thoughts, notes, etc
‘Alien spies live among us,’ says a chap from the Bulgarian national Space Research Institute.
This is so fucking awesome on a hundred levels. First, I am gobsmacked Bulgaria even has a space research institute. Plus, according to this chap, these alien spies are responsible for global warming! I’m not sure about you, but I know *I* can rest so much easier now this is out in the open.
In recent weeks, Ontario has seen some beautiful Fall temperatures. By this time last year, we actually had lots of snow in some places. With November coming to an end shortly, we’ve seen above seasonal temperatures and some really beautiful hiking conditions. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but given there was snow in California today, we’ll be seeing the white stuff in these parts in no time. As Fall leaves us, we’re all waiting in anticipation of what Father Winter might bring. I expect a Green Christmas, but it’s beyond the New Year that has me concerned.
I rather enjoy Winter. I prefer cold temperatures as opposed to our oppressively hot humid summers. As I remind people who bitch incessantly over how cold it is, we live in Canada. Enough said there. Complain all you want, we’re not exactly in a geographically located place that is conducive of pleasant Winter temperatures. Thus why complain about how cold it is? It’s bad enough the Economist offers polite commentary about how much we talk about the weather — too much!
Never the less, I have seen one thing that has made me extremely happy lately. Even though it’s not law in Ontario (yet), the increase of winter tyres on cars has been a joyful sight on the roads. We’ve not been in a position to need them, but the fact that drivers are taking responsibility for their own safety and OTHERS around them is fantastic. Last year Québec made winter tires mandatory through their Highway Safety Act. Ultimately it comes down to people being more aware that the cheapest of winter tyres are a thousand times better than the best all-season. Could it be that common sense is trickling down to Ontario drivers? Gosh, I could only hope. I’m hoping Ontario will follow suit sooner, rather than later, with our own Law requiring winter sets for the road.
It comes as no surprise that I see more and more AWD vehicles on the road too. Nearly every manufacturer has some AWD offering, even if it isn’t a double Haldex system, Jeep’s manually engaged 4×4 awesomeness, or Grand Father Quattro running things. It seems that auto manufacturers & people are cluing in to the fact that Canadian driving conditions can be some of the worst in the world. Even if belt tightening is getting a bit tougher, a long term investment in to the cheapest of winter tyres can be a huge difference to your Canadian driving experience. We’ll have to wait and see what our Canadian karma delivers us this Winter.
While winter tyres won’t solve bad driving habits, nor will AWD systems automatically correct for driving well beyond the driving conditions of the roads (I’m looking at you SUV owners), I’m liking what I see so far by my fellow Ontarians.
I’m not sure why I haven’t chimed in on this before, but 1Password is a must have for OSX. Version 3 is newly released (earlier this month) and finally has Firefox integration — this solves so many problems, especially for those of us who prefer Firefox over Safari.
Also, if you have an iPhone, do a search for 1Password and grab the app — it’s free until Dec 1. All hail technology.
A developer wrote a rather nice and well thought complaint/plea to Steve Jobs of Apple. Jobs’ response just about made my day.
I have been waiting patiently for more information about Google’s PowerMeter. It seems like only a few lucky Utilities (and their customers) get to use this service, but power to the consumer! There are various alternatives out there to pique your interest. The only stipulation to all of this is whether or not you have a SmartMeter. I know in Ontario, all new homes are supposed to have SmartMeters installed, and the old meters are to be updated in year or two. I myself am stuck waiting to get an upgrade.
For those of us without a Utility partnered with Google, Black & Decker makes a Power Monitor. It works by physically interfacing with your SmartMeter (outside your place) that in turns communicates with a central device. The central device is where all your informational glory gets graphed and displayed, and hopefully makes you learn more about your power usage trends. Big condo users are screwed, unless their Utility is signed up with Google’s PowerMeter or has some online customer system. It’ll be a common thing soon enough.
My local Utility offers such a system. The graphs are all sorts of awesome, however trying to interpret them is a different story. The best method I’ve seen so far is to literally turn off (almost) everything in your house. Then through viewing the graphs, you’d turn on a device and try to figure out a profile of it. Take your dryer for example. It probably has a very high energy spike hopefully allowing you to intelligently read those graphs and put two-and-two together. Once you get the picture of your energy portrait you can find areas you can improve — like not leaving your TV on all day!
