Japanese I can’t translate

未だ筈は筈の儘 = “mada hazu wa hazu no mama”.

I came across this one quite a while ago, and all my teacher could say about it at the time was that she couldn’t think of a way to explain it in English.

It’s not fair…

Five people at the table. Two of them have never, ever heard the phrases “jump the shark” or “break the fourth wall”.

Why, oh why, if the pod people are here, aren’t they replacing my friends with alien zombie catgirls?

Today’s mail: scam, fraud, and cash

I had three entertaining items in the mail today:

1. an equity loan offer with highly deceptive terms, from a company with an important-sounding name that was obviously made up for the occasion.
2. a transparently fraudulent “loan modification” offer pretending to be from the bank that holds my mortgage.
3. a report that really was from my bank, informing me that my escrow account is so healthy that not only are they cutting my mortgage payment by $150/month, but also that they’re legally required to refund the excess money that’s accumulated, so here’s a check for $1,500.

So, one out of three for the day. Not bad.

Confessions…

If I were offered the choice between a box of Honeycomb and sex with a supermodel, I’d have to ask which supermodel.

Amazon recommends…

You know, this one actually makes sense. Unlike the “you bought a hard drive, so you might like truffle oil” recommendations I usually get.

WoW performance on the S12/ION

Fledge asked about the gaming performance on my ION-equipped Lenovo S12. At the time, the only benchmark I had was that it was possible to ride an epic mount around in Dalaran one evening at about 6 frames/second, but there’s really nothing you can do to get decent performance in Dal, on any machine; WoW just can’t handle a big crowd of people.

So, a more realistic test. Last night, I created a brand new level 1 human warlock named Lenova and ran her up to level 7. My framerate never dropped below 18 fps in the starter area, and averaged 24 fps there and in Elwynn Forest. It dipped to 14 briefly when I went into Goldshire (duels and a crowd), averaged 40+ in the mines, hit 12 in the main square of Stormwind (big crowd), but stayed a steady 15 outside the bank in Ironforge (moderate crowd). I even watched the character-intro movie, and it only had a few moments of choppy framerates; for the most part it was quite smooth, as was the gryphon flight back from Ironforge to Stormwind.

I had the visual effects settings pretty low, obviously, but this was at a full 1280x800, with the music and ambient sound on.

[Unrelated to gaming, but I like the fact that Win7 on the S12 is automatically switching to hibernate after the machine has been asleep for a few hours, and correctly resuming.]

[Update: we just tried the Star Trek Online headstart, and just flying around in space, we could get 10+ fps; once we entered a space station (which had a rapper as background “music”; word to my Federation homies, blech), it dropped to 5-6 fps, and lowering the resolution didn’t help much. The Atom just doesn’t have the guts, even assisted by an ION.]

Amazon versus Macmillan

Most people who’ve opined on the current Amazon/Macmillan flap have reflexively sided with Macmillan, without waiting for statements from either side. When the CEO of Macmillan issued a statement explaining that they went to Amazon to renegotiate their contract and the two sides failed to come to agreement, this was taken as further evidence that Amazon was Teh Evil and should be shunned from now on.

I read that statement a little differently.

M: “Okay, Amazon, our current terms are A. We want B (higher retail prices for ebooks), but if you don’t like that, you can have C (current pricing, but no ebook sales for N weeks after release).”

A: “We like A. Our customers like A. We’d like to stick with A.”

M: “No deal.”

A: “Okay. With no contract, though, we’ll have to stop selling your books. Today.”

M: (ohshittheydidn’tblink)

[Update: when the Kindle blog was updated with a “we’ll have to cave in to M’s demands eventually, because we want to sell their books”, this was immediately spun as a massive victory for Macmillan (and, in many eyes, for “us”). It’s now Tuesday, February 2nd, though, and a spot check does not show Amazon selling Macmillan books again. Apparently people were so excited that they missed the word “eventually”. As of right now, the deal’s still off, which has got to be hitting Macmillan where it hurts.]

Bad case of Flash

John Nack of Adobe argues that because Flash gave us online video, we shouldn’t focus exclusively on its flaws. This is a bit like saying that because a hooker got you off, the burning rash is nothing to kick up a fuss about.

