Take the First

List of all iPhone owners in the world

2011-10-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

Do you want to create a list of everyone in the world that has an iPhone?

Here's how: Simply write a script to cycle through every possible phone number, and mimic the web service call that the iPhone Messages app uses to see if a phone number has iMessage capabilities. See below for a screenshot showing how Messages does this.

And yes, I know the receiver has to have iOS5 for this to work, but eventually most iPhones will have iOS5.

http://techgadgetx.com/imessage-in-action-here-is-how-it-works/

AmaZune tablet

2011-09-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

I always say, you should never write a review of a product until you've actually used it. You can read what others have said and experienced, but it's just not the same until you put your real data on the device & carry it around for a few days.

That said, it's more fun to speculate and get ahead of the other reviewers, so here's my review of the Amazon Kindle Color, based solely on the Techcrunch maybe-true leak.

If you're short on time, here's the review in 1 word: AmaZune.

Let's back up & first summarize what the Amazon Kindle Color is:

7" LCD tablet
$250
Wi-Fi only, not 3G
8 GB storage (MG says 6 GB, but the mass produced parts come in either 2, 4, or 8 GB, and it'd be more expensive and consume more board space to put on separate 4 and 2 GB parts than to just put on a 8 GB part)
UI optimized for media consumption - books, music, movies
Pre-installed Amazon Store apps - Kindle store, MP3 store
Possibly email, calendar, etc. support, but no licensed Google apps (like Gmail & Android Market)
Runs a fork of Android 2.x
Amazon App Store will have a subset of Android 2.x apps, but it won't support the newer Tablet-optimized Android 3.x apps

In other words, it's basically the same hardware as a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7". And it's basically the same hardware AND software as a Nook Color, if you search & replace the text "B&N" with "Amazon."

So, I can buy the same product today (Nook Color) for the same price, $250.

Or, I could buy the Samsung tablet today for $280 (at Amazon, where else?), but I'm sure it'll be $249 or even $199 by the end of the year. Or maybe the fancier Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 will be available, which runs the real Android 3.2, providing access to the full suite of Android apps, including the tablet-optimized ones. And hey if I want 3G and the ability to run all Android apps, I can get that too with the Samsung tablet. And you know what else, I even have access to the same Amazon Kindle and MP3 Store Android apps.

Or I could just buy an iPad, which is what most people will do, if they can afford the extra $250 (perhaps coming down to $150 in the future, if the iPad 2 drops to $399 when iPad 3 appears).

In other words, this is Amazon's Zune moment, the AmaZune. It's a product that does less than its competitors for the same price. It might have a few differentiators (e.g. tighter book store integration), but it doesn't sound like it has any killer differentiators, or else MG would have leaked them. So though it may be a fine device, it's unlikely to be a breakthrough product.

So, will they sell? Well, the Nook Color has sold a few million & is doing ok in its niche. Same with the original Kindle. These are products that sell because they're relatively cheap -- maybe even impulse buys for those with more disposable income.

But think of the AmaZune like the original Zune. It won't take out most Android tablets (which are like iPods in the Zune analogy), and it won't take out the king (the iPad), but it'll do ok. And if Amazon wants to pour $ into it and promote the crap out of it on Amazon.com every day like the Kindle, that will certainly move units. But Microsoft could have sold more Zunes if Microsoft poured marketing cash into it also - at the end of the day, it's a question of how much $ you wish to burn. In an ideal world, though, you shouldn't need to burn cash - your product should just be hotly desired, like the iPad.

How Google+ is like Windows Live

2011-07-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here’s an experiment. Stop the next guy you see on the street and ask him what Google is. I’d give you 50 to 1 odds that he says “that thing for searching the Internet,” assuming he doesn’t say, “What’s Google?” (if you get Cletus) or “the number 1 followed by 100 zeros” (geek). Google is so strongly associated with Internet searching that the Oxford English Dictionary lists “google” as an official verb.

So what do you think the average consumer thinks Google+ means? Super duper search? Perhaps. But definitely not “a new social network like Facebook.”

And that’s how Google+ is similar to Windows Live. It’s a generic word (+, Live) added to a brand so strong that it makes the new brand confusing. Why do you think Microsoft went through all the trouble to create the new Bing brand? Because the previous name, Windows Live Search, was unclear. Was it something used to search Windows? What’s Live about it?

Google should acknowledge this branding deficiency and come up with a unique name for its Facebook.

But I can hear the complaints from the tech pundits already – that I’m just not getting it. That Google+ is not a Facebook killer – instead, it’s a social layer that’s being added to Google, and that’s what’s so awesome about it. And I completely agree – it’s great that if you use Picasa, your photos are already accessible to this new social network. And I’m sure whoever came up with the name immediately saw how clever it was – hey, it’s all the Google goodness, +!

But that’s very Google-centric thinking. It assumes that the average consumer thinks of Google as “that company that built Google Docs and Picasa and Google Calendar.” Most consumers simply don’t think that – they think of Google as a search engine. Which is ultimately going to hurt Google+ as it goes head-to-head with Facebook, another brand so strong that it’s become a verb, too.

Internet Explorer OS

2010-12-09T13:58:00.000-08:00

I've got this great new product - Internet Explorer OS. IEOS is built and optimized for the Web. In fact, it's so optimized for the Web that it doesn't do anything else. Want one?

No?

But wait, there's more. I'll throw in 2 years of FREE Verizon 3G service, up to 100 MB a month! Well, sorta - you see, cellular data is expensive, so Verizon is charging the laptop OEM for this service, and the OEM is including the cost in the laptop price. So you can also think of it as being required to pay for 2 years of 3G service up front, whether you use it or not.

Still don't want it?

You're saying that in addition to browsing the Web, you also want to:

Sync music and videos to your iPod, iPhone, and iPad?
Sync photos from your digital camera?
Organize all this media?
Connect your printer & scanner?
Occasionally edit a few home video clips?
Run that Windows or Mac app/game that you bought last year?

Well, IEOS can't do any of those things, because (as mentioned earlier) IEOS is optimized for the Web. You see, no computer can be both optimized for the Web & do all those other things you want. Well, except for every Windows & Mac laptop in the world, but those are the exceptions.

Still don't want it? I understand... you'd only want this if it was made by someone else, like Google. Oh well.

Why Facebook badly needs Steve Jobs

2010-11-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

Facebook could have easily become a player in the email battle, if they had just kept it simple. All they needed to do was the following:

Give out email accounts for everyone at @facebook.com
Build a simple, beautiful Apple-like email user interface
Make it easy to email anyone, without having to figure out their email address. How? By leveraging the 500 million accounts that Facebook already has - their contact database is quickly becoming a White Pages for the world.
Make it simple to search your entire conversation history, across Facebook posts, email, and Facebook IM/Messages.

