I never thought I’d bother to do this, but my natural paranoia has led me to put password protection on some of my posts. Thank goodness WordPress makes this easy. For the (very, very) occasional posts I would rather the entire public not see, you’ll have to enter a password to view the entry. If you know who I am, then you know (one of) my personal email addresses. If you email me there (and we’ve spent more than five minutes together), I’ll send you the password. Or, just ask the next time we’re together.
Everyone else, if you don’t know me, then these protected posts won’t really interest you anyway. Seriously. Hell, even if you do know me, they probably don’t interest you. There are like, six people who care. I’m one. My girlfriend is another. And I’m not sure about her.
I’ve long said that iTunes is the worst application Apple has. It’s buggy, slow, and lacking features. It’s a shame that it’s the only application I can use to manage my iPod automatically, otherwise I’d switch to a competitor faster than Sonic the Hedgehog on a Speed Break.
iTunes has some great features, of course. Uh, there’s CoverFlow (oh, wait, that’s a third-party app they bought).
There’s music streaming to my Airport Express (when it’s not dropping out).
Oh! There’s that iPod management thing I mentioned before. That’s neat.
This rant was originally directed at the guys from MacBreak Weekly, a podcast for Mac geeks. I was going to complain that they should use a standard Artist instead of the list of varying hosts they have week, since it made my iTunes CoverFlow and Album view look like crap. Here’s what my CoverFlow view looks like sorted by Artist:
Seven different album covers because each episode has a different set of Artists and iTunes, seeing different Artists, considers them different Albums.
Except!
Except it’s not just MacBreak Weekly, and it’s not just the Artist field being different.
No. It’s because iTunes’ sorting mechanism—and particularly its sorting mechanism for podcasts—is brain-dead.
If you use iTunes to manage podcasts, you already know how awful it is. All the podcasts are mixed up in one big list, there are no per-podcast preferences, and if you don’t sync your iPod up often enough, iTunes stops updating your podcasts.
But as I said, you already know how awful it is.
It’s made more awful because iTunes doesn’t recognize podcast episodes with the same Album, Artist and other editable information, as being related. This screenshot is of the Get Info windows of three MacBreak Weekly episodes; two of them appear as one album cover, the third as a separate album cover. Can you guess which one is the stand-out?
Turns out that despite MBW-15 (in the middle) having different metadata from the other two, iTunes considers MBW-14 (on the left) one album, and MBW-15 and MBW-20 as a second album.
Odder still is that MBW-29 and MBW-30, below, have very different metadata, and yet are grouped together as a single album!
I know what you’re thinking: Surely there must be some clear difference somewhere! If there is, I haven’t found it yet.
It’s not file types. I looked the files in the Finder. MBW-14 is an m4a file; MBW-15 is an mp3 file. But wait… MB-20 is an m4a file. And, it sorts with MB-21, which is an mp3 file, and has different metadata.
Sigh.
I simply can’t find any logic to how iTunes sorts episodes into albums.
It gets better.
iTunes has an “Album view”, which is a handy way of browsing my collection.
In this view, I can show only items that match a search term. I enter “macbreak” and I get the 32 episodes of MBW, grouped into three albums when sorted by Album: episodes 1-14 in group one; 15-32 in group two; and in group three is episode 32 by itself.
Aside: There is a hidden feature in iTunes where you can sort by Album, Album by Artist, and Album by Year. You switch among the three states by clicking the Album header in any listing. I don’t know why there isn’t a menu item for this. Cool feature, completely hidden. Shocking.
If I sort using “Album by Artist” or “Album by Year”, I get two albums (the same episodes either way). MB-14 is in one group, MB-15 and MB-20 in the other group. Other than that, the episodes that make up each group has no logic I can discern: “by Artist” has a mix of artists; and “by Year” has episodes from 2006 and 2007 in the same group.
Out of desperation, I even decided to change the metadata some more (I’d been changing it several times in an effort to bring things together, unsuccessfully, clearly).
I sorted the show by Album (three groupings), and selected all of them. I selected all 32 items, did a Get Info on them, and changed the Album name to “MBW”.
I had the same three-album split, as before.
If there were different Artists listed, I moved the listed Artist to Album Artist, and changed Artist to “MacBreak Weekly”. Again, three albums, but a different grouping this time. Now, one album was episodes 30 and 31; the second was 1-14 and 32; and the third 15-29.
I changed the Composer for all to “Pixel Corps”. No change.
I changed the Grouping for all to “TWIT”. No change.
Just about everything that could be changed to something standard was. I eventually just gave up and reset every field to something new.
