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January 31, 2005
Physicalized words
I can’t read Chinese, though I am able to at least distinguish it from Korean and Japanese scripts. (Cut me some slack, that’s progress! But don’t even ask about distinguishing Traditional from Simplified. I’ll have to be content in my ignorance on that one.) What this means is that, since I have no idea what idea is being conveyed, my growing love for Chinese characters is almost purely visual. A reverse ekphrasis, the strokes of even the most mundane lines are painterly, evocative of an artform more fully engaged with the space around it than Western writing. Chinese calligraphy, such as I have seen it, is more akin to dance or yoga than it is to other scribal arts. It is all very physical.
Consider the “calendar” in the image above. Called the 81 Days of Winter, it is a single phrase that evolves slowly over the course of the winter. Each day the author/painter adds one stroke to the characters; a total of 81 comprise all nine characters. Ticking off the days like an Advent calendar, the phrase is complete by the end of winter:
The weeping willow of the pavillion waits for the warm breath of spring.
But it isn’t just script that is spatialized.
The item on the left is called a Ruyi. Long ago it was an imperial backscratcher, but it eventually lost that function altogether and merely became a royal symbol. The item to the right is a spitoon shaped like a persimmon flower. Together they form a visual pun. The word “ruyi” also means (or sounds like) “whatever you wish” in Chinese. The word for persimmon also means “everything”. So, taken together, the two completely symbolic objects mean “everything you wish for”. You see these objects conspicuously placed together on furniture throughout the Forbidden City, a portmanteau resting amongst the other objects of daily life.
Posted at 2:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: China | Topic: Words
January 30, 2005
The Pavilion of Literary Profundity
Now that’s the way to name a library! Or, more specifically, a book depository. We braved the bitter cold at the Forbidden City in Beijing for a unique tour of this Ming-era building deep inside the palace complex. It isn’t open to the public as it is still used as storage for what looked like textbooks and promotional materials. Dust clogged the air and draped everything; if I were alone it would have been exceptionally creepy.
The upper floors were empty — much of the original corpus is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, but they offered close inspection of some fancy stacking technology. (Ever since reading Henry Petroski’s Book on the Bookshelf I’ve had a low-level interest in the technologies of physically storing books.) Each section in the stacks are composed of two-ply shelves. The top shelf is a grid, to allow ample airflow in and around the volumes and scrolls. A second shelf immediately underneath the first is filled with sand. In the event of fire, this shelf would burn through (the theory goes) and dump fire-extinguising sand onto the level below. Rather ingenious.
Those Ming and Qing certainly were committed to fire abatement. Some 300 bronze vats were spread throughout the grounds for ready access to water (heated by fire in winter to keep it liquid). Protection was sought symbolically as well. The roof of the Pavilion of Literary Profundity is colored black, an atypical choice in the Forbidden City, but one that connotes water in the Chinese spectrum. Dragons spew water at the corners of the building and a huge lighting rod and cable snakes across the spine of the roof into the ground. All combined, an admirable long-term data preservation strategy. (More photos at Flickr.)
Posted at 1:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: China
January 29, 2005
Virtual flâneur
Amazon’s A9 search engine is impressive, offering smooth, dynamic filtering of results and nice integration with the store and affiliated sites, but I’ve never been able to use it exclusively. It is tough to go cold turkey from Google’s simplicity. Actually, some of A9 is powered by Google, so maybe the strategy is not to dominate, but to provide certain niche services or enhanced applications. If so, A9’s new Yellow Pages search fits that bill nicely.
Amazon sure doesn’t shy away from brute-effort labor-intensive data entry. A while ago they hired transcriptionists to enter the text from thousands of books so you could search “inside the book” for most of their titles. Now they’ve paid a phalanx of digital photogs to capture images block-by-block in major cities so that you can actually walk up and down streets virtually as you search for services, products, and the like. Is this screaming for a head-mounted display and GPS integration, or what?
Posted at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Science/Tech
January 27, 2005
Forboding signs
I mentioned being disinfected on the approach into China. Maybe I spoke too soon. Turns out my entire family back home has been completely waylaid by some Stephen King strain of influenza. Fevers, painful coughing, locusts, general pestilence — all coming down at once. The disease vector this time was — surprise — my kids. My father-in-law calls children “poison dwarves” and he ain’t kidding. Sometimes I think my son’s school is a front for a biological weapons laboratory.
