Good things in 2007

Now that it 2008, it’s time to discuss a few things about 2007. You start seeing stories about 2007 just after Thanksgiving, when the year isn’t done yet. Seems strange to me.
So Happy New Year to you, Loyal Cruft Reader, here are my thoughts.
Books
The Good Fairies of New York – Martin Millar – This was my most enjoyable read of the year. Not a new book, but a great one. My review explains.
Glasshouse – Charles Stross – Stross’s previous work have been excellent and Glasshouse was fantastic as well.
Sun of Suns: Book One of Virga – Karl Schroeder – Space Opera meets Niven’s Smoke Ring in a new series. This is the first book. I eagerly await the third one to be published.
Games
Bioshock – A fantastic single player game. The first game in years without multiplayer that I’ve loved. Great story, music, game play, and astounding graphics. Perfection.
Portal & Team Fortress 2 from the Orange Box – Who cares about Half-life anymore? Portal is a truly innovative game that uses sharp writing and design to elicit various emotions. Team Fortress 2 tosses the notions of realism out the door and gives us a cartoon world of team based mayhem.
Movies
Dan in Real Life – I’m not sure why this film struck a cord with me. Perhaps as a father of daughters, I can relate. In any case, a well written and well acted film about people dealing with love & loss.
3:10 to Yuma – A classic western that looks at the motivation behind men’s action. Fantastic acting and better writing.
Sunshine – A good attempt at hardcore science fiction. The last 20 minutes devolve into a horror film, disappointing me a bit, but worth seeing anyways.
Web Sites
Woot.com – I’m now firmly addicted to Woot, patiently waiting until 10PM when the new items appear.
Ask Metafilter – Not a new site. I’ve been a member at Metafilter since 2002, but recently I’ve enjoyed reading & answering people’s questions in a sane, controlled environment.

Hardware

The iPhone – Simply the best mobile phone available. Fanbois can try to deny it, but the iPhone completely changes the face of the cellular phone industry. Strangers don’t want to look at your Voyager or Blackberry, but they sure as hell want to look at your iPhone.
Humanscale Foot Machines – Michele bought me a FM500 for my desk at home to put my feet on when sitting. I highly recommend getting one. With the amount of time I spend at the computer, proper posture is essential.

Don’t buy the Rip Roar Creation Station

DO NOT buy a Rip Roar Creation Station.
For Christmas, we bought my daughter Mira a Rip Roar Creation Station. Looks great right? A video camera for kids that does green screen video? Too bad it’s crap.
I help her get going and do the software install. After a convoluted set of steps that required CD install, downloading from the internet, plugging and unplugging of the camera USB cable, and even a good old command line patch, the software won’t run. Crashes everytime.
Undaunted, I uninstalled and reinstalled. Same problem again. It doesn’t work.
My daughter is standing there ready to go, dressed for he video with the green cloth background ready. Utterly disappointed that her ‘big’ Christmas present doesn’t work. Breaks a father’s heart to see this.
I track down the customer service line for Rip Roar/Toyquest. Amazingly a real person answers. I speak to him for a bit, but he tells me that they can’t support the Rip Roar Creation Station, that I need to use the ‘Help’ email address. I asked if there was a phone number to call, since solving software problems via email is usually useless. He said there was no phone number and that only the email address.
I expressed my concern that waiting for an email to resolve the problem for a Christmas problem was not good. He responded that the ‘Help’ email people should get back to me “in a few days”. He also suggested that I could return the item to “my local retailer”. Yes, I’ll enjoy explaining that to my daughter.
All I want is for the camera & software to work. I guess that is too much to expect these days.
I started searching on the net for help, since none was forthcoming from Rip Roar. I’m not alone in having trouble. Read what the Amazon Reviews of this product say. I wish had read them before buying this.
Not one to give up easy, I tracked down the parent company, Toyquest. I gave them a call at (310) 231-7292, trying to track down help on the problem. Of course, Toyquest doesn’t make it easy to find their number, it’s nowhere on their website, but I found it anyways. No people there to help, just recordings that wanted me to email for help instead of speaking with a person.
I thought that the President of Toyquest, Brian Dubinsky, would want to know how his product was doing, so I left him an voicemail explaining my frustration with the product. I’m sure that Mr. Dubinsky is a nice man in person with his family and friends, but his business operations leave much to be desired.
So, my hope is that when others search for the Rip Roar Creation Station, they find this note and are warned off. My fear is that there are many parents in the same boat as me with disappointed children with non-functional gifts. My PageRank is pretty good, so this will likely float to the top, but any extra linkage would be helpful.

In Memory of Anita Rowland

My friend Anita Rowland passed away from cancer this week.
Although we never met in person, we conversed via blogs, in IRC, and through email. She loved science fiction and meeting new people. An early blogger, she used Greymatter until the end. She kept a LOL – List of Links that I enjoyed quite a bit and introduced me to many new things.
I am better for having known her. My sympathy to her husband Jack in this tough time.

