The Richter Scale^®

I’m in Washington DC at the present, and as I was wandering back to my hotel about 30 minutes ago, a motorcade with about a half dozen motorcycle cops, a couple of limos, and several Suburbans with lots of antennae and a bullet-proof-vested military guy in one open window, drive by. One of the limos looks like it has the Presidential Seal flying on one of its flags (the other being an American flag). All vehicles that had flashing lights and sirens had them going.

Here’s the odd thing - second to last in the entourage was an ambulance, also with lights flashing.

Anyone know if this is normal?

On a footnote to the previous blog entry, my camera was tucked away too deep in my backpack, and I couldn’t get it out in time to snap pictures - but I did get intensly stared at by the military-type person looking out of one of the giant SUVs. I fear he might have yelled at me that photos were not allowed due to heightened security concerns, although I doubt they would have stopped the motorcade just for that.

So here I was today, at the McPherson Square Metro station (the Metro being the Washington, DC subway system), awed by the cavernous hall of the station.

I pull out my camera with wide angle lens, intent on capturing the scene for posterity, planning a long exposure to capture all the subtle lighting, when a uniformed official comes up to me and (politely) explains that as the Metro is under heightened security, no photography
is permitted.

I grumbled a bit and put my camera away, and as I stewed about not being able to take my picture, the situation struck me as more and more ludicrous. I realized I was only approached because I had a real camera in hand.

After all, with multi-megapixel cell phone cameras now on sale everywhere, it would be very easy for a determined doer of no good to take all the detailed pictures they wanted.

Heck, if they wanted to be truly thorough, a pocket video recorder with a tiny low lux security camera would do the trick. You could even have one person carry the tiny recorder and another handle the small camera transmitting the image wirelessly. Anyone remember the annoying pop-up advertisements for the X-10 cameras? Those thing were wireless and
worked okay at short range.

And what about those darned sketch artists? You don’t need a camera to capture imagery - a notebook and pencil work just fine and add the ability to annotate in real time.

So, as with much of the “official security” I see during my travels, this enforcement in the Metro stations is feel-good from a PR and self-congratulatory perspective, but truly shallow and ineffective when it comes to protecting against truly determined people.

I wonder if anyone will get incensed enough by all this false security and the related ill-conceived and executed policies to start creating photo flash mobs as a form of mass civil disobedience, with all images posted to Flickr for widest distribution.

Imagine a single security guard dealing with hundreds of people simultaneously whipping out their photo cell phones, camcorders, and digital cameras and taking pictures in public places where someone has bizarrely determined photography could be a security risk.

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Update 1 - July 31, 2005 - 17:29 EDT

My experience above reminded me of a similar experience related on BoingBoing a couple of months ago about a photographer in Pittsburgh who was asked to stop taking pictures of a building (non-governement at that) for security reasons. Here’s the link to the blog entry.

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Update 2 - July 31, 2005 - 19:18 EDT

Okay. There must have been some sort of vibe in the air today.

As I read through the last couple of days of BoingBoing postings a few minutes ago, lo and behold, there’s a report of a photography flashmob in San Francisco yesterday, as the result of a photographer harrassed by a security guard for taking pictures in a public place a few days ago.

Photos of the event have even been posted to Flickr here and also here too.

Weird coincidence (mind you I submitted the initial commentary in this entry via my Sidekick II cellphone (moblog) completely unaware of the event in San Francisco - I would have also included a pic from the Sidekick to prove my point but the camera is the Sidekick is pretty crappy and doesn’t deal well at all with low light conditions such as those in man made caverns).

Yay for the concept of photography flashmobs and the first successful implementation! Photographers everwhere should rejoice that their First Amendment rights are being defended.

Okay - I know it’s been a while since my last blog entry. I’ve been traveling and on vacation, and then just overwhelmed with work. But I think I’m back for now. Expect to see some entries on some of the vacation things I did.

In the meantime, I’ve been catching up on some of the blogs I haven’t read in a month, and found the following at the Business2 Blog.

It’s a faucet with LEDs which shows blue for when cold water is running and red for hot water.

Boy, I need one of those. My wife always runs hot water in our master bath at night to wash her face, and if I’m not paying attention, I end up scalding my gums with the hot water I have used to dampen my toothbrush.

Most gadget blogs and reviews rave about first look reviews of new tech toys, but it’s rare that I’ve seen anyone look at the tech toys of yester-months after months of use (or non-use, as the case may be) to see how well they have fared.

So, over the next few days I will be reviewing some of the tech toys I have been using for the last few months, starting with the Creative Labs Zen Micro.

The Zen Micro is Creative’s effort to unseat the Apple iPod Mini. Based on market numbers they have not been particularly successful. Using man-on-the-street surveying and eavesdropping techniques I have counted exactly zero Zen Micros (or any other type of Creative MP3 player) on my travels since I acquired mine in the middle of January 2005. With one no-name exception every other MP3 player I have seen (and it’s well over a hundred at this point) it’s been Apple iPods of some flavor all the time.