So here I am on the other side of the planet worrying that a time-release virus is waiting for the most inopportune time to blossom into full-blown misery for me. I’m OK now, but I just know I’m doomed. So I get the name of some potent flu-prevention meds from back home and think, what the hell, I’ll see if I can get them here. I slip the bellboy a note and some RMB and ask him to find me the best Oseltamivir Phosphate he could find. He scurries off and only then does it occur to me that I’m probably going to be hauled off to SARS quarantine or something. Then I recall that the newspapers on the plane mentioned the latest bird flu outbreak in Vietnam and Thailand and the steps China is taking to keep it out. So, if the virus doesn’t get me, the anti-virus police will. Nice going, John. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
What luck that I should discover that my hotel room is actually outfitted with dual gas masks, should I develop symptoms of influenza (or bird flu!) and not care to infect my co-workers. The best part of these beauties: pop-top lids. Like they should be in the minibar or something.
Here are two of my favorite pieces of signage today. The first is a gem from the Forbidden City in central Beijing. Apparently, it wants to be loved just like everyone else.
And lastly, this pictogram. To many people this says “squat toilet ahead.” To some it says “impossible feats of human levitation ahead.” To most Westerners, however, it simply says “run away, run away fast … and clench!”
Posted at 5:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: China
January 26, 2005
ORD -> PEK
Last week I was in China for work. Here’s the first in a series of posts that didn’t quite make it up in real time.
This is my third time to China in the past year, but only my first time doing it via a “normal” route. The first time was by going east from Chicago for work in Europe then continuing onward to the Far East and eastward still across the Pacific home. That was awful. Destroyed me. This past summer because of scheduling conflicts I had to take some godforsaken cattle-hauler out of LA at midnight. How pleased was I to be booked on a direct, non-stop flight from Chicago to Beijing this time!
You know, it still sucked. No matter how you slice it, 14 hours on an airplane is just brutal. And it does not help that United personnel appear to be defending their 2004 title of World’s Snippiest Flight Crews. Man, those people are just bitter. If they were half as chipper as their discount-fare faux persona Ted it would be bearable, but as it is now you feel like you’re imposing on the airline itself just occupying a seat that needs to be served a cold beverage.
Chinese law requires the occupants of inbound airplanes to be disinfected just prior to landing by flight attendants who run up and down the aisles with something like a cannister of Right Guard. But it ain’t deodorant. I don’t know what it is, or what exactly it does, but it is an endearing little welcome ritual. Like we’re being perfumed for entry into the presence of royalty or something.
More endearing still, in an odd way, is the mural of the Great Wall painted behind the stalls of the passport control agents that greet you upon arrival. Is it me or is the depiction of a massive rampart meant to keep foreigners out of your country (and ineffectually at that!) the best welcome mat for visitors? Welcome to China … it could be worse.
And the construction cranes! I have never seen quite so many in such density. Yes, I’ve heard that something like 60% of the world’s cranes are in Shanghai right now, but I figured that was exaggeration — probably is. But the Beijing airport is a veritable forest o’ cranes. Perhaps this is where they grow them? Perhaps they are prepping a new terminal for the Airbus A380 flying casino/health club/theater/plane?
One last thing before I nod off. The greeting of guests by name as they walk in the door of the hotel and the escorting of these guests straight to their rooms without stopping at the front desk and the checking in of these guests in the room itself — yes, all that, I love it. Wish all hotels would do that.
Posted at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: China
January 25, 2005
Zombie comedy
Some people with whom I’ve shared my Netflix queue using the new Friends feature think I watch too much horror. True, some of the worst movies I’ve rented fall into this category. Maybe that’s what makes Shaun of the Dead such a great movie. On the surface this British “romantic comedy with zombies” is just a parody of the undead-run-amok flick. But also in way it is a double-parody, implicitly mocking the now-established horror parody subgenre (think Scream and its offspring).
The movie is simply hilarious. A scene where Shaun argues with his slackass friend about which of his vinyl record collection they should fling at approaching zombies approaches perfection. And you just know the whole time that the final stand against the hordes will happen at the local pub.
