Assorted Afflatuses

Better Sideways
The landscape keyboard and its larger keys make for easier and more accurate text entry

As many reviews have noted, the EDGE data moves data extremely slow. (For the technically inclined, the one test I ran with CNET's broadband speed test put my EDGE data speed at about 42.3 Kbps). But I have found, in my very limited usage of the EDGE network, that the speed suffices for viewing most non-graphics intensive web sites and retrieving email. My wireless network, connected to a modern high-speed Internet connection, sped the load times considerably.

Everything works as Apple advertised on television and online: applications load extremely quickly and I have only experienced one very non-eventful crash.

But beyond the fun and fancy features that everyone knows about, like the touch screen interface and the colorful animations, the most impressive feature of the iPhone is its sheer simplicity. Take voicemail as an example. On my old mobile, just configuring voice mail was a painful and befuddling experience. On the iPhone, I ran through a few simple screens that made the process effortless. I have not had a chance to try the visual voicemail system, however, if it functions as simply as the initial setup, I will doubtlessly find myself quite impressed.

In fact, I can only think of three features Apple should add: text selection, a system-wide landscape keyboard and a jog wheel.

The iPhone, to the best of my knowledge, does not permit the selection of a block or line of text. In an email, say, I cannot run my finger over a sentence and highlight it, as I might do with my mouse in a word processor. Instead, the iPhone forces the user to move to the end of the line and tap the backspace key until the text has all been deleted.

Apple also missed the boat with its landscape-oriented keyboard. In Safari, the iPhone permits text entry with a landscape keyboard, which is infinitely easier to use than the extremely skinny vertical keyboard present in the other applications. The landscape keyboard should be accessible in every application, not just Safari.

And, finally, Apple needs to add a jog wheel. Yes, the finger-flick scrolling looks cool and, in certain applications, comes in handy. But when I read my email, it would make one-handed operation much less of a hassle to have a wheel on the side of the device, like the old BlackBerry handhelds or Sony's long-dead Clié line of PDAs.

Nonetheless, save a scenario in which the other cell phone manufactures have some secret device stashed away in their R&D labs that the public has yet to see, I doubt anyone will overtake the iPhone so far as the software is concerned. Obviously, the people who feel compelled to have a seven-megapixel camera embedded in their phone should probably look elsewhere. For someone who wants an elegant and dead-simple smartphone, however, the iPhone fits the bill.

For most of Earth's population, the bad times become a good time to question the existence of God. I, on the other hand, seriously question my belief that no such power exists when everything falls apart. And, of late, no tragedy more horrific has befallen me than my extremely unpleasant and depressing experience with the college admissions process.

As anyone who has even heard my name now knows, I applied, partly out of hubris and out of well-reasoned counsel, to five schools. Initially four of them rejected me outright. But for the last two months I have lived with the faint hope of a spot at Northwestern hanging above my head.

Two days ago, however, that hope became yet more despair thanks to the arrival of one sadly anorexic envelope. It seems that my wit, whimsy and previous penchant for success were not enough even for the purple-tinged folks at Northwestern University to offer me a spot in this fall's freshman class.

Indeed, it is times such as these that I wonder whether or not some omniscient being is exacting his or her revenge upon me. What other force could have conspired to arrange such a terrible set of circumstances?

First I was condemned to apply in a year when every college set a new record for the number of applicants who wished to attend. Then the College Board just happened to incorrectly schedule me for a SAT Reasoning Test, rather than the SAT Subject Test, which prevented me from applying to Princeton early and subsequently diminished my chances of gaining admission there.

After I submitted my applications, every college, save Dartmouth, managed to lose at least one form, with the result that I had to mail them extras, which, for all I know, they never received. I went so far as to pay an exorbitant sum to have my SAT scores sent to schools via express delivery after four of them mysteriously failed to receive them when I had them mailed initially.

Then not one, but four of the schools sent me a flat out rejection. Northwestern, of course, decided to give me a position on their wait list, which also came to nothing.

So, while my piety pale in comparison to the founders of the Creation Museum, I have at least begun to consider reconsidering my belief that no all-powerful being exists. At least my crops were not destroyed by a plague of locusts.