My Zen Micro is a 5GB model, and while it comes in all sorts of colors, I chose white when I paid for it at the Consumer Electronics Show (along with a blue one for my wife). It plays MP3s just fine, has a built in radio (reception hasn’t been great in my experience though), records voice (haven’t had need to try that yet), and tells time (surprisingly useful when you don’t wear a wrist watch and when you’re in mid-flight and can’t check your cell phone for the current time).

The Zen Micro has two firmware choices as well - pure MP3/WMA playback, or DRM support in the form of Microsoft’s Plays For Sure. For those not familiar with DRM, it stands for Digital Rights Management and means that you are restricted in where you can play DRM-protected music - typically 3 to 5 systems, and a portable player, such as the Zen Micro.

The Plays For Sure thing works pretty well - a couple of weeks ago I signed up for a trial of Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and proceeded to download about 800 songs from artists Yahoo! Music recommended based on my music tastes to my notebook and then to my Zen Micro. Of course, I was on a high-speed U.S. DSL connection where I had a 2.5Mbps connection. Would have been impossible here on Bonaire.

In my nearly half year of using the Zen Micro, most of which has been on planes (and I have been on a lot of planes in that time!), I’m very pleased with the unit’s size, capacity, and battery life. My trips from Bonaire to the U.S. usually involve anywhere from 6 to 10 hours in flight, and the battery has lasted for the duration when I had charged it fully the night before. I’ve probably logged over 200 hours on my Zen Micro so far.

I paid $249 for it, and got as a show special, a set of Creative’s TravelSound 300 speakers (which sound tinny and flat to my ears). The same 5GB unit goes for $199.99 now. The Zen Micro also came with a belt clip - a flimsy clip which broke off about two months ago.

The controls take a bit to get used to - sliding one’s fingers up and down a non-moving control pad takes a bit of finesse when that same pad can be tapped quickly as well to perform a specific function (separate from the one from sliding one’s finger, that is).

Other than the belt clip, I have discovered only two real negatives with the Zen Micro.

First is that the 1/8” jack where I plug in my headphones in has started getting flaky. I have to position the headphone plug just right so that I don’t lose most of the sound. I’ve confirmed it’s not the connector on the head phones as those work fine on my notebook computer. And, not comfortingly, this problem appears to be getting worse, so I may have to send it in for service soon, and then who knows what will happen to my DRM’d music on the drive in the unit?

The second problem I have is that the Zen Micro seems to drain the battery even when I have turned it off. That means that if I don’t charge it right before I leave on a trip, I end up with drained batteries. It’s not a showstopper like the headphone jack problem, but it is annoying. I’d like to be able to have the thing shut off to a much lower power state (like off?) when I want, instead of being in this power-consuming, fast boot “sleep” mode that it seems to go into.

Would I recommend a Zen Micro to someone else? Probably, and only assuming that the head phone jack problem is a rarity instead of something common.

While I think all the various iPod accessories out there are cool, I don’t like the idea of being tied to a particular software program like iTunes for doing all my music synchronization. The Zen Micro looks just like a hard disk when I plug it in, making it very easy to copy music to it. I can also store data on it if I wish. The Zen Micro also comes with several applications, including a simple file manager which is not bound into a player that wants to take over my system.

So, after 5.5 months of use, I give the Creative Labs Zen Micro a 6.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

Being on a low-carb diet has some drawbacks in terms of foods you may have been used to eating for pure gastronomic pleasure, but can no longer enjoy because of their high carb counts. For me that includes french fries, tortillas and tortilla chips, bread, and ice cream.

However, in the freezer section of the Super Wal-Mart in Marshall, Texas, I came across low-carb Blue Bunny brand ice cream bars. The one that seemed particularly appealing was that the Butter Pecan Carb Freedom “frozen dairy dessert”.

The package describes these as “Butter Pecan frozen dairy desset dipped in white chocolate and pecan pieces”. At 2g net carbs for each bar, that’s within the limit I of daily treats I allow myself (when not having a pack of Atkin’s Peanut Butter Cups instead - also 2g of net carbs for one package).

Having previously tried a Ben & Jerry’s low-carb ice cream (flavorless - yuck! - 2.0 out of 10.0 on the The Richter Scale) and ice cream bars from Atkins (chocolate covered peanut butter ice “cream” - good chocolate covering but the ice “cream” left a lot to be desired 3.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale), I wasn’t sure I would like these Butter Pecan bars, especially from a company that names itself “Blue Bunny”.

So imagine my surprise when it turns out these Butter Pecan Carb Freedom “frozen dairy desserts” are actually very good (at least as far as low carb sweet things go. I’ve not tried the other flavors from Blue Bunny yet, but the Butter Pecan flavor gets an 8.0 out of 10.0 on the The Richter Scale.

