ipod – Page 2 – Observations Along the Road

A Sweet Circular News Chum, with Raisins

Posted onMonday, October 3, 2016Tuesday, October 4, 2016Authorcahwyguy

round challah userpic It’s Rosh Hashanah afternoon (L’Shana Tovah to all), and I’m exhausted from the morning. Yet I have a bunch of news chum to post. Let’s see if we can braid it into something sweet and circular, coming back by the end to where I started. This time, we’ll just give headlines and a few comments.

The O shaped iPod? On Rosh Hashanah, you dip Apples in Honey, so where else to start but with a circular Apple product. This article describes a new circular design for the iPod Shuffle that is quite cool, if a Shuffle has enough storage for your needs.
The Taxonomy of Tech Holdouts. As we’re talking about iPods, here are the nine archetypes of planned non-obsolecence, from the Anachronist to the Careful Curator. I think I’m the latter.
Navy scuttles sailors’ enlisted rating titles in huge career shake-up. Moving from holdouts to non-holdouts. The Navy is holding on to specialist ratings no more. Effective immediately, sailors will no longer be identified by their job title, say, Fire Controlman 1st Class Joe Sailor. Instead, that would be Petty Officer 1st Class Joe Sailor.
New college at Onizuka Station pays homage to the ‘Blue Cube’. Moving from the Navy to their sister service, the Air Force. Those in the Bay Area might remember the blue cube, the former Onizuka AFS. It has been converted into a local college, but still plays homage to its history. The walkways leading from the parking lot to the campus are speckled with flecks of blue paint harvested from the cube. Once inside, there is the Onizuka Cafe for hungry students and the Satellite Lounge next door for relaxation and study. Two murals that previously had been inside the cube are now hung in campus hallways. One features the Challenger shuttle with a memorial poem. The other is signed by many former employees of the Onizuka Air Force Station and coincidentally features a large owl—Foothill’s mascot—with a lightning bolt in its talons.
An Abandoned Hospital in West Adams Has Been Filled With Fine Art. Moving from an Abandoned Air Station to an Abandoned Hospital, although this one is still abandoned. The LA Metropolitan Hospital was one of the first black hospitals, but it close a few years ago and is pending redevelopment. However, for the next month, there is an interesting art exhibit in the abandoned hospital.
Texas prisons ban books by Langston Hughes and Bob Dole – but ‘Mein Kampf’ is OK. A hospital is a pubic service building, and so is a prison. So here’s an interesting prison story: prisons in Texas have banned books by Bob Dole, Harriet Beecher Stowe or Sojourner Truth. But inmates are more than welcome to dig into Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” or David Duke’s “My Awakening.” The rationale: they ban offensive language or violence or sex, but not offensive ideas.
Palestinians’ Abbas seeks British apology for 1917 Jewish homeland declaration. Moving from Hitler to another group that doesn’t like the Jews: the Palestinians. According to the Palestinian President, Britain should apologize for its 1917 declaration endorsing the founding of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and should recognize Palestine as a state.
Your Samsung washing machine might be about to explode. Moving from explosive ideas to explosive washers. The problem it appears, is a defective support rod that is causing washer tubs to separate, potentially launching wires, nuts and other parts. Boom!
The one step you shouldn’t skip when cooking with your cast iron pan. Moving from the Laundry Room to the kitchen, here are some tips regarding use of cast iron pans.
Fat Flora? Gut Bacteria Differ in Obese Kids. What do you cook in a cast iron pan? Food. And what happens if you eat too much food? You get fat. Researchers have found that obese children have a different population of microorganisms living in their intestinal tracts, compared with lean children. These microorganisms appear to accelerate the conversion of carbohydrates into fat, which then accumulates throughout the body, the researchers said.
Attack of the plastic eaters: Can mushrooms, bacteria and mealworms save the planet from pollution? Speaking of bacteria, it runs out they may be the solution to accumulating plastic. As it turns out, nature might offer us the solution to our man-made problems. Scientists around the world are harnessing — in test tubes, under glass domes, and within large bioreactors — the power of living things that can digest plastic without suffering harm.
Inside Arizona’s Pump Skimmer Scourge. Of course, if you’re in Arizona, you should keep a close eye on your plastic — not due to bacteria, but criminals that are doing a lot of skimming of gas and other credit cards.
Why the Hallmark Card Company Owns Thousands of Priceless Artworks. Plastic, of course, refers to a credit card, and who is one of the largest purveyors of greeting cards? Hallmark. Here’s the history of Hallmark, and why the company owns lot of priceless art.
UC Berkeley mascot Oski celebrates 75th birthday. Of course, you send greeting cards on an anniversary, and it just so happens that Oski, the mascot of UC Berkeley, is celebrating an anniversary — his birthday.
Horses can communicate with people using symbols. Oski is a bear, and another type of animal is a horse. It turns out that twenty three horses learned to tell trainers if they wanted to wear a blanket or not. Subjects were shown three symbols: a horizontal bar to say “I want a blanket”, a blank square for “No change”, and a vertical bar for “I don’t need a blanket”. They learned the meanings in a day or two and using them to convey if they were too warm or too cold, building the case for self-awareness.

