Doublequote

Residential Internet in San Francisco

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Tue, 18 May 2010 11:56:51 PDT

I'm getting overcharged by Comcast for Internet access and since they generally are on the evil side, I researched and wrote a little knol on home Internet providers in San Francisco.

separate profiles on Chrome on Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 12:08:41 PDT

Google Chrome has a command-line flag --user-data-dir that makes Chrome store all its settings and preferences in the specified directory. By default, the directory is something like Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome in your home directory, so the following command will bring up a pristine instance:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --user-data-dir=Library/Application\ Support/Google/ChromeMySecondProfile

You can run several Chrome instances concurrently this way, saving cookies and history in each -- that's something you can't do with incognito mode.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a profile manager like the one Firefox has. I haven't bothered yet to figure out how to wrap the command-line above in a script with an icon etc.

Illy is called Amici in Switzerland

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:01:34 PDT

Another curiosity from Swiss supermarkets: there is a Swiss coffee brand called "Illy" or "Jlly", which is not the Italian Illy coffee we are used to in the rest of Europe and the US. The Italian Illy coffee is sold under the name Amici in the same packages as Illy coffee elsewhere.

The Amici web site explains why Illy is called Amici in Switzerland (translated via Google; German original) -- the gist is that in the sixties Illy's founder sold the Swiss branches, thereby conceding the trademark to the new local owners.

I bought the Italian Illy coffee after an unpleasant experiment with espresso coffee from Migros.

Cannabis Ice Tea

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:29:11 PDT

We saw this hemp-based iced tea in a supermarket in Switzerland. Apparently it's legal in the US as well but not readily available.

Rotating Android Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:51:30 PDT

Android phones have been able to take videos since Android 1.5 launched early this year. However, if you take a video in portrait orientation, it is exceedingly painful to get the movie rotated to display correctly, e.g., when uploaded to Youtube. I wrote a knol on rotating 3gp videos (hello knol, this page still hasn't made it into Google web search!?) but I hear that the iPhone 3GS actually solves this the way it should be solved: on the phone.

Clock reads 5:30 when it should read 9:30

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:02:57 PDT

One of the LEDs in the seven-segment displays on our oven clock broke. Interestingly enough, the failure maps two valid numbers to two other valid numbers and that's as bad as it gets for a single permanently-off segment.

The segment that broke is denoted by "B" in the diagram on the left. The seven segments can represent any 7-bit string and the Hamming(7,4) code is capable of encoding 16 values with error correction for any single-bit error, so the common representation of the digits is sub-optimal from a fault-tolerance perspective. Can this be improved while maintaining human readability?

A wet weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:29:32 PST

Martin after the sailing race
Originally uploaded by Hein

Last weekend was rather wet -- first I got drenched on Saturday bicycling back from the climbing gym at 40% chance of rain and Sunday I sailing with Martin. I only took a single picture because most of the time we were either busy with the boat or busy getting rained on. Finally a good excuse to put all that mountaineering gear to test :-) (It was definitely a time for hard shells.)

To round things up, it hailed on Sunday night but now the sun is shining again for a clean start of the week.

Weekend reading: Glennkill

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:05:45 PDT

While traveling this weekend I read a book in German, the first in a long time. Glennkill (English translation) is a sheep detective story--set in Ireland, its protagonists are sheep whose shepherd has been murdered. The sheep talk among each other and can understand humans, but humans can't understand the sheep; this gives rise to many funny misinterpretations. Of course there is a fair amount of suspense as well, and the book makes for an altogether fun light read.

Weekend reading: Little Brother

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:19:13 PDT

This weekend I picked up Little Brother (at the library). It is the best "near future science fiction" book I have read this year.

Set in San Francisco a few years from now, we witness a revolt by young geeks against the police state imposed by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the bay bridge. The students use a network of game consoles to establish a darknet. In civil disobedience, they organize an unapproved rock concert and fool the government's surveillance tactics. The novel is technically well researched and I enjoyed being taken to familiar places around San Francisco -- Dolores Park, the Tenderloin, the ruins of Sutro Baths.

