An open letter to holiday drivers

Last night, I drove up I-95 from North Carolina to Philadelphia. I wanted to offer a few tips to the many holiday drivers on the road.

First, the LEFT lane is for passing. That means it’s for people moving FASTER than the general flow of traffic. If you are moving SLOWER than than everyone else, MOVE TO THE RIGHT LANE!!! How do you know if you are moving slower than traffic? For one, there’s a long line of cars piled up behind you with extensive open space in front. Another hint… multiple cars have passed you on the right and pulled in front of you. Flashing lights, honking horns and people yelling at you as they pass would be other good signs.

Two, safe driving does not dictate that you keep 15-20 car lengths of open space between you and the car in front of you. And it certainly doesn’t mean you should come to a complete stop with 5 car lengths open. Why? Because it’s dangerous. No one reasonable person can anticipate you’re going to leave that much open space. You’re going to cause an accident. PULL UP!!!

Third, and this one is for Delaware Department of Transportation, why are you doing construction on the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving? The two lanes of I-95 North you closed caused backups into Maryland. It took an hour and a half – 90 minutes – to drive through your state. Did someone not get the email that this is the busiest travel time of the year? And that more of us would be driving because of the disaster air travel has become?

Driving would be a lot easier if people were aware of what was going on around them and our illustrious bureaucrats used a little common sense.

Jury still out on Stargate Universe

I’ve been watching Stargate Universe since it “launched”… and I still don’t have a good feel for it yet. I was really worried that it had already fallen into a pattern after the first few episodes. In one, the ship brought them to a desert planet where the substance they needed to fix the ship was a major trek from the gate. In another, the ship brought them to an ice planet where the drinkable water they needed was a major trek from the gate. If that was the plan for the next couple of years, I’d pass. But they’ve pulled back from the brink.

What I like.

• The characters. Rush is  the most complex character in any of the Stargate series. He’s got the brains of Carter/McKay without their morality or blind team loyalty. That makes him interesting. You’re never really sure what he’s doing or why. And Robert Carlyle is a fantastic actor. Eli’s the wide-eyed newbie there to ask questions for the audience. And (of course) he’s brilliant enough to keep Rush from getting away with too much. But he’s a fun character and played well by David Blue. (Does Blue remind anyone else of Jason Biggs from American Pie?). TJ, Greer, even the bald guy who can’t control his temper. All interesting with a lot of potential.
• There isn’t the obligatory alien with super strength / wisdom to guide and save the team.
• The  fact that the main computer control area looks like the TARDIS control room.

What I don’t like.

• Why does American sci-fi have to be so damned boring. PICK UP THE PACE!!! Let’s go already. Watch a couple of episodes of Doctor Who or Torchwood. Plenty of technobabble, lots of drama and deep moments, but upbeat, fun and exciting. My wife, who hates sci-fi, looks forward to those. Deep and dark doesn’t have to mean sleep inducing. (ST:DS9, Enterprise, Battlestar Galactica all had the same problem.)
• These people are really free with other people’s bodies. Those stranded on  the Ancient ship can use magical communications stones to trade bodies with people at Stargate Command. Ok, I’ll play along. But what’s the first thing they all do? Find their wives / significant others and have sex. Umm… has no one given any thought to what happens when Col Young gets his wife pregnant while he’s “borrowing” Telford’s body? Figure that one out. Anyone thought about STD’s? How about the unnamed female airman who trades places with Camile Way? Anyone ask if she minded it Camile spent the weekend having sex with her lesbian partner? Somehow I doubt that’s what the airman signed on for.
• PICK UP THE PACE!!!! Don’t just plod around and look constipated.

So far, the best I can say is that this has potential. It’s certainly better than Sanctuary. But, its not good enough for me to get really excited yet. Here’s hoping.

The Dora-fication of kids?

For anyone who has had young children in the last decade, you are likely familiar with “Dora the Explorer.”  According to wikipedia:

“In every episode, Dora goes on an exploring trip to find something or help somebody. Dora always asks the viewers at home to help her find new ways to get to the places with the help of Map.”

