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(coming to you from a USAir jet somewhere en route from Boston to New York... yes, it has been a l o n g day...)
Is the election this simple (see at right)?
The Scientist: readers discuss Is Sarah Palin a Creationist? That's a question I'd like to know the answer to myself.
Leslie Sanchez thinks Palin is a VP for the rest of us...
Karl Rove says Palin's toughest days are ahead...
Running Palin's and McCain's speeches through the word cloud...
She certainly does have everyone talking, huh?
In booking flights for my trip, I noticed a new sign of airline desperation... they now offer to sell you additional miles when you book a trip. Get that? They take your money now, and owe you flights and upgrades later. Anything to stay alive, I guess...
Here's some interesting inside information about Chrome, Google's new entry in the browser wars... I love this quote: "Speed may be Chrome’s most significant advance. When you improve things by an order of magnitude, you haven’t made something better — you’ve made something new." Very true. Speed is important, but as long as Firefox has Adblock and Chrome doesn't, Firefox wins...
Lifehacker with a list of Chrome's "About" pages, the geek's view inside the Web OS...
Some important work: Science proves exotic cars turn women on. Vroomm! Follow the link for clips of a Maserati, Ferrari, and Lamborghini in action :)
Here's something that turns me on - the Talbot, possibly the most beautiful car ever made. What do you think (pic at right, click to enlarge)?
Vallegwag notes NBC dumps Silverlight after Olympics. "NBC streamed all its NBCOlympics.com videos using Microsoft's Silverlight backend tech, but the network dumped Microsoft before last night's NFL kickoff — streamed live over NBCSports.com and NFL.com — opting to use Adobe Flash instead. Why?" Ha! Everyone has Flash, hardly anyone has Silverlight, even after the Olympics. IIWII...
(coming to you from a UAL jet somewhere en route from LA to Boston...)
Wired's cover story this month is The Future of the Electric Car, about Shai Agassi and his company Better Place. He has a pretty innovative vision. Instead of building electric cars and selling them, he wants to build a network of charging stations and give cars away, then charge for access to the network. A sort of weird melding of the business model of cellular phones with the technology of electric cars. One advantage of this approach is that range isn't as much of an issue; if you could charge your car "everywhere", how far would it have to be able to go on a charge?
{I have one of the longest commutes to my office of anyone I know, 140 miles. That is easily possible with many electric car designs. It is trying to make them go 300 miles which is tough.}
From the Wired article:
Agassi dealt with the battery issue by simply swatting it away. Previous approaches relied on a traditional manufacturing formula: We make the cars, you buy them. Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of "smart" charge spots. Drivers could plug in anywhere, anytime, and would subscribe to a specific plan—unlimited miles, a maximum number of miles each month, or pay as you go—all for less than the equivalent cost for gas. They'd buy their car from the operator, who would offer steep discounts, perhaps even give the cars away. The profit would come from selling electricity—the minutes.
A key is the AutOS (diagramed at right, click to enlarge), the network which provides electricity to the cars.
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I was totally heads' down today, coding and deHeisenbugging. Even managed to obey my three-hour rule, which I'm better at explaining and promoting than following myself. Much better than yesterday, when I basically spun in place without accomplishing anything. And yes of course I escaped for a ride, didn't have the legs I had yesterday but managed to shake off a few cobwebs. It is noticeable that the days are getting shorter, and the air has a "fall" feel to it. Pretty soon it will be long tee-shirts for these evening rides...
Of course today's biggest news was Sarah Palin's speech at the GOP convention. I watched it, after vowing not to watch any of the convention speeches (from either party) on the grounds that they didn't matter. I guess I was curious, would we see a train wreck, or a tour de force, or ... what?
At the Vuelta, Levi Leipheimer won today's time trial and took over the gold jersey. Yay. He says he's going to continue working for Contador, and I believe him; Alberto is the best climber in the world, and there are some big mountains left. But clearly Levi is on form, you never know...