The suspense and the geek humor made it hard to put down this book and I finished it in little over 24 hours. It also left me a bit paranoid. I brought up again my tor node (you should too!) and started wondering what happened to Freenet...

Library books I read this year

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:43:24 PDT

Six words each better than nothing.

1. Near-future SF: suspend less disbelief

Pattern recognition: a quest for superhuman art (reprise).
Execution Channel: fake bloggers and other media fabrications.
Halting state: Augmented-reality role playing games predicted.
Snow crash: Avatars invented but like comic book.

2. Detective&spy stories with a twist

An ordinary spy: agent turned novelist, reminds of Greene.
A death in Vienna: no weeping Nietzsche, but Freud appears.
Back to Bologna: Zen's penultimate, a comedy of errors.

3. Everything else that I finished reading

Kafka on the shore, Sputnik sweetheart, After dark: must reads, but in small doses.
China road: by bus and lorry across China.
The prophet: not sure whether I finished; avoid.

Sailing

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:29:06 PDT

Today Martin took us sailing again on the bay. It was awesome, even though we didn't make it all the way to Alcatraz; the spray just got too annoying so we turned toward calmer waters near Berkeley.

Later we played Puerto Rico. Imagine my surprise when I won (by a tiny margin) -- I am usually really bad a board games and even had a hard time tallying my score at the end.

Buying art for its IP

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:35:52 PDT

Last night we went to read at the Grove. A guy at the table next to us had a little graphics tablet hooked up to a laptop and, as we furtively stole glances from our books, rapidly executed a number of impressive drawings. Daisy struck up a conversation with him. John Mavroudis, poster designer (painter?), was at the cafe creating sketches for a poster for a band playing at The Fillmore. (Update Sep 17: the band is called Menomena and they are going to play at The Independent, not the Fillmore.)

He showed us some of his art and as a compliment I told him he should do a New Yorker cover sometime. Turns out, that he already had. Sort of. They liked his idea, but apparently play favorites with the execution and after a couple of iterations had one of their regulars cover the cover art. Kind of like buying a software company solely for its IP and ditching the product. We really liked John's style; hopefully the New Yorker will see the light and choose an authentic Mavroudis cover sometime soon!

TCP dimmable CFLs disappoint

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:01:18 PDT

As Daisy mentioned, I have been trying to replace all incandescent bulbs in our place with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). In two places we have conventional dimmer switches, however. Regular CFLs don't work well in those; typically there are warnings against using them on a dimmable circuit even if the switch is always fully on or off.

So I was happy to discover that TCP (which stands for "Technical Consumer Products", an unfortunate name clash with the internet network protocol) offers small form-factor bulbs in its 101 series (pdf specs). Other bloggers decided to wait until the products get more mature but I went ahead and bought three #10120 bulbs at $18.23 each(!).

My first impression was that they sort of worked. Very close to the brightest setting of the dimmer, the lamps actually dim as you turn down the dimmer. However, the colors change dramatically; unlike an incandescent bulb that turns toward yellow as you turn down the dimmer, the CFLs turn pinkish blue. Turn the wheel only a few degrees further and they start to flicker and go out completely.

That's disappointing. Worse was to come, however. After only two months of casual use (and almost exclusively at their brightest setting, since the dimmed colors were so displeasing), one of the lamps just stopped working. I got a replacement under warranty from the vendor but after only two days the replacement bulb stopped working too.

Something wrong with the circuit? Incandescent bulbs work fine, and the two other CFLs have been working fine too; whatever problems there are must be typical in a residential setting. TCP's customer service didn't seem interested in troubleshooting -- so much for the advantage of having a domestic provider.

Conclusion: I wasted some $60 on fickle immature technology.

