I ordered a Dell Mini 9 online on 3 March 2009. I won't bother linking to Dell; don't bother going there.

See, they don't have any.

This didn't stop them from putting a huge "back to school" banner on the Japan website (school starts in April here), complete with a "Hurry! Sale ends tomorrow!" tagline.

Having read a lot about how easy it is to install MacOS on them, I thought it would be nice to have a tiny, low-powered, cheap laptop to carry around campus and take to conferences. Like the MacBook Air, but not a million billion dollars and requiring a dongle for ethernet and a dongle for video out (what good is an ultraportable laptop that requires you to carry a bunch of junk in order to use it???). And, reading that back just now, yeah, that would be cool.

For this reason, I ponied up my $400 or so (fully loaded--the most RAM and the biggest SSD drive) and prepared the materials needed to effect its transformation. The full amount was promptly deducted from my credit card.

Then it turned out that I wouldn't be getting the computer until after moving to my new place here in Kanagawa, so I needed to give them that address for shipping. But no worries. School didn't start until 8 April, and if I hadn't quite gotten all the Hackintosh bugs worked out yet by then, I could just use my MacBook.

Then the ship date was updated to 20 April.

...Ummm... Okay. This is not what I had in mind, but shortly after that is Golden Week, so I will have time to fix it up then and I can really start using it day-to-day after that, when the school year finally gets reallty underway and you don't have a public holiday every week (this sounds nice, but it's awful to try to plan a class like that).

The 20th came and went with no laptop. I checked the website.

15 May was the new date.

Recently, Obama presented his idea for a network of high-speed rail in America. This has prompted a lot of discussion in the blogotubes, and I would like to toss my two pennies on the already-towering mountain of copper.

I live in Japan, and enjoy having one of the best high speed passenger rail systems in the world. These trains are amazing. On time every time, fast, and the price is the same no matter where you are in the country.

Now let me point out why this has nothing to do with the situation in my home country of the US:

1. Japan is smaller than America.
   The distance between Tokyo and Osaka, for example, is not really that far, even though these are the two biggest cities in the country. This is like if NYC and LA were 250 miles (400km) apart, instead of almost 10 times that far (2444 miles / 3933km). The distances we're talking about in the US are ungodly huge. It is for this reason that we in the US (and our Aussie friends) have standardized on the automobile, not because we're lazy morons (the fact that we are lazy morons is a side issue).

Well, I officially hit year 3 5 days ago, and forgot all about it. Not because I'm not exercising any more, but because it's just a habitual thing I think about every day.

I hit a year at CSU in February (yeah.. I now know lots about .NET) and have ridden my bike to work every day except day one. So most of my exercise has been biking around town. On days when I can't find some distant errand to run, I take the long way home to stretch out the time it takes.

On weekends I generally take the dog for a run. I did a 5k the other day and counted that. It was kind of fun. I signed up for another one in April.

Anyway, not a lot to say. My weight has stayed rather stable around 135-150.. Since my wife has been pregnant and I've taken to consuming her leftovers, I hit 145. : ) I'm not sure what I'm going to do about a workout on the day the baby is born.. that one will be tough to negotiate..

Here are the numbers again:

And here's a link to the other posts about this

Sending SMS texts to friends in the US can really be a hassle if you live abroad. Some countries support it, some carriers support it, many do not. And even if you can do it, it can be expensive.

Google Labs to the rescue!

There is a (new?) feature to Gmail, available in the Labs tab of the Settings, that allows you to send texts to US cellphones via the chat client in Google. Here's what you do:

1) Log into your Gmail account (duh).

2) Click on "Settings" in the upper-right.

3) Click on "Labs" in the dark yellow bar at the top.

4) Scroll down until you see this:

--And click "Enable"

5) Return to Gmail, sign into chat, and enter a US cellphone number (include the "1" for long-distance) where it says "Search, add, or invite." It will probably ask you to give this contact a name.

6) Type your text and hit send!

It's great!

This is part 2 of my response to Wired's shoddy coverage of Japan's "hatred" for the iPhone which was exposed by AppleInsider in this damning piece.

Okay, yes, Wired's Brian X. Chen is an asshat who really should be fired for that stunt. And yes, the iPhone is not doing as bad as he says (BTW, SoftBank is not "giving the iPhone away;" it simply follows the same cost structure as all their other models--I pay ¥3300 a month toward the purchase of my iPhone, although I actually don't because I've been with SoftBank long enough that I get a heavy discount on that; this cost structure, as far as I understand it, is mandated by law). But there are some serious barriers to heavy Japanese uptake of the iPhone. Some of these could be fixed; some could not.

You may have read this damning piece about Wired's coverage of Japan's "hatred" for the iPhone. If you haven't, go read it now. I'll wait.

(Playing Sol Free on the iPhone... Operating my iTunes library from the iPhone... Checking mail on the iPhone...)

You done?

Good.

Basically, here's the thing: In academia, when we write a claim--any claim--we have to either back that claim up with data we've collected and analyzed, or we have to cite some other available source written by someone who did. This is to ensure that we aren't just pulling things out of our butts and lying to people.

And that, my friend, is why academics are better than journalists.

"Yeah, but, who cares?"--I hear you thinking aloud, "it's just a stupid puff piece about a phone."

Wel, in this case, yeah, it's not the end of the world if it's wrong. It isn't going to get anyone killed, but it could have a negative impact on Apple's stock price, which could mean lost jobs, which could add to the unemployment problem in the US where the company is based, which could add to the overall economic downturn...

Everything is connected, and in the information age, putting out bad information from a position of authority, whether it be deliberate or negligent, is serious business. Wired is supposedly a respected and respectable technology magazine. In this case, a writer abused that reputation to try to get away with just throwing some crap on paper and cashing his paycheck.

