OK, thanks, but that will do. No more phone calls please. In the past two days I have received no less than seven phone calls which were not for me. Two were collections agents looking for some lady (I called them and they promised not to call again) three were wrong numbers and two more were crank calls. Um… hello? That is enough thank you. I’m trying to get some work done here.
When live is tough, the joys become greater. The Iraqi soccer team recently won the Asia cup. For one moment anyway, the entire country is united. I don’t believe for a minute that this will make any difference, but it is nice to see even just a moment of happiness for a country that has endured so much pain.
The News agencies had sort of agreed to an embargo on revealing details about the Harry Potter books until after it went on sale. The NYT however picked up a copy early, and got slammed for their spoileriffic review which came out three days before the release. Rowling herself made some comments about “American Newspapers” ruining the fun. So I had to laugh when I found that the Trib sent their editor to London to pick up the book and read it on Saturday to finish in time for a Sunday review. And what a review it is. It is about as unspoilery as a review can be (though they do give a couple really great lines away). Probably my favorite part is where they make a veiled slam of the NYT:
Death is not the point
And that is why, frankly, all the fuss and blather and bother about early reviews of the book by some media outlets now look a little silly.
To be fair, the NYT review was pretty good too, just a bit spoilery. This quote in particular is funny, given Prince Corwin’s reviews of the first five books:
“This same magpie talent has enabled her to create a narrative that effortlessly mixes up allusions to Homer, Milton, Shakespeare and Kafka, with silly kid jokes about vomit-flavored candies, a narrative that fuses a plethora of genres (from the boarding-school novel to the detective story to the epic quest) into a story that could be Exhibit A in a Joseph Campbell survey of mythic archetypes.”
Also: I discovered my wife likes to read the last page first. This shocked me when I found out (though of course she did not spoil me). Fortunately, the Trib let me know that that is OK. There are two kinds of people, those who suck their way through a tootsie-pop, and those who bite. Apparently I am just a sucker. 
I was just reading an interesting article in CNN about the US becoming more conservation conscious. It is an interesting article, talking about the new bill on congress mandating better mileage, and opinion polls taken with citizens about the importance of conservation. But it ended with one of the worst quotes I have ever seen:
“It’s not that Americans don’t want to be environmentally friendly, it’s just that we don’t have much of a choice,” he wrote. “As an SUV driver, telling me that my only alternative is a Toyota Prius or a Honda Civic is like telling me to eat beef jerky when I’m used to filet mignon.”
There are so many things wrong with this that I actually got mad reading it. Um, moron someone needs to give you a dictionary because you don’t appear to know the meaning of the word choice. And your metaphors suck, it is like someone telling you to eat healthy when you are used to junk food. Salad and chicken instead of filet mignon. Someone like your doctor because if you keep eating all that cholesterol you are going to have a heart attack and die. Your SUV is simply irresponsible. It consumes too many resources and is dangerous to those around it. Can you imagine if the person who rammed the Panera yesterday had been driving an SUV?
OK, that’s enough vitriol from me today.
The little old lady from Wilmette missed my wife by like five minutes. It appears that she destroyed the newly finished Panera, and my wife says that the entire strip mall is still cordoned off. 10 people sent to the hospital. That is on par with a car bomb! Hopefully everyone will be ok… there were a number of my wife’s students there…
Minor spoilers for the fifth movie. Though, not that much that isn’t in the fifth book.
Saw the fifth movie. Loved it, but then I am a sicko. I also saw all the other movies leading up to this and I realized what bugs me about the fourth and fifth movie. The Dumbledore. And I just figured out why he bugs me. He has no sense of humor, and is overstated. They took Dumbledor and replaced him with Gandalf. Dumbledor is understated and funny. My wife pointed out that even when they give him a humorous scene, like warning harry about the licorice snaps in the fourth movie, it isn’t funny at all, but rather a grave warning.
My other problem with the fifth movie was that they left too much in. I have to wonder if JKR told them to leave certain elements in there because they would become important later. I view the movies as different stories from the book, so having stuff missing doesn’t bug me. I’d rather have the movie be self coherent.
Stuff I loved about it: Luna was awesome. Apparently Ivanna Lynch grew up a harry potter fan and wrote JKR saying how she wanted to be in a potter movie. She was awesome. Imelda Stauton playing Umbrage was deliciously evil as well. They did a pretty good job compression huge numbers of scenes in the book into one in a number of places in the movie, though like I said, I would have been fine with just leaving more stuff out. Interestingly they did the same thing with the The DA meetings were great. Harry’s failed relationship with Cho was perfect, though I was hoping they would fade to black on the kiss like they did in the book. Hermione and Grawp had me rolling on the floor laughing. Finally number 12 grimwald place was completely different from my interpretation from the book, but it gave it a very creepy presence which was awesome.
