting mail to check every 30 minutes. But there is one glaring thing in all their test configurations: they have call forwarding turned on.
In other words, they set their iPhone to not receive any calls. Oh yes, they can make calls, and that’s how they arrived at their 10 hours of talk time on 2G — but to do so they have disabled the ability of the phone to receive a call. I would submit that this is patently ridiculous and sort of renders the phone practically pointless, wouldn’t you?
Accessories
Looks like, once again, old accessories are useless and the iPod/iPhone ecosystem cycles around once again, generating more money for some and bankruptcy for others. My iPod hifi doesn’t work properly with the new phone — it doesn’t charge. The three docks scattered around the house are useless now (at $30 a pop).
Sound quality
People swear that sound quality is better. I think this is the usual phenomenon that accompanies any Apple product or software release — people swear something is new but nothing has changed. I don’t hear any difference at all. The sound quality is the same, the speaker is the same volume.
Looks
The new phone, despite Apple’s marketing claims, is clearly bigger than the old one. Not by much, but to my eye it is definitely significant. This is especially apparent if you put the two phones side by side. The new one is much wider, and this is exaggerated by the black borders around the screen, making the display look smaller. There’s just something about the proportions of the new phone that are strange, like the new wide iPod nano. It’s not quite right.
I got a white phone, realizing that the black version I’ve seen is quickly laden with greasy fingerprints. The white doesn’t show the fingerprints.
The phone rocks slightly when set down because of the curved back. This is somewhat annoying because I typically type on the phone sitting on a table during meetings, however it’s not nearly as bad as I first thought. The rocking is very slight.
Apps
So far, there are few gems and no must-haves. iPhone apps have a way to go before they mature; even the well-concepted ones like Twitterific, leveraging such integrated technology as location and camera, need tweaks to make them really useful (and speedy).
Unfortunately, the App Store is filled with the sort of craptacular nonsense that Apple’s web downloads page is famous for — there’s no quality control at all, and seemingly little imagination among “developers.” Example:
There are two — count’em, TWO — bubble-wrap simulators, 99¢ each.
THREE apps that do nothing but display a blank screen to emulate a “flashlight”.
Untold numbers of apps to calculate tips (doesn’t the iPhone come with a calculator? Don’t humans come with brains?).
How about the ability to “write or draw using a virtual pencil!” Only $4.99!
And really — is Sudoku the new “Hello, World”? Is there some unwritten rule that every developer must write a Sudoku game before they do anything else?
General rants
The iPhone system — like Mac OS X itself — has become inordinately complicated. There are days when I try to do something on my Mac and realize in frustration that they’ve added too many complicated functions with confusing interfaces, moving us closer to Windows. iPhone is getting complicated. Settings for different functions are scattered around here and there; nothing quite makes sense when it comes to settings for mail, calendars and contacts. Some settings for push/fetch are in one place, some are in another. Another confusion is that the settings for various apps are not contained with the apps themselves, but are put into the Settings app. To change a setting for, say, AIM, you exit the AIM app and then open a different one. Then exit that and go back to AIM.
[More to come, probably]
Trust me, I’m pretty much over the iPhone hype — as evidenced by the fact that it took me 5 days to go get a new one — so I won’t be blogging about it incessantly or spending any significant time discussing it. The time for that was a year ago when the first one debuted, and the new one isn’t an earth-shattering change.
Instead, I’ll periodically update this entry with some notes and impressions.
3G
The biggest problem with 3G is its unavailability. AT&T’s 3G subscribers pay a premium price to access data via this speedier system, but if one lives in an area without coverage — which is most places — they still must pay anyway if they have a 3G phone. My experience with 3G in the San Jose area, first with a Blackberry and then with a iPhone 3G, is that coverage is pretty good… if you’re in a car on a freeway. Turn off on to a residential street, and you lost 3G — if you go indoors, forget it. You often don’t even get EDGE, the default slower system.
