Author Archives: SeanMcTex

OLPC, Microsoft, and Intel

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The Times Online has a really interesting article up on the One Laptop Per Child initiative and Microsoft’s and Intel’s responses to it. It’s a great read, and provides an interesting window into some of the skulduggery that the corporations engaged in when threatened by the vision of a cheap laptop for the developing world.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, supreme prophet of digital connectivity, revealed a strange tent-like object. It was designed to change the world and to cost $100. It was a solar-powered laptop. Millions would be distributed to children in the developing world, bringing them connection, education, enlightenment and freedom of information. The great, the good, the rich and the technocrats nodded in solemn approval.

And then some of them tried to kill it.

Kindle Impressions

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I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time with an Amazon Kindle over the past week. The Kindle is Amazon’s attempt to bring book reading and distribution into the 21st century. It’s essentially a small, purpose-built, handheld computer that incorporates several interesting technologies to create a compelling experience for the book lover.

The first distinctive thing about it is the display. Rather than using the LCD or OLED screens that are common on laptops and cell phones, the Kindle uses electronic paper, a display made up of thousands of tiny capsules filled with black and white particles that can be dragged to the top or to the bottom electronically. It functions (and looks) a bit like a high-resolution Magna Doodle.

This screen provides a couple of advantages: first, it gives the kindle a distinctive, book-like appearance. Though the 800×600 display isn’t quite as high-resolution as print, it looks very good, and the four gray scales allow for some basic graphics and diagrams to be included (and some lovely screen savers). One might reasonably wish the background color were a purer white, rather than a light grey, but the constrast ratio is still very high, close to that of a newsprint. Second, the electronic paper display is extremely power-efficient. Because it only draws power when it is changed, the Kindle can run for up to a week on a single charge — something unheard of with emissive displays. Third, because it is reflective, it can be read in all the same conditions one could normally read a book — bright sunlight presents no problems. (The ironic flip side of this advantage is that you need a book light to read it in a dark room.)

The second distinctive thing about the Kindle is that it has a built-in wireless data connection that runs over Amazon’s Whispernet service. Amazon subsidizes the service through device and electronic book sales — it doesn’t cost anything to use. It’s built on the cellular phone network, and therefore has excellent coverage, though the bandwidth is fairly limited. However since it’s used primarily as a delivery mechanism for textual content, that’s rarely a concern. One can use the device to grab a sample of a book from the Kindle store nearly instantly, and can download an entire purchased book within about a minute.

According to the hackers, the software that runs the whole show is largely Java on top of Linux. However, as a user, you’ll never be aware of the fact. The system is controlled with an easy-to-use system of menus which are almost entirely accessed through a little scroll wheel. I gave Kathy (who will be the first to admit that she’s no big fan of technology) 20 seconds of instructions on how to use the scroll wheel while we were driving to San Antonio last week, and she, without further help, kept herself entertained for the two hour car ride downloading sample books, reading, and exploring the device — an impressive testament to its ease-of-use.

There is currently no SDK for the device, so one is limited to running the applications that Amazon ships with it. Amazon has hinted that they might consider creating an SDK in the future, but hasn’t made any official announcements yet. Even so, the Kindle is quite functional. One can, of course, buy and download books from Amazon’s library at rates substantially lower than what one would pay for a hardcover edition. Amazon also has a conversion service where you can send a variety of document types to a special email address and have them converted into a format viewable on the Kindle. It costs $0.10 to have the document sent to your Kindle over Whispernet, but is free if you use the included USB cable to put it on the Kindle yourself. Since the Kindle registers itself as a standard mass storage device, you can transfer files to it easily using a computer with Mac OS, Windows, or Linux with no additional drivers.

Amazon also includes several experimental applications, including a music player, a human-backed question answering service, and, most interesting, a basic web browser. While the browser doesn’t support a lot of advanced features, it works well for browsing well-formatted content, and is even quite usable for some web applications. I’ve been able to update my Twitter while walking home, though haven’t yet convinced it to display my RSS feeds in Google reader. Though the browser isn’t as good as Mobile Safari, its reliance on the cellular network means that I can use it in many more places than the iPod Touch, which relies on having a wireless access point nearby.

