Another Festival in Victoria Park

There's another music festival this weekend in Victoria Park. I love these. Nice crowds, lively music. The festival walls weren't photogenic, but I took some random photos in a big walk around the music grounds.

some wildflowers in Well Street Common

new olympic stadium looming over Tower Hamlets... looks wonderfully alien

Trending Aesthetics

I've noticed that the iPad versions of apps for which there are also desktop versions tend to have much nicer interfaces (e.g. Evernote, SplashID, OmniFocus, BBCNews). Has Apple made it ok for both hardware and software to actually look good? Has the aesthetics of the device and the free availability of competition in the marketplace raised the bar? Maybe it's just the iPad versions are newer, but I think there's more to it.

Evernote

Started using Evernote a few weeks ago. Its utility increases exponentially with use, so I've made a good-faith effort to seed it with info. Once it gets to critical mass I can see it will be phenomenally useful. Even a couple weeks in, it's already proving to be handy. Example use case: anything that might be tax-relevant info I now just send to evernote with a #tax tag. Or anything I find related to, say, cycling, that I'm interested in, I have Evernote remember, whether it be a website, a product I'm interested in, route info, PDFs of install & maintenance guides for components I have, etc. This could partially be covered by saving bookmarks, and keeping them in sync. Not entirely though. And I've got clients on my desktop, iPad, and iPhone. (The iPad client is the best for browsing, actually, much nicer than the desktop client. Desktop client is the best for adding new content. Also there are plug-ins for firefox and safari on the desktop to add pages to evernote with a single-click, but the iPad safari has no plug-in capability yet, which is a shame.) Will re-evaluate in a year, but so far it looks like it will be good.

Some Movie Viewing Recommendations

Inception: recommended for viewing in a theatre

Let The Right One In: recommended for viewing subtitled version, especially before the american remake comes out (virtually assured to be inferior in all aspects)

Burrata!

Occasionally the chalk sign for the neighborhood deli will announce "Burrata back in stock!" I never paid much attention. I didn't even know what burrata was. Finally I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out it's a southern italian cheese thing, in which they make a pouch out of mozzarella and stuff it with a mixture of shredded fresh mozzarella + cream.

Yes.

HDTV

Finally got HDTV a few weeks ago. Wasn't sure I'd notice a difference.


I notice a difference.

Some things look fantastic. Sports tend to look ludicriously good. Nature shows, Top Gear, and GT5: excellent. Movies are a mixed bag. Some look wonderful, but sometimes the HD makes them look like they were shot on video. Edges too sharp and flat backgrounds or something. There are lots of settings for the TV, though, I think there are plenty of tweaks to optimize for film. Overall, definitely enjoying it.

My MiFi vs. My Use Cases

So I've been using a MiFi thingy (take a 3G phone, remove the voice functionality, and turn it into a wifi router) and it generally works fine but I am still baffled by it's modes of operation. It has 3 buttons. One to toggle power, one to toggle the wifi routerness, one to toggle the 3G connection to the internet. So it can be in these modes:

1. off
2. power on, but not connected to the 3G network and wifi OFF
3. power on, connected to the 3G network, but wifi OFF
4. power on, wifi ON, but NOT connected to the 3G network
5. power on, connected to the 3G network and wifi ON

When you power it up, it goes to state #2! Sometimes it then automatically goes to either #3 or #4. It seems nondeterministic. Additional button pushing gets it to state #5. Sometimes the wifi bit turns itself off, for no apparent reason. But what I'm really wondering is what are the use cases for states 2-4?? I only ever want it to be in state 1 or 5. I can't for the life of me figure how any of the other states could be used.

London's New Cycle Route 3: when does the "super" start?

The first two of  London's unfortunately named "Cycle Superhighways" opened officially the other week. This morning I rode Route 3 from the docklands east to the end in Barking. It goes all the way west to Tower Gateway, but I've already ridden down Cable street to Tower Hill a couple times prior to it being any kind of highway. So the new route 3 ride was... well, kind of crap. I do like the blue paint, and they've supposedly done their homework on the surface and durability of it. Much of the route is just an older bike path tarted up a bit. And that bike path was essentially just pavement segregated into pedestrian and bike halves, with a dangerous little concrete berm in between them. Some of it is on streets, in which case there's no blue bike path but there are large and helpful blue squares with the route designation on them at regular intervals. The bike paths mostly suck. Most sections are way too narrow. Even a modest traffic volume would be a nightmare. No passing, and somewhat nerve-racking in some bits having to ride a narrow chute with on-coming traffic just off the curve to your left, oncoming cyclists brushing your shoulder on the right. There was one section where the pathway widened out to reasonable proportions, with a pleasant grass strip in between the path and the A13, but for most of the length it was uncomfortably narrow. Also in the path: lampposts, road signs, and the occasional car. Fun. For the most part, the route marking was fine, but there were a couple sections where the blue disappears and there's no clear signage where you're supposed to go, including a couple non-obvious navigations of large roundabouts and a particularly bad one through the edge of the docklands. And the end in Barking is not clearly marked at all. Flow-wise, there are a high number of intersections on the route that use pedestrian crossings. On the balance, it wasn't that pleasant an experience. In Barking, I headed north and then west back into hackney. I was honestly relieved once I was on actual roadways, jostling with the buses and vans.