Instead, they tried to "rethink messaging" by implementing a way to hide the transport (SMS, IM, email) from the user. From the Facebook blog:

[Your recipients] will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time. You shouldn't have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use. Simply choose their name and type a message.

This sounds great, right? In theory?

Problem is that every smart person who's ever worked on SMS, IM, or email clients has come to this identical conclusion before. And we started thinking about this perfect world where users don't have to think about transports (SMS vs. email). And then we started building this product, and realized several things:

SMS and email are different. SMS costs $ per message. Email does not. In the Facebook UI, if you add a SMS user to an email thread, he will receive numerous SMSes from email users who don't realize that they're racking up his bill.
SMS and email are different. If you send a message to an SMS recipient and 2 email recipients, what happens when the email recipient replies-all? The SMS receiver gets a message from some strange short code (32665 (FBOOK)), and he's confused about who sent the message & who will get the reply if he replies.
Group IM conversations & email are different. In the Facebook UI, you can add people to the conversation & they have access to all previous chats. But that's not how IM or SMS works today - will people understand this? Or will they add people to conversations & accidentally leak secret messages to these new recipients?
Facebook threads all conversations with a person into a single thread. Even if the threads are about different subjects (since Facebook demotes the email subject to the body). All this means is that your chat with Fred about his travel plans and which TV to buy get weirdly interleaved into a huge chat session.

But that's not the #1 realization we've all had. No, the #1 realization was:

This solution doesn't actually solve any user problem. Humans were successfully texting, IMing, and emailing each other, before SmartEngineer came along & decided to slam them all together into a mixed up mess, in the name of "abstracting away the transport."

In other words, the tagline of Facebook's blog post is indicative of everything that's wrong with this feature:

Joel Seligstein, a Facebook engineer, is relieved he no longer needs to keep track of which friends like texts vs. email vs. chat.

He designed this feature to abstract away texts vs. email vs. chat. But 99% of real humans don't care about this, and won't experience his "relief" because this was never a problem in the first place. Teens always text each other, because they always have their cell phones & this is the way to reach them. And to reach your grandma, you use email. Simple. No mixing up grandma with your girlfriend.

Which brings me back to the title of this post: Why Facebook badly needs Steve Jobs. Facebook is the new Google - as in, they are building up an army of the best damn software developers on the planet. But having great engineers is not enough. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have each had a monopoly on great engineers for a period of time. But engineers want to solve hard problems - to build abstractions - to unify 3 different things that seem kinda similar. But this has nothing to do with solving real user problems, which is what Apple excels at. So these amazing engineers need a Product Person to direct them. Steve Jobs. Someone who doesn't just unify stuff because it's neat & challenging. Someone who thinks, "what problems do people have?" and then solves those problems (see: iPhone vs. every smartphone before the iPhone).

Without a Steve Jobs, Facebook is going to become the new Google. A technical powerhouse that can't build usable software, because the super-smart engineers have lost touch with real user problems. They need to start shopping for a new CEO, stat.

Say no to "Smartbook" terminology

2009-08-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

Can we please not invent another term to squeeze in between Smartphone and Netbook?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartbook

Us geeks do enough to scare civilians away from technology - we don't need to keep making up new "English" words to learn.

Is indie rock the same as 70s prog rock?

2009-08-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

Just asking --- when I listen to Sunset Rubdown it reminds me of 70s Genesis or even Pink Floyd.

Now with AdSense ads - for more ad-iness

2009-08-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

I've been ignoring this blog for a while, but I finally decided to refresh the template today. I noticed that Blogger has finally added simple AdSense support - just click "add ads," create an account, and bam, instant ads! Cool -

Now I just sit back & cash the checks.

Where did Ray go?

2009-07-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

I post all my thoughts on Facebook & Twitter now. I wish I could post longer form content to Twitter, because I tend to use it like a traditional blog. Far more people read my posts on Facebook & Twitter vs. this random blog site...

Free Karaoke for your PC - with almost any song you want

2009-01-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

My wife & I have been wanting to set up a karaoke machine for home. I looked into Karaoke Revolution, but the problem is the lack of songs that we like.

So, this morning, I put together a makeshift solution which works pretty well.

On lyrics.com, you can search for lyrics to tons of songs. Plus, when you're viewing the lyrics, it plays the song from YouTube automatically. Throw in a microphone & amplification (which I did through a PC, turning on the microphone "monitor"), and there you go. Instant, free karaoke.

Of course, it's "karaoke" in quotes because it's not really karaoke. It's the original song so you can obviously hear the original singer. But that's ok with me. It's a small price to pay to be able to sing along with almost any song you like.

Apple iPhone notification service - when is it shipping?

2008-12-31T13:39:00.001-08:00

Anyone heard of any updates to this?

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/iphone-push-notification-service-for-devs-announced/

New Macbook trackpad loves to accidentally zoom on your behalf

2008-12-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

Just got the new aluminum Macbook. First off, it's a great laptop - the screen, backlight, battery life, keyboard, design - it's the best laptop around. But in my first week of use, I started to notice a weird bug in Safari - text on some Web pages would be rendered smaller than normal. Now, I've never seen this on my work Macbook, or Safari on Windows, so that made me suspicious. Turns out that I was accidentally using the Macbook's pinch gesture while browsing, which zoomed the text size down - I guess the zoom happened before I even saw the rendered page, so I didn't notice the zoom.

The interesting part (for my loyal readers) is why: In Mr. Jobs's neverending quest to remove buttons, the new trackpad is the button - that is, there is no separate button to click - you simply click anywhere on the trackpad. Problem is, the way the trackpad is designed, it requires more force to click at the top of the trackpad than the bottom - enough force that it's still a bit of a pain to click near the top. And you never know when your mousing will lead your finger to the top, so you never know when you have to push extra hard to click. So instead, I've gone back to the classic trackpad posture, using my right hand to move the mouse, and resting my left thumb on the bottom of the trackpad for clicking. But guess what - the trackpad detects that as a pinch when I'm moving my right finger, which causes the accidental zoom.

Perhaps if Apple could redesign the trackpad to make the top just as easy to click - I might change over to 1 finger mousing rather than my classic 2 finger mousing. But I'm not 100% sure about that yet - after all, it's tricky to drag & drop things with 1 finger - you have to push down, drag, and hope that you reach the target before you reach the end of the trackpad. As opposed to the old design where you could lift your finger and move it back to drag further, while keeping your other hand on the button.

That is all. Great laptop, but for now I want to disable the pinch zoom - I mean, seriously, how often are you zooming things on your laptop anyway?

One step closer to Agent-led driving directions

2007-07-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/03/tomtom-patent-reveals-camera-based-gps-unit/

I love this idea - I've always wanted to implement the "virtual yellow brick road" - you get in your car, set a destination, and you just follow a virtual yellow line on the road. Heck, you could even have Clippy projected into space & waving to you & telling you to go right at the next turn.

