Nelson's Weblog

Marin Marais vs. Liquid Sky

2012-05-25T18:22:00Z

Today I learned that one of the key themes in the electronica soundtrack for the film Liquid Sky is an arrangement of a 1723 piece by baroque composer Marin Marais. Compare for yourself: Sonnerie de Ste-Geneviève du Mont-de-Paris, Noon and Afternoon from Liquid Sky.

Liquid Sky has always been one of my favorite films. The plot’s ridiculous. But the music, the art direction, the costumes, the acting, it’s all beautiful and unique. A particularly heady film for 1982. Sadly my love for the film is not shared by all.

I came to all this while listening to Nicolas Jaar’s essential mix, excellent listening itself. He mixes the baroque piece on top of some Aphex Twin around 19 minutes in.

Dolores Park at 1 pixel per inch

2012-05-18T17:07:00Z

Last Sunday I had the pleasure to participate in making an aerial map, a very detailed overhead image of Dolores Park taken from 200’ to 400’. The fine folks at Public Laboratories have published the result. A couple of direct links: a full page slippy map and aerial video. I also got a nice single shot of the new Dolores Park playground (full size).

This kind of mapping comes from Public Laboratory, a cool non-profit helping ordinary people make their own aerial maps. You don’t need a satellite or fancy cameras on a plane to make a “satellite map”. All you need is a kite or balloon, a cheap point and shoot camera, and a little software.

I particularly like how low tech the setup is. The lift comes from something as simple as a mylar balloon filled with helium (we used a car dealership ad balloon). No fancy cradle, just some rubber bands holding the camera to a plastic soda bottle with the soda cap as the clamp. And no special camera, just an ordinary consumer camera set to continuous drive with another rubber band holding down the button. Launch, fly for awhile, pick the best photos, then stitch them together into a map. (That last part takes some effort; you can do it by hand in Photoshop or use the MapKnitter web app).

The Dolores Park shoot was mostly for fun, a nice way to be outside on a sunny day and excite a bunch of kids. But Public Laboratories participates in more serious projects too, like documenting the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A key thing about this kind of mapping is anyone can do it relatively cheaply and quickly. You can also fly other sensors, they’re doing a lot of work in environment monitoring,

Many thanks to Stewart Long and Bobby Sudekum for letting me tag along on the fun photo shoot.

Apple's software control

2012-05-12T16:16:00Z

I have an increasingly bad feeling about Apple’s efforts to control what software runs on the computers they sell. Not just the business implications, but technical issues.

There’s two ways to get software onto a Mac: buy it directly from the developer or buy it via Apple’s Mac app store. App store versions are almost always worse; fewer features, more awkward updates. And now, with the sandbox requirements, total contortions.

I bought NZBVortex via the app store. Version 2.7 was recently released to be sandbox compatible. But for it to work completely you have to download a “helper application” that runs outside the sandbox. It’s a clever workaround, but it’s needless complexity and subverts the whole purpose of sandboxing.

I also bought Alfred, an awesome app launcher. At first I got the free version via the app store but that turned out to be a mistake, because you really want the (for pay) Powerpack but because of the sandbox restrictions the Powerpack is not available via the app store. The Alfred developers optimistically say “the Mac App Store is one of many ways to buy software for your Mac,” and encourage you to buy directly from them. Which works today.

But what if the Mac App Store becomes the only easy way to buy software for your Mac? Gatekeeper is a step down that road; you’ll still be able to run software from other sources, but only if it’s signed by an Apple-issued developer key or you personally disable a security setting. So far Apple’s not dictating policy on what key-signed code is allowed to do. But what if they decide to?

Meanwhile, over in Apple’s actual computer market, iPhones and iPads, total lockdown has been the rule since day one. And sometimes it goes badly. The most recent kerfuffle is over Dropbox signups; Dropbox has capitulated, removing some aspects of user signups to satisfy Apple’s market monopoly demands. And Apple has behaved poorly in the past, for example blocking Google Voice and Camera+ for ridiculous reasons.

I admire Apple. I sympathize with their desire to control the quality and security of software. But I don’t want to have to completely trust them to make the right decisions.

Perspectives on North Korea

2012-05-09T01:43:00Z

I’m fascinated by the hermit kingdom, North Korea. It’s the world’s most oppressive government, has run its country literally into starvation and ruin and horribly abuses its citizens. And yet it persists as this somewhat stable if entirely isolated country. Also it has nuclear weapons, that commands some attention. So I’ve read a few things about North Korea in the past year, here’s some recommendations.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. A completely fantastic book by an LA Times journalist who has devoted years to North Korea reporting. She tells the stories of six defectors from North Korea, ordinary citizens from the large industrial town Chongjin. It’s a long, heartbreaking read of life in the DPRK around 1980 – 2000. She does a fantastic job capturing what life is like in a totalitarian society, how people really believe in their Dear Leader and the absolute superiority of North Korean communism. At least until the mid-90s when a multi-year famine caused by government mismanagement killed a million or so people and severely starved the rest. Very upsetting to read despite the author’s compassion and skill at nuanced writing; I only made it through because I knew it would end with people escaping North Korea. (Although even that escape is a mixed blessing).