Russell Beattie observes Tweets kill that blogging urge. I don't know about that, since I don't tweet, but I do agree with this: "I can definitely tell you one thing I've noticed, and the reason I actually want to blog more - Tweets have no archival value of any sort." Every time I've seen a blogger posts their tweets, it is mindless drivel. Which doesn't help draw me to try Tweeting :)
This is cool: the Energy Ball wind turbine. I want one!
From Chris "long tail" Anderson: Fourteen free business models. Not that the models are free (well, they are, he's giving them away on his blog :), but the models are for free, that is, how to make money in a long tail world. Pretty cool analysis.
Oh, and this is nice: a new DirectTV Tivo which supports HD. I'm not a DirectTV subscriber, but I'm still interested in this product because I'm interested in Tivo staying alive as a company, and this will help...
September, Day 2. A day of work - many meetings, conference calls, status reports to read and write and review and reply to... I was frazzled all day, my todo list is now longer than when I started, and the one thing I had to do - for which I am on negative time - I never did. I love Mondays, especially when they fall on a Tuesday.
One bright note: after being frazzled all day and almost talking myself out of riding altogether, I did make it onto my bike and rode my usual route around Westlake and through Hidden Valley in 1:16:56, an all-time record. This route is 25.5 miles so that works out to an average of 19.97 mph. I am -> <- this close to averaging 20, which would be awesome! (Yes, there are three short but reasonably steep climbs, and one longer one at the end - it is no cakewalk; here's the route profile, courtesy of mapmyride.com: 
Okay, I know; who cares. Well, I care, and this is my blog. You get what you pay for :)
In the Asia Times, "Spengler" explains How Obama lost the election. You might disagree, and events may prove him wrong, but it is certainly an interesting and well reasoned point of view.
So like everyone (probably like you?) I tried Google Chrome, and I liked it. Very fast, very clean. Worked really well and I encountered no problems, and I liked the extra real estate and lack of clutter. But then I chanced to load a site with ads, and I suddenly remembered why I prefer Firefox: Adblock. There is simply no contest when Firefox extensions are added into the mix. YMMV, but I doubt it.
Here's an interesting point: Who cares about Chrome, IE6 has 25% market share. "Everyone is writing about the features of the new browser, and its strategic significance. The product sounds great, but I can only get but so excited. Why? Because as a developer, Chrome seems to me to be little more than pissing in the wind. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer controls around 75% of the browser market, and that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that Internet Explorer version 6 has 25% of the market." True.
Of course, the real competition for Chrome isn't IE, or even Firefox. The real competition is Windows and OS X. If you don't believe it, check out the Chromium developer documentation: "In the long term, we think of Chromium as a tabbed window manager or shell for the web rather than a browser application. We avoid putting things into our UI in the same way you would hope that Apple and Microsoft would avoid putting things into the standard window frames of applications on their operating systems." Ha!
Today's picture of the day: Atlantis breaking the sound barrier.
Jason Calcanis explains how to demo your startup. Ten simple rules, starting with "show your product within the first 60 seconds". I so believe this. And later, violating his own stricture to keep it simple, he adds how to demo your startup, part 2, with eight more rules :) They're not bad, but not as fundamental as the first ten, IMHO.
Here's an interesting twist on online dating: Psismic. The idea is that you post stuff you like, and other people do too, and they match you with other people who like the same things you do. Seems like it might work?
I've often thought that if you listed your top ten favorite songs, or movies, or wines, or anything - it would be a pretty unique "signature". How many people have the same ten favorite songs?
Remember I posted about Dash? This is a GPS unit that makes realtime decisions based on traffic. Each Dash subscriber not only receives updates, but contributes to the traffic database by sending telemetry. Sounds like a great idea - and guess what? - today I received an email telling me I'm under consideration for beta-testing Dash in the L.A. area! Wow, how cool is that! Anyway I filled out their survey and we'll see what happens - stay tuned...
