One-Handed Rubik's Cube solve (20.09 seconds solve)

my fastest ever solve (back in the day) was right around 30 seconds, but that was using both hands. Mad props to this guy.

creationism's innovative tactics

Interesting to see this discovery reported in the NYTimes today. Ironic to see how the Creationist's insidious tactics are evolving:

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students....

The program provides $4,000 grants to third- or fourth-year, low-income students majoring in physical, life or computer sciences; mathematics; technology; engineering; or foreign languages deemed “critical” to national security.

The list of eligible majors (which is online at ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN0606A.pdf) is drawn from the Education Department’s “Classification of Instructional Programs,” or CIP (pronounced “sip”), a voluminous and detailed classification of courses of study, arranged in a numbered system of sections and subsections.

As the article details, it's no small task for a major to be removed from the list, and the current pleas of "clerical error" strain what little credibility I have for folks in the department.

It's disturbing to see a tactic so brazen as to impose creationist religious beliefs through omission in a program like this. If this goes unchecked, I hate to see what's next.

How Crayons Are Made

Can you tell me how to get here?

desert soundtrack

On the flight from SFO to Salt Lake City, we spent a lot of time flying over the deserts of northern Nevada and western Utah.

While I had my nose buried in a book, I did glance out the window rather frequently, and I realized the perfect soundtrack for flying over the desert was playing on my iPod: Arvo Part's Alina.

Sparse notes across a barren landscape studded with craggy hills. And the land below looked a lot like that, too.

proportionality is a slippery thing

From Le Monde Diplomatique:

Attacks targeting towns, villages and civilian infrastructure have forced some 600,000 people out of their homes. Under international law such actions count as war crimes. The 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention clearly defines the principle of proportionality: “An attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”. Who could ever imagine that the stated objective, to rescue two soldiers, justifies the death and destruction caused by the Israeli bombardment? Is a Lebanese life is worth less than an Israeli life?

This lack of (objective) proportionality reminds me of the conclusion of the recent NYT op-ed by Daniel Gilbert, He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t:

Neither [party in the experiment to deliver retaliatory, yet equal blows] realized that the escalation was the natural byproduct of a neurological quirk that causes the pain we receive to seem more painful than the pain we produce, so we usually give more pain than we have received.

Research teaches us that our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.

None of this is to deny the roles that hatred, intolerance, avarice and deceit play in human conflict. It is simply to say that basic principles of human psychology are important ingredients in this miserable stew. Until we learn to stop trusting everything our brains tell us about others — and to start trusting others themselves — there will continue to be tears and recriminations in the wayback.

make way for the living

This music video shows an 8000 flag installation on Salt Spring Island which represents the humans that die each day due to HIV/AIDS. The African reality is from Lesotho. The song is by Harry Manx (I'm a huge fan of his work).

Friends of mine from the omidyar.net community are behind the broader project of creating these flag installations across Canada. I couldn't be prouder of them and their work.

states i've been

Thanks to Christine, I found these "been-there" widgets from those durn Google folks:



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Evidently, I've had no reason to traipse along the northern border of the contiguous states (yet).

And the global view shows I'm really a Northwest quadrant kinda guy, even though my aspirations are much further afield. Better go unpack that passport of mine.



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Day of the Longtail

Day of the Longtail

Sweet little video parody of the power of all of us to change the status quo. Will you watch? or will you participate?

DSL Success!

As evidenced by my previous post, today's tech time with AT&T could have gone to either extreme (really good or really bad).

Thanks to a very customer-service-oriented technician named Chris, things went extremely well. He was at our house for about 30 minutes testing this and testing that.

Being the inquisitive sort that I am, he didn't mind explaining what he was doing as he was doing it. I could really tell he was passionate about his work, and maybe the fact I was so interested made our time fly by.

In direct contrast to his brethren at the call center(s), Chris seemed focused on making my experience with AT&T start off on a good foot. As he put it, "it makes sense to me that if you can start the relationship off in a good way, the relationship will last a lot longer." Maybe the pleasant interaction is thanks to the fact Chris has to look the customer in the eye, or that the customers don't have to navigate voicemail hell before interacting with him. I enjoyed uor time together so much that I wasn't feeling as bent about paying the $60 service call.

To top it all off, Chris stipulated there was to be no charge for his visit. AT&T has (blessedly) been smart in their management approach and put the power of determining when to charge in his hands. Maybe that is intended to let the customer dictate the terms of the relationship, too. If I was an ass, I'd get charged. If I was nice, the charge could be waved, and Chris was the arbiter of my disposition. (maybe I'm reading too much into that)

When I get home tonight, I'm going to use my brand new DSL connection to send a direct thank you to Chris's boss. Let this post suffice as a very public show of my gratitude.

