Ian Varley

Part Of The Solution

2011-12-28T11:16:00.001-05:00

Hey, it's time for my annual blog post!

It's been a big long crazy year around here, with many thousands of hours spent doing many dozens of nice things. I'll write more about the rest soon, perhaps even before another year has passed. But today, I wanted to mention that as of this fall, we're now a solar-powered household! Behold:

We were able to do this because of an incredibly cool program called Pecan Street Project, which funded and inspired the Mueller Megawatt Project. It's a pretty amazing to see all the houses with solar power (over 200 at this point) just in our little neighborhood.

And we're producing! Check it out:

Even in late december, without many hours of daylight, on a sunny day we still have a pretty good surplus (5 kWh yesterday). Really looking forward to seeing how much we produce in the spring with more light outside, and fewer lights on inside.

I want to give a shout out to our solar installers, Lighthouse Solar. They were great to work with, and the monitoring tools they provide are really amazing--I can see, over the internet, my real time energy production and usage. It's so real-time, in fact, that I can flick a light on or off and immediately see the result. Which has the nice side effect of keeping us a lot more conscientious about our energy usage (man, lights use a lot of electricity!).

Next up: using our surplus for ... an electric car?

Documentation Momentum

2010-12-28T02:14:00.000-05:00

I got my first real camera in 2006. Specifically, on June 14th, 2006; I know this because prior to then, my life was more or less undocumented. This is the first picture I took with it:

Since then, I've taken just over 10,000 photos (that I've kept), of which about 1400 are on my Flickr page. 2007 was a peak year (4125 photos), and 2008 trailed off a bit (2308 photos).

Then, in 2009, I only took 626 photos. What happened?

I got an iPhone.

"But wait, Ian! Doesn't the iPhone have a camera in it?" Yes, absolutely; that's the problem. I stopped carrying my awesome camera around because I didn't "need" to; I told myself that I'd just take lots of pictures on my iPhone instead. And, I did take some pictures. But the funny thing is, I didn't like the pictures, and didn't care to organize or look at them later. And, over time, I just kind of quit taking pictures.

At the same time, I switched from managing my photos on a Mac (iPhoto) to a PC, because our old Mac was groaning under the ever-increasing weight of my all these pictures (most of which were of my dog). So I moved my photos over and started using Picasa. Big mistake! It's well engineered software, but not well designed for use by human beings; everything is convoluted and un-obvious, at least to me. So, my visual documentation languished.

No more! I've now moved back to managing photos in iPhoto on a Mac, and can now easily integrate photos from both my camera and my iPhone (which can now do fancy stuff like click focus, HDR, etc., and actually looks quite good). And I've started posting on Flickr again (here are sets from recent trips to London and San Francisco.

The Force

2010-04-26T18:06:00.001-04:00

Through my career as a software engineer, I've always felt drawn to data. Modeling it, manipulating it, mining it: anything having to do with the structure and use of concepts in software, really. It's an amazing (and important) area to work in, because understanding a problem's data is often the biggest step towards solving it.

Recently, I finished my Masters Degree at UT, and wrote a thesis about some new-fangled database design strategies that got noticed by a few folks. One group who noticed was a company I've long admired: San Francisco-based Salesforce.com, which creates online ("cloud") software for businesses. They've essentially built a "meta database," where their customers directly interact with database concepts, without needing a programmer to make it happen. Salesforce brought me out to do a technical talk about data design in non-relational databases, and I had a great experience meeting and talking with the team.

So it is with great excitement that I can now share that I've been hired by Salesforce.com to join the core engineering team, and work on the next generation of really tough data problems, and–hopefully–make the world a better place. I plan on taking advantage of Salesforce's 1/1/1 policy to not only design and develop advances to data in the enterprise, but also to extend that work to non-profits who are themselves tackling even bigger problems, and can use all the help they can get taming and understanding their own data.