The computer mouse finally fulfills its destiny

2006-11-12T08:43:00.000-08:00

Here's an idea for a cool new novelty gift: A computer mouse that behaves like a real mouse. It has sensors like Aibo, so when it sees cheese, it tries to eat it, and when it sees a cat, it runs away. And the rest of the time it sits around & lets you control your screen cursor. Perhaps the 2 eyes could be the mouse buttons, and the nose could be the wheel.

Ambien - WARNING!

2006-11-07T20:39:00.000-08:00

I picked up some Ambien (sleep aid), just in case, as I'm about to fly to India and I'll be traveling for 36 hours. On the side of the medicine bottle there's a strong warning, "May cause drowsiness."

Seafood May Be Gone by 2048, Study Says

2006-11-04T14:21:00.000-08:00

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061102-seafood-threat.html

"According to the study, the loss of ocean biodiversity is accelerating, and 29 percent of the seafood species humans consume have already crashed. If the long-term trend continues, in 30 years there will be little or no seafood available for sustainable harvest."

Better rush to the store & eat as much lobster as you can before it's gone!!! Oh no, but all that binge eating means seafood will run out even earlier, so you better eat more! :)

Fake Estate Investment Trust

2006-10-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest half-baked idea (which I'm sure others are already doing): investing in real estate inside Second Life. Second Life is an incredibly popular virtual world - US $500,000 is spent every day inside the world.

Anyway, the hot neighborhoods are scarce, so the time to invest is now.

Course, I don't know where to invest, so I posted this question:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20061017080735AAmMSVb

"Quick Serve" restaurants

2006-10-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've encounted a new name for fast food restaurants: "Quick Serve." Like this:
http://www.bison.com/featured/category/foodfast.html

As in, "don't blame the food for being fast (hence not fresh); focus on the upside -- quick service!" Long-time reader Ken will appreciate this.

I also noticed that Dairy Queen is now DQ, but that's presumably so they can push their "tasty" dinners, expanding beyond their dairy royalty.

Topper Gun Dim Sum

2006-10-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

The owners of Top Gun have outdone themselves with a clean version of itself: O'Asian.

Top Gun was the best dim sum in Seattle, but now you get the same great dim sum, plus:

Clean plates!
No roaches crawling around - like my wife saw in the original Seattle Top Gun which has now closed down.
New carts.
Fancy silverware & such.
Fine surroundings.
Younger staff
It's no longer hard to park because they have free validated parking in the garage. The old Top Gun was always too crowded all the time.

Top ten geek business myths

2006-10-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

This is a good summary of "myths that smart people have about starting their own businesses."

Agree with most of his boldface points:
http://rondam.blogspot.com/2006/10/top-ten-geek-business-myths.html

You have to ignore & not be offended by his color commentary. :)

Free 411 directory service

2006-09-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

1-800-FREE-411, ad sponsored. Hey, what isn't ad sponsored these days?

http://www.free411.com/

Switching from Blogger to another blog service

2006-09-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

The switching cost is far too high today to move from one service to another (e.g. moving this blog from Blogger to Windows Live Spaces, or moving my Flickr pictures to Hello). Most of the time, there's simply no automated way to do it. Anyway, this is an open plea to the software development community!

Outsource your google/y!/msn search work

2006-09-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

I was too lazy to search the Internet to find info about the upcoming Arcade Fire album, so I outsourced it to people with lots of free time. You know, the wikipedia-editor types :)
http://qna.live.com/ShowQuestion.aspx?qid=EFCD2836AB014C48974BB7C4C0F31ECD

Cool!

An unrelated idea: build wikis to compare Candidate X vs. Candidate Y. I like to do the research anyway (e.g. what is Darcy's stand on fixing traffic vs. Dave, but not from darcyburner.com), and it would save others time.

Apple's 800 lb gorilla effect

2006-09-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/aug2006/db20060831_806225.htm
Short summary: Walmart sells 40% of all DVDs. They pay $17 for new dvds, while Jobs (the largest disney shareholder) got Disney to charge only $14 to Apple for video downloads. So Walmart is pissed off and wants lower DVD prices, which may mean lower prices for DVDs everywhere.

And Jobs was originally trying to sell all movies for $9.99 (nice & simple like the $.99 song), which means an even lower wholesale price in the future. Good for mr. jobs.

Looks like the studios are starting to fear Apple as the 800 lb gorilla, though. Apple being the middleman by which all future media flows -- who needs cable when you've got itv & itunes & can just watch that whole 24 season instead of waiting every week? 'less Microsoft can Zune them.

Riddle: baby corn

2006-09-03T17:02:00.000-07:00

Name a 2-word phrase where you like the first word, and you like the second word, but you don't like the phrase.

e.g. baby corn, if you like babies and corn, but don't like baby corn...

Hmm, it's not really a riddle since I can't know what the answer is for you. What do you call that? That's the riddle.

drearywallpaper.com

2006-09-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I keep giving away such great ideas, but...

Register the domain above; amazingly enough, it's still available!
Collect the most dreary desktop wallpaper in the world & post it there. Allow your users to submit their dreary wallpaper.
Realize that there are lots of crazy people out there, so limit the wallpaper to dreary but not violent or offensive.
[step omitted]
PROFIT!

World's Fastest Roller Coaster

2006-05-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

If you like roller coasters, you need to know about this:
http://www.ultimaterollercoaster.com/news/archives/june01/stories/062801_05.shtml

"Fujikyu Highlands in Japan announced that they are building the world's fastest roller coaster World Bucchigiri Coaster Dodonpa...Thrill seekers will experience the ultimate launch, as compressed-air accelerates the trains from 0 to 106.8 mph in only 1.8 seconds. Passengers will feel the incredible force of 3.2 G's during the launch."

Christina Aguilera battles terrorists?

2006-04-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1757618,00.html

"Another detainee named on the list is Muhammed al-Qahtani, accused of being the 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks. The Saudi citizen was stopped as he tried to enter the US in Orlando, Florida, shortly before the attacks.

Details of Qahtani's interrogation caused outrage and shed fresh light on the techniques used in Guantánamo Bay when a logbook was leaked to Time magazine last year.

He was frequently awoken at 4am and interrogated until after midnight, with requests for toilet breaks refused until he wet himself, while Christina Aguilera music was played at him if he dozed off."

Not just music, but Christina Aguilera music. The ironic thing is that al-Qahtani was trying to get to a Christina Aguilera concert at Disney World later that week.

(I'm joking, btw)

Traffic traffic (not related to my previous buffalo buffalo posting)

2006-02-24T08:51:00.000-08:00

The Seattle traffic site always seems to be down at 6 PM these days. There are just too many people hitting the server.

Looks like I need a traffic traffic notification, to let me know when the traffic dies down on the traffic site.

