December 2009 Archives

A Metaphor for 2009: Hit in both engines by a bunch of heavy, big flying objects minutes after take off, attempts to restart engines result in an emergency landing, cool headed pilot & co-pilot make safe landing in an unusual runway, ferries come quickly to rescue, all humans on board come out alive including the baby & the elderly, and then plane and luggage get more than a bit soggy or lost.

Here we are, at the end of 2009, shaken to the bone, wet, shivering, and standing on the wing of the plane waiting to get climb up on to the ferry and get to where it is warm.

.

Here is the yearly meme list of cities I visited in 2009:

A wide variety of cities in the greater LA metro area, including:
Los Angeles, Santa Monica, The Valley, various places in OC and the SVG.

San Diego, CA
Las Vegas, NV
Mammoth Lakes, CA
Bishop, CA
Phoenix, AZ
Parker, AZ
Quartzsite, AZ
Austin, TX
Honolulu, HI
San Francsco, CA (and surrounds, the Silicon Valley, Marin, and Peninsula surrounds)
Aalen & Oberkochen, Germany
Stuttgart, Germany
London, UK
Oxford, UK
Ojai, CA
Brighton, UK
Seattle, WA

2008, 2007, and 2006.

Bruce Schneier asks Is aviation security mostly for show? on Cnn.com.

Yes, yes it is. My experience traveling the last eight years is that airport security measures to go beyond the border of ridiculous and over into the 2000's version of Theatre of the Absurd.

Once I smiled at a TSA agent and asked to anyone who didn't listen, "Doesn't this evoke a sense of the Dada Theatre, circa 1922?"

Lucky for me, the only thing required of me was to put my shoes in the bin and the bin on the conveyor belt. I felt that I should be chanting nonsense syllables as I walked through metal detector.

Now, I don't ask culturally relevant art historical rhetorical questions, I just put my shoes in the bin, the bin on the belt, and smile a nice big smile as I go through the metal detector.

Cathal Kelly writes in The Star about the huge difference between Israeli and US airport security in The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother:

Five security layers down: you now finally arrive at the only one which Ben-Gurion Airport shares with Pearson -- the body and hand-luggage check.

"But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America," Sela said.

"First, it's fast -- there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela. "Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."

That's the process -- six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.

25 minutes from parking lot to airport lounge at Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv! Now that is how to do it.

TSA, pull your head out of your ass. Time for intelligent prevention and not the mindless, droid-like bureaucratic theatre of the absurd of the last eight years.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Tues 12.29.09 - Otherwise entitled, "The Tide is High, and I'm Gonna...".

Photos taken by ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Mon 12.28.09 - The last Monday of 2009 was an eventful day in Seal Beach, as the early morning high tide was really high and flooded the south end of Seal Beach as well as Seal Way near the pier. My morning walk route with the dogs was a bit interrupted by the water, but the wonder of it all was amazing. Most of the home owners were in good spirits as the water did not come up to their doors, but only to the first step or so.

The Atlantic Wire on After Failed Attack, What Next on Security and Terror?

The Daily Dish live blogged the Ashura protests that erupted all over Iran today. Highlights: Why The Martyrdom Of Ali Mousavi Matters, Faces of the Day III, Camera is Mightier and Death By A Thousand Snapshots.

Sun 12.27.09 - While I continue to work away in on a web app, I offer to you a video from this morning's walk. Yes, I am as tired and stuffed up as I sound in the video.

Happy end of Christmas weekend, I hope you had a restful and lovely one.

And may your New Year be full of laughter and blessed.

Tues 12.22.09 - Boy Mongoose is a brilliant music / animation send up of Christmas songs.

Tues 12.22.09 - Yes, the best part of the LA Times today was not just the full 99¢ Store full page ad on the back page of the Front section. It wasn't any 99¢ Store ad, it was an ad with good friend, the ever fabulous Lucky Laura as the scarf model!

;oD

Winter Solstice, where the Northern Hemisphere has the longest night and shortest day of the year, happened today at 9:47am PST / 17:47 UTC.

Today ushers in my favorite season of the year: Winter.

