Lawrence Lessig on Obama

Lawrence Lessig outlines his powerful reasons for choosing Obama over Hillary in the democratic primary. It's a persuasive argument.

Smooth Traveling

I have had a remarkably smooth days travel. Taken four flights all of which departed and arrived on time. All of the TSA security screening points have been quick and relatively painless. It is almost enough to make me believe that flying can be a pleasant experience. Three of the four airports offered free wifi, though I did have some trouble using the openDNS servers with San Diego's free system.

My curious route:

• Portland -> Sacramento on Southwest
• Sacramento -> San Diego on Southwest
• San Diego -> San Francisco on United
• San Francisco -> London on United

So True

I think the title says it all. You also have to love some of the reviews:

Have reviewed a number of books on prayer and they usually get too complicated and bogged down.

It is hard to believe that there is a complicated way to close your eyes and mumble.

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Obama's inspirational SC speech remixed fabulously

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fZHou18Cdk[/youtube]

Barack Obama has given some amazing speeches including this one at the 2004 Democratic convention that catapulted him into the public eye. His recent South Carolina victory speech has been remixed superbly. Video such as this are testament to his ability to inspire a generation and hopefully soon a nation.

Link to Video

Schools TV from whne it was really educational

I learned most of what I know from being dumped in front of a TV at school.

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Unfortunately True

fMRI and the inefficency of multitaksing

Well written and witty article in the Atlantic about fMRI imaging studies of people performing multitasking activities. Technology has been the driving force behind the current enthusiasm for multitasking but these studies show that multitasking actually makes people less efficient.

This is the great irony of multitasking—that its overall goal, getting more done in less time, turns out to be chimerical. In reality, multitasking slows our thinking. It forces us to chop competing tasks into pieces, set them in different piles, then hunt for the pile we’re interested in, pick up its pieces, review the rules for putting the pieces back together, and then attempt to do so, often quite awkwardly. (Fact, and one more reason the bubble will pop: A brain attempting to perform two tasks simultaneously will, because of all the back-and-forth stress, exhibit a substantial lag in information processing.)

I think that technology can be a significant productivity enhancer in the interstitial spaces, those places and times between others. Waiting for the bus, in the airport lounge and other low cognitive intensity situations. If you are going to have technology that has access to you at any moment, instant messaging, blackberry etc they need a contextual awareness as to what you are doing what the message is and whether it is appropriate to interrupt you in order to deliver that message. As we become more connected we have to become more discriminating. Not all information has the same value, but at the moment we are forced to absorb the information before we can make a judgement to it's value, distracting us from our intended goals. I see this contextual/semantic understanding as the next major evolution of mobile devices.

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Untitled 1

I keep getting this message from Google on some pretty benign searches. Anybody else seen this?

Kindle selling like hotcakes?

I have a more than passing interest in an Amazon Kindle. The idea of being able to carry around all the books I could ever want to read in a small portable package is fantastic. Unfortunately the downsides are that it uses horrible DRM and is relatively expensive at $399. Even at that high price it seems that Amazon can't make enough to supply the demand and as usual ebay steps up with Kindle's going for as much as $599.

I am going to wait for kindle V2.0 or a price cut before leaping in. One thing that would make the deal sweeter for me would be with every purchase of a real book you get a copy of the ebook to read on your kindle. That way you can still have a product you can sell, keep on a shelf and thumb through whilst still having the convenience of the ebook.

Last FM has full tracks

So my favorite social music service has signed a deal allowing you to play full versions of any of the tracks on the site. This is fantastic news and a sign that finally the music industry is embracing new business models and not just suing their customers.

As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.

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RPG-7 Vs Bulletproof Glass

This video from predictably a Japanese TV show demonstrates an RPG-7 Round against 5 cm thick bulletproof glass. The slow motion footage at the end is spectacular. It's not clear but I think that though the warhead is stopped by the glass the explosively formed penetrator, does go right through as is evidenced in the shots from the side of the building.

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No power at Heathrow Terminal 5?

So it looks like the great hope of London airports Terminal 5 has made a ridiculously dumb mistake before its even opened. No passenger accessible power outlets.

In a brand new terminal built in the 21st century, BAA has managed to build departure waiting areas with not a single passenger-accessible power outlet. Rows and rows of hard plastic benches with armrests which prevent you from lying down--kind of makes you feel like you're in a Greyhound bus terminal and not a single power outlet.

Because no one these days travels with a laptop. good work Heathrow.

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OpenDNS

I have been struggling with really horrible latency when browsing the internet from our office in Portland. I had thought that it was an issue with Firefox on OSX, but on further investigation the issues seemed to be related to DNS lookups. to fix this issue I have manually configured my laptop to use the OpenDNS DNS servers. So far the improvement has been very significant indeed. My initial observations would suggest that the latency is about a quarter of the previous automatically assigned Qwest DNS servers.

If you are seeing high latency, it may well be worth checking OpenDNS out. Its a well designed site with easy to follow instructions that offers a lot more features than jsut DNS lookups. you can configure your own URL shortcuts. so that for example you can simply type mail into the address bar of your browser and have it redirect to mail.google.com.

OpenDNS.com

Simple but true

xkcd

MacBook Air Update

So apple launched it, its beautifully thin and in many ways very nice. However my apple lust has been subdued by the following.

• The 1.8 inch Hard Drive is likely to be extremely slow and given my experience with closely related iPod hard drives not designed for long continuos operation.
• That leaves the SSD model which is over $3000.
• No user replaceable battery. One of the main reasons I want an ultraportable is for travel where battery life is critica. 5 theoretical hours is a good start but, for a transatlantic flight nowhere near enough. Thats where a spare battery comes in.

Those design decisions which allowed them to build a beautifully slim laptop ultimately prevent me from buying it. I would have taken a little bit thicker with a 2.5'' drive and a replaceable battery any day. It's nice to have ultimates, like worlds thinnest, but for real day to day practical use, I will take a couple of compromises.

Best Airports in the World

List of the top 10 airports in the world. Cant say that I am surprised that there aren't any US or UK airports in the list. In fact Heathrow is officially the worst airport in the world, again hardly a surprise.

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MacBook Air frenzy

So all rumors are pointing to Apple releasing a sub notebook tomorrow called the MacBook Air. As I am currently in the market for a sub notebook, I am pretty excited. So far Apple has done a remarkable job at keeping this one under wraps. With the number of engineers and suppliers that must be involved in such a complex project that is an impressive feat. I will be tuning into the live coverage on engadget and macrumors to see what is announced and if it meets the hight standards that apple have set themselves over the last couple of years.

Awesome slideshow of Monster surfing at Cortes Bank

This slideshow of a monster storm on the Cortes Bank. The pictures are awesome and the audio commentary is pretty interesting. This will redefine your ideas of big wave surfing

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Back to training

First upgrade ever

Looks like all this flying has finally paid off. On my flight out to San Francisco from London I was upgraded to United Business Class. It certainly made the flight a whole lot more pleasant as I struggled to recover from my Christmas flu. I managed to get some sleep and do some work on the plane, the latter is something that I normally find very hard to do in economy. Not sure I could ever justify the five fold price increase in cost over a regular economy ticket, but its certainly nice to get upgraded once in a while.

On my flight back I heard the best ever PA announcement at San Diego Airport.

Would the two timing Southwest customer please come to the information desk to meet his wife.........and girlfriend.

Made the whole departure lounge smile.