And still no luck. iTunes simply refuses to sort my podcasts by any discernible logic. It must be using some extra metadata that isn’t exposed for editing.
Which is why iTunes is Apple’s Worst. Application. Ever.
I don’t usually think of them as pictures. More photographs. Timeless portraits and expansive landscapes that reach into your soul and stir emotions previously inaccessible.
If you’re wondering why I don’t have links to any of these photographs it’s because I don’t have any. I have thousands of pictures, though. To become a photograph I have to open the image in Photoshop, Aperture or at least iPhoto, do some cropping, color enhancement, maybe convert to black and white.
Doing this generally requires a powerful computer, expensive software and some skill.
Recently I stumbled across Picnik, which virtually eliminates your need for all three. On it, you can do the kind of basic photo editing that you’d usually do in iPhoto or Photoshop Elements. Mere words cannot do this site justice. You need to play with it for a few minutes to experience its awesomeness directly (they provide a couple of images for this purpose).
That you can upload an image to a website and manipulate it isn’t new. Sites like Shutterfly have long allowed you to add borders or make an image black and white. What’s interesting to me is the amount of power, control and interactivity Picnik offers. Its buttons, sliders and other controls feel as smooth, and respond as quickly, as local application (in some cases more so!).
Even in a “beta,” unfinished product, the polish and finesse are unmistakable.
What’s particularly interesting about Picnik is it uses other websites to do stuff it doesn’t want to do. While iPhoto lets you to manage your photo collection, Picnik leaves the photo management to others. They integrate with Flickr as your organizer, for example, which means Picnik can focus on just the image manipulation piece.
It’s brilliant.
The promise of web-based applications has been a long time coming, but with the ubiquitousness of Adobe Flash and the ascendence of AJAX-style functionality, I think we’ve finally crossed the threshold for real, functional, we-based applications that look, feel and work just like a desktop application.
Picnik is one of the more recent ones I’ve come across. Another example is Apple’s .Mac Webmail, which, if you weren’t paying extremely close attention, you’d easily mistake for a local application. You can drag and drop messages between folders, start typing recipients and have it display matches as you type, the spell checker displays popups of possible word replacements, and windows come and everything just feels like a desktop app. (If you haven’t tried it, sign up for a free trial and play with it for a while.)
Some applications are trying hard but haven’t quite made it to the “feels real” stage. For example, even though both Kiko’s and Google’s calendars let you move appointments by dragging, neither feels particularly smooth and intuitive, and for some reason Google thinks every click on the calendar means you want to create an appointment. No doubt both will be improved over time, and it show how far web applications have come that I’m complaining about the level to which they feel like desktop applications.
It will be interesting to watch what kind of applications find themselves at home on the web, and if they’ll replace desktop applications for primary use.
Security and privacy issues not withstanding of course. But that’s for another entry.
A few days ago a 34 year old middle school teacher sent a text message to her pot dealer to score some weed, except she fat-fingered the number and accidentally sent it to a cop instead.
First, how unlucky do you have to be to have your pot dealer’s number be close to a cop’s number?
Second, why is a 34 year old still smoking pot? Shouldn’t she have graduated to something more potent? Everyone knows mary-jane is a gateway drug.
But the best part is the police spokesman, who said
She learned her lesson. Program your dealers into your phone.
That clearly is the take-away from this story: if you’re going to break the law, use the technology you have to your advantage.
I was perusing the inter-web today when I stumbled across “How’s your vocabulary?” Thinking myself the erudite one, I of course took the test. When I received my score, I was flabbergasted, as instead of getting a perfect score, I got an A-.
A-?
Please.
So I went back and reviewed my answers. None of them seemed wrong. Then I got to number 12. Number 12 asked
Someone who is phlegmatic is:
Unemotional
Sick
Polite
Well, “phlegm”… the mucous discharge you have when you have a cold… so you’re sick… that’s my final answer.
I decided to check the dictionary. Off to Google, plug in “phlegmatic”, click “definition”. Answers.com tells me:
phleg•mat•ic (flÄ•g-măt’Äk) also phleg•mat•i•cal (-Ä-kÉ™l) adj.
Right there… first definition… related to phlegm. And the phlegm definition of course says
phlegm (fləm) n.
1. Thick, sticky, stringy mucus secreted by the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract, as during a cold or other respiratory infection.
Well then, case closed! I must have gotten something else wrong.
But wait… there was another definition for phlegmatic:
2. Having or suggesting a calm, sluggish temperament; unemotional.
What? That would mean instead of “Sick” it might be “Unemotional”. Hm… I choose that option and resubmit the test and, sure enough, I get an A score.
