You might be a nerd if...

...you check the math. Yup, only primes.

Merry Christmas. May you and your loved ones be safe and warm, and may next year bring better fortunes.

What a waste it is to lose one's mind

I've been interested in mind mapping for some time, and I've finally found a great, free tool for mind maps.

I've been reasonably happy with Omni Outliner as an organizational tool, but now XMind has taken its place in my heart, and then some. It's a great way to convert thoughts into bytes and (hopefully) keep my long-term goals in front of me, instead of being distracted by the daily grind.

Did I mention it's free?

The Cycle of Christmas

Especially for cycling enthusiasts, holiday greetings from Specialized.

(Thanks to mom for the great find.)

Question One

How can an organization send election-related materials without any identification or meaningful information?

Some local group has sent me a piece asking me to "Vote YES on Question One."

Who? I don't know. The piece is entirely silent on the question of its origin. What is "Question One?"

Our local municipal government website, indygov.org, has nothing about the election on its front page. Neither does the state website, in.gov. (That's an entirely separate rant.)

Who's in charge of this chump operation, anyway?

ACORN

Yes, I've worked with ACORN. They perform a vital role in our democracy: encouraging citizens to participate by registering them to vote.

I regret that members of that organization have been involved with fraud, and I call on everyone to respect the integrity of the voting process. Nothing is more dangerous to our future than a loss of faith that system.

Why won't Barack Obama say something like that, rather than trying to distance himself? I would respect him so much more, and I can't believe that anyone who was undecided would vote for McCain solely due to such an admission.

Politics has all but extinguished straight talk.

How many must die?

If the only evidence that convicted him was not physical evidence – it was the evidence of witnesses. Seven of the nine recanted. How can you say that's enough to take a life? –Reverend Al Sharpton

How to recognize when the news is grim? When you find yourself agreeing with Al Sharpton.

I don't know whether Troy Davis is innocent, and neither do any of the others who are speaking out against his execution.

But I do know that executing an innocent man achieves nothing. Next time someone says "I'd rather execute an innocent man than let a guilty one walk free," point out that every time we execute an innocent person the guilty party does walk free! Three crimes are perpetrated: the original crime, the murder of the innocent by the government, and the abdication of the responsibility of finding the real criminal.

How many must die before we recognize the obvious: that the death penalty is flawed, and if we're going to use it, it should only be in the most egregious, glaringly obvious cases. Troy Davis is going to be executed with no physical evidence and shaky eyewitness testimony.

If that doesn't appall you, then ask yourself this: what is preventing you, or someone you love, from being put to death for someone else's crime?

Photography as Beauty

I admit it: I'm a sucker for beauty. I need to find a way to recapture the beauty I originally found through my own photography, but in the meantime, occasionally I'll be fortunate enough to be deeply moved by others' work.

The Online Photographer has linked to two YouTube videos that are beautiful on many levels. Highly recommended.

I finally get Polaroid.

iPhone development: first steps

Now that Apple has effectively lifted the NDA (seems like this would officially happen next week, but everyone seems to be acting as though it's gone now), it's time to begin my explorations into software development for the iPhone.

Some links I've started accumulating:

• ars technica: A touch of Cocoa: inside the iPhone SDK
• The Pragmatic Bookshelf: iPhone SDK Development
• iPhone Development Central
• O'Reilly's Inside iPhone Blog
• MacRumors iPhone Programming Forum
• iPhoneMinds
  

I have some ideas about developing a utility to assist with my volunteer work at the local library, and I'd certainly like to see some tools to interface with Request Tracker and Nagios.

First, though, there's this brand new programming language to learn...

And so it begins

From the Economist, in a story about a new $25 billion bailout for Detroit:

The logic of bailing out Wall Street is that finance underpins everything. Detroit cannot begin to make that claim. But, given its successful lobbying, can it be long before ailing airlines and failing retailers join the queue?

From the Washington Independent, reviewing the newly-added pork in the bailout bill:

This includes: billions in renewable fuel tax credits; billions in relief for families who would otherwise have to pay the alternative minimum tax next April; a tax credit for companies that promote bike commuting; a provision expanding insurance coverage for mental health services, and the list goes on. (Indeed, the original bailout bill was three pages long; the latest version is 451.)

I fear Glenn Beck has it right, in a mock commentary from the future:

The airlines came first -- we just couldn't live without them. Then it was the automakers (Detroit would've died), health care (they said they could manage it better), and eventually, the oil companies (I'm not sure where all of those "windfall profits" have gone).
...
It didn't take long before so many of our tax dollars were going toward interest payments that we couldn't fund even the most basic of government programs without massive tax increases on everyone. People now work most of the year just to pay Uncle Sam (or, as we now call him, "Comrade Sam").