I'll continue blogging personal stuff here, but probably not much about my work, since, as a part of a public company, I can't discuss internal stuff without working through the standard communication channels. Besides which, I'll be up to my ears in java code, and you probably don't want to hear all about that. :)

Honeybear in Hibernation

2010-03-20T12:37:00.002-04:00

For the past 3 years, I've had the pleasure of playing with a talented group of guys known as Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. In that time, I've toured the world, played shows with everyone from the New York Dolls to Barack Obama, and performed for huge crowds at festivals (and even on TV). I joined the band just before their first big break (opening for a Spoon tour), and had no idea what I was getting into at the time--every time it seemed like we'd just done the most ridiculous thing possible, something even crazier popped up. They're a fantastic group of human beings, and great musicians as well.

Tonight (3/20/10), at the Austin Music Awards, will be my last show as an official member of the band. Over the years, life, in all of its amazing fortune, has interceded to make it rough for a thirtysomething guy like me to do hard touring with a bunch of whipper snappers like them. They've been awesome about letting me play just the "big shows" (thus, my nickname), but some new commitments in my life are making it harder to do even that. They show no signs of slowing down, and while I hope to still show up for the occasional gig or session, it's time to take my bow. If you're in Austin, I hope you can come see me off.

Draggin' A Mean Bar

2010-03-15T12:51:00.002-04:00

In the fall, I took up a new instrument: the pedal steel guitar.

"The what?" you might ask? Actually, if you're lucky enough to live in the world's finest city (Austin, TX) or know classic country music (e.g. Merle Haggard), you're not asking that, because you already know. But for the rest of you poor souls, I'll explain it.

The pedal steel guitar is the king of instruments. It's a horizontal guitar, played with a slide, and makes use of various pedals & levers to change the pitch on individual strings. It's got an ethereal tone, and is unique among instruments in that its configuration allows chords and harmonies to "morph" continuously from one to the next without interruption.

It is also maddeningly hard to learn, because you've got several dimensions to think about: bar position and angle, 3 foot pedals and 4 knee levers (which can be used in various combinations), 10 strings (usually played with 3 or 4 finger picks), and a volume pedal. It's kind of like playing chess on a unicycle at first.

Why am I learning pedal steel guitar? Because it's my favorite instrument to listen to, and because I love a challenge. I took a couple lessons (from Neil Flanz and Bob Hoffnar) to get the basics down, but I'm mostly self-taught; I've put in nearly 150 hours of practice so far, and am now vaguely passable as a backing player (though definitely not a soloist yet). When I started in September, my goal was to be stage-ready by South By Southwest.

And lo: here we are! I've already done my first gig, as a matter of fact - last week with my friends in Honky Kong at my favorite, Club Deville. That one was just to get the butterflies out, and did its job.

But now, for the world's most famousest music festival, I offer, for your enjoyment, 2 shiny new gigs, with yours truly draggin' bar. The first is TODAY (Monday, 3/15) at the Mohawk at 8:15pm, backing up singer/songwriter Trey Brown. It's part of the ATX Emerge party.

(I hear a pretty good soul band is playing later, too, but they don't have a pedal steel player, so ... whatever. :)

The second one is with my own new project, Branch & Steel, which is so hip that we don't even have a myspace page. It's comprised of me on the steel, and amazing guitarist John Branch, who will instead be playing piano. We'll be playing original compositions, pretty chill stuff, as part of the SoCo Freedom Rock party, which will also feature FREE MARGARITAS.

So, if you've a mind to hear the mighty brought low, here's your chance. See me now, before I start refusing to play to crowds smaller than 10,000 again. By my prediction, that should be happening by June or so.[1]

[1] June of 2057.