The In Focus photojournalism blog: Inside North Korea • Kim Jong Il, 1942-2011 • North Korea Mourns Kim Jong Il • Glimpses of Humanity in Choreographed North Korea • North Korea Prepares for a Milestone Year. Pretty much all images coming out of North Korea are heavily censored, but even so there’s a lot of amazing photojournalism done by visitors. Alan Taylor’s well edited photo collections tell amazing stories.

The Orphan Master’s Son: A Novel by Adam Johnson. Not so much about North Korea as a book set in North Korea. And with a lot of literary liberties, the author is too clever by half. Still there’s something excellent in the alienation of the story and the characters against the backdrop of North Korean totalitarianism, it was a good read.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle. A lovely graphic novel, a French Canadian’s memories of a two month stay in Pyongyang. It’s a bit of a light-hearted treatment considering how awful the place is, but it’s nicely drawn and I appreciated the author’s personal story of his relationship to such a strange place.

An extra set of links.. North Korean Economy Watch, an analysis blog. Korean Central News Agency of DPRK, the official government press outlet. Daily NK, critical news published by defectors and other dissidents. Mourning King Jong-il, a propaganda video; from what I read in Demick’s book these expressions of grief are genuine if coerced. I have more North Korea links, too.

It’s hard to understands how North Korea persists, how Kim Il-Sung’s family maintains control to a third generation and how the country still manages to barely function despite years of complete economic collapse. A key part of it is the utter isolation of the place, convincing most of its citizens that life in North Korea is the best in the world. But that façade is failing between the mass starvation, the rise of communication with China (both illegal trade and cell phones), and the increasing influence of black market DVDs and radios.

Grass Valley and Nevada City

2012-05-06T17:16:00Z

Ken and I had a nice little vacation last week, up near Grass Valley and Nevada City. It’s up in the Gold Country, in the Sierra Foothills northeast of Sacramento, about three hours drive from San Francisco. In the past we’ve enjoyed going up to Placerville; same idea except the towns are bigger and have more to offer up north.

Not that city life is the primary reason to go to Nevada County. It’s quiet up there, and beautiful; a nice escape from the city. Still, nice to have amenities like grocery stores and restaurants. New Moon is good for fine dining and South Pine Cafe is a great casual breakfast / lunch place.

We had a great stay in this log cabin, a bit south of Grass Valley in Alta Sierra. Really comfortable place and big, could easily host 6+ for a week. Nice creek in the back, chirping frogs, wood stove, hot tub, hammocks, and a well furnished kitchen.

A week in Grass Valley

2012-05-02T00:35:00Z

Ken and I spent a week in Grass Valley, up in the Sierra Foothills northeast of Sacramento. We're thinking about buying a house up there. Here's where we went.

The map is a screenshot from Google Latitude, a passive location tracker. It's a roughly accurate view of where we travelled; the purple circle is where we stayed. The spray of red south and west from there aren't correct, I think it's iPhone location errors in a rural setting.

The parallel Chinese Internet

2012-04-23T21:39:00Z

There’s a whole second Internet out there, in mainland China. It’s hugely innovative and we in the west can learn a lot from what’s going on there.

We have Google and Bing: in China they have Baidu. Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo are the Twitter equivalents, Renren is Facebook. The Chinese eBay is Taobao (owned by Alibaba). NetEase is like Yahoo without the miasma. There’s a robust variety of big Chinese websites. Online games, too, Western juggernauts like World of Wacraft are also-rans compared to local games.

Here in the US we tend to dismiss the Chinese Internet as a backwater, some second-rate place that clones American technologies while laboring under the yoke of communist oppression. Nothing could be further from the truth, there’s a lot of interesting innovation and an enormous ecosystem developing independently in China. As a small example, consider maps. Baidu launched indoor maps before Google. Sina Weibo just blew past Twitter in mapping microblog posts. And no one can touch Baidu’s awesomely unique isometric pixel art maps.

I’m trying to learn more about Internet development in China but unfortunately I don’t read Chinese and surfing via Google translate is pretty bad. (Maybe I should try Baidu Fanyi). But thanks to a tip from Richard Chen I’ve been reading the Tech in Asia blog, a great bit of news coverage of consumer Internet stuff in Asia. About 10 posts a day, not just China, most quite readable. The Economist’s new expanded Chinese coverage is also helpful for a broad perspective.

What I haven’t found is a good source for technical innovations. Where is the Chinese open source community, what is their GitHub, their Hacker News? There’s Chinese Linux distros; are there app server frameworks, NoSQL datastores, nerd fights over semicolons? There’s a lot of very smart computer scientists in China, where is their hacker output?