I was terribly excited when we had a budget surplus, and we thought we could pay off the national debt in a decade. Remember that? Just one presidency ago. Our future was finally much less gloomy.

Pride goeth before a fall. And this one has been a doozy.

Fiscal responsibility, coming to a government near you

I'm impressed. I really didn't think the U.S. House of Representatives had the guts to reject the bailout plan.

It's about time.

Look, I don't know what the consequences will be if we don't throw a trillion dollars at Wall Street, but I do know this: every major initiative of the 21^st century has come out of the pockets of our children, our grandchildren, and their children. Iraq War? No sacrifice needed, because we won't have to pay for it, they will. Just keep spending, please, to keep the economy running full speed ahead. Want to go to Mars? Put it on MasterCard and worry about it tomorrow.

Maybe ten years of economic hardship will serve to remind us that debt exacts a heavy price.

Or, maybe it'll forever wreck our standing as preeminent power in the world, because the foreign credit that we've been using to pay our way will dry up.

But either way, I don't think our grandchildren will thank us. That ship has sailed.

Camera criteria

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm interested in purchasing a new camera in the not-too-distant (but by no means near) future. While considering my options, I want to keep several criteria in mind.

• Weight. My current camera is much too heavy to be comfortable carrying around for any length of time.
• Size. A light-weight camera is nice, but only part of the equation. Pentax seems to be making pancake prime lenses that would make carrying around a small camera that much easier.
• Size, the counter-argument. Many of the entry-level SLRs are too small, or at least their grips are uncomfortably small. Plus, a very small SLR is unwieldy with very large lenses.
• Image quality. There are two factors of particular concern to me: image size (aka megapixels) and high ISO performance. Anything 10 megapixels or higher should be fine (although don't think I'm not drooling about the new 20 megapixel cameras), but quality at ISO 3200 and higher is of greater importance, and to some degree will be inversely proportional to the number of megapixels.
• Viewfinder quality. I gave up on my Canon 300D because I was tired of looking at the scene through a tunnel. Give me a large, bright viewfinder, or I'll stick with my 1D.
• Responsiveness. I don't need 8 frames/second, like my 1D has, but my 300D with a very slow boot time and impossible lag after filling the buffer was difficult to tolerate. 3 fps with at least a 10 image (RAW) buffer would be sufficient, I think, although I'd miss my 1D's speed a little.
• RAW is a must; DNG output would be nice, but not essential. (Having said that, Adobe's DNG converter must be able to handle the camera's native files.)
  
• Lens cost. I don't want to buy a camera only to discover that the lenses I want are unreasonably expensive. Canon's lenses, while quite pricey, will likely be my primary point of comparison.
• Interchangeable lenses. I'd like a pocket camera to have handy at all times, but my primary camera must be an SLR, rangefinder, or perhaps one of the new Micro Four Thirds SLR-like cameras. (My iPhone is a serviceable pocket camera, albeit limited.)
• Battery life. I'll have to research the SLRs driven by AAA batteries carefully; that doesn't seem like a recipe for long battery life.
• Image stabilization. While I appreciate the advantages of lens-driven image stabilization, I'd like to have it in the body as well.
  

Note to self: do not buy a camera without handling it first. Thank goodness for Roberts.

The omnipresent Norbert Krapf

Indiana's poet laureate is Norbert Krapf, and I can't escape him. He's everywhere!

I first encountered him this summer at a jazz and poetry performance at the newly-renovated Indianapolis Central Library (he's a fan of jazz...more on that later). Shortly thereafter, I visited one of my favorite used bookstores Bookmamas (regrettably, one of the very few independent bookstores left in Indianapolis), only to see him on a poster: he was going to be there the next day for a book signing event.

I started a jazz appreciation class three weeks ago (taught by Monika Herzig, a local jazz performer/instructor/arranger/etc/etc/etc, who I had also seen for the first time at the library performance), only to discover that Mr. Krapf was sitting in on the class, having been a student of Monika's during a previous semester.

The following week, I started a creative writing class (instructed by Andy Murphy, another local gem), who was promoting the Indy BookTalk Conference. Prominently featured on the handout was, of course, one Norbert Krapf.

I've resigned myself to the fact that I can't escape him, so I'm feeding him bad ideas for poetry in hopes he uses them to ill effect and is driven from town by a frenzied crowd with torches and pitchforks. So far, I've given him a line about poetry and jazz being like cockroaches and rats: difficult, if not impossible, to completely kill off.

I'm not holding my breath on this strategy working.

To buy, or not to buy

In 2004, almost entirely by accident, I discovered that I enjoyed photography. Over the next two years I took tens of thousands of (digital) photographs on a Canon 300D, better known in the U.S. as the original Digital Rebel.

