A capitalist defence of socialized medicine.

The American healthcare system is broken. My first-person experience is that it is merely broken (long wait times; exorbitant fees; healthcare professionals who are more concerned with billing data than symptoms). Poll data and 3rd party anecdotes suggest that it is severely broken (coverage is denied; rates increased beyond reason, arbitrarily). The twin problems facing healthcare are: 1) poor, expensive care and 2) unreliable insurance coverage.

I believe in capitalism and in the ability for markets to correct themselves. In this case, the capitalist response is (correctly) that I should be shopping for a better doctor and I should be shopping for a better health insurance provider. I have found that, in both cases these products are extremely complicated, the markets are completely opaque. Insurance shopping is left to the professionals (called agents or brokers). On the care side, actually shopping for a good doctor is largely left to word-of-mouth (there are no brokers). It is impossible for me to find good care at any price. It is impossible for me to shop for healthcare services based on price - I have found that the front desk will quote a price, and then later offer a cash discount. It is not practical to ask every provider for every procedure via the phone. It is impossible for me to predict what any insurance company will cover in advance. It seems like this is a problem too big for me to fix. Or rather, it's a problem that outstrips the utility of it's solution.

When lots of people have the same problem, and no individual seems able to fix it on their own (or rather it is cost prohibitive for each individual to solve the problem), it makes sense to cooperate and solve it together. The first thing you might do is look at other places and see how they solved the problem. Look at France, or Hawaii. In both cases people seem happy with their care; certainly I would appreciate the act of just getting healthcare without going through the rigamarole of providing billing information.

That said, I think the Hawaii system should be rolled out on a state-by-state basis. I don't want the federal government involved. I would like each state to take a good hard look at Hawaii and see if they can swing it. So thats it, a capitalist defense of socialized medicine.

Facebook, leaning toward evil.

Facebook has patented the news feed. The opportunity for mayhem is incredible.

This patent is just wrong. It would be like a newspaper patenting narrow columns. It's not right. They already have a strangle-hold on my data. This is the last straw. I'm leaving Facebook.

Change always hurts

It's funny how people vote for politicians advocating "Change" and then when it comes to actually changing, people balk. This is for a good reason: all change hurts somebody.

Take health care reform. That's a big change, and it will surely hurt insurance companies. I am not being flippant: insurance companies have investors who want to make a profit, and those investors could very well be me or you thanks to the 401(k) investment. Health care reform, in it's current incarnation, will also cost more money, and increasing the size of the government, hurting the taxpayer's wallet. The hope is that such a change will improve people's lives, overall.

I voted for Obama, but I have to admit his healthcare reform initiative took me by unhappy surprise. With all the crap going on the world, and with the US already bleeding money thanks to two thankless wars, why now? Why not wait until the wars are over, we stop bleeding money, and can make these changes without making the government any larger than it already is?

I want smaller government, not larger. I think there are very few Americans of any party that want a larger government. This is not a matter of principle, it's a matter of practicality: the federal government already appears to be a hulking, wasteful lumbering thing. Rewarding the government for a job poorly done is no way to spend resources. If the government were more effective, doing only those things which require a fierce concentration of power and resources, then I would be more open to giving it more money.

Change is always painful. We just have to be smart in judging whether some pain now will yield benefits in the future. The interesting thing is that, if you take virtually *any* historical decision, even ones that we now perceive as good, or even great, you will find enormous opposition. The creation of central park was going to bankrupt New York. Desegregation was going to destroy America. Entering world war 2 was going to bankrupt us and needlessly entangle us in world affairs. Landing on the moon was going to be a wasteful misuse of government resources, and probably kill the astronauts. Revolt against Britian was needless, and going to end in utter defeat.

Unintended Consdequences of Lightwieght Activism

About a year ago I took a stand against membership cards. I found out today that my small act of rebellion changed the policies of a major corporation, derailed one of it's marketing campaigns, and got someone fired.

The relatively recent rash of "membership cards" at virtually every retail store was troubling to me. On a superficial level, I was annoyed at having to carry all of these cards just to get the ordinary price. It was clear to me that, rather than enabling "discounts" these cards actually just warded off penalties - non-carriers are penalized for not having one, or not presenting it. On a deeper level, I knew the true purpose of these cards and it bothered me: they give the store a valuable database not only of personal contact details, but also behavior data. You are what you buy, and these companies can learn a lot about you from your spending habits. While the use of this information would normally be innocuous, it frightens me. At no time in history were such complete records possible to keep on a such a wide scale. It's not clear how they can be misused.

One day, while at the local Ralph's, it occurred to me that I could solve both concerns at once. I could register a card with a fake name and address, an easy-to-remember phone number (562 500 5000), and then encourage others to use that phone number as well. This was an act of lightweight activism. And today I found that it was far more successful than I hoped. Indeed, it got someone fired.

According to Mary, my checkout clerk today, around 30 people at the one store were using the number. It was directly because of this, according to her, that they discontinued the free gas initiative. And finally, a checkout clerk was fired for suggesting that a customer who had forgotten their card use the number. She said all of this with a quivering lip, and was obviously very angry with me. "So YOU are the one who registered that number!" she began accusingly.

(Of all the accusations I found the "free gas was discontinued because of you" the most interesting. I put a fake name, "Guy Faux" and a fake address "123 Main St. Seal Beach" so I never received anything from Ralphs. I suppose if they just printed unnamed vouchers some lucky person at or near that address was getting a lot of free gas. I expected the mail to get returned to sender.)