Schick Quattro Razor & MP3 Docking Station

Yesterday I was at Target doing some shopping, when I spotted this on sale for $6.99.


A strange marketing combination to be sure, but look, they got me to pick up the box. The picture is obviously of a Zune, but the box says it is iPod compatible. Visions of cool docking systems swam through my mind. For $7 I would get a razor, 6 blades, an MP3 speaker set, and 4 AAA batteries. Of course, I bought it. Cruft Labs always needs new things to examine.

When I opened the package, I found the speakers folded up. I put in the batteries and attached the actual holder for the MP3 player.

I was disappointed, that there was no docking in the traditional sense with the multi-pin conncector found on the bottom of most major MP3 players. The was simply a headphone jack that I needed to plug into the MP3 player.

In my first test with an iPhone, the infamous headphone connector problem was in full effect. I had to trim down the plastic on the speaker set connector to get it to fit. As you can see, there’s a on/off switch, a volume control, and even a DC power connection.
The sound was mediocre. Way worse that most of the other speaker setups we have around the house from the Muji Cardboard Speakers to the Tivoli PAL. But for $7 I’m not expecting much.

I put the Zune in place, and unsurprisingly it worked just fine, just like the cover of the box.

I also tried a video iPod. Like the others, it fit well and I could see using on an ongoing basis.

At this point, my daughter Mira came in and wanted to see it. She put on Ratatouille and shooed me a way so she could watch the movie. She could have gone 25 feet into the family room and watched the same film on a HDTV set off of the Apple TV, but she preferred this way. I think this says something for what the younger generations will expect when it comes to personal media. She picked up the set and walked out of the room.

Now that I was no longer in possession of the speakers, I took a look at the razor part of the boxed set. In the past, I tried a Schick 4 blade razor and was unimpressed. Keeping an open mind, I wanted to give it a second chance. Currently I prefer a Gillette Sensor 3 . I have backed away from the Gillette Fusion since I reviewed it.

The head of the Schick seems to be a step back toward sanity from the gel surrounded razor I last tried. The design is simple in comparison. I prefer to shave in the shower and use Kiehl’s Shave Cream (as should you if you want a close shave).

The razor went pretty smoothly on the flats, but just didn’t feel right on the curves. It just couldn’t stay as close as I’ve come to expect. Perhaps that the head size is bigger than what I’m used to these days. But the Schick did feel much better than the previous one I tried. Very comparable to the Gillette Fusion. On the back of the razor is a trim blade. Nice idea, but when I’m in the shower, sans contacts, I can’t see well enough to trim my sideburns.
Overall, I’m pleased with my purchase. I will keep the razor as a backup and I will actually use the speaker set when I travel.

Kindle and the New York Times

We got a Kindle at the office to test out and demo. If you haven’t heard, the Kindle is a new kind of electronic book made by Amazon. I took it home last night and gave it a try in my normal reading circumstances. To be honest, I was impressed. The Kindle felt good and was easily readable, even in bed. Since the Kindle is not back lit, I did use my reading light, just like I have to when I read a paper book.
This morning, I was eager to see what it was like to read the newspaper on the Kindle. Via it’s wireless connection, the Kindle can download the newspaper while you sleep. I told it to subscribe to the New York Times.


I walked outside to get the paper New York Times and brought it inside to compare it to the Kindle Edition New York Times. The first thing I noticed was that the headlines were markedly different for the same story. The first sentence of the story is the same, as is the rest of the article text, but for some reason the headlines are different. I looked at the web version of the same story, and the headline different as well, close to the paper version headline, but not exactly the same. Three different headlines for the same story in three different mediums? Kinda strange if you ask me. Here is the comparison.
Paper NY Times: Lenders Tighten Flow of Credit; Growth at Risk
Kindle NY Times: Lenders’ Belt-Tightening Stifles Growth in Economy
Web NY Times: As Lenders Tighten Flow of Credit, Growth at Risk
I guess they have an excess of headline writers these days…

The differences don’t stop there. Today is Thursday, my favorite day with the NY Times, since it is the day for Circuits in the Business Section. I enjoy reading the Circuits section a great deal.
The Kindle showed only 5 stories in the Business Day section. When I started to compare, I found that not one of the front page stories on the Business Day paper version was in the Kindle version.
Intrigued, I counted and found that in the paper version, there are 30 articles in Business Day and 5 in Circuits. Of the 5 articles in the Kindle version, 2 were from Business Day and 3 from Circuits.
So let’s be clear, the Kindle version is missing 28 of 30 Business Day articles and 2 out of 5 Circuits articles. Not really the electronic version of the traditional NY Times. Maybe they are still getting the kinks out, but it sure is weird. At ~$15/month of the Kindle version, you would expect equivalence to the paper version or the web version at a minimum.