I can’t post this without a word on why the Internet in China is a separate place. Most US coverage talks about China’s censorship, in particular the “Great Firewall” that blocks politically sensitive topics (like Gu). Censorship is absolutely part of the Chinese Internet and is deplorable. But I think most of the division is simple language and cultural boundaries. A quarter of Web content is in Chinese and Americans never read it; why should we expect Chinese to read English content? There’s also a healthy dose of trade protectionism: China is explicitly trying to develop its own Internet industry to be independent of the US. Maybe we should start cloning some of the Chinese innovations.

Unlicensed use is not stealing

2012-04-19T16:07:00Z

We should stop using the words “theft” and “stealing” when talking about unlicensed use of intellectual property. Those words should be reserved for physical property, for things limited by scarcity.

A bunch of the news coverage of Oracle v Google talks about Google “stealing” Java or the “theft” of Oracle’s intellectual property. It is common to talk about downloading music or video as “stealing” or “piracy”. That language is prejudicial. What Oracle is really claiming is that Google has used some of its patents and copyrighted material without a license. Downloading Game of Thrones is not “theft”, it’s “unlicensed use”.

I think copyrights and (appropriate) patents are important; I’ve made my own living by creating intellectual property. One of the great challenges of the Information Age is figuring out how to control intellectual property. But applying 3000+ years of physical property law to intellectual property doesn’t make sense. When I take your cow, I deprive you of the use of your cow. When I copy a song I don’t deprive anyone of the song. Intellectual property is fundamentally different from physical property. We should use different words when describing their misuse.

Keurig single cup coffee brewers

2012-04-12T00:39:00Z

The Keurig B60 single cup brewer makes good coffee. I’m not much of a coffee snob and am perfectly happy with any decent American brewed coffee. For me and Ken, this K-Cup brewer gizmo is better than a generic drip coffee pot.

The main advantage is convenience. We can have a cup of hot fresh coffee in about three minutes; faster if the machine is already on. Any time of day, without the hassle of making a fresh pot (or, guiltily, microwaving leftover coffee). The other advantage is consistent quality. The coffee just tastes better, I think partly because of freshness and partly because of precise temperature control during brewing.

The downside is cost. Even in bulk, my preferred coffee is about $0.65 / 10oz mug. That’s about double what I paid for drip coffee made with decent beans from my local coffee shop. You can use your own cheaper grounds in refillable K-Cups (the ekobrew works OK), but a bit of grit gets through and it’s a hassle to fill and clean. The brewer itself is also expensive, but it’s a surprisingly complicated and well made machine.

Keurig sells a confusing variety of K-Cup systems and now has a new incompatible system called Vue. The B60 special edition looked like the right feature set to me, although I’m already wishing I had some way to hook it directly to my plumbing so I don’t have to fill a water tank.

Update: thanks to Adam for pointing out that the K-Cup patent expires in September. The price of a cup should go down then, it also probably explains why Keurig just introduced an incompatible new system with no obvious major benefits.

iPhone software for international travel

2012-04-09T18:42:00Z

I feel pretty lost without my iPhone, doubly so when traveling. Here’s some of the iPhone apps I found useful on a recent trip to France. Many of these apps cache data on the phone, both to save on roaming charges and for responsiveness.

MapsWithMe ($0): street maps. Caches vector data from OpenStreetMap and then renders maps on the phone. I used to use OffMaps but their raster tile approach just takes up too much space. With MapsWithMe I could download super-detailed maps for all of France with no sweat.

Navigon ($20 – $100): turn-by-turn driving directions. No need for a standalone GPS, the voice prompting and routing is good enough to drive all over France and Norway. Shop carefully to avoid their random pricing; right now it’s $65 for all of Europe, or $90 for just France. TomTom is a strong competitor. Bring a car charger.

Wiki Offline ($10) and AllOfWiki ($10): cached copies of Wikipedia. Really great for research. The 5GB data dump is text only and has some formatting issues, but it’s usable. Both apps work well and you only need one; I think I slightly prefer the Wiki Offline UI.

Accio French-English ($5): translation dictionary. There’s better language software out there, Accio is cheap and good enough for quick lookups.

Photogene² ($1): photo editing. Photogene makes it easy to crop, correct exposure, and upload. iPhone 4S photo quality is great and I really like uploading photos on the fly during a trip; I’ve been home 3 weeks and still haven’t gotten to the 200 photos on my “real” camera.

Twitter ($0): social networking. Tweets are the Internet’s postcards. Particularly good with photos. I’m still looking for a way to archive all my tweets into a journal; here’s a Storify view of my trip to France.

Traboules ($1): Lyon sightseeing. Only useful if you’re going to be in Lyon, I’m linking it here because it’s remarkable. The tourist office commissioned an augmented reality iPhone app; you look through the iPhone screen to see the world with overlaid markers for the Traboules, a hidden bit of Lyon.

See also Matt Haughey’s post and my own earlier post