My assumption is this: when phone companies began to build out the cellular infrastructure, they made a fatal assumption: that the only place people would use cellular phones was in their car. After all, back then cell phones were still installed in cars, and portable phones came with a battery and transmitter in a big bag.
Over time, as phones got smaller and personal, it became clear that people would use them everywhere. But by then, NIMBY groups decided they didn’t want any cell towers in the neighborhoods.
So here we are. In an era where more and more people are dumping landline phones in favor of mobiles, they can’t get signal in their homes.
GPS
This seems to work really well — again, when you are outdoors. It is pretty quick, no doubt because of the “Assisted” nature of the system. It tracked me consistently and smoothly while driving and on the highway the 3G system fed the map data quite well.
The GPS is so accurate that it pinpointed me in the back bedroom of my tiny house; now I understand the paranoid alert boxes asking for permission to access current location data. While I enjoy the feature in Twitterific that posts my current location, I’m not so sure that I want the precise coordinates of my backyard broadcast on the internet.
Lack of any live turn-by-turn routing means that the phone won’t be replacing my GPS navigation device. But it will certainly be useful outside the car.
Battery
Power usage was the reason given for not including 3G in the original iPhone, and I have to wonder how incredibly bad it must have been a year ago because today’s 3G iPhone has horrible battery life. I’m still trying to find the right balance between the various power-sapping services like 3G, push data, and GPS. I’ve been experimenting with different push settings to see if it helps; for instance, I’ve turned off push for my calendars and contacts and instead put them on manual. Turns out that by doing this, my calendars only sync when I open the calendar application, which is fine for me — others may need to background updating so that they get notifications of changes from the office so this isn’t necessarily a solution for them.
[Update] Apple has posted a page about optimizing battery life. In the small print at the bottom, they explain how they arrived at their battery estimates through various tests, and the settings they used in those tests. I’ve recreated their settings, from turning off “Ask to Join Wifi Networks” to disabling auto brightness, location services, push, and setting mail to check every 30 minutes. But there is one glaring thing in all their test configurations: they have call forwarding turned on.
In other words, they set their iPhone to not receive any calls. Oh yes, they can make calls, and that’s how they arrived at their 10 hours of talk time on 2G — but to do so they have disabled the ability of the phone to receive a call. I would submit that this is patently ridiculous and sort of renders the phone practically pointless, wouldn’t you?
Accessories
Looks like, once again, old accessories are useless and the iPod/iPhone ecosystem cycles around once again, generating more money for some and bankruptcy for others. My iPod hifi doesn’t work properly with the new phone — it doesn’t charge. The three docks scattered around the house are useless now (at $30 a pop).
Sound quality
People swear that sound quality is better. I think this is the usual phenomenon that accompanies any Apple product or software release — people swear something is new but nothing has changed. I don’t hear any difference at all. The sound quality is the same, the speaker is the same volume.
Looks
The new phone, despite Apple’s marketing claims, is clearly bigger than the old one. Not by much, but to my eye it is definitely significant. This is especially apparent if you put the two phones side by side. The new one is much wider, and this is exaggerated by the black borders around the screen, making the display look smaller. There’s just something about the proportions of the new phone that are strange, like the new wide iPod nano. It’s not quite right.
I got a white phone, realizing that the black version I’ve seen is quickly laden with greasy fingerprints. The white doesn’t show the fingerprints.
The phone rocks slightly when set down because of the curved back. This is somewhat annoying because I typically type on the phone sitting on a table during meetings, however it’s not nearly as bad as I first thought. The rocking is very slight.
Apps
So far, there are few gems and no must-haves. iPhone apps have a way to go before they mature; even the well-concepted ones like Twitterific, leveraging such integrated technology as location and camera, need tweaks to make them really useful (and speedy).
Unfortunately, the App Store is filled with the sort of craptacular nonsense that Apple’s web downloads page is famous for — there’s no quality control at all, and seemingly little imagination among “developers.” Example:
Mind Warp is an optical illusion that makes the skin on your hands boil and crawl. Stare at the center of the animation for 30 seconds, then look at the back of your hand. Price: $0.99
There are two — count’em, TWO — bubble-wrap simulators, 99¢ each.