Topping off the strangeness is the choice of articles in the Kindle version. Of the two Business Day articles included, one was a short blurb about some guys promotion that’s in a tiny box on the bottom of page C6. While I am happy for Mr. Strangfeld and his promotion at Prudential, I would have greatly preferred to read any of the article from the Front Page of the section instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the Kindle is fantastic, but the stuff with the NY Times is just plain weird.
Next, I need to figure out how to get books from Project Gutenberg into the Kindle.

What’s inside a ThinkGeek Wi-Fi Detector Shirt?

Recently I bought a Wi-Fi Detector Shirt from ThinkGeek. I’ve worn it to work and even BarCampLA with many comments.
People often wanted to know how it worked. To wash the shirt, you need to take it apart, so I thought I could show you.


The display is attached to the front of the shirt.

The display is held in place by velcro normally. It’s not hard to lift it up.

The display detaches from the cable easily.

In a small pocket, the actual wifi unit sits. The cable connects the wifi receiver to the display

The wifi unit has switch to turn it off and on. The whole thing runs off of two AA batteries. They seem to last about one night.

The cable itself runs though a cloth tube that is attached about both ends. When you are wearing the shirt, you don’t feel anything but the cloth.
ThinkGeek says you can wash the shirt with the cable still inside the tube. I wasn’t taking any chances and pulled the cable out.

Hear is the wifi detector, minus the shirt.
The shirt is a lot of fun when you are in a tech saavy group. The number one question they ask is “Does it tell you the SSID?”. Alas, no it doesn’t . I think Version 2 woudl be kick ass if it had a text display of the hotspot SSIDs it could see.

OpenDNS ftw

Recently I’d been having trouble with resolving sites via ATT’s DNS servers.
For those that don’t understand that, let me try to explain. The interent operates based on what are called IP numbers or Internet Protocol numbers. Every computer on the internet needs an IP address to be found and find other computers. Think of it as a phone number.
For example, the IP address of Google is 64.233.187.99. Go ahead, click it, you’ll end up at Google.
To make the internet more understandable to humans, we use domain names. But computers don’t use the domain names, they want to use the IP numbers. To translate a domain name into an IP address, you ask a Domain Name Server, commonly called a DNS server. The DNS server translates the domain name into an IP address so your computer can talk to it, kind of like a phone book that you look up a name to find a phone number.
It gets a bit complicated with things called Root Servers. The Root Servers kind of act like a master directory telling you which local DNS server has the info about the domain you are trying to reach.
The conversation goes some thing like this:
You: Computer, https://cruftbox.com, please…
Your computer: ISP DNS Server, who do I talk to about cruftbox.com?
ISP DNS Server: I don’t know that, talk to the DNS Root Server, she’s smarter than me
Your computer: DNS Root Server, who do I talk to about cruftbox.com?
DNS Root Server: For cruftbox.com, talk to this DNS nameserver For Cruftbox.com
Your Computer: DNS nameserver For Cruftbox.com, what is the IP address for cruftbox.com?
DNS nameserver For Cruftbox.com: The IP address for cruftbox.com is 38.119.119.169
Your computer: 38.119.119.169, please show me the cruftbox.com site
cruftbox.com/38.119.119.169: Sure thing, here you go…
That kind of conversation happens every time you go to a new web page. It’s a bit more complicated in actuality, but for our purposes, it a clear enough explanation.
So my problem was that all these DNS requests were going slow or failing, making it hard to navigate the internet. ATT is my ISP and they provide the DNS services I use as my first step. For whatever reason, their DNS servers having been sucking lately. Not being about to complete Google searches because the DNS request is timing out is The Suck.
I was quite frustrated, until I stumbled onto OpenDNS.com.
OpenDNS.com allows you to use their DNS servers for free instead of your ISP’s DNS servers. I switched over and my web response are markedly faster. I am impressed.
It’s not hard to switch and OpenDNS has great guides to show you how.
Of course, TANSTAAFL. OpenDNS makes money by showing you a page of their own if you enter a domain name that doesn’t exist. The page has ads on it and they hope you click. A fair price in my opinion for a good service.
OpenDNS will do a few more things for you like filter phishing or porn sites if you want. You can also block or allow any site you want via OpenDNS. I don’t use that service, but I assume others might want it.

Do you expect me to talk?

No, Mr. Bond, I expect to drink you.


Yes, even here on vacation in Kauai, I keep my eyes open for good stuff. Loyal Cruft readers know me penchant for Asian iced coffee.
We found this can of Mr. Bond iced coffee, from the Taiwanese company Want Want, at the local Foodland in Kapaa.
I drank it last night while I prepared the charcoal for the barbeque. The flavor wasn’t bad, not too sweet. You could taste the coffee, but it was a bit watery. Not as creamy as some of the Boss coffees I’ve had in the past. Overall, a typical Asian iced coffee, nothing special but the cool name.