Blog

New Toy: HP 54111D Digitizing Oscilloscope

John Havard — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:14:25 -0500

The HP 54111D was an amazing oscilloscope for its day, which happens to be around 1988. It was the scope that made analog scopes obsolete. Fast acquisition, large bandwidth, deep memories, math functions, automatic measurements, and pretty much everything one would expect from a modern instrument.

Rather than fiddly knobs, it has one Big Fat Multi-Purpose knob, 14 soft keys, numeric keypad, unit buttons, increment/decrement buttons, and seven fixed-function system control keys. It has two input channels, two trigger inputs with one duplicated on the back, and a clock input.

The buttons have that magical feel that's only available on electronics produced between 1978 and 1990, when it was possible to have high-quality pushbuttons and keycaps manufactured.

Naturally, I needed to create some sort of electronic circuit to throw at the scope so I bought a 555 timer, some resistors, some caps, a breadboard, and made an LED blinking device. The top image on this page shows a 220µF electrolytic capacitor charging and discharging as used in the 555 circuit.

I wanted to fiddle with ethernet, but I couldn't get it to work. Whipped out the M-Audio box, opened up Pro Tools, and created a couple of tracks with the signal generator plugin. If you've ever tuned a guitar by hand, you've heard beats caused by mixing two tones that are slightly off frequency. As you'd expect, it looks an AM signal. In my case, the peaks clipped because they exceeded the peak limits of the audio equipment. Otherwise, it would have been a perfect AM signal of the difference between the two frequencies.

I learned an important trick during that experiment. The Nyquist criterion states that to reconstruct a sine wave, one needs a sampling rate that's double the principal frequency being sampled. To reconstruct complex waveforms the sample rate must be four times the principal frequency. As this is an early digitizing scope, the scope plots points rather than lines for the waveform as that's what the scope actually captures. The computing power at the time made it rather impossible to interpolate those waveforms with a line in real time. To get a reasonable waveform appearance your choices are to oversample with an 8-bit resolution or oversample in the time domain and then shift your time base. Quadruple the sample rate and then shift it back to zoom out to what you actually want to see.

I later touched the probe to a cable plugged into the "wonderful" 2wire DSL modem and was greeted with a signal. It would seem I'm seeing a ground loop between the DSL modem and scope. It's 60Hz, and depending on the pin on the ethernet cable varies between 12v to 120v with approximately the same waveform.

I couldn't care less...

John Havard — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:54:56 -0500

Anything about the iPhone

For the 90% of America that doesn't have an iPhone, we don't care about the iPhone. Please report on something else.

.xxx TLD

Sure, porn is a multi-billion dollar industry, but that doesn't mean the bulk of the population really cares about a new top-level domain.

Gay couples as parents

Bible-thumping hypocrite wankers aside, who cares? I know a few individuals raised by gay couples, not a single one of them turned out to be gay. You would be surprised how not abnormal they are.

Marilyn Monroe's Chest X-rays

Really? This wasn't under the Odds and Detritus section?

Naked Cowboy as Important National News

When did a random busker become important national news? Oh right, it's in New York, which means it's instantly important to the whole world.

Michael Jackson

Can we please let the man rest in peace?

Tori Spelling thinks she spoke with Farrah Fawcet's spirit.

Shouldn't that be under the police blotter regarding some person having a mental episode and getting hauled off to the psych ward?

Lady Gaga's bus driver's amazing talent

Still don't care.

And that's the world according to cnn.com.

Megadeth, Testament, Exodus at The Tabernacle, Atlanta 3/21/2010

John Havard — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:40:00 +0000

Battered and bruised. Feet ache from standing for five hours amongst other things. Yeah, I went to a show. It was great. Everyone that I told about this show, you should have gone and you missed out.

First off, I-20 through Eastern Alabama can suck it. The speed limit drops to 55MPH for about 75 miles and the idiots on the road drive 15MPH. Took about an hour and a half longer than usual so I made it to Atlanta late. To top it off the hotel and Tabernacle are around CNN Center, which is dense, unfamiliar territory where half the streets are missing street signs. Fine if you're a local, not so good if you're using Google Maps. Left my ticket in the garage so I had to walk from the hotel to the garage, half a block away from the Tabernacle, climb some stairs, and make it to my car then walk back.

