The Richter Scale^®

I’ve been so busy in the last few months that I’ve barely had time to surface, but things are thankfully slowing down. I have probably missed a few new images, but my extremely talented wife, Linda Richter just finished several new paintings.

A couple weeks ago she finished “Koi in Blue”, and this past week, a triplet of tropical frog images she has entitled “One Frog, Three Frogs. Green, Blue, and Yellow Frogs.” Take a look at them at http://www.LindaRichter.com.

Linda has also been making some very cool ornaments (which in the present season make great Christmas ornaments) featuring miniature prints of her and my work, in a small mat decorated with cinnamon sticks, sea glass, or shells. These can be found only at our Cinnamon Art Gallery on Bonaire at the moment, though.

I’m pretty sure I was the first person on the island of Bonaire to have an Xbox 360. It arrived at 5pm on Thanksgiving Day, November 24th (not a holiday on Bonaire, since the island is Dutch, not American). I had ordered the high end “all inclusive” Omega pack from GameStop.com a few months back and had it shipped to my in-laws in New Hampshire. They received it on Tuesday, November 22nd and turned it right around to ship to me on Bonaire via FedEx. Not the cheapest way to go, but certainly the most efficient (other than flying it down in person).

After we had finished Thanksgiving dinner, my kids and I set the console up. I plugged it into the VGA/PC connector on my Samsung DLP display, attached the wireless adapter, turned it on and lo, it worked!

However, the set up was horribly tedious, as I decided I wanted to have the thing configured properly for Xbox Live as well. If this is Microsoft’s idea of a console for the masses, they haven’t a clue as to what the masses will put up with to, I think. My 10 year old daughter finally gave up watching me enter data via the on-screen keyboard and went to bed. My 8-year old son, bless him, was patient enough to bear witness to the completion of the set-up and even play a game with me.

One major annoyance was that I could not use an existing Passport.net account when setting up the system, and woe to anyone ordinary mortal who only has one e-mail address and an existing Xbox console that they have registered. I happen to run a web hosting provider and have an unlimited number of e-mail addresses I can use or generate, but that’s a rare thing out there.

The other annoyance was that using an on-screen virtual keyboard is a royal pain in the butt when having to fill out page after page of forms. Would have been a lot nicer to either be able to plug a PC keyboard into the box and type on that (and it may be possible to do it via the USB connectors), but no suggestion was made by the Xbox to do so. Or, alternately, allowing one to do all the data entry on a PC via a web site, and then just punching in a few codes on the Xbox 360 to finalize the set-up. But I persevered and got it done.

Of the dozen and a half games I got with the system, my son decided that we should try King Kong (I pretty much ruled out Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark, Condemned, GUN, and Quake 4 as being inappropriate for him) as our first game. The graphics were pretty decent, but not awe-inspiring. I had configured the Xbox 360 for the highest resolution the DLP display would support, and it did a good job crisply filling the display (although the Samsung DLP does not show PC output as completely full screen, for some reason - there was a small black border all the way around the image).

We didn’t play for long as my son had school the next day (as my wife came to remind me at 10pm).

I stayed up and playing about a half hour each of Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark, GUN, and Quake 4. Enjoyed them all in various ways. However, Microsoft’s highly touted efforts back in March at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco to make the use of the controller, and more particularly, the use of particular controls universally the same across games apparently didn’t make it to production. Everyone of the five games used different variations of buttons to fire various weapons, etc. Movement seemed to be the only thing more or less universally constant, but that tends to be the case on other consoles too.

I must say, I love the responsiveness of the new wireless controllers, and the wireless-ness is great too. But the “Charge & Play” cable idea just plain sucks. I don’t want a cable connecting my wireless controller to the Xbox 360, plus it never seems to charge the battery to the point of getting a green “I’m fully charged” light (and it doesn’t consistently charge the battery when the Xbox 360 is off). The suggestion in the documentation to use a quick charger for the rechargable battery is a good one, but no one is selling these quick chargers!

Anyhow, the next morning I got the Media Extender functionality running, but not without further hassles, like having to reinstalled aspects of Media Center Edition 2005 on my Windows MCE-based computer. The link the Xbox 360 provided for the MCE extension software for my PC did not help.

I’ll have many more comments forthcoming, but in summary from initial impressions, the Xbox 360 is not worth the high premium one presently has to pay. The graphics are good, the game play is good (for the few Xbox 360 games out there now), but the game selection is poor (especially for games kids can play), and set-up is horrific (if you want Xbox Live).

