01.23.08
Posted in Distractions, Reviews, Tech at 6:21 pm by Sulla
I don’t think I’m the cell phone industry’s favorite client. I tend to hold onto my phones for years, until they’re so old the tech guys ask to have them carbon dated.
I’d bought my last new phone a couple years ago, on my first (and only) Black Friday shopping experience. I was long past my two year contract, and my phone – a workhorse Sanyo – was finally too abused to trust as a traveling phone. I gave into the hype, braved the round-the-block crowds, and picked up a Samsung “home entertainment center” phone that did all sorts of things the Sanyo had not, including an accelerometer-enabled “beat box” (shake it and you’d get the wooga-wooga scratch-scratch that is all the rage with the kids these days). First time I broke out the beat box, my brother said, “you remember that time, just before you started doing that? Good times…”
It was my first foray into the concept of phone-as-fun. It had faster Internet, streaming video, better graphics, a camera/camcorder with optical zoom, a downloadable music store and stereo playback, an alarm scheduler that worked better for me than any Franklin Planner…it actually had some coolness to it. And no extensible antenna.
It held up pretty darn well. Not even the iPhone tempted me away. But time passes, and eventually the contract expired and I was free to consider other phones. My wife’s phone, a bottom-feeder LG-225, had been replaced no fewer than four times; my phone had been through the wringer with little more than a slightly cracked screen.
We’ve been discussing our options for months. Smart phone? Media phone? Sprint? Helio? Verizon? iPhone? We trolled the phone stores at every opportunity, giving the phones a test drive. I tried an LG Musiq for a few weeks; well regarded by Consumer Reports, it had some nice features, including real-time traffic and navigation in a package thinner and blacker and cooler than any phone I’d ever tried. When you touched the outside controls, they buzzed. Ooh.
But in the end, I went with a sort of convergence device. I own a Palm T|X PDA, and my best chance to lighten my pockets was to pick something that could run those Palm apps I’d come to rely on.
We ended up going with a pair of the Palm Centro – black for me, pink (champagne blush) for her. It’s a smaller cousin to the Palm Treo 755p, with really tiny keys – but it’s surprisingly easy to type on. Its Internet is fast enough; Google Maps looks terrific on it; I can finally maintain my calendar on my phone through Outlook; it’s got SuDoku; and because my wife and I have matching phones, we can synchronize our calendars with little effort. I can run my favorite apps, including Documents to Go for creating Excel spreadsheets and Word documents.
The phone isn’t perfect. The screen, while larger than my other phones, is much smaller than the Palm T|X. The keyboard takes some getting used to. For some reason, incoming calls still read “Unknown caller” even after I’ve added it to my contacts list with a name. I’m not a big fan of the Palm Hotsync method, which takes longer than Windows Mobile’s activesync. I can crash the thing at will, but cannot will it to NOT crash, which happens far too often. And uninstalling apps can be a nightmare.
But all things considered it’s been a good choice, and I think I can live with it for at least two years.
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11.02.07
Posted in Politics, Reviews at 5:03 pm by Sulla
When I was a kid, my dad took me to Sacramento. I’d hoped to meet Governor Reagan, whose role as the monkey’s costar in Bedtime for Bonzo impressed me more than his position as the Big Kahuna of Kaleefornia. Alas, it didn’t work out, but I never forgot the excitement at the prospect.
Years later, I interned in Washington, DC. Reagan was President, and my first day on the job I was taken to one of his speeches. It was worth the wait; Reagan charmed my socks off. He was the only governor I knew as a kid, and the first president I cast a vote for. And I’ve lived long enough to see his accomplishments praised by those who savaged him when he was in office.
One of the charges frequently leveled at Reagan was that he was an amiable dunce. Saturday Night Live once parodied Reagan by showing him as the mastermind behind his own administration. (“ha ha! as if!”) Turns out they were more right than they knew.