I made it in while Exodus was half way through their first song. I'm not well versed on their repertoire so I don't know anything about the set list other than THEY PLAYED THE TOXIC WALTZ and that other song of theirs that's popular. Exodus is a firm believer in The Pit, but the crowd was saving their energy for the main act. They forced a circle at the start of Toxic Waltz.  While it spread the entire width of the floor and about two thirds of the way to the back of the house, it stopped just as they were getting to, "...and you're injury bound..." While the lack of pit activity made us all wimps, I'm fine with that since I'm still recovering from back surgery. They played two more songs and their set was over.

I actually ducked out to the restroom as they were playing their last song as I knew there would be some turnover in the crowd between sets. Perfect opportunity to get to the front. Ended up at stage left, touching the barricade. More on that later.

After an excruciatingly long setup, Testament began to sound check. I heard some warm ups and I thought, "that sounds like Glen Drover, former guitarist for Megadeth and that band he formed with his brother up Canada." Sure enough, he's filling in for Alex Skolnick. I heard mention of this on Liquid Metal on Friday night but I didn't notice who was filling in as I had other things on my mind, like driving and eating and getting ramped up for the show.

Testament is amazing.  Chuck Billy, the vocalist, brings a stage presence infinitely larger than his massive, portly frame. The crowd was moving a bit more, but I ended up staying pretty much in the same spot. Testament decides to stir the crowd with "Into the Pit," but the crowd didn't do much. A pit formed and a small eddy hit me a couple of times, but nothing major. Megadeth was running late, Dave explained it during the Megadeth set, but the 2000 screaming fans kept me from understanding what he said.

So Testament finishes and they begin setup for the Megadeth set. The crowd starts squeezing and pushing. I get moved from my original spot to about a foot to the right.  This continues throughout the entire show and I end up half-way between center stage and stage right! I also ended up with another layer of bodies in front of me which meant I was at the front edge of the pit. I ended up in another eddy, moved around in a six foot circle, stopping right where I started. The crowd was pushing like crazy, and there were some kids thrashing in front of me so violently I wanted to throw them into the pit, but the pit was a gentleman's pit. Someone went down, someone helped them up. Things get a bit too intense, verging on fists flying, someone talked it down in a second and a half. The pit was safer than the crowd at the front, especially when it got near the end of the show. Everyone wanted picks, and the much coveted wrist bands. I ended up covered in sweat, most of it belonging to others. Was nearly kicked in the face by numerous crowd surfers, many of which ended up booted from the floor when they were dumped between the barricade and stage. One guy was dropped on his head before Megadeth's set started.

Folks, there's a reason venues don't like attendees bringing cameras. It's not that it somehow detracts from the value of the show, devalues the band's image, and so on. It's not that the flash is overly annoying to the performers; it's only mildly so. It's that those boxes, when combined with a few thousands hands in the air, blocks the view of everyone behind you. This isn't limited to proper cameras. Cell phones are just as bad when raised to the air.

The actual show was nothing less than amazing. First on stage was Shawn Drover. He amped the crowd with just a couple of waves, not that it took much, as the guitar tech was enough to get the crowd shouting, "MUSTAINE! MEGADETH! WOOOOOOOOOO!" Next up was Chris Broderick, the friendly giant. Next up was David Ellefson, whose appearance drew about ten times more insanity from the crowd. A few seconds later, Dave Mustaine. Crank it up another fifty decibels.

Don't even get me started on the set list. During the tear down/setup between sets I was surrounded by pot smokers, one of whom accidentally flicked the glowing ember from the head onto my hand while attempting to extinguish his medication. I had enough second hand smoke to make me hazy thanks to the three stoners behind me exhaling while standing a mere 4 inches behind me. They apologized for the whole burning my hand thing. Not a big deal. It's a concert, and the stoners were much better than "DUIDE I GOT DRUNK BEFOER WE LETF THE HO

ATELLL" guy.