…and that’s why I use ClickToFlash in Safari, Flashblock for Firefox, etc. Also, John? Adobe Air sucks for all the same reasons Flash does, making, for instance, many sections of the Adobe site (no longer really part of the web) excrutiating to use. What do you suggest as compensation for that sucking chest wound?

No, wait, I’ve got the name for it!

It just came to me in a flash (but not with Flash, because that would make Steve mad). Apple’s in the hardware business, and the tablet is not a standalone device, so you need something to connect it to. If you have a home machine and a carry-around tablet, then you don’t want a laptop, you want an all-in-one desktop. An iMac. Hence the name for the tablet:

iTosh

“iMac and iTosh”, or perhaps, “I Mac and Tosh”.

Dear Steve Jobs: why carry an iPad?

Student tool?

The iBookstore format is ePub, which has relatively limited layout support, making it a poor fit for most textbooks. Apple has not announced any support for Adobe Digital Editions, and non-DRM PDF textbooks are a pipe dream (feel free to solve this problem next, though, if you’re up for a challenge). Also, the tiny on-screen keyboard with no support for a stylus means no serious note-taking. You can tweet and fingerpaint, but that’s about it, so you’d still need to carry actual notebooks. If you were, say, going to the library to work on a paper, do you take the iPad and an external keyboard, or just carry your laptop?

Carry it to meetings?

No remote for using it in presentations, need to carry a dongle to attach it to a projector, no serious note-taking, microphone unlikely to work well for audio notes.

Errand-running?

Pretty big for holding your shopping list, no GPS for finding your way around (although WiFi-based triangulation may work in some areas), no camera for scanning bar-codes.

Commuting?

Only on a train or bus, and definitely only with an optional case to reduce the risk of dropping it (and also hide the big shiny expensive steal-me gadget).

Visiting friends and family?

“Hey, check out the new pictures of the kids! Oh, you want a copy? Hmm, I can’t plug it into your computer because it will try to sync, so maybe if I plug in the SD dongle and copy it to a card from your camera, you can transfer it to your machine later. Oh fuck it, I’ll just mail you the Flickr link.”

Camping?

No GPS, no offline mapping, poor 3G pretty much anywhere interesting, and can’t read a book after the “up to 10 hour” battery life is over.

Not an exhaustive list, to be sure, but so far, every reason I can think of to carry this gadget involves either doing without some functionality or carrying it in addition to something else, like pen and paper, a laptop, a phone, a GPS, a camera, or some of the many optional accessories. Taking notes? Add a Bluetooth keyboard or the special dock. Transferring data, including attaching it to a larger display? Carry dongles and cables. Etc, etc.

It’s 7.5x9.5x0.5 inches and weighs a pound and a half. Add a case to protect it from damage, and you’re carrying around a cookbook. In fact, you’re carrying around this cookbook. I could carry this cookbook everywhere I go, but it’s big enough that I wouldn’t do so without a good reason. Take a look at the top 100 applications for the iPhone; are any of them compelling enough to justify carrying a cookbook around? I haven’t found one, and the notoriously capricious approval process makes it unlikely a compelling app will get released quickly, and the notoriously clunky App Store makes it unlikely you’ll find out about it if it does.

Apple promises optimized versions of iWork, but even in landscape mode, the on-screen keyboard is no bigger than the one on the original 7-inch EeePC. And if you put the iPad in a comfortable position for typing, the shiny screen is at an awkward angle for viewing, especially in less-than-perfect lighting.

Am I rationalizing my recent purchase of a Lenovo S12 netbook, and wishing I’d saved my pennies for the iComeToJesusTablet? No. Not only didn’t I expect the iPad to ship before March, I never expect the 1.0 release of any Apple product to be stable, so I wouldn’t have bought one until at least June anyway, and in any case, I can afford to own both. Right now, though, I don’t want one, because I can only envision using it around the house, and all my stuff is already there, so why bother?

I get some use out of the iPod Touch, and I’ve often wished for a scaled-up version, but what I wanted scaled up was the capability as much as the size. The iPad has the size (very close to B5, with a bigger-than-B6 screen), but is basically limited to consuming content created on actual computers. So why not just carry a real computer when you want to work, and an iPod when you only need canned content?