I too am angry that someone got fired over this, but for very different reasons. The clerk got fired for helping a customer. That's just wrong. I can totally understand that the company does not want it's employees systematically undermining any system, no matter how ill-concieved. But to fire someone over this? Why isn't Mary angry with management? They are the ones who did the firing! Heck, I never told any of the clerks to share the number. It just sort of caught on.

An act of rebellion, someone lost their job, many people protected their privacy for a short time, a random person got free gas. All of this because I picked a fake number and encouraged a few people to use it. Wow. What a strange world we live in.

For the record, I advocate doing away with these ridiculous cards entirely. Places like Trader Joe's need to be commended for not imposing on their customers like this. If you agree you can act by doing something like what I did, but perhaps on a smaller scale. Figuring out what the public needs and wants should be up to the "feel" of the store manager, not the output of an OLAP data center that then dispatches impersonal orders around the globe.

An Exciting Time for Democracy

The proposition 8 trial will be posted to YouTube! What a wonderful way to show some transparency!

Why Basecamp is Evil

It's the old wound: they hold your data hostage. Over at basecamp there is an export option, but it doesn't include uploaded files. Which I presume means that links to files will break. I guess the good news is that data hostage taking isn't just for Big Heartless Corp anymore.

In all fairness, I don't think 37signals intended to be evil. It just sort of turned out that way: their tools and data are so tightly coupled that it would be very difficult to extract one from the other. (And one could argue that the tools & data are themselves tightly coupled to the runtime: Ruby on Rails hosted on Amazon EC2.).

I think the idea is that you want to make tools to help your users organize their information, but that doesn't require the tool to make further use of the organization that they have worked so hard to create.

Of course, if I was really smart I'd write a little program that pulled apart the finite state machine that is basecamp - normal recursive wget will not work because of the ajax.

How to solve "cannot connect" problem with VMWare Fusion after Migration Assistant

'The problem:

I recently used the Migration Assistant to move my applications and data over to
the a new machine from my old MacBook.

Everything works fine, except for VMWare Fusion. When I attempt to start either
my Windows XP or Ubuntu images, VMWare complains, "vmware fusion cannot
connect to the virtual machine. Make sure you have access rights..." and
so on.

I did a search through your knowledge base for both the error message
and "migration assistant". No luck. I did a Google search too, and there
are many people with this same problem. The resolution that apparently
works is to reinstall VMWare. But I figure I'd check with you first.

Here's the answer from tech support (which was rather prompt!):

You may need to reinstall Fusion but hopefully not just yet.
Try these steps first to repair the permissions of the virtual machine filles:

1. Log in as a user with administrative rights.
2. Navigate to Documents->Virtual Machines (or wherever you saved your VM files)
3. Right-click the .vmwarevm file that corresponds to the name of the virtual machine you want to work with and choose "Get Info".
4. Unlock the padlock at the bottom of the window using your administrator password.
5. From "File & Extension" remove the .vmwarevm extension.
6. Close the "Get Info" window. This file now displays as a folder.
7. Right-click the folder and choose "Get Info"
8. Under "Sharing & Permissions" beside your user name and "Everyone" ensure the Privilege is set to "Read & Write".
9. Click the gear next to + - at the bottom of the window and choose "Apply to enclosed items".
10. From "File & Extension" re-add the .vmwarevm extension to the end of the file name.
11. Close the "Get Info" dialog.
12. Restart your Mac.
13. Launch VMware Fusion and run the virtual machine.

If your issue has been resolved by this email please let me know.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me by responding to this email.

Regards,

Kellan Adamson
Desktop Technical Support Specialist
Global Support Services
VMware Inc.

Here's my answer, based on the above:

1. Start Terminal
2. cd Doc[tab]/Virt[tab] (should yield something like cd Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/)
3. chmod -R o+rw *.vmwarevm

It works!

Becoming a Software Criminal

Big companies like AT&T, Apple, and Microsoft encourage their users to break the rules, because they make unreasonable rules. Not only unreasonable, but hidden until it's too late. This post will describe two such cases.

I became an iPhone criminal when I started my trip to New Zealand. I had spent over $400 on my iPhone 3GS and wanted to use it on my trip. However, the iPhone is locked to AT&T, and you cannot use it with an overseas carrier without unlocking the phone. This reasonable usage required that I go outside the law to jailbreak then unlock the phone.

I became a Windows criminal when I switched to Mac, looking to move my legitamate Windows software to VMWare Fusion. This use is apparently prohibited by the Microsoft license agreement. And it's causing me problems right now because for some reason my Windows XP image is asking for activation, again. I did not know this, but if you buy a new PC with Windows on it, that copy of Windows is in some way tied to the physical computer: if you trash that PC and keep the hard-drive, and put it in a new PC, you are in violation of the Microsoft license. Or, in my case, if you trash the PC and attempt to run the hard-drive image in a virtual machine, you are in violation of the license.

And in both cases, because I've gone outside the law, it's more likely that I will continue to do so. In the iPhone case, I've installed Cydia, which is a gateway to all kinds of licit and illicit iPhone applications. So far I've only used it to unlock my phone and install some handy developer software (such as Mobile Terminal), but who knows? In the Windows case, I've had to hunt down an illegal, cracked copy of Windows even though I already have a legitimate copy. In the course of doing so, I've found a lot of other illegal software, and frankly I'm tempted to try some of it out. I haven't yet, but who knows?

I begin to understand the marijuana "gateway drug" argument more clearly. It's true: if you have to break the law to do something harmless (like smoke pot) then you are more likely to break the law to do something less harmless (like smoke crack). The one action puts you in closer proximity to the latter action.