So they played four songs, the entirety of Rust In Peace, and then another few songs. I had stated before that I hoped they played the first half of Holy Wars, stopped, played the entire show, and finished with the last half. Well, they halfway did that. They reprised the last bit of Holy Wars, starting with the pm'd harmonics. Dave didn't sing this time. When it got to where, "Next thing you know, they'll take my thoughts away," should be they drop the guitars, leaving bass and drums. Dave does some talking, guitars return, finish the song, and then the standard show ending "You've been great! We've been Megadeth! Thank you! Good night!" This was followed with the ceremonial tossing of picks and sticks, and Dave's wristbands. The show ended at approximately 23:15, a good 45 minutes later than the norm.

Everyone in the band interacts with the audience in such a way that it doesn't feel like you're watching rock stars perform. Yes, I know it's partly because of the small venue with a stage only four feet off the floor, but there is no arrogance, and there is no strong separation between The Band and The Audience. In-your-face solos and lead breaks are actually in your face, with a smile or Mustaine snarl, eye contact and a nod of acknowledgment

I finally remembered one of the reasons for the delay. Headcrusher was dedicated to a crew member that decided today would be a good day to quit.

elbows slammed into various parts of the body, including top of right wrist
someone's head shoved into right hip
someone's body came in horizontally and slammed into right hip
someone's head slammed into my back on top of the surgical scar
someone's elbow slammed into my back on top of the surgical scar, twice
someone came in horizontal onto the side of the my right knee as I was tripping over someone, shin pinned between the two. Could have been worse, but I managed to twist around so that I suffered no real damage
that happened again
someone from the pit ends up with the back of their head slamming into my tail bone and their torso slamming into my legs, knocking me over onto the kids in front. helped this guy up
pinned, pushed, tumbled and squeezed countless times.
between songs, as I was pushed further towards the right side someone else was trying to head left. elbow jammed into this person's ribs with audible cracking... over the noise of the crowd and over the 20dB of attenuation offered by the ear plugs!
Stepped on countless feet during the mass shovings
due to the pushing of others, nearly elbowed a girl in the head multiple times. As she was fairly short, she could easily duck so I would elbow the chest of the guy she was with

Another Fun Night

John Havard — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:51:55 +0000

The MacBook battery died. That's $150 to replace it including tax. Unfortunately the MacBook is falling apart and probably won't last another year or two to see a new battery worn down. No sense in throwing away money there. To top it off, my desktop machine's monitor, an old CRT, is starting to go permanently unfocused on anything above 80x25 text mode. I could spend $200 to $400 on a new LCD, but I rarely use the machine. Ultimately I was looking at blowing $500 on a laptop that could die at any moment and a monitor I'll rarely use. It's shameful to leave that nice, fast desktop machine wasted simply because I didn't have a lesser machine to play WoW and run FontLab and some actual windows-only apps, mainly games.

I was looking at cheap pc laptops at the various generic box-shaped depot-mart stores and noticed there are some rather nice large laptops with decent keyboards, dual and quad core cpus, 4GB RAM or more, two hard drives, blu-ray, and all sorts of nice toys. Even better, they often have CPUs that support hardware-assisted virtualization. This is necessary so I can get all the joys of running Windows 7, which I had no intention of wiping from the box, and Linux, and FreeBSD, and Plan 9, and whatever else I can throw on there too. I found an HP Pavilon dv7 that looked nice, under $1000 after tax.

After putting Windows 7 Home Premium through a few tests, and actually liking it, I downloaded VMware Workstation so I could run CentOS to play around with that Common Lisp webCMS I've been allegedly working on. Windows 7 is what Vista would have been had Microsoft had another couple of years after they realized that Longhorn was too ambitious. While I can't judge their actual code, the end result shows that somebody actually thought to check that whole "does it really work" thing. I have to admit I'm not certain if its a real improvement or if Vista was such a horrendous hunk of crap that my standards have sunk further than NBC's rapport with rabid Conan fans.