To be fair, yes, it is an improvement. Some sections I might appreciate if I were commuting on that corridor. No, I wouldn't want to take the kids on it (even though they are competent cyclists), nor would I recommend it for anyone nervous or inexperienced. In other words, if you're not already ok riding in London, this probably isn't for you. If you are, some bits of it might make your life slightly easier, but don't expect it to be entirely pleasant or to make a big change in your commuting time.

Calling them "superhighways" was about the worst thing they could have done. It's like making modest improvements to a driving route that was in bad shape (e.g. unpaved sections with no signs) such that you ended up with a single-lane (in each direction) paved roadway, with plenty of stop signs and traffic lights, and then telling everyone you've built an autobahn. Instead of a few people being happy with your improvements, you get everyone thinking you're an idiot. Especially because there are good examples of autobahns that just about everyone is familiar with. Likewise, there are good examples elsewhere in europe of fast, wide, segregated cycle routes. We're still waiting for ours.

Bike Mechanic

What I lack in skill and knowledge I make up for with stupidity and perserverance. I rehabbed my bikes recently. On the legendary Trek 7600, I finally retired the softride suspension stem. They haven't made them for years, but I was quite fond of mine. Being an old bike, I had to get a quill-threadless stem converter. Then put a new stem on. And ended my ill-advised cork-tape-on-straight-handlebars experiment with some new grips. Also put some schwalbe ultra marathon++ tires of uninstallibility on (eventually), after getting tired of flatting out on broken glass on the towpaths. They seem like they will outlast the heat death of the universe, which is good because they were nearly impossible to put on. I may just buy new wheels if I want to put cross tires on for some rides.

I also dusted off the road bike frame, not used in anger in the past 6 years. I had put a mtb crankset on the front in Switzerland, to gear it down to accomodate my feebleness in the mountains (climbing is all about power/weight ratio, and gosh is my ratio low). I decided to reinstall the original campagnolo cranks, chainrings, and bottom bracket, but could not get the old cranks off. I'd gone with an isis bottom bracket with the mtb cranks. Unlike the campy bottom bracket, onto which you which you tighten the cranks to a specific torque setting, the isis interface has a positive stop, so torque is a guide but you keep tightening until you hit the stop, regardless. Isis was a clever design, actually. But I managed to essentially friction-weld the whole thing into a solid metal unit. So I took the boys out and we bought an angle grinder. Oh yes. The angle grinder. (I've found that now I'm constantly trying to come up with excuses to use it.) So we had a lot of fun with it. Nothing (much) caught on fire in the kitchen. And the cranks came off.

campy parts, ready for install, once we're done with the angle grinder

pre angle-grinder: this filed-down coin didn't help, but at least I didn't break my crank-pullers

the road bike, reassembled

suspension stem, RIP

the front end is a lot lighter and more responsive now

the bike room

Beef Shin Confit

Finally cracked open the beef shin confit I'd made. Seven+ months in the fridge. Still good. Fried it up a bit like shawerma -- wonderful combination of tender & crispy. Really good. Definitely something to try again.

iPad: first 2 weeks

If the Motorola flip phone let you be Captain Kirk, the iPad turns you into Captain Picard, receiving a report in your ready room off the bridge. It's more futuristic in daily use than I expected. A bit over two weeks ago, I got one (wifi only), and took it on the road -- longhaul flights to the Pacific and back.

The verdict: OK, this thing is awesome. I love it. I have grown inordinately attached to it in a very short time. It's not perfect, but for what I most use it for, it's great.

Web: Fantastic. So much nicer for casual sofa browing than a laptop. My laptop usually is driving a big monitor on my desk at home. Not only is it a pain to unhook it just because I want to browse from the sofa, but even opening it and waiting for it to wake up, then logging on, etc., now seems like a real chore. The immediacy of the iPad is striking.

Psuedo-Web Content: Even better. By this I mean online "magazines" and such that have dedicated "apps". The Wired app, for example, is beautiful. They really got it right for a tablet-based magazine. Great touches include side-scrolling to get from article to article, but vertical scrolling to page through once inside an article. Also some interactive animated bits and such. Just ideal. Another example: the bbc news app. Pretty basic still but already superior to reading the BBC news site via the browser (which in itself is perfectly fine). It changes its layout whether you're in portrait or landscape, has intuitive scrolling through stories and topics, very easy to read the major stories. Not ground-breaking, just nicely done.

Book Reading: Excellent. I've been skeptical of e-books. I do still prefer physical ones, but given that, the iPad is a great alternative. Travelling is the perfect use case. I finished two books and started a third while on a single trip. There's no way I would have lugged three physical books along on the trip with me. I've got books via apple's bookstore and via amazon. Amazon's iPad Kindle app works well. Apple's book app is even better. A lot of little details, even things that seem cheesy at first -- the animation for page-turning -- actually make a subtle but powerful difference that is noticeable when I go back to using the Kindle app. The Apple reading is slightly more immersive. And, predictably, the integration with the book store is much smoother. Not to slight the Kindle app -- I gladly use it as it gives me access to all of Amazon's e-catalog in addition to Apple's.