Of course, a square is a simple polygon, and if you keep adding sides to a polygon infinitely, you end up with a circle. An a circle, of course, is the shape of the new iPod Shuffle, which permit us to spiral back to where this post began. Of course, circles and spirals are the shape of a round Challah, which we dip in honey as we wish EVERYONE a happy and healthy new year. May you all be written and inscribed for the happiest of years.

Some Tasty Afternoon Stew

Posted onSaturday, September 10, 2016Authorcahwyguy

Observation Stew Now that the highway pages are done, and the water heater is repaired, I can start some stew cooking on the stove. Loads of interesting articles in here. I’ll group them the best I can.

Things Dying and Dead, But Then Again….

The iPod Classic. Nine years ago, Apple introduced the iPod Classic. Last week, they introduced the iPhone 7. The iPod Classic had 160GB in a spinning hard disk, for $349. The iPhone 7 can have 256GB for almost $850. Is this the replacement for the Classic, finally? Or, is it still better to get a 7th Gen iPod Classic off eBay, or from that drawer you’ve been hiding it in, and replace the hard disk with a Tarkan board, some solid state memory (I put in 512GB), and keep the classic. Going the Tarkan route is less than $400, and gives you more memory for about the same cost. Oh, and it gives you a 3.5mm headphone jack as well, so you needn’t pay for adapters or lost AirPods. Then again, the headphone companies don’t care. They’ve got product to sell you.
The Colony Theatre. Oh, the poor Colony. We thought you would survive. Now you’re having to rent out your space just to stay alive. And your poor subscribers: We’re left holding the tickets for shows that we will never see (literally — there’s no way I’m gonna see Patty Duke in Mrs. Lincoln — both are dead). Will the Colony come back? At this point, I’m highly skeptical. What they need is new artistic direction, a new board, and a new way of thinking about things. Their collapse shows the perils of keeping the same leadership for far too long.
The Advertising Jingle. Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but the advertising jingle is dead. Who killed it? Cover artists and the licensing of modified lyrics, that’s what. Those are more easily recognizable. So, our hats are off to you, “I’d like to teach the world to sing”, “Like a good neighbor”, and “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz”. We’re just left with the Empire Carpeting jingle.

Los Angeles Development

Earl Carroll Theatre. It looks like a massive development next to the Earl Carroll Theatre (→ Aquarius Theatre → Nickelodeon Studios) is going to occur. We may get a preserved outside, but offices it will remain. Live theatre will not grace the space again.
Baja Fresh and Pinkberry. The owner of Baja Fresh has been sold, and they are now owned by the same folks that own Pinkberry. Is this a good thing? I don’t know. Now that Sharkey’s has moved nearby, we go there instead of Baja Fresh.
Paper Airplanes and Grand Park. Giant paper airplanes are soon coming to Grand Park. The shade structure appropriately titled “Paper Airplane” will be unveiled Tuesday near the oft-photographed Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain (they’re actually made by “made of a mesh-like material”). Created by artists Elenita Torres and Dean Sherriff, it will look like a squadron of 11 giant paper planes floating across Olive Court. That’s the totally exposed area between Grand and Hill where food trucks line up during the weekday lunch hours.

Sensitivity and Culture

Tiki Bars. Here’s an interesting question: If you were going to add a third arm to your body, where would you add it? Whoops, wrong question. Try this: Are Tiki Bars offensive to Polynesians? NPR endeavored to figure that out. It is hard to know: Tiki bars are about as close to something really Polynesian as the Chinese Food you got downtown in the 1950s and 1960s was to real Chinese food.
Napalm Girl. The furor yesterday was over Facebook and “Napalm Girl” — the famous photo of the napalmed Vietnamese girl. First it was taken down. Facebook banned it. Then they reversed themselves. It makes me think about a debate that occurred many many years ago when that photo was first published: Should photos like this be published? When does news value override sensitivity? These questions are still relevant today.