Ultimately I'm using Windows to run Linux. The VMware setup is better than dual booting as it's possible to run both OSs at the same and even integrate apps from the linux desktop with windows. It's a rather comfortable setup. Not only that, I have SecureCRT on windows for most of my ssh sessions which is better than an xterm+ssh most of the time. Even with out the Unity magic, the vmware tools make X behave quite well inside the vmware console. It transparently captures input, most of the time. It's not perfect and occasionally focus will switch from X to the Windows desktop, and sometimes that happens while typing so you get a screen full of repeated letters. Same goes with Unity and its occasionally weird color issues. This entire week I've used the laptop at work 95% of the time as XenCenter, the management console for XenServer, our chosen virtualization system at work, is Windows-only and my old netbook just doesn't cut it for long term use even with a real keyboard and monitor attached.

Back to tonight, I used the external hard drive I purchased around Christmas and finished the backups on my old desktop machine as well as synced up files I care about from that and the laptop, and got the MacBook in the mix as well. After that, I installed VMware ESXi on the old desktop. Dual dual core 2.6GHz CPUs, 4GB of ram, two 500GB disks, and that's about it. I need to get a low end video card for the machine instead of the space heater that's in there now. Also I could use four 1TB or larger disks for more storage. And replace that 4GB with 8GB. It's going to cost about $600 to get the machine into the desired state, but it is 100% usable now. As soon as I reimplement the services from the two existing machines onto this one, I'll take it to the colo.

Watched the last Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. Wasn't disappointed. Fallon's and The Roots' tribute at the start of Late Night was nice. Unfortunately I missed The Late Late Show's commentary as I had The Mighty Boosh set to a higher priority than Ferguson. Missed the MythBusters. While I was at it, changed the DVR to start recording Letterman instead of Tonight Show reruns.

This post ended up taking longer than expected as I got sidetracked on getting my first freebsd vm setup. Went through almost all packages looking for new, neat stuff. This is going to be my personal shell/home vm, so it must be quite featureful.

It's official: Conan's Last Tonight Show This Friday

John Havard — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:50:00 +0000

According to reports, NBC and O'Brien signed a deal late last night while we were all playing Apples to Apples at animenite™. He'll be free to go to do another show in September.

My bets are still on a move to CBS, replacing Letterman. I just don't see Fox stations as very willing to change their late night format, running syndicated sitcoms and such, which is a distinctive alternative to talk shows.

I'm with Conan

John Havard — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:20:25 +0000

During that time, I jumped from The Tonight Show to The Late Show to get my Dave fix. It certainly wasn't for Letterman's interviews. He's terrible when it comes to the interview. Letterman's innovation was to make the talk show less about promoting the guests and more about bringing in the entertainment. Ultimately, we want our celebrities to give us The Right Soundbites about their promotion, a few personal remarks, and a 30 second clip. Concentrate on the funny, less on the crap nobody cares about. Conan O'Brien took this format and made it his own, and he brought it with him to the Tonight Show. I would go on about how Craig Ferguson takes it even further, but this is post is mainly about Conan.

From 1993 to 2000 my late night schedule was catch the news on WAPT (ABC), flip over to WJTV (CBS) for Letterman, and then NBC for Conan, which meant sitting through a half hour of Cheers reruns. In 2000 I purchased a DISH Network setup and pretty much immediately stopped watching the local news broadcasts in favor of The Daily Show on Comedy Central. While I would occasionally flip over and watch the local news, I mostly skipped it in favor of reading local news on the web. Even today I mainly use the web to consume the local news. This changed in 2008 with Late Night with Conan O'Brien winding down in preparation for O'Brien's move to The Tonight Show as well as my acquisition of a DISH DVR. I skipped the local news and Leno to watch Conan. Sometimes live, but usually time shifted. During the transitional period I caught a few episodes of Leno, and realized I didn't miss much. Letterman also didn't get much love as he's aged a bit much and is best described as complacent, in the bad sense. It's still infinitely greater than the new Leno show.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon premiered in March of 2009, and I caught it a few episodes in to its run. It was okay, but around the same time Craig Ferguson had a Comedy Central special that got me hooked on his show. By the time Conan took over The Tonight Show, Fallon was classic NBC Must See TV. Combined with Conan's Tonight Show, I found myself watching WLBT, and hence NBC, from 10pm until 12:30am. I would even occasionally watch the completely unwatchable Last Call if an interesting guest was announced. Even more shocking, I would frequently find myself watching it straight through, completely negating the purpose of the DVR, and ruining my sleep schedule. This is why a dual tuner DVR is great. It solves the either/or problem when it comes to late night tv choices with "both". Right now my late night ritual entails watching Late Night and The Late Late Show up to the start of the interviews, and then call it a night and watch the interviews when time permits.