Fully automatic parallel parking

2006-02-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

I'd heard of this, but never seen it until now:
http://www.youtube.com/w/Toyota%20Prius?v=rT6UQ6iqsio&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enewlaunches%2Ecom%2Farchives%2Ftoyota%5Fprius%5Fautomatically%5Fdoes%5Fparallel%5Fparking%2Ephp

Automatic Lyrics Generator

2006-02-13T20:33:00.000-08:00

Here's an idea: use Closed Captioning information to automatically generate lyrics for songs. e.g. from MTV.

Gillette's revolutionary new razor

2006-02-09T11:36:00.000-08:00

First read this Onion satire from 2/04:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930

Then read this:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/14/news/fortune500/gillette/

I'll admit; I stole this story from NPR this morning.

McDonald's Fries Got Even Fattier

2006-02-09T11:30:00.000-08:00

That's right; put down those mickey-D fries that you're eating. McD just realized that their previous estimates of trans fats in the fries were on the low end (perhaps some of the fries dropped under the couch). The fries actually have a third more trans fats than they previously thought.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/08/health/main1299086.shtml

Rolling Stones censorship

2006-02-06T13:40:00.000-08:00

Funny.

Back in 1967 the band appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on the same day as the first Super Bowl, which was then called the world championship game. They wanted to sing "Let's Spend the Night Together," but Sullivan insisted they change the lyrics to "Let's Spend Some Time Together."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060206/en_nm/media_superbowl_stones_dc

FON: Get free hotspot access if you share your hotspot

2006-02-05T16:03:00.000-08:00

Interesting idea: http://en.fon.com/

In short, if you share your Wi-Fi router, you can log onto other members’ Wi-Fi routers for free. FON runs on your router, so you don’t have to run a server on your computer. I feel like I’ve heard this plan before, but I can’t recall where…

Comments/questions:

What’s the security story? Home users don’t set ACLs, so shared folders will be available to all FON users. And does everyone have their PC firewalls set properly?
How inconvenient is it? I assume that your home PCs/laptops on Wi-Fi will be treated like any other customer’s laptop. So you have to authenticate to FON to use your own Wi-Fi.
It’d be nice if you could easily share your phone or laptop’s wireless broadband connection (e.g. 3G, HSDPA, EV-DO). That would increase coverage in areas where home Wi-Fi isn’t available (e.g. buses, subways that are cell enabled).
Outside of densely populated areas, coverage will be pretty bad. 802.11n / MIMO will help, but only so much.

Apple Hit With Hearing Loss Lawsuit

2006-02-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=178601020&cid=CRNBreakingNews

1^st rule of suing: go where the money is :). Is the iPod really louder than other players? Perhaps it is…

Making the world a better place

2006-01-30T13:59:00.000-08:00

It’s not hard to make the world a better place. Case in point:

http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/sendtophone/index.html

I’ve been wanting this little feature for a while… it’s a browser extension that lets you copy a snippet from a Web page & quickly SMS it to your phone. This is useful when you look up a restaurant or whatever and you want to “jot down” the address/phone-number before you leave the house. I currently do this by emailing it to myself, since I have always-up-to-date email, but this is more convenient, and it works for everyone w/ a cell phone.

Next step is to integrate this more directly (e.g. a link by the contact info, right in the Web page). And to integrate driving directions…

Sad Seattle Story

2006-01-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

I installed Y! Widget Engine on my desktop 2 weeks ago. It has a nice looking weather reports widget. When I came in today, I saw an unusual icon – the sun. I’d only seen the rain icon before that…

24

2006-01-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

Anyone watching 24 this season? This is the first time that I’ve really watched it, and I must say: the first episode’s storytelling was great. Very movie-esque. That said:

Can someone say “Die Hard 4: Die Harderest?”
What is up with the terrorists’ airport plan?

Let’s say the Presidents did not sign the anti-terrorism treaty. Then what?

Release the hostages? Then what? You wake up the next morning and damn! the Presidents signed the treaty.
Kill all the hostages? Nope, then the treaty gets signed immediately afterwards.
Hold the hostages indefinitely? Leaving this storyline for the rest of the season: The terrorists go home w/ the hostages to live out a quiet white-picket-fence life in the suburbs, until the treaty gets signed then BLAMO!

In short, it seems like they would have just blown up the airport, in an effort to show that terrorism cannot be stopped by a treaty.

Bonus criticism: Why would terrorists hold hostages to stop the signing of an anti-terrorism treaty? “Oh no, they’re signing a document that says that they’re going after terrorists – we can’t have that!"

Nuances of English

2005-08-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

My friend Alan asked me this question a while back, “What single English word can be repeated 5 times sequentially to form a grammatically correct sentence?”

The answer: Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

I’ll invite one of my numerous readers to explain the answer.

Hydrant-related fatalities

2005-07-23T22:04:00.000-07:00

You have to admit. Before the Internet, I couldn’t have possibly known that in New York City, it’s illegal to open a fire hydrant & waste all the water, but you can legally open the hydrant if you pick up a free spray cap. The cap limits the amount of wasted water, while letting kids party around the fire hydrant:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/press/print/05-30pr.html

I love the commissioner’s explanation for why you shouldn’t illegally open fire hydrants. She went through all the legitimate reasons, and then for good measure, added:

“Also, children can be at serious risk, because the powerful force of a open hydrant without a spray cap can push them into oncoming traffic.”

Not that the powerful force can hurt them, but specifically that it’ll thrust little Joe through a car’s windshield.

I stand corrected if this has actually ever happened.

Office "thermostat"

2005-07-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, we moved offices, and my new office was extremely cold. I was pleased to find an intranet site with two big, graphical buttons: 1) my office is too cold (with a snowflake icon), and 2) my office is too hot (with a picture of the sun). I clicked #1 and a few days later, my office was magically warmer. Naturally, I assumed that heating elves dropped by and applied elvish heat upgrades to my walls.

Recently, I was in my office, hard at work as usual while staring at the ceiling, when I noticed something interesting. There was an extra ceiling tile blocking 90% of the A/C vent in the ceiling. That’s when I realized that elvish heat upgrades were rather low-tech.

Who needs mail merge?

2005-07-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

Got this letter from my garbage collection agency today. Perhaps they had a meeting that went something like this:

Joe: As you all know, we just changed the garbage truck routes to <Joe makes the double-quote signal with his fingers> insure the highest quality of service for our customers <end quote, snickers all around>. But, that means the pick-up day has changed for some of our customers, and I need to tell them. On an unrelated note, I’ve got this database of our customers and their pick-up days. Team, what should I do?

Team: <blank looks, uncomfortable silence>

Pete: I’ve got it. Send out a notice to all the customers, but leave it ambiguously worded so it will be accurate for both customers that have a new pickup day, and customers who still have the same pickup day. And don’t, and I can’t stress this enough, don’t use mail merge to make the letter seem more friendly.

Team: Great idea, Pete. You rock! <high-5s, hoots> Now let’s all go to the strip club!