For various reasons, I stopped shooting so much; around the same time that my interest waned, I "upgraded" from my 6 megapixel camera to a 4 megapixel professional model that was several years old, the original Canon 1D. Fewer megapixels, but that doesn't matter much; I upgraded because I wanted a large, bright viewfinder, and because the 300D was terribly slow at autofocus and shooting speed. As I liked to joke, I could shoot at three frames per second...for one second.

The 1D, on the other hand, can shoot at 8 frames per second for several seconds. Quite an upgrade.

Unfortunately, it's also a heavy beast with poor high ISO characteristics, and lacks several other features that a modern camera takes for granted, such as the ability to zoom while reviewing an image on its LCD, and the ability to shoot more than an hour on a single battery.

And the batteries are heavier than a small camera.

So, it's time to consider upgrading again. I probably won't buy anything any time soon, but I'll use this blog to keep track of my thoughts on various options.

Jazz: Of saints and sinners

Oliver Nelson Jr. gave a presentation to my jazz appreciation class about his father's work, and it really drove home to me just how difficult it is to achieve immortality. Here's a guy who collaborated with many of music's brightest stars, was widely sought-out to arrange and compose, created songs that many of us would recognize immediately...and now, only thirty-three years after his untimely passing, how many music fans remember him?

(If you really want to see double takes at a party, put some Soul on Top on the stereo. James Brown doing swing? Ambitious, but it works. For some. Maybe.)

I now have a craving to seek out some vinyl. It's been a long time since I've looked at an LP cover, and I'd forgotten just how rich with information and artwork the covers and liner notes could be. Just beautiful.

The next generation of automobile technology

Finally, after all these years, we've reached the point where automotive nirvana is within reach. All we need now is for a brave lawmaker to mandate these improvements, and the world will be a better place, practically overnight.

My proposal: by 2012, all new vehicles must include negative feedback into the steering wheel for the following crimes against humanity.

• Tailgating (defined as traveling less than 2 seconds from the car in front of you)
• Changing lanes without using a turn signal (must be on for at least 1 second before the lane change is made)
• Making a turn without a turn signal (must be on for at least 2 seconds before the turn)
• Active cell phone connection while speeding (this is tricky–what if your passenger is the one talking on the cell phone?)
  
• Driving with the windows up and air conditioning running on a 75˚ day (this one would probably be dropped in committee, but we have to have something to compromise on to be able to keep the rest)

The feedback should be in the form of a mild electric shock or strong vibration.

Anything else that's technologically feasible? The civil libertarians (like, uh, me) will gripe that government is sticking its nose into private behavior, but this is purely for training proper behavior. We're not actually imposing new laws on citizens, just corporations.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Shorthand training

Friend of mine asked me to keep an eye out for continuing education classes that cover shorthand. It occurs to me that, given the apparent rarity of such training, that a simple iPhone/Touch application to learn, practice, and take notes in shorthand might be a winner.

Then again, as I look at samples of the various forms of shorthand, it occurs to me that it's a lot of work for a dying specialty. Look at the Gregg vowels, for example.

Escape velocity

Colts squeaked by today. Even after drafting 3 centers this year they're struggling to maintain any sort of protection for Peyton.

I volunteer for my local library Sundays at 1pm; guess who wasn't thinking about the football season last spring. Oy.

Update: if you haven't seen the madcap sequence that led to the Colts first touchdown, NFL videos has it. Very sorry I missed it!

The Madness of the Apple

I've been an Apple fan for nearly 20 years now, although I used Linux at home for many years before switching to MacOS X in 2004.

So, of course, an iPhone was the natural next step: a real computer in my pocket wherever I went, with connectivity everywhere. What more could a boy ask for?

This weekend, I decided to establish a reasonable task management system. Below, sadly, is the best process I could find for keeping my calendar and my task list in sync. The first 4 steps are eliminated if I don't use Jott.

1. Call Jott and leave a message.
2. Jott translates my message to text and sends an update to Toodledo.
3. At this point, Google Calendar has access to the new task "event", although the update may not take place for quite some time.
   
4. Synchronize Appigo's Todo software on my iPhone with Toodledo.
   
5. Update the new task via Todo to refine the details.
6. Synchronize the Todo software on my iPhone with Toodledo.
7. At some point, Google Calendar has synchronized with Toodledo.
   
8. BusySync running on my home computer checks every 5 minutes to see whether it needs to retrieve changes to my Google calendar and push them to to iCal on my Mac.
9. Every 15 minutes, my Mac pushes iCal changes to MobileMe.
10. Immediately after this, MobileMe pushes the calendar update to my iPhone.

Total time? The big unknown is the frequency of Google's retrieval of new entries from Toodledo. Everything else is inside my control.

The cost?

Jott (pay as you go plan)

$10 for 10 minutes of recording time.

Toodledo

Free

Google Calendar

Free

Appigo's Todo

$10

BusySync

$25

MobileMe

$100/year