I love it. I love the chill. I love being outside at night while snow is falling. I love skiing. I love walking in the winter. I love wearing more clothes. I love the lack of sun and heat. Love it.

My greatest disappointment in living in Southern California is the lack of snow.

I realize that the reason that everyone else, all the other 16-19 million folks who share this metro area with me, lives here is the utter lack of the snow. Saturday's weather is the real reason they live here: 80F at the beach.

I can have my fantasies. Yes, I can. The last few days I have watching my European, British, and East Coast friends' Flickrstreams for photos of snow falling in the night.

Here are a few of the truly lovely winter scenes from various locales that are not SoCal from the last 48 or so hours:

All photos from friends on Flickr, please click on the photo for the larger version.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Sun 12.20.09 - After a heavy work week, I found myself a bit stuffed up this weekend with an attendant sore throat, all the while praying that I not get fully sick. Today, I met up with Julie Wanda at her house so that we could go to lunch. I wanted to take photos of Figaro and Miss Kitty Le Meux, as I was taking the photos of Figaro he kept coming up to my nose and sniffing my nostrils and mouth, then backing up with a look on his face. Yes, Dr. Figaro, I have the beginnings of a cold or something.

After a stop by my brother's house and my return to home, the sunset came early as we are only one day from the winter solstice. Scruffy and I went on a walk along Seal Way and along the pier. Today it was very warm, 77F / 25C, and the air was so very clear, as I could see the mountains in full detail and Catalina Island in sharp contrast. Three oil supertankers were sitting out on the bay waiting their turn in at the Port of LB/LA, the air was so clear that one could see their names on the sides of the ship even though they were several miles out to sea.

The best of all was the couple who were having their wedding photos taken on the beach on the north side of the Seal Beach pier. A bunch of folks were standing in the parking lot and on the pier taking photos of the sunset, Catalina and the bridal couple. Truly lovely.

Mazel Tov!

Several sites I visited today had links to various astronomical theories on the Star of Bethlehem, thus in the spirit of the season, I give you the links:

The Star of Bethlehem by Colin Humphreys, originally printed in Science and Christian Belief , Vol 5, (October 1995): 83-101 - Humphreys advances the theory of a planetary conjunction of Jupiter & Saturn or a comet.

Revealing the Star of Bethlehem by Michael Molnar - Molnar's website has a Q&A about his book on Jupiter as the Star of Bethlehem

What was the Star of Bethlehem? by Nigel Henbest in First Science - Henbest summarizes all the major astronomical possibilities for the Star.

Understanding the Christmas Star by Stephen Milton - Also a summary, but with more Bible exegises in combination with reviewing Molnar.

Happy reading!

Conversation with Al, Jeb, & Ms. Jen #4
On the Nokia N900, Al's Trip to Thailand, Jules' iPhone, etc.
(or how we gush about the Nokia N900 for nearly 20 minutes)

Video'd by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97
at Tuttle Club LA on Friday 12.04.09

http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen
http://www.jebbrillant.com
Twitter: @not_al, @jebbrillant, @msjen

I am currently buried under in work and thus don't have any real photos to post from today and the two blog posts that live in my head about the Nokia N900 will have to wait for a day or so.

In the meantime, here is a few delightful links for you:

The Language of Food on Ceviche and Fish & Chips. A wonderful cultural historical linguistical exploration of vinegared meat from the Persia of the Sassanids to vinegared fish dishes of modern day Peru and the UK.

Tom Chi in his OK/Cancel form writing on how developers and designers need to work together and not in separated worlds in Bowman vs Google? Why Data and Design Need Each Other

These last two articles are on the differences between US/Nordic or Apple/Nokia in terms of advertising and approach written by Teemu Arina, who I met last year at Nokia Open Lab 2008, and Karri Ojanen, who I have not met but I love his name & admire his work. I have been formulating my own thoughts on the essential (good) differences between the design & advertising cultures of Apple v. Nokia which in many ways stem from the differences between Norther California and Finland culturally, and Teemu & Mr. Ojanen have beat me to the punch in: Interactive value creation, Apples and Nokias and with Digital (Advertising) in the Nordics.

