7 November 2007, mid-morning
Your finger tips are much bigger than the end of a mouse pointer. Apple is clearly aware of this, which is why most of the controls on the iPhone are large and easy to touch and work with. One glaring mistake in Apple’s choice of controls is the time-line bar in the iPod interface. If you want to fast-forward or rewind through a song you need to press the ball that indicates where you are in the song and drag it back or forward; the problem here is that this is incredibly inaccurate. I find it next to impossible to skip the first minute of a podcast. If the fast-forward button worked better then this would be a non-issue, but sadly it does not: the fast forward takes a second to kick in, and it’s so slow.
The other thing I don’t like about the iPod interface is that it is split over two pages. The “front” page has the timeline controle described above, and buttons to let you shuffle and repeat songs. It also shows the album cover art of the song playing. The “back” page has controls to rate songs, and has the list of songs on the album you are listening to. (The keyword here is album: if you are listening to songs on a playlist, this back page doesn’t list other songs on the playlist, it lists other songs on the album the song belongs to, which seems obtuse.) Now, there is plenty of screen real estate on the iPhone. Clearly Apple wants to show off this screen by dedicating most of the screen real estate to displaying the album art. The thing is, the controls from either page could easily fit on both pages. There is no reason that Apple couldn’t also include a song rating bar on the front page, or a time-line on the back page. (You could even hide these extra controls: tapping and holding the album are could bring up a rating bar for example.) This wouldn’t kill that much space; it certainly would make the interface a lot more functional.
The iPhone is a nice iPod, but i’m not sure it’s the best iPod evah.
iPhone
6 November 2007, early morning
With rumors of yet another iPhone Firmware Update in the works, I thought it was time to get going on upgrading my phone from 1.0.2 to 1.1.1. Now, as you may recall, doing so without putting any thought into the process would have left me with a brick of a phone. Thankfully, I’m not a sheep, and put off upgrading till people had figured out how to undo the unlock that caused the bricking, created a simple way to jailbreak and activate the phone (and install the Installer.app), and finally sorted out how to unlock the phone once again. In fact, if you were an idiot and upgraded despite all the warnings you would still be in good shape because hackers figured out how to undo the bricking. Yesterday I sat down and started going through all the steps required to upgrade. It was surprisingly stressful. Still, it was unlikely the whole process would get any simpler than it is right now: It’s actually easier to jailbreak, activate, and unlock a phone now than it was when I did so a month or so back. I’m curious as to what the landscape for this sort of hacking will be like when the official SDK is released. I don’t think this sort of activity will die down: I don’t think Apple will give people the access to the phone they get from a proper jailbreak, and they certainly won’t let people skirt activation with AT&T. I do wonder if the official SDK will make this sort of thing easier to accomplish. Proper documentation on the hardware might help move things along, though it seems the hacker community is doing just fine going it alone.
iPhone
31 October 2007, late evening
I, like many other people I imagine, went out and bought a new giant hard drive to go along with Leopard. Giant-ass hard drives are pretty cheap now — well, as hard drives go anyway. For $125 (taxes and all) you can buy a half terrabyte drive from Western Digital. I had to pay $45 more for an enclosure. I really wanted to get a firewire enclosure, but SATA to FireWire enclosures are few and far between; the few that I found were quite expensive. SATA to USB 2.0 and/or eSATA enclosures on the other hand are fairly common. eSATA is incredibly fast, but sadly my iMac has no interface for it so I am stuck using USB 2.0, which I’m not a big fan of. That said, USB 2.0 is probably fast enough for a backup drive, so I’ll live. The drive is sitting behind my iMac, making hard drive noises as I type this. It seems to be holding up quite well thus far.
Time Machine seems to work well enough. It does what Rsnapshot was doing, but I have more faith in it than I ever had in Rsnapshot, which would never seem to run rsync without spewing out a lot of errors. Last night I had Time Machine back up everything on my main drive. That was slow. Today I learned you can exclude individual folders on a drive; now the only thing I’m backing up is my User directory. Having hourly snapshots of the system or application folders seemed a bit silly. I can always reinstall the OS and my applications if the system crashes. Not that I want to jinx myself or nothing.