The core idea here is to be a smart power user — it’s just that the tools (these graphs) aren’t exactly the most up to date. My own Utility has all sorts of information graphed out, but it’s a couple days old. It’s a bit like budgeting — you need to do it for a while to see the trends, and the big picture. Real time would make life so much easier! I expect homes will eventually have per-socket usage monitoring via wifi (or some such) that sends data to a built in power monitor station of your very own. A super thermostat! I know this idea has been around for a while. Take it a step further, and let’s get these appliances hooking in to some home-based open standard of power monitoring, and suddenly we raise the level of power usage education for the next generation. Not too far off we’ll be a kW-pinching society — or so I can dream!
In the mean time, a Latronix XPort Pro given a bit of hacking with a regular socket might make an interesting weekend project.
Choose Your Own Adventure (cyoa) books were very popular for people my age growing up. I recall spending hours going back and forth through various trees of decisions all the while fending off the carnal urges of cheating by reading all the endings at once.
A designer chap by the name of Christian has beautifully shown all that there is behind CYOA novels. It’s a hefty read text wise, so I would strongly encourage you to put aside some time for his discussion on the subject. Alternatively you can view his wonderful infographics.
Phenomenal. A brilliant example of why the internet is so awesome.
Well that’s just plain weird.
I remember when the iPhone 3.0 OS came out that Fido had mentioned tethering would be enabled. I tried it back then only to find some message telling me on the actual iPhone that I would need to contact Fido.
After some research I found a page clearly describing that I would need a higher MB package. At the time of signing up I was on a 500MB/month data plan. In order to tether I would need a 1GB/month plan. I was fine with that, and didn’t worry too much. One less toy/tech to worry about.
While reviewing my Fido bill online this evening, I saw that I had a usage maximum of 1GB/month of data. Somehow I was upgraded and no one told me. Not believing this good fortune (as my monthly charges have not increased since I signed up), I tried to tether with my iPhone, and it worked! Hurrah.
I have to investigate when/why my data plan was changed without my knowledge, unless it was some grandfathering that happened. In the mean time, just for kicks, I posted this very text while tethered.
Isn’t technology grand? 
Switching applications is easily enough done on OSX. Command-Tab. Except if you are like me, you have lots of applications running, each with tabs or individual windows inherent to a particular process.
Well, there’s a handy little utility out there called Witch. It’s far more granular by design as it gives you much more control over your window swapping needs.
In the above screenshot you can see how each application is listed, including each sub window that said application may have. While Expose can do this too, I just find Witch easier for me being such a heavy keyboard user. It’s cheap at 10 bucks too! Not to mention you can close minimized windows without bringing them to focus. That alone makes me a happy user. For those feeling more adventurous with keyboard short cuts, Witch includes a boat load of other highly configurable methods/options too. Well worth the investment!
I wrote about Microsoft’s super secret tablet device, named Courier, a little while back. Gizmodo has some really good screenshots outlining the user interface design. Hot damn, I have to say this is looking better all the time.
Laptops are great but the dependance on what software you have, and your personal workflow, influence just how well you use it. I’m not talking about surfing the web or updating your social networking sites. I spend an awful amount of time, probably too much, in searching out new software to make my life easier. It’s a dangerous game in that you can fall pray to never using what you have effectively.
A nagging problem for me over the last few years has been the need for storing and referencing vast amounts of research material. I use a combination of text notes for fast, easy indexing and searching. Evernote covers my screenshot needs from saving emails to forum threads worth a read later, and I get Evernote’s awesome ability to search those images as text! But in the end I’m still stuck with a clunky ol’ keyboard, and two different methods of handling two different types of media.
These rumoured tablets/booklets could be the missing link in computing. Apple tried it once-upon-a-time with the Apple Newton (I still think it was a beautiful device). But given the power of today’s mobile chips, network infrastructure, software, and materials, a proper tablet would be a godsend. We’ll see what both Microsoft and Apple deliver soon enough.
Plus I would slap a Don’t Panic sticker on that so fast.
I know the Dashboard is seconds away from a quick key-press, but having your calendar pleasantly displayed on your desktop is really handy.
Enter in Dateline. It essentially displays the date… in a line. It reminds me of sparklines! Ok, seriously it’s far more useful if you go check it out, rather than my terrible explanation. Here’s a screenshot:
The free version works just fine, with no silly pop ups or anything distracting. If you wish to donate, the price is cheap at $4.95. Registering opens up some nifty little options. I love software that is both reasonable and appropriately priced.