Describing zombie behavior, one of the characters notes that they are “Vacant, with a hint of sadness. Like a drunk who’s lost a bet.” This parallel between the modern slacker and the classic revenant runs throughout the film and provides seemingly endless fodder for joke-making.
OK, back to the crappy horror in my queue …
Posted at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Movies
January 24, 2005
Colbert on NPR
Kinda fun interview of Stephen Colbert, Senior __________ Correspondent for The Daily Show, on Fresh Air today. It’s always nice to pull back the curtain on the fake news. But like seeing a radio DJ for the first time, listening to Colbert so eager to have a serious conversation was a bit disconcerting. He was funny, of course, but his asides knocked Terry Gross off-kilter a bit. Which is fun to hear in itself. Have a listen.
Posted at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Fun
January 23, 2005
Moleskine mod
Moleskine notebooks are somewhat faddish right now, but damn they are useful. And there are plenty of sites out there that detail ways to make them more so. Moleskine hacks, so to speak. Here’s my own: a holding mechanism for the Fisher Space Pen.
I wanted a way to join the notebook and the pen so I would not have to dig for either when I need them in a pinch. The problem was that the Fisher has no clip and is very slick. So I bent a paperclip to snugly grab the pen where it’s sheath ends and affixed a rubber band to hold the other end. It ain’t pretty, but it works.
UPDATE: My little MacGyverism hacked me back. Turns out the paperclip snip created a flesh-digging edge. Must work on 2.0.
Posted at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | Topic: I Like
TivoToGo, VCR NoGo
Well, well, well. I woke to the long-awaited TiVo system update this morning so, naturally, I’ve been playing with the video extraction to PC all day. The interface, as you’d expect, is fairly elegant and pulling files down is simple, though painfully slow. When, oh when, will you not throttle all networking through a dinky USB 1.1 adaptor, TiVo? To my surprise, it is even fairly easy to circumvent the DRM so the video files will play anywhere and can be burnt to DVD without buying the special Sonic software. Best of all is that the TiVo box now includes a webserver (like my trusty Audiotron) which allows you to check your Now Playing queue and download video from any web browser. There’s even an XML version. This is all ripe for hacking; I can’t wait to see what projects sprout from this (undocumented!) feature. (I maintain that TiVo’s product launch was completely premature, though!)
The irony? In a project completely unrelated to TiVoToGo I spent way longer than I should have trying to dump a 7 minute DVD video to VHS for my grandmother. I couldn’t do it. The rewiring necessary to perform this seemingly simple operation was too daunting. It is like I have pushed off one end of the video technology spectrum with TiVo and can no longer get back to the other end. Ah, progress. Sorry, grandma.
Posted at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Science/Tech
Mine!
A few weeks ago we got quite a load of snow, but I was shocked to see not a single piece of household detritus placed in the street to claim a parking spot that had been carefully shovelled out. You see, the thinking here normally holds that if you go to the effort to excavate your car you shouldn’t have to cede the spot to some lazy schmuck when you drive off. This “tradition” of essentially claiming a property right for what is not yours is openly condoned by City Hall and often derided by suburbanites who love to highlight the irony of such un-neighborly conduct by the very citydwellers who bemoan the lack of sidewalk-centric community bonds in the suburbs.
Well, my worry was for nothing. This weekend we got an even bigger winter dumping (though not as big as what’s pounding the east coast) and, true to form, the crap is piling up in the street. Derelict couchs, two-by-fours, plastic lawn furniture — whatever can be tossed into the spot to prevent a would-be spot-stalker. There’d been some talk that gentrification was slowly killing this tradition, presumably because yuppies have garages and they like their streets not to look like the aftermath of a flea market. I’m happy to report that this does not seem to be the case. However, I will suspend final judgement on this trend until I see an altercation over a shovelled spot. (Certain brave drivers will actually move the impromptu barricades off the street to get a spot.) Only if the dispute ends in one neighbor deliberately icing another’s car with a hose will I consider the tradition to be thriving.
Posted at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Chicago
January 21, 2005
Jesus of the Sweaty Gym Bag
I’ve used this health club ID many times a week for the last four years but only today noticed this strange figure in the background of my photo. I know it ain’t Christ-in-a-tortilla, but I may have a supernatural totem on my hands here. Do I go to the archdiocese or eBay?
