Bob Congdon

Objectified

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:30:00 GMT

Objectified is feature-length indie documentary about industrial design. A look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets.

It's due to come out in March. Here's the trailer. Looks interesting.

Thirty Days Has September

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:30:00 GMT

I really enjoyed this story on All Things Considered today. Journalist Christopher Stevens talks about his new book, Thirty Days Has September: Cool Ways to Remember Stuff. It's a collection of mnemonic tips and tricks for remembering, math and spelling rules, geography, science, etc. (For example, We Just Like Rushmore to remember the four heads on Mount Rushmore — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Rosevelt).

That's clever but what I found more interesting was the unexpected inspiration for the book. Stevens' 12 year-old son is profoundly autistic. He cannot understand spoken language but can recognition and reproduce music including the words. He communicates and responds to musical verses as cues to taking a bath, going into the car, etc. These are his mnemonic devices. Stevens has also written a book with his wife about their son called A Real Boy: How Autism Shattered Our Lives - and Made a Family from the Pieces.

Picasa for Mac

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:30:00 GMT

The Beta release of Picasa for Mac is available today. I've been waiting for this. Moving my photos from the Windows version of Picasa to iPhoto was no fun and I really don't like iPhoto as much. Fortunately, moving back to Picasa was painless. It found all of the photos in iPhoto (as well as everything else in my directories) very quickly. I've found a few glitches but overall it seems pretty solid and really fast. I've read some complaints that it doesnâ��t really look like a Mac app at all. Looks okay to me. And it co-exists with iPhoto just fine.

Update: Now it's clear why Google released Picasa for Mac just before MacWorld. A new version of iPhoto is coming out.

What a real financial crisis looks like

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:30:00 GMT

We visited Poland in the early 90s. Due to hyperinflation, the exchange rate was roughly 20,000 Polish złloty per US dollar. For $50, you could be a Polish millionaire. At it's worst, Polish inflation reached 275%. That's pretty horrible but nothing compared to Zimbabwe. Look at these photos of the progression of Zimbabwe currency. At the beginning of November, 2008, the inflation rate was calculated to be at 516 quintillion percent!

Rust Never Sleeps

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Most of Seattle's streets aren't plowed when it snows. Usually the snow melts quickly. But if the weather stays cold, the snow packs down and turns to ice making for treacherous driving. The city uses de-icer and sand but has a policy not to use road salt. With all of the snow that we've received over the past few weeks, there's been a push to change city policy. So the mayor relented the other day. Seattle hasn't used salt in the past due to the potential harm to Puget Sound. Sand can be bad as well, clogging streams with silt. But there's another problem with salt that hasn't been mentioned in the debate.

Salt will rust your car. Big time. Having lived on the East Coast for most of my life, I was amazed that despite the damp weather in Seattle, there's no rust on the cars. I took our 2001 Sienna in for repair the other day and the mechanic asked whether we had moved from the Midwest due to the rust he saw on the car's undercarriage. You don't see that out here. That may change if we get more snow like this and they start salting the roads here like they do in the snow belt.

Out of Town News Is Closing?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:30:00 GMT

In another sign that paper media is dying, Out Of Town News in Harvard Square may be closing. I used to live a few blocks from Harvard Square when I attended MIT, and bought my first computer magazine there, Byte magazine. Unlike Paul Allen and Bill Gates, as recounted in the article, I didn't become a multi-billionaire as result, but it certainly did help push my interest into software.

Microscopic Grinch?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Watching Horton Hears A Who! on DVD with the kids the other night and then reading How The Grinch Stole Christmas! to my son this evening, I finally made the connection between the two stories. Whos and Who-ville! Does this mean that the Grinch is microscopic as well? According to Wikipedia, the live-action The Grinch movie reinforces the idea that the Whos are microscopic by showing that the events in How The Grinch Stole Christmas! actually took place within a snowflake.

Less Clutter in 2009

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:30:00 GMT

We bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 document scanner back in April to reduce the paper clutter in my office. As I mentioned in a blog post, I used it to scan documents and copy out to our NAS. That worked fine but I found a better approach a couple months later.

I tried (and then bought) a copy of DevonTHINK Pro Office. It works directly with the ScanSnap and includes its own OCR software. It indexes the contents and can automatically classify them into groups that you create based on content. For example, if you create a group for your mortgage payments, it will recognize a new document as belonging to that group. You can still quickly search for any document but organizing them into groups is helpful. In eight months, we've scanned over 3800 pages (many of them double-sided) collected into over 1500 documents. That includes a lot of old papers so I don't think we'll continue to add documents as quickly in the future. The best part is that it's quick and easy and I don't have to think hard about keeping documents or not. Unless I need the actual paperwork, I can scan it, file it and shred it. If one of your New Year's resolutions was to reduce paper clutter, I definitely recommend trying this scanner and software combo.