And the Rest…

A Ren Faire Musical. A Renaissance Faire themed musical is being penned by the creators of Legally Blonde – The Musical. This isn’t going to end well, is it. The musical, titled Huzzah!, is supposedly is about a family-owned mom-and-pop-type operation that is threatened mostly by its own family dysfunction.
Munchkin Arguments. No, not about the movie and whether they did Dorothy. (ducks and runs). Rather, about the Steve Jackson game and its endless, and I do mean endless, variants. Here’s the article to link to when arguments about Munchkin occur. You’ve been warned.
Language Arguments. Here’s an interesting opinion: Speak to your kids in a foreign language. They suggest Yiddish.
Going with Grace. The US Navy is naming their cyber center after Adm Grace Murry Hopper. This deserves a huzzah!
Dim Sum. LA Eaters essential Dim Sum restaurants. Do you agree?

The Future of Music

Posted onFriday, May 13, 2016Friday, May 13, 2016Authorcahwyguy

userpic=white-ipod Even though I’m on vacation this week, I’ve still been reading news and collecting articles. One subject that has been popular this week has been Apple, iTunes, Apple Music, and the future. Here are some of the discussions that caught my eye:

All About the Benjamins. A number of articles have been circulating about the skyrocketing value for older iPods, such as this article, which notes that the U2 edition of the iPod is now supposedly fetching $90K, but of course only if it was factory-sealed in its box. To us old timers, this sounds like the Cabbage Patch Doll craze of many years ago, or the Beanie Baby craze. iPods are meant to be used: to hold music, to play music, to be the center of your musical life. They are not meant to remained boxed. I have two iPod Classics, each modified to have a 512GB SSD memory instead of the 160GB Hard Disk, and I use them everyday (in fact, I’m using one of them as I write this up: currently playing, “Fireflies” by Vana Mazi from the album Izam Anav).
W3C, DRM, EME, and other Acronyms from Hell. Yesterday, on Boing Boing, was an open letter from the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) to W3C (the Web Advisory Council) about their stance on new DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology for the web. They are creating a video DRM standard designed to prevent people from implementing it unless they have permission from the big movie and TV companies, by invoking the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its international equivalents. Earlier in the week there had been a similar article about how earlier attempts at DRM could have killed iTunes and the iPod. That article noted that “iTunes was able to become a powerhouse in music by allowing Apple customers to legally format-shift their digital music. The fact that the RIAA hated this, said it was (or should be) illegal, and tried to stop them didn’t mean that Apple couldn’t go on.” I’ve been format-shifted music I own for years, and there’s nothing that can stop it (especially if you’re willing to go the old analog route, and actually do analog re-recordings of music). I do analog recording from LPs, CDs, and cassettes; digital ripping of CDs, and purchase music digitally. Back when I was much younger, I even recorded off of AM or FM radio (that’s how we used to “stream” music 🙂 ). I’m of the belief that people should actually own copies of the music they listen to; if they do, they should have the ability to format-shift their purchase so they can use it.
iTunes and Destroying the Will to Collect Music. However, these days, collecting music has gotten much harder. Our interfaces to manage the music doesn’t help — witness how many people complain about iTunes (which is likely still the largest music manager for MP3 players and their brethren). Here’s one man’s story about how iTunes destroyed his desire to collect music. What with fears about iTunes replacing carefully curated tracks with similar versions on the cloud, to the tendancy of iTunes to lose tracks or delete music, the ability to manage a collection — especially large collections — gets difficult. I can understand the concern. If you’ve visited our house, you know I have a large collection of LPs and CDs (and once upon a time had a very large collection of cassettes recorded from those LPs and CDs). I have just under 38,000 tracks in iTunes, and plan to add more. I recognize how I’ve grown tied to iTunes and its play counts and ratings, as well as how easy it is for iTunes to screw up and lose music.
iTunes vs. Apple Music. But the music industry may be trying to screw listeners once again. There are conflicting stories out there about how Apple is going to kill the iTunes store within 2 years; but then again, it may not. The conflict (and the reason for the conflicting reports) is the movement to streaming music (which I view as an insidious plot). Supposedly… Apple wants to get out of the profitable business of “selling” people music through the iTunes store, and replace it with the streaming of music through Apple Music, where you can stream tracks you are leasing (but I put “selling” in quotes, because in someways it was leasing as well, because Apple could delete the trick, or might have DRMed the track). I tend to side with the folks that say Apple isn’t doing this now, simply because it is a profit center. I think the risk of it going away is there, especially if more people move to storage in the cloud and a streaming model. Luckily, I think the artists still want to have the ability to get music in the hands of their fans — be it through download, CDs, or other means. I have yet to hear rumors that Amazon is getting out of the digital music field — and I always get my music through Amazon if I can as they do not DRM protect their tracks; I subsequently import them into iTunes (which moves them out of Amazon Music’s reach).

