Good Foods

I made this for dinner again last night. It's been delicious both times. I made it with turkey, which apparently weighs more? 1.5 lbs turkey is too much turkey. I also use frozen vegetables, since peas/corn/carrots come prepped that way. Big time saver. LOTS of glorious leftovers since I quadrupled the recipe. It's also delicious with the vegetarian protein crumbles. Worchestershire sauce is invincible.

And since my bananas finally ripened, I made Alton's smoothie this morning! Also delicious. I gotta recommend that whole episode.

Avatar

Spoiler warning.

It is a great movie. It noticeably lacked only two things:

1. An original plot. Reviews I read before watching made this same critique. The avatar thing is a nice speculative fiction twist (and a bit over-played in the title, I think), but doesn't sway the story too considerably from Pocahontas/Dances with Wolves/The Last Samurai: efficient-killing, greedy invaders lend wayward hero to "savages", who turn out to be noble and inspire the hero to switch sides.

   Here's the catch: I love this plot. Add in the thoughtful and inter-woven support from the Na'vi culture and Pandoran ecology for the audience's inflamed environmentalism, and Cameron has sharpened-up a very old and very proven story.

2. Character development. The wittiest critique I read on Rotten Tomatoes was about how the movie looks great in 3D but the characters themselves are trapped in 1D. Nobody really changes.

   The closest I'd say was the capitalist Parker; his resentment for his charge and his thin attempts at self-deception become more evident as the movie proceeds. I like that veneer of sympathy the movie allows him. Clearly, Jake changes, but this is a plot element more than character development. Moreover, the lack of information about his past character (=spunky?) leaves us with no trajectory upon which to witness character development.

I'll say it again. It is a great movie. But not a film. I'd say the two missing pieces above are pretty much pillars of film, but no more than pieces of a movie.

Basically: amidst the simple plot, Cameron effortlessly blends dragon-riders and mecha in the same movie. I can dig that. Layer on the wonderment of being a Na'vi, the invitation for redemption for our greedy ways (demonstrated by Dr. Augustine/Jake connecting with Eywa), the drop-dead gorgeous Pandoran environment, and the most seamless computer animation ever, and you have no excuse to miss this one.

ship this

Good: SNL UPS #1 & #2

reverse Internet

Type a few letters into Google's search box, but don't hit Enter. See what it suggests. I just had lots of fun exploring "when should" on Google. It's all about beefy pregnant patriots.

Billy Batson must really like music

My favorite non-obvious iPhone application is Shazam. It is the application that is most specifically useful to have on my person at all times and works just like I need it to. I use it in the car all the time. For instance, on the way home tonight, I used it to identify Bring it on Home off of KJHK, amidst three other songs.

I just watched the riff of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with Stace and A. It was excellent, like the glorious, glorious MST3K of yore and left me eager to watch another. We three plan on soon watching the riff of Battlefield Earth.

Initial iPhone report

I've had it since Friday. It arrived at the store on Monday, but they did not notify me.

Arg.

I like it. Battery life was a problem the first day, and probably will be any other day where I'm so constantly using the internet. Battery life is only an issue if I'm asking the it to entertain me all day, and I won't be. So the major obstacle is fine.

Money is the other major, and I'm not paying much more than I used to for a simple plan plus 200 text messages. (Responsibly) cutting Netflix makes it about even, and I'll occasionally skip a lunch out to make myself feel better. I have disabled text messages (but I haven't updated my voice-mail greeting yet!) and am still figuring out how that will affect me.

I'm not going to escape until truly enticed. There are SSH clients – even in the app store – but I have not investigated.

Likes

• Automatically geocoding my photos is also awesome. The camera is weak, but anybody who would complain should have a dedicated camera device.
  
• Makes good use of the vCard spec for contacts; cooperates with Address Book.
  
• Syncing is a snap.
  
• Mobile Safari is a very nice interface.
  
• The alarm app is well-designed.
  
• I've used YouTube more than I expected.
  

Dislikes

• To save battery, I disable Wi-Fi and 3G when I don't need them, but this requires a few menus. It'd be nice if a few simpleton apps could do this and make it one tap.
  
• I miss being able to get near a certain contact by hitting the key for the first letter; gesturing is relatively inaccurate. The pane of favorites helps.
  
• The GPS is sometimes sluggish to acquire, even without buildings. Especially on the highway, it seems. I wonder if the speed is a factor.
  
• The app store gives no refunds, and there's no way to really know what the functionality of an app is until you purchase. I've been burnt by two apps ($23) so far.
  
