Chilled Out Bearded Man

I apologize to all of the professionals who were wounded in the making of this article.

I was listening to a Youtube playlist of classical music in a minimized window. Maximizing that window for a moment to check the name of the artist, I noticed a woman sitting on stage with the pianist. She was sitting so close to him that at first I thought maybe it was his wife or his nurse. Then the video redirected towards the music sitting on his piano and it dawned on me what that woman was doing there. She was (and is and ever will be) a page turner. From then on I watched in complete awe. The anticipation was killing me. Would she turn it? When will she turn it? What if she makes a mistake? Will her mistake cost him the piano championship? I got to the point where the music became background for the page turning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bn3PdTyj0Q&feature=PlayList&p=2DA91D29ED24F128&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1

After a while I could no longer stand the level of intensity and had to switch back to my other work. When the next song came on I had to check. Would there be another page turner? Amazing! This guy’s piano skills were amazing. Who needs a page turner when you have a piano player? How wrong was I. After a moment the camera zoomed out off of the pianist’s hands and there he was, lo and behold, the page turner. But wait. Something is wrong. Something is missing. There are no pages to turn. The pianist is playing by heart. Then the question comes up, why do you need a page turner if there are no pages? This was completely blowing my mind. What was this guy going to do? He was far younger and was seemingly inexperienced as compared to the previous agile handed mature page turner. Sweat began pouring from my pores. (There was no actual sweat, but it felt like there should have been.) I waited. Was this young man simply the lucky lottery winner who got to sit on stage? Did he perhaps get lost and thought he was in a piano bar? Why wasn’t security pulling him back? So many questions were racing through my head. And then the moment came. I could not have asked for anything more. The “page turner” stood up, took a step forward, and… and… What’s he going to do? THERE ARE NO PAGES TO TURN!! He takes off the pianists glasses. Then he walks away. Huh? It all looked so rehearsed.

Take a look for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNZerbc-9Kk&feature=PlayList&p=2DA91D29ED24F128&playnext_from=PL&index=31&playnext=2

I have not watched a lot of classical music performances in my life, and I had seen even less solo piano performances. I knew nothing of these page turners. So, of course, wanting to learn more, I searched Google for “the art of page turning”. Can you believe it? The first result is actually exactly what I was looking for.

http://northwestreverb.blogspot.com/2009/07/elizabeth-harcombe-talks-about-art-of.html

By this point, there is no turning back (pun intended). I am in love. This is truly an art, more than even Elizabeth Harcombe could know. This is not just an art. This is a sport. And the musicians are perfect background to build up the suspense. I would really love to see John Cage perform 4’33″ with a page turner by his side. My heart is pounding just thinking about it.

Where else could this go? Well, I’m glad you asked. I searched YouTube for “the best page turner” and to my extreme joy a video of Victor Borge called “Page Turner” turned up (pun intended).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWqFaGwNCMU

I thought there could be nothing better than a stand up comedy routine to end it, but Victor Borge has been one-upped. There is a full-length feature film called… You guessed it. “The Page Turner”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fANWrJPhqWw

Now, I need to get figure out how to unwind before bed.

The keyboard on the T-Mobile Google HTC G2 is pretty cool.

First of all, it is a wide qwerty keyboard. There are only three rows of keys but it feels like everything needed is available. They do this by adding the ALT key and an additional character to each key on the board. Just type ALT once to access the alternate character for a key, or type ALT twice to keep the keyboard in ALT mode.

The @ sign is in a much better position than it was before. It is located at the top left as the main character for that key.

Directly below the @ sign is a “.com” key, which has its alternate character as “www.”. Pretty clever innovation.

The comma and the period are on opposite sides of the space bar.

There are additionally 3 quick keys, which you can set as one click to open email, an application, or a bookmark.

They managed to fit in 2 shift keys and 2 ALT keys which is really helpful.

I think it will take some getting used to the location of the alternate characters which are typically on the numbers keys, since on this keyboard the numbers keys are alternate characters on the top row.

There is only one menu key on the keyboard, but there is an additional one on the edge of the screen.

The search key is also another useful touch, which makes searching on many applications that much faster.

An interesting feature of the keyboard is the light sensor. If it thinks there is not enough light it back lights the keys. At first, I thought there was a loose connection, because the back light kept turning on and off while I was typing. Then I noticed that if I shaded the phone it turned on and if it gets direct light it turns off.

