We Californians just passed Proposition 1A which provides funding to build a high-speed rail network throughout California! There is some information on the rail system at http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/. I can’t wait for this to happen. I think that the outdated system of freeways and the current lack of viable public transportation is a terrible thing. Finally we can catch up to where we should have been 20 years ago.
Category: Personal
Democracy delivers
Posted by – November 5, 2008
Record voter turnout, relatively accurate elections and a Presidential race that was tempered with respect and fairness (for the most part). I am pleased with the outcome and hopeful for our future.
I was impressed with Senator McCain’s conciliatory speech. Had he ran his campaign in the same manner, the outcome may have been different. He spoke well and truly seemed sincere in his support of his new President Elect.
President Elect Obama’s speech was, as I have come to expect, nothing short of eloquent and moving. His unrivaled ability to motivate people to better themselves and their community is most welcome.
I read an interesting article on Time.com with statements from a variety of foreign leaders and prominent members of foreign society that reflects the hope that the entire world shares for Barack Obama.
iPhone 3G, a few months in
Posted by – October 28, 2008
I have had my iPhone 3G for a few months now and I really enjoy it. I am not in love with it like I thought I would be though, but I don’t think this is necessarily a poor reflection on the phone at all. Although I don’t think about how much I love it every time I take it out to use it, I do find myself thinking about how much I use it. It may be the single most useful device I have ever owned. I find myself using it all the time. From web browsing, email, finances, maps, games and of course the phone I am using it all the time. It is odd, I thought I would be in love, but I guess I don’t love my Leatherman either I just use it, all the time. I even think this may be a testament to the device. I may not think about how great it really is, but I can’t imagine not having it! I also have a work supplied BlackBerry Curve, but that just sits on my desk all day. All other phones pale in comparison to the iPhone. I suppose that my lack of love for the iPhone is a big step forward for me as I have tended to despise every other attempt at a “smart” phone that I have had prior to the iPhone. I hated how I wished they would do one thing or another. I do not dislike anything about the iPhone, as a matter of fact I rather like how it does most things.
hulu
Posted by – October 16, 2008
Unfortunately I missed the final Presidential Debate last night. I went to watch it online, and once again ended up at hulu. I have ended up at hulu with increasing frequency lately. I have watched the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live to name a couple. Hulu seems to have finally gotten online TV right. The video is freely available, embeddable and linkable. There are ads, but they are minimal and I honestly don’t mind them in exchange for an easy to watch and well presented experience.
I was first turned on to hulu by a weblog post “Hulu figures out how to bring TV online” at Signal vs. Noise.
Google Maps & Public Transit
Posted by – September 30, 2008
I just noticed that Google Maps has a nice new Public Transit feature called Google Transit [more information]. This is a very welcome and at the same time depressing feature. Welcome because I am a staunch advocate of public transportation. Depressing because the trip I was just mapping is 28 minutes by car, and 2 hours by public transit. That is unfortunate.
Change I Don’t Want To Believe In
Posted by – August 26, 2008
I hope that the proliferation of this sort of police / fascist control is not the change that Barack Obama wants us to believe in.
http://newsproject.org/videos/113
“There’s a powerful police presence here. The chill of 1968 is in the air of Denver,” Ron Kovic
I hope that, if elected, Barack Obama will adhere to the following:
US Constitution, Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Posting from iPhone
Posted by – August 4, 2008
I just downloaded the WordPress application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It was painless to setup and seems to work really well. One thing I would already like to see is automatic completion for tags. Other than that, A+!