• The app store has a really bad search function.
  
• Two of my pictures were apparently taken at a desert in China. The camera app gives no indication of the current GPS accuracy (it starts at about a few hundred kilometers – or half the globe apparently – and works its way down to about 10 meters), so I have no idea if it's prepared to tag a photo (it tags them automatically) with /accurate/ location data.
• No photo apps can upload photographs (circumventing iPhoto) without stripping out the location metadata. Seems it's an SDK limitation as of yet. (So says Karl van Rondow via an appreciated, prompt email response.)
  
• I don't see a seek-bar when it's in iPod mode; that's pretty lame.
  
• No exposed file system.
  

Mehs

• 3G isn't yet in Lawrence, but I've been told by December. This may affect battery life.
  
• A bigger form factor than I'm accustomed to.
  
• No Flash apps in Mobile Safari yet.
  
• No EDGE data while talking (perhaps with 3G, haven't tried it).

A moment of awareness and an admission of self

Heavy title for a post about a band. What I realized is that I will not acheive the persuasion of Dan or Lindsey. I just don't do that sort of thing. So I'll let SPIN.com do it for me Re: What Made Milwaukee Famous. I like this band. The song on that page is from the upcoming album, which I've never heard, but I really like the first album. The album I know and love is probably low brow and repetitive compared to the new one, but I like repetitions of good. And, once again, those captives in my car have asked about WMMF before – so I'm not totally crazy.

Though I'm not selling the band, I can tell a story. One that might even shake the very foundations of marriage. Might.

Kyle loves Katie Daryl. It was love at first television. Short story even shorter, since I lived with Kyle I ended up watching a bunch of HDNet's True Music. WMMF was on one of those episodes (note: she has her own theme music!) along with The Blue Van and Toby Lightman – both of which I like, though The Blue Van is a bit sloppy for my taste. I digress.

Katie Daryl is cool (and beloved) and WMMF makes good music. In searching for a "representative" song from Trying to Never Catch Up, I couldn't really find one. So maybe my repetitive comment is way off base. Paying no mind to that, I'll throw "Idecide" out there as a rep along with "Hopelist" as a demonstration of some breadth. The album has many great lyrics (due in part to sonorous and compelling delivery, but the words do indicate a keen, young wisdom) and "Hopelist" contains more than its fair share.

Enjoy.

The other end of YouTube

Adrienne passed along a link that her mother shared with her to an NPR story about the classical music on YouTube. Turns out, there's lots of great stuff on the NPR website for music wonks, including concerts and songs of the day. (Note the RSS feeds on those pages, people!)

Emails instead of RSS? Yes, yes, right away!

The kids are all hip to RSS and Atom, nowadays. They are really helpful if you're comfortable with them and you're tracking many websites, but they can be a bit overwhelming if you're following just a couple websites.

If, instead of figuring what RSS is all about, you'd just like to receive an email whenever there's a new post, try SendMeRSS, BotABlog, or RSSFwd. These services use an RSS feed behind the scenes to monitor a website for you and send an email whenever there is something new on it. This isn't so much a "recommendation" since I haven't used any of them myself, but I tracked them down for a friend who requested such a service and they seem pretty solid. Maybe you'll find them useful. But read the fine print, because you can't blame me!

Even as I suggest alternatives for the reluctant, I really must encourage you to join the syndication crowd by finding yourself an aggregator, especially one that is web-based. That is really the only step you need to take. Choose an aggregator and then just keep an eye out for the syndication icon: . This is like the shift from film-based to digital cameras – don't get left behind!

A gentle explanation from What Is RSS?:

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Yahoo News.

Great film, great music

It seems Big Night is referred to as a food film; apparently I need to watch more of those. It's slow at parts, but you will be soundly rewarded for mustering a little patience. The last scene is a keystone conclusion the likes of which I haven't seen recently. Simple, pertinent, poignant, and reassuring – just how I like my finales.

I recommend the film if you have the slightest romance with food. That's not to say there aren't plots running the drama gamut, you'll just need to have a soft spot for food to enjoy all of this one.

What's more, the music is amazing. I need a name for it so I can track down more of it.

I write choppy

Whenever I read the rough drafts of paragraphs in my research publications, my writing is really choppy. While searching for an answer to the question of capitalizing the word after a colon (no answer found), I discovered the hyperbaton – it looks like I use a lot of those. So I suppose that's the formal term for choppy.

One fix suggested to me was to replace ", which" with "that" wholesale. I went with it. But it turns out that it's wrong! The 'pedia entry for comma provides a nice counter-example with these two sentences:

I cut down all the trees, which were over six feet tall.
I cut down all the trees that were over six feet tall.

