Jason Kottke, of the emminent Kottke.org, posts about his experience at the GEL conference in New York, where he found himself fondling a Sony Librie. According to Kottke's account, the Librie's screen resolution was so close to print resolution and clarity that it felt almost unnerving, like a decal on the screen. Kottke reports that the Librie will also play video at 24 frames per second in full colour.
A few weeks ago I posted about 3POs in 10 Years Time, my stab act as a futurist and attempt to articulate what I thought would happen with mobile computing / entertainment / communications devices. Partly I think my post originated from frustration. I can see that MP3 players, phones, video players, video cameras, digital cameras and digital projectors all share a common converging future, and I want to have that single, usable device now, with a wireless Internet connection and disk storage space so large that I don't have to consider it while operating the device.
Now it seems like I may not have to wait 10 years. I'm not interested in the Librie simply based on principle; I hate the data lock in of being forced to use their memory sticks and I hate their ideas around Digital Rights Management (DRM), which amount to a bait and switch - now you own it, now you don't. But someone out there is watching closely (Paging Mr. Jobs), I trust, and sooner than I expected something shiny will be on the shelves.
As you may or may not have noticed, the blog space here at Up in Ontario has been silent for the past few weeks. It's felt like a hiatus, like I've gone somewhere else without Internet access and computer screens in every room for a period of time. But I've been here all along, just busy dwelling in the day to day: work, tax season, too much work, some time in the sun, some work on the body in preparation for swimming / cycling / running a triathlon this summer.
On the bright side I've returned to rowing in the Community Corporate Rowing Challenge race series. I rowed in the same series two years ago and had a great time in a quad. This time I'm in an eight, with a coxwain, and only one oar to manage. We're sweeping instead of sculling and I'm not sure I like it as much but somehow I ended up team captain, which means I knock my hand on the side of the shell and urge my teammates on.
I've also started working out in boot camp-style session with a fellow name Curt Heywood of Functional Athletics on Wednesday evenings in the out of doors at Kits Pool. In hockey, we lost our first two playoff games in the beer league where we play, and it's a double knockout format tournament, so we're out.
I've watched a few rugby games in the past few weeks as the BC Rugby Union playoffs have halved the teams every weekend. My brother plays with James Bay and last weekend I travelled over to Victoria to watch them as they played the Kitsilano Meralomas, the team my friend Bryan Erichsen captains. The Meralomas won a very tight game on a heartbreaker blocked kick returned for a try in the final few minutes. The Meralomas will now play the North Vancouver Capilanos in the finals this coming weekend at UBC's Thunderbird Stadium. If you're interested in some of the best rugby you'll see all year in Canada, come out and sit in the sun with us.
Right, so that's all to say that the body is active but the mind is restless. I find that when I'm not learning anything new that I'm a less interesting person to myself. And really, that's what it's all about. So in the next few weeks, more posting on this blog and more pursuit of the life of the mind.
The bad-idea filter was clearly not fully engaged when the yahoos at Dose, 24 Hours and Metro decided to launch daily newspapers in Vancouver.
I fall into the demographic slot of 18-34 years old. The target demographic for all three newspapers. I've read the first editons of Metro and Dose. I haven't tried to find 24 Hours, but their orange boxes litter the landscape. Metro, by the way, let's me download a PDF of the day's edition. I hate PDF.
[ADDITION: Why do these sites not offer e-mail news alerts or RSS? I get the feeds from CBC and the Globe and Mail. I want content on my terms not theirs. Metro tells me at the bottom of their pages "This site is updated regularly, so check back often." Good luck with that.]
My first reaction to these papers, F-sharp!@#
Dose is pleased to inform me that their marketing department "tells" them the target is 18-34. They've written that in the damn paper, and the publisher or editor interviewed on CBC chirped away the exact same phrase. Essentially, here's the nice little, multi-layered box we'd like to slot you into. Step inside, the marketing department has clearly labelled the way.
To me, this is worst than some advertiser deciding women are the target market for their new chainsaw. Does it have smaller handles, it is easier to use? No, but we coloured it pink and put "For Women" on the packaging. Great.
My second reaction is how many trees is this exercise for my attention consuming?
Here's my question for all three papers. Are you using 100% post-consumer recycled paper? Because if you're not, I have no interest in supporting you.
What's the print run and circulation of your paper? How many get thrown out each day? Are the leftovers recycled to make the paper for tomorrow's rag or are they sitting in land fills.
[ADDITION: and if the target audience is commuting, what are they doing with those papers once they're done? Are recycle bins littering the downtown core? No. So if I want to read your paper, first I have to get it the way you want, then I have to be mindful and recycle it. And no, I do not want to check your website daily.]
Forget the sustainability of your target audience and your advertising revenues. Tell me your plan for the sustainability of the planet.
My recently departed friend Louise Desantis, a joyful girl with movie-star good looks and a lovely Aussie accent, sent along the following jokey email, likely forwarded from another thousand people to a million people. I thought I’d end the forwarding and post it, so if someone wants to read it they can come and read it.
The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so profound that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic or endothermic?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving.
I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
- #1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
- #2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then #2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct, leaving only Heaven, and thereby proving the existence of a divine being, which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."
This student received the only A.