Unfortunately those idiots at NBC decided to protect their fallen star, Leno, by mucking with their brightest. Fallon is safe for now. Conan will be fine, but it's virtually certain he'll be leaving NBC at the end of the week. I can only hope the mentions of a move to Fox is a red herring, and Conan will actually replace Letterman. Dave seems like he's the sort that would say, "I wanted to retire early but was keeping the seat warm enough long enough for NBC to screw you over so we could bring you here." NBC had a million different choices for Leno. Syndicate him. Put him on an NBC-owned cable network. Sell his contract to some other network. Then again, they didn't want to risk splitting their viewership after losing half of it all after the new Leno show premiered. Mix in a few egos and stubbornness and you're in this situation.

I don't really have any Leno hate, but I don't have any Leno love. I can't stand his current show as it's completely boring. I've attempted to watch it four times, three of those at my parents' house. I just can't bring myself to watch more than a segment or two before I get up to do something, anything else. Sitting out in the freezing cold in pajamas is preferable.

No matter what happens, Conan will be fine. There's one major network without a late night show. There's another where the post-nightly-news slot has a guy who would like to retire. They're not going to let a man and his entire crew where even a guy playing trombone in the house band has rabid fans slip away into obscurity. NBC's idiocy will only serve to enrich everybody else and to further erase what few viewers it has left.

I bought a new laptop

John Havard — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:18:17 +0000

My MacBook is falling to pieces and last week its battery thoroughly died. You never realize how frequently an Apple MagSafe connector is disconnected until your battery is dead. After killing the power to the macbook several times, it was time to consider buying a new battery. That's $135 for something I'm not 100% certain will make it another year. Next up, the monitor for my desktop PC is going permanently fuzzy. It's a CRT, so I was looking to upgrade to a nice LCD to the tune of about $300. I also wanted to buy a server to replace one of my older machines at the colo, that's another $1200. It just so happens I was considering a machine similar to my desktop. So I could have spent $1635 on all that, or I could buy a decent laptop for about $900. The new laptop won.

It's an HP Pavillion dv7 or something like that. Dual core AMD, 4GB RAM. Dual 250GB disks. Three USB, one HDMI, one Firewire, ethernet, modem, blu-ray/dvd. It runs Windows 7 Home Premium. I've slapped VMWare Workstation on there so I can run Linux.

The Flavored Cigarette Factsheet, Annotated!

John Havard — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 01:20:00 +0000

A factsheet from the FDA gives various points, and the PDF version actually gives citations. The cited references, however, are weak and mostly reference surveys rather than rigorous scientific studies.

In 2004, 22.8% of 17-year-old smokers reported using flavored cigarettes over the past month, as compared to 6.7% of smokers over the age of 25.

Could it be that inexperienced smokers are more likely to experiment? What happens when a lack of choices are in the marketplace? Will the lack of flavored tobacco products result in fewer smokers, or will they simply stick with unflavored varieties?

A poll conducted in March 2008 found that one in five youngsters between the ages of 12 and 17 had seen flavored tobacco products or ads, while only one in 10 adults reported having seen them.

A poll. Clearly this is reliable scientific data. Could it be that adults are different than children and adolescents? Could it be that adults have learned to ignore advertising?

According to one study of youth smokers between the ages of 13 and 18, 52% of smokers who had heard of flavored cigarettes reported interest in trying them, and nearly 60% thought that flavored cigarettes would taste better than regular cigarettes.

Another survey! This survey conveniently neglected to poll adults so using it as a basis for banning flavored cigarettes as a gateway to youth smoking is without merit. The results of this survey also suggests flavored cigarettes are not a concern. Only 20% of youth smokers had tried flavored cigarettes. It also suggests that methol cigarettes are a bigger menace as 37% of youth smokers not only have tried a flavored cigarette but usually smokel menthols!

Studies of youth expectations around other flavored tobacco products like bidis and hookahs have found that young smokers report choosing flavored products over cigarettes because they “taste better” and are perceived to be “safer.”