Posted at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Fun
January 20, 2005
The Good Earth
There’s a possibility of upcoming work in China, so I’m trying to get a feel for the history, places, and people. I had read some “Complete History of” titles for the macro sweep view when Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth was released in a new edition. (OK, fine. It was for Oprah’s Book Club. Can I help it that she picked this book too?) It is a deceptively simple book about a farmer who achieves great success through hard work and love for his land while, periperhal to his rural experience, the country heaves and lurches toward revolution. The tale is reminiscent in a way of William Dean Howells’ classic American novel The Rise of Silas Lapham, though Buck’s story is made more powerful by the knowledge of what would happen to China after she wrote the book in 1931. Indeed, the final scene somewhat eerily presages the widespread seizures of land that marked the civil war and Communist rule.
Anybody have any other good titles on Chinese life, history, or politics?
Posted at 9:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Words
Cityscape as graphic equalizer
This video is making the rounds and for good reason. Vernie Yeung directs the amazing visuals to Faultline’s “Biting Tongues.” At first I was reminded of those students at Brown who wired up the lights on the university library to play a building-scale version of Tetris, but I think what’s going on here is a projection of images onto a skyline. (The last frame is the clue.) Whatever Yeung did, it’s gorgeous.
(Thanks, Len!)
Posted at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Music
Parallel-o-gram
To the driver of Checker cab #5557:
Just a quick note of thanks for not killing my wife and son today as you hurriedly attemped to pass their parked car on Lincoln Ave. (Yes, I have two sons, but I’m rather fond of the blonde one you nearly mowed down.) I’m so relieved that you weren’t hurt and that you were able to get to your next passenger 4/1000th’s of a second before you otherwise would have. Think of the potentially lost income!
Also, I wanted to say thanks for the legal lesson you gave my wife. True, it might have been more effectively delivered if you were not screaming and gesticulating threateningly at her, but I admit that I have no law training so I’m not totally qualified to comment on your rhetorical strategy. One correction, though. It is not actually illegal for doors on the driver’s side to be opened into traffic when parallel parked. However, a friendly police officer to whom my wife spoke did note that it was her responsibility to make sure that she was not blocking traffic in any way when opening the door. Can you believe she was actually trying to put our toddler son into his car seat from the same side of the car that it is installed on? I mean, that’s just lazy. She clearly should have climbed over the other car seat on the other side of the car and inserted said toddler long-distance style. Who cares if that’s a physical impossibility. That’s what sun-roofs are for, right?
So, I apologize for any inconvenience. As soon as I get home tonight I will reprimand my wife both for her ignorance of the law and for showing such vehicular effrontery to you and the entire taxi driving community in Chicago. Please know that if I am ever in your cab in the future — #5557, easy to remember — I will make certain that my feelings on this matter are made even more forcefully than this letter permits me. You have my word on that.
Sincerely,
John Tolva
PS - Given your legal acumen, we were wondering if you could outline the law’s position on stopping your cab in traffic to deliver a lecture on municipal parking regulations to a mom and her kid? Thanks!
Posted at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Chicago
January 17, 2005
Beasts in Babylon?
The Guardian reports on widespread destruction of cultural monuments in the Iraq city of Babylon — not by looters, but by U.S. troops. Apparently we’ve set up a military depot there. Um, hello. You’d think with the Olympics just in Greece we’d be saturated with knowledge that this is a very bad idea. Say it with me: ancient structures make bad armories. Repeat.
Where were the much-ballyhooed cultural heritage consultants to the military on this campaign? Ugh.
(Thanks, Mark.)
Posted at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Topic: Art/Design
January 16, 2005
Rendered Chicago
The city of Chicago envisioned by Alex Proyas in the movie I, Robot is set almost as many years in the future as I have been alive. Either I’m underestimating the last three decades of technological progress or Proyas is being too optimistic about how quickly his vision could be reality, but in either case the movie is an enjoyable one, teasing a pretty decent narrative out of a collection of loosely connected short stories and novels by Isaac Asimov. I especially enjoyed the film’s elaborate CG environments that create a clearly futuristic but also recognizable cityscape. (They had to, the movie was shot in Canada.) I’ve read that Proyas set the movie when and where he did because he liked the way the Chicago of today juxtaposes old and new architecture so comfortably and thoroughly. Of course, I agree, and for the most part the movie does a great job taking this trend into the future. I was intrigued by the choices the virtual urban planners made in removing and inserting new structures into the skyline. (And if you are too, you’ll want to visit the Art Institutes’s excellent 10 Visions exhibit.)