In truth these are two examples of a much bigger problem: egregiously complex terms placed on an apparently simple transaction. You may think you're paying for one thing, but in truth you're getting much less, subject to incomprehensible restrictions. This is particularly a problem with loans, credit, and insurance, but increasingly electronic devices and software. There needs to be some legally imposed upper-limit on the complexity of terms! Complexity breeds disagreement, but even worse it shifts the balance of power to the party that understands the terms the best, which is usually the party that imposed the terms, which is the manufacturer or vendor. Ordinarily I would be in favor of letting the market sort this out, but I'm afraid this is a fundamental flaw in the market which is only now reaching fruition thanks to technology. Technology is making it possible to enforce these complex rules - the only reason it hasn't always been this way in every industry since the industrial revolution is that the cost of enforcement has been a limiting factor in all but a few contract types.

Running out of disk space in the age of the cheap terabyte - avoiding data clutter.

Running out of space
Running out of drive space these days is like New Zealand running out of sheep. It's hard to believe it's even possible, but today I got a "running low on space" warning on my laptop. It's an upgraded 180G 7200rpm drive. I only had about 500MB free. What on earth was going on?

The first thing I did was empty the trash. That helped a little (I had almost 5,000 items in there). But I was still very low on space.

I needed to get some idea as to what was going on. So I fired up Terminal, ran du (including the du * -k | sort -nr variant), df, and wasn't really the wiser. I needed something visual. So I downloaded JDiskReport (actually I couldn't remember the name so I googled "visualize disk usage" which brought up a lifehacker.com article which reminded me of the project...) JDiskReport is a fantastic tool for seeing where your space has gone (and the guy who wrote it, Kars Lentzsh is a very talented Java Swing programmer as well.)

Turns out that, while I do have 70G of movies, and 14G of music (yes, a small amount but I actually own all of my music) the first surprise was Vmware Fusion: 16G of virtual machines! And really, I don't even use it all that much: I have an older XP image with IE 5.5 on it for testing. And an Ubuntu image for the same reason. Really, these should be 2G apiece, and one 10G image could be deleted. Easy fix.

The biggest surprise was my iMovie "events" folder: 30GB used. First, I have a lot of footage. Second, iMovie adds a lot of meta-data (in one case I had 1G of thumbnail data alone - for a one hour video). Third, raw video footage is very large. It is highly compressable, but compressing this stuff is not part of my workflow. I used iMovie to export a tiny version of a 1 hour video, then deleted the source files. The original was 4.8G. The exported video was 34MB! (It took about 10min to compress. I might also try using HandBrake to do the transcoding.) I can look forward to getting this down to around 200MB, I hope. But it will take time.

And then there are about 12G of photos floating around in various places.

How did this happen?

Cleaning the mess up is great, but if I don't figure out why it happened it's just going to happen again. Despite the increasing amount of storage, the tools I have to generate new data is increasing even faster. I have about 5 devices capable of producing photographs and video: two cameras, a flip video, my cell phone and a webcam. All of this new data is dutifully sync'd to my laptop (a process I wrote about earlier in an article on iPhoto), but then (apparently) the data just sits there, and problems like these arise.

Of course, this data shouldn't just sit there. It should be doing something useful, or it should get deleted. (The utility of data generally goes down over time. But that's ok because flickr, youtube, and facebook don't ever delete your data. It's their business to keep your data as informational as possible, so that's to your benefit.)

Should you have more photos on your hard-drive than on your favorite sharing service, or less? Most people would say more, I say less! Put the good photos on Flickr, and only keep the great ones locally. (Same with videos and youtube). If it's not good or great, it's deleted. Even if you decide to keep it your work isn't done - for example, you need to compress the video. (And you may want to compress the local photos you keep if you shoot RAW).

(Two unavoidable factors may keep more data on your pc than on the net in the short run. First, you may have a limited connection. This will make uploading even smaller files very slow. In the worst case, you're completely offline. Not much you can do there but wait, knowing that your data clutter is only temporary. Second, you may need to compose your story a bit, putting together the narrative and cleaning up the source data, and make decisions about what's good, what's great, and what's trash. That takes time! But being aware of all this work you're creating before hitting "Record" might make you more cautious. It might also inspire you to cull out your work before uploading to your PC!)

How much to keep? I don't know, but I do know that about 95% of my photos are pretty bad. So I'd say 4 photos and one very short video per event day are good, and half (or less) are great. That's about 40MB uploaded, 20MB (max) kept on the hard disk. That's still quite a lot to upload over a bad connection, but doable with reasonable broadband.

Unlocking the iPhone 3GS - Overseas

The iPhone 3GS has the potential to be the traveler's best friend: it has a great camera, now a very good video camera, a good sound recorder, and lots of handy travel apps. And it even has a GPS and a compass!

But travel requires that the iPhone be offline quite a lot more often than when used as a daily device. The reasons are several. Countries don't have data networks, let alone 3G data networks. They may not even have ubiquitous wifi, let alone ubiquitous, free wifi which is the norm in the LA area at least. Even ordinary internet access may be restricted or expensive.

I learned all of these lessons the hard way. Newly arrived in Aukland, New Zealand I had some time to kill before the next leg of my journey and sought out a coffee shop and a quiet corner to take care of some iPhone unlocking. Frankly, I had never considered doing this before my big trip, as I'd been pretty satisfied with the default service of both AT&T and the Apple Store applications. But, I wanted to be able to use my phone as a phone here, so I set about learning about the process.