THREE apps that do nothing but display a blank screen to emulate a “flashlight”.
Untold numbers of apps to calculate tips (doesn’t the iPhone come with a calculator? Don’t humans come with brains?).
How about the ability to “write or draw using a virtual pencil!” Only $4.99!
And really — is Sudoku the new “Hello, World”? Is there some unwritten rule that every developer must write a Sudoku game before they do anything else?
General rants
The iPhone system — like Mac OS X itself — has become inordinately complicated. There are days when I try to do something on my Mac and realize in frustration that they’ve added too many complicated functions with confusing interfaces, moving us closer to Windows. iPhone is getting complicated. Settings for different functions are scattered around here and there; nothing quite makes sense when it comes to settings for mail, calendars and contacts. Some settings for push/fetch are in one place, some are in another. Another confusion is that the settings for various apps are not contained with the apps themselves, but are put into the Settings app. To change a setting for, say, AIM, you exit the AIM app and then open a different one. Then exit that and go back to AIM.
[More to come, probably]
posted by Gene Cowan | category The War with the Customer
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July 14, 2008
07:52 am
To 3G or not to 3G
That is the question.
There are many pros and cons associated with switching to a 3G iPhone, making the decision fraught with anxiety. Only in America do weirdos like me agonize over buying a telephone.
Let’s make a list, as I am wont to do when making a decision of this enormous, earth-shattering magnitude.
Pro
Con
It all comes down to the perceived value of the 3G speed and the GPS chip. And I have a feeling that those become more important as one uses third party applications. This morning I tried to take a picture and post it on Twitter, but trying to tag it with geographic coordinates and upload it over EDGE was so ridiculously slow that finally Twitterific just gave up. One assumes that with GPS and 3G, that process would have been much faster. But how often will I use those features, I wonder?
The new 2.0 software on my old iPhone seems to be rather slow. Something as simple as opening the settings can take 3 seconds — count it out, that’s a long time. But is the new phone any better? I played with one for a few moments yesterday and didn’t see any real difference. I don’t know how much the memory space has to do with this; if I want a model with more memory I’ll have to get a 3G as the older version is no longer on sale.
oy.
That is the question.
There are many pros and cons associated with switching to a 3G iPhone, making the decision fraught with anxiety. Only in America do weirdos like me agonize over buying a telephone.
Let’s make a list, as I am wont to do when making a decision of this enormous, earth-shattering magnitude.
Pro
- It’s a shiny new gadget
- 3G is much faster than EDGE
- GPS enables all kinds of cool location services
- I’ve heard that sound quality is better
Con
- Service cost is $15 per month more (the hardware cost is a wash because there are at least 2 people who are interested in buying my old phone). That means it will cost me $180 more per year for the 3G phone, which is annoying because:
- 3G coverage is spotty at best, at my house 3G is often non-existent (as is regular service, as well — and I live smack in the middle of Silicon Valley).
- Location services work with the current phone, just with far less accuracy. And so far, I don’t see a lot of compelling use for it from the current crop of applications.
- The back of the iPhone 3G is curved, and it rocks if you set it on a table and try to tap the screen — something I do a lot in meetings.
- The iPhone 3G is noticeably bigger than the original in every dimension; especially width which is obvious from the black border around the screen. It won’t fit in the change pocket of my jeans like the old one.
- All the other upgrades — from push calendars to Exchange support — are also available on the old phone now.
It all comes down to the perceived value of the 3G speed and the GPS chip. And I have a feeling that those become more important as one uses third party applications. This morning I tried to take a picture and post it on Twitter, but trying to tag it with geographic coordinates and upload it over EDGE was so ridiculously slow that finally Twitterific just gave up. One assumes that with GPS and 3G, that process would have been much faster. But how often will I use those features, I wonder?