The Examined Life: 2009

2010-01-02T19:30:00.004-05:00

2009 has been a well documented year for me[1]. All year, I've been tracking my time in 15 minute increments using Bubble Timer (as I said I would a year ago). Now, with a little SQL magic, I can look at my entire year in one picture:

Nifty, eh? Each data point is one week; each color is a different activity. I'm not saying what each color is, for my own privacy[2], but a couple of them are:

The blue on the bottom is "sleeping"
The top is "Other" (notice how it fills in the cracks to make most days pretty consistent)
Other stuff in the middle includes Work, School, Music, Dog Walking, Housework, Food, Exercise, Reading, Personal, Web Surfing, Entertainment and Hanging out. But not in that order.

It's fairly consistent over time, but things do change; for example, all spring and summer, I worked on my Masters Degree, and then it ended in August, after which time I moved on to spending (some of) that time learning Pedal Steel guitar:

(Blue (on the left) is time spent doing school work. Red (on the right) is time spent learning the new instrument.)

In addition to tracking my time by category, I also "tag" certain time, like time spent listening to music. When I looked at that, I saw a disturbing trend throughout the year:

What's up with that? Turns out that in the fall, I diverted a lot of my listening time into "listening while practicing" time (I often practice by playing along with music), which I didn't also tag as music listening time. When I add that back in, I get it moving to a nice steady state:

Of course, it's not just for tracking trends over time; I can also see patterns in how I spend my time during a single day. For example, here's a 24 hour plot of how I spend the majority of my time:

And my daily routines are evident (though still pretty flexible, as evidenced by the large spread):

Was all this effort worth it? Who cares, it's pretty. :)

Seriously, though, I do actually enjoy both the tracking (which keeps me mindful of how I spend my time) as well as the eventual analysis (which hopefully gets easier as time goes on).

What's up in 2010? A few things. First, in reading a book called Beautiful Data, I stumbled across this self-tracking web site:

It uses Twitter as a collection interface to let you track anything you want to (moods, hygiene, health, exercise, etc.). Been trying it out for a few days and I like what it does so far (it's got lots of visualizations built in - in fact, that's the focus of the research effort). I'll also continue using Livestrong (which I mentioned here, and recently got an Ajax-y revamp so it's easier to use). I'm also thinking about getting a Fit Bit, which automatically tracks all your movements and sleeping patterns using built-in accelerometers.

I also learned this year that I'm not the only person who's interested in tracking all of this stuff about my life. In fact, there's a burgeoning community of "Self Trackers", with blogs like The Quantified Self. So, while I am most certainly OCD about it, at least I'm not the only one.

[1] - Some might even say my year has been a little too well documented. And by "some" I mean "my wife". But I guess she should know, since I spent 34.8% of my waking time with her this year.

[2] - Or putting axes on the graph, so that nobody comes back and complains that I am, say, spending 300 hours a year playing video games. Not that I am.

Locavores

2009-12-05T11:43:00.004-05:00

Since reading Omnivore's Dilemma this fall, I've been more tuned in to the "local food" scene. I'm fortunate to live in a place where not only is that possible most of the year, but lots of other people are interested in it too.

Thus: Austin Eat Local Week. They've got a bevy of local joints participating, a local farms Bike Tour (that I'm actually missing right now, sadly) and several other events throughout the week.

JAM and I started off the week right with a basket from Farmhouse Delivery (sadly, without any bread from {name of amazing secret bread lady withheld})[1]. The produce was great:

We hastily converted much of it to calories in the form of dinner, including the giant mutant radishes:

It does not escape me that this bounty comes to us in freaking December. But as if to prove that, even here, we are not exempt from the seasons, we actually got freezing temperatures and a frost last night:

This morning, the dawg and I hit Boggy Creek Farm (about 6 minutes drive from our house) and collected some eggs, sweet potatoes, and other goodies. Boggy creek is beautiful, and especially nice to visit during a week when everyone has the local food chain on their minds.

Hope we can make it to several other Austin farms and restaurants this week to enjoy the bounty of locally grown food.