So what is the upshot of these articles. I think it is simple. People have always wanted to own the music of the artists they like: be it sheet music in the early days, LP recordings through much of the 20th century, cassette records, and later CDs and digital tracks. With recording technology, they like — and need — the ability to format shift their music to formats of their choosing. They also need the ability to pass their music collections to their children (something that may be difficult to do). We should not be forced to buy new copies of recordings we own every few years, despite what the music companies claim.

As for Streaming Music: Streaming music is demon spawn. It is a reinvention of the radio, but under your control. However, with streaming, you not only pay for the music, you pay for the bandwidth used to deliver it. Further, the streamers can lose the ability to send you the music at any time. Further, it is only good if you have a signal to stream the music. Fight streaming. Purchase your music, record it to a format you can use, and just play from your collection — non-streaming or local (i.e., your house) streaming. Oh, and that iPod Classic you’ve got in your closet — don’t sell it as a Cabbage Patch MP3 Player, and don’t throw it away. Replace the hard disk with SSD, load it up, and use it. You can have your entire music collection with you, and listen to the songs you want.

An Alphabet of Chum: From A to Almost Z

Posted onSaturday, April 2, 2016Sunday, April 3, 2016Authorcahwyguy

userpic=masters-voice Our life is a litany of interesting news articles, of news chum, ripe for the discussion. Shall I enumerate? I shall.