OK, hold up.
You’re giving a vocabulary test, and for one of the questions, you choose a word with two meanings, and then give both of those meanings? And when I choose the one you didn’t want, I get penalized?
That’s just wrong.
So I do some more digging. Let’s see… how about the built-in dictionary in Mac OS X?
phlegmatic |fleg’matik| adjective
(of a person) having an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition.
Hm.
Dictionary.com?
phleg•mat•ic [fleg-mat-ik] adjective
1. not easily excited to action or display of emotion; apathetic; sluggish.
2. self-possessed, calm, or composed.
3. of the nature of or abounding in the humor phlegm.
The late classical pianist Joyce Hatto released over 100 recordings shortly before her death in 2006. According to Gramaphone magazine,
To love Hatto recordings was to be in the know, a true piano aficionado who didn’t need the hype of a major label’s marketing spend to recognise a good, a great, thing when they heard it.
But it appears Hatto was not the virtuoso some believed. Using a variety of technology (including the simple act of ripping one of her CDs using iTunes), Hatto and her husband/producer are being accused of stealing other musicians’ recordings.
Several days ago, another Gramophone critic was contacted by a reader who had put a Hatto Liszt CD—the 12 Transcendental Studies—into his computer to listen to, and something awfully strange happened. His computer’s player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszts, but not a Hatto recording. Instead, his display suggested that the disc was one on BIS Records, by the pianist Laszlo Simon. Mystified, our critic checked his Hatto disc against the actual Simon recording, and to his amazement they sounded exactly the same.
[…]
Gramophone then sent the Hatto and the Simon Liszt recordings to an audio expert, Pristine Audio’s Andrew Rose, who scientifically checked the soundwaves of each recording. They matched. “Without a shadow of a doubt,” reported Rose, “10 of the tracks on the Liszt disc are identical to those on the Simon.”
The folks at Pristine Audio have posted a series of articles about their research and findings, complete with side-by-side audio comparisons and images of wave forms and equalizers.
I don’t know why I find this fascinating, seeing as I’d never heard of the artist before now and don’t listen to a lot of classical music.
Take a look at this image, from the video game Beyond Good and Evil:
Jade, from the video game Beyond Good & Evil, courtesy of microscopiq.com
What race would you consider this character?
Jason over at Microscopiq.com did a write up on what he deemed “The First 11 Black Videogame Stars“, and this character was one of his selections. Wired did a followup on it because people reacted to Jason’s contention that this particular character (her name is “Jade”) is Black. I, too, am surprised that this character might be considered Black; when I look at her, I see an Asian woman, not a Black woman.
An NPR story caught my attention recently. A study shows that diversity positively affects businesses. It wasn’t just what you’d think: that diversity of people brings diversity of ideas. Instead, it was that diversity of people changes how people think and act. From the NPR story:
If you have two groups of people and one of the groups is all White, and one of the groups is diverse, and you present them with various cognitive challenges, the group that is all White thinks differently and reaches different conclusions than the group that is diverse.
Something more subtle—and intriguing—also seems to happen when people of color join groups that were formerly all white: The entire group starts to think in new ways. Minorities, in other words, not only bring new perspectives to the table but also seem to catalyze new thinking among others.
[…]
“It is not just the minority group members who are responsible for the diversity—something happens to all the members in a group when the group is diverse,” [Tufts University psychologist Sam Sommers] said. “White people behave differently and have different cognitive tendencies in a diverse setting than in a homogenous setting.”
Race has long held a fascination for me, ironically because growing up in Trinidad & Tobago, I was never really exposed to “race”: I grew up with Black, White, Indian, Chinese and all kinds of other races and peoples, but it was never noted in any meaningful way. The fact that one neighbor was White and the other Indian had no bearing on our interactions. We were merely different from each other in skin tone, facial features and hair, and other than being jealous of someone else’s green eyes or curly hair, it wasn’t a factor in who we played with, which house we went to for dinner, or whose mom watched us after school.
It wasn’t until I moved to the United States that race had a bearing on my interactions with people. At first, I didn’t notice it, because I didn’t socialize differently based on the color of my skin. But I did start observing subtle differences in how people reacted to me. As I grew older and more aware, I started reading and hearing about “race” and “racism”, and started observing it in action. Eventually, I did start to experience (or, I suppose, become aware of) racism directly, such as when someone would cross the street or duck into a store until I passed them.
I like to think my early experiences in Trinidad made it possible for me to observe these acts without having them negatively affect me. Instead, I became an avid people watcher, and learned to enjoy seeing how people chose to interact with each other. This enjoyment extended beyond race, to gender, class, age, education and other factors. I wonder often how a group of people decides to form and become friends, and whether or not they recognize their own insularity and internal prejudices.