The new 2.0 software on my old iPhone seems to be rather slow. Something as simple as opening the settings can take 3 seconds — count it out, that’s a long time. But is the new phone any better? I played with one for a few moments yesterday and didn’t see any real difference. I don’t know how much the memory space has to do with this; if I want a model with more memory I’ll have to get a 3G as the older version is no longer on sale.
oy.
posted by Gene Cowan | category The War with the Customer
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07:07 am
I guess I have a dirty mind
Is it just me, or is that the dirtiest headline ever?
Is it just me, or is that the dirtiest headline ever?
July 13, 2008
02:44 pm
Isn’t it great having a frat boy as president?
From the Telegraph:
Amazing. Real news sounds more and more like The Onion these days.
And this comes after the earlier faux pas:
When I first heard that story, it was teased on the radio with “An embarrassing moment today at the G8 summit…” and I immediately knew it was something to do with Bush.
From the Telegraph:
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world’s richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.
Amazing. Real news sounds more and more like The Onion these days.
And this comes after the earlier faux pas:
Mr Bush also faced criticism at the summit after Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, was described in the White House press pack given to journalists as one of the “most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice”.
The White House apologised for what it called “sloppy work” and said an official had simply lifted the characterisation from the internet without reading it.
When I first heard that story, it was teased on the radio with “An embarrassing moment today at the G8 summit…” and I immediately knew it was something to do with Bush.
posted by Gene Cowan | category Right = Wrong
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July 12, 2008
10:13 am
Fun with screenshots
There I go again, always proofreading. I guess that Apple was in such a tizzy over the last two days that fixing typos is not high on their list right now.
So, the iPhone 2.0 location service is rather cool and I can see the value inherent in it… but only if it really knows where you are. Since I still have an original phone without the new GPS capability, location services uses cell tower triangulation and wifi router information to find my position. Before the 2.0 update, it located me within about a half-mile radius. Now, it thinks I am about five miles away from my real location, and it zooms right in to give me a very small pinpoint — in some condos over near Berryessa.
Here’s what I think is happening: the wifi location system works by mapping out the location of wireless base stations. I assume they are identified by their network addresses, which are usually a hardcoded unique number. This system gives pretty accurate proximity information. Unless, of course, a base station moves.
I’m thinking that someone in my neighborhood — there are a lot of wifi networks showing up around here — used to live over near Berryessa, and moved their base station to my neighborhood. As far as I know, our neighborhood has never been “mapped” by the company that provides this information (since wifi triangulation never worked here before), so when the new base station moved, the database still has it listed as being located in Berryessa. And since our neighborhood never gets mapped, does this mean that location services here on my street are permanently useless?
Aha… the fatal flaw in the system. Still, I am all for obfuscation of personally identifying information like physical location. Who knows what stalker might be hunting me these days?
[Update: if your location is way off — some people have been reporting that their location is thousands of miles off — then you can submit coordinates for your wireless base station here:http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php … assuming you want to give that information out!]
There I go again, always proofreading. I guess that Apple was in such a tizzy over the last two days that fixing typos is not high on their list right now.
So, the iPhone 2.0 location service is rather cool and I can see the value inherent in it… but only if it really knows where you are. Since I still have an original phone without the new GPS capability, location services uses cell tower triangulation and wifi router information to find my position. Before the 2.0 update, it located me within about a half-mile radius. Now, it thinks I am about five miles away from my real location, and it zooms right in to give me a very small pinpoint — in some condos over near Berryessa.
Here’s what I think is happening: the wifi location system works by mapping out the location of wireless base stations. I assume they are identified by their network addresses, which are usually a hardcoded unique number. This system gives pretty accurate proximity information. Unless, of course, a base station moves.
I’m thinking that someone in my neighborhood — there are a lot of wifi networks showing up around here — used to live over near Berryessa, and moved their base station to my neighborhood. As far as I know, our neighborhood has never been “mapped” by the company that provides this information (since wifi triangulation never worked here before), so when the new base station moved, the database still has it listed as being located in Berryessa. And since our neighborhood never gets mapped, does this mean that location services here on my street are permanently useless?