Woo hoo, September! And... Labor Day. I labored at doing nothing today, did a little coding, a little football watching, a little hanging out. Today is traditionally our last day of heating the pool for the summer, after this, the weather cools down, the kids are in school, and no swimming takes place. I'm heading into a busy week with a lot going on and travel to Boston and New York at the end of it, so I rested up.
My server continues to labor, yesterday I mentioned I served over 4,800 pages (ended up over 5,000), today, over 2,400 so far... and a ton of hits, too, mostly images (thar be hotlinkin' goin' on out thar). So be it... I don't have the energy or inclination to figure out what's going on, but I like it. Welcome!
So it's curtains for Gustav, and now we await Hanna, Ike, and Josephine. Welcome to the hurricane season, whew. Not to trivialize the damage caused along the Gulf Coast, but the longest-lasting impact of Gustav was that it kept George Bush from speaking at the GOP convention in Minneapolis. As noted in the New Yorker cartoon I just posted, he remains McCain's biggest liability, and although it would have been weird not to have the sitting President speak, it was fine that [because of Gustav] he didn't. The GOP can now resume the convention with speakers like Giulani...
The big news today was Google's Chrome, a new browser. Or a new Web Operating System, if you prefer. The idea that Google would do something like this has a pretty long history, as noted by Jason Kottke, why do it now, when Firefox has taken off so nicely? Looking through comic book in which Google explains the plan, it seems the main reason is to have an architecture with separate processes for each tab / window, in order to get more parallelism for background tasks. I guess that makes sense. In conjunction with various client-side web applications (written in JavaScript), over time this could end up being a major threat to Windows. We'll have to see how it plays out...
Check out these amazing nested Klein bottles... 3D equivalents to the 2D Mobius strip (Klein bottles have only one surface, Mobius strips have only one edge). Beautiful, on two levels.
This is cool: Yacht Club prepares children for sailing, an article about the Westlake Yacht Club's summer sailing academy. My kids are all happy graduates :)
As a veteran C++ programmer, I look over into the Objective-C world with curiosity and confusion. Although superficially similar, they aren't really, and the difference is illustrated by the new blocks feature being added to Objective-C. It is clearly more "dynamic" than statically compiled C++...
A great rant from ex-uncov-er Ted Dzuiba: OpenID is why I hate the Internet. The real subject is "why I dislike OpenID", and the observations are accurate and compelling. There is no way this is going to succeed, he's right.

Wow, the last day of August, already! Where did the year go?
Did a great ride this morning; got up at 5:00AM (pronounced "oh-dark-hundred") and proceeded to ride 80 miles, through the Valley, down to the Santa Monica pier, up PCH, climbed Latigo Canyon, and down Decker Canyon. Nice to do a long ride early, to have a lot of day left afterward, although I was a bit tired. Sleep seems indicated...
Meanwhile, it's all happening (yawn)...
Today's big news is Hurricane Gustav, of course; the threat to New Orleans, and the consequent postponement / rearrangement of the G.O.P. convention this week. Noemie Emery analyzes What Gustav Does... be careful what you wish for, indeed!
Weirdly, today I had over 4,800 page views! What could explain such a thing? No new referring links, no major search engine activity... strange. The whole world just decided to read my blog today, I guess :) In other blog-gazing news, this is my 50th post this month, and 319th this year (but who's counting?) My busiest blogging year since 2003, which was my first. Interestingly, September has been my least active month of blogging. We'll see what happens this year - stay tuned!
An interesting post: the designers have spoken again... various posters made in response to a design contest to encourage people to vote. "Good design makes choices clear." The posters are supposed to embody the reasons why people should vote, and many of them do, pretty nicely.
Of course people who aren't informed or interested enough to vote should not be encouraged to do so; it just dilutes the votes of those who are informed and are interested...