Photos taken with a Nokia N97.

Sun 12.13.09 - Little did a certain Mr. G.F. Handel know that one day far in the future humans would make an annual Advent season pilgrimage to the nose bleed section of concert halls worldwide to sing along under their breaths to the Hallelujah Chorus all the while fighting a case of vertigo.

Rockstars do it all the time. If they don't, it tarnishes their reputations.

Movie Stars would be deadly dull if they didn't.

Sports dudes also do it, unless they are shooting 'roids, then maybe they can't.

We live in a culture saturated with it, so really people why does the media even care?

At least half the reporters reporting on this case have. So, why does it matter?

Yes, I am talking about Tiger.

So, the esteemed Mr. Woods is a horn dog. Yep, a multi-millionaire got some pussy.

Why do you care? Are you jealous? Did you wish you could score that much?

Or you like me and are baffled about this being news?

Baffled in a culture saturated in sex as to why the media would even cover such a thing when there are wars going on, people being killed, and budgets being strained by eight years of overseas military expenditures.

Is it the golf factor? Yes, golf is deadly dull, so the astounding fact that some chicks would divert attention from the stars of football, baseball, soccer, rock, hip-hop, actors to a golf dude is that what is so titillating? Is that the story, groupies for golf dudes?

Or is is the story as Cecily and Tiffany have pointed out? Is this story really about the Swedish Model Wife done wrong?

Wake me up when Jeff Sessions or Robert Byrd are outed as having life long gay high school sweetheart lovers.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Fri 12.11.09 - Diego is only 11 weeks old and he is wearing a size 1 shoe and growing out of 6 month clothes! His hands are HUGE. Basically, Alex & Paige have a baby who will be a very tall/large!

The best part is not that Diego will be taller than me by the time he is four months old, no, the best part is how alert and watchful he is.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Fri 12.11.09 - The big difference that clouds can make in a photo, yesterday was nice & bright & sunny and I could not get the N97 to focus on the rose. Today was raining, grey, and dull in light, and the N97 was able to focus beautifully on the rose.

Obviously, this Nokia N97 is from Finland and prefers cloudy, rainy weather to capture nice crystal clear images. ;o)

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Thurs 12.10.09 - My climbing rose looked lovely today in the sun and I wanted to take a photo of it, but the N97 camera phone kept taking very nice photos of the stucco wall behind the flower even when I used the macro mode and focused on the flower.

Wed 12.09.09 - The surf swell that hit Hawaii's north shores early this week has migrated to California beaches today and will be bigger tomorrow. I went out this morning to try and take photos/video, but as you can see, no one should allow me to video before my morning caffeine... ;o)

In case you are wondering, I have had kinetic Essential Tremor since I was 13 and I rarely notice my hands shaking but others do and so does my video camera. Oops.

Wed 12.09.09 - The esteemed illustrator/designer Anton Peck has proposed that folks get back to writing on our blogs and to encourage folks to that end has started Project52. I found about about Project52 through a few of Dan Rubin's tweets this evening, followed the link, and decided to take up the challenge.

While I already (mo)blog here daily and have for a couple of years, I have realized in the last year that folks out in the big wide world tend to be confused by what I do professionally.

"Uh, you are a mobile user experience designer, right?"
"No, I thought she was a web developer."
"You're both wrong, she is a photographer and mobile blogger."

Actually, all three plus some. Sorry folks, I am terminally curious and am driven make | create things online be it mobile|web.

I endeavor to take up the Project52 for all 52 weeks of 2010 to blog an article weekly on some aspect of my varied professional interests: be it mobile, web dev, a tutorial of some sort, or my opinion on some aspect of technology.

And yes, I will continue to inflict photos plus other textual bits on you daily through 2010.

I know at this time of year that there are a lot of folk who are encouraging you to donate before the end of the year, but if you haven't already and are looking for a place to donate or give or contribute, how about Kiva.

You give a bit of money via Kiva to someone who is in need of a micro-loan and they use it to start or improve their business. They pay you back via Kiva. Repeat cycle.