An Overused Clue
The crossword compliers seem to think that I cannot remember that Putin once worked for the KGB (Image courtesy antonis)

For the most part solving the crossword is fun. Today, for instance, I read the clue, "Home of Notre Dame" and mistakenly filled in "ILEDELACITE" — the part of town where the famous Parisian cathedral is located — when, in fact, the correct answer was "SOUTHBENDIN" — the home of Notre Dame University — both of which have the same number of letters. In general I can complete the puzzle Monday through Friday, but the excessively cryptic nature of the clues on Saturday and Sunday usually prove just a touch to difficult.

But while Will Shortz usually ensures the clues are both witty and fresh, I have really become irritated with the frequency with which three clues have appeared in the last two weeks:

1. Former Putin org. (KGB)
2. Egyptian viper (ASP)
3. A kind of support (BRA)

As they demonstrate every week in the Saturday and Sunday puzzles, the people who dream up the crossword can bend words in the same way that Superman can bend a bar of steel. So why can't these people dream up some other, more creative three-letter clues?

I despise American Idol. This, however, is magic. I heard about Paul Potts on NPR while sitting in traffic this afternoon. For a mobile phone salesman, he really can sing. US reality television needs a Paul Potts.

Through some clever scheming I managed to fix the commenting system. Everything probably will not be back in order until the final version of Movable Type 4 is released late this month, as I will need to make some changes to the backend of the website once I know the final specs.

You still have to use some kind of authentication to comment, though. But thankfully the new version of Movable Type I installed allows you to register specifically with this site and create your own profile complete with (eventually) a picture and all that jazz. You can also authenticate to comment using TypeKey or OpenID, or you can log in using your Livejournal or Vox account. I cannot say that I have tried the Livejournal, but I know the TypeKey and the Vox systems both work.

A Deterrent?
Why bother adding this annoying beige doodad if it doesn't actually serve a purpose?

The story begins this very afternoon, when I decided to do a touch of shopping. After successful trips to several stores, I popped into my local neighborhood Nordstrom establishment to buy some socks. Of course, I could not help make an impulse buy: a pair of those fancy-shmancy "Seven" jeans. Nothing particularly unusual. Forty-five minutes after entering, I left the store quite content with my socks and denim in bag.

But, as seems to happen with many of my endeavors, something went wrong. When I pulled the jeans out of the bright red shopping bag and unfolded them, I noticed that the small plastic security device had not been removed at the point-of-sales terminal. I have yet to make the return trip to the store to have it removed, though it really irks me that the salesperson failed to remove the tag.

More so than that, however, this incident makes me wonder why the store bothers to put the tags on the clothes. I walked out of the store and, to the best of my knowledge, no loud alarm sounded. To me, this means that any run-of-the-mill shoplifter could easily have swiped the jeans and waltzed right out of the store. This too also seems like a lose-lose situation for shareholders: the merchandise is no more secure and the system is expensive to implement in maintain.

So, a note to retailers: make it safe or forget about it. And, either way, please tell your employees to remove the blasted security devices!

When I read, yesterday, that Six Apart would release an update to the Movable Type 4 beta today, I figured that they would. But with only an hour and a half left until tomorrow in the Pacific time zone, I have begun to develop doubts that such a wonderful event will not come to pass.

While I spent half an hour sitting at my computer waiting for the beta to go online this evening, I paid a visit to my friends at flickr. Unlike the somewhat feature-happy people at Six Apart, the developers at flickr have added some new features since last I visited. Among them is support for six new languages, French among them. So, patiently waiting to fix my website, I switched the language just to see how it would feel to browse all those pretty pictures en français.

As anyone who uses flickr knows, the homepage greets users with a greeting in an attempt to impart the ability to greet in another language. Obviously someone browsing the flickr files in English would learn nothing by learning how to say hello in English. But for the francophones, such a greeting might prove (mildly) educational. Unsurprisingly, then, I was greeting with an English-language salutation that looked like this:

There is something mildly humorous about that little blob of text. The caption below the image reads, "Now you know how to say good day in English!" If I had a nickel for every time I heard those two greetings mixed up I would have a very empty piggy bank. Ah, the joys of translation.

Mum as Ever
Apple CEO Steve Jobs giving his annual keynote address to developers at WWDC 2007 (Image courtesy acaben)

So what happened to those so-called "secret features"? Theoretically Apple could add more functionality to its operating system between now and its release in October. But Apple calls the product that Mr. Jobs demonstrated today a "near final" release of the software, which implies that Apple engineers will not add any substantial functionality between today and the final release of Leopard in October.