I’ve created a Flickr gallery of screenshots from almost all the scenes of Chicago in the movie. It is pretty clear where the designers placed the U.S. Robotics HQ building, but studying the images shows that they weren’t overly concerned with keeping it in the same place throughout the movie. A few things are clear from these shots:
- By 2035 Mayor Daley is dead because he isn’t in office because if he was he’d never allow a plaza like the one in the movie without a single flower bed or row of trees.
- The architect of 71 S. Wacker will be hired by USR to build their tower. His client’s only instruction: “make it taller.”
- Yes, we have sentient machines taking care of us, but was it worth it to give up recreational boating on the river?
- The L is way too silent and slinky. I can believe in robots with positronic brains, OK, but it simply defies belief that the CTA will ever get their act together for the effort required to replace the current clunky rolling stock (nor would I want them to, come to think of it).
Posted at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Chicago
January 14, 2005
A good week for this geek
Apple’s Macworld announcements left me awe-struck and out about $300. Those kids on One Infinite Loop are on fire!
Comcast upgraded my cable box to a dual-tuner HD PVR for free (meanwhile Tivo’s product “launch” continues to infuriate).
Cassini’s hitchhiker finally showed that it could do cool things too. Hello, Earth II! (Note to ESA: a photo of Saturn setting in the night sky of Titan would have been a real treat. Next time?)
Posted at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: I Like
January 12, 2005
The mechanized ant hill outside my window
As if I didn’t have enough to distract me at work, the Sun-Times deconstruction has moved into high gear. It is impossible not to watch as the crews scurry around pummelling concrete to bits, blow-torching in half the very girders they’re standing on, and driving those cute miniature bulldozers to the very precipice of certain doom. These guys have now officially suffered through every element: wind (the bend in the river is one of the windiest points in the city), snow, rain, sneet, frizzle, and, yes, fire. I passed part of the hard-hatted crew at street level the other day and I felt like I was walking by celebrity. Reckless men of destruction, I salute you!
We’ve been taking snapshots of the work at 10-minute intervals since it started. Here’s a timelapse video of the work so far. (Thanks to Jack and Jeff for putting this together.)
More photos here.
Posted at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Chicago
January 10, 2005
Fake news, real coverage
Last week Richard Gere bumped me off a phone call with the OneVoice crew. My ego was wounded, but, you know, I shook it off. Well, take that Mr. Gere. You got yours tonight on The Daily Show.
Gere’s been taking some heat for his presence in a get-out-the-vote PSA for the Palestinian elections, but I was pretty surprised to see Jon Stewart pick up on it. Surprised and pleased, I guess. The Daily Show’s got way more credibility than many mainstream media outlets these days.
So in the span of 24 hours OneVoice finds itself with an outspoken supporter newly elected in Palestine and has acheived the level of cultural currency conferred by a bit on The Daily Show. Time to get to work on the hard stuff.
Posted at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Fun
January 9, 2005
Vapourspace
Certain genres of music seem to age less well than others. For better or worse, they seem more firmly tied to the time of their creation: they feel dated. To some degree electronic music suffers this way. Could be that the heavy reliance on technology — whose pace of change is rapid and discernible even to non-aficionados — is to blame. Could be that electronic music exhibits a higher percentage of amateurism because the barriers to entry are perhaps lower than other genres (got a turntable? a computer? just a tape recorder? you’re good to go). Or maybe it is because the bewildering matrix of sub-genres — trance, sythnpop, nu jazz, gabba, drill and bass, illbient, house, IDM, they grow like fractal screensavers — disallows a unified sound that can transcend the moment.