Let's give a hand up to Elizabeth and many others at Kiva:

iconeye on RCA student radically improves the UK plug

Endevver Consulting on Creating event calendars in Movable Type

Fri 12.04.09 - I realize that this video is not new as it is from 2003, but I found it via a bizarre internet blackhole of which lead me to Erykah Badu at the Def Jam Poetry. Not only is the poem on the nature of fans, friends, and artists good, pointed, and twisty, but Ms. Badu's delivery drives the twists home with delightful results.

If you know of any other sources of Erykah Badu performing her poetry, please put the link in the comments.

Also highly recommended:
Bassey Ikpi's Apology to My Unborn

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N900.

Thurs 12.03.09 - Belle and Scruffy, bed hogs!

Mobile blogged directly from the Nokia N900's mobile web browser.

I come from a large family on my Mom's side, she is the oldest of five and each of her siblings has had between 2 and 7 children of their own plus a few grandkids scattered here and there. We haven't all gotten together since May of 2002, and partially in May of 2007, then last week Tuesday my Mom's siblings all got together, sans issue. Thus, various aunts were in town over Thanksgiving weekend.

On Saturday, my Mom's youngest sister, Dana, who lives in Oregon, and I went to lunch at Udupi Palace for a lovely lunch and then we took Scruffy McDoget to Dog Beach for a good long walk. When we got back to my house and my aunt's car, she left pretty quickly, which I thought at the time had to do with the fact we had hung out for about 4 hours at this point and the fact that she is a strong introvert.

On Sunday, I ate the leftovers from our lunch over the course of the day, including my Aunt's leftovers. Hey, its Udupi Palace, spinach dosa is always good, even the next day.

On Monday, I got a text from my Aunt Dana that she had been officially diagnosed with H1N1 and if I got sick I should immediately go to the doctor.

Yes, it happened that fast. From what I found out today from my Aunt Anne, Dana was fine at lunch and after our walk she started to feel really bad, by the time she drove back to Anne's house about 30 miles south of my place she was really sick. By Sunday, super sick, sick enough to go to the doctor.

I texted her back to let her know that if she needed any help to let me know. The first day, I was bemused. The Pig, The Pig, it is coming.

By Tuesday, while I felt fine, I did some research and found that the infectious period for H1N1 was heatedly debated and could be anytime from when the person was first infected until the last cough and the incubation period if exposed to a person with H1N1 could be anywhere from one to seven days.

How about if you shared a dosa, uttapam, and sambar with someone with H1N1 in the infectious period?

I then decided that getting The Pig would be a forced Staycation with a real good excuse for missing work. I twitter this. Yes, yes, I know, Hanen Black Humor Alert. Funny, ha ha.

All week, I have felt normal. Well, as normal as I ever feel. Ok, so I lie... Really, I have had a bit of a sore throat and swollen glands, I did cough up a big cough up yesterday on to my steering wheel while driving. Surprise!

BUT IT ISNT THE PIG, I swear. Today I have felt a little off, but not much. Really, I promise. I just stayed in all day and had the heater on. I never run my heater. It is SoCal, no need for a heater on when it is 72F, right?

This evening, my aunt Anne called to give me the report on how Aunt Dana was faring, to ask how I was feeling, and to give me instructions on how to get into my Grandma's storage tomorrow so I can get & put up her Christmas decorations.

Aunt Anne: "How are you feeling?"
Me: "Fine."
Anne: "You don't sound good, your voice is weak and you have been coughing as we have been talking."
Me: ".....uh....((cough))"
Anne: "Are you feeling sick? If so, go to the doctor..."

Conversation about immediate doctor visit and Tamilflu ensues, all the while I remain in DENIAL. I am fine. I swear.

No Pig here. The only Pig I can see is the one in the freezer. Maybe I should turn down the heater before it melts the apartment.

Tues 12.01.09 - By a chance of delicious WOM/Nokia induced trial phone fate, I currently have both a Nokia N900 and a Nokia N97 in my hot little mitts, so I have been putting both through their photographic paces to see which one is the better Nokia Nseries flagship phone / mobile device of the year 2009.