While the Kindle has a lot to recommend it, it’s not perfect. The display takes about 3/4 of a second to refresh when you move from page to page. It’s very easy to hit the Next Page and Previous Page buttons by accident. It’s rather homely. Purchased books are wrapped up in DRM. And it’s expensive.

However, by taking advantage of its unique place in the book selling market, Amazon has managed to create the most viable electronic book yet. For the traveler, the reader, or the person who needs convenient access to a reference library, it’s a very compelling product — and a lot of fun.

Bees Have Nothing On Us

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We’ve had a ton of stuff going on lately:

  • Last Wednesday, I took Abigail for her day out on the town. We went kayaking at Zilker park, padding around under the bridges, checking out the secret art that some mysterious painter had emblazoned across the insides of the support struts, scaring turtles, and generally having a grand time. We then visited a vegetarian cafe, spent some time wandering about the mall, watched Journey to the Center of the Earth, and visited Wake The Dead Coffee House, where I converted her to the view that Everything bagels are far and away the best sort.
  • On Thursday, The Patio Boys played in the park for San Marcos’ summer concert series. We in the band had a great time, and the audience seemed to enjoy it a good deal too (especially the cheerful inebriate who brought his own guitar to play along from the audience). Performing outdoors with the energy a crowd brings is always a treat, even when it’s 172° and sunny.
  • On Friday, we celebrated birthdays with Becky, my sister-in-law, and Tanya, my cousin. We ate lots of Greek food, disrupted the restaurant’s table arrangement, and made ourselves as obstreperous as possible. The staff were great sports about it all, and we had a superb time.
  • Saturday was Abigail’s 12th birthday party, which we celebrated at the house. As usual, we had pretty much no idea how many people were coming, and ended up with about 40 at peak. Since it was far too hot to spend much time outdoors, we all ended up crammed in together in three rooms, enjoying a wonderful spread of different foods that people had brought, spirited conversation, and (in the kids case) a great deal of Mario Kart and Rock Band. Abigail reported having a great time, so Mission Accomplished. Thanks to all who helped her celebrate!
  • On Sunday, The Patio Boys played again, this time at Cheatham Street Warehouse. We were all pretty bushed, so we just pulled out some songs we hadn’t done for a while, did unspeakable things to them, and wrapped up early.

Robocars!

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I’ve been intrigued by Personal Rapid Transit since 2002. I’ve gone so far as to do some software modeling and simulation of a PRT system for San Marcos (with a station right by my house, natch), and those of you unfortunate enough to live near me have probably been regaled by my excited blathering on the subject from time to time. (“Good goshamighty, why won’t he be quiet? Shut up! SHUT UP! He won’t stop. Ok, I’m going to my happy place now. Thinking about unicorns and cheesecake. Mmmmmm…cheesecake.”)

But as of today, I’m no longer a fan.

The reason? Not any particular deficiency on PRT’s part. It’s still quicker, more efficient, and generally much more desirable than private cars or other public transit options.

But today, I discovered Robocars.

What are Robocars? Cars that can drive themselves. DARPA’s Grand Challenge in 2004 and 2005 showed that autonomous vehicles were a technological possibility. The 2007 Urban Challenge demonstrated that they could function on normal roadways, dealing with traffic laws, other vehicles, and pedestrians along the way.

Once you have vehicles that can drive themselves, a fleet of them (run by, say, a taxi company) offers nearly all of PRT’s advantages without its drawbacks. Consider these improvements on the PRT concept:

  • Robocars operate on existing roadways. There’s no need for a dedicated infrastructure like PRT’s.
  • If a Robocar breaks down, it can easily be moved out of the way like a car. It wouldn’t block an entire monorail line like a failed PRT tram would.
  • Implementation of Robocars would not need a huge initial investment from a central government, but can be introduced one at a time, just like automobiles. It can therefore happen as gradually or rapidly as the market dictates.
  • By communicating with traffic lights and ensuring optimum travel speeds, Robocars could be nearly as efficient as a PRT system.
  • One can have personal ownership of a Robocar if one wishes.
  • Robocars remain useful as you move out of urban areas.

Robocars, like PRT, offer even more advantages over traditional cars and transit systems: fuel efficiency, convenience, safety, flexibility, and the ability to both enjoy a private space and to do other things while in transit.