This is misleading as the whole point of banning flavored cigarettes is banning flavored cigarettes. The two cited studies refer specifically to hookah, a waterpipe, and bidis, a thinner cigarette wrapped in a tendu leaf. It's clear why smokers would think those are safer.

Industry documents reveal clear patterns of designing flavored cigarettes to target youth.

[citation needed]

Advisors to one company developed concepts for a “youth cigarette,” including cola and apple flavors, and a “sweet flavor cigarette,” stating, “It’s a well-known fact that teenagers like sweet products. Honey might be considered.”

And children love dinosaurs!

A memo from another company instructed workers to “make a cigarette which is obviously youth oriented. This could involve cigarette name, blend, flavor and marketing technique....for example, a flavor which would be candy-like but give the satisfaction of a cigarette.”

Ahh, 1974. Back before there were major restrictions on tobacco advertising. Clearly, nothing has changed in 35 years.

Other internal documents describe sweetened products as “…for younger people, beginner cigarette smokers, teenagers . . . when you feel like a light smoke, want to be reminded of bubblegum.”

Not only does this point exhibit selective quoting, the reference document does not exist at the URL given in the PDF.

All tobacco products, including flavored tobacco products are as addictive and carry the same health risks as regular tobacco products.
An estimated 443,000 Americans die prematurely each year due to smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke.
More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides and murders combined.
Cigarette smoking causes many types of cancer, as well as heart disease and chronic lung diseases like emphysema. Smokeless tobacco products cause gum disease and cancers of the mouth.

Since all tobacco products are equally evil, let's treat all tobacco products the same. If you're going to ban Djarum, you must ban Marlboro.

Switch back to BlackBerry

John Havard — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:29:29 +0000

I didn't leave the BlackBerry platform out of disgust. I didn't leave it because I wanted something new and shiny. I simply needed a phone after I sent my Curve through the wash and the iPhone was cheaper at contract price. The iPhone was fun. Even with its flaws, even with as much as I complain, it does graphics like nobody's business with an interface that's better than any other phone on the market, as long as the app doesn't support orientation changes.

The ultimate example of the iPhone's features is Base Velocity's RadarScope. Pinch/flick zooming is there, and it's smooth. Details cleanly fade in and out as needed at each zoom level, well, more like zoom gradient. It's really that smooth. The interface is clean and any clickable item is finger-friendly. It's the only app I'll miss when I switch back to the BlackBerry.

More iPhone Idiocy - apprejections.com

John Havard — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:29:14 +0000

For example, one app was rejected for using private methods, even though they're not. In this case it looks like Apple's automated analyzer is inaccurate. Other apps are rejected for doing the right thing, as directed by Apple. Have a sense of humor? Apple doesn't allow that.

Don't get me wrong, the approval process does stop some evil, but that could easily be accomplished with BlackBerry-style code signing certificates. The AppStore model is there to make Apple plenty of money and to keep competition at bay. It's pretty much what you'd expect with the history of third-party syncing of iTunes songs: not allowed, never, never, never, NEVER! Apple is the gatekeeper. Apple is watching you. You are not free.

Just to reiterate other broken-by-design issues with the iPhone, let's not forget that you are limited to one app at a time. The reason for this is simple. The iPhone doesn't have any more RAM than other modern phones. While the user interfaces of other phones are uglier, they don't have the same resource requirements. Because of this they can concentrate on adding more functionality and even keep apps running in the background without impacting the normal function of the phone. With the iPhone you have to keep in mind that the user's only input method is the tip of the finger. Anything smaller than the keys on the on-screen keyboard is going to be difficult to hit. Want examples? Try any of the numerous solitaire games available for the iPhone. You will be annoyed!

Speaking of the numerous solitaire games, it may be difficult to figure out which app you want to use. Since the iPhone was a marketing success, it was bought by every trendy idiot and every gadget fiend on the planet. With the promise of an AppStore available on the phone itself prospectors jumped to the platform. Of course, all is not rosy. Some developers are leaving the platform in disgust.

Stuff.

John Havard — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:55:00 +0000

At least one twitterer seemed to think the previous post was serious. Also, the iPhone is still a hunk of crap.