Looking forward to being an AT&T customer for a good long time, especially as they roll out fiber that'll carry voice, data and video all in one to my doorstep.

DSL roulette

Having just changed residences, I decide it's time to ween myself from the high-bandwidth Comcast internet and plug into ATT Yahoo! DSL instead. Should be easy enough, right?

I fancy myself tech-savvy. There was a time in my life when I managed a network of Macs at an ad agency where I pulled double-duty as a graphic designer. I'm pretty handy at diagnosing (and fixing!) computer-related problems. Thus my consternation with the DSL line and AT&T's taking advantage of a bad situation and making it worse.

Before we moved, I went online (using Comcast internet, the irony!) to AT&T's site to set up service. Our new phone (and DSL) was to be hooked up on July 20. The DSL modem and filters for our phones all arrived on the 19th. The transition was looking easy.

Then I tried to fire the thing up. No dice. The DSL modem light flashed red (a bad thing) instead of shining a solid green, and I couldn't get any internet connection on the line.

I rebooted my computer and rebooted the modem. I rebooted the modem on its own. I unplugged all the cords (power, ethernet, phone) and replugged them into the appropriate jacks. Still the flashing red light.

So I called AT&T at 6pm on a Sunday night. Matthew was good enough to spend 15 minutes on the phone with me walking through his script. Actually, I spent a good 10 minutes of the call on hold while Matthew click-clacked away in the background and apologized for how long it took to file a trouble ticket. Final result: AT&T would call me back within 24 hours to follow up. Keep the modem on so they can diagnose it from the Central Office (the "CO" to the tech folks).

At 6:15p Monday night, I called up AT&T and got patched through to Robert. I asked if he could update me on the ticket and he informed me no ticket had been filed. Would I like to file one? GRRRRR. 15 minutes later I had my first (according to them)/yet another (according to me) trouble ticket filed. Final result: AT&T would call me back within 24 hours to follow up.

AT&T left a voice mail indicating I needed to call back and schedule a technician to come out and check our equipment. I called and spoke to Ellen and was all set to pull the trigger until I heard there might be a $60 charge involved.

Excuse me? Can you tell me what "might" means?

If the technician comes out and finds out it's a problem with the external box (outside the house), there's no charge.

If the technician comes out and finds out it's a problem with the DSL modem, there's no charge.

If the technican comes out and finds out it's a problem with our internal wiring, there's a $60 charge to fix it.

If the technician comes out and finds out it's a problem with our internal wiring, and I tell him thankyouverymuch I'm going to go back to cable, there's a $60 charge for his diagnosing the problem.

Ellen informs me that it could be my computer that's bad (uh, no, am using it now to post this blog item) or that my phones aren't working (uh, how have I been calling you my dear?) or there's no dial tone (answered that one already), so we'd need to pay the technician for his/her time to come inform us of that problem.

So, by scheduling the service tech to come out, I'm playing roulette with $60 on the table. I'm pretty sure there'll be no charge, but I'm completely powerless to hedge my bets because AT&T won't tell me how to self-diagnose where the problem is.

Oh, and the kicker is that I'm paying for DSL service all this time it doesn't even work.

Great way to start off our relationship with AT&T, no?

A quick Google of ATT DSL sucks should have warned me to stay with Comcast. But then a quick Google of Comcast cable internet sucks says pretty much the same thing.

mr grier, we meet again

Hip Hip Hooray!

Today I learned that Mike Grier is now a San Jose Shark, signing a three year contract to come play for los Tiburones.

I can hardly begin to explain how happy I am at this news. When I was a Washington Capitals season ticket holder, Grier came to play for the Caps in 2002, and week-in week-out he was the guy who played his heart out, grinding it out on the boards, blocking shots and killing penalties. Even when the rest of the Caps had seemed to fall asleep around him, he kept going going going until the final whistle sounded.

During those dismal Jagr-infested years, Grier was my star, my honorary captain, playing the game with his whole heart and soul, luring me to the MCI Center game after game and making each televised game worth watching.

My wife gave me a Grier Caps jersey for Christmas in 2002, and he was traded to Buffalo the following spring. While I continued to wear my Grier jersey to all the Caps games, we moved out to San Jose in the fall of 2003, and the jersey was regulated to the back of my closet. When the Caps came to play the Sharks here last December, I wore my Grier jersey even though he was already with the Sabres.