The MythBuster's Adam Savage has three ways to fix science education. "When Jamie Hyneman and I speak at teacher conventions, we always draw a grateful crowd. They tell us Thursday mornings are productive because students see us doing hands-on science Wednesday nights on our show MythBusters, and they want to talk about it." I like his way #1: Let students get their hands dirty!

This is awesome, NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day is actually a panoramic view taken from the top of Mt. Everest.
Wow, that's just about all I can say.
Well it definitely isn't summer anymore, as today the football season started (!); I watched USC crush Virginia. Ouch. I did discover that Smokey (my new guinea pig) likes to watch football. Or at least, he likes to sit on my chest while I'm watching :) Otherwise a quiet day off; I didn't even ride. Got a long one planned for tomorrow though... have to stay in the groove for the Knoxville Double which is coming up in three weeks, and next weekend I'll be in New York presenting at a conference.
Palin-ed out already? I'm not... interesting that a surprise selection like that changes everything, gets people talking. The reaction I've noted is all over the map, too. The choice didn't so much change minds as coalesce them.
If you're still trying to learn more, this Time interview is worth a read; it was conducted a couple of weeks ago. Interesting that in Palin's political career her age has been more of an obstacle than her gender.
Politico has five questions about Palin; good ones, too, including: Is she a creationist? (LGF tries to answer...)
Hurricane Gustav is not looking good as the threat to New Orleans increases. Yikes, here we go again... I really wonder what the Republicans are going to do, postponing their convention doesn't seem possible on such short notice, but going ahead and having it doesn't seem right either.
The Vuelta started today, with a team time trial in Granada. Surprisingly Liquigas won, over favorites Astana and CSC, and Filippo Pozzato will wear the first golden jersey. Ah, Granada... reminds me of the Vuelta two years ago when I rode and saw a stage up the Alta de Monachil that finished there. That really was a perfectly incredible day...
An awesome rant from eco-geek: Why changing your lightbulbs doesn't matter. "We will never significantly reduce our energy use in this country by asking nicely. If you tell someone 'Save the planet, change your light bulb' you'll be lucky to get a 20% action rate. But if you say 'save $200 per year, change your light bulbs' you're suddenly on the right side of every argument." This is so true. There has to be a positive local advantage for people to behave in a way that has global benefit.
Russell Beattie visits the library, encounters a kiosk covered with flyers, and asks When will Local truly be on the web? "I'm on the computer every day, all day and yet I know almost nothing about what's happening in my local area. Not only is it basically impossible to stumble upon the information, like I can while walking back to my car from the library, but even actively searching for it is normally fruitless." I totally agree. Right now there is no good way to find it all, why is that?
I'm having such fun with KillerStartups; today's preposterous startup of the day is NoFouls.com, "a communication tool intended to accomplish one thing: get other ballers to the basketball court when you wanna play." Why it might be killer? "This is a great idea. Once more cities are added, it could turn from a simple site into an online movement, like Facebook or Twitter." Riight...
A couple of weeks ago I drove the Furnace Creek 508 route in my car, and wrote a reconnaissance report. The intended audience was my riding partner Mark Burson and our "crew" for the ride, Mark Elliot and Dan Pizano. In typical 2008 fashion Google indexed the report, and pretty soon I was getting visitors from everywhere who were interested in the 508, including Chris Kostman, Mr. 508 himself, Chief Adventure Officer and Race Director!
Chris had some nice things to say about the report, and asked if he could host it on the 508 website... Of course, Chris, you're welcome! He also pointed out a number of errors and omissions; as a newbie who hasn't even ridden the route on a bike yet, I am barely qualified to give such an overview, while Chris has been running the race for eighteen years. So today I went back and used Chris' remarks to update the report. It is still probably "wrong", but at least it is right-er :), and who knows, it might appear on the 508 website soon!