I see this in my circle of friends and family. In one of my circle of friends, the group is nearly exclusively Asian: Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc. Even more interesting to me is that it’s mostly Asian women. And still more interesting is that almost none of those Asian women is dating an Asian guy. In this circle, there are a couple of whites and a couple of Blacks. They definitely stand out in the crowd (and at dim sum).
I’ve often wondered if the mostly-Asian mix is by design or circumstance; cultural or economical; or perhaps just a backlash against ultra-conservative parents of Asian-born American kids.
After all, we live in an area where there’s no shortage of people of Asian descent, so finding Asian dating partners, if that’s what was desired, would not be a challenge.
(An aside: one of this group could be mistaken for Korean. But don’t tell her that, it’s practically an insult! Likewise, if people don’t assume you’re at least first- or second-generation American, you’re failing to “pass”. The goal? Have people assume you were born here, and not a FOB.)
In another of my circles, the group is nearly exclusively white. So much so, that at a recent gathering of about 60 or 70 of these friends, you could count the Black faces in the room on one hand.
OK, with one finger.
What I’m saying is I was the one Black face in the room.
For a while, there were also only two Asian faces in the room, but later attendees upped that to about half-a-dozen.
I wondered if that group (before this gathering) realized their stark lack of diversity. I wonder still if the group realizes it after this gathering. (One guy in the group made a comment seconds after meeting me that I was, in fact, the “Token Black Guy”. A woman mentioned while we were dancing, as other women tried to dance with me, that they should find “their own Black man, this one’s mine”. I’m certain no harm was meant by either comment; I just found it amusing that they would react in that way.)
It’s interesting to me to realize that in many ways, I’m living just as I did in Trinidad: race isn’t a factor in who I spend time with. I have a relatively diverse extended group of friends, even if individual groups are less diverse. On the few occasions where I associate with a group that is not racially diverse, such as with my work’s “diversity group”, it’s by conscious choice., and even in that context, there is tremendous diversity (in this case, Caribbean, African, American South, and East Coast home-boys).See update below.
I guess in the end, even though I can often be hyper-aware of race and diversity, it seldom has any meaningful impact on how I choose to live my life.
Update: I realize the irony of suggesting that a group of “Asians” composed of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese isn’t diverse, while a group of “Blacks” from the Caribbean, Africa, etc. is. I presume that the group of “Asians” considers themselves diverse in the same way I consider the group of “Blacks” diverse, and that others simply see my group as “Black”. Suggesting the Black group is more diverse is inaccurate from a racial perspective; the diversity comes from social, not racial, differences.
Several months ago, another ATK book showed up, one I didn’t recall ordering. I didn’t really pay it too much attention; I figured it was a mistake (and I had a suspicion as to what kind of mistake), and I’d eventually get around to sending it back.
Four months later, I received the late notice. I finally called them to find out why I received a book I didn’t order, and indeed, my suspicion was correct: when you order from America’s Test Kitchen, they automatically add you to their book club, in an opt-out manner. They sign you up to receive books every so often, bill you for it, and then leave it to you to return the book and not pay the bill if you don’t want it.
I find the practice sleazy and deplorable.
When I spoke with their customer service today, I was informed that I “agreed” to this when I purchased the book, that it was part of the long set of legalese I was presented with when ordering.
Of course, upon returning to the site, I can’t find any such agreement. I can’t get very far in their site without giving them my credit card number. I’ve sent them email asking to receive a copy of or a pointer to the agreement.
My take is it’s a big scam meant to get people to buy books they never ordered. People get the book, plan on returning it, forget, get three or four bills of increasing urgency, and just write a check so they don’t have to deal with it. One member of the ATK public forum did exactly that:
I must sheepishly admit that I have fallen victim to [Cook’s Illustrated]’s less than noble tactics. I received a preview copy of The Best Light Recipe and decided I would read through it to see if there was anything I liked, but would most likely send it back. I had 3 weeks, right? After about 2 weeks I received a “friendly reminder” notice that I hadn’t paid for the book yet. The notice said that the original date (from whence the three weeks supposedly ran) was 6 weeks prior. I KNOW I didn’t receive the book that early, but felt that if I tried to return it now they wouldn’t accept it. So I paid for a cookbook I really didn’t want. I just didn’t want to try to fight it, and I know that is what they are after by sending out these “preview” copies.