It’s been parodied on Saturday Night Live because Dora doesn’t so much “ask for help” as narrate her every thought and order the audience to stand up or clap or whatever.  But Dora’s dictatorial nature isn’t the point to this post. Its the constant narration.

This weekend, my daughter was helping me rake the leaves. To make it fun we had a contest to see who could make the biggest leaf pile. At first, I thought she was trash talking (which was funny from a 6 year old). But then it hit me. She wasn’t trash talking… she was narrating every step before she did it. Just like Dora.

I wonder if the Dora format, which has been copied by many other programs and is intended to make the show more interactive, has actually conditioned our kids to think (and talk) in that way.  And, if so, is that a bad thing? Or does it just drive me nuts?

Paperless boarding passes rock

You’re at your hotel. You don’t have access to a printer, need a boarding pass and are late leaving for the airport… what do you do? That was me this morning.

The first part was easy… I checked in on-line from my iPhone. But I wouldn’t have time to wait in line for a boarding pass at O’Hare. Fortunately, American Airlines offered to email my pass to my phone when I checked in. The link in their email opened a 2-D barcode in a browser window – which TSA and the gate agent scanned from my screen. No waiting in line or paper needed.

On the one hand, this is not new thinking. I’ve seen concepts like this talked about for years and read about pilot projects. I just hadn’t seen it deployed (in the US) before. Now I need to find out how many airports are equipped to handle this and if other airlines are following suit.

Nice job, American Airlines.

Now that’s a smart OS

Maybe this has always been in OSX, but I just saw it for the first time… and its one of the many little things that make Mac’s such a pleasure to use.

Last night, I was working late and listening to music through my headphones. This morning, about to start work again, I unplugged the headphones to put them away…. and noticed that the volume icon in the menu bar went from two “sound waves” to mute. Just to be sure I did it a couple of more times and the volume settings in OSX are clearly tied to the output device. (Typically, my speakers are set to mute so I don’t disturb anyone on conference calls. I work for IBM…. we live on conference calls.)

What I love about this is the fact that the Apple engineers didn’t take the easy way out. It would have been simpler to “let the user do it.” After all, that’s why there is that mute button on the keyboard. No extra code. No complicated interfacing with hardware. Fewer test cycles. Developers could focus on higher value items. (Any of this sound familiar?) But adding that extra little intelligence to the system improves the user experience in subtle but profound ways. Apply that kind of thinking to an entire product and it’s why Mac fans are as loyal as they are. It just works… and it works really, really well.

Hello again

Wow… hard to believe its been a month and a half since my last post. I’d love to claim I’ve been relaxing on a beautiful beach and just out of range of a wireless network, but that would be a lie. At IBM, we’re prepping for the launch of Sametime 8.5. During the work week that has me going day and night (unfortunately, not an exaggeration). On the weekends, I’ve been helping my wife “nest”. We’re only four-ish months from the new baby… so naturally we bought a nice new leather sofa & club chair and I’m painting the living room. Meanwhile, she’s baking up a storm.

Speaking of baked goods, this week I did manage to get out of the home office long enough for “Donuts with Daddy” at my son’s preschool. The event itself was only 30 minutes, but my son was sooo excited that I was taking him to school and I’d get to see the red room and meet his teachers and classmates. And have donuts! It was too much fun.

Meanwhile, K-9 sits in pieces in my garage. He’s been sanded following the first coat of poly and awaits a second. The ears are still giving me problems. The paint just wont stick to the plastic tubing that surrounds the “satellite dishes” – causing them to stick to everything else. Eventually, I’ll have to find a better solution. But for now I’ll be happy with putting him back together and getting him in the house before the weather turns.

This weekend my son has two soccer games, I’ll be working in the yard, rooting for the Phillies to beat the Dodgers and the Eagles to crush the Raiders. (Has anyone else noticed how much the announcers appear to favor the Dodgers? Are these the local TV guys or what?)

And then, on Monday, its back to 9 hours straight of conference calls.

Let there be (LED) light!

At the moment, K-9 sits, completely disassembled, in my garage. When he was last in the house (in July), the kids knocked him around a little bit and I decided he needed he needed a protective coat of polyurethane. The first coat is on. He needs a good sanding and a second coat.