I am more of a hard keyboard kinda guy, but I imagine some people may be into the on screen keyboard SWYPE functionality. SWYPE takes away the need to lift up your fingers when typing letters. It drastically increases your potential typing speed. Instead of pressing the letters of the word individually, you place your finger on the first letter and then drag your finger across the letters of the word. If there is more than one possibility of what you meant, it will offer you options. The first option is the most likely and if it is the correct one, you do not need to even click it – just move on to the next word. Also, there is no need to press the space bar between words. Each word you SWYPE is automatically followed by a space if you SWYPE the next word.

Check out more about SWYPE at swypeinc.com.

I received my G2 last Thursday. I was unfortunately not able to get it set up until play time today. I am excited that I received it so early. When I called in to T-Mobile for some help on setup, the lady I spoke with was shocked that I already have the phone as it has not come out yet.)

I am very quickly falling in love with this phone as I did with the G1 2 years ago. It is a bit silly to compare it to the G1 as the G1 is 2 years old and there have been quite a few solid Android phones released since then.

So instead of comparing, here are a few things, I simply appreciate about the new T-Mobile Google HTC G2.

- The screen is big and very clear.

- There are a lot of preloaded Apps on the phone which I probably would not have otherwise found, such as Google Listen, Google Goggles and Shopper. I expect to use these quite a bit.

- I like the widgets. (On the g1, I was not able to install too many desktop widgets bc they used up too many resources.)

- I love SWYPE. I still prefer the hard qwerty keyboard, but if you are using the onscreen keyboard SWYPE is a very efficient way to type.

- The speed on this thing is amazing.

- I love that I can have multiple gmail accounts.

- Having flash on the phone is just awesome.

- The “www.” and “.com” buttons on the keyboard are a very clever idea (and of course there is still the @ sign as a main key).

- The camera is very nice with the flash.

- Live Wallpapers add a nice look to the screen.

- 7 Home Pages is great.

- Recent Apps window is very nice. (When you long hold the home button.)

- New browser key always on screen is great. (The browser does not reload the page each time like it did on the G1. It even jumped straight into the middle of a flash video I was watching as though I never left.)

Some missing things:

- Still no built in google reader app. This is a very minor issue as NewsRob still does an amazing job.

Things to note:

- The phone came with a new SIM card. I was told by the T-Mobile Customer Care, that I can use the old SIM card. I have read some places on the web that using the new SIM card would improve speed and various other

- I have not yet figured out how to transfer my app data over. I decided to install the apps themselves fresh as the download speed on wifi and HSPA+ is zooming. I have pretty minimal data that I really need to transfer over. Most of my docs are stored on Evernote. The main things I would like to transfer are my OI Shopping lists and the receipts from the Receipt Filer.

- I have never bought an App in the Market, but I have read that if you did buy one on a previous Android phone, you can download it again free of charge as long as you are using the same google account on your new phone.

Tell me more…

I want to start by stating that I think Stop Bad Ware is a wonderful idea, and I am only writing this as a critique of a service I have respect for. I hope they can resolve the issues I am mentioning.

When I visit Chilledoutbeardedman.com, I receive an error saying that there is badware on my site.

Trying to access the site through chrome shows it as normal (after clicking past the bad ware red page of death), but accessing the site through Firefox makes it impossible for me to access my admin page and presents my site with limited (if any) css and images.

The way I am told to resolve this is create an account with google Webmasters. I specifically have chosen not to use Google Webmaster for this site for various reasons, while I do use it for most of my other sites.

So here is the process:

1) Google finds “bad ware” on my site

2) Firefox caches a list of bad sites from google.

3) Since I have no google webmaster account, I am not notified that my site is not viewable through Firefox.

4) Almost a month after the initial bad ware was found and users still get an error and can practically not see the page.

This seems a bit monopolistic, no? I am effectively being forced by Firefox and Google to sign up for a Google Webmaster account if I want people to see my site.

The actual issue, I believe, was probably a couple of spam posts which I have since removed. The Google bot found the bad ware on 9/7 and has not seen any “bad ware” since then – specifically when it searched the site on 9/23. It is now 10/3. It seems that because I do not have a Google Webmaster account, I have to wait an entire month (at least) to allow users to see my site.

The bad ware message I received when viewing Chilledoutbeardedman.com in Chrome

The screen of death first seen when viewing Chilledoutbeardedman.com in FF and Chrome

Follow up to: http://www.chilledoutbeardedman.com/2010/09/03/nyc-yellow-cabs-change-shifts-during-rush-hour/

I have spoken with a few taxi cab drivers recently to find out more about the taxi shift schedule and this is what I learned.