But I generalize. The best of any genre bubbles to the top, remains fresh, and rewards the listener who lets it age. In 1994 under the name Vapourspace, Mark Gage released the symphonic hour-long Themes from Vapourspace and its 35-minute little brother variation Gravitational Arch of 10. This LP and EP were by far the most important to me of the 1990’s, forking the road in my musical appreciation into a few different branches. Vapourspace showed that one could remain magnetically neutral and musically inventive sliding between the poles of four-on-the-floor club techno and bleep bloop experimental electronica.
Recently Gage posted an excerpt of Gravitational Arch of 10 from a 1994 soundcheck in Switzerland on his website. I was struck by how fresh it sounds, even now. Gage was ahead of his time in 1994, but not 11 years ahead of his time. He just got it right, moved beyond labels, and made a thing of beauty. The original albums are out of print, I believe, so look hard for ‘em. This vintage is just maturing.
Posted at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Music
January 7, 2005
MediaLoom indeed!
Given my recent post on the connection between automated weaving and computing, I had to share this. The Consumer Electronics Show brings us the Brother Innov-is 4000D, one seriously geeked-out sewing machine. They should have named it the Stitchtron 9000 or the Weavebot or something, but this is still pretty cool. Input a digital image, output a sewn pattern.
Jacquard would be so proud.
Via Gizmodo.
Posted at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Science/Tech
Poetic license
My son calls headphones “headmuffs.” I find that hysterical, but if I let him see even a smirk he’d get embarrassed and probably cry, never to utter it again. That’s my current parenting dilemma. Correct him or let him go on with his cute and often-funny neologisms? Seems cruel to let him go on, now that I think of it, but there’s nothing better than hearing about a “hippo-om-a-puss” when you least expect it. I’ll let it go a bit longer …
Posted at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: The Darnedest Things
January 6, 2005
Art of the subway
It’s a day for snatches of free music: bells,
sirens, a saxophone echoing the spheres,
industrial-strength percussion from a tribe
of project kids, the techno beat
of sprockets as trains reel overhead
like runaway strips of film.
— Twenty Feet Above The Street, Stuart Dybek
The London Underground map — benchmark for all transit information design since it was created in 1933 and a work of art in its own right — was based on an electrical circuit diagram. There’s something about depicting conduits for the transport of humans using visual language developed to denote conduits for the movement of electrons that is captivating to me, a suggestion of what we really want: seamless teleport from point A to point B.
3D Tube Map, Corey Clarke
Subways have an interesting relationship to art. For a period the cars themselves were the most desirable canvases available. Then the art went inside, became sanctioned. But most often subways are the subject-matter, creative fodder for the good, the mediocre, and the atrocious. Sometimes subway trains are the means of art production themselves. Or even the means of documenting the process of production. Now that’s travelling full-circle.
Posted at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Topic: Art/Design
January 4, 2005
Three technologies you need to invent
Yes, you.
iPod Album Art Remote
I don’t own an iPod photo, but if I did I’d want a headphone remote like the normal one but with a tiny LCD screen that displays album art so that when I affixed it to my jacket on the subway I’d be as cool as Japanese teenagers for sure.
WindowVNC
I would also very much like the ability to drag a window from one monitor to another on my desk. No, not like in a multiple monitor setup, but actually drag one app window — say, an instance of Mozilla — from one machine’s monitor seamlessly to another’s with all settings and states being maintained. Should work cross platform too, unless there is no application equivalent on the “recipient” machine. Some sort of funky VNC hack would do the trick, no?
True Dual SIM Phone
Lastly, I’d love a phone that accepts two SIM cards natively and can place/accept calls to/from either card. Without shutting the phone down to switch between the two or needing an adaptor to accommodate both cards. So, for example, I could receive calls overseas on a number local to where I am and on my number back in the States. For cripe’s sake, this should exist!
That’s all. No patents claimed or royalties owed. Just go ahead and build ‘em. Be sure to shoot me an e-mail when you do. Thanks.
Posted at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Science/Tech
Lamerica
Netflix finally got Lamerica, a film I’d been hunting for a while. This is a wonderful movie about two Italian carpetbaggers who come to Albania shortly after the fall of Communism and attempt to set up a fraudulent business. Well, that’s the plot anyway. What it is about is the way Italy has become a symbol of hope for the destitute Albanians, their own “America” across the western sea. It is an allegory of Italian fantasies about coming to the USA so many generations before. And it is a beautiful one at that.