Aha… the fatal flaw in the system. Still, I am all for obfuscation of personally identifying information like physical location. Who knows what stalker might be hunting me these days?
[Update: if your location is way off — some people have been reporting that their location is thousands of miles off — then you can submit coordinates for your wireless base station here:http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php … assuming you want to give that information out!]
July 07, 2008
06:48 pm
Emptiness on the calendar
When someone passes away, those left behind are faced with two obstacles in their path — first, the loss itself, and then second and perhaps more difficult, letting go and moving on.
It’s been a week since my friend and co-worker Ros left us. Since that day I’ve kept the entry about her stuck to the top on this blog, and her picture across the banner.
Tonight is the rosary, tomorrow is the funeral. Then comes the decision on when to let go, when to let the entry on Ros unstick itself and settle into place in the chronological timeline here; sort of an analogy to the way that Sunday stuck in all our personal timelines and keeps repeating itself like time has stopped. It’s still that Sunday for many people, and it will be hard to put that day into the past and look at today instead, to look at the future that is coming and not live solely on June 29, 2008.
I still think of Thomas after that sad August 6th 14 years ago, commemorated in little ways everyday, like threads in the tapestry of my life. It’s obvious to me that it is sometimes not possible to leave a date behind forever.
When someone passes away, those left behind are faced with two obstacles in their path — first, the loss itself, and then second and perhaps more difficult, letting go and moving on.
It’s been a week since my friend and co-worker Ros left us. Since that day I’ve kept the entry about her stuck to the top on this blog, and her picture across the banner.
Tonight is the rosary, tomorrow is the funeral. Then comes the decision on when to let go, when to let the entry on Ros unstick itself and settle into place in the chronological timeline here; sort of an analogy to the way that Sunday stuck in all our personal timelines and keeps repeating itself like time has stopped. It’s still that Sunday for many people, and it will be hard to put that day into the past and look at today instead, to look at the future that is coming and not live solely on June 29, 2008.
I still think of Thomas after that sad August 6th 14 years ago, commemorated in little ways everyday, like threads in the tapestry of my life. It’s obvious to me that it is sometimes not possible to leave a date behind forever.
posted by Gene Cowan | category Life… Don’t talk to me about life.
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June 30, 2008
05:31 pm
Some of us can move on, others can’t
I’ve been in a weird state all day — I arrived at my desk without having remembered driving to work, floated through my day alternately pissed off and morose, snapped at the CEO more than once in a meeting. Just as one never expects the sudden death of a friend or colleague at such a young age, one also never knows how they’re going to react.
I sat staring into space for much of the day, and then finally decided to tip toe back to twittering and writing on the blog. I didn’t really want to write about how I feel because it’s not about me, it shouldn’t be about me, it was never about me.
So let’s change the subject and shine the spotlight on stupidity in the whackadoo religious right, one of my favorite subjects here. Ros would have loved it.
From the Carpetbagger Report today:
I’ve been in a weird state all day — I arrived at my desk without having remembered driving to work, floated through my day alternately pissed off and morose, snapped at the CEO more than once in a meeting. Just as one never expects the sudden death of a friend or colleague at such a young age, one also never knows how they’re going to react.
I sat staring into space for much of the day, and then finally decided to tip toe back to twittering and writing on the blog. I didn’t really want to write about how I feel because it’s not about me, it shouldn’t be about me, it was never about me.
So let’s change the subject and shine the spotlight on stupidity in the whackadoo religious right, one of my favorite subjects here. Ros would have loved it.
From the Carpetbagger Report today:
Note to the religious right: auto-replace is not your friend
Auto-correct can be a very helpful feature of any word-processing program. But when conservatives use it, they run the risk of embarrassing themselves.
Some far-right sites that subscribe to the Associated Press feed, for example, will use auto-correct to change “Democratic Party” to “Democrat Party.” This, of course, is because they have the temperament of children.
But the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.
The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.
That means — you guessed it — the track star was renamed “Tyson Homosexual.” The headline on the piece read, “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.” Readers learned:
Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.