Rejected names for the iPad

[Update: I’m leaning towards iSpork – only good for consuming canned goods; if you want to cook, it’s the wrong tool]

• iMaxi
• iReadOnly
• iCantTakeNotes
• iCanHazDongles?
• iGotRejectedByTheAppStore
• iPodTouchButBigger
• iPoundAndAHalf
• iTrophyWife
• iOnlyConsumeContentCreatedElsewhere
• iStreamPornOver3G
• iHuntAndPeck
• iBling
• iWTF
• iDrinkKoolaid
• iLikedTheNewtonBetter

Modern Times

Tomorrow morning, Steve Jobs speaks. Tomorrow night, President Obama speaks. One of these speeches will be filled with hope, change, and a bright economic future. The other will be the State of the Union.

(yeah, I was off by a day the first time…)

Nami’s cup size…

Speaking of One Piece, here’s a picture of a well-stacked Nami, courtesy of Mari Yaguchi’s blog (Mari sings the current OP for the series):

Making Windows Work

In the Mac/PC wars, I’ve occasionally commented that my primary computer is a Mac because it’s simply more useful to me right out of the box, and it takes less work to add the rest of what I need. Well, a few weeks ago the Lenovo outlet store had a few refurbished (~30% off retail price) S12 netbooks with the nVidia ION chipset that replaces the pathetic Intel shared graphics that the Atom comes with, and while I waited for it to ship, I started assembling things to install.

[Update: in the essential column, add GetGnuWin32, the wrapper for the GnuWin32 packages. Better than CygWin, less conceptually disgusting than Portable Ubuntu]

Bare minimum to make a computer more than a toy (supplied with every Mac):

• Perl (I used Strawberry, not ActivePerl)
  
• GNU Emacs
  
• Putty (SSH)
  
• Sqlite
  
• Quicktime
  
• Update: Virtual CloneDrive (mount ISO images)
  

Equivalent to extremely useful supplied Mac software:

• Safari/Firefox/Chrome
  
• iTunes
  
• TrueCrypt
  
• PasswordSafe
  
• Sharpkeys (the CapsLock-killer; sadly doesn’t install under Win7)
  
• SecureW2 TTLS (sadly no longer free, despite all earlier versions being GPL’d)
  

Other stuff that helps make a laptop useful:

• 3G drivers (AT&T USBConnect Mercury)
  
• Adobe Flash 10.1 (beta, with hw-accelerated video)
  
• CCCP codec pack (like Perian on the Mac)
  
• DisplayLink
  
• GPG4Win
  
• Mercurial
  
• Microsoft Office
  
• Python
  
• RealVNC
  
• TeamSpeak
  
• VLC
  
• Windows Security Essentials
  

Fun:

• Steam
  
• Good Old Games: Fallout, Fallout 2, Might & Magic 6
  
• World of Warcraft
  
• Champions Online
  

I still need to find something that will mount ISO images as file systems, buy a cheap bare drive to use for backups, and bump the RAM from 2GB to 3GB, but I’m set for now. I wish that the ION version of the S12 didn’t replace the ExpressCard slot with an HDMI port, and I’d love to find a Bluetooth mouse that holds up under regular use, but this is a nice little cool-running carry-around machine, with reasonable performance and battery life.

Oh, and I installed the Nanami OS-tan theme that shipped with Japanese pre-orders of Windows 7. :-)

Software, good and bad

Good: Sony’s SPUDownloadManager. Lost the install CD for a Sony product, or is it old enough that Microsoft has released two new operating systems since you bought it? Plug the device into your computer, run this tool, and it installs the latest versions of all the relevant software and drivers.

Bad: Lenovo’s VeriFace. This is a biometric authentication system that uses your laptop’s built-in camera to scan your face as your password, and record the faces of people who fail to login. It includes an optional check to make sure that it isn’t being fooled by a photo, but it’s still useless, because it only works under excellent lighting conditions. You can spend upwards of a minute finding good light and staring at the screen until it recognizes you, or you can just type your password.