[7] Apple Computers
31 October 2007, mid-morning
I watched 30 Days of Night last night with Dave. I hadn’t seen a film in the cinema in ages, so I’m glad this movie was so good. 30 Days of Night is about vampires attacking an Alaskan town during the month where the sun never rises — hence the name. My coworker was of the opinion that this film does for vampire movies what 28 Days Later does for zombie movies, and I’d have to agree: the film is dark and gritty and very serious. If you are going to make a movie about monsters that drink peoples blood, it is very easy to end up with something silly and campy. This film takes itself very seriously. If you had monsters that drank peoples blood running around killing people, that’d be a pretty fucked up situation. It would be disturbing. This movie is disturbing. There is a lot of blood, and people pleading for their lives, and wailing; god damn is there is a lot of wailing. Even the ending is kind of disturbing. This isn’t a film for the squeamish. All in all I really liked the movie. There were a couple of moments of hokey dialog that seemed a bit too Hollywood for my liking, but on the whole it is a solid film. If you can stomach some blood check it out.
The official 30 Days of Night web site.
[4] Movies
27 October 2007, early morning
Shima and I watched the Princess Bride with Renee last night. Neither of us had seen it before. It’s one of those cult films everyone seems to have seen, so I’m not sure how I had managed to avoid it all these years. It’s quite entertaining as children’s movies go. There are a surprising number of familiar faces in the movie: there are a lot of cameos. The movie also features Andre the Giant, who was awesome. This is probably a movie you should watch just so you can say that you have if for no other reason.
The Princess Bride on IMDB.
[6] Movies
25 October 2007, mid-morning
I exchanged a few words with a man this morning on the south side of Bloor and Lansdowne. He said he was a schizophrenic, had been on the street for 4 days, and needed help. He clearly did need help. Before he could finish going on about how he needed money for a GO ticket I was off: it’s amazing how cold I’ve become living here for a year. It was all very depressing.
[3] Bloor and Lansdowne
24 October 2007, early evening
I bought the PeepCode Rails Code Review eBook a few days back. It was a very impulsive decision. The eBook was $9, which isn’t much money in the grand scheme of things, and it seemed kind of cool. There was a time when I thought paying for an electronic book was the dumbest thing someone could do — I mean, really, it’s electronic, there’s nothing there. Actually, I still do feel that way to some extent, but I see buying this eBook differently: I think I’ve reached a point where I see purchases like this as some sort of budget philanthropy on my part. I think I’m willing to make the purchase because in my head I picture some dude trying to buy an iPhone or a new hard drive and I feel for them. I thought about all this while I bought TaskPaper a few moments ago. I’m hoping I use it a lot, but if I don’t, it really doesn’t bother me too much. I feel good making the purchase.
[ed. I was going to title this post “Why I have no money.”]
[4] Life | Technology
22 October 2007, early afternoon
I think every programmer should know how to use vi. It’s a small lean text editor that is usually found running on pretty much any Unix box you may find yourself in front of. I’m not saying you should know all the ins and outs of vi, but you should be able to start typing away if need be. I also think every programmer should know enough about Emacs that they can quit the program if they ever open it by accident. (FYI: Control-X Control-C will do the trick.)
[2] Code
21 October 2007, the wee hours
The MIA show was last night at the Kool Haus. Also billed for the night were Holy Fuck, Datarock, and The Carps. It was a solid show.
Read the rest of this post. (419 words)
[2] Music
20 October 2007, mid-afternoon
I just finished watching Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Man, I didn’t see that ending coming. Season 4 won’t start soon enough. Maybe one day whomever owns the rights to the show will put Season 3 out on DVD. For the time being it’s pretty easy to find on the Internet. Man I love this show.
Television
19 October 2007, mid-morning
There seems to be an obsession online with Pilot G2 Pens. Those particular pens come up all the time on sites like 43Folders and the Moleskinerie — even Daring Fireball has mentioned them. I quite like them and have used them in the past, but I think there are much nicer pens available. (Maybe it’s hard to find nicer pens in the US? In Toronto you can get all sorts of nice Japanese pens.) Of the pens Pilot makes, I prefer their Hi-Tec-C line. For a good while I would use their 0.25mm pens. They produce much finer lines then your typical gel-ink pen. The finest pens I’ve come across I found out about through Shima: the Sakura Pigma Microns. I’ve been using the Pigma Micron 005 which has a 0.2mm nib. It’s easily the nicest pen I’ve used, and it’s the one I am using right now. Shima keeps forgetting where she buys them though, so I’m not sure what i’ll do when this one runs out.