---scanned & OCR’d letter follows---

July 8, 2005

'POSSIBLE DAY CHANGE FOR YOUR GARBAGE, RECYCLE, AND YARDWASTE COLLECTION'

Dear Customer,

In order to provide you, our customers, with the highest quality of service we have just completed a reroute of the area you live in. This may or may not result in a day change for your area.

Effective the week of July 18, 2005, your collection day will be Thursday.

We hope this change causes no inconvenience for you and your family. If you should have any questions or concerns, please call our Customer Service Line.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Rabanco Connections/Allied Waste Industries

NOT prosperity, death death

2005-07-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

A coworker of mine just got her corporate cell phone account. She took one look at the phone number and freaked out. Turns out, it’s xxx-5844.

Perhaps you weren’t listening. xxx-5844! Can you imagine?

Oh, shoot, guess I should explain, since I didn’t get it either. In China, certain numbers are lucky while others are not. 5 turns out to be the NOT operator, 8 is prosperity, and 4 is death. So her number means NOT prosperity, death death. As if one death wasn’t enough.

Anyway, she traded her SIM with her officemate J.

Indie Rock recommendations

2005-07-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

Bored? Want to listen to something new?

2 bands on high rotation for me:

· Arcade Fire. I didn’t realize how huge this ‘indie’ band was until I saw their show’s ticket prices. $25 at the Paramount! Try “Tunnels” and “Rebellion.”

· Album Leaf. DJ Kenneth Tam introduced me to this solo project. Allmusic describes it as a mix of classical, jazz, and post-rock.

I wish I could put a Rhapsody URL here because then you could use your 25 monthly free plays to listen to the full songs.

Why do phone number keypads have letters on them?

2005-07-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why the letters were put on the numbers in the first place? It’s great for 1-800-FLOWERS now, but what started it? What countries do this?

This is an open-question post because I haven’t researched this one yet.

Why do we have to remember phone numbers?

2005-07-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

Let’s say that you meet someone at a party named Paris Hyatt, and you want to contact that person. Great, she gives you her phone number. Ready? 742-594-6734. Woah, I can’t remember that. Can you tell me again & I’ll type it in my cell phone?

Let’s say that you then meet someone else named London Sheraton. You also want to contact this person, but she says “just go to londonsheraton.com.” Great, that’s easy to remember.

Now, londonsheraton.com maps to an IP address like 153.52.51.124, but London didn’t have to tell you that.

Similarly, Paris shouldn’t have needed to tell you 742-594-6734. She should have been able to give you a friendly phone number like parishyatt.com.

In other words, phone numbers are like IP addresses. They expose a technical detail of the old phone system (e.g. 212 used to physically tell the switches to route to New York) that we shouldn’t have to deal with. So just like the DNS system for IP addresses, we should have a “DNS” system for phone numbers. So I can literally dial londonsheraton.com.

SIP helps because you can call london@londonsheraton.com, but that doesn’t apply to most phones. ENUM solves this by mapping +1-202-555-1234 to 4.3.2.1.5.5.5.2.0.2.1.e164.arpa, assuming that you set up a DNS mapping from friendlyname.com to that .arpa address. So we’re almost there…

"Shark" text input

2005-07-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

Interesting stuff… Trace out the word that you want instead of typing; the idea is you start to memorize patterns for familiar words & end up quick-sketching them… Sort of like Graffiti, but using words instead of letters.

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/sharktext

Apprentice sightings, or B-list celebrities

2005-07-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

2 Apprentice-related events:

· Karen and I went to breakfast at the Jitterbug in Wallingford. The line was huge so I went next door to Starbucks to get a latte. While in line, I looked back & saw Alex, the lawyer from the Apprentice. Didn’t figure that he wanted to answer any more questions about the show, though, so I didn’t interrupt him.

· Went to lunch w/ a coworker the other day, who turned out to be Andy’s roommate at Harvard. Small world… apparently Andy’s working for Trump anyway.

2005-07-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

I often hear positive comments about the "authenticity" of a particular restaurant. This usually relates to the types of ingredients that you find at that restaurant. For example, you'll find an authentic Chinese restaurant that serves chicken feet or a French restaurant that serves bone marrow. When Karen and I were in France, we were served a complete pig.

But the truth is that there's a reason that we don't often see these ingredients. It's because they are pieces of the animal that we no longer need to eat. Historically, these pieces were consumed because people didn't want to waste any bit of the animal. And that tradition has lived on in many countries that have existed for much longer than the youthful USA. But how often have you had chicken feet or bone marrow and said, "gosh, I wish I ate that every day?"

So in some ways it's good that a lot of restaurants are not "authentic." Now, don't take this too far; I don't want sweet and sour everything. I just don't want tons of cartilage and bone with my meat, thank you.

2005-07-04T21:05:00.000-07:00

Why do people buy DVDs? Economically, it doesn't make sense for most people. After all, a DVD costs $20, but it only costs $4 to rent it (possibly less if you commonly rent with buddies). Do people watch the movie over and over?

Couple explanations that aren't economically sound, but make sense:

DVDs are so cheap that people buy them on impluse without considering the economics.

The buyer is already in the store, so why go to the rental store to get the same thing?
People are used to buying CDs, so they're accustomed to buying media. But of course, CDs are very different from DVDs; people commonly listen to CDs over and over, and it's hard to rent them (libraries don't always have the latest CDs, and some people don't even realize that you can rent CDs at the library).
Or, they convince themselves that they'll watch a movie enough times to make it worthwhile, even if they don't. After all, as I said, DVDs are cheap so a wrong economic decision doesn't make much of a difference.

Having a library allows you to watch your movies without driving to the store. This is also useful when people are visiting.
Some people are collectors.

Reasons that are economically sound:

There are a few movies that you'll probably watch over and over. e.g. your top few movies, and kids' movies.

An aside: I don't buy DVDs, but I do buy books. The reason, though, is it's hard to get new books in the library.

2005-06-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

When you get a chance, you should take a look at my friend Erick Eidus's ramblings. He's an interesting character, full of off-beat observations about life. We share a love of Seinfeld & mobile phone software.

2005-06-17T23:57:00.000-07:00

I used to take Claritin-D for my hay fever. An aside: I switched to Sudafed because I realized that the decongestant was all that I needed, and the loratadine was useless.

Problem is, the decongestant (pseudoephedrine) keeps me awake.

Now, Claritin-D comes in a 12-hour and 24-hour version. I can't take the 24-hour because then I'll be up all night & zombified the next day. But at the same time, I'm a normal human so I am awake for 16 hours a day; hence if I take the 12-hour medicine, I'm sniffing & congested for 4 hours a day. Why can't I buy a 16-hour medicine?

So now, I take Sudafed, which comes in 3-hour increments. But that's less convenient...