See Brad Templeton’s Introduction to the idea for an overview of what it’s all about, or for a glimpse into the possibilities, read his fictional account of what a week with Robocars might look like.

Schlitterbahn with Maggie

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Last Wednesday was Maggie’s day out on the town. After loading up my backpack with snacks from the grocery, we lit off for New Braunfels. Though we were there about 30 minutes before the official opening time, we were able to immediately get our wristbands and join the queue. Once the gates swung wide, we headed immediately for The Dragon’s Revenge, an update to the Dragon Blaster ride. Though the “multimedia extravaganze” turned out to be a bit overplayed, this turned out to be a smart move, as the line for the ride was crazy long for the rest of the day.

I especially enjoyed this trip, as Maggie is now enjoying some of the more exciting rides, including the excellent tube chutes that are, to my mind, the heart of Schlitterbahn. Though they’ve rerouted those chutes a bit since my teenage years, Raging River is still a particular favorite, largely due to the fact that it can take about 40 minutes to go through the whole thing. Maggie also really liked the Whitewater chute with all of its vertiginous drops.

Though Schlitterbahn is fairly expensive, you get good value for your money and aren’t hit with additional unexpected costs through the day. Parking is free, and you can bring in a cooler or backpack with food. Lockers are available, but we’ve never had any trouble just leaving on stuff on one of the numerous picnic tables or lounge chairs that are scattered liberally throughout the place. The park is well-maintained and well-staffed, and remains a great destination even as it has grown over the years.

After a full day of watery fun, we stopped at Freddy’s Frozen Custard for some chicken strips and their awesomely addictive french fries, and then headed on home, happily and completely tuckered out.

Happy Vignettes

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A few enjoyable bits from this weekend:

  • Friday night, I attended a small gathering of guys to celebrate my friend Craig’s birthday by playing Axis & Allies and Acquire until late in the night. Craig’s wife graciously organized the evening for him starting two months in advance, and then scampered off to allow the testosterone to course freely and without inhibition through the house. I took a drubbing at both games, but still had a grand time.
  • We enjoyed a delightful lunch with the Barnards and the Hulls on Sunday afternoon, with great conversation, much hilarity, good food, and several intense rounds of Speed Scrabble, which I enjoy much more (and at which I’m much better) than normal Scrabble. Thanks for a great time, y’all!

Sad Vignettes

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A melancholy post this morning:

  • Abigail left this morning for a week at a church camp up near Waco. Though she’ll be with one of her close friends there, this is the first time she has spent any significant time away from home, and she has been simultaneously hugely excited and quite nervous at the prospect. I’m both proud of her bravery and sad that she’s one step closer to growing up. With her there and Emily in New York, it will doubtless seem strange to be a two-child family for the week.
  • I got news this morning that our neighbor, John Morrisett, died last night. John was an ex-marine in his seventies, and was one of my favorite people in our neighborhood. He had been bedridden for a few months, and increasingly frail for a year or two beforehand. Beth, his wife, said that it came as a relief, since his quality of life had been so poor toward the end. Until the last year or so, John had kept very busy, always involved in some volunteer work or another with a more active schedule than I think I could manage at half his age. He always had a kind or wise word whenever we saw him, and I’m sorry to see him go.
  • I won’t go into any detail on this one, but a friend of mine has had his life pretty much collapse around him over the past couple of weeks. While some of it is a pretty direct result of some terrible choices he made, it’s still heartrending to see, and I pray that good may ultimately come of a miserable situation.

A Grand Day Out With Liam

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Yesterday was the second of the days this summer I took off to spend with one of our kids. Liam and I, after some deliberation, decided on a visit to San Antonio. (The other contender was to take Amtrak up to Austin and spend the day visiting Barton Springs, Peter Pan Mini Golf, and an Alamo Drafthouse theater, all of which are within walking distance of the station.) We started off at the Witte Museum, a fantastic, hands-on, kid-friendly place to which Liam has been keen to make a return visit. It featured an exhibit on Leonardo da Vinci with functioning models of many of his mechanical innovations which were great fun to pump, crank, and climb on. Those that particularly caught my eye were a bridge that could be assembled without any nails or other fasteners, an elaborate wood cutting apparatus, and an early military tank. We also bumped into and had a nice chat with Becky, my brother’s delightful bride, who has been volunteering there at the museum for a couple of months and enjoying it a great deal. The Science Treehouse portion of the museum is also a great favorite, as there are lots of cool things to fool with there, several of which, like the pneumatic rockets and air cannon, mirrored some of the things Jason Young and I have built together.

