Gadgets

I’m thinking of getting an electronic reader, now that display technologies are finally catching up, but have been unimpressed with reviews of the Sony Reader, which seems to be the market leader in the US. The iRex Iliad looks to have better specs, but I haven’t seen any proper reviews of it. It doesn’t handle proprietary DRM stuff, but that’s not what I’m interested in reading – I want it more to reduce the load of book and article manuscripts that I always seem to lug with me when I am going from place to place. Anyone out there who has this machine (or another competitor), and is prepared to offer advice/opinions?

So I’m contemplating buying a digital SLR, and, after much huffing, puffing and reading of reviews I’m hesitating between a Nikon D40 and Canon EOS 400D (or Digital Rebel XTi as they call it in the US). The Nikon has a six megapixel sensor and the Canon has ten, and the Canon has some patented dust-removal system. But the Canon costs £100 more. I figure the extra isn’t worth it, and, ten days ago, I buy the Nikon. A couple of days ago Nikon announce a new camera, the D40x. Same as the D40 (more or less) but with a 10MP sensor and an expected price-tag that matches or exceeds the Canon. The comment boards go nuts with discontented D40 buyers, and I think — for a moment — “I should have bought the Canon.” Reminds me of the Sidney Morgenbesser joke:

bq. After finishing dinner, Sidney Morgenbesser decides to order dessert. The waitress tells him he has two choices: apple pie and blueberry pie. Sidney orders the apple pie. After a few minutes the waitress returns and says that they also have cherry pie at which point Morgenbesser says “In that case I’ll have the blueberry pie.”

Via “Gruber”:http://daringfireball.net/, comes a post about “The Boring Store”:http://www.methodsreporter.com/2007/02/27/826chi-boring-store-eggers/1/, which sells nothing of utility and definitely does NOT contain assorted spy equipment. Here’s a part of the awning:

Lifehacker “links to”:http://lifehacker.com/software/clock/download-of-the-day–the-procrastinators-clock-windowsmacweb-230632.php an invention that I’ve thought for years would be a good idea (I’m sure that plenty of other people have had the same thought). Many people have their clocks running a few minutes fast, to encourage them to leave earlier for appointments to get there on time etc etc. The problem with this is that if you’re half-way rational, you’ll correct for the error, making it useless. So the solution is to have a probabilistic clock, where the clock is fast, but you aren’t sure _how_ fast it is within a given and relatively short time range. Thus, you’re more likely to depart early for your appointments and get there on time (or a few minutes ahead, most probably, in many situations). This is exactly what some bloke “has programmed”:http://davidseah.com/archives/2007/01/17/a-chindogu-clock-for-procrastinators/, although it doesn’t appear that it has an alarm feature yet.

Becks at Unfogged and Scott Lemieux “both”:http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2007_01_14.html#006126 “wonder”:http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2007/01/and-when-third-suv-conks-out-you-have.html why the hell the _New York Times_ publishes articles like “this”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/realestate/greathomes/19appliance.html?ex=157680000&en=297a9072f68ae297&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink.

FOR some people, the most elusive aspect of owning a vacation home that sits beyond big-city borders isn’t finding the time to enjoy it. It’s finding someone to service the deluxe appliances inside.

“We called Viking over the holidays every year,” Rosemary Devlin said of her half-decade-long (and mostly futile) efforts to schedule manufacturer service for her mutinous dishwasher. The appliance was installed along with a suite of Viking cousins when Ms. Devlin and her husband, Fay, whose main house is about 20 miles north of Manhattan in Irvington, N.Y., built their six-bedroom ski house on Okemo Mountain in Ludlow, Vt.

The _Financial Times_ (which has its biases, but is still in my opinion the best newspaper out there), has an entire bloody weekend supplement devoted to this kind of stuff, with the classy title “How To Spend It”:http://www.ft.com/howtospendit. While a fair number of its readers are presumably City types who can afford the pieds-a-terres and fancy toys lovingly detailed in its pages, I would imagine that most of its readers aren’t. Someone who I was chatting to about this recently suggested that it’s an aspirational thing; while most of its readers can’t afford this stuff, they’d like to be able to, and are more likely to buy a newspaper that allows them at least to daydream about it. Or perhaps the marketing types think that readers would prefer to be addressed _as if_ they were in a position to “Spend It” even when they aren’t. Any other plausible explanations?

“This thing”:http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/ just arrived from the future.What can I say? if this is the “RDF”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field, sign me up.

_Update_: If you think _I’m_ a Mac fanboy, check out “these photos”:http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/1/9/6547 of the faithful worshipping the holy relic (it’s behind glass, naturally) at the convention. A Durkheimian moment for the brushed-metal set. They look like the apes in _2001_ gazing at the monolith.