While I do love the petite-r size, design of the phone, and the lovely flip hinge (thwack!) of the Nokia N97, the Maemo operating system of the Nokia N900 is winning me over even though the form factor of the N900 is a chunky monkey with a non-thwacking sliding qwerty keyobard. Delightful form over amazing brains?

Which to choose, as both the N900 and the N97 have 5 megapixel cameras with a Carl Zeiss lens, though the N97s seems to be more wide angled than the N900, both devices have LED flashes, and good sensors as well as software to render the images and video.

Which is better in real life rather than on a tech spec? Well, let's see how the pretty form vs. hot brains perform in the all important Photo and Video departments:

An excellently pointed Barbara Ehrenreich opinion piece in the LA Times, We need a new women's health movement, "What we really need is a new women's health movement, one that's sharp and skeptical enough to ask all the hard questions: What are the environmental (or possibly lifestyle) causes of the breast cancer epidemic? Why are existing treatments such as chemotherapy so toxic and heavy-handed? And, if the old narrative of cancer's progression from "early" to "late" stages no longer holds, what is the course of this disease (or diseases)?

What we don't need, no matter how pretty and pink, is a ladies' auxiliary to the cancer-industrial complex."

Photo taken today by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N900

Tues 12.01.09 - Rabbit rabbit. With the greeting to the new month out of the way, I would like to alert you to several interesting takes on Nokia's strategy and mentions of the N900:

GigaOm's very own Om Malik had a chat with Nokia's Tero Ojanperä last week and Om now has a wee bit more faith in Nokia's direction. Read it at, "For Nokia's Ovi, the World (Minus the US) is Enough."

Analyst Michael Gartenberg questions What's the future of Nokia? on Engadget's Entelligence:

"Second, Nokia's services strategy is as muddled as the fruit in Don Draper's Old Fashioned. Ovi sounded good when it was announced but it's now gone through so many iterations, with different services added, dropped, and changed that it's hard to know what's in and what's out. Comes With Music has been reported as having as few as 107,000 users worldwide, and Nokia's put off bringing it to the US this year, leading me to wonder what kind of future it has as a service. The N-Gage project not only resulted in two failed phone designs but the service itself is on its deathbed."

As a Nokia mobile phone owner, I have felt quite burned over the last four years by Nokia's frequent changing around and dropping software and services. I won't even invest any of my data at Ovi, as I don't want it to go away in 2 years when Nokia has changed its strategy again or the project manager has moved on along with the marketing manager to another project and the new folks in charge don't care and move on to new divisions themselves.

The big reason that I am so excited about Maemo is that Python comes already installed and integrated on the Nokia N900, so I can code my own apps and not worry about will they be supported 12-18 months from now. I don't code in C, C+, Objective C, Java or Symbian, so most of the world of mobile application development is closed to me, but I do code in Python. While one can install python on Symbian and run a PyS60 app on a Symbian phone it is not without hassle and if you want to share the app, then the other person has to install Python on their phone too, thus creating a large barrier to entry.

Roland Tanglao and Croozeus are also both excited about pre-installed Python on the N900. Yesterday, I was on the Maemo.org website looking at the various apps available for download and the ones in development. The best part was finding out that many of the apps that I would want to use or contribute to are coded in Python. One of the great parts of any Open Source and/or Linux community is the ability to contribute to projects and to the code base, and now for me it is even better that I can contribute in Python. Furthermore, I am very excited that Maemo community has an active PyMaemo sub-community.

Yes, the Nokia N900 may seem a bit too geeky to some, but in the long run, I do think Maemo will bring in developers who have been alienated by Symbian's high barriers to entry and the whole certification / app signing troubles, developers who will have more choice in programming languages, more choice in how to contribute & distribute. More choice means more mobile applications available to everyone.

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Related N900 Posts:
Nokia N900 : The Artist Phone
Nokia N900 : The Gold Standard Test
The Nokia Flagship Face Off : Nokia N900 vs. Nokia N97 : Part I, Night Video