This took much longer to understand than I expected; it appears that this is still a very fringe activity for a very mainstream device. The best resource for hacking the iPhone 3GS was on iphonehacks.com. This has a lot of detailed instructions and good links (although I may have had to find a different link for the ipsw file IIRC). In addition, one of the steps ended up costing me about NZ$25 in coffee. :) Here are the steps, in brief:

1. Jailbreak the device. This allows you to install non-Apple approved applications on the phone.
2. Unlock the device. This allows you to use non-AT&T carriers.
   
3. Install the new SIM card.
4. Enjoy and send metta to the clever programmers who made this possible. And send metta to apple for making a nice device.
   

redsnow is the name of the program that jailbreaks your device. For most people this is a minor inconvenience. ultrasnow is the name of the unlock program, which itself is an unauthorized application. Cydia is another unauthorized application that is used to install ultrasnow. The wrinkle with the iPhone 3GS is that Apple made some change to OS 3.1 which makes it harder to jailbreak, so you have to downgrade to OS 3.0, then do the jailbreak. An extra step, but no biggie. [If someone had written just that paragraph I would have been saved a lot of furrowed-brow time. I hope someone finds that useful.]

One step seemed simple enough: to restore 3.0, just download a file from Apple. And so I started. When the download just stopped, I was a bit taken aback. But then I realized, ah, they meter the internet here! This file was 300MB and the coffee shop had a 50MB limit on internet usage (using these neat little paper cards with codes you had to type). Problem solved few lattes later (the guy was kind enough to give me two cards per coffee) I had the file. But by then I had to leave, and didn't want to mess something up by rushing.

At my final destination I set about completing the jailbreak. Dutifully following instructions, I did it! Now, time to unlock. Ah, but here is the wrinkle: Cydia requires the internet to download ultrasnow, and there was no wifi here! And of course, no data network. Without data my iPhone had turned into a fancy digital camera, able to sync to my computer only.

I still haven't completed the unlock because of the lack of wifi. Yes, there may be a way to download the package and install it manually. And if worse comes to worst I'll do that.

The moral of the story is: jailbreak and unlock your iPhone before leaving on your trip! Then you can easily pick of a pre-paid SIM card, pop it in and be happy. I'm not sure I would actually do this, but there have been several times a wifi router would have really come in handy for both my iPhone and my computer.



As a postscript I'd say that the iPhone has one standout feature for basic travelling: the video camera. Not only is it very good quality, it is neatly compressed and ready to upload. The videos on my compact are HUGE for their size. The iPhone 3GS is a big let-down, however, when it comes to battery life, and nothing sucks down the iPhone's battery like video. It is best used in short spurts (like flickr's "long photos"). And when you're overseas this actually means you will bring: a charger, a wall adapter, and a cable. I'm super glad I got the battery extender from Mophie before I left. $80 well spent.

The iPhone is also a big let-down for almost every other travel application. The voice recorder is excellent for journaling, but doesn't geocode and clips are hard to share (use Evernote instead). You can read books and watch movies on the thing, but that's not too common for me. There is no really good way for someone to give you their contact details, or to jot down a bunch of tips someone is giving you. It's good for keeping lots of contact information around, but only if the battery didn't die. It is, of course, a very good MP3 player. :)

The underlying reason for this lack, I think, is that most iPhone apps just aren't designed for feature-rich, extended, offline, and unplugged operation. They are designed for commuters who have 3G or Wifi all the time and keep it plugged into the computer they are working on most of the time.

Phones are easy to borrow. Computers are even easy to borrow. If I had the choice between having:

• handy small atlas, a cheap pad of paper, and a pen
• iPhone 3GS

And I was on the road, I would choose the former. Now that I think about it, it's pretty easy to borrow a pen, too.

Meditating, Still

My enthusiasm for the meditation technique of Vipassana has been renewed by this wonderful experience, this place, and these selfless people, and I am more determined than ever to maintain my practice.

iPhoto sucks, 2009 edition

iPhoto still sucks. A quick google for "iPhoto sucks" gives a variety of hits

• he lifehacker article asking for replacement ideas from 2006
• the random typepad post (when will bloggers learn to include author and date on all of their articles?).
  

First, let's review the primary reason why iPhoto still sucks: it doesn't use the file system. It stores everything in a huge, monolithic file called, by default, "iPhoto Library". This is a HUGE interoperability problem:

• Other programs can't read, modify, delete iPhoto photos. 

Anytime all of my data is glommed into a single, multi-gigabyte clump I start to worry about data integrity issues - I don't want a single bit flip to make my entire library go bad!

There are some alternatives:

Perhaps the biggest new tool on the scene is Picasa for Mac (Requires: Mac OS X 10.4.9+, Intel CPU, 256MB RAM, 100MB available hard disk space). Picasa is Google's free, previously Windows-only entry into the desktop photography organization space. It's a very good program, except that it crashes all the time, and use the Windows version extensively on my Sumi, my Thinkpad T43 running XP. Picasa works with both file-oriented photos and iPhoto's custom file-system (however, Picasa is read-only on iPhoto library).

Another alternative is Adobe Bridge. "Adobe® Bridge CS4 is a powerful, easy-to-use media manager for visual people, letting you easily organize, browse, locate, and view creative assets." Bridge also has primitive import capabilities - it will get your photos and movies off your device, but it doesn't do duplicate detection or offer the option to delete source files when you're done. It's a very low level utility, but does have very sensible folder naming conventions.

There is another program that comes with OSX called Image Capture which is very primitive but at least offers to delete source files when you're done. This is great when you need to delete data from your iPhone and don't want to click delete 200 times. Image Capture is very nice, but it doesn't separate data according to the date it was taken, unlike Bridge.