A few weeks ago I was contacted by Peggy Kuo, an honours student at the University of New South Wales, who is conducting a survey on "Email Addiction in the Workplace" as part of her thesis topic. She found me because of my 2003 article The Tyranny of Email. Peggy has posted an online survey and asked me if I'd mind linking to it... not at all, Peggy! If you have a few minutes and would like to help her, please click through and take the survey. I just took it myself in about five minutes.
The whole subject of email addiction is pretty interesting... obviously email is an important communication tool, and many of us rely on it for business; as well, many personal contacts now are made and maintained that way... when was the last time you wrote a [paper] letter! If you encounter someone who doesn't have an email address it seems weird, in fact it seems weird when you encounter people who don't check their email at least daily. Now that we have smartphones, checking email hourly seems pretty normal, and of course we all know "crackberry addicts" who check their email compulsively every minute. Whether this rises to the level of addiction depends on how easily you can let it go, I guess; I like being informed and check email frequently, but I am able to unplug without too much trauma.
My biggest problem with email isn't that I feel I must check it, it is that I choose to check it as a way to procrastinate. I have the same problem with reading RSS feeds. And with posting to my blog :)
Amazing how the Gov. Palin announcement dominated the news and the blogosphere today... Obama's speech last night is a distant memory. I'm wondering how Hillary Clinton feels about all this - pissed, I would guess. She worked so hard and now it looks like someone else is going to have that shot instead of her.
My main reaction surprises me: I'm really happy a woman was nominated. I have four daughters, all the genes I'm sending into the future are on X chromosomes. Breaking the glass ceiling does matter. Plus, she seems pretty solid, although I am worried about whether she's a creationist; that would be unfortunate.
Interesting: how a college sophomore won Sarah Palin the VP slot.
John Dickerson: huh? I think all the "huh?" reactions are wishful thinking; she was a pretty inspired pick. Over the next few weeks the excitement will fade, but she'll still be an excellent choice.
Wired: Mazda building a Volt of its own. The difference between GM and Mazda is that Mazda will probably ship, and probably ship on time. "What makes this especially interesting is Ford owns a big chunk of Mazda, which means anything Mazda builds could appear in showrooms with a blue oval on the hood. Looks like the race is on." Good - for everyone...
This looks really cool: Blaupunkt nav overlay on live video. Excellent.
Remember Elementeo, the board game about Chemistry? "In this action-packed game, two or more players wage a chemical war with just one goal in mind – destroy their opponent's electrons to zero! Armed with their arsenal of elements, compounds, and nuclear reactions, these young chemists strive to create, combat, and conquer the world!" It is finally out, get your copy today...
Awesome choice!
Sen. John McCain today announced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate, calling her "the running mate who can best help me shake up Washington." Palin says she "was just your average hockey mom in Alaska," before getting involved in politics.
I like her already. She's 44, a first term governor, and a conservative Republican. "Her past occupations included being a commercial fishing company owner, outdoor recreational equipment company owner and sports reporter, according to Congressional Quarterly. She is blunt, outspoken and charming. And don't assume she can't stand toe-to-toe with Joe Biden. She is a great debater. And she was runner-up for the Miss Alaska title, won Miss Congeniality in that contest, and plays the flute." She'd be considered too inexperienced except by comparison with Obama (!) Her nickname is "Sarah Barracuda"; it will be interesting to see her debate against Joe Biden :)
If the reaction in my household is any guide, this was an inspired pick.
I just returned from watching the Angels beat Texas, they scored five runs in the eighth and came back to win 7-5, pretty exciting. The rest of the score was four hot dogs, two orders of nachos, and one ice cream sundae. A good game.
The rest of today was good too, but I'm almost too tired to relate. Had a long hard ride - lately I've been trying to keep my speed over 18mph on my "local" rides (which is nearly impossible), but constantly riding with my average speed displayed makes for harder workouts. A tangible example of the metric magic :)
You'll notice I'm not saying anything about Obama's speech tonight. First, I didn't see it, and second, we all know what he was going to say - a bunch of feel good platitudes, very little detail, and probably some hefty attacks on Bush and the Republicans. Ho hum.