Weekend adventures

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:50:22 PST

DSC06189
Originally uploaded by Oliver C. Radke

On President's Day Katja and Oliver picked me up for a little excursion to the Point Bonita Lighthouse. On the way there, just before entering the freeway, Katja pointed out a funny sound, which she correctly diagnosed as a flat tire. Cars are black boxes to me, so my instinct was to figure out the equivalent of filing a trouble ticket... it turns out that it's quite feasible to change a tire yourself, especially with the step-by-step instructions that came with the replacement wheel. Who would have thought!

(Click on the picture above for more of Oliver's shots.)

Obama, not Clinton

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:40:22 PST

Barack Obama will make a better president of the US than Hillary Clinton. Here are a few reasons why:

Contrast Obama's clairvoyance about the Iraq war with Clinton's taking "the President at his word" and meandering on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.
Obama is proactive on government transparency and rolling back some of the executive power grabs by recent administrations.
Obama will overcome the post-1968 polarization of politics.
Obama will break the political dynasties' hold on the White House, which is worthy of a Banana republic.

Milk

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:42:45 PST

Raw Milk
Originally uploaded by Hein

Recently I discovered raw milk at Rainbow Grocery. To drink pure as above or with my daily müsli, it has, well, character. However, as with other milk, I can taste the plastic container it came in.

Prompted to experiment with alternative milk forms, I discovered that I can't distinguish Clover organic milk from its non-organic variety (both from carton containers). However, the whole milk from Strauss did make a big difference: like the raw milk from Rainbow, it is topped by a layer of cream and it tastes just great. That makes paying top-dollar for an organic product so much more compelling.

Strauss milk comes in glass containers. Even a chain like Whole Foods has seen no need yet to make the return more efficient than having to queue up at the customer-service counter. Contrast that with the bottle-return machines in Europe, which accept individual bottles or entire cases and print out a bar-code receipt to claim a the deposit refund when paying for your grocery.

An anti-abortion demonstration in SF

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:10:58 PST

Figure that. On our Saturday stroll through San Francisco we got washed up by an anti-anti abortion demonstration (click the picture for more).

I am sure such a demonstration through notoriously liberal San Francisco strengthens the feeling of community of those people. At the same time, it doesn't engage anybody who isn't a religious blockhead already. For a short while we marveled at those alien crowds but we quickly got tired of it. There isn't really a way of interacting and discussing with demonstrators; demonstrations are borderline vehicles of public expression and like a referendum have a tinge of the populist and undemocratic.

WSJ on Koran research

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 18:15:04 PST

This Saturday I browsed the Wall Street Journal at our local public library. On the front page an article about a rediscovered picture archive of early versions of the Koran (spelled Quran there) caught my attention. The story has the makings of an Indiana Jones movie -- Nazis searching for ancients texts in Arab countries, the mysterious death of some of the researchers, the hiding of the archives after the war, and the vociferous hostility of Muslims toward researching the origins of a work deemed the word of God.

I hope that scholars will muster the courage to mine the new information in spite of this opposition -- I have always loved the popular-science accounts of the data mining involved in placing early sources of the Bible and even reconstructing a never-found Q source. The history of a text and the meaning of the words at the time of its creation improve our understanding -- unless one insists on literal interpretation, which on the given time scales strikes me as nonsensical because of the evolution of language.

Now that's a cluster

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:17:53 PST

Recently I watched Seth Goldstein talk about the Brain in a Bottle project (slides of the talk or fish). The idea is to build 1mm-diameter computer balls and throw them in a container, where they establish a power-distribution network by capacitive coupling between neighbors and a medium-distance information network by a few hairy wires that stick out of each ball and establish connections wherever they touch.

I haven't been paying much attention to computer architecture research recently but this seem pretty exciting to me. It is clearly a longer term project, but it seems promising to me because it involves both hardware and software people and the system is designed in a bottom-up manner. Of course, it's far from clear how to harness its power -- but maybe a reformed neural-network learning approach like Geoffrey Hinton's could make this a really powerful system for machine learning.