Now, I get to wear my Grier jersey again as I watch him devote his heart and soul to the Sharks. Maybe I'll even get Grier 25 in teal for Christmas.

It's good to see you again, Mike.

the doldrums

Now that hockey season is over (thanks, Hurricanes) and even basketball has crowned its king (go Heat!), we've got 10 days of World Cup inconvenient programming to tide us over until the Tour de France starts.

Can't wait to watch the prologue July 1!

whom to trust? (or: what's our ETD?)

Ending my stay at the Identity Mashup conference in Cambridge, I found it more than a little ironic that I was confronted head-on by the trust issue as I sat contemplating when to leave for the airport for my flight back to SFO.

My flight was scheduled to depart at 6:11pm from Logan airport. The forecast called for a wicked band of thunderstorms to come screaming through the area in the late afternoon. As the storms moved west to east, the entire Eastern Seaboard could domino through a series of longer delays as equipment got stranded on the tarmacs of IAD, DCA, EWR, LGA, etc. A witches' brew for spending hours trapped at the terminal.

Cue thunder and a darkening sky outside the classroom, and it was time to consult the flight status web sites to see what they'd say. That's right, sites. I like to triangulate in on the correct data, as I've been burned by relying on the airline to tell me everything's peachy when in reality it's going to hell in a handbasket. I don't think I'm the only one they've done this to, so maybe you know what I'm talking about.

So, at 3:45pm, sitting in Austin Hall at Harvard, I consulted three different web sites to try to learn when United flight 179 would really depart:

• United.com flight status widget- Scheduled departure time: 6:11pm. Estimated departure time: 6:11pm. It would appear the thunderstorms would be having no effect on the United schedule out of Boston.
• FAA's Flight Delay Information System - There's weather-related delays of 15 minutes for arriving planes and 30 minutes for departing planes out of BOS. No other East Coast airports are affected, so it looks as if the dominoes aren't in place to cause a really long delay, but why isn't the United site showing any sign of this? The FAA simply links to the United site to look up flight-specific info, so that's no help.
  
• The Weather Channel's Business Traveler Flight Tracker - The weather radar shows a wall of red descending upon the Boston metro area, and a the flight tracker shows the expected scheduled departure time of 6:11pm yet an estimated departure time of 9:27pm. A three hour delay? Yikes.
  

Whom to trust?

It seems it's in United's best interest to not show a delay so folks won't scamper to other flights. (Even though I've signed up for their "EasyUpdate" service that sends a text message to my phone should my flight status change, they seem to wait to send notices of delayed departures to me until after I'm standing in the security line at the airport. The worst of these times was when I was flying from Vegas to SFO and instead of finding out about the four hour departure delay while I was still on the Strip and near the poker tables, I got the text message as I was taking my shoes off at the scanner. Grrrr.)

For better or worse, I think the FAA doesn't have any reason to report anything but the facts (ma'am). And the Weather Channel has always been so very good at forecasting events in the future with great accuracy (not!), but still that three hour delay is one heck of an outlier here.

I check to see who's feeding the Weather Channel their flights status info and it turns out the data's coming in from FlyteComm (what a clever name!). Looking up the status of flight 179 on the FlyteComm site directly shows no difference from what's on weather.com, so there's no disconnect there.

The thought of spending three hours at Logan doesn't sit well with me. I'd rather spend the time observing the Code and Law panel and then going to the cocktails and demos event.

But what if it turns out United isn't lying? I check to see what the cost of relying on FlyteComm's data instead of United's by looking for the next departing flight to SFO from BOS. It's at 6:50am Wednesday morning. Ouch, it's an overnight penalty if I show up late for a flight that left on time.

After much gnashing of teeth, I decide spending three hours at Logan is a much better proposition than staying the night at Logan.

So I arrive at the airport in plenty of time to take off as scheduled: at 6:11pm.

The big lesson I've learned is to treat the flight tracker info on the weather.com site (powered by FlyteComm!) like I do any weather forecast: with great suspicion bordering on amusement as long as I don't get soaked.

While FlyteComm is launching an app for mobile flight status checking, I won't be using it. The data is only convenient if it's accurate, at least to me.

tags: idmashup06, idmashup, United, delay, trust, Thomas

creating the email link

setting it up so I can now blog from my Treo. Hopefully this will
allow me to post more often.

legislation as blunt instrument

Listening to Christine Varney, an attorney at Hogan & Hartsen, speak at the Identity Mashup panel on Privacy and Civil Liberties in Benign and Hostile Environments.

Hadn't quite thought of it in such a fatalistic manner, but this is what she has to say about legislation:

Legislation is a blunt instrument that's rarely effective, has copious unintended consequences and is usually inspired by big companies.