It's a CONSPIRACY!1

John Havard — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:30:00 +0000

The Catholic Church has recently stated it has no problems with aliens. Then we have a confirmation of water ice on the moon's surface. This means one crucial piece of earth-style life exists on our space buddy, The Moon. What's next? World governments confirming the existence of extraterrestrials followed by open diplomatic exchanges with aliens, complete with Visitor embassies around the world and a consulate in your back yard? Could the abductions be for real? Do we need to prepare ourselves to stop alien mind control? Was David Icke not simply trying to make money with his numerous books? Was Richard Hoagland right all along?!

note: not serious

I Hate My iPhone!

John Havard — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:05:00 +0000

First off is the interface. There are four buttons and a switch controlling volume, power and locking, and the magic center button. Everything else is done via a touch screen. These facts are obvious to the world by now. What the non-iPhone using world may not be aware of is that the touch screen interface is terrible. Absolutely horrendous. It is an abomination of epic proportions. Typing on the iPhone just isn't enjoyable. The virtual keyboard has tiny buttons. With no tactile feedback, it's difficult to target fingers and thumbs to where they need to be so words come out ering, err, wrong. Sure, it tries to correct what you type, but half the time the suggestion is wrong. If it just had a real keyboard this wouldn't even be an issue as trillions of BlackBerry users, well, other than the Storm, will attest. The iPhone just isn't designed for text input. To add insult to injury, the touchscreen requires careful UI design. For example, in Solebon Solitaire, the Undo button is in the lower right hand corner, exactly where the meaty base of your thumb will certainly reside as you move cards around. Since the size of the screen is rather constrained, cards are extremely small, requiring the tip of a stylus to move them around, which is impossible with the type of touch interface used on the device. It requires meat, often meaning careful use of the tips of your fingers. I only use Solebon as an example, but there are many other instances of this problem in countless other apps. If you're targeting an area smaller than 7.5mm x 7.5mm, there will be problems.

So the touch input is terrible, that's not the only UI problem. As Apple knew that the vertically-oriented screen sometimes wouldn't cut it they put in tilt sensors to figure out the orientation of the device which can be used to flip the screen from vertical to horizontal and even to upside down should the app support it. This brings up another point. Among Apple's apps, orientation change is applied inconsistently. Some apps support it, others don't. Until recently, the SMS app did't support landscape mode, but now it does with a vengence. Apps will flip from one orientation to another with the slightest hint of going off-axis. Far too many times I'm responding to a text message or checking an email in bed due to the fact that work pretty much requires it, and with each use of the mail or SMS app, the screen rotates, and flips, and rotates some more.

Same goes for the iPod app, where the landscape orientation is agonizingly painful to use and is too easy to slip into even when you have the thing vertically oriented! For a company that founded sane UI design the designers of the iPod app completely ignored every rule at every step of the way. The auto-locking feature gets in the way, although that fix is simple enough: disable auto-lock. Oh wait, if you want battery power to last more than a half hour you'll want to hit the lock button which means you won't be able to get back to the iPod app without pressing the power/lock button or the home button and then sliding the unlock slider across the screen. If you want to change to a different album or artist, you need to precisely target the "Back" button at the top. If you use the pad of your thumb you are like to hit the top item in the list rather than the back button. The fact that Apple thinks this design is so great that they created the iPod Touch and morons actually buy it and enjoy it goes to show that the average man is clearly below average. If you're used to the wheel-type iPods, that interface required very little thought from the user, which is a good thing while trying to find a decent song while motoring down the interstate. The touch interface requires too much attention. Not only that, scrolling through a list is error prone. Sometimes it registers a click rather than touch and drag, but more commonly it registers a touch-and-drag rather than a click, leading to further annoyance.

Some have complained that the phone part of the iPhone is substandard. While it's not the best in the world, I must say that it is better than tolerable. Well, at least when it comes to dialing. For answering phone calls, that's a different matter. There's no send-to-voicemail feature from the lock screen. Only slide to answer and whatever undefined function the power/lock button performs, which seems to simply ignore the call. The interface while unlocked isn't much better.