His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. […]
Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.”
posted by Gene Cowan | category Right = Wrong
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June 29, 2008
07:32 pm
Rosalind Aguilar
I knew Ros for only a couple of years, but I loved her. That’s enough to clue you in about how special she was. She was special in many other ways as well, from her musical passion to her hard work at creating a better life for her kids. And I’ll miss her very much.
I just wanted the world to know this and to remember her.
I knew Ros for only a couple of years, but I loved her. That’s enough to clue you in about how special she was. She was special in many other ways as well, from her musical passion to her hard work at creating a better life for her kids. And I’ll miss her very much.I just wanted the world to know this and to remember her.
Rosalind Irene Aguilar, age 28, left this life June 29, 2008. She was a courageous mother who dedicated her life to her two sons; Geronimo and Elias. Rosalind always said ‘that her boys were the lights of her life and that’s why they were her “suns”. Rosalind will be remembered and dearly missed by her two brothers; Frank and Mondo, sister Sarah, nephew Moses, her nieces; Alyssa, Serena, Delilah, Josalynn, co-workers at Barracuda, her band “The 20s!, numerous friends and extended family she collected over the years.
A memorial account has been set up for her boys’ future at Bank of the West, Acct. #387079577.
Mass will be July 8, 2008 at Holy Cross Catholic Parish, 580 East Jackson, San Jose at 10 a.m. Interment at Calvary Catholic Cemetery under the direction of Chapel of Flowers.
[San Jose Mercury News. Guestbook]
posted by Gene Cowan | category Life… Don’t talk to me about life.
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June 27, 2008
01:12 pm
Dody Goodman
Another face we all knew, gone but with us forever on film.
Another face we all knew, gone but with us forever on film.
Dody Goodman, the delightfully daffy comedian known for her television appearances on Jack Paar’s late-night talk show and as the mother on the soap-opera parody “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” has died at 93.
Goodman died Sunday at Englewood (N.J.) Hospital and Medical Center, said Joan Adams, a close family friend. The actress had been ill for some time and had lived in the Actors Fund Home in Englewood since October, Adams said.
Goodman, with her pixyish appearance and Southern-tinged, quavery voice, had an eclectic show-business career. She moved easily from stage to television to movies, where she appeared in such popular films as “Grease” and “Grease 2,” playing Blanche, the principal’s assistant, and in “Splash.”
The actress performed regularly on stage in the 1940s and early ’50s as a chorus member in such musicals as “Something for the Boys,” “One Touch of Venus,” “Laffing Room Only,” “Miss Liberty,” “Call Me Madam,” “My Darlin’ Aida” and “Wonderful Town,” in which she originated the role of Violet, the streetwalker.
“I had to make so many transitions into other things,” Goodman said in the AP interview. “When I first came out of dancing, I did revues.”
It was the early to mid-’50s, when small, topical nightclub revues flourished. Goodman, a natural comedian, thrived in them. She performed in shows by Ben Bagley and Julius Monk, and in Jerry Herman’s first effort, a revue called “Parade.”
In more recent times, she appeared on David Letterman’s late-night talk show.
“He understands my sense of humor. I will do a dumb thing for fun. That’s how I got the reputation for being dopey and dumb. I don’t like dumb jokes but I will do dumb things for a laugh,” she said in the AP interview.
Goodman, who never married, is survived by seven nieces and nephews, 11 great nieces and nephews and 15 great-great nieces and nephews, Adams said. [AOL]
posted by Gene Cowan | category Life… Don’t talk to me about life.
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June 22, 2008
11:57 am
Evolution of a neighborhood
This morning, for no apparently good reason, I have been looking at maps. The brilliance of the internet is the ease with which one can move from link to link, the connections that lead one to make interesting discoveries. For example, I started out looking at a Google Earth map of the Cerne Abbas Giant, which led me to finding the Upper Boat studios where they make “Doctor Who” and “Torchwood” just north of Cardiff. From there I came back around the globe to San Jose where I looked at the AT&T Long Lines microwave tower on Communications Hill; which was once called Oak Hill.