After I got my new Nikon D2x digital SLR a couple of weeks ago I needed to go and put it into play. (It is a very nice camera, and my credit card company is very happy with me for buying it, no doubt.)

The results of my initial experimentation with the Nikon D2x produced four new prints in my digital painting series, shown below:

The text which descibes these images can be found on my digitally painted art site.

I’ll try and post more direct results from the D2x here in the coming weeks.

An annual Dutch tradition is the catch of the season’s first herring, a small fish which some consider a delicacy. The first herring harvest, something which typically occurs in May, is called “Hollandse Nieuwe” (means “Dutch New"), and the Dutch celebrate this by event by gorging themselves on the raw (or nearly so) herring, along with liberal amount of Genever (a Dutch gin), and perhaps raw onions and pickles.

Living, as I do, on an island which is part of the Dutch Kingdom, and thus has a lot of Dutchmen (and women) living on it, I’ve been privileged to join in the celebration of Hollandse Nieuwe, and am usually the only American present. This year, the first “haaring” showed up on June 1st at the Mai-Mai restaurant on Bonaire, accompanies by load Dutch music:

Pictured above is a plate of fresh Dutch herring right off the KLM flight from Amsterdam, served with pickles, raw onions, and bread.

To eat the herring, you pick it up by the tail (it has been scaled and deboned, incidentally), optionally rubs it up against the finely chopped onions on the plate (so as to have some adhere to the herring), then tilts your head back, open your mouth and lower the herring into it, taking as big a bite as you can. See my demonstration below:

The more timid will cut their herring into smaller bite size pieces and eat it with a fork.

It’s not nearly as fishy as one might think, and I am sure the fish oils are very good for you. If you eat sushi or sashimi, this is not far removed from that.

More on this tradition can be found here.

USA Today ran an article in it’s Life section today entitled The Caribbean: Leaving is taxing, which showed the departure taxes for various Caribbean islands.

The island I live on, Bonaire, is often criticized for its high departure tax of $20, but compared to Aruba ($37), Turks and Caicos ($30), St. Maarten ($30), Jamaica (soon to be $30 or 35), and others, Bonaire’s cheap.

What makes Bonaire seem expensive is that due to historical reasons, airport tax is sold independent of airline tickets, whereas most other destinations include (hide?) the airport departure tax in the ticket price you pay the airline.

I just posted a copy of my most recent TechWatch article, entitled Battling For The Sacred Living Room over on my articles site.

The article discusses the attempt by the big three game console makers - Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo - to justify having next generation consoles be the center piece of the living room, and why they still have a long way to go to make that happen, including still not understanding how to market to the people that really run the home, namely the wives, mothers, and other women co-residing with game-addled males.

I’ve been catching up on my magazine and journal reading and recently finished the February 2005 issue of MIT’s Technology Review, which has a fascinating article by Sam Williams entitled “Unnatural Selection”.

The article explores using machines programmed with genetic algorithms to create new technology. An example given is NASA having a computer design an antennae for a trio of miniature satellites which feature both wide beam and wide bandwidth. The resulting antennae looks like something of a corkscrew, but is better than anything designed purely by humans (at least so the article implies).

What I found particularly interesting however was in the closing paragraphs, where Stanford University’s John Koza, professor of biomedical informatics, has developed a genetic program to design, among other things, electronic circuits. The paragraphs in particular which drew my interest are:

By the time Koza’s group tested the fourth or fifth versions of their program, however, something even more surprising began to happen: the program kicked out circuit designs unpublished anywhere in the patent literature. Two of these designs—a pair of controller circuits that regu­late feedback—were so original that Koza and his colleagues have taken out patents on them.

As proud as he is of his software, Koza isn’t about to assign responsibility for the new designs to the program itself. The patents credit Keane, Koza, and Streeter, in that order. But there are a few new pseudophilosophical conundrums lurking here: If something is invented with no human near, is it really an invention? Who is the inventor? And if the invention actually works, does it matter if we don’t understand how?

I find this a rather troubling commentary. Section 102(f) of U.S.C. 35, the law governing patents, clearly states:

35 U.S.C. 102 Conditions for patentability; novelty and loss of right to patent.
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless —…
(f) he did not himself invent the subject matter sought to be patented, or...

If it was a machine which invented the new circuit design, then arguably, no person did. Sure, a person programmed the machine at some point, but genetic programming includes by definition evolution of the program. So, arguably Keane, Koza, and Streeter should not be able to file for a patent on something they themselves did not invent. Or should they? In the plant world people are claiming they invented (discovered?) naturally occurring compounds. Perhaps the belief is that as artificial intelligences have no status under U.S.C. 35, then it’s perfectly fine for a human to take credit for discovering the results a machine has produced.

I would love the insight of some others in the patent field on this subject.