A is for Apple. Apple turned 40 this week. Amongst the various articles out there commemorating the occasion was this one, which explored why the iPod was Apple’s definitive invention.
B is for Bagel. LAist attempted to list the 11 best bagels in Los Angeles. They were smart enough to include my favorite on the list, Western Bagel.
C is for Cabrillo. Here’s the first part of an interview with Lewis Wilkenfeld, the Executive and Artistic Director of Cabrillo Music Theatre, which just announced it is closing down at the end of the season. What’s interesting are the reasons for the demise: a shrinking large donor base, lack of broad community support, and problems with the attitude and management at the Civic Arts Plaza. There was one telling line: the large donors didn’t want to feel that they were the only ones supporting Cabrillo. That echos what I’ve heard at shul. Hence, I’ll emphasize the importance of giving — even if it is only $5 — to those groups you believe in. They need to know the community is there for them. Here’s the second part of the interview.
D is for Downtown. In this case, downtown San Diego, and an interesting article on wayfinding signage. The notion is that people should look up and feel comfortable that they’re going in the right direction and have the sense that they can explore and experience the city (without looking down at a map or a phone).
E is for Education. Here’s a map of 169 preschools that are (supposedly) too close to a freeway. This list concerned me, as our synagogue pre-school was one the list (we’re next to a freeway), and that could have an impact on the opening of the infant toddler center. First the Porter Ranch gas leak, and now this.
F is for Frugal, as in Frugal Cooking. Here are a list of 10 Frugal Cooking Blogs: blogs that help you cook on a budget.
G is for Gun. Here’s the stupid (or, I guess, brilliant) idea of the day: Let’s invent a gun that looks like a cell phone. Just what we need: an easier way for people to bring weaponry into inappropriate places.
I is for Ivory. When I first went to Hawaii as a teen, I picked up some small pieces of scrimshaw, a traditional Hawaiian whaling art. But thanks to the misuse and crimes in the acquisition of ivory, scrimshaw may become an endangered art. There are plans to prohibit the sale of any ivory, even that acquired when it was legal. I’m sure it will be possible to have a synthetic substitute, but what about the existing items?
J is for Jumping Ship, as a number of people have threatened to do if Trump (Clinton) wins. Here’s an article that shows why that is a bad idea, from the viewpoint of an American living abroad.
L is for Los Angeles, and an exploration of how Los Angeles can shape politics. In this case, it is how Los Angeles shaped the politics of folksinger Woody Guthrie.
M is for Money, specifically in the form of Student Loans. Here’s are some suggestions of what to do when paying your student loans is difficult.
N is for Nipper, as in Little Nipper, the mascot of RCA. Nipper, famously, listened to “his master’s voice” on the records and radio. The article explores that history, as well as how voice commanding as moved to applications like Siri.
P is for Park-ing. Two items here: First, how the city of LA wants to use giant paper airplanes to shade downtown’s Grand Park. Before you go WTF?, it is actually an interesting artistic idea. The second concerns the other end of the MetroRail from downtown: the various lots such as North Hollywood, which will soon no longer have free parking. Good idea, but they could have done the execution better (such as just tap and go (or take a ticket) when you enter, and when tap and go when you leave).
R is for Radio. AM and FM radio is collapsing, thanks to folks like me who listen to their iPods, and folks like you who listen to streaming music. iHeartMedia is on the verge of collapse, and radio in San Francisco is undergoing a bloodbath with the decimation of the news team at KGO. [ETA: And the other shoe has dropped in San Francisco, with KFOG’s evisceration on the FM dial by the same owners. (h/t to Gary Cohn from camp for the link)]
S is for Solar. For years, I’ve been getting talks to convince me to put in solar; just got one 10 minutes ago. I’ve generally felt it was a rip-off, due to the problems with the lease terms and the power companies. However, one of my credit unions had an interesting offer; might be worth exploring.
T is for Theater. StageLA has an interesting exploration of the problems facing the mid and large theaters in Southern California. Actors Equity believes that their approach of making it economically impossible for the intimate theatre to survive will make mid and large theaters grow. Will it happen? Not when such theatre are dying on their own due to lack of support.
U is for Underwear. Here’s an interesting exploration of how new underwear companies are trying to find a niche between granny panties and thongs. I find this an interesting economic and stylistic exploration.
V is for Vegas. Plans have been announced for the implosion of the Riviera. Perhaps I should say two implosions, as they are doing it in two pieces. In a related note, a historic sign collector (not the Neon Museum) plans to restore the Riv’s spectacular neon (or at least some of it)
W is for White Rage. Lastly, a very interesting article on der Trumpster. Trump has created an outlet for pent up “white rage”: the rage of the former powerful and privileged, or at least socially supported, majority in this country, who have been increasingly rankled at the ascendance of minority power and attempts to do away with privilege inherent in the system. They’ve turned to Trump, who has bluntly expressed their views. Where will that rage go when (note I don’t say “if”) Trump does not win? It may not be pretty; the civil war didn’t end at Appomattox.
Y is for Year, as in Ugly Political Year (or You Can’t Win). In related news: Donald Trump is now the least popular politician in three decades. Less popular than Obama (who actually is at peak popularity), less popular the GW Bush, less popular than Chaney, less popular than Clinton (either), and probably less popular than even Nixon or Carter. Mind you, this is not likely to significantly change to “popular” before November, and this is that man that the Republicans will likely nominate for November. Further, if they somehow don’t nominate him, there is likely to be a party split, as he and his followers are unlikely to unite behind whomever the RNC chooses. Given that you’ve got similar splitting between Sanders and Clinton supporters, and the presumptive nominee Clinton doesn’t have strong popularity either, this is going to be an ugly ugly political year.

Weekend News Chum to Fill your Loving Cup

Posted onSunday, February 14, 2016Sunday, February 14, 2016Authorcahwyguy

Observation Stew ’tis the weekend, and that means it is time to clear out the accumulated links that didn’t them… well, at least those I remembered to send back home from work. In the spirit of the day, feel free to share these stories with your sweetie.