- NYC yellow cabs work 12 hour shifts. 8 hours would be too short to justify the cost of the taxi rental.
- Taxi bases are located throughout the burroughs, so if a taxi driver finds himself in the wrong burrough at the end of his/her shift s/he must start heading back to the base sooner.
- Taxi shifts switch at 4am/pm, 5am/pm, and 6am/pm depending on which company they are renting from.

One taxi driver I spoke with was adamant that if they were to change shifts at any other time sleeping schedules would not work out.

I recently took a taxi in Linden, NJ and the taxi driver there told me that they also work 12 hour shifts from 6 to 6, but that people come on at different times. This is so that not all of the taxis are off duty at the same time.

Conclusion:

They should switch at 1,2, and 3. That is the time when the fewest people are taking taxis, so the least lost revenue. It is also when there is the least traffic to return to the base. I am unclear about the effects of sleeping on that schedule, but it seems like if you are getting to work at 4am, you could probably adjust your schedule by a few hours and get to work at 1,2 or 3.

Also, it seems like taxi rental companies would make more money if they rented the taxis for 8 hour shifts. First of all, it seems safer for a taxi driver to drive 8 hours per day, than 12 hours straight. Second, if you were to work on an 8 hour shift, the taxi rental would cost less to justify the 2/3 reduction in time you are renting it for. If you were then to put the shift changes at low traffic times, you would reduce the time to return to the base. Perhaps this is not a perfect solution, but may lead to less tired and more alert taxi drivers.

Perhaps its just my bad luck, but it seems that every single time I am attempting to catch a taxi during rush hour I am passed by mostly taxis with their off duty light on.  I cannot for the life of me understand why taxis would change shifts during the busiest time of the day.

a) It takes more time for them to get back to their bases.

b) There are more people available to be picked up, while there are hundreds of off duty taxis.

It just makes no sense to me. Perhaps somebody can explain it to me, because its starting to get a little bit frustrating standing on the street corner and being passed by endless amounts of taxis during the time when the taxis should be most available.

Dear Google,

All I ever do is write nice things about you. You invent, innovate on and create such wonderful and useful products.

But I am tortured by one of your products. The G1, which I lovingly purchased as it came onto the market, is on the verge of driving me to insanity.

How can the most basic feature – email – not work correctly. I am so sick of my emails getting stuck in “Sending…” mode. How could you not fix this??!!!! I have seen endless complaints and mentions of this bug on websites and forums across the web. I don’t have hundreds of dollars sitting around to just buy another smart phone.

I am not only angry, I am also sad, annoyed, and dejected. Tonight I wrote a response to someone. It was a a full 5 paragraph thought out email. I clicked send and (I am so angry right now, I probably should not be writing) there it goes into limbo with the other 5 emails currently in limbo on my phone. I am so angry I want to curse and so sad I want to cry. I have to now, for the 100th time or so since I bought the phone, rewrite an entire email.

This email happened to be an important personal email in which I will not be able to recreate the feeling I had a the time of writing it. This is obviously more important than the many business emails that got stuck in limbo which have actually lost me money and clients.

I give up now. I hear good things about your new products, but I have plenty of friends still using the G1 and this bug drives us completely up the wall.

Please help us!!!

Your barely hanging on admirer,

The Chilled Out Bearded Man

P.S. If you are reading this article and feel the same way about it, please comment here.

P.S.S. I’m just finally starting to find good uses for Google Wave. Don’t kill it now.

Years ago, I used to type in a search engine url, load that page, type my search into the input field, and click submit. That was years ago…

Nowadays, like I’m sure most of my compatriots do, I just type my searches straight into my browser. Since my search is obviously not a URL, I get redirected to the search engine results using the search engine set as the default keywords service in my browser. That stopped working for me recently. Now, instead of the URL redirecting to Google as my Firefox is set to do, it was instead redirecting to … searchresults . rcn . com.

It finally got on my nerves today and I decided to search for a solution. At first I found this article titled RCN Hijacking Mistyped URLs by Ed Hayes which recommended calling RCN as he had done. I didn’t want to call them, so I spent a few more minutes searching for another solution. Nothing else was really showing in google search results for this problem.

Then I discovered a link at the bottom of the RCN Yahoo search results page called Search Settings. Clicking this link brings you to a page that says:

About the Search Results Page

The search results on the prior page were provided to you because you entered keywords or an improperly formatted, currently unavailable, or nonexistent domain name into the address bar. This service is designed to enhance your web surfing experience.No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.

•  Would you like to opt out of this service?

If you would like to Opt Out of this service, please click here.