Music services: Kazaa vs. the paid services

2005-06-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

Paid music services are multiplying like rabbits. There's y! music, napster to go, rhapsody, Apple iTunes, etc. Wireless carriers are also joining in the game.

Question is, how do they compare with Kazaa and similar P2P services?

Pros for Kazaa

Free
Widest selection

Availability of music is not limited by composer, performer, and record label restrictions. e.g. The copyright holder of the Beatles catalog still refuses to make their songs available on legal services, but the songs ARE available on Kazaa for free. Funny how the world works.

Bootlegs and rarities
Pre-release CDs. This is huge; often times, a CD's tracks become available a month before the official release. One artist did a free concert at his CD release party; he noticed that most of the fans already knew all the words to his songs!

Users can do whatever they want with the music. They can put the songs on any PC or portable music player or car MP3 player. Music is fully owned.

Cons for Kazaa

Searching for music is still cumbersome.

You often get a ton of duplicates.
The RIAA has contracted with several companies to flood the P2P networks with fake MP3s. When these are downloaded, you often hear part of the song and then noise or silence.

If you want a full album, you have to figure out the individual tracks & get them.
Even though Kazaa generally has a wider selection, from time to time it's hard to find a particular track on Kazaa that's readily available on a paid service.

Downloading is usually faster from a paid service.
No way to compensate the artists. Though you can try to buy the T-shirts & go to the concerts.

SIFF picks

2005-05-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

Two SIFF movies that I recommend:

Murderball

http://www.seattlefilm.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=7194&FID=5

This won the American Documentary Audience award at Sundance this year.

Description: Quad rugby, aka “murderball,” is played by quadriplegics in customized wheelchairs that resemble something out of MAD MAX. It’s a full-contact sport, played with manic intensity by super-competitive jocks. MURDERBALL looks on-court and off at the indomitable spirit of true athletes.

Layer Cake

http://www.seattlefilm.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=7193&FID=5

From the producer of Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

Description: After a shady pharmaceutical transaction goes violently awry, a levelheaded con artist discovers that leaving the thug life is a tad more difficult than anticipated. Matthew Vaughn (Guy Ritchie's longtime producer) taps down the flash in favor of a burnished professionalism that harkens back to the glory, gory days of British crime films.

2005-05-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

3 thoughts on Star Wars 3:

If you've seen 4, 5, and 6, Star Wars 3 is incredibly compelling because you finally find out why Anakin becomes Darth Vader. In fact, I contest that this is the ONLY interesting thing about all 3 prequels (Star Wars 1, 2, and 3). Lucas is a brilliant man for milking it because the 3 prequels could have just been summarized with this movie (+ a little more background, possibly done by scrolling more cheesy text at the beginning :) Then we all could have skipped boring Senate meetings.
Lucas should milk it some more (if it doesn't bore him to death) by re-making episodes 4, 5, and 6 with all-new digital effects. The fans would love this, and the new kids that never even saw 1, 2, and 3 would love it too. After all, if the kids watched 4, 5, and 6 after episodes 1, 2, and 3, they'd gasp at the special effects cheesiness.
Big round of applause for the artists and programmers that did Star Wars 3. The rendering is the best I've ever seen. The fakey world seems amazingly real (except for Dooku's flip off the top of the stairs).

2005-05-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

I just clipped this from an AP news wire.

"The couple first met when Fualaau was in the second grade. Their relationship became sexual when he was 12 and she was a 34-year-old married mother of four, a teacher at a suburban elementary school."

You don't hear that every day!

2005-05-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

Did you see the finale of the Apprentice? My wife and I wonder how much longer it'll last; she speculates Apprentice 5.

Anyway, it's ironic that Street Smarts Tanna (sp?) lost because she was disrespectful to her employees, which shows a lack of um... street smarts?

2005-05-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

Fun article over at Wired:
http://www.wired.com/news/e3/0,2879,67568,00.html

"Nintendo leads the charge with games like Nintendogs, a virtual puppy simulator with adorable, lifelike dogs who obey your voice commands and respond to being stroked with the stylus. You can use the DS' Wi-Fi capabilities to link up with strangers' dogs -- if you are within range of another Nintendogs player, your dogs will automatically bark at and play with each other."

I refuse to stroke things with my stylus, especially touchscreens.

2005-05-13T20:34:00.000-07:00

A coworker of mine, Kyle, called a meeting to review a document that he was working on. Before the meeting began, he immediately apologized & told us about his horrible relationship with the network printer. All of his page 1s were stapled together, then all of the page 2s were stapled together, and so on. He had to remove a page from each stapled stack & hand-collate. While we laughed at him, he wondered out loud about what sick person would program the printer to provide such an option. Soon, the job was done & we began the meeting.

5 minutes later, another guy showed up. Kyle had vowed never to hand-collate again, so he just tossed the multiple stacks at Tim and told him to take one page from each stack. Tim had the funniest, bewildered look on his face as Kyle said, "don't ask."

Hmm, a textual description of the event doesn't seem very funny, but trust me it was worth a few laughs. You know us office types.

2005-05-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

i think that it'll be required soon to have closed captioning on most programs on tv. you could use this to extract lyrics for songs from mtv.

2005-05-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

"Science is often more of an art than a science."

Just made that up. People often say, "x is more of an art than a science," meaning that x is imprecise. But lots of science (like a visit to your medical doctor) is just an educated guess. Got sniffles? Yeah, probably allergies.

2005-05-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

Society tolerates flatulence in men far more than women. Why is that? Is it because men naturally excrete more cubic centimers of gas than women? Nah, it can't be; must be a social norm thing.

So, perhaps women should fart more to promote gender equality. Should we start a group to promote this idea? NOFW, National Organization of Farting Women?

----------- <--Cheek shown here
| Tongue |
-----------

2005-05-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

Roman numerals really need to die.

Quick test:
a) 1999
b) MCMXCIX

Yeah, that's what I thought. Not only do the letters suck, they even have multiple meanings based on position, making them even more complex to parse/understand. How many movies have you watched where you said, "gosh, I'd love to know what year that was made." And then you desperately tried to translate the string of Ms and Xes as it raced towards the top of the screen? Why the heck do movies use Roman numerals? When were movies invented again?????

Problem: kids won't know what the heck that XVI means in Pope Benedict XVI. Is that his last name, but caps lock was left on accidentally? An abbreviation? Is it like MC Hammer?

2005-05-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Before everyone leaves this green earth, I think they should try to invent a word.

re: Tivo, there should be a word which means "intentionally not watching the first n minutes of a TV show when it's playing live, so you can buffer up enough time to skip the commercials."

Twait, as in Tivo-waiting. Usage: I'm twaiting for the show.

Suggestions?

2005-04-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

random thought of the day: it'd be nice if i could export my netflix queue & automatically match it up with tivo's upcoming movies list. That way, I could get some movies early.