I'd certainly like to get my hands on of those bottles :-)

Update: crap, the slides actually just cover about the first five minutes of the presentation. I can't find anything else on the web at this point, I'll update this post when there is more information publicly available.

After the weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:51:06 PST

On today's Monday night I finished what I had begun but not completed during the weekend: vacuuming our apartment and reading After Dark, a novella by Haruki Murakami. The book is pleasantly short and interesting for its description of the late-night life in a large Japanese city. Yet it leaves a lot to be desired: there is a second fantastic plot that never really gets integrated into the main plot; the entire book reads like the retelling of a movie, with descriptions of the camera movement and such; and some of the dialog seems stilted and improbable, such as a nineteen-year old starting a sentence with "when I was a teenager".

Pico projectors

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:44:53 PST

A colleague pointed me to these single-mirror projectors -- it's basically a laser and a microscopic oscillating mirror, recreating an image by scanning like a CRT. It's pretty cool technology even if it doesn't fit into a cell phone, as the company's sales pitch has it.

Carbon offsets

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:13:42 PST

The idea of carbon offsets is to compensate your CO2 emissions by paying somebody to sequester a commensurate amount of CO2. Of course, not flying is better and I did that for our last department offsite, but going home for Christmas is important to me. To remind myself of the associated environmental costs, I subjected myself to a token emissions tax in form of carbon offsets from TerraPass.

Of course it is easy for any outfit to mint such carbon offsets and have them certified by an equally unknown authority. The market is tiny for now and not well developed; in Germany, atmosfair.de appears to be semi trustworthy, and in addition to TerraPass I considered buying my carbon "indulgences" from Sustainable Travel International, who are loosely associated with atmosfair.de. As Malcolm pointed out, showing that consumers care may matter more than which organization gets your money; as the market grows, procedures and standards should get shaken out.

Checklists and algorithms

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:35:04 PST

The December 10, 2007 issue of the New Yorker has an article on the power of checklists in intensive care and how hospitals in the US are not adopting them. That incentive misalignment is a scandal but I want to talk about something else here.

Checklists help automate processes. They are simple algorithms (or rather, implementations) for maintaining a patient or getting an aircraft ready for takeoff. As such, you could regard them as the first step of taking the human out of the critical loop. Similarly, instead of aiming at musician-like performance of surgeons (who like professional musicians refine their art on live audiences, but with potentially worse consequences), it would be great if doctors could evolve from the performer role towards a becoming programmers, e.g., with the help of machines executing the actual surgical steps and, of course, with the use of checklists for scripted actions by the human element in the procedure.

Wine Tasting at Trefethen

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:22:17 PST

Wine Tasting at Trefethen
Originally uploaded by Hein

On "black" Friday a bunch of us ventured once again into Napa Valley -- we weren't quite sure whether we were about to avoid the shopping masses or hit the wineries on their busiest day of the year. Thanks to Neha who had called ahead, we got great service at all the wineries we visited: Trefethen, famous for its dry Riesling, Cakebread (tastings only by appointment, nice but pricey Merlot), Ggrich (no tasting fee, but accordingly busy and impersonal).
Some more pictures by Daisy.

An excursion to Marin County

noreply@blogger.com (Hein) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:24:17 PDT

Pictures by Omar.

Today a bunch of us went to the live broadcast of the West Coast Live radio show from a country inn in Marin. Robert Reich got interviewed on occasion of his new book; talking about Yahoo!'s and Google's dealing with China I found myself disagreeing with his view of corporations being amoral and only controllable via laws. This is similar to Lessig's nit about Supercapitalism. Unlike Lessig I got the impression that Reich is a proponent of big government, wanting government intervention in place of adjusting market mechanisms, e.g., by controlling the working conditions in outsourced jobs. Unfortunately the interviewer quickly moved away from the subject matter of the book and the interview deteriorated into platitudes bashing the Bush administration.

Pictures by Daisy.

After the radio show we drove to Point Reyes Station for lunch and then hung out for a bit on Stinson Beach. I definitely need to bring my climbing shoes next time :)