[3] Life
17 October 2007, late morning
I was at Global Village Treats late Monday night ordering some chicken kebabs. I had been meaning to stop in for a while once I realized they were selling Persian food; I am addicted to Persian food. Since Shima refused to eat at a Persian place that also sold Spanish and Filipino food — she was convinced it wouldn’t be authentic or good — I had to wait till I was wondering the streets alone. At 10:00 at night the place isn’t too busy. The store was being manned by one of the owners, a small Filipino lady. She runs the store with her husband, an Iranian fellow. They also have hired a cook that is apparently from somewhere in South America. Hence, the store sells Iranian, Filipino, and South American food. Apparently, depending on the day, they have different things available. (I also wanted to grab some of the South American food they had on the menu, but they were all sold out.)
I was chatting with the owner for a good while — it takes some time to cook up chicken. She’s a very friendly and outgoing lady. The store has been open a few weeks now. They get a lot of their lunch business from the kids in the neighbourhood. (The store is closer to Dufferin, there are several high schools near by.) Late at night Iranian taxi-cab drivers apparently stop off to grab a quick dinner before heading off again. We mostly discussed how stressful it is to operate a restaurant. (We also spent some time chatting about our Iranian significant others.) It was a nice little chat.
There are a few tables to sit on, but for the most part it’s a take-out place. The interior has been painted by the two owners: there are some nice murals over most of the walls. It’s nice clean and bright inside. I enjoyed the food: the chicken kebabs were quite good. (Even Shima agreed.) The only thing I felt they were missing was some sumac. I’m not sure if they have that available when you eat in. Next time I’m there I’ll need to try the other food, so expect a follow up review.
Global Village Treats is at 1226 Bloor St. West (between Brock & Margueretta); their number is 416-827-1417. They look to be open pretty late.
ed. edited and cross-posted to the DigIn blog.
Restaurants and Bars | Bloor and Lansdowne
In human society, all violence can be traced back to these seven recurrent blunders: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.
— Mohandas K. Ghandi, Young India, Oct. 22, 1925 (via Harpers)
16 October 2007, mid-morning
I met Tyler at the Rhino Bar last night. Martini Boys informed me that, “When you walk into The Rhino you think, ‘I might get my ass kicked in this place’ — not a sentiment many Toronto bars inspire these days.” I love sketchy ass bars, so this sounded like it’d be my kind of place; sadly, when I arrived I wasn’t greeted by any lonely old men nursing pitchers by themselves. I guess Martini Boys hasn’t been back to the Rhino Bar recently. Parkdale just isn’t what it used to be. (Well, the drinks were still cheap, so that’s something.)
The monthly Ruby on Rails Pubnite was being held at the Rhino Bar. I’ve been meaning to go for ages, despite the fact I don’t actually do anything with Ruby on Rails. Tyler wanted to check it out: he knows a bunch of the people in that community, and, you know, actually works with Ruby on Rails. (Aside: an interesting Tyler comment from 2005.) It was far busier than I had thought it would be.
The Toronto Rails crowd are a friendly group of people. I ended up chatting with a couple people from Unspace, a couple people from Kaboose, a fellow from FreshBooks, and finally Rishi’s friend Constantine (it was strange seeing him there). If you are even remotely interested in Ruby on Rails is probably worth coming out to the Pubnite. It’s a very informal and relaxed environment. It’s easy to pop into conversations. When you stop to consider that the Ruby on Rails Pubnite caters to the geek crowd, this is a pretty amazing feat.
The whole experience makes me want to learn Rails.
[4] Restaurants and Bars | Technology
15 October 2007, early evening
Shima and I finished watching the first season of Ugly Betty last night. The show is actually quite entertaining. It’s a very over the top soap opera of sorts: most of the time its quite funny, with the occasional poignant moment thrown in for good measure. There is a long and convoluted story arc for the first season with tons of twists and turns: like any good soap the show features plenty of love triangles, murder, etc. This also makes it difficult to sum up the show in one line. I enjoyed Ugly Betty much more than I thought I would. The characters on the show are all really good, which is what makes it work. (I think I like Amanda the most. She’s hot which is a plus, and she has a cool accent.) The season ends with what feels like a million different cliff hangers. I can’t wait to start Season 2.