Sharing.

Eventually, any content of value is going to be shared. But how? Where? For photos the four major options are: Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, and Dropbox. For videos, there's basically just YouTube and Dropbox (although Flickr does allow for short videos to be posted).

I have the most experience with Flickr. You can pay to have a Pro account ($25/year) which allows unlimited uploads at any resolution. Flickr has a highly developed community of photographers (although they are playing around with video, it's still primarily about photos), and some really nice sharing options (like embedding slide shows in your blog). Unlimited storage is pretty cool but in practice you don't want to be posting crap so you don't really use all of it. The only reason to go Pro is to make sure you get full resolution. You can get photos to Flickr in 3 ways: through the web, through the Uploadr, and through email. Email is the best option, because it's the most flexible (you can email from Picasa or the iPhone for example).

Picasa Web Albums is newer and quite compelling, especially if you use Picasa. The integration with the desktop client is extremely good, and lets you sync edits and add watermarks automatically. Photos default to private (although you can share public photos as well). Honestly, if the Picasa Mac client was more stable, I wasn't already invested in Flickr, and Facebook wasn't such a tempting alternative I'd be using this product.

Facebook Photo Sharing is something that I really want to learn more about. I've seen other people sharing photos, tagging people in the photos, and commenting - both of which are great features. But I have questions. For example, is it possible to post public photos so that non-facebook users can see them [answer: yes, but only via URL]? Is there a way to upload more than one photo at once (e.g. a desktop uploader?) [answer: yes, there's a Picasa Facebook Plugin] Is it possible to upload via email [yes, but not to an album]? Are tags supported you can only tag people]? Is it possible to download your photos once uploaded [only by right-clicking]? What are the maximum filesizes supported [looks like about 600px]? Is the original maintained (e.g. is it suitable for archiving?) [no]. Basically, this is great for snapshots with people in them.

Dropbox is a very basic option, best used for long videos that won't fit on YouTube (which is limited to 10minutes, I think), for audio recordings, or for anything else that's not a photo or a small video. The great thing about Dropbox is the flexibility: it's really just a net accessible file system. You don't get any nice things like tagging or flash viewers or anything. But on the plus side you can share whatever you want, no matter how big, as easy as a file copy. Very good for audio and video.

My Process, or, What I do

When I take photos with my Nikon D90 (a "semi-pro" DSLR) I almost always sync with my Mac by just putting the SD card into a reader connected to the Mac - this is both faster and more battery efficient than connecting the camera up directly with a USB cable (although it's probably harder on the SD card and camera). You can configure which program runs to sync photos: I'm using Adobe Bridge currently, but both iPhoto and Picasa can do an import. (I use Bridge because I like it's file naming better, but I do miss duplicate detection). I import into a sub-folder of Photos called D90 - it turns out it's handy to organize by device. Then I boot up Picasa which detects the new photos, and do my basic editing there. Occasionally I start up Photoshop. Then I post to Flickr via Picasa's built-in email interface.

For my iPhone 3GS I sometimes post directly through the phone: you can email photos and videos, or post videos to YouTube or to Facebook (with the Facebook iPhone app) over wifi or 3GS. Otherwise I sync photos and videos (but not audio, alas) with Adobe Bridge, as with the D90. Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to do a bulk delete on the iPhone Camera Roll! The immediacy of getting data off of the device and onto the net immediately is wonderful, if a little slow. I am certain that this is the way of the future. Audio is quite tricky, alas. The iPhone 3GS offers a new "Voice Memos" app (it may be available on any iPhone 3.0 phone). Audio is only sync'd via iTunes (see the Voice Memos smart list). Then you have to export as MP3 files, if you want to share (right click, "Create MP3 Version" - the iPhone records m4a audio.) Another option is to email the audio file, but this is of limited utility unless you only want to share with one other person. [An interesting alternative to Voice Memos audio is Evernote. Evernote is time limited (10min) and very low quality compared to voice memo but it does OTA sync with the Evernote servers, is geocoded on save, and you can store text alongside the audio and you can share the audio if you want.]

Flip Video has it's own proprietary syncing application. Unfortunately it is modelled on iPhoto: data gets plopped into a monolithic application which then needs to be exported. If you just want to burn DVDs and send to YouTube you may never need to export. Of course, I find myself using the Flip much less now that I have the iPhone 3GS. [Is it possible to use Image Capture for the Flip?]

Making Art

My true goal is to use this data to say something about the world, to share an insight about the world. The best photography can certainly stand on its own, and a title and/or description is enough. For that, Flickr and YouTube are enough. However, more often than not I find myself wanting to say more, to embed these images and videos and audio into a more comprehensive document, to make a multimedia essay. Flickr and YouTube, along with a blog (like Blogger) is perfect for this. Both services provide nice Flash viewers for the content, which can be embedded in the post (see "Short Trip, Important Lessons" for a simple example).

Conclusion

The best bang for the buck, in my opinion, is using Bridge (or Image Capture) to get the photos off your camera into an actual filesystem, then use Picasa to upload to Flickr and YouTube, and then use Blogger to write great posts, embedding assets as needed. However, there's a bit of a marketing problem. You can link people to your post from Facebook. However, this has the important drawback that a) people can't be tagged and b) it seems like people are not often willing to look at links. People like photos, but they like them native to Facebook.

Working offline is tricky. If you don't have an internet connection then you can't upload your resources, which you can't embed in your essay. In this case you can fall back on classic HTML authoring techniques: make a folder for your essay, placing all your assets in that folder alongside an index.html file. When you are online, put the assets up first, adapt the post for the new URLs, then post the essay. (I've never seen that kind of functionality in an offline blog authoring tool, so you have to do it by hand.)