I recently downloaded Reagan in his own Voice from Audible, which offers a selection of Reagan’s three-minute radio spots from 1975 through 1980. This is the period between his exit from the California statehouse, and the launch of his presidential campaign in 1980. In the earlier work “Reagan in his own hand,” compiler Kiron Skinner had discovered and published a number of those radio spots, which Reagan had written in longhand on yellow legal pads. These spots were almost completely the product of Reagan’s own mind and voice – no ghost writers, no editors. Just a man, a pad and pen, and a microphone, covering issues that concerned him most.
The audio version is less than six hours long, but it’s a lengthy trip through a tumultuous period in our history – post-Watergate Washington, the devastation in Vietnam and Cambodia after our withdrawal, energy crises, Iranian hostage crises, Soviet expansionism, the stagflation and malaise that were Jimmy Carter’s gifts to America….there was no lack of things to discuss, and discuss them Reagan did, in his earnest but optimistic style that came from a solid core of belief.
The selection of radio spots are interspersed with commentary from the editor and from people who knew and worked with or for Reagan in those days, adding a valuable context. Even Nancy Reagan makes an appearance. As good as the book was, I love this audiobook, which is more like a radio documentary. Even now, thirty years later, Reagan’s voice has the power to inspire, amuse, and motivate.
It’s been nearly 20 years since Ronald Reagan left the national stage, but the current crop of Republican candidates contort themselves mightily to try to fill his shadow. A few hours with Reagan in his own Voice will remind you why they’re so eager to do so.
[n.b. this is not an ad or a paid review. I just really liked it.]
I can’t help but compare and contrast Reagan to the current president, George W. Bush. This man is also a man of firm convictions who has held his ground in the face of enormous opposition, even within his own party. Where Bush has Iraq and the War on Terror, Reagan had Iran-Contra. Bush and Reagan both had a fatal space shuttle explosion on their watch. Both have taken controversial stances on illegal immigration. Both faced recession and acts of terror, and responded with mixed results. Bush is not the heir to Reagan, but he has faced similar charges – dimwitted, incurious, detached, a “manager” who is a mere figurehead for shadowy lurking powers.
Time has begun to vindicate Reagan. How will Bush hold up over time? I look forward to finding out, but I suspect that in 20 years, his reputation will be better than it is now.
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09.26.07
Posted in Distractions, Reviews, Tech at 7:57 pm by Sulla
My wife recently enrolled in an Italian class, in part to underscore her intent to vacation in Tuscany. (mmmmm, Italian cuisine….) She picks up languages quickly, having dabbled in several (Irish, Russian). She’s not wildly interested in Spanish, partly because of the efforts of so many in our area to force the language upon us.
Me, I don’t mind Spanish, though I’ve only danced around the edges of it. I’ve never taken a class, though I watch a ton of Super Sabado Gigante and El Gordo y la flaca…for the language training, of course. *ahem* I’ve looked at any number of offerings on Audible.com and elsewhere, but the more interesting courses are also the more expensive. I like Rosetta Stone in particular, but its price tag is close to tuition on one (or more) college courses. Some online sites offer some instruction for free, but their quality varies.
Enter LiveMocha, which was unveiled this week. For a detailed introduction to the site and its mission, see its blog, here.
LiveMocha reminds me most of Rosetta Stone, though this is not as immersive as Rosetta’s 3.0 offering (CD and online) that hears and grades your spoken language. Another limitation is that it tends to give you four static images at a time, so the process of elimination during the exercises is easier (Rosetta Stone mixes up the images and their locations for every question).
These two limitations aside, LiveMocha is a breeze to use. It offers the equivalent of 160 hours of instruction (in college terms, 101, 102, 201, and 202 courses) for languages they deem important in the 21st century, including Spanish, English, Hindi, and Mandarin – each of which has at least 1 billion speakers. Those are the four dominant languages in my workplace. French and German are also offered, for those who do a lot of business in the EU. As part of your profile you can specify which languages you (1) speak and are (2) learning, and those lists cover dozens of languages; this lets you search for and connect with people who can or want to converse in more than just the six languages offered. Even so, I hope they eventually increase the offered courses to languages such as Korean and Japanese, Latin and Italian.