This disappoints me. Since January, Apple has done almost nothing but promote the iPhone. Admittedly, they refreshed some hardware and released a nice upgrade to Final Cut Studio, but otherwise, it has been all iPhone, all the time. Most of their consumer software -- iLife, iWork, Final Cut Express HD and Logic Express -- has not been updated for almost 18 months. And the last significant refresh of their hardware was the Mac mini's introduction in January 2005. The Mac Pro still makes use of an enclosure that has remained more or less unchanged since its release four years ago in June 2003.

I have seen enough of the iPhone. It clearly has some innovative features, though I will reserve final judgement until I can actually hold and use one. Unless the iPhone really knocks my socks off on June 29, I intend to purchase a Nokia E61i.

Hopefully the two percent decline in Apple's share price that followed Mr. Jobs' presentation will wake management up to the fact that they did not live up to their promise. Certainly, Leopard looks interesting, and I will gladly shell out $129 to buy a copy come October. But I do feel a little let down by the fact that Mr. Jobs did not unveil anything particularly amazing that really warranted his "top secret" label.

Delicious and So Simple
Pancakes are a chinch to prepare, yet Bisquick still graces the shelves of lesser supermarkets. (Image courtesy LynnInSingapore)

In general, I have a hard time understanding why people buy pre-prepared food. Granted, for the sake of your sanity, some items, like puff pastry, really should not be prepared by the home chef. Other items, however, are so bafflingly simple to prepare that I cannot understand why people bother to buy them.

Then again, according to The New York Times, our culture has spawned such laziness that six-year-olds now gain the most weight in the summer, when they are supposedly outside swimming and swinging. The article begins, "Summer. The perfect time for children to play outside, swim -- and get fatter?" But why should that laziness stop at the kitchen?

Americans, it seems, will stop at nothing to avoid work. Just look at the popularity of margarita mix. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have never had a margarita. I have, however, read enough cookbooks and cooking magazines to know that margaritas are dead-simple to make. One recipe I found at Epicurious.com, has a whopping six ingredients, including such hard-to-find items as salt and ice cubes. The third of America's population that can now officially call itself "obese" would stand to benefit from burning the extra two calories of energy needed to cut and squeeze a lime, rather than dumping the tequila and Tripple Sec into a bucket of powder.

Pancakes too epitomize this trend. As Mark Bittman would say, it is a matter of ones: one egg, one cup of milk, one cup of flour and so on. Is it really that much easier to pour water into a bowl of potentially tasteless processed powder? Just as comfort is no excuse for bad fashion, laziness is no excuse for insipidity.

I just love the irony: some Americans are so lazy they cannot even stop to make food to fatten themselves. We need to stop giving the rest of the world something else to make fun of. Our Fed chairman is bad enough.

It now appears that the Beta of Movable Type 4 is not as stable as I thought it would be. As is probably obvious, many features of the site are now broken or do not display properly. I would explain the technical details, but I don't want to bore anyone too much.

At this point I am waiting patiently for the next build of the beta to be released, which should include bug fixes for a number of internal issues that will, hopefully, allow me to rehabilitate the broken features. Until then, comments will not work properly, the left-hand navigation sidebars are gone and the individual entry pages will not render with the same graphic richness that they ought to.

Once again, apologies for the inconvenience.

It appears that the beta upgrade software really mucked up some of the internal workings of my website, so things may be a little weird for the next 24-48 hours while I try to put everything back in working order. Sorry about the pain!

Fear not, entries are in the pipeline. I just have not had the opportunity to polish them off for publication for the entire world to read. At any rate, I have been busy working on some backend features of the site that will manifest themselves shortly. I also spent part of my morning upgrading my server to Movable Type 4 Beta 1.

This new version of Movable Type should allow me to publish more easily, though it may cause a few headaches initially, especially since the folks at Six Apart have not taken it out of beta status. In the brief period that I have used the system I have already found a few bugs that need ironing out.

The only noticeable change on the user's side of the new system is the lack of anonymous commenting. I spend hours every week deleting unwanted spam comments for products and services I neither need nor want. So, from this day forward, all those wishing to comment must use some kind of authentication. The good news, however, is that Movable Type 4 allows authentication with not just TypeKey, but also with OpenID, Vox, Livejournal and Movable Type's new native authentication system.