cascadian telegrams

year of the bicycle

I know 2010 is the Year of the Tiger according to the Chinese calendar, but the bicycle is far more talismanic for me.  I think the bike bug stems originally from my first long ride – New York to Nova Scotia – with my younger brother back in 1980, when we decided it would be fun to follow Route 202 through New England up to Maine, and then cross on the Portland-Yarmouth overnight ferry and continue in Nova Scotia.  Man we were young and stupid:  No helmets (of course, this was back in the day) on crappy bikes, and with a tent, sleeping bags and gear we set out in 100 deg. August heat.  Two weeks, 500 miles, a bunch of flats, wrecked wheel and one big adventure later, we met up with our parents at our uncle’s place in Maine, exhausted but exhilarated.  I had the bug.  I was never a competitive cyclist, but there’s just something about the freedom of getting on a bicycle and going that is unbeatable.

Susan has the bug, too.  In fact, a large part of why we came out to Seattle in the first place is because it is cycle-friendly.  We were regularly doing organized century (100 mile) rides and rides like the STP before Malcolm was born.  We kind of lost our groove for a while after that, but now that Malcolm can handle longer (25 – 40 mile) riles as “stoker” on a trailer bike we’re picking up the ride calendar again.

February starts with Chilly Hilly, the unofficial start of cycling season here in Seattle.  I did it last year, we’re both going to ride this year.  June brings both Flying Wheels (we’ll do it with Malcolm again this year) and then – for me at least – The Tour de Blast which is 4300 feet of elevation in 41 miles climbing Mt. St. Helens, then the return trip back down.  Better start training now for that!

July brings the STP (my goal is to do it in one day this year) and we cap the season off with some touring on the Oregon coast before Labor Day.  And hopefully a bunch of decent weekend and training rides in between.

[My trusty steed, above, has taken me through all kinds of rides including the only triathlon I ever did (in Denmark in 2005) and she just got new handlebars , shifters and tires from Gregg’s around the corner.  On the test ride out of the shop, I had a big, stupid, loopy grin on my face.. it feels like a new bike, and I shellaced the cork bar tape to weather-proof and give it a classic look. Still not sure about clip-in pedals, though.]

rich vs reach

this?

or this?

 

I ask because we’re about to repeat the whole “everything runs in the browser” war that we had 10-15 years ago, which makes me tired just thinking about it, and irritated because it will spawn another generation of documents masquerading as applications and un-maintainable code.

It is obvious to me that the rich experience is the better one.  Whether you get it via Adobe Air, Silverlight or whatever, the experience in a rich client is superior to the experience in a browser:  More tactile, more tailored and better use of the underlying OS and hardware than the “least common denominator” approach of browser-based apps.  Yes, the Ajaxian apps are better than the L.C.D. vanilla web apps, but even the best of them (Basecamp, Mint, Gmail) pale in comparision to truly rich desktop apps – the ones you live in as a tech worker or a digital artist or engineer, your editor or designer tools; the best ones are like the cockpit of a high-end car or an airplane, with every affordance designed to minimize gestures or cognitive load.  The iPhone apps are also testament to this:  the best ones are tactile and use the built-in sensors such as the accelerometer to great effect.

Meanwhile, the HTML5 hype machine is gaining strength, with promises of video playback and “drag & drop support”, which just makes me laugh.  We already have those things.  So now your browser can do that?  That’s nice… basically it’s a stupid pet trick, and 10 years too late.

To be clear:  Moving the browser forward is great.  It’s the best low-friction way to deliver software ever invented.  But we confuse the convenience of navigating to a site with the actual app.  Everyone wants the convenience of a single click (or navigation) to access or update an application.  But almost nobody wants to spend their day toiling in front of, say, Facebook. 

On the other hand, with the really great apps (say AutoCAD, Cubase or Photoshop, really good IDEs/Editors such as VS or Emacs) you can spend hours in front of them with a real sense of productivity and craft, where the tool (like any good tool) feels like an extension of your body and mind, and where you don’t feel like you’re constantly fighting the limitations of the damn thing in order to get your work done.  I’ve yet to see a web app that gives you that sense of capability and power.