I kept surfing and linking, connecting to historic preservation in San Jose, learned that San Jose has the largest collection of historic fire fighting vehicles west of the Mississippi, and then I learned that patrons of the San Jose Public Library have access to historic insurance maps.
And that’s where this entry begins. Because I found my street in the maps and worked backwards.
I know that my house was built in 1937, so I started looking at what was here before and since. Here’s the (future) corner of my street in 1915:
There was a farm here, and anecdotes claim that where we live now was once a pig wallow. Here we can see that my house is built a few yards from where a dairy used to stand. Across the street is a hay barn. A few hundred feet to the west, where there is now a Best Western, was a distillery. The Arthur Lachman & Co. Santa Clara Distillery No. 325, to be exact.
45 years later, in 1950, here’s what my street corner looked like:
And that’s pretty much what it looks like today.
Oh, there are some differences, obviously — there is no more American Home Foods, Inc. (Clapps Baby Food Div.) down at the east end of the street by the railroad tracks. As of a year or two ago, that’s now expensive condos. The pie bakery a few blocks away is now some kind of custom kitchen fabricator, but the plumbers are still there.
And my little house in 1950 looks the same as it does in 2008.
This morning, for no apparently good reason, I have been looking at maps. The brilliance of the internet is the ease with which one can move from link to link, the connections that lead one to make interesting discoveries. For example, I started out looking at a Google Earth map of the Cerne Abbas Giant, which led me to finding the Upper Boat studios where they make “Doctor Who” and “Torchwood” just north of Cardiff. From there I came back around the globe to San Jose where I looked at the AT&T Long Lines microwave tower on Communications Hill; which was once called Oak Hill.
I kept surfing and linking, connecting to historic preservation in San Jose, learned that San Jose has the largest collection of historic fire fighting vehicles west of the Mississippi, and then I learned that patrons of the San Jose Public Library have access to historic insurance maps.
And that’s where this entry begins. Because I found my street in the maps and worked backwards.
I know that my house was built in 1937, so I started looking at what was here before and since. Here’s the (future) corner of my street in 1915:
There was a farm here, and anecdotes claim that where we live now was once a pig wallow. Here we can see that my house is built a few yards from where a dairy used to stand. Across the street is a hay barn. A few hundred feet to the west, where there is now a Best Western, was a distillery. The Arthur Lachman & Co. Santa Clara Distillery No. 325, to be exact.
45 years later, in 1950, here’s what my street corner looked like:
And that’s pretty much what it looks like today.
Oh, there are some differences, obviously — there is no more American Home Foods, Inc. (Clapps Baby Food Div.) down at the east end of the street by the railroad tracks. As of a year or two ago, that’s now expensive condos. The pie bakery a few blocks away is now some kind of custom kitchen fabricator, but the plumbers are still there.
And my little house in 1950 looks the same as it does in 2008.
June 21, 2008
05:18 pm
The Vast Wasteland
There are only two weeks left for this year’s run of Doctor Who, and there won’t be a full series next year — just a few specials. Torchwood will only have a 5-episode run next year.
Lost is over until 2009. Battlestar Galactica is on an extended hiatus until 2009, and then the series ends.
I don’t know about you, but I’m going through a severe television withdrawal and I don’t know if I will survive.
Thank goodness for Netflix. They’re my supplier, my dealer. RIght now they’re filling the gap with 1980s television like Remington Steele.
Ah, sweet, sweet candy.
There are only two weeks left for this year’s run of Doctor Who, and there won’t be a full series next year — just a few specials. Torchwood will only have a 5-episode run next year.
Lost is over until 2009. Battlestar Galactica is on an extended hiatus until 2009, and then the series ends.
I don’t know about you, but I’m going through a severe television withdrawal and I don’t know if I will survive.
Thank goodness for Netflix. They’re my supplier, my dealer. RIght now they’re filling the gap with 1980s television like Remington Steele.