By the way - all the proceeds from Eat Local Week events go to support Urban Roots, a non-profit that my friend Mike runs. They take inner city kids and put them on farms, where they are immediately eaten by wild boars, or something. Seriously, they're a totally awesome cause, so check them out as well.

Now then. Anyone have any idea how I can get local Pop Tarts?

[1] - The bread from the amazing secret bread lady is so amazing that I can't tell you about because if anyone else finds out how awesome it is, we'll never be able to get any. But you can find her goods at Dai Due and East Side Showroom.

Happy Birthday, House

2009-10-23T10:37:00.001-04:00

It's the 1-year anniversary of moving into our new home at the Mueller redevelopment. It's been a wild year, and doesn't seem like that much time has passed. I love living here - the people are extraordinarily friendly, we love our house, and I spend time running the trails almost every day. Here are some pictures I took on my run this morning:

Just 29 more years until we pay it off! Hm.

More photos here.

Garbage Out

2009-09-24T13:58:00.002-04:00

As further evidence of my late onset OCD (see Bubble Timing), I've recently picked up a new obsession: tracking nutrition. (At this point, anyone who knows me is probably assuming this blog has been hijacked.)

It started with a general feeling of out-of-shapeness. The long hours of graduate school (plus working full time, touring, etc ...) had taken their toll on my health, and I was looking a bit, er, round in the middle. I do exercise (I run regularly) but it wasn't noticeable. For a tall skinny kid who used to down entire pies without a blip on the scale, my early-30s were a shock of actually being, you know, human.

That's when I picked up a book called The End Of Overeating:

Written by David Kessler (former FDA commissioner), it explains why we learn, over a lifetime, to compulsively eat larger amounts of fat, sugar and salt than we need (hint: it's partly our biology, and partly "the man"). Long and short of it is, while we are conditioned to "hyper eat" as he calls it, you can do something about it.

About the same time, I found an iPhone app (with an associated web site) from Livestrong.com (Austin biking champ Lance Armstrong's company) called the Daily Plate. The idea is simple: you enter what foods you eat, and it automatically tracks the nutrition info: calories, fat, protein, carbs, vitamins, etc. They have a huge database of commercial and generic foods, so almost anything you might eat is already in there (and it's wiki-like enough that you can edit or add your own foods, too). It shows running totals and compares it to your goal:

This thought--that you could actually quantify the amount of energy you're taking in, versus what you're expending--was totally revelatory. My database-addled brain said, "I know how to do this."

So I started counting calories. My first revelation--I was on tour at the time--was that I was regularly eating upwards of 3500 calories a day. (The suggested diet for adults is between 2000 and 2500.) I also started to realize that I could actually predict my cravings and moods based on what I'd eaten in the previous 24 hours; for example, if I go without eating all day until dinner time, I desperately want to eat something fried and covered with cheese ("fat on salt on sugar on fat", as Kessler calls it).

So I changed how I eat. It was rough at first[1], but I'm actually really enjoying it now--I monitor and record everything I eat, and shoot for 1500 - 2000 calories a day. Drinking turns out to be the strongest predictor of going over my calorie limits (duh!) but now that I know that, I can at least plan for it a little better. In the month that I've been doing it, I've lost almost 15 pounds:

Next up: getting a body bugg! (Or a sub-dermal implant, whichever is cheaper.)

[1] - At one point, a band mate threatened to take away the solitary cheese stick I was allowing myself as a snack, and I almost cried. (I felt better after listening to some Indigo Girls and reading the Nanny Diaries.)

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Master

2009-09-04T19:28:00.004-04:00

So, my 2-year long odyssey into the wilds of higher education has now come to an end. Behold!

You may now refer to me as "Master Varley", "Ian Varley, MSE", or just "Master" if you're tight on time. I graduated at the top of my class (or at least, I got a 4.0 average, which I don't think anybody else surpassed.)