On The Richter Scale, I give the Xbox 360 a 6.5 out of 10.0.

Almost four months ago I wrote a review of the Creative Zen Micro after having used one for six months.

I have been procrastinating sending the semi-broken unit in, but a couple of weeks ago, the Zen Micro I had purchased for my wife also failed, in that it would no longer boot up (unless connected to a PC or wall power supply, but not on battery).

So now I’m struggling with Creative’s customer service department to get two RMA numbers for these units.

Two out two units failing (and my wife rarely uses hers) in less then 10 month’s time is pretty ridiculous. I downgrade the Zen Micro to a 3.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale as a result.

And then, adding insult to injury (no fault of Creative’s) is that Yahoo! is significantly (double the price) increasing the cost of their subscription music service if you want to continue to use subscribed music on a portable player (like the Zen Micro).

To heck with that. I’ll just go buy my CD’s on the cheap at Amazon’s CDNOW Preferred Buyer’s Club and then rip them into MP3s so I can use them on something more reliable like an Apple iPod. The new 60GB Video iPods sure look interesting…

One of the things we’ve been doing at CaribbeanArt.com is a monthly newsletter which includes specials. If you want to learn more, click here to see the newsletters as well as sign up to receive them yourself.

That newsletter is where you’ll find out about things like Linda’s newest painting - “Fishing Lessons”

I also write a newsletter with happenings at the Cinnamon Art Gallery of Bonaire - click here for information on that newsletter.

It’s been a busy last couple of months. Far busier than expected, and hence the lack of blog entries.

In addition to all my patent litigation consulting related work, I’ve also been busy working with my lovely and talented wife Linda on:

1) the launch of the Bonaire Creations 2006 Calendar:

2) A new on-line shopping site called Caribbean Art where one can now buy any and all of the art Linda and I produce (and hopefully art from other Caribbean-based artists in the coming months) - see www.CaribbeanArt.com

3) Launching a series of 20 new Bonaire postcards - 10 featuring Linda’s oil paintings, and 10 featuring my digital paintings (also can be seen at www.CaribbeanArt.com.

4) Getting the aforementioned calendar in item #1 above selected by the Tourism Corporation Bonaire as the Official 2006 Bonaire Calendar:

5) Helping with the guest exhibit openings for two sets of artists at our Cinnamon Art Gallery on Bonaire.

All of the above have required a lot of logistics in terms of production, marketing, and sales, never mind the technical issues.

If you’ve been anywhere near a TV in the last few days, it has been nearly impossible to miss the devastation and heartache Hurricane Katrina left in its path in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.

I already donated a fair amount on Tuesday to the Red Cross to help them help those left destitute, homeless, and hungry, but I just received an e-mail from a friend who runs Strengthen the Good about a another way I can help, and I wanted to share it with you.

The idea is that we as bloggers get together and encourage our readers to donate to Katrina relief efforts, and that we bloggers will match the donations given up to a certain amount.

The details of this idea as well as the seed matching fund can be found at Matching the Good.

Due to certain work and travel constraints I am unable to manage my own matching fund, but I have just sent Alan at Strengthen the Good a pledge to add $250 to the matching fund, and I encourage you to either do the same, or just go ahead and donate so that matching funds can be used. Every dollar will help those all those devasted by Katrina.

When I get into deep philosophical discussions with friends about the meaning of life, I typically try to explain that my goal in life is to leave the world a better place than when I entered it. But outside of explaining that both my actions and the way I am raising my children to be good people are the means to this end, I have struggled to put the overall concept into a succinct set of words.

Last night in my hotel room I found decorative words, part of a poem or small essay, etched into a framed brush glass surface, attributed to American essayist, philosopher, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Reading these words left me completely speechless and stunned for a while, because they so well described my life’s philosophy.

There is some speculation that perhaps he didn’t write these, and that they (or a variation) were perhaps written by Bessie Stanley in 1905.

Whoever wrote them, they still speak to me:

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.

Wow. There you have it.

Last year I made an on-line donation to the American Cancer Society in honor of a dearly departed friend. As I typically do, I created a unique e-mail address at one of my domains to register with the American Cancer Society. These address have some sort of descriptive text component followed by a number and sometimes some more random letters to the left of the ubiquitous “@” sign. They are quite unique and very unlikely to be guessed by traditional dictionary attacks.