A Yiddish Date. Let’s start things with something fun for the day. If you haven’t seen the Yidlife Video linked in this post yet, go watch it. It is hilarious. Plus, it stars Mayim Bialik.
Nobel Drama in Trouble. The Nobel Middle School drama program is in trouble, falling victim to a parent complaint and district policies that dictate, at the Middle School level, that activities can’t select based on skill level. Thank you to Colin at Bitter Lemons for spreading the word about this beyond the school community to the theatre community in Southern California.
Congratulations to Van Nuys HS. Ever since my daughter was part of the Van Nuys Academic Decathalon team, I’ve silently cheered them on against the nation’s leader, Granada Hills HS. So congratulations to Granada for winning at the LA level and going to state, but even more congratulations to the other high schools the district is sending: Marshall, which finished second; Franklin, which finished third; El Camino Real; Garfield; Bell; Van Nuys; Grant; Narbonne; Hamilton; North Hollywood; and, for the first time, Cleveland and Lincoln. It is a lot of hard work by a lot of good kids.
A Nigerian Needs Your Help. At the ACSAC conference, we presented the Nigerian Spam Scam Scam, a story about how Dean Cameron led on Nigerian spammers to get money out of them. Well, it appears another Nigerian needs our help: this one is lost in space unless you provide the funds to bring him back. What I found most interesting here was the email address used: XXXX@nasrda.gov.ng . At the conference, we actually had a Nigerian senator in the audience, and even he was using a Hotmail address because the Nigerian government infrastructure wasn’t set up. Note that here we have a .gov.ng address. Very interesting.
Kickstarters Makes Good. Two Kickstarters we’ve supported have made the LA media. The first, which we knew as Smash Cup but is now called StoJo, is a collapsible reusable coffee cup that got written up in the LA Times Gear section. The second kickstarter is Game Haus Cafe, a wonderful board gaming cafe that got a nice piece from KCET’s SoCal Connected. They only made one error: the problem with the place is not finding a seat, but finding parking.
Theatre Podcasts. Here’s an interesting announcement from The Folio Group, which has brought together a number of theatre podcasts into a collective, including two that I listen to: the Ensemblist and Theater People. I do find it interesting that they did not get The Producer’s Perspective or Broadway Bullet to be part of their collective.
Undercover Boss. One of the shows I enjoy watching is Undercover Boss, although I do find it odd that only a few select people win the largess lottery. Here’s an interesting article on the show from one of the bosses from a recent episode.
Changes in the Archie Universe. Whereas comic books in the past tended not to push the bounds, today’s comic books reflect society. Surprisingly, one of the ones at the edge is Archie, which once was the whitest of the white breads. Riverdale has added gay characters, and now Jughead has come out as asexual. This is good: the asexuals are a group that society doesn’t understand, and attempts to force into mold that just doesn’t fit them.
The Feathers are Gone. The last Showgirl show in Las Vegas has ended. Jubilee, at Bally’s has closed its 35 year run, leaving the strip devoid of shows with the traditional Las Vegas showgirl. Will the era ever return?
Crumbling Presidents. 43 Presidential Heads are decaying in a field in Virginia. I view the images as a pictorial commentary on the state of our politics, and of the respect we show for our leaders.

Breathing Room at Last

Posted onMonday, January 11, 2016Saturday, February 13, 2016Authorcahwyguy

userpic=ipod If you recall, since Apple discontinued the iPod Classic, I’ve had a number of discussions about what my path forward should be. I initially thought about going with a non-iPod device (also here). But each had its limitations, including cost and abandoning my carefully curated playcounts and ratings in iTunes. Then I discovered another approach: modification of the iPod Classic to add more storage. But I’m a software guy. Modding hardware is outside my comfort zone. So I decided to do some men normally don’t do: ask for help. I found someone local, and… voila! Here’s a before and after picture. Note the “Capacity:” line, and the amount of free space:

Before

iPod Primero Before

After

Primero Prime After

Ah, breathing room. It is wonderful. A 512GB iPod Classic, for a cost of about $300. I used the iFlash Dual SD Adapter from Tarkan, two PNY Elite Performance SDXC 256 GB UHS-3 Memory Cards, and the help of Juan Salinas, who I met through the Tarkan boards. Juan took care of the hardware end over the weekend, as I’m a software guy (and he did a great job — things loaded just fine — did it in alphabetic chucks and it took about 5 hours).

After about 6 months of use, it will be Segundo’s turn to be upgraded to Segundo Prime. I have no plans to upgrade to iTunes 12. I believe Apple has moved iTunes to the direction of pushing cloud storage instead of on-device; I do not want to move in that direction.

P.S.: Pioneer has a $700 DAP that can go to 256GB, for $700 plus 2x128GB cards. Onkyo just announced a new DAP with a max of 482GB in micro-SD cards for $899, not including the SD cards. How puny. With the Tarkan approach, one could go to 1TB! (Of course, the iTunes database maxes out a 66K songs, supposedly).

P.P.S: Primero Prime Post Upgrade Status:

Day U (Upgrade)+1: One spontaneous update in the morning. Driving home, a reboot after the podcast, and then about 4-5 more reboots — some due to complete freezes, others due to interface freezes. Note that the drive home includes a power connection through a DC adaptor that could be flakier. Last reboot seemed to solve problems.
Day U+2: No reboots in the morning. For the drive home, ran Primero Prime off battery only. One reboot in the evening, before the podcast while switching playlists. Otherwise fine.
Day U+3: No reboots in the morning, during the day, or on the drive home (on battery). Perhaps it is settling in.
Day U+4: No reboots in the morning. Again, on battery for the drive home, and got one reboot when traversing menus. Otherwise, again, fine.
Days U+5, U+6, U+7: No reboots. I’m beginning to think the reboot is unrelated to iDual and more related to age (and spurious signals from the click wheel, as this happened occasionally before the surgery)
Day U+2 Weeks: Had a number of reboots and freezes yesterday. Could get a reliable freeze from the 2nd song on a 37000+ playlist, but that song played fine when chosen from a 11000+ playlist… and the 2nd song position on the 37000+ playlist was fine after a resync. Most occurred when touching the click wheel or navigating. It has been fine since.