OK, I only have one more day before the final Harry Potter book comes out, so I had better get my theories up quick. Obviously this contains spoilers through book 6.
Harry: Lives. If JKR followed the normal heroic tradition he would have to die (Achilles), or at least not have a place in the world for himself (Frodo), but he will make it through, with a little help from his friends (and a lot of help from his enemies) and a strengthened relationship to boot. (He and Ginny will have trouble because he is out Horcrux Hunting but get through it for the better.)
Snape: Lives, or maybe that’s just because I want him to. He probably needs to die to vindicate himself, I just have this crazy dream that Harry will finally be able to see past the obvious conclusion and realize that he is good and be able to do something to save him at the last minute. Unfortunately Harry will probably remain clueless until it is too late.
Horcrux: RAB was Regulus, Mundungus stole it from Kreature along with hopefully some others that RAB got already, but I’m not holding my breath. (I really don’t want the book to be a treasure hunt.) Harry is one, but Voldemort broke it by using his (Harry’s) blood in bringing himself back to life. That would explain why Dumbledore was happy when he heard about how Voldemort came back. That’s my crazy prediction.
Slash: Harry/Ginny, Hermione/Ron, Tonks/Lupin (Dead), Bill/Fleur. Watching harry ginny and hermione ron be set up from the beginning has been one of my favorite things about reading this series.
Growing Up: Harry will finally realize that controlling his anger is the only way he can win, and that what Snape was teaching him the most important lessons of all: Close your mind and your mouth, occlumency and silent spells will be key, and don’t do the unforgivable curses. Leave that to Snape who will finish the job. The only question is how fast Harry will figure this out.
Deaths: Voldy, Wormtail (owes harry a life debt after all), Lupin (expendable and tragic, also only remaining father figure?). Not sure about the Weasleys, but I could easily see any of the non slashed hogwarts kids getting the axe. Cost of war and all that.
Now all I need to do is find the time to read the final book BEFORE SOMEONE SPOILS ME. I am warming up my brain to melt people with hate if they spoil me.
Update: Growing Up: I forgot one chunk of growing up that Harry has already done, at the beginning of OotP he is caught on the train with Luna and Neville by Cho and wishes that he wasn’t with them because they aren’t cool enough. At the beginning of HBP he defends them in front of others because he realizes that true friendship isn’t about being cool. They were willing to fight and die for him. I think that transition is one of my favorite moments in the book, and I hope that JKR will follow up on that in the next book, so harry doesn’t have to go it alone.
The Aussies bring us some important lessons from history. Simple things like not letting trojan horses stay the night. Yes, they try to foist trojan horses on a number of institutions. I am happy to report that the turks turn them away. It is important to watch the video all the way to the end.
And on the creepy robot invasion front, the Air Force has started its first unmanned air attack wing. This wing will use a combination of old school predators, and the souped up version as well, which holds three times as many missiles and bombs. Interestingly the entire wing of 70 aircraft will cost less that three piloted attack aircraft. This wing will also have the best maintenance record in the Air Force, given the current uptime of the Predator in the field. This is the future of the Air Force, and it is going to piss a lot of people (in the Air Force) off. The era of the billion dollar attack airplane is over, and in my opinion, the era of the billion dollar fighter will be over soon as well. Planes are shockingly easier and cheaper to build when you don’t have to worry about holding a person in them. The biggest problem I foresee is the fact that this will make the generals from afar even more likely to intervene in situations where they really don’t know what is happening because they are not in situ. (Read “A Good Day to Die” by Sean Naylor if you don’t know what I am talking about, but be prepared to be depressed by the idiocy of the upper levels of the chain of comand.)
The MIT aeronautics team (among others) has built a 20 kPa, mechanical counter pressure suit. While that’s not quite enough pressure for the space environment it has a lot of uses here on earth. Particularly in physical therapy and rehab type work. I have been excited about mechanical counter pressure space suits for years (OK I am odd) and it is really exciting to see someone finally making progress on it. It should make preparing for EVA much easier and faster. More importantly it will drastically reduce the danger of EVA by both reducing the consequence of suit failure, and increasing astronaut mobility. I would think these features should combine to reduce the time required for any individual EVA. Due to the simple nature of the engineering involved I would also think that the cost of the suit should be dramatically lower than current models as well.
So I went to my first caps meeting yesterday. It was at the church across the street from me so I didn’t really have an excuse not to go. It was actually pretty interesting. I met two old friends who I haven’t seen in years since they moved out of my old neighborhood. I didn’t realize that I was following them to Rogers Park/West Ridge.