So, imagine my surprise when, a few hours ago, I get an e-mail addressed to the unique address provided only to the American Cancer Society (ACS), which has nothing to do with ACS activities.

The mail message had a subject of “Just to her...” and was offering “Soft V__gra” (two letters blanked to avoid poorly designed spam filters), with a link to a web site presumably selling the offered goods.

The implication is that the American Cancer Society, a reputable organization, has had some part of all of its mailing lists hijacked by a spammer.

This could have happened in several different ways:

1) A PC which had my unique address on it at the ACS or an outside mailing house contracted by ACS, got infected with spyware which stole all the e-mail addresses and forwarded them to spammers (a vast majority of spyware and viruses are used for data collection these days).

2) Someone hacked into said PC(s) and outright stole the mailing list(s).

3) Someone with access to said PC(s) took the data and sold/gave it to someone else.

Regardless of which of the above methods caused my address (and thus very likely many others) to leak out to a spammer’s database.

Worse yet, I have just gone and done a search on my filtered spam archives, and find that I have been regularly receiving similar spam to that unique address as of July 17, 2005, so the theft of addresses likely occurred before then.

I count six spams - three for medication and three for pirated software.

Just goes to show that companies need to take the security of their mailing lists extremely seriously. I have reported this to the ACS, and urge anyone else who can trace the source of spam to an ACS list leakage please contact them.

Back at the end of March, my family and I took a one week vacation aboard the S/V Polynesia, one of the ships of the Windjammer fleet. These four masted schooners are small cruise ships in their own right, holding around 100 passengers (capacity varies based on which ship you’re on), and are pretty campy and persona(ble). Definitely not as formal, rigid, stuffy, or impersonal as the big cities-on-the-sea from cruise lines such as Carnival. No black tie nights on a Windjammer cruise. Windjammer cruising is also called “Bare Foot Cruising”.

Anyhow, we had a great time with Capt. Casey and his crew, seeing Sint Maarten, Anguilla, Nevis, St. Kitts, and St. Barths. Highly recommended.

But, the point of this blog post is that on that trip, we took some pictures, and my ever talented painting wife recently finished paintings based loosely on those photos.

You can find these paintings under the titles “Windjammer” (how apropos!) and “O Sunset” on her web site at www.LindaRichter.com (I won’t repost the pictures here because they are too large).

An interesting footnote is that the S/V Polynesia is now calling on Bonaire every week for a couple of days. We’ll have to hook up with Captain Casey once we’re all back on island at the same time and show him the paintings.

I had over two weeks in July where I vacationed in New England, visiting with my in-laws, checking out an inn in Vermont where Linda and I took some cooking classes, heading out to the coast for lobsters, and visiting with a couple of friends. I’ll cover some of these in future blog entries.

However for now, let me share one of the highlights of my time away from most work and from this blog - trying out a Segway Human Transporter.

Turns out one of the friends we visited has an “in” with Segway, based in nearby (to them and us at the time) Manchester, New Hampshire, and managed to bring home a couple of loaner Segway HTs for us to try out.

What a blast! Segways have been out long enough so that the idea of being able to balance on two wheels doesn’t seem so outlandish any more, but actually trying one is still a thing of new found joy - I felt like a big kid playing around on one. After our hosts felt I had shown enough aptitude, I even managed to graduate to “fast” mode (peak of 12.5 miles per hour) from training mode (5 mph max).  That’s done by using a different magnetic key to “start” the Segway HT.

Driving one of these requires a bit of practice. You move forward by leaning forward, and slow down or even go back by leaning back. Turning is accomplished by turning the left handle on the handle bar. Turning gave me the most trouble - I kept twisting the handle in the wrong direction - that’s problematic when moving at a good clip, as I discovered. Once you get in the groove it’s pretty easy to operate. I only wish there were an even faster mode available.

Linda and both the kids tried out the Segway HT as well. Linda was okay with it, Bas (age 8) loved it until he collided with a park car at a low velocity (turns out he was also a bit too lightweight for the unit and it couldn’t easily detect his weight shifts), and Krystyana (age 10) took to it as well as I did.

I am contemplating one of these for back home on Bonaire, but am concerned if I had one, I’d just get lazy - I should be riding my bike instead of using powered transport. For folks in urban areas, I would think the Segway HT would be a great thing though - you can use it on the sidewalk in some cities even.

On The Richter Scale, I give the Segway HT an 8.5 out of 10.0, especially for being fun and cool (never mind practical).