But, overall, avoid iPhoto because it makes everything else harder.

Selling my motorcycle. [SOLD]

Alas, I am selling my motorcycle. It's been a great bike and a lot of fun. But I won't be able to ride for some time and it's a beautiful summer and I don't want to see it go to waste.

Asking $4400 - which is a really great price for this bike in great shape and all the extras. Call me at 562 331 7169 if you're interested or want to take a test ride.

General information
Model:	Triumph Thunderbird Sport - Yellow
Year:	1999
Category:	Naked bike
Crashes:	Rear-ended in 2005; professionally repaired to stock by OC Triumph, Santa Ana. This was a minor accident and did not affect the frame or any other major systems. There are two small scratches on the exhaust.
Upgrades:	Upgraded cam shaft Upgraded to off-road exhaust Hand-warmers
Accessories	Corbin Leather Saddle Genuine Triumph Windscreen Genuine leather Triumph Panier HJC Helmet Leather riding gloves (large) Bike cover Extra set of rear-view mirrors in black
Service History	April 2009 did a major preventative maintenance: Full tune up New wires and plugs Fork seals and oil replaced Carbuerator cleaned and adjusted All other maintenance records are available.
Engine and transmission
Displacement:	885.00 ccm (54.00 cubic inches)
Engine type:	In-line three
Stroke:	4
Power:	82.00 HP (59.9 kW)) @ 8500 RPM
Cooling system:	Liquid
Gearbox:	6-speed
Transmission type final drive:	Chain
Physical measures
Dry weight:	224.0 kg (493.8 pounds)
Wheelbase:	1,580 mm (62.2 inches)
Chassis and dimensions
Front brakes:	Dual disc
Rear brakes:	Single disc
Speed and acceleration
Top speed:	165.0 km/h (102.5 mph)
Power/weight ratio:	0.3661 HP/kg
Other specifications
Fuel capacity:	17.00 litres (4.49 gallons)

Short trip, important lessons

As a test run of a longer, world-spanning adventure, this 10-day trip to DC and NC has been a success. I've met with obstacles, adventure, and even peril on this relatively short excursion. And, something I didn't expect but should have, I've had a lot of new ideas about how the world works. Travel is not just an opportunity to experience new things, but it's a chance to observe what remains the same.

The Mechanics of Travel
First things first: lessons on the mechanics of travel. By tickets early. Check the tickets carefully or you will end up at the wrong gate, or at the wrong time. TSA hires morons to both write and implement security policy - just get through it quickly and try not to think. A map is the most important thing in a new place. Do not rely completely on technology to replace maps, phone, camera, etc: batteries run out and signals don't go everywhere, even in big cities. Also, it's tricky to use multiple apps on an iPhone. Even if you get a big room, don't unpack everywhere. Talk to strangers. Eat well. All problems go away with sufficient money: remember that travel is primarily a cost optimization problem, not a survival problem.

Relax, but keep moving forward. Be adventurous. Sometimes it's lonely on the road, but it passes.

Seek out local advice, but take it with a grain of salt. Often locals don't know as much about the area as a good guide book (I've learned a lot about my hometown through guide books!).

Washington, DC: shattering a caricature
Washington, DC is unique in that it is the nerve-center for the world's most powerful nation, a place through which trillions of dollars flow and momentous decisions made every day. And yet, for all that, it is still a city. People need to eat and live and laugh. The trash must get collected. And it's a city in the midst of a great deal of natural beauty: one can get lost in the woods within easy walking distance of the capitol building. I think I had grown to think of DC as merely the steps of the Capitol Building, and the Oval Office, and some vague "inside the beltway" place. But it is a real city with a real heart. Like DC, many places exist only in caricature, and I hope to change that.

Raleigh, North Carolina: alive and real
For me, the principal reason to visit North Carolina are the important people who live here, my family. It has been a great pleasure and privilege to stay at my sister's family's beautiful home and reconnect with my nieces. This will always be my chief (and happy) memory of this place, I think. But another facet of this place will always stay with me, I think: I have never been in a place so dense with life. Everywhere is endless life. It is almost oppressive in it's liveliness, as if there is no room for thought because that would take away from the bustling business of getting on with it. And yet the pace of human life here is undeniably slower than either DC or LA. I like the fact that, for the most part, the people here are concerned with what's in front of them, rather than the unreliable (and dangerously distracting) abstractions that preoccupy more "sophisticated" people.

The Why of Travel
Living alone for even a few days in a strange city creates a feeling of loneliness that I didn't expect. In the past I've traveled either with friends or, when traveling alone, to friends. And this is perhaps the most interesting effect of travel: when almost everything else changes, what is left is who you are. Identity in the absence of acquaintances and familiar places is a curious thing: without the reinforcement of others, identity becomes truer.

But who are you? This question can most easily be approached by asking the question, "why am I here doing this right now?" While this is always a good question, it seems particularly poignant on the road. "Because I can" is certainly a valid answer: flexing your freedom is a reasonable thing to do, I think. But what is really in this for me? Is the benefit of a changing world worth the cost of discomfort and instability?

My own answer is this: "because I don't know what I will find." I am firmly in Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" territory. In a way, I am using myself as a guinea pig in a grand experiment and dis/comfort has little to do with it. I don't really know what I hope to find as I travel the world, but I have a great deal of confidence that I will find it. Perhaps it will be a strong set of insights, or ideas, or inspiration that I can use directly or indirectly to help others through my professional work. Or perhaps I'll stumble onto a culture or people that resonate strongly and beckons me to become a part of it. Or perhaps I will fall in love and start a family. These are only possibilities, and chances are whatever I find will not fit neatly into any category. If this short trip was any indication, the lesson is bound to be profound.