The lessons do build on one another, using and extending vocabulary. I take notes in an open Notepad window as I go. I suppose you could cheat, but if the idea is to lear, why would you?
Each course consists of one or more units, which in turn is composed of one or more lessons. Each lesson has four sections: learning, where you’re given 40 words, phrases, and/or sentences.
The Live part of LiveMocha is its social networking, and this is where I see great potential in its “21st century, Web 2.0″ approach. You don’t just enroll in a language; you can’t help but see who ELSE is enrolled. You can see how well they’re doing in your course. If you’re competitive, the Leader Board keeps you motivated not just to finish the lessons, but to do as well as possible. (“What? He’s three points ahead of me? Gaaa! Wait until Unit 8, darn ya!”) When you’re feeling more cooperative, there are options for inviting and accepting Friends who are learning, teaching, or speaking any “common” language, for a natural stable of pen pals. This is particularly useful for languages like Mandarin and Hindi; for Spanish conversation, I can yell at my neighbor’s kids. (¿cómo se dice “hey you kids, get off our lawn”?)
The social networking could be a mixed bag. My first day I was inundated with mail from a “hey, sexy!” spambot, though to the site’s credit, that ended quickly and I haven’t been bugged since. I’ve accepted several friend requests from fellow travelers in Spanish 101, and from an instructor. I’m still at “¿Dondé está casa de Pepe?” stage and haven’t started chatting yet, but the site’s philosophy that language is meant to be USED is common sense, and conversing with folks at varying levels means you can butcher the lingo with fellow n00bs, get schooled by the l33t, and in turn shepherd the young minds filled with mush into the correct path of your native tongue.
The site recommends one lesson per week. Heh; Internet Time mocks such a glacial pace. I signed on 48 hours ago, and I’m 2/3 of the way through the first course. I don’t have all the content memorized, but it’s been sticking as I go along, and I’m feeling accomplished, as this song will attest:
All in all, I give LiveMocha three stars, and say Check it out.
(h/t to Hot Air for the video)
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07.21.07
Posted in Entertainment, Reviews at 9:48 pm by Sulla
As of Saturday evening, only the most hard core speed readers have managed to finish the latest and last in the Potter series.
Self-imposed insomnia also helped.
First impressions: Yowsa.
More than a few “A ha! I KNEW it!” moments.
Many “I wasn’t expecting that…” character moments.
Several laugh-out-loud bits, and a few that choked me up.
And a couple of lines that, when filmed, will be closed captioned with “PWN3D” in big bold letters.
J.K. Rowling has said that once people finished the seventh book, they’d have little doubt about her religious beliefs, and that’s a fair statement. Sin and depredation, forgiveness and redemption, are shot throughout, and the snitch isn’t the only thing that’s golden. Actions have consequences in the Potterverse, and few deeds go unrewarded, for good or ill.
It drags in spots, but all in all an engrossing read, and not that many loose ends that might have left me screaming for more…unless you count the epilogue. Epilogues invariably raise more questions than they answer.
Could Rowling return to the Potterverse? My guess is, yes…but I could see it returning through other characters, either before or after Harry, with The Boy Who Lived playing a minor role, if any at all. Rowling’s wizarding world has a vastness of history and geography. She could spend the rest of her life playing in this sandbox, if she chooses.
Part of me hopes she doesn’t, and spins a whole new tale, just to see what she comes up with.
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07.17.07
Posted in Entertainment, Reviews at 1:59 pm by Sulla
Reading Orson Scott Card’s glowing review of the latest Harry Potter film didn’t change my opinion, though I did find myself in agreement on several points.
Card, the back-to-back Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, knows something about writing about smart, talented, and motivated kids who transform the world. He also knows a bit about “do-overs,” having re-written several of his earlier novels (e.g. Treason) because he wasn’t satisfied the first time, and return to the Ender’s Game events from a new perspective to fill in the blanks that people – people like me, at any rate – cared infinitely more about than the fast-forward-three-millenniums branch he started with.
Note to Hollywood: give me my Ender’s Game movie. I’ve been waiting over 25 years.
Anyway, back to Scott and Harry:
Read the rest of this entry »
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