My masters' thesis* was called "No Relation: The Mixed Blessings of Non-Relational Databases". Should you have a burning desire to ruin your day and a few hours to spare, you can read it here.

Next up: learning to play pedal steel guitar. Anybody got one I can borrow? I've been told it takes about 4 years of practice at 8 hours per day to really get the hang of it. No sweat.

* - Technically it was a "Masters Report", which I think in theory means it's supposed to be shorter. But mine was really long (115 pages) so I think it's OK to call it a thesis. :)

Call Me, If You Need A Friend

2009-04-06T23:35:00.001-04:00

Check me out! No, seriously, check me out:

But, you know, don't actually call me. Just send me an email.

Pop The Stack

2009-01-06T20:42:00.003-05:00

So how's 2009 treating you so far? If you're like me, it means you've got about two weeks of writing "2008", then crossing out the 8 and writing a 9.

What's new in my life? Not a whole lot; finished the fall semester in flying colors, and now I'm on to bigger and better things. At the moment, that means lots more studying, presently from a great book called the Algorithm Design Manual (full audio and video lectures from the author are here). Also been refreshing my C++ syntax trivia and playing with the Python Challenge (though doing both at once is a bit of a brain fry(1)). So much to learn, so little time.

Another recent obsession of mine is the web site Stack Overflow, a coding Q&A site / wiki. I just broke 1000 reputation points today (here's my page). This isn't quite as crazy as it sounds, since they give you 10 points for every up-vote you get (2).

The guys who created Stack Overflow are Joel Spolsky (whose writings I've been a big fan of for a long time) and Jeff Atwood (who I wasn't familiar with before). They host a weekly podcast that I've been really enjoying, and last week I submitted an audio question to the podcast that they included. More on that here.

The other major obsession recently is Bubble Timer. Did you know that I have slept 248 hours in the last month? Or 13 hours walking my dog? OK, so that's true, but I'm not quite so OCD that I really care about that level of detail (3). But the great thing about emergent task timing is that you start to see patterns in your time usage, and you can plan around them. Like, I know that if I spend 45 minutes a day on house cleaning, it'll stay in nice shape, and if I don't, it won't. There's no magic way around that, regardless of what I might want to believe. Over time, emergent timing lets you understand the realities of your life a little better, and then at that point, if you want to change something, you can do it consciously.

Anyway, guess I should get back to whatever it is that I do when I'm not blogging.

(1) - Which reminds me of the time I tried to learn regular expressions at the same time I was learning the Dvorak keyboard layout. I don't recommend that.

(2) - I like to call that "pinball scoring" - inflated scores to make you happier about what you're doing. Seems to work.

(3) - LIES.

Happy 2009

2009-01-02T14:41:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year! Here's to a great 2009.

2008-11-07T02:16:00.001-05:00

So, we did it. Now what? Obviously, some celebration. But, what's next as far as political priorities?

Obama seems to be on his game already - he's already got an impressive web site up called change.gov, soliciting opinions and input, explaining positions and giving transition news. Here's my contribution:

President-elect Obama:

First off, congratulations, and thank you for working tirelessly for this.

Here's my input as far as what I'd like to see you prioritize. Aside from the main things I know you'll obviously be working on diligently (the Iraq war, the economic crisis and expanded health care), I see three main priorities I'd love to have you tackle head-on:

1. Teacher pay. You talk about it in every rally, so make it happen. A small symbolic increase to start, with a plan to get teachers up to real world salaries within 4 years. It'll cost money, but if you pair it with more useful evaluations (to weed out poor teachers) and rewards for high performing teachers that inspire kids, it'll be easier to swallow.