In the first case, there are no trees left standing. In the second, any trees that were under six feet were not cut down. I think this is restrictive versus non-restrictive usage.

[Update 2 Feb 2008 – From an English professor who seems to identify me as one of the worst writers in the world:

A paradoxical mnemonic: use that to tell which, and which to tell that.]

Lessig Starts on Corruption

I've been doing some critical introspection regarding my distaste for politics. Corruption is all I see; but at the same time, I'm certain that's an over-simplification – there must be good people in there. Rory sent me a lecture regarding corruption by Larry Lessig, who has become the guru on copyright in the last decade. Within this lecture, I have found some respite from my cynicism regarding politics.

I must recommend watching the entire lecture. It's an hour long, but I think it is a rare opportunity to listen the first lecture on a new topic as a scholar of Lessig's caliber is approaching it.

While Lessig addresses the issue of corruption without restricting the discourse to any particular domain, he does spend some time with the case of government. In particular, he cites a double-barrel claim put forward by Dennis Thompson. They claim that legislators themselves are less corrupt – that is, more principled – than ever before in Congress, but Congress itself suffers from "institutional corruption" anyway.

I am rightly recognizing an institutional corruption but am wrongly projecting it onto the politicians. The influence of money on campaigns remains obvious, but I should dole out a bigger beneficial slice of doubt to individual politicians. I made reference to this in my previous post by saying that even the good-willed politicians are doomed, but maybe more of them wield noble intentions than I had thought. They just end up faltering because of the institution's inherent problems.

Now this still doesn't suggest any individual action, but at least someone perspicacious is recognizing and attacking the things that plague me. It has helped me find some immediate hope through refinement of my opinions, and it also offers the long-term hope of a plan. Somebody trustworthy is working on it.

Godspeed, Professor Lessig!

P.P. - Lessig is changing his scholarly focus in part because he believes academics ought to reestablish their "capital" every ten years. I like this idea a lot.

I Forget Things

I'll go upstairs and forget why. I'll buy all ingredients for the recipe but one from the store. Worst and most frequent of all is the truly intended but ultimately doomed I'll call you. But I'm a geek and that usually spells hope.

Historically, my attempts at todo lists rather quickly became oppressively comprehensive anthologies of failure. There was this one time I had a tiny pocket calendar and an equally tiny pen and a rubber band. That actually worked really well until I lost it in a grown-up's jungle gym in St. Louis. Fans of the PDA/smart-phone are probably scratching their heads right now. Bulk, yo; I'm a pockets man and just don't have room for those bricks. And they try to be too many things at once, in my opinion. (The iPhone is a sweet step in the right direction, but I'll wait for a bit more innovation.) Victory was eventually mine, and that victory was Remember the Milk.

The best part of RTM is how well its designers accommodate my cell phone. After a one-time setup, if you give an RTM task a due time instead of just a a due date, it will send an email 30 minutes prior. Since all phones have an email address†, I configured RTM to remind me about really important tasks – no matter where I am – by sending a text to my cell phone.

So RTM can send stuff to my phone, but can my phone send stuff to RTM? Answer: yes yes. I can send a text message to a provided email address with a wee bit of formatting (a T: here and D: there) and the task shows up presto. Alternatively, RTM cooperates with Jott.

I actually found Jott weeks before RTM. It helped me not forget things since it takes just a 30 second (tops-ish) phone call to put a transcribed email in my inbox. Schuper schweet. But it's not a task manager. Jott and RTM recognized one another's awesomeness and now I can use Jott to make a phone call that results in a new task in my RTM list. Me saying "Buy tooth paste, 8pm" while riding in the car to the North Carolina airport means I get a text message on the drive home from MCI.

RTM is proactive and not blind; the designers have hooked into the services Google provides. There's a Gmail/Firefox widget as well as an iGoogle widget. This means we Google users can access RTM within our conventional, daily web destinations. (Also, for Mac users, there's a plug-in for the indispensable Quicksilver launcher.)

RTM and Jott have helped me form an integrated todo system that functions way beyond a list. With accessibility from my cell phone and my email, I'm never out of reach. Of course, it's just as easy to ignore RTM as with other todo lists, but I've found I kind of enjoy using this one and that helps me stick to it. It is comprehensive, convenient, and free‡.

If you would like help setting this up, I'll provide some step by step instructions in response to the first of such requests posted in the comments.