2005-04-11T16:59:00.000-07:00

Neat site which exposes your cell phone location information:
http://celltrack.spv-developers.com/

2005-04-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

New Stephen Malkmus album coming. Based on the first released song "Baby C'Mon," it sounds like he's striving to leave his Pavement roots behind.
http://www.matadorrecords.com/stephen_malkmus/

2005-04-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

re: TiVo: Oh yeah, and I'd like to browse my friends' season pass lists.

2005-04-05T21:23:00.000-07:00

Random thoughts on Tivo:

* When you want to play a recorded program, TiVo will always momentarily show you the description of the show. But for some programs, that description will give away the show & ruin it. I wish you could hit Play from the program list & jump right to the program w/o seeing the description. After all, you can still see the description if you hit enter on the program in the list. Currently, I solve this by hitting Enter twice from the list quickly so it doesn't have time to render the description.
* It'd be nice if the TV & TiVo were more tightly integrated. e.g. one time, we turned on the TV and TiVo was recording The Amazing Race. Unfortunately, it was near the end & we accidentally saw the end first. Of course, TiVo doesn't know that we just turned on the TV, hence the need for better integration...
* With some reality shows like The Amazing Race, the regular program is 1 hour long but the all-important finale is 2 hours. So, you're recording the program all season w/o a problem, but because of a conflict between the finale's 2nd hour and another program, TiVo doesn't record the final episode. I wish there was an easy warning for this.
* While reordering the Season Pass list, it'd be nice to see a different color for programs that actually conflict w/ the item you're moving. That's what you're really interested in: which programs will not record if I move program X? Not do I prefer X over Y when they don't conflict.

2004-11-02T23:25:00.000-08:00

Unless Kerry takes Ohio it looks like it's over... sigh...

2004-11-02T02:10:00.000-08:00

Just flew coach over to europe...

highly recommended:
* bose noise cancellation headphones
* ipod, due to battery life
* eye mask

didn't work:
* sleeping pills

2004-11-02T02:08:00.000-08:00

Can't wait for the election. I'm in London right now so I won't be able to track things real-time unless i get up at the crack o' dawn. I might just try though!

2004-10-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

Warning: This is an attempt to fully explain the movie Primer. If you haven't seen it, stop here. If you want to figure it out for yourself, stop here.

Also, I wrote this as a stream of consciousness after the second viewing of the movie, so I haven't vetted it for clarity. I probably made some assumptions about things that may not be 100% clear in everybody's mind. Let me know...

---
Note: Abe2 will designate the Abe that has gone through the original failsafe machine. Aaron2 will designate the Aaron that has gone through the failsafe machine that he smuggled back through Abe’s failsafe machine & started immediately. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry; read on.

Abe, Aaron, Robert, and Philip are working on startup ideas in Aaron’s house. Aaron has a new fridge with a red bow around it. Did he buy this using future time machine earnings? No, because the machine hasn’t been invented yet and you can only jump back to when the machine was started. During this talk, Philip mentions someone named Platt; Aaron is upset when he hears this; it’s a reference to some VC or somebody that screwed them a year ago; keep this name in mind, though.

Abe and Aaron notice interesting gravity-reducing characteristics of their machine. They decide not to share this w/ Robert & Philip.

Aaron calls Abe one night to go to Aaron’s house to work. The call wakes Abe up in his bedroom, where he’s passed out & has a beard. He didn’t have a beard in any previous scene. Before Abe opens his bedroom door, he practices saying “Hi, Brad.” He opens the bedroom door, sees Brad his roommate and says “Hi, Brad.” Does he do this practicing because he’s really Abe2, the Abe that’s already gone through the failsafe machine & started everything over? Doesn’t seem right because again the machine hasn’t been invented yet.

Aaron says the machine is stable. Aaron and Abe mess with it and notice that it runs itself w/o batteries. They go to a steak dinner & discuss all the implications.

They go to parties to try to get VCs to fund them. At one party, they are shown talking to Thomas Granger, the father of Rachel, who is Abe’s girlfriend at the time. Somewhere in this time, Abe puts 2 time machines in one storage locker, and 1 failsafe machine in another. He turns on the failsafe. The failsafe is supposed to be a secret; Abe will use it to reset everything if something goes wrong.

(not shown in the movie) One morning, Abe sets a timer to turn on a time machine 15 minutes after he leaves the storage area. He then goes to a remote hotel & cuts off all communication w/ the outside world. In the early afternoon, he leaves the hotel, asks his broker which stock went up the most that day, then goes to the storage locker at 3 PM & enters the time machine. He travels a few hours back to the point when the machine went on (15 minutes after he left that morning).

Aaron2 is sitting on a bench with an earpiece in his ear. Abe looks at him from a rooftop, then goes down to talk to him. Abe thinks this is Aaron, not Aaron2. Abe tells him that he’s about to show him something extraordinary. In this scene, Aaron2’s speech seems strange because he’s just echoing what he hears in his ear, a recording he made before going through his failsafe machine. Aaron2 is trying to change the future as little as possible.

Abe drags Aaron2 along to the lab & whatever to discuss the protein growth. He demonstrates the watch traveling through time. Just before 3 PM, Abe takes Aaron2 to witness Abe going into the locker at 3 PM.

Rachel calls Abe in the car.

Abe and Aaron2 do this day-jumping a few times to earn money on mid-cap stocks that move during the day. They do their research in a different town’s library to avoid running into anyone they know & altering the future.

(not shown in the movie) Aaron goes to a basketball court & tells Will to bring his cousin (Rachel’s ex-bf) to Robert’s birthday party. Aaron has no ill intent other than mild mischief; he doesn’t know that Will’s cousin will threaten Rachel yet.

(not shown in the movie) Robert has a party and Rachel is threatened by Will’s cousin (an ex-boyfriend) with a shotgun. Aaron2 and Abe were not at the party. Rachel is not harmed, and Will’s cousin is not arrested.

Abe, Aaron2, and Kara (Aaron’s wife) are at Aaron’s house. Kara complains about rats; Aaron2 says don’t worry but really this is Aaron stuck in the attic. They are asking Kara what she would do with tons of money. Kara says “oh good things” but Aaron2 says “I’d go punch Platt in the face. But only if I could go back and make myself not do it, just so I could experience it.” Abe seems upset; he says “Aaron you can’t do that” because Abe is deathly worried about causality.

Abe knows that he has a failsafe machine, but he doesn’t know what happens if you travel back more than a few hours, so as an experiment he starts a machine at 5 PM instead of in the morning as usual. In the middle of the night, a kid runs down his street & sets off car alarms, including Abe’s Maxima. This wakes up Abe. Abe goes to Aaron2’s house & says, “now’s your chance to go punch Platt; we’ll go & do it, then come back & prevent the kid from setting off the alarms, so in reality it never happened, yet we experienced it.”