I’m sure I used to be good at parking a car, but the older I get, the worse I get at it. So I was rather excessively excited to see that Lexus have invented “a car that can automatically parallel park”:http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2006/09/ls_460_parking.html. The link is a few weeks old, so apologies to those who find this kind of news old hat.

Thanks to all for their “advice”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/05/12/laptop-choice-bleg/ . I’ve just ordered a “MacBook”:http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook/macbook.html (white, 13 inch, 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo, with 1 gig of memory and an 80 gig hard drive).

So here’s a topic on which CT readers are bound to have opinions: which laptop should I buy? Or, more exactly, what should I be looking for? Productivity-wise I need a machine that will run a LaTeX implementation — currently I use MiKTeX plus WinEdt on my desktop machines (XP based) in the office or at home — but just about anything will do that. And I’d like something that will be generally OK for surfing, playing the occasional video-clip or mp3, but that’s about it. And, of course, wireless is essential (though I’ve got a spare wireless card for a notebook as it happens … it came packaged with my router). How much memory? What size HD?

I had thought about making the switch to Apple, having seen a grad student’s neat little iBook. But since Apple is moving to Intel and their low-cost laptops haven’t yet made the switch, that seems a bad choice at the moment. (If I’m wrong about that mattering, then I’m sure some Apple-fan will set me right.)

I see that the left sidebar now has a permanent link to Eszter’s “Frappr Map of Crooked Timber”:http://www.frappr.com/crookedtimber readers (scroll down: under Frenzy of Renown). Add yourselves (if you want to and you haven’t already – especially if you come from Africa, South America, Eastern Europe or Antarctica).

Wow! Just had my first “Google Talk”:http://www.google.com/talk/ conversation. I’m sure most of you are old hands at this voice-over-internet stuff but it was my first time. Set it up, invited some friends and then up pops a mate from Novosibirsk (equipped with headset) for a chat, as if he was just down the road. It works, it’s simple and easy to use. Fantastic.

I am guest-blogging over at Lifehacker this week while regular editor Gina Trapani takes a breather. Lifehacker is part of Nick Denton‘s Gawker Media empire that has managed to make money out of blogging. (We’re not all in it for the $s as you can tell by the lack of ads on CT, but it’s nice to know that some people who don’t necessarily have other main sources of income are able to pull it off.) CT readers are probably most familiar with Gawker’s Wonkette, but there are about a dozen Gawker sites at this point addressing all sorts of topics.

Lifehacker focuses on ways to make your life more productive. Many of the posts feature downloads (e.g. Firefox, Flickr), shortcuts and pointers to helpful Web sites. There is a whole category of advice pieces as well ranging from how to deal with various situations at work to ideas for getting things done more effectively.

If you have any lifehacking tips, please send them along to me this week by writing to tips@lifehacker.com.

For those in Chicagoland or those contemplating a visit, here are some fun goings on over the summer. I still consider myself relatively new in the area so I’m still actively on the lookout for what goes on here these months. I’m very impressed.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve already had the opportunity to go see a Gospel Music Festival, an Art Fair and participate in other outdoor celebrations. Much more is ahead. The free Summer Dance program started at Grant Park this past Wednesday. It runs until the end of August. On Wednesdays they have a DJ. On Thu-Sun they first offer free dance lessons and then have a live band for dances ranging from Polka to Swing, from Bachata to Waltzes. Given that I have been spending increasing amounts of time in dance classes, this is an exciting and fun opportunity. A propos dance, this weekend is the annual Chicago Crystal Ball national dance competition. I’ll be there although only for part of it since I’m hosting friends over the weekend and we’ll be exploring numerous areas of town. No, I won’t be competing at Crystal Ball, but I’ll be cheering on friends who will.

Next weekend (24-26th) will be the Wired Nextfest for all of us interested in the latest gadgets. I think from there I’ll head straight to Grant Park for that evening’s ballroom session.

A bit later in the summer will be the Chicago Outdoor Film Festival also in Grant Park. This event it free as well. They will be wrapping up with Star Wars on Aug 23rd. Sounds fun.

I have found the following resources especially helpful in finding out about goings-on and keeping track. I recommend them as sources of additional amusement:

• City of Chicago Events page
• Upcoming.org‘s Events listings (this should be helpful also if you are in another metro area in the US)

“Dan Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002117.html pre-empts a post I’ve been toying with writing for the last couple of weeks by discussing the usefulness of Douglas Adams’ “Somebody Else’s Problem Field”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEP_field to the understanding of international politics. There’ve been books on Star Trek and International Relations Theory, Harry Potter and International Relations Theory etc, etc. Why hasn’t somebody written the Hitchhiker’s Guide to International Relations? Adams made far punchier contributions to the understanding of IR than either Rowling or Rodenberry; not only the SEP Field, but the Babel Fish theory of the effects of globalization.

bq. The Babel fish, said the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

bq. The poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.