The value of silence

There is irony in writing about silence. To promote something with it's opposite is rather cheeky. But in meditation today I was reminded of it's key importance. When you sit and try to think only of the breath, for example, the mind revolts because the breath is a prison. The reality of breath is less far less interesting than the experiences the mind can produce for itself.

But there is value in staying in this prison for a while. Within this prison very little is happening. It is peaceful - with the key exception of the revolted, and revolting mental reaction. It's true that some matters of real interest can arise, observation of unusual and subtle sensation. However,  it is essentially sensory deprivation. This forces the cluttered mind to clean itself up, to deal only with what is right in front of it. This is a very useful skill for those moments when one really needs to pay attention, for example when learning a new skill or sizing someone up. "Now" is the only time your mind receives new information.

Once you begin to pay attention to the prison, it is not quite what it seems. The breath is complex. The mind seeing the breath is complex. Against the backdrop of a chaotic mind this complexity is lost, but against a backdrop of relative peace this subtlety shines and is fascinating. And it is shocking how quickly and violently "normal" thoughts can break into this new-found idyllic world, literally tearing it apart.

Speech is almost always part of disruptive "normal" thoughts. A more subtle form of speech occurs, some call it "noting" - this is the process of simply naming what you find. It can also occur that questions arise "What is this?" or "Am I doing this right?" or "Is this really a sensation?". These mental verbalizations don't seriously disrupt the experience. However, words do prevent forward progress.

With practice, it is possible to eliminate all verbalizations, even the subtle ones. This is done by simply realizing when you're doing it, and stopping. Even in mid sentence. If one sets a special intention to eliminate words, it becomes relatively easy to do in only a few sittings. And one finds the meditations more meaningful and interesting.

Security wisdom from years ago

The security of a signal is inversely proportional to the distance between the sender and receiver.

There are only two fundamental ways to control a signal: control the box or control the pipe. Clever encryption schemes make controlling the pipe impossible - therefore there will be economic and political pressure to control the box.

Is money really the reason to eliminate the death penalty?

For years I've been against the death penalty for the simple reason that, if it ever turns out the judicial system made a mistake on a particular case, the sentence is irrevocable. That is, the death penalty implies a level of judicial reliability that is unattainable. My opposition to the death penalty is opposition to the idea of the infallibility of authority.

John van de Camp (former DA of LA and AG for CA) wrote an interesting LA Times opinion piece claiming that the death penalty costs California $125m/year, and that it should therefore be eliminated. My reaction to this was a complex mix of happy surprise, doubt, and disgust. His claim is that California could save one billion dollars in 5 years.

Put in such stark terms, the elimination of the death penalty seems like a no-brainer. The generally conservative people in favor of death penalty also tend to be fiscally conservative, and this becomes "easy money".

But I also have a hard time believing van de Camp's numbers. Why would it cost an extra $90k per  prisoner to have them on death row? Where does that money go? Could that possibly be true?

If it is true, van de Camp's article becomes less of an argument against the death penalty and more an expose about the inordinate costs of doing some as simple as killing people. I mean, I don't want the state to kill people, but I also don't understand why it costs so much to do it.

In truth, I think that van de Camp is right. In a way I'm glad the state is so incompetent that it makes this decision easy. I'd prefer it, of course, if the state was both competent AND wise. But if incompetence paths the path for wisdom, so be it.


[Caption]

On Photography

I really like it when people like my photography. For example, someone favorited and asked me to share this beach ball shot.

And I've had other photos requested for books and the like.

But lately, my output has reduced significantly. A big part of this was the theft of my camera equipment. However, even having since replaced it, I've noticed the puzzles of light, color, focus, depth-of-field, subject don't seem to hold my interest. I certainly appreciate other people's work a lot more these days - I am particularly impressed with technical, commercial photography (which, I know, doesn't get a whole lot of love. but I don't understand why. Making things look like their Platonic ideal is interesting, difficult, and beautiful). However, I am less drawn to the art than I was.

And now I am leaving on an extended trip around the world. Photos (and perhaps videos) are expected. That is why I'm renewing my Flickr pro account. However, I'm also going to return my fancy D90 gear (thanks Costco!). I just don't want to lug a lot of heavy equipment. Some of my favorite travel photography was off of a P&C camera - and I know why: the odds of the camera being there is inversely proportional to it's size and weight.

Perhaps most importantly, documenting the experience should never ever eclipse having the experience.

So, with my beat up old SD400 (and water-tight enclosure!), I hope to apply what I've learned about photography, and increase my output once again.

Where to discuss songs?

I often seem to wonder about the meaning of songs, and would like to talk about them with others. Consider the track "Dragon Queen" from the latest album from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz! It's a catchy track, but there are some indecipherable lyrics in there, and it sounds very much like another popular song which I can't quite identify. I think it would be fun to argue about the lyrics and identify the funk track that Karen O and friends are lifting.

Allmusic has the data on this track - how long it is, who made it, etc - but offers no forum for discussion.

Where should such a form exist? Should it be a feature of an existing service (like allmusic), or should it be it's own thing? Should songs have a canonical URL?

Some songs are important enough to warrant a wikipedia article, but Dragon Queen is really not one of them, I think. And besides, wikipedia is not appropriate for critical discussion. So for existing services, I think Wikipedia is out.