(The show originated in Colombia. It was brought to the US market by Salma Hayek and some other dudes.)
[2] Television
11 October 2007, late morning
Homer: Eh, what do you mean by `suggested donation’?
Clerk: Pay any amount you wish, sir.
Homer: And uh, what if I wish to pay … zero?
Clerk: That is up to you.
Homer: Ooh, so it’s up to me, is it?
Clerk: Yes.
Homer: I see. And you think that people are going to pay you $4.50 even though they don’t have to? Just out of the goodness of their… [laughs] Well, anything you say! Good luck, lady, you’re gonna need it!
I’m listening to Radiohead’s new album as I type this. This is the first of their albums I’ve bought.
Read the rest of this post. (709 words)
[5] Music | Technology
10 October 2007, evening time
Tony Ruprecht holds the lead at the moment with 50% of the vote — with 10 polls reporting. My man, Peter Ferreira, is in second place with 27%. It’s not looking good, but it is still early. 64% of Ontario are in favour of the current electoral system, first past the post. What the fuck people? Seriously?
Update: Every time a new poll reports in, Ferreira has a few more seats. He has 34% of the vote now, with 42.65% going to Ruprecht. Hopefully this trend continues, but Ferreira needs a few polls going to him for things to really flip.
Update: The Green Party is doing better than the Tories in this riding. Does that make them a proper party? I’d say so.
Update: Ruprecht has been sitting at 40% of the vote for a while now, Ferreira at 37%. I can’t believe it’s this close.
Update: Well it looks like Ruprecht has it, unless the last 36 polls decide to do things very differently. He’s up by 1000 votes. The split remains more or less the same; now it’s 41% vs. 36%.
Update: I just realized that if everyone who voted for the NDP voted for the Green Party (of vice versa) Tony wouldn’t be winning this riding. (Of course, if you add the Liberal and PC numbers up they’d come out on top.)
Update: Well, at least the season premier of Intelligence was really good.
[5] Politics | Current Events
2 October 2007, evening time
I’m listening to the 11th episode of the Talk Show. It’s actually better than I had originally given it credit for. That said, Gruber and Benjamin seem to be way off base with his take the state of the iPhone.
[locked phones are] just the way the industry is set up, it isn’t Apple’s fault.
It may be the case that most providers sell their phones locked to a particular provider, but there is no reason to say this is the only way to do things. There is certainly no reason for Apple to follow the lame example set by Motorola or Samsung. For starters, Apple has the infrastructure in place to sell unlocked phones themselves: both through their physical stores and online. No one forced Apple to team up with AT&T, Orange, or whomever else. So yeah, if Apple chooses to sell locked phones that is totally their fault. That said, it is Apple’s prerogative if they want to make money by locking their phone to a provider. The kick-backs from AT&T certainly can’t hurt their bottom line. It’s not a particularly consumer friendly decision, but it is Apple’s decision to make.
Dan Benjamin and Gruber also both seem to be unaware that it is pretty easy to buy those fancy Korean phones both in the US and here in Canada. (You’ll probably pay a premium to do so, but that’s life.) Thanks to eBay you can live in the middle of nowhere and still have a fancy-ass phone. So while it may take Samsung a long while to roll out an expensive phone in the US, there are people out there willing to do the leg work for them. This is also the case with Apple. I can buy hardware unlocked iPhones at Pacific Mall here in Toronto. (How they are fairing in a post 1.1.1 world I can only wonder.) Apple is the only company I can think of that is actually being malicious about closing up this gray market. Again, I agree they are well within their rights to do so, and they probably need to show due diligence in keeping their end of the deal with AT&T, but it is definitely another consumer unfriendly move on Apple’s part.
I’m not sure how Gruber can rail against Apple for their ring tone policy, which is lame but in line with how things are currently done, but not rail against Apple for locking up the iPhone, which is also lame but in line with how things are currently done.
People are wasting their time trying to unlock these phones. … It’s a pipe dream.
That remains to be seen. I expect the phones to be unlocked again shortly.