In my personal experience with the devil phone, the text messaging interface is a disaster. It's slow, ugly, suffers from the scroll and click issue like any other list-oriented app and with the latest software release now has the annoying "change orientation at random" feature. The SMS app itself is slow to respond. Click on a conversation and wait, regardless of the length of that conversation. Since you are forced to use AT&T in the US, that means you have to suffer with their idiotic email-to-sms gateway. Each message gets its own long code, rather than Cingular's old method of using a single code. When a few dozen notifications are generated from something at work I get just as many conversations in the slow SMS app. Not only that, I have to kill each of the conversations rather than killing off one thread. Not really an iPhone problem, but it's still there partly due to Apple's decision to make the iPhone an exclusive device.

The home button is another abomination. For those of us used to every other cellular phone created since the beginning of time itself, there is a "back" button that pops off the current screen or app and takes you to the previous level. To get back to the main screen, there's a home button. The iPhone combines this into one single multi-fuzzy-function button. In apps, be it Apple-provided or third party, it pops back to the menu from which the app was launched, no questions asked. Clicking it while in a menu panel returns you to the home menu, unless you click it again, which brings up the search screen. A double click of this button will perform some function. That function can be one of the following limited choices: Home, Search, Phone Favorites, Camera, iPod. Oh, and you can also set it to always bring up the iPod controls when a song is playing. Double click from the lock screen always brings up the iPod controls.

Third party apps are tightly controlled. The only way to get an app to your phone is through the App Store, owned and controlled by Apple. Your app must be submitted to and approved by Apple against some secret criteria. While it is nice that they vette each app against at least one criteria: it actually runs without crashing on startup. That's about it as far as usability is concerned. as those who purchased I Am T-Pain can attest. The screen randomly shuts off. The phone locks up. Not fun. Tens of thousands of useless apps litter the store. Finding something useful is second only to getting an app into the store on the pain index.

On other platforms, such as the BlackBerry, privileged features that could cause trouble for the phone's owner, such as touching the in-phone addressbook, dialing, mucking with and integrating with the main message store, and such are controlled with a cryptographic signing key issued to the developer. For the BlackBerry, the cost of the key isn't out of reach for the hobbyist. It's primary goal is to make writing dangerous apps a minor hassle, but more importantly, traceable to a developer. Not only that, the key can be revoked, providing further security. With the iPhone, apps can't be revoked. Then again, they can't really do anything dangerous. Third party apps can't touch the internal addressbook. They can't touch the calendar. They can't run in the background. They can't do much of anything. Only recently did they add "push notifications" which is handy for certain types of applications, but it's nothing compared to the abilities of other platforms where background apps are as boring as a clean phone. However, this still doesn't allow a third-party calendar app to alert you when it's time to take your meds. It doesn't allow a non-official app to sync with some third-party service unless it emulates the only "open" option for mobile syncronization: Microsoft's ActiveSync.

The phone is not expandable. Want more storeage space? Sorry, you're stuck with the model you bought. Upgrading to a higher-capacity phone will cost $300 more than the non-contract price of any other phone available from AT&T. Seeing as how other smartphones that don't suck cost $350 to $500, the Apple options are insanely priced. Well, that is until your contract is up or you're eligible for an upgrade, which happens when you're 75% finished with your existing contract. It just so happens Apple releases a new version of the phone every 18 months, and the phone is available only with a two year contract. Highly suspicious if you ask me. Then there's the battery replacement issue: you can't. If you need the battery replaced you'll have to take it in for a service job. If it's under warranty, you're set. If not, you may as well buy a new phone.

I could write more, but that would make me want to throw this piece of crap phone against the wall and I can't afford a new phone right now.

AOL Spam Reports Idiocy

John Havard — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:20:00 +0000

Redacted-Address: redacted
Redacted-Address: redacted@

Seriously AOL. What's the point of that? They also mangle the headers so we can't tell if the mail was sent via a forward, and if so, whose forward. Even worse, AOL users will often mark something as spam even though they really meant Delete. Then there's the fact that the reports are one way. They don't make it easy to say, "Hey, this isn't really spam. Tell your customer to stop being such an idiot."

"Why Craig Ferguson Rocks" retracted

John Havard — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:03:08 +0000