Movies: Fantastic. And renting movies works really well for business trips. Watching movies on this thing is great. I watched a variety of movies. It's 720p HD, but I couldn't tell the difference between normal quality and HD movies. The normal ones looked great. I watched a normal rental from apple, an HD rental from apple, and a DVD I'd ripped myself and re-encoded down to about 1.7GB -- erring on the side of higher quality. I also tried some I'd done at much lower quality (less than half the size), and they were noticeably poor, but the other one was great. (I don't remember the settings, but was something along the lines of 2-pass encoding with avg bitrate a bit over 2000).

Games: have only tried one game, Need For Speed: Shift, and it is really fun. It's a turn-the-pad-to-steer racing game. Lot of potential on this, although I'm not much of a handheld gamer and probably won't be buying many games (maybe chess).

Photos: Beautiful. Photos look great. I just wish I could get an iPad version of Adobed Lightroom (one of my all-time favorite pieces of software). Not for library management, but for basic image editing, the iPad would be great. Multitouch is a natural for cropping, rotating, and adjusting sliders (moreso than the mouse).

Maps: Wow! It's hard to imagine google maps on any other device after this. Not being able to touch-zoom/scroll a map now makes normal computers seem really clumsy and crippled.

Battery Life: Super good. Exceeds expectations. Haven't run it all the way down yet, but have gone 8 & 9 hours with time left. Should exceed 10 hours in normal use. This is excellent for a plane trip with no power adapter -- watch several movies and read a book.

What's bad? OK, typing is awful. It would be good if I couldn't type, and had to hunt & peck with 2 fingers. But I can type, quite well, with ten fingers. And typing means you rest your fingers on the keys. Which doesn't work with the iPad currently, since touching is the same as typing. So you have to hover your fingers in the air above the keypad. You can get a docking or wireless keyboard for it. Don't expect to get much mileage out of typing directly on it. Also, it does get a bit heavy in the hand for reading especially. Usually not an issue as it's lap (or chest-) based, but sometimes noticeable.

Overall: it's great. Amazing content-consumption device. And could be really good for certain types of content-creation, just not typing-based ones. A side-effect of iPad use is that I am now totally spoiled for multitouch functionality. I really want my desktop computers to have this as well, so at any moment I can reach up and start manipulating things "directly" with my fingertips. Someday soon, I suspect. (Imagine a 27" iMac with multitouch glass over that beautiful LED-backlit monitor.)

Accessories:
(1) I got a slipcase (Tuff-Luv iPad Veggie Leather Pull-Tab Case), which works well. I like it, despite the idiotic ring device used to affix the strap. A bit of velcro would've been in order here. Aside from that, does just want I need it to do.
(2) I put a Zagg Invisible Shield screen cover over the front. It worked great for a while. Even the small bubbles, which I didn't notice on install, went away after 2-3 days, just like the instructions said would happen. But near the end of my second week travelling, the edges began to separate in a few places -- almost curling up a bit. Not sure if it was the change in climates and humidity levels and/or the extended a/c use in the hotel room, but it shouldn't have happened. One corner curled up completely and I had to smooth it back down. That looks bad now. The screen part is still good, and looks quite clear and all, but I'm not entirely happy with the ratty look at the corner now.
(3) VersaCharger minisync charger+airplane adapter+etc. worked fine charging the iPad on the plane.
(4) Not really an iPad accessory per se, but used Sennheiser PXC 450 noise-cancelling headphones extensively on various flights. Overall, quite good. Best pair I've had, and I've gone through Sony (a while ago), and cheap JVCs. Sound quality on these is by far the best. My only complaint is that they take a lot of power to drive. Volume can be a bit low in some cases. Could use an inline headphone amp maybe.
(5) Definitely not an iPad accessory, but deserves special mention for being great: Tom Bihn "checkpoint flyer" carryon bag. I love it. Got a "slip" folder to tuck inside. Perfect variety of pockets, excellent laptop solution (too big for iPad, but still worked well), just great to travel with. Very easy. Heartily recommended.

U-S-A: songs for the cup

The biggest disadvantage the US has heading into the world cup is the lack of a rousing chant. "U-S-A! U-S-A!" is as moronic and uninspiring as it is tedious. It's not that US sports fans lack an affinity for music. Students at fall football games chant ("this is our school fight song/and we don't know the words"). University pep bands feed the manic energy inside packed basketball fieldhouses. NBA and NHL arena sound systems have blasted snippets from Gary Glitter to The Fratellis. None of these quite work for soccer, though. For that, we have to turn to baseball. Were the late 70s the golden era of singing in baseball stadiums? The alka-seltzer jingle might not work, but "kiss him good bye" definitely would (yes, Steam's "na na na na/na na na na/hey hey hey/goodbye").