Ah, sweet, sweet candy.
posted by Gene Cowan | category General Annoyances
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June 18, 2008
12:49 pm
People should not be scenery
Barack Obama’s staff evidently wouldn’t allow a woman in a head scarf to be part of the crowd behind him in a photo op. For obvious reasons, such a photo would simply hand ammunition to the reactionary weirdos out there.
Here’s my solution to the whole issue: let Obama change the face of politics once again by abandoning this ridiculous practice of creating a backdrop out of human beings. It’s a Karl Rove-ish tactic that takes a page from fascist rallies where hand-picked boosters are employed to make someone look popular and beloved. I’ve always detested this trend (along with the network TV bug and the newschannel crawl) that became a de-facto requirement over the years.
I think it’s time for Obama to start appearing in front of a plain blue backdrop with no crowd… no slogans or logos repeating in a grid pattern… no projection screens with animated graphics. How about letting us focus our attention on the candidate for once?
Barack Obama’s staff evidently wouldn’t allow a woman in a head scarf to be part of the crowd behind him in a photo op. For obvious reasons, such a photo would simply hand ammunition to the reactionary weirdos out there.
Here’s my solution to the whole issue: let Obama change the face of politics once again by abandoning this ridiculous practice of creating a backdrop out of human beings. It’s a Karl Rove-ish tactic that takes a page from fascist rallies where hand-picked boosters are employed to make someone look popular and beloved. I’ve always detested this trend (along with the network TV bug and the newschannel crawl) that became a de-facto requirement over the years.
I think it’s time for Obama to start appearing in front of a plain blue backdrop with no crowd… no slogans or logos repeating in a grid pattern… no projection screens with animated graphics. How about letting us focus our attention on the candidate for once?
posted by Gene Cowan | category Right = Wrong
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12:39 pm
The conservatives are too liberal
One of the (many) things that bug me most about today’s Republican Party is the hypocrisy. If only Republicans were actually interested in fiscal conservatism, in less government interference in our lives, well, then I’d vote for them. But when their idea of less government interference in our lives means more interference in our bedrooms, well…
Anyway. Andrew Leonard in Salon writes about the off-shore drilling debate, and therein lies a perfect illustration of the mismatch of Republican rhetoric with Republican action.
One of the (many) things that bug me most about today’s Republican Party is the hypocrisy. If only Republicans were actually interested in fiscal conservatism, in less government interference in our lives, well, then I’d vote for them. But when their idea of less government interference in our lives means more interference in our bedrooms, well…
Anyway. Andrew Leonard in Salon writes about the off-shore drilling debate, and therein lies a perfect illustration of the mismatch of Republican rhetoric with Republican action.
…the most fascinating aspect to the debate about offshore drilling — to this profound choice between two worldviews, two ways of being on the planet — is the harsh light it sheds on the value systems at the heart of how political identity is traditionally seen in the United States.
Republicans have made hay for decades by portraying Democrats as spendthrift, reckless liberals. Their side is supposedly “conservative” — sober-minded, prudent, levelheaded — while their opponents are “radical” — dangerous, risky, foolish.
But what is the truly “conservative” position on offshore drilling, or energy policy in general? Recklessly exhausting all available resources now, and letting the future take care of itself — or conserving those resources, investing carefully for the future, and thinking about the long term? Where does prudence reside — in attempting to shave a few pennies off of gas prices now, or on planning on how to cope with high gas prices for the foreseeable future?
If you’re looking for a metaphor, try the competing fortunes of Toyota and General Motors on for size. George Bush and John McCain are like the fin-de-siecle executives of GM, living only in the present, catering to their customer’s worst impulses in pursuit of maximizing profit in the short term. But Democrats are like Toyota, making a bet on what makes economic sense for the future.
Presumably, Toyota’s shareholders are a lot happier than GM’s, right now. As shareholders in this planet, what do we want? A good quarter now, at the risk of financial disaster next year? Or a long-term ecologically healthy path to sustained prosperity?
That’s what the debate over offshore drilling is really about.
posted by Gene Cowan | category Right = Wrong
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