The government doesn't have nearly as much data on us as the corporations do (witness the telephone records incidents).

Then, Identity Woman Kaliya comments in the IRC:

The issue not being talked about [on the panel] is the way the courts have interpreted the 4th amendment as not applying to third party storage of information/data. Addressing this must be done legally/socially, not through technical protocols.

But if we heed Christine's warning about legislation, we're stuck with finding a social way of addressing it. What's the answer then?

What kind of social recourse do we have, especially after "The Next 9/11" when the government goes after the third parties even harder.

tags: idmashup06, identity, berkman

Esther Dyson at Identity Mashup 2006

Listening to Esther chime in on the opening panel "What You Need to Know About Identity"

Her high-level overview of the Accountable Net:

The accountable net notion is peer-to-peer (I'll be accountable to you, and you be accountable to me) and that only works with a persistent identity.

The first commandment of the Accountable Net: Do ask, don't lie.

You have every right to ask who I am and what I've done. I don't need to answer, but if I don't I can't expect to be extended the same privileges as those who do answer. If I do answer, I cannot lie (and if you don't like my answer, you don't have to extend me priviledges you don't want to).

Dyson was just at the Where2.0 conference (all about maps and location and GPS and stuff like that). What the conference was really about was identity: you in the map (as an avatar in Second Life, or as a place on a Google Map), and all the tools for representing self on the map.

Do we want privacy or do we want attention? Newest tools are about attention, establishing a conspicuous identity in the world. But we don't realize the slime trail we're leaving. When we do see it, we may be alarmed at what can be traced back to us. We need better understanding of the "cost" of using these new attention-getting tools.

I like her ability to cut to the chase on the challenge ahead (bold is mine):

The debate isn't about whether there will be a national ID card or a chip or what have you... we're already there. It's called your DNA. So, the problem isn't so much identity theft, but that folks will aggregate your segregated identities and add stuff you don't want there by aggregating.

tags: idmashup06, Esther Dyson, berkman

better than boot camp

So, news out of Herndon, Virginia today is the release of Parallels Desktop for Mac that allows you to run WinXP (or any other version of Windows back to 3.1) on your PowerMac as a window within the Mac desktop. At last, we can run Windows apps (Visio!) at the same time we're running Mac programs (everything else!).

As you know, this differs greatly from Bootcamp's either/or proposition where you can boot into either operating system but only one at a time.

Isn't this just an update to Virtual PC? Well, according to Mossberg in the WSJ, Parallels is written specifically for the new Intel-based Macs so it runs fast, even faster than some of the PCs running WinXP native.

I think I've finally discovered the last straw holding me back from replacing the old Gateway with a MacMini and becoming a mac-only household (at last!)

tags: MacBook, Boot Camp, Parallels, switch, Thomas Thomas Kriese

full-face irony: stupidity scrolling

Is this ironic or what?

While watching the US World Cup team get dismantled by Czechoslovakia on ESPN2 this morning, the scroll at the bottom of the screen flashed news of a motorcycle accident involving a footballer (in the US-sense of the word).

As the story came into focus, the scroll updated to show Ben Rothlisberger, star quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, had been taken to the hospital after crashing his motorcycle into a car.

Eyewitnesses state Ben's head hit the windshield of the car and there was blood involved.

Eyewitnesses also reported he wasn't wearing a helmet. (hey, helmets are only for game days!)

My first thought was: how incredibly stupid is it for Ben to be riding around without a helmet on? Safety issues aside, he's breaking the law, isn't he? Or at least violating the "thou shalt do nothing stupid" clause of his NFL contract with the Steelers, no?

Then I checked to see that Pennsylvania's Governor, Edward G Rendell, repealed the state's mandatory helmet law back in 2003. Wow, it seems there's a full-blown epidemic.

While Ben's only taking his own life in his hands, the governor's set up thousands of others to make a mose unwise decision to ride without a brain-bucket in place.

Technorati tags: Steelers, helmet, motorcycle, Thomas Kriese, Thomas

The evolution of dance

One of the funnier six minutes I've spent in a while. I only wish this trip through memory lane wasn't so vividly close to the bone. If you associate with Gen X or Gen Y, the moves (and music) will be all too familiar to you.

Melanie II

Melanie II
Originally uploaded by karmafood.

For someone who doesn't like her picture taken, I'm glad I can rely on others to sneak photos of her (she always runs away when she sees the camera in my hand).

So beautiful. I'm lucky to have her as my wife, and the mother of my daughters.