Update Oct 3rd: John Gruber responds to the MacWorld editorial iPhone 1.0 forever.
Update Nov 6th: 1.1.1 iPhones are basically even easier to unlock thatn 1.0.2 iPhones. And so it goes.
[3] iPhone
2 October 2007, early morning
My Field Notes finally arrived by way of one Tyler Rooney. When the notebooks were first announced shipping to Canada was stupid expensive, something like $19.50 for 3 day shipping. Now, I’d be cool with paying that much if the notebooks came with a picture of Mr. Coudal himself stuffing my notebooks into an envelope, but since it didn’t seem like this was the case, I asked Tyler to buy me a pack and send them to me. Of course, checking the web site now, I can see that shipping to Canada is now a much more reasonable $4.75. (Mind you, this is still 50% of the price of the notebooks themselves, so you really should commit and just buy 27.) I suppose that’s a long digression on shipping.
The notebooks themselves are quite nice. Their closest competitor would be the Moleskine Cahier notebooks, which are also a thin cardboard covered notebooks filled with nice paper. The differences between them are slight, so it’s probably a matter of taste more than anything else that will decide which brand you opt for.
- The Moleskine Cahiers are bound with string, while the Field Notes are stapled. I think the string is nicer, but i’m not sure that really makes any difference. I’ll need to use the Field Notes for a while to see if the staples fall apart.
- The Moleskines are also devoid of any branding, save for an embossed Moleskine logo on the back. The Field Notes have writing all over the front and back covers: the logo, details of the notebooks themselves, space to write your name and other details, and ideas for what to do with the books. I like all the Futura, but the blank canvas of the Moleskine leaves you room to be creative.
- The grid paper in the Field Notes is nicer than the lined paper of my Moleskine. That’s my completely unscientific take on things. The Moleskine paper is much more yellow, and the lines are a light somewhat thick gray. The Field Notes paper is much more white, with a thin brown grid. I think this is a big plus for the Field Notes.
- The Moleskine has slightly more paper, 64 pages vs. the Field Notes’ 48. The last 16 sheets in the Moleskine are perforated so you can pull them out.
I’m definitely impressed with the Field Notes. They are quite nice. If you are looking for nice small notebooks to write junk in they are probably worth taking a look at. Hopefully they start selling them in stationary shops soon.
[ed. I need to add a rabid consumer category to this site.]
[1] Life
1 October 2007, mid-afternoon
[ed. This is an edited version of a message I originally posted in response to a comment on the DigIn mailing list. If you haven’t been following the MMP debate on the news, it probably won’t make much sense.]
I’d like to say there has been a lot of discussion on the voting referendum taking place during the upcoming election, but really, there hasn’t been.
We’ve had how many governments in a row now where a 40% popular vote returns a huge number of seats in parliament? In 2003 the Liberals had 46.4% of the vote, which earned them 70% of the seats. We’d be moving to a system that would temper this sort of thing.
People opposed to MMP seem upset by the party lists. We (the people) currently don’t get to pick which politician chooses to run in our ridings. The party lists represent a new group of people we also don’t get to pick. That said, if you want a say in who is running for the NDP, you do have an option: join the NDP party. More so, to pretend we don’t get to vote for this new set of people is misleading. You see the party lists before the election. You know who your “party vote” is going towards. All this talk about “non-elected” members making it to parliament is straight up scare mongering. If these people do a bad job of things, the party will need to think hard about including them on their party list for the next election, lest voters decide to give their party vote to someone else.
More so, from voteformmp.ca we learn:
“Conservative Party leader John Tory, NDP leader Howard Hampton, and Green Party leader Frank de Jong have already stated their parties would used democratic processes to nominate their at-large candidates should the MMP system be adopted in the referendum.”
The 3% popular vote barrier to get the party seats does shut out fringe parties for the most part, but this really is no worse than the current system, which gives fringe parties absolutely no venue to address this. Chances are the Green Party will break the 3% barrier this coming election. In the current system, that doesn’t matter, because they’ll probably never win a riding with those numbers; under the new system, this would get them a seat.
Also keep in mind that straight-up proportional representation is not without its issues, and would generally not be considered a democratic system of government. We don’t have referendums on gay rights for a reason.
I don’t think MMP is perfect, but it is certainly a step forward.