Understanding Diversity

Posted onThursday, December 24, 2015Monday, December 28, 2015Authorcahwyguy

userpic=twogentlemen Prologue. As I’ve noted before, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Perhaps too many, as it takes a lot of work to keep current; this is partially because there is such a resurgence in the number of really good podcasts. I’m learning about more and more everyday, and there just isn’t time to listen to the podcasts that sound interesting. Now I’m “old-school” on my podcast listening: I actually download them daily to an actual iPod, as opposed to using streaming data to listen to them on a mobile platform. I find that I can only listen to spoken-word podcasts in certain environments (primarily those where I’m not consciously using the “reading” portion of my brain): driving, shopping, working out, walking. Further, I can’t just sit back and listen — if I do that, I’ll fall asleep (which I blame on conditioning from the vanpool). As a result, I’m regularly backed up on podcasts; my typical backlog is on the order of 15 podcasts, not counting Woodsongs.

Boy, I’m starting to feel like Ira Glass opening an episode of This American Life (one of the podcasts I listen to).

So the other day, I’m shopping at Trader Joes and listening to a recent episode of the Startup podcast. Startup was the first podcast from Gimlet Media, and originally told the story of the startup of Gimlet. It has gone on to look at other startups, such as DatingRing, but it occasionally tells Gimlet’s story. Right now, they are doing a half-season on Gimlet, and the latest show tackled the question of Diversity.

I strongly urge you to give it a listen. This episode explores the level of diversity of Gimlet Media. Although they have made an effort for male/female balance, they are working to correct a significant white/people of color balance. The episode explores why that divide exists, how diversity begets more diversity, and why the question of diversity is more than skin deep. That’s meant to be literal: for there are questions of diversity across religion, orientation, political spectrum, etc. Alex Bloomberg of Gimlet rightly points out why diversity is so important: it enables them to tell a better story that exposes all sides of an issue.

This post consists of three acts (no, that’s not right). Well, there are three articles that came across my feeds this week that illustrate this so well.

Act I: Dating Apps. The first was a post by Ferrett Steinmetz over on LJ (you do remember LJ, right). It explores a new dating app: this time it is one developed by women for women. Dating is similar to porn, in that what women want and need in the experience is often drastically different than men, and yet it is mostly a male-centric industry that is producing the product. This results in an inherent bias in the product towards the male point of view. Nowhere is it clearer than this dating app: whereas men want to see the widest variety of women, the women only care about those men who are somewhat local, who are congruent on interests, and who have a mutual interest in them. In fact, it restricts the profiles that you can see to those where there is a mutual match of criteria. This is a clear example of what a different perspective can bring, and why that perspective is so important.

Act II: Wearing the Hijab. The second was an article in the Washington Post, which was subsequently echoed by other outlets such as NPR. The article looked at the recent movement to support Muslim women by wearing head scarves as a show of solidarity. The problem? No one asked Muslim women what they thought about this. Modern Muslim women haven’t adopted the headscarf out of choice or even out of religious reasons; it has been forced upon them by the male-dominated atmosphere of Islam. They would prefer an approach that actually encouraged Islam to liberalize its attitude towards woman, instead of reminding them of their second class citizen status. It is as if society said they wanted to support Jews by dressing in long black frock coats, growing long beards, and wearing tzittzit and kippot. So where did the headscarf notion come from? People who did not understand the Islamic culture, but “meant well.”

Act III: The Theatre. Broadway Bullet, Episode 608, was specifically focused on women’s voices and diversity in the theatre. Again, this is an issue I’ve brought up many a times — as recent as last week, in fact. In order to draw audiences to the theatre, we need to have diversity in the writing of the shows. We need diversity in the casting so that what is on stage reflects what is (or what should be) in the audience. We need diversity in the back and front of house production and creative positions as well. This diversity ensures we hear the voices we need to hear. But far too often, theatre go for what is safe, and that is shows often by white men aimed towards the white mindset.