And that's not right.

So every couple days or so I get a new comment on the blarg (most of them on this one article) that sounds like this:

You are really great
Submitted by Essay Help (not verified) on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 11:15pm.

You are really great dude.that's a really cool idea. i may use that in my own filing system.

Now, I'd like to be flattered that this person thinks I am "a really great dude".. but I just can't believe someone talks like that. More likely, they'd like to get a link displayed on my site to their site with the terms "Essay Help" on it in order to boost their site's pagerank.

(For those that aren't familiar Google has a rather ingenious setup where they assume that if someone takes the time to link to you, they like you and you're important. If thousands of sites link to you, you're very important. Additionally, the term they use in the link text ends up being terribly accurate as keyword metadata.)

Out of the box, drupal comments allow for posters to leave their 'homepage' as one of the terms in the comment. This is a pretty cool way to kind of.. spread good will between sites. At the same time, the nasty side of it is that my site ends up contributing to the endorsement of all kinds of stupid crap on the net... without me actually thinking those people are important.

So, I hacked into drupal's guts and turned that off. Am I just being a cranky grinch? or am I doing my part to enforce search engine accuracy?

I guess I leave the question to this thread's comments, should you feel inspired. I'm afraid you can't link to your site though. ; )

So for the past two months, Celeste and I have incurred massive phone bills with At&t. After the first big one, I accepted that oops, yup, we talk more than our rate plan will allow. I called At&t up, and the nice man there happily sold me a larger rate plan for more money. I asked him, "So, when does this go into effect? this month? (it was january 19th) Like, we'll have more minutes now?" He said "Yes sir."

So, it's February 6th, and I've got another bill from At&t for $360 bucks. I called them up hoping this was a billing mistake, but of course... Corporations never make billing mistakes. When the computer's all you've got, what the computer says is the word of god.

I tried to explain my conversation with At&t call center Monkey1 to At&t Monkey2 and then Monkey2's supervisor. Both of them checked with 'the word of god', and there was no record of Monkey1's words.
(in their defense, they were willing to halve the overage charges.)

Here's the thing.. (sorry it took me so long to get here) Throughout this entire conversation, I felt completely powerless. At&t holds all the cards. I signed their contract, so I can't take my business elsewhere, if they wrong me, I've got more or less no recourse. This power imbalance translated all the way down to Monkey2, who acted like I should feel lucky that she was willing to work with me as much as they have, and that she CAN transfer me to her manager, but then the huge favor she's doing for me could be taken away because I'm making waves.

Yes, it's my own damned fault. I sold my soul to Apple and by extension to At&t. I sold what little power I would have had over their actions for a cheaper iPhone. Really though, how much power are we talking about here? Enough to change the motivations of Monkey2? Probably not.

(batty will hate this but:)

Well, I rolled around to a whole year of the bike commute and forgot all about it. Like most things if you do it long enough it's a habit.

Here are the numbers:

Those are pretty averaged.. I think my mileage is quite a bit more than that.

I was working on the bike the other day and wondering why I'm having to replace crap all the time... It didn't occur to me that I'd been riding it more than a year, and that for this winter at least, it's been parked outside during my 9-5. : (

Anyway, not much to say. I never drove to work. Even to the point of riding in, then riding home to get my car so I could make it to appointments out of town, etc.

I rode in all kinds of weather, and only wussed once or twice. We had one day when I woke up and windchill was at -30 or so.. I worked from home for the morning and went in at noon.

Oh, I also had one sick day, which suuuucked.. I felt fine in the morning, and had to pedal my ass home at around 11 with a massive headachey fever thing. I puked in a creek by my house.

I love my bike.

I bought an e-book yesterday. I don't have a microsoft reader compatible device, but I bought it in reader format.

I paid $17 dollars to Neal Stephenson, because I generally like his books. I paid, finished checkout, then spent the next 45 minutes or so installing microsoft reader, so I could download the file, and rip the drm off of it in order to get it to plain html (to read on the iphone). I did all this because I felt I should pay Neal for his work, but I didn't want a dead tree copy of it.

Had I not had this fuzzy motivation, I could have gone to IRC and had a drm free copy at no cost in probably.. 30 seconds, but Neal wouldn't have seen a dime.

So, here's the problem you face as artists. You no longer control the distribution of your work. It's got legs baby. If you charge too much, people will steal it. If you don't distribute it in a format people can use, people will convert it for you to the platform of their choice (after stealing it).

I know it seems like it sucks, but I truly believe you'll do alright! The business now is about fairness and an actual relationship with your audience. If we like your work and want to see more of it we'll support you. It's direct patronage.

Why you need a tip jar

At this point very few people are doing digital distribution that is palatable. I know that sometimes with agents and publishers and lawyers in the mix that all gets muddied. The thing to remember is that none of those people can control your audience or the distribution method any more. We choose it. Sorry, but we're in control again, it's the nature of the net.

So go with the flow. Put up a simple app on your website that says: "like what I do? leave me a tip!" and take donations. Outwardly, you don't need to be any clearer than that. Inwardly, count every cent of that money as a vote against closed formats and DRM. (by buying the microsoft reader format, I in effect voted FOR DRM.. which I'd prefer to avoid.)

Your publisher, rather predictably will then say something like "Your tips are taking money from us!". Tell them that in fact, they're not. People that want a printed book will still buy a printed book. People that want to put up with their ham handed attempts at ebook publishing with draconian DRM, will still put up with it. The ones that wouldn't have, were never their customers. We're yours, artist.. and we're damned loyal to you, if you let us be. ; )