2. Government transparency and citizen input via the internet. You're obviously already doing it, which rules, but please - recruit the best minds from the progressive technology community (guys like Bill Joy and Bruce Schneier) to help you figure out how to do it right, so that we can actually do things like vote and give meaningful (auditable, authenticated, secure) feedback on issues from big to small (using open software). And cast some sunlight on the congressional process (that you know so well) so citizens can help combat pork spending and have the budget better reflect our priorities. You KNOW that, given the chance, the tech community (bloggers on both sides of the partisan divide) will jump on that and vet bills way more efficiently and comprehensively than senators and congresspeople can (no offense - there's just way more folks with way more time on their hands). They just need the tools and the transparency.

3. Healing the divide. 40-something percent of the country is disappointed and maybe angry right now, and I know how they feel, because it's how I felt in 2000/2004. Ask them what is irking them and commit to compromises. Reach out right away. Go on Rush Limbaugh's show, talk to Hannity and that bunch, and ask them with an open mind: "What can I do to earn your respect?" It might be just a symbolic gesture (i.e. in some of those cases, their industry is built on stirring up hatred, and respecting you would be tantamount to giving up their livelihood). But I think it would take the wind out of a lot of haters' sails, and send a message to heart-felt conservatives that your rhetoric about bridge-building wasn't just talk. You've convinced 52 percent of us, but please, use some of the next two months to reach out to the other half. Ask how we can bridge the gap about abortion (all commit to a detailed program of reducing unwanted pregnancies), spending (commit to how you're going to cut pork and be very transparent about it all), and other hot-button issues. You'll never win 'em all over, but please listen to them. That is exactly what Bush did NOT do (and couldn't ever have done), and I know at least a few conservatives who would really look at you differently for that.

And, moreover, please continue to communicate. A lot. Write up detailed, wonky explanations of what you're doing, and why. And then have legions of smart writers and educators summarize things and make them clear enough for the rest of us to understand, too. We may still disagree or second-guess you, but we'll all be better off operating in a high-information environment. If you're doing things wrong, or for the wrong reasons, you seem like the kind of guy who will take our advice and change course.

Mr. Obama, we are psyched that you have been elected, but now we're counting on you to step up and do things that aren't just the will of corporations or powerful people, but will move us forward. You can do it.

So, my conservative friends and readers, on that note: what do YOU want now? To reduce wasteful government spending? To focus on ending abortion? To bring more fairness to the tax code? Lay 'em on me (or go tell the Obama administration yourself). When Bush entered office, he (and, to a lesser degree, the conservative half of America) basically said "F$@% you, liberals - you lost, and we're going to do whatever we want". I don't want to make that mistake this time.

Go Go Go, Obama

2008-11-04T17:38:00.006-05:00

I woke up at 4:30 this morning. Maybe it was the Pizza Hut I ate last night in a moment of weakness. Or, maybe ... this is a long shot ... it's the election.

I'm nervous and agitated - physically - about today's election. I've never felt this way about a presidential election in my life, even the Kerry boondoggle of '04 (which made me sad and slightly nauseated, but didn't wake me up at 4:30 in the morning).

I've heard people talk about Obama fans as "drinking the cool aid". I've followed sites like FactCheck.org that chronicle misrepresentations and lies from both sides in this election. Etc, etc. He's still a politician, and I know that.

But honestly - his candidacy actually gives me true hope about this country. That there's actually something indomitable and special about America. That a smart, scrappy guy who didn't come from money could inspire people and shatter the existing political machines to become leader of the free world. And that together, we can make the world better, by making good decisions that work for the greater good, and by believing in integrity and mercy and humility and progress.

Go get 'em, O.

ACL

2008-09-22T09:44:00.003-04:00

So, Austin City Limits festival is coming up this weekend. I'll be playing with Black Joe Lewis on Saturday at 4pm on the Austin Ventures stage. Come see us if you'll be at the festival! :)

Here's some other stuff I'm going to go see. Let's see if this works ...

BTW, we're also playing an aftershow on Friday night at the Parish, which should also be fun and might be more available to those of you not going to the festival itself.