WordPress 2.6
Posted by – July 24, 2008
I upgraded the WordPress installation that runs this weblog to version 2.6 today from my new iPhone while waiting for an iced tea at Starbucks! I used the InstantUpgrade plugin for WordPress that I installed to upgrade to version 2.5 a while ago and it seems to work very well.
iPhone 3G
Posted by – July 23, 2008
I have had my new iPhone 3G for a little over a week now and I absolutely love it. As some people have noted, the OS on the phone does seem a tad glitchy. I think Apple may have rushed the SDK enabled OS out the door. That being said, I fully expect any minor issues to be fixed with simple software updates. Enough about the issues, on to what makes it the best phone I have ever had…
The iPhone 3G is the best phone that I have ever had. Now, I am not much of a gadget junky, so I have only owned a few smart phones, and that name was a complete misnomer for them. My first foray into the smart phone world was around 2003 with the Motorola MPX220. This phone worked well enough as a phone, but the limitations of the “smart” aspects of the phone left me wishing I hadn’t spent so much money on it. In fact, the phone completely turned me off to the whole smart phone scene. While the phone hinted at the glorious future of a workable mobile computing platform in a phone, it delivered none of it.
My next adventure in smart phone land began in 2007 when my employer decided to provide a number of us with a Nextel/BlackBerry 7100i. This is perhaps the worst phone I have ever seen. It is large and bulky and quite simply doesn’t work. If the phone isn’t answered within the first nano-second of a ring, it goes to voicemail. The email functionality via a corporate BlackBerry server again leaves me wishing for more. When an email is deleted on my desktop, it still shows up on my BlackBerry. The synchronization does not work as well I would like. Also, the web browser is decent, but certainly not perfect. Oh, and it has PTT which is perhaps the single largest hindrance to communication that mankind has ever invented. Why, when it is completely possible to engage in a duplex conversation would anyone opt for simplex? The phone does have a couple of nice features though. It has a good speakerphone and the battery lasts forever, probably due to it’s massive size.
So, on to the iPhone and why it is so nice. First off, the “phone” is rock solid. Calls are clear and the sound quality is really good. I think any smart phone needs to focus on being a phone first and “smart” second. I carry this thing around with me because it is a phone, not because I can read my email on it. “Smart” is a bonus, the phone is a necessity. That being said, the “smart” in the iPhone is really smart, genius level smart. The UI is very intuitive, Apple must have poured money into the development of the UI on this phone.
Perhaps the single greatest feature of the iPhone is also the one that I think about the least, the touch screen. So much of my time is spent focusing on the content being presented that I quite frankly ignore the technological marvel that is the iPhone’s touch screen. Actually, until I began writing this, I hadn’t given the touch screen a second thought. That is truly the hallmark of a great design, I don’t ever think about it. Since the moment I bought it, I have swiped, typed, pinched, scrolled and cursored my way across that screen a million times without ever thinking about the way it works. It works so well, it is so intuitive and natural to use that I simply forget about it while using it.
The last thing that I will write about in this installment are the applications on the iPhone. The whole iPhone and Apple community were up in arms over the lack of native application development support on the original iPhone, so Apple began working on an SDK equipped version of the OS for the second generation of the iPhone. While Apple certainly has delivered, I am not so sure that they wanted to do this. When the first generation iPhone was released, Steve Jobs touted the phones fully functional web browser as the sole target for iPhone development. I think this was a brilliant move and, while not sad to see native applications, I do think that the existence of the SDK will detract from the web based development on the iPhone. Of the few applications I have downloaded so far (Last.fm, Sudoku and Twitterific) I only really use Soduku. I do however use the web applications I have added many times a day. I currently have Digg, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Hahlo on my main screen. These “web apps” work flawlessly and I am truly impressed with them. I think that Apple was correct with their 3rd party development strategy for the first generation iPhone. Limiting development to web apps, while certainly constraining was also the way of the future. I hope that the existence of the SDK doesn’t mean that web app developers will lose momentum.
A Telling Quote
Posted by – July 14, 2008
via: CNN
OBAMA: You know, my job is to make sure that, here in the United States, the American people feel confident that I’m going to be advocating for their interests, that I’m going to keep them safe.
The way to do that though, I believe, is to make sure that we’re paying attention to the rest of the world, their hopes, their aspirations, as well, and that we’re leading with our values and ideals, and not just with our military.