End Of An Era?

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:45:00 GMT

2009 will be last of a decade-long stretch of years with two zeros in the middle allowing goofy New Year's Eve glasses like these.

I supposed that the novelty glasses manufacturers could make something similar for 2010, 2020, ... but no more X00X glasses until the end of 2999.

Happy New Year!

Slingbox

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:00:00 GMT

We got a Slingbox SOLO a few months ago. It's hooked into our DVR so that we can watch live programming or anything recorded by the DVR on a computer, either at home or anywhere there's Internet access.

Setup was pretty simple. The picture quality is quite good, even with the limited outbound bandwidth we have with Comcast broadband. SlingPlayer software is available for Windows and Mac OS X. The Windows version is much slicker, it includes a programming guide and lets you pause, rewind or fast-forward up to 60 minutes of video. The Mac OS X player is fine, just fewer bells and whistles. There's also SlingPlayer Mobile that's supported on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Symbian phones. I've tried the Palm OS player and it works surprisingly well. Not the greatest experience on a 320x320 screen but still pretty slick.

Snowbound

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

We've had some interesting weather for the past two weeks in Seattle. It snowed pretty much every day from December 17^th to the 26^th. We got about 26 inches of snow. And, except for the main roads, the streets aren't plowed, sanded, or salted. And it's very hilly too.

Until the 26^th, the snow wasn't that bad. It formed a hard pack layer on the streets, which, as long as you had forward momentum (and chains), you could get through. But then The Big Melt began on the 27^th. Not good. The hard pack became deep slush. It's like quicksand made from slushy snow. Nearly impossible to drive through without getting stuck. So we're snowbound, waiting for more melt. It's raining today which should speed things along.

In case you're wondering why there aren't many snow plows here: Seattle is about 350 miles further north than Boston but it doesn't snow very much here. The last time Seattle received snowfall like this was in 1996. So it's not economically feasible for the cities to keep a lot of snow removal equipment around. Or so they tell me. Still very frustrating.

Update: The sun came out, more snow melted and we were able to dig our way out of the cul-de-sac to the main road. Freedom!

Blogger Publishing Problem

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:30:00 GMT

I use Blogger to manage my blog but publish content to my own site. Publishing new blog posts over the past week or so has been problematic. I often got an error:

java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out

But FTP access to my site worked fine. Username and password were correct. I haven't changed these settings in years. Digging around I found a solution in this thread. If your FTP site is, say, ftp.contoso.com, change the setting to be contoso.com instead. I changed the setting and publishing works fine now. Seems like a regression since this has been working fine this way for at least four years.

boxee

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:15:00 GMT

I've been playing with the Boxee Alpha release for OS X. It's based on XBMC but adds a bunch of social networking features and support for Internet content services such as Hulu and Netflix. It also runs on Apple TV although requires hacks to work there. So far, it works pretty well although definitely feels like a Alpha. Assuming that they can produce a solid release, it might actually make the Apple TV a useful device.

Dead Tree Media Continues To Disappear

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Newspapers and print magazines have been losing advertising revenue and subscribers to online content for nearly a decade. The latest casualty is PC Magazine.

Despite having a circulation of more than half a million readers, the January 2009 issue will be its last print edition.

Call me old school but, in addition to online content, I still like reading newspapers and (some) magazines in print form. Reading content on a laptop screen or smartphone just doesn't provide the same experience. Perhaps devices like the Kindle will eventually be good enough. But, in the meantime, as advertising dollars continue to move away from print media, more magazines and newspapers will either move completely online or disappear.

Note: someone is probably going to comment on how Windows 7 appearing on the last print issue of PC Magazine is somehow prophetic on its prospects. We'll see.

Roomba

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Every year we get some sort of family gadget for Christmas. This year we got a Roomba. It seemed like something our gadget-obsessed household would enjoy — and might actually be useful too! So far we've let it clean the floors in a couple of rooms and hallways, It did a pretty good job, picking up quite a bit of dirt. And it was able to avoid most obstacles including the stairs.

The dog and cat don't pay much attention to the Roomba unless it heads directly for them. It would be cool to see the cat do something like this but she's not that adventurous. My son has discovered that the Roomba is hackable. Maybe we'll try some of them out at some point.

Happy Holidays

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 06:01:00 GMT

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Fantastic Festivus, Wonderful Decemberween...!!

Complaints Choir

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:30:00 GMT

In Finnish there's an expression "Valituskuoro" that mean "Complaints Choir". It's used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously, such as getting stuck at the airport during a storm storm.

Two friends, Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in Helsinki had a thought: Wouldn't it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir! And they formed the first Complaints Choir. The idea spread to cities around the world, where other Complaints Choirs were formed. Watch the videos (non-English choir performances are subtitled in English). Some complaints are very local but many are universal. (via Kristian)