As for the content of the meeting, you need to know the street addresses in your neighborhood pretty well or it can scare the pants off of you. For example, there were four or five people who reported hearing gunshots, but when the police had them all give their addresses and time that they heard it, they were able to figure out that they were all talking about the same incident. That happened a couple times. I think about ten complaints reduced down to three incidents. In particular one corner seems to have acquired a dealer or two, while the rest of the neighborhood is still pretty quiet. I wonder how much of this is just always going on in all neighborhoods, but you just don’t notice it or hear about it if you don’t go to these meetings.
On the murder this weekend, it appears that it was not a random nor even unplanned act which, while still tragic, isn’t the start of a pattern of violence in the neighborhood.
It was also interesting to learn a bit about how the police work, they are mostly statistical, so if you want more police in your neighborhood, you need to call 911. In particular, a lot of your neighbors need to report these incidents as well.
Best tip of the night? Buy window treatments so the foot patrols can’t look into your windows as they walk around at night. Err… I mean so criminals can’t look in your windows and figure out your daily patterns. Also, the people that run these meetings are damn funny. The banter between the police and the regular attendees is pretty entertaining.
What ever happened to resigning in disgust? We get these nice after the fact tell-alls and complaints but you don’t really hear about people resigning when the no longer believe they can do their job. The former surgeon general has some really horrible things to say about the current administration, specifically in regards to stem cells and birth control education. But the fact of the matter is he was the Surgeon General until 2006 and the stem cell law was passed in 2001. Knowing that some of the science was being suppressed at that time would have been a very useful thing to know, and given the other politics at the time, might have actually made a difference.
I suppose better late than never, but I am having a hard time figuring out how knowing this now is going to make a difference.
Sometimes iTunes does a classic mash-up:
Phil Collins – You Can’t Hurry Love
Alanis Morissette – You Oughta Know
So apparently I am continuing on my trend of becoming a crotchety old man. On Saturday night the people across the alley were having a party. It wasn’t loud or raucous or anything like that, but they were in the alley talking and playing bean bag ball starting at 11 PM. And there were like a million of them. One of my neighbors told one of them off for peeing in the alley. The bean bag ball is what did it for me though, that thump, thump, all night. It kept waking me up, but I was … er … too inebriated myself to wake fully up to go tell them to knock it off. My wife did at around 6 in the morning though. I can’t even imagine going to a party until 6 any more. It seems as if the party was had by relatives of the builders rather than new tenants, so I don’t have to worry about having those guys for new neighbors. Though I can’t imagine that the builder was really happy when showing the unit on Sunday and finding a keg on the back porch.
However for all of my complaints about that, I shouldn’t be too upset because the people up the street had a shooting in their alley instead of just a fairly quiet party. This was the same alley, though separated by a school. The info from the Trib and the info from the local CAPS news group are slightly different. I wonder if the police talked to the people in the party because they seemed to know about it the next morning. Whatever the case, remember to keep a wary eye out when wandering the streets.
So I have recently seen two iPhones, and spent time with one of them. So to follow up on my last iPhone comment I thought I would give a little mini review.
It seems to pretty much work as advertised. Contrary to what apple says, you don’t really need to start with one finger on the soft keyboard, you can bang away with both thumbs if you are already used to a Treo. This was a real shocker for me because I thought there was no way I would ever be able to deal with a soft keyboard. I still want to see if the thing is still working that well a year from now. On my old palm screen I was constantly re-centering the digitizer, though I don’t need to do that on my Treo, I think that has more to do with the fact that I don’t use the stylus much on the treo.
The bigger thing is having a real finger centered UI. They spent a lot of time thinking about what a stylus free interface would look like. From zooming in on almost everything (cursor placement anyone?) to making most controls be not needed (flipping through images rather than pressing a next button) the whole thing is amazingly obvious to use. I am just shocked at how little training and playing to took to just make all 16 of the applications work. Assuming that the touch sensor holds up over time, there is no question in my mind that this is the face of the future of computing.
The ease of use thing causes an interesting problem. Apple prides themselves on their uniform API. Because everything must do the “obvious” thing, and you use your finger to do it, there is no good standard UI to share with other apps. This make building new apps for it exceedingly difficult. I can understand why apple only released the dashboard API for it. Unfortunately this means that everything is supposed to be web based, and there are some programs that I want my data on the phone not the web. In particular my password encryption program, and my quicken. These should also cleanly sync to the data on my computer. This is one of three things that prevents me from getting an iPhone.
The other is the fact that you can only get it through AT&T. I might be able to change that, but I have arranged my life around the fact that it is free to call everyone I call regularly because they all have Sprint. It is goofy, but it is nice to be able to call my wife from the hotel when I am on site with a client and not worry about how long we are chatting for.
FWIW, the price is the final reason I won’t get an iPhone. But oooh is it shiny.
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