[5] Politics | Current Events
1 October 2007, early morning
I just finished watching Intelligence Season 1. The show really is kick-ass. I can see why Rishi was going on about it so much last year. If you can track down a copy on the Internet you really should. It’s full of intrigue and murder and double-crossing and all sorts of good stuff. I can’t wait to start watching Season 2.
I watched the last half of the last episode on the ride in to work. Watching television on the iPhone works well enough, but i’m not sure it’s something i’d do normally. Getting stuff onto the phone involves converting it to an iPod friendly format. In my case, I used iSquint to do this, and it worked quite well. The only issue is the time it takes to convert from DivX to h.264. The iPhone tracks where you are in the various videos you are watching (it does this for podcasts too) so you can watch them piecemeal. I can’t imagine watching a video on the ride to work on a regular basis, but it’s a nice feature nevertheless.
Television | iPhone
27 September 2007, mid-afternoon
Reports on what happens when you upgrade your iPhone’s firmware to 1.1.1 are starting to trickle in. So far things don’t look so good. Some people are reporting the loss of all their 3rd-party applications; others are saying their SIM cards are no longer recognized. My plan is to wait to there is clearer picture on what will happen. I’m missing out on some new features Apple has rolled out, which include: iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Louder speakerphone and receiver volume, Space bar double-tap shortcut to intelligently insert period and space, and other things I wouldn’t take the time to list on a feature list. Compare and contrast this with the sorts of applications and tools available to you if you chose to jailbreak your phone and install 3rd-party applications. Apple really needs to step up if they want people to leave their phones alone. Apple needs to release an SDK for the iPhone and let people develop for it legitimately. I think as of right now, what the people outside of Apple are getting up to is more interesting than what Apple is bringing to the table.
The problem with waiting to upgrade is that my phone is missing out on security updates that are being distributed in this patch. Still, if left to choose between a broken phone and a Javascript exploit, i’ll take the exploit.
[ed. I should setup a spin-off iPhone site before everyone here gets tired of me blathering on about my cell phone.]
Update 7:23pm: The latest word from Gizmodo is that the update will render unlocked iPhones more-or-less useless, as they will need to be activated with AT&T, but all attempts to do so will fail. Lame?
Update Oct 1st: You can now downgrade from 1.1.1 to 1.0.2 so that’s that.
iPhone
27 September 2007, early morning
At the all-candidates debate a fellow from Burma got up to ask a question, but wanted to make a brief announcement before starting. He wasn’t allowed to do so, because the crowd really wasn’t in the mood to hear anything that wasn’t about the election. After he sat down, I asked him what he wanted to talk about: he said, “the protests.”
Unless you really don’t pay attention to anything whatsoever, you are probably aware that there are protests happening in Burma right now. Thousands of monks have been marching in the streets. Burma is one of those countries with run by a vicious military junta that no one seems particularly bothered about. People are calling the current demonstrations the Saffron Revolution. It remains to be seen what sort of effect they will have. The military has finally started cracking down on the monks, but I can’t imagine people look on to fondly when you shoot at people whose entire existence is predicated on a belief in non-violence. (Though, I’m always confused by the monks in Sri Lanka. Their asses are crazy.) Bloggers within Burma are helping get the word out about the conditions within the country. The Globe has been carrying AP stories for the past few days on Burma. You should be sure to stay abreast of what’s taking place. We live in a world where this isn’t that difficult.
[2] Current Events
26 September 2007, early morning
Neither my Grado SR-60s or my AKG K26Ps can be used with my iPhone. The iPhone’s headphone jack is recessed into the unit a fair bit. The problem here is that unless the plug on your headphone is fairly skinny, it’s not going to fit in the iPhone’s headphone jack. A lot of people think Apple is trying to sell official “Made for iPhones” headphones. I think the answer is much simpler. You can tell by looking at the phone that this was done to ensure the curved edges of the phone remained curved. If the headphone jack was raised slightly it’d protrude. Here Apple has chosen aesthetics over functionality. (Because the Touch is skinnier than the iPhone, the jack doesn’t need to be recessed as much, so the Touch avoids this issue completely. I think that should be evidence enough Apple isn’t trying to gouge headphone makers.) The iPhone does look nice.
[3] iPhone