HTML documents are great and have a place in this world.  But they are not programs, and they encourage bad programming habits and provide a diminished experience for users.  Let’s not conflate our connectivity fascination with the quality of the end results.

a grand day in, and out

there’s a little pod of us Aquari w/birthdays all in a row:  My brother Dave (20th), Susan (23rd), 2nd cousin Kamila and me (24th).  Dave was in town on his birthday, sorting out a Brammo customer’s cycle, so we got together for dinner @ the apartment my mum and dad are staying at for a few months (oh yes… they’re around the corner for a few months.  Babysitters FTW!!).  Happy Birthday Dave!

Susan’s was yesterday.  She made a lovely eggplant/aubergine parmigiana and freshly-baked foccacia, and Malcolm got into the act with a white cake with chocolate chips and pumpkin seeds on top (which was actually better than it sounds :)).  We chilled, listened to some music and had a nice, quiet night.  Happy Burthday Susan!

Today my parents came over for brunch (omelets with chevre and leeks, obligatory champagne juliuses) which was really nice, then it is off to Serious Pie for the eponymous dish tonight with Rob, Rachel, John and Jacki and then to Showbox Market for Jay Farrar / Benjamin Gibbard’s One Fast Move Or I’m Gone tribute to Kerouac’s Big Sur, which isn’t our normal piece-of-fruit, musically speaking, but should be fun.  Happy Birthday, us!

Not too shabby a dance card for an old bugger like me :).

oh, god

glasses!

Is there any more certain sign of impending middle-agedness then having a pair of glasses perched upon your face? (A: Yes,  there is.  Look at your waistline or hairline – Ed.)

I’ve successfully resisted getting glasses for years, but after a few too many times of squinting at a computer screen when it is late, or at the tiny text on some wine bottle in poor light, I caved and went to visit the optometrist and the trendy eyeglass shop with my friend John, who knows about such things. 

The guy selling the glasses looked like a cross between The Strokes and Elton John (he had very large glasses which screamed “GLASSES” and dared you to comment).  This intimidated me.  I mean, I love Sir Elton as much as the next guy, I just don’t want, like, Christmas lights, or Bootsy Collins glasses, or something.  We’d had a couple of beers at lunch before the eyeglass shop so I was treating the whole thing like a big joke, which probably wasn’t very entertaining for Elton, who looked weary when we came into the shop.

Anyway… he showed me loads of glasses, voicing his opinion on each.  I had no idea what to choose, so I selected these ones you see here.  I look like a Mac ad or something, which is ironic given that I’m really the PC guy, but I guess it could be worse.

The meeting with the optometrist was interesting… it was the first eye examination (sans getting a driver’s license) I’d had in, oh, 40 years or so, since I had a crossed eye when I was a little ‘un.  “You don’t have stereoscopic vision!”  she announced to me, which is odd as I can determine distances, see the 3D stuff in Avatar and such.  I think what she meant is my eyes don’t work together or something.  I guess that makes sense:  When I look through binoculars I close one eye to focus.

I must admit that reading and close-up monitors is easier now than before, although objects in middle-distance look blurry.  They are reading glasses after all, not corrective prescription.  But the optometrist says that after a few days your brain adjusts and things get clearer.  If I could wear them for a few days (I’ve lost them once, already… maybe it was deliberate?) then I’ll find out.

And so the long, slow slide into decrepitude continues…

win7 media center v apple v tivo

For one who watches little television, I’m strangely obsessive about media.  I think this stems from watching my grandfather over 40 years ago, who (in the days before remote controls) had a long, wired control that allowed him to turn off TV volume during commercials.  I find commercials as much an affront as he did, but I have more technology tools at my disposal to fight the advertisers.