† To find your email address, write the best joke you know in a text message on your phone. When you go to send it, you should see an option to enter an email address. Put your own email address in there. Your phone's email address will be waiting in your inbox. There are easier ways online, but the search works best given a particular provider and I don't know yours.
‡ Except for the ubiquitous text message fees.

Flying Tips

I have secrets to share about flying on planes. Hello, government spies.

The TSA doesn't let you bring water bottles on the plane because you can't bring water bottles past security. The only safe water bottles are the $4 bottles on the other side. Also, the in-flight service gives you very small water cups on the flight, packed with ice. Two things for you to know:

1. You can ask for multiple cups of water when the cart comes down the isle. I usually ask for one with ice and one without. Steward people are nice.
2. You can bring a water bottle onto the plane. What? Hell yes you can. It just has to be empty when you pass through security. If it's not empty, the joyless zombies take it and throw it away (Recycle? Fmeh.). The drones won't even let you drink it in front of them even though you could have chugged it 30 seconds ago. Once you get through the oddly placed door frame, just fill up at a water fountain. This sort of thing is how I win.

* * *

I've been doing the water bottle thing for a while now, which isn't surprising since I've been winning for a while now. Now it's lessons on sleeping on a plane.

One new thing I learned on the flight back from NYC is that you don't have to be uncomfortable on the plane. What what? Hell yes you can. Studies have shown† that the number one factor inhibiting sleep on planes is acquiring a comfortable position. Here's the trick. It might be specific to the plane I was on, but I'm willing to put it out there just in case it helps you. I always have trouble making my neck comfortable when I'm on the plane, even if I'm next to a window. The wall curves in too quickly for me to get the right angle. My "go to" option is to put my bag on my lap and my hoodie (always have a hoodie on a plane) and another coat on top of that if I have one. It's comfortable enough for me to fall asleep, but I ache pretty good when I come to. It also makes me look weird. Or at least really drunk.

The new sleep solution is to sit as upright as possible. What what what? Hell yes upright. The trick is to get your neck (or at least most of your head) above the back of the seat. The seat I was in actually got softer up there and I was able to comfortably tilt my head back on a cushion. Moreover I found the sense of space up there relaxed me compared to the low cage to which I was accustomed.

My sleep number was 13-F.

fin

† - (‡) I surveyed myself on the flight back.
‡ - That symbol is my favorite because it is called a "dagger." This one is a "double dagger," Raph style※.
※ - Yes, I know Raphael used sai¹.
¹ - Sai is the plural of sai.

[Update 13 Jan 2008: A related list of foods allowed through security (secret handshake to Tyler C). And I forgot to mention that the service crew has refilled my water bottle on the plane.]

Tipping Folly

NYC is a tippy place, and I've already screwed up twice.

For the shuttle from the airport to Midtown, I made my reservation online, including tip. But dispatch didn't tell the driver that, so I had to say, "I already tipped you $3 online." How lame must that sound? Moreover, my "proof of purchase" didn't show the tip, so I'm not even sure he got it. And what if he didn't deserve $3?

I took a surprisingly awesome free tour of the Grand Central Terminal neighborhood. The guide was excellent, but I didn't have any cash. Free meant free right up until he finished and I realized "He did so well! I'll give him a good tip... err." I darted off both out of embarrassment and in search of an ATM. Found one, but it only leaked $20s.

Lessons I've learned so far: tipping in advance/online and neglecting tip cash just because a service is free are both unsmart.

On a related note, I rarely feel comfortable when deciding how much. Tight wads aren't cool. Big tippers try too hard. And rarely will I tip if I know someone makes full wages. I'm pretty sure Sonic Drive-In workers make full wages. What about those restaurants where you order at the register? I've actually asked "Do you make full wages?" before – yep, I'm that uncouth. Fortunately, it was a high school kid who didn't realize that I was really asking "Should I give you extra money?"

Anyone know of a general rule/resource for knowing who to tip and how much?

Seems a bit early, though I'm a bit late

The seasonal classic A Christmas Story was made the same year I was. So how is it already in the public domain?

Jolie Holland

Jolie Holland is the most enchanting folk singer I've ever heard. A few of you have enjoyed her work while held captive in my car. Your curious inquiries rang sweet in my ears.

"Crush in the Ghetto" is so bittersweet a song I almost wish I had reason to sing it. "Mexican Blue" puts me at peace without fail. And "Faded Coat of Blue" is my new favorite Civil War song!

I sometimes find myself listening to the drums instead of Jolie. That's a credit to Dave Mihaly, who was just as ensnaring heh heh when I saw Jolie et alia perform. The live show is almost as polished as the recordings.