Unfortunately, with work and family and vacations I haven’t been able get back to him. But I was able to start playing with the Arduino micro-controller I bought a few months ago. I’d like to use this as the interface between motors, sensors and the “brain” – an old 12-inch 1Ghz PowerBook G4 running OSX 10.5. But before I even think about which motors make sense, I wanted to make sure I could get my laptop to talk to the board. It wasn’t hard, but requires custom code on the Arduino to send data over the serial port and listen for instructions. After doing some research I stumbled upon a project called Firmata that provides a standardized way to do just this. I couldn’t figure out the MIDI-based message syntax Firmata uses at first. But a gentleman by the name of Andrew Craigie, on the Arduino forum, helped me work through that. (And I NEVER would have figured that out on my own. Thank god for “the internets.”)

With Andrew’s insight and a little effort, I wrote a little REALbasic application that can turn on and off an LED connected to a digital I/O pin on the Arduino. Exciting, I know…. I’ve created a four pound light switch! But genius starts with small steps. I want to make sure I have the details down correctly by setting this up to simultaneously control multiple LEDs. Then I’ll hook up some of the switches on K-9’s control panel to make sure I can listen properly… oh, and wire up the switches, board and computer in such a way that I don’t blow anything up. Details, details.

Polk Audio SurroundBar 360

Not too long after my failed Zvox experiment, I purchased a Polk Audio SurroundBar 360 DVD Theater. I had looked at several other single bar surround sound systems… including the Sony HT-CT100, a couple of Samsung’s and the Yamaha’s…. before choosing this one. I really liked a couple of things about it. First, it has enough bass not to need a sub-woofer. (I could add a subwoofer, but it doesn’t need one.) This made it less expensive than the Yahmaha’s, which require one for decent sound. The Polk is also much more flexible than the Sony, which puts all the I/O ports in the subwoofer. That would have forced me to keep  the sub, the TV and other components close to each other. Second, the Polk has a lot of inputs… including 3 optical audio jacks… allowing for future expansion (a blu-ray player or Wii).

My one complaint is that it doesn’t have any HDMI inputs. This means that I have to switch the video and video sources individually. It’s not a big deal… but does irritate the wife. Beyond that one nit, it sounds fantastic and is more than capable of filling my room (18×13) with rich, full sound.

If you do pick one of these up, Polk just make a firmware upgrade available that does a nice job of enhancing the sound. Initially,  background music / effects would drown out the dialogue on some programs (not all, but some). After the upgrade, the dialog has been crisp and clear on everything. Highly recommended.

Sabatino’s & Hollywood (Day 6)

So today we wrap up our stay in Southern California… heading to the airport in about 2 hours.

Yesterday we had an amazing brunch at Sabatino’s Sausage Company in Newport Beach (a must) and then drove to Hollywood to take a Starline bus tour. While there were many stops, we only got off at the La Brea tar pits -so the kids could see the animal fossils. Beyond that we didn’t want to tire them out before a big travel day. (Jack and I played a lot of eye spy from the roof of the double decker bus.) Then it was dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, whose name I can’t remember.

All in all, a nice way to close out a great trip.

Disney & Acquarium (Day 4 & 5)

Friday, we started with the character breakfast at Goofy’s Kitchen (Disneyland Hotel). The kids got autographs (or audio-graphs, if you are my son) from Pluto, Goofy, Chip, Dale and Cheppetto. We managed to fill all but 3 pages of their books. They met a lot of characters.

We went back to Disneyland for the morning. The kids wanted Mickey Mouse ear hats and they picked out “lovies.” We spent the rest of the day at California Adventure and saw a great stage version of Alladin. Highly recommended.

Today, we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific and toured the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Tomorrow we go touristy with brunch and a bus tour of LA.

While this has been a ridiculous amount of fun, we’re tired (in case you couldn’t tell from this post). I’m looking forward to not walking around tommorrow and sleeping in our own beds when we go home on Monday.

There’s something to be said for going back to the same place every year. You have the luxury of taking it slow. After all, you’ve probably done it a million times already and could always do it next year. Trips like this… it all needs to be done now and that takes a lot out of everyone.