By far the best way to control the experience is to use Windows 7 Media Center, which I’m happy to say is no longer solely the purview of geeks like me:  You can use any Win7 box (such as the gorgeous, small and quiet Mac Mini I found on eBay and BootCamp'ed to Win7) feed it a TV signal and you’re off to the races.  It’s no more difficult than setting up a Tivo or Apple TV and it is way more powerful:  Because it is a Windows computer underneath the beautiful 10’ UI,  there is literally no media type it cannot play.

Using Media Center was certainly not “turnkey” in previous versions.  Prior to Win7, it was error-prone and only for hobbyists.   I remember watching the US-Italy game of the 2006 World Cup in Copenhagen on my XP Media Center with some American, English and Italian friends.  A few minutes after the game started, the screen froze.  The Italians were having heart attacks!  Where was the game?  I had to reboot my PC to resume the in-progress game.

My guests were puzzled by this.  “You’re… rebooting your television?”.   Sigh, yes.  That’s the way it was a few years ago.  Not ready for prime time.  That was then.

But this is now.  Win7 Media Center is head-and-shoulders better, faster and more beautiful than its predecessors, and usable by virtually anyone.  It is better-looking, less expensive and more powerful than Tivo HD and considerably more polished and powerful than Apple’s FrontRow or Apple TV (we’ve owned  Tivo Series 3 and I’ve tried FrontRow).  My seven year-old drives it w/o problem, and unlike earlier versions my wife doesn’t hate it because it never flakes out.

It is cheaper than Tivo because there is no charge for the monthly guide, and (assuming you watch more than 1-2 shows per month) it is cheaper than the Apple “ala carte” purchase of programs through iTunes.  I use a Silicon Dust HD Homerun tuner which takes the cable signal and sends it over the network in our house, so any PC or laptop anywhere in the house can be a Media Center (which is considerably cheaper than multiple cable boxes).

I hate paying high premiums for cable (and especially paying for commercials as we do in the US… there are so f*(*in many of them) so I get the cheapest service ($13/mo) which includes all the HD locals such as PBS and Discovery.  Netflix is seamlessly integrated.  I’ve found these plus ala carte shows from Hulu (or Amazon, or iTunes, or Boxee, or other) is more than enough and doesn’t cost much money, and most of it is beautiful HD quality.  Hulu can be integrated into Media Center via an add-in.

Movies can be integrataed into Media Center using MyMovies, so our blu-ray and DVD movies are fully-integrated.  All of my music is available via the same interface, and there are plug-ins for Flickr photos and lots more.  This starts to get into the geeky end of the spectrum I know, but Media Center can be successfully used without any of the add-ins.

I don’t really want some noisy PC in the TV room, so the Mac Mini fits the bill really well as a small and silent Media Center machine.  I found one for not much money on eBay and it works great (I’m watching an HD channel right now while recording another and it isn’t even warm).  I can dual-boot it into Mac OS, but I don’t have any need for that (more on Mac OS v Win7 in another post).

It is also a cheaper solution than a box from the cable company as there’s no monthly charge for a box (although you’ll need a PC).  Frankly the Comcast etc. boxes are so crap I haven’t even included it in the comparision here.  I really dislike Comcast.   Cable is a massive rip-off, really.

And of course, there’s the original motivation:  Getting away from the damned commercials.  Out of box, the media center remote does the 30-second commercial skip just like the Tivo does, and there are third-party tools that will automatically strip out commercials from recorded shows.  Granddad would have approved.

Yeah I know it sounds like I'm shillin' for the man here (I do work for MS after all... not the MediaCenter team) but it is worth pointing out that there are good, relatively cheap and easy ways to enjoy television without all the adverts and without forking over too much money to cable operators.

horse sculpture with Christmas baubles, Montlake neighborhood. Camera test for Nokia N86.

horse sculpture with Christmas baubles, Montlake neighborhood. Camera test for Nokia N86., originally uploaded by mcmCPH.

testing the Nokia N86 phone's camera... more to come.