When I clicked on that link I was taken to a page that said the following:

Search Service Settings

OPT-IN Opt In  (Recommended) OR OPT-OUT Altavista TM AOL ® Ask.com TM Google TM Bing TM Yahoo ® None — DNS Error Page

Note: In order for opt-out to work properly, you need to accept a “cookie” indicating that you have opted out of this service. If you use a program that removes cookies, you will have to repeat this opt-out process when the cookie is deleted. The cookie placed on your computer will contain the site name: “.searchresults.rcn.com”.

I selected Google rather than a DNS error page, and was shown the final page of the opt out process.

SETTINGS CHANGED

Your preferences have been set, and will not have to be changed again as long as your browser cookies remain intact. If you would like to change your settings in the future, simply visit optin.searchresults.rcn.com.

If you select DNS error page, you get this result when you type an incorrect url or non-url:

http://www17.searchresults.rcn.com/not_found

This is actually problematic because it is a valid URL, so the browser gets confused and thinks it has found the valid URL you were looking for. They have in effect hijacked your ability to control what to do with an unresolvable URL. You can either opt in to use their custom Yahoo RCN search page, or else choose from one of their other choices. You are not given the choice to use the settings in your browser. It is not a true opt-out. In fact, as stated a few paragraphs above in the italics from their page, it says that you actually need to accept a cookie that in effect opts you in to their opt out system. Very backwards if you ask me.

You can read more about the browser Location Bar Search and how Firefox resolves unresolvable URLs and keyword searches here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Location_Bar_Search

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keyword.URL

I wonder if the Search Settings was available to Ed on the Yahoo RCN search page when he was dealing with this problem a few months back or if RCN got wise and added this solution once they started getting a bunch of complaints. Either way, hope that helps people. And perhaps RCN can make a real Opt Out option that would allow our browsers to do the URL resolving. ISPs should be giving us an http error result, not a valid url result saying that it failed.

Don't bee caught unprepared

This is in response to a post by Meg Pickard and will make more sense if you read her article first.

I actually had a similar experience a few years back when I was staying in downtown Chicago at a cheap ($100 per night) hotel. The place was not shiny new, but it also was not a dirty old dump. It just looked like an older place that had been kept up well.

I foolishly went to bed wearing only my boxer shorts and a t-shirt. I awoke to find a bite in a place you don’t want to be bitten. My first instinct was that it was a spider or mosquito, but there was a lingering thought that maybe it was something else. When I returned to my hotel room later in the day, I discovered the red brown bug on the edge of my bed.

Based on where I had been bitten, I jumped to the conclusion that it was crabs – not knowing that crabs were way way smaller. I actually looked up crabs on the internet and they look just like the bug that was on my bed. Now I know that they could not have been crabs for many obvious reasons. And I think Meg finally solved my pickle as to what it was. Luckily, I don’t think I brought any of the bugs back home with me.

I want to recommend a tool for traveling. My hostel jumping friend told me about it.

Fold a bed sheet in half the long way. Stitch the long end and one short end closed. Now you have a lightweight protective sleeping bag. For extra credit you can get a longer bedsheet and add a place to put your pillow, so that you don’t need to carry a pillow case with you when you travel.

Thanks to Meg Pickard for reminding me about this. I hope our experiences can be a lesson to you other travelers out there.

I just read a short article on The Next Web (http://thenextweb.com/europe/2009/10/18/pirate-party-leader-threatened-burnt-stake/)about Sweden’s Pirate Party in the European Union. Here were a few very interesting points they summarized which made a lot of sense to me:

* Deep Packet Inspection and any other methods of ‘looking inside’ the data being transmitted by individuals is wrong, just like it’s illegal to intercept mail in the postal service.
* ISPs should be immune from prosecution for what’s sent through their networks, just like the postal service isn’t prosecuted for moving illegal drugs.
* Individuals have a right to privacy online and offline
* Copyright should only apply to commercial work – bedroom remixers and mashup artists shouldn’t have to ask permission to release their work unless they want to charge for it.
* Finally, and most controversially, copyright on any song, film or any other creative work should be just five years. That would mean artists would only be able to earn a living from their music for five years before the song became public property.

I definitely agree that the last one is controversial, but I have heard similar points from GNU creator, Richard Stallman: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html. His point is that a copyright is a monopoly given to a writer,etc with the intent of promoting innovation. Having long copyrights is counter to the purpose of the law, and he claims, counter to the constitution. I still do not have enough knowledge about this subject to form a strong opinion, so I will leave it at that.