 So have you seen BMW/Oracle's new trimaran? Wow, what a boat! I can't believe they're actually racing these things in the America's Cup - what the heck is up with that? - but this is sure an amazing watercraft. I want one :) Or maybe just: I want to ride on one :)
If you're not visiting KillerStartups, you're really missing out on some great entertainment. Honestly half of these companies don't even rate as products, in fact, many of them don't even rate as features of products. Clearly the lowering of the start-a-new-company barrier has allowed all sorts of stuff to flourish. A Cambrian explosion of new companies. The best part is that the description of each company includes "why it will be killer"... (and in the process, answers the other question, why it won't be :)
A few times now I've mentioned Smokey, our new Guinea pig... so it turns out they live about 4-7 years, sometimes as long as 10. So I'm looking at little Smokey, and I'm really struck by this; his whole life is going to be compressed into a time period 1/10th as long as mine. Why do animals live as long as they do? Clearly some of it is physics, but also a lot of it is evolutionary. Don't live long enough, and you can't have as many progeny as possible, nor care for the ones you have. Live too long and you'll compete with your progeny for resources. Fascinating...
Philip Greenspun notes Sikorsky's new prototype helicopter, the first commercially viable chopper with counter-rotating blades. Apparently conventional helicopters are limited to about 165 knots, a counter-rotating one could go more like 250. Cool!
Posts and articles in the last month:
08/27/08 10:47 PM -
Wednesday, 08/27/08 10:47 PM
08/26/08 11:41 PM -
Tuesday, 08/26/08 11:41 PM
08/25/08 11:15 PM -
early Phelps
08/25/08 11:09 PM -
Monday, 08/25/08 11:09 PM
08/24/08 11:56 PM -
Olympic BYE
08/24/08 11:11 PM -
Sunday, 08/24/08 11:11 PM
08/24/08 11:36 AM -
deHeisenbugging
08/24/08 09:18 AM -
goodbye Beijing
08/23/08 10:25 PM -
introducing smokey
08/22/08 11:03 PM -
Friday, 08/22/08 11:03 PM
08/21/08 10:18 PM -
Thursday, 08/21/08 10:18 PM
08/20/08 11:32 PM -
Wednesday, 08/20/08 11:32 PM
08/20/08 11:19 PM -
colored water
08/19/08 11:07 PM -
Tuesday, 08/19/08 11:07 PM
08/18/08 11:34 PM -
(New Yorker - 09/25/06 - low hanging fruit)
08/18/08 11:11 PM -
Monday, 08/18/08 11:11 PM
08/17/08 09:47 PM -
Sunday, 08/17/08 09:47 PM
08/17/08 09:32 PM -
Relay for Life
08/15/08 10:30 PM -
full lunacy
08/15/08 09:32 PM -
Friday, 08/15/08 09:32 PM
08/14/08 10:12 PM -
the ceremony
08/14/08 10:08 PM -
Thursday, 08/14/08 10:08 PM
08/13/08 10:12 PM -
solitude and lunacy
08/13/08 10:02 PM -
Wednesday, 08/13/08 10:02 PM
08/12/08 09:38 PM -
Furnace Creek 508 recon
08/12/08 08:35 PM -
Tuesday, 08/12/08 08:35 PM
08/11/08 10:57 PM -
Monday, 08/11/08 10:57 PM
08/11/08 10:52 PM -
(new yorker - 08/11/08 - future memories)
08/11/08 08:27 PM -
gak! down...
08/10/08 11:40 PM -
Sunday, 08/10/08 11:40 PM
08/09/08 07:11 PM -
stuff happens
08/09/08 02:13 PM -
Saturday, 08/09/08 02:13 PM
08/08/08 11:43 PM -
Olympic WOW
08/08/08 05:47 PM -
in a rut
08/08/08 09:18 AM -
8/8/8 - crazy eights!
For older posts and articles, please visit the archive.
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