Post-Logue. These are just three examples, and show why diversity is so important, and is so much more than tokenism. It is a change of attitude, a desire to bring not only diverse people but diverse viewpoints to issues. These articles — and it is emphasized in the Startup Podcast — show how these diverse viewpoints can improve the end product, often by coming at issues from a very different place and experience.

P.S.: You’re probably wondering why I chose the userpic. Two Gentlemen of Verona — at least the musical version from the New York Shakespeare Festival — was one of the first productions that emphasized diversity and color-blind casting. It wasn’t a bunch of white men spouting Shakespeare.

P.P.S.: So what podcasts do I listen to? Here’s the current subscription list: The Allusionist, BackStory, Broadway Bullet, The Ensemblist, Freakonomics; Gastropod; Invisibilia; Irish and Celtic Music Podcast; LA Observed; Opening the Curtain; The Moth; NPR Technology; Planet Money; The Producers Perspective; Quirks and Quarks; Reply All; Science Friday; The Specialist; Startup; Theater People; This American Life; Wait, Wait, Dont’ Tell Me; The Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour; and 99% Invisible. There are quite a few more I’d love to add to the list, but I just don’t have the time. [ETA: Over the weekend, I added Surprisingly Awesome and Answer Me This.]

A Matter of Perception / Why People Who See the World Differently are Wrong – A Lunchtime Post

Posted onTuesday, November 10, 2015Authorcahwyguy

userpic=aughh In a recent discussion in response to my Facebook post on Starbucks Red Cups, a very rationale friend of mine wondered by people became religious fundamentalists. I responded back that I didn’t know, but noted back “Well, lots of people have beliefs. But some people have beliefs that can be challenged or modified, and some are so convinced that they are correct that they won’t accept any evidence that contradicts their beliefs.”. While reading through my RSS feeds over lunch, an article came across with the intriguing title “Why you often believe people who see the world differently are wrong“. The article, which appears to be a transcription from a podcast I need to explore, explores what shapes our perception that we see the world as it truly is, free from bias or the limitations of our senses (which is termed “naive realism”). Naive realism leads us to believe we arrived at our opinions, political or otherwise, after careful, rational analysis through unmediated thoughts and perceptions. In other words, we think we have been mainlining pure reality for years, and our intense study of the bare facts is what has naturally led to our conclusions. As such, we can’t understand why others don’t think the same way. In fact, on most emotionally charged issues, there is no objective perspective that a brain can take, despite the fact all the people on each side of any debate believe their side is the one rooted in reality.

Here are some interesting quotes from the article:

…since you believe you are in the really-real, true reality, you also believe that you have been extremely careful and devoted to sticking to the facts and thus are free from bias and impervious to persuasion. Anyone else who has read the things you have read or seen the things you have seen will naturally see things your way, given that they’ve pondered the matter as thoughtfully as you have. Therefore, you assume, anyone who disagrees with your political opinions probably just doesn’t have all the facts yet. If they had, they’d already be seeing the world like you do. This is why you continue to ineffectually copy and paste links from all our most trusted sources when arguing your points with those who seem misguided, crazy, uninformed, and just plain wrong. The problem is, this is exactly what the other side thinks will work on you.

[…]

When confronted with people who disagree with your estimations of reality, even after you’ve pushed a bunch of facts in their faces, you tend to assume there must be a rational explanation for why they think and feel the way they do. Usually, that explanation is that the other side is either lazy or stupid or corrupted by some nefarious information-scrambling entity like cable news, a blowhard pundit, a charming pastor, or a lack thereof. Since this is where we often end up, they say what usually happens is that our “repeated attempts at dialogue with those on the ‘other side’ of a contentious issue make us aware that they rarely yield to our attempts at enlightenment; nor do they yield to the efforts of articulate, fair-minded spokespersons who share our views.” In other words, it’s naive to think evidence presented from the sources you trust will sway your opponents because when they do the same, it never sways you.

This is something I see happen continually on Facebook and other discussion forums. It is a very important thing to understand, and in many ways, it explains arguments with both fundamentalists and Republicans quite well 🙂 . I will have to go listen to the full podcast.

P.S.: Mental Floss has published an article on NPR’s new Podcast finder, earbud.fm. What’s interesting about this is that is it curated: the editors don’t just list good podcasts, but they recommend specific episodes as entry points for that podcast (and often, that’s not the first episode). I’d say I need to explore it, but I’ve already got more podcasts coming in than I have time to listen to. There’s loads of good stuff out there.