A great place for online music discussion would be Allmusic - they already have all the facts handy, all that's needed is a new discussion feature. I'm not sure what their revenue model is, but traffic is always good. Last.fm would be a nice place for this kind of musical discussion, too. Of course, if Google could somehow collect all the blog posts, tweets, and comments about the song from all corners of the web, that would be very impressive! YouTube is another option for music mecca, but the song has to have a video associated, and frankly the quality of youtube comments is so bad I wonder if this would be worth the cost.

There are so many options for musical discussion, it's surprising it hasn't really happened yet.

[Update: it turns out that Last.fm is the place. It has all of allmusics info, and you can edit entries for artists, albums, and tracks, and forum discussions. For example, here is the page for Dragon Queen. Last.fm calls comments "shouts", and their OSX thick-client doesn't support them, which is why I missed them on my first look at Last.fm.]

Sending the wrong message about torture

Obama Rules Out Charging C.I.A. Agents in Interrogations - NYTimes.com

The interrogation methods were among the Bush administration’s most closely guarded secrets, and what was released on Thursday afternoon marked the most comprehensive public accounting to date of a program that some senior Obama administration officials have said included illegal torture.

And Obama won't prosecute. This sends the wrong message to soldiers and operatives: that you don't need to use your judgment when carrying out orders. As long as you're just doing your job, you won't be held accountable. This is the wrong message, and I'm disappointed in Obama.

Hi-Tech organization tips?

I've been working assiduously through a wonderful book called "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Organizing your Life". It offers some wonderful advice and specific techniques to help define your goals, and then unclutter and streamline your stuff, your time, and your relationships to support those goals.

The techniques, though, are not very high tech, and I think it's a worthy goal to adapt the book's advice to a modern suite of tools. For example, in building a "Life Management Center" (or the "helm of your ship", the author talks about filing systems primarily geared toward paperwork, and also focuses on using paper-based planners (in particular using the alphabetical section as an all-purpose database).

Instead of a paper planner I want to use my iPhone. With one exception, the todo list, the iPhone is a great tool.

I think there is a great deal of opportunity to write a book (or perhaps a series of posts) that applies these lo-tech concepts to hi-tech tools.

LiveScribe vs. Windows Journal

Bought a LiveScribe pen yesterday. Here's what I wrote about it when I first discovered it:

ARM 9, 2G Flash RAM, IR sensor in the tip, stereo microphone, OLED display - and a ball-point pen! $200. Position and velocity data apparently via coded dots on special paper (a mildly unfortunate requirement), can digitize notes associating audio with them for later playback. Desktop software does hand-writing recognition making notes searchable (this last feature is similar to Windows Journal). You actually draw the pen's interface if you need to interact with it; there are no buttons on the thing. Interestingly the company is going to ship a (Java) SDK for the device. Very interesting indeed - with a little custom software I'm thinking this could be an amazing tool for client consultations, or for marking up any printed material. Neat but probably useless demos include a piano you can draw and then play, and a foreign language dictionary that will pronounce a word you write in english in several different languages. Tablets are still better for illustration, though.

My tablet's battery has been flaky, it's WiFi hasn't been working right, and I gave my (very nice) voice recorder to my ex-girlfriend, so I decided to buy it for use as a note-taking tool. I've been using it pretty heavily for the last two days, and here are my first thoughts.

This pen is perfect for taking notes in a meeting. The ability to record audio along with your notes is very powerful. I'm still getting the hang of this style of note-taking. Being able to store your notes and audio on a PC for backup, search and review is potentially useful, but I fear data-duplication. Luckily the desktop tools are read only so it's easy to treat the PC as a viewable backup, and the notebook/pen as the actual data.

The pen is okay for creating and sharing simple expository videos. Unfortunately you can only share these with the Windows version of Livescribe desktop.

The tablet still wins for illustration and expository videos (just draw and talk, capture with Jing). It is not quite as convenient as you would think, though - you have to have some "dot paper" for the thing to work, so you need to have a notebook and a pen. Indeed, you can't use the pen as a simple voice recorder on it's own, because you have to have dot paper to make it start recording! I'm also concerned that eventually the paper buttons will become obscured and unusable.

A more serious issue with Livescribe is integrating the data into the rest of my tool set. The data is not file-oriented. One is forced to use yet another tool to search and access proprietary data. (Windows Journal is slightly more file oriented). You can export PDF and AAC files from the Mac client, but this is a) inconvenient, b) duplicates data, and c) loses information about the capture (you couldn't recreate the video, for example). The closest thing to a "true backup" is, ironically, the SWF files used on the community site.

An interesting tool, but in no way revolutionary.

Exploring the Blogosphere

I am finding so many interesting people! It's quite exciting!

Via Case I discovered Buster McLeod's Enjoymentland - one man's exploration of happiness and satisfaction (with handy tips on loosening your brain with three random words, theories like "it is enjoyable to take your own advice", and an interest in fresh produce). From there I learned about Jane McGonigal's Avantgame - one woman's exploration of why gaming makes us happy (via a post on "game-ifying" her attempt to write a book). In addition she is a very accomplished, attractive person living an apparently wonderful life. (And she has an identical twin sister Kelly who is an accomplished yoga teacher and writer (and also a PhD)).

Frankly it feels good is to know that these people exist, that they are thinking, creating, and sharing themselves in all their quirky esoteric glory. I get the sense that anything is possible, that if I take the time to accurately describe my dream, patiently work toward it every day (while keeping my workspace neat!), that I really can achieve it. And meanwhile I should feel free to unabashedly blog about my own preoccupations no matter how odd they may be.