Posted at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Movies
January 3, 2005
OneVoice gets a lot louder
Daniel at OneVoice is in overdrive. With the attention of the world cast toward the upcoming Palestinian elections there’s a great chance that moderation can snatch the spotlight from extremism. OneVoice is doing all they can to help in the snatching. Good news from the OV blog today.
The first-ever Get-Out-The-Vote Campaign in the Palestinian Authority, conducted by OneVoice-Palestine, is about to release a Public Service Announcement that will turn heads: it juxtaposes Sheikh Taysir al Tamimi, the Chief Palestinian Islamic Justice, and Father Attallah Hanna, the Patriarchite of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, with Richard Gere, the film star and humanitarian. They all encourage the Palestinian people to go out and vote. Sheikh Tamimi calls it a “religious and a national commandment” to participate in the elections.
The main site — very soon to receive a facelift, by the way — can tell you a heck of a lot more.
2004 ended with tragedy. Let’s start 2005 on the other end of the spectrum of human emotion.
Posted at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Work
No-go on TiVoToGo
Today TiVo announced the availability of TiVoToGo, a feature they first mentioned almost a year ago. TiVoToGo is supposed to allow you to copy recordings from your Tivo(s) to your local network for archiving and playback on your computer. Now, aside from the fact that MythTV and ReplayTV have been able to do this for some time, and ignoring the current unavailability of this feature for Mac, and setting aside the nasty DRM they’ve included, and temporarily accepting that the software that allows DVD’s to be created is neither part of the service fee nor even available yet, and trying not to focus on the annoying ability for a show to be desigated un-copyable by its owner, the fact is that TiVo isn’t ready for this rollout.
Sure, you can install the new desktop software, upgrade your MPEG2 codecs, get everything ready on your home network — but it still won’t work because TiVo has not rolled out the box-side software uprgade that enables the service! You can get on a “priority list” for the upgrade, but they are saying that could take weeks. There’s no surer way to piss off your best customers than to make available a product that doesn’t work yet. Why even release it? Why not roll out the set-top software upgrade first? I mean, why empower a user to download and configure their own system only to have to wait for more software that is out of the control of the user and, by the way, gives no easy notice that it has even been updated?
I’m annoyed.
Posted at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Topic: Science/Tech
January 2, 2005
Resolved
OK, I’ve given these a lot of thought. Here are the tasks I resolve to accomplish in 2005.
- Learn how to conjugate Italian verbs in a tense other than the present. This will help me formulate the sentence “Would you be interested in being my wife in an alternate reality?” when I finally meet Sylvia Poggioli, which, I suppose, is another resolution for this year.
- Get a goddamn backhand. I’m done performing acrobatics to be able to hit every ball as a forehand. Left-side muscles atrophying, I’m starting to look lopsided.
- Fall in love with NASA again. C’mon, people, seduce me. I’m easy.
- Be nice to political bloggers. That is, I resolve not be so condescending to the legions of “Olde Media Killers” whose contributions to the global dialogue mostly include copying scads of text from other sites and appending small comments like “Awesome” or “Devastating” or “Go read this”. Hint: you don’t need a site for this. It is a called an RSS Reader. (Crap, guess I need to resolve harder.)
- Learn to match beats when remixing. Currently my efforts sound like a session of “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore” gone tragically askew.
- When home, watch only high-definition television programming. This might be difficult since I rarely watch live television (‘cept when the Cubs play) and my TiVo don’t do high-def. I must be strong-willed for this one.
- Convert all old mix tapes to MP3. Not a technical problem but a problem of data scarcity. Much of this music is obscure, unlabelled, and basically un-Googleable. Damnit, tune-recognizing search tool — where are you?
- Become able to change my son’s diaper with one hand. Not sure what I will do with the other hand, but this will surely be impressive to onlookers.
- Avoid LAX like the Black Death.
- Avoid the Black Death.
- Get to know my nephews better. It is one thing to be fatherly, quite another to actively participate in avuncular kookiness and crazy relative hijinks. I am looking forward to this one.
- Figure out how to make my own oak switches for the Russian Baths. Come on, it isn’t that bad. (Hmm, this’ll pair nicely with #11.)
Posted at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Topic: Notes