I’m sure the general uptake is large enough otherwise they wouldn’t continue doing it; paying for shipping both ways for books people don’t want can’t be cheap. This was all but confirmed on the same forum thread above when Lindsay McSweeney, the cooksillustrated.com web editor wrote
Regarding the book continuity program—the complaints have been heard, but the bottom line is that it is a very effective and legal way to sell books….
(An aside: She then goes on to say, in effect, “just be glad I’m not censoring you”:
There’s no posting I could make that would give you satisfaction, and since I obviously would like these postings to disappear as they are critical of the company, I’ve been trying to avoid what would continue an unconstructive discussion. Rather I hoped you appreciated that while I obviously have had the ability to erase all these emails immediately as posted (and I could make a pretty good argument that I should since the company is essentially paying for harmful comments to be posted), I have respected our Chat board members enough to allow you to express your dissatisfaction.
Oh my. They host a public forum, and then suggest that we should “appreciate” that critical posts haven’t been deleted? Very thoughtful. Companies who don’t get that negative comments will be made regardless of their desire must not yet realize the power of the internet. One day. One day. End aside.)
I still enjoy the ATK show, and the methods they use in the test kitchen to come up with their recipes and such. However, I won’t be buying their DVDs, books or subscriptions via their website. If I want something they are selling, I’ll go to Amazon or my local bookstore.
More likely, I won’t buy anything else from them. When my current magazine subscription is up, I’ll have to strongly consider if I wish to continue supporting a company that does business in this way.
What do you think about the tactics? Should I continue to support ATK? Any suggestions for alternatives?
For the last several weeks, I’ve been experimenting with making Martinis. For Christmas, Y bought me Martini glasses from Williams-Sonoma (with my initial on them), and coincidentally, TT got me a Martini shaker. To top it all off, I’d recently watched Alton Brown’sGood Eats episode “Raising The Bar“, and he offered a recipe for a dry Martini:
1 cup crushed ice, plus extra for chilling glass
1/2-ounce dry Vermouth
2 1/2 ounces gin
1 olive
Place some crushed ice into the Martini glass you will be serving in, and set aside.
Place the 1 cup of crushed ice into a cocktail shaker. Pour in the Vermouth and swirl it around, making as much contact as possible with the ice. Using a strainer, pour the Vermouth out. Add the gin and stir well to combine.
Remove the ice from your serving glass and add the olive. Using the strainer, pour the gin into the serving glass.
I made a few of these, then decided I wanted to experiment a bit: if a dry Martini has barely any Vermouth in it, how much would a “regular” Martini have? I eventually came across “The Perfect Martini“, which went into great depth on the history of the Martini, and ended with a challenge:
What then is the recipe for a perfect Martini? I could simply tell you the proper ratio of gin and Vermouth to use, but all you would then be doing is following my lead…. If you really want to understand the Martini, and to understand the concept of a balanced cocktail, then what you should do is to spend a little time and do your own experimentations in order to arrive at what you think is your own preferred ratio.
And so, I have. Let me tell you, a good Martini is hard to make. Every ingredient matters, from the quality of gin to the amount of ice. Despite making dozens of Martinis (in the name of science), I haven’t yet come up with a fail-safe recipe for a Martini I love, (though I have made a few which I enjoyed thoroughly). I even made a few with—shudder—vodka, mostly for Y, but I can’t seem to enjoy any vodka Martini.
I’m going to keep up the experiment for a while. It only seems right. If you have a suggestion on improving my Martinis, let me know.
It would appear that Google’s crack team of engineers has managed to solve an age-old quantum physics problem: can an object be in two places at once? The answer, according to Google Maps, is a resounding yes.
A few months ago Y, B and I decided to grab some Pho for dinner. Since we were at my house, we looked up Pho on Google Maps, and, rather at random, choose Pho Blossom. We got directions and set off, and spent 30 minutes driving around looking for the restaurant, only to never find it.
Tonight, Y and I again decided we wanted Pho for dinner, and decided to try to find Pho Blossom again. We went to Google, did our Pho-near-95008 search, and again got directions, and, again, spent 30 minutes trying to find the restaurant before giving up and going somewhere else.
Note the address (124 Blossom Hill Rd, San Jose, CA 95123)
Click ‘From here’ and enter that same address into the destination
Wonder in amazement at Google’s directionsfrom 124 Blossom Hill Rd, San Jose, CA 95123 to 124 Blossom Hill Rd, San Jose, CA 95123. One address, two locations!
Quantum physics will never be the same.
(If you do a search for “Pho Blossom, San Jose“, you’ll see two entries on Google Maps. One of them (B in my case) doesn’t exist.)
automatically, otherwise I’d switch to a competitor faster than 
or at least 