Aaron2 and Abe drive off to do it, but they notice that Thomas Granger is following them. Aaron2 says that he saw Thomas earlier in the day & he was clean-shaven, but now he has a 2-3 day beard. Abe is rattled so he calls his girlfriend Rachel to get Thomas’s number. He calls Thomas and Thomas is at home. That means Thomas2 is in the car behind them. Aaron2 chases Thomas2, and eventually Thomas2 falls into a coma (from misusing time travel & screwing himself up) and Aaron2 slips. Abe catches up with them and they take Thomas2 to a spare bedroom. The voiceover (Aaron2) says that this is when Abe decides to use his failsafe machine. Abe is worried that Thomas changed things that are unpredictable.

Abe takes the failsafe to start over.

Abe2 then oxygen-masks Abe in his sleep and puts him in the closet to take over Abe’s life (effectively).

We’re back at the scene where Abe2 meets Aaron2 on the bench. Funny: Aaron2 is saying what he said as Aaron, even though Abe2 is saying totally different things from Abe, so Aaron2’s conversation doesn’t make sense. Abe2 has just traveled a long way, though, so he passes out before having the same conversation with Aaron2 that he had before.

Abe2 goes to Aaron’s garage. Robert and Philip show up and say something that indicates to Abe2 that Aaron was at Robert’s party. But Abe2 knows that Aaron wasn’t at the party. So Abe2 figures out that even though he used the failsafe and everything should be back to normal, somehow Aaron interfered. The only way is if Aaron used a failsafe himself (he used Aaron’s failsafe).

They argue at the fountain while looking for a cat. As far as I know, this has no significance other than confusing the crap out of me at the first viewing.

Aaron2 and Abe2 discuss what to do about Rachel in the garage. Aaron2 explains that he wants to change what happened at the party because he wants to get the ex-boyfriend arrested so he can’t *potentially* harm Rachel in the future. Abe2 is hesitant to mess w/ the future, but in the end he agrees.

Aaron2 tells Abe2 about his earpiece strategy. Abe2 starts wearing one too.

Aaron2 goes to the basketball court & tells Will about Robert’s party, and tells him to bring his cousin (Rachel’s ex-bf). Aaron2 and Abe2 go to the party & take the bullets out of Rachel’s ex-bf’s gun. The ex-bf threatens Rachel but this time Aaron2 saves the day. The ex-bf is arrested as they planned. Note: Aaron2 could have also just not told Will about the party, but that would have made a less interesting movie…

But at this point we’re wondering what happened to Aaron.

Aaron2, on the voiceover, explains it. He found out that Abe had the failsafe by checking the storage records & noticing that Abe had 2 lockers. Aaron finds Abe’s failsafe & is upset. Aaron takes one of the time machines & puts it inside the failsafe, travels back in time, then Aaron2 immediately puts the smuggled time machine into his own secret location & turns it on. That provides Aaron2 a secret failsafe of his own to wipe the time slate clean (as a primer does for painting, as suggested by someone else on the primermovie.com site).

Aaron2 then drugs Aaron’s milk at night, which Aaron eats in the morning (daylight) and passes out, and Aaron2 puts Aaron in the attic. This lets Aaron2 take over Aaron’s life for a bit.

Here’s a part that I don’t understand. In the next scene, we see the Aaron2 drugging the milk scene again (at night), but this time you see an Aaron overpowering another Aaron at night. But then another Aaron enters the room & sees this, but he talks to the standing Aaron & agrees to leave, saying “see you” because the drugging was already done. There are 4 Aarons here; 1 Aaron is asleep waiting to have milk in the morning, another has been knocked out on the floor, another knocked him out, and another came through the door. I think Aaron2 was the last guy with the white shirt that walks out the door. I think Aaron found out that Aaron2 drugged him, so he went back to stop it? I dunno…

Aaron2 and Abe2 argue at the airport about where to go. They note that Abe and Aaron are about to get out of the closet/attic & start building their machines. Abe2 has been sabotaging the effort to stop any more Abe/Aarons. Aaron doesn’t want to do that; he just wants to leave. Aaron goes to another country & starts building his own machine.

The voiceover is Aaron2 talking to Aaron on the phone. I think Aaron2 is telling Aaron so he has an advantage over Abe2.

2004-08-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

I've decided to compete with Coca-Cola's new C2. They claim 1/2 the carbs & 1/2 the calories of regular Coke, but with all the great taste.

Well, I'm now selling a cola that's 1/3 the carbs & 1/3 the calories of regular Coke, but with all the great taste. I'm drinking it right now, and it's de-lish.

The secret formula is one of the following:
* something I devised after hours of blending random chemicals in my basement
* coke + toilet water
* 1/3 regular coke & 2/3 diet coke

2004-03-22T01:19:00.000-08:00

Wedding planning is going well. Karen and I are very happy! Friday's the big day.

2004-03-15T13:59:00.000-08:00

I'm getting married! Really soon!

http://www.raysun.com/wedding/

2004-03-13T16:36:00.000-08:00

Can't get enough of this blogging, let me tell you. We're enabling everyone to easily talk to themselves in public. It's just like the crazy guy screaming on the street corner. Thankfully, some of the screamers are actually interesting and I read their sites, like Gizmodo.

Random context switch: If you haven't tried this on a multimon XP system, do so immediately:
http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

2004-03-13T16:27:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen The Fog of War, you should. It's absolutely captivating. Robert McNamara is sharp, and the decisions that he's made have shaped our world.

Let me paraphrase one of his comments: "If the United States is advocating a plan, and many other countries with similarly aligned goals don't agree, the U.S. should figure out why it's so different."

2004-03-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

There really should be an easy way to quickly grab your friend's RSS favorites. Anyway, for now, you can read what I read by importing this.

2004-03-13T15:39:00.000-08:00

I'm finally an RSS convert. Reading news in SharpReader is pretty cool; I can quickly scan through almost all of my favorite news/blog sources and double click only on the articles that are interesting. For a while, I satisfied my news craving by using Firefox; it could quickly load all the favorites in a directory, which meant I could load my news in parallel. Now, I no longer need Firefox.

Besides, Firefox didn't work for some Web pages & I was always wary of making serious transactions in it. And it didn't render MHTML, which is what I use to write specs.

Couple things I'd like in SharpReader (someone tell me if another RSS reader has these features; I haven't investigated at all):
* Put the summary in-line with the title, a la Outlook autopreview. That keeps me from having to read the title, then read the summary at the bottom, then lose my place trying to find the next title.
* Autoproxy support like IE. When I connect to my VPN, SharpReader fails to update news. "Copying IE proxy settings" doesn't help because IE autodetects the settings.
* An easier way to add new blogs. 2 subfeatures: 1) I should be able to click on the XML icon in the Web page & add the feed. 2) SharpReader should point me to an RSS directory and suggest new feeds that might be interesting. Hell, you could go all Tivo and autodownload new RSS feeds for me.