After a lunch at IHOP, we buzzed back up the highway a bit to Splashtown, a San Antonio water park that has been around since I was young. We flitted from one thing to another, enjoying the short lines brought on by a combination of an overcast, threatening sky and the fact that it was the middle of the week. Since nearly all the rides require you to climb to the tops of towers to launch yourself headlong down the chutes, I ended up climbing the equivalent of a 35 story building over the course of the day, and Liam did around 60. Unsurprisingly, I was terrifically sore the next day. (And the next. And the one after that.) Though he never worked up to the biggest slide at the park, an orange monstrosity we used to call “The Wedgie”, Liam grew increasingly bold over the course of the afternoon, finally settling in to some fairly significant tube chutes with lots of twists and turns (that dumped him out of his tube as often as not) as his favorite thing of the afternoon.

It was a fine day out and, as always, I was glad to seize some extra time with one of the kiddos.

Blasted Nonsense From The Past

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Back when dinosaurs roamed the Internet and you could get a cup of coffee and a shoeshine for a nickel, before the kids all had their newfangled “Mybook” and “Facespaces” and the blink tag still seemed a pretty nifty idea, there was Brain Sausage.

Brain Sausage was an early proto-weblog, created before such things actually existed. I wrote the software for it because I wanted to learn Perl, and enlisted the aid of Robert Leahey and Chris Morris to help populate it with interesting links and a liberal dose of snarkiness. Chris also wrote a super-cool little ticker for Windows that would alert interested parties when there were new posts.

While most of it has been lost to history at this point, I was amused/delighted/horrified to discover that the good folks at archive.org had actually preserved a few pages. The logo, sadly, appears to be lost, either by the vagaries of the program that collected the information or by the good judgement of a censor somewhere. But here are a few bits that historians, masochists, and the easily amused might enjoy having a look at:

A few other horrors I pulled from the archive:

Fiesta Texas, or How I Got Robbed By Porky Pig

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This summer, I’m taking each of the kids out individually for a day on the town. The first of these trips was with Emily. We went to Fiesta Texas, the San Antonio theme park, on (of course) the hottest day of the week.

Spending time with Emily was the best part of the trip. We talked about friends and the drama thereof, favorite places to eat, what’s required to become a licensed tattoo artist, the efficacy of motion-sickness pills, travel, siblings, and more. It was fun to see the shows and ride the rides, though I’m afraid I’m getting to the point in my life where the lavishly choreographed brass and percussion show has more appeal than the vertiginous fighter-jet coaster rides. I particularly enjoyed getting a photo with Pepé le Pew, my long-time favorite of the Looney Tunes gang. Unfortunately, Porky Pig kept trying to horn in on the picture, which prompted me to tell him I was going to Photoshop him out. Since characters in costume aren’t allowed to speak, his only recourse was to smack me, which he readily did.

Unfortunately, Fiesta Texas itself left a bad taste in my mouth, largely due to constant attempts to wring more money out of us. When I bought the tickets for $30/each, I thought it a reasonable price for a full day’s entertainment. But as soon as we arrived, we had to pay another $15 for parking. When we went to our very first ride, we were told we weren’t allowed to bring our backpacks on, but had to put them in a locker, which cost only $1, but which had prominent signs promising that our backpacks would be thrown away if we didn’t retrieve them within 120 minutes. (It’s a good thing lines were fairly short on Wednesdays!) Bringing food or drinks into the park was prohibited, leaving you with little choice but to buy food at their usurious prices: $6 for a slice of pizza was typical of the fare on offer. And even after shelling out all of this money beyond the ticket cost, we were still subjected to advertisements at every corner and on the in-line monitors that used to show cartoons.

While I understand that making money is what businesses exist for, this sort of bait and switch, nickel and dime approach is awfully short sighted. When people leave the park, you want them to be thinking “Wow, what a great time I had!” Instead, I was left with “Holy rhubarb, in spite of careful planning and self control, I was railroaded into spending $40 more than I expected!”

And given that sour note, I don’t think I’ll be going back.