Palin

2008-08-30T12:02:00.004-04:00

Here's a quick note from my friend Candice, regarding McCain's VP pick:

"If you all have been watching, McCain just picked Sarah Palin, govenor of Alaska, as his VP, one heartbeat from the presidency. During her acceptance speech, she ran off her short and thin resume:

1. Soccer Mom of Five
2. Head of the PTA
3. Member of the city council
4. Mayor of Wasilia

Ok. Let me pause there for a moment. I just got back from Alaska, living about an hour away from Wasilia, so I can paint you a picture of this place. Population is about 8000 people. There is one hospital. One movie theater. One radio station. And a Wal-mart. It's a decent town and god were we happy to get out of the woods and see anything remotely resembling a city, but it's hardly a microcosm for America. Let me pull back the lens a bit and look at Alaska as a whole, or the part I saw of it, which was definitely more rural than some places can be. There are more trees than people in Alaska. There is no law in this place. My purse was stolen and it took 2 hours before I got a phone call from the Talkeetna trooper, who then did nothing. I got sick there once and the ALL volunteer EMTs came to help me 3 hours after the call. Bear and moose attacks are a daily concern.

The closest towns to Wasilia, where Sarah Palin was mayor, are Anchorage and Talkeetna. FYI--Talkeetna's mayor is a cat!! His name is Stubb's. I petted him once.

5. Gov. of Alaska (for a mere 18 months--Stubb's the Cat has held his post longer!!)

This decision shows the worst decision making I have ever seen! A 72 year old man who has had 4 bouts with skin cancer is saying that Sarah Palin is ready to be president on day one???

Put a bow on that woman. Christmas just came early for the Democrats!"

Indeed. I know that McCain is probably trying to court the Hillary Clinton supporters who have vowed never to vote for Obama, and I'm sure he'll get some of them. But I wonder if he'll simultaneously turn off an equal (or bigger) chunk of good old boys who'll stay home before they vote for a woman VP. Who knows.

OK, back to putting my head in the sand ... ;)

So, how do you really feel about your iPhone?

2008-07-29T11:39:00.002-04:00

Over a year ago, I posted my reaction to the newly announced iPhone. I was incorrect in a couple of the details (GPS and pricing) at the time, as well as about when my Sprint contract was up (it was actually a year longer than I thought). So, sadly, I skipped version 1.

But no more. Version 2 is out, and Uberjam and I were first in line to get one (well, OK, 39th in line, but close enough). Behold:

It really is awesome - I feel like I'm living in the future. :) The attention to detail in this UI goes beyond anything I've ever seen. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn great. Here are the ups and downs:

Ups:

I've found myself listening to a TON more music than I was before, simply because I don't have to worry about listening for the phone. When you're listening to music and you get a call, the music automatically fades out and pauses so you can answer the call. Then, when you're done, it automatically un-pauses and fades back up. That's a small thing, but it makes me more likely to be listening to music all day long, b/c it really doesn't get in the way.
The headphones have a mic (so you can talk on the phone without taking them out) and a little squeeze control to pause your music or skip to the next track. That's really nice when you're running or something, no fumbling with the controls.
There are a ton of apps in the app store, many free; and you can also basically elevate iPhone web apps to nearly full app status by putting an icon on the home screen, which means that many more are already available (google cal, bloglines, remember the milk, etc.)
Syncs to google contacts, which is huge for me. I wrote an export from my self-created contacts database (with thousands of listings - basically, everybody I've ever met in my life) into Google, and from there it just syncs to the iPhone when you dock it.
GPS will (theoretically) enable very cool new friend locating & sharing apps. I look forward to trying this at ACL, SXSW, etc. Time will tell which of the location apps (Loopt, Whirl, etc.) will be the platform of choice.

Downs:

BATTERY. The battery does not last long enough on this thing, even from day one. I'm having to recharge at least once in the middle of every day. That's not acceptable - at a minimum, it needs to be able to go full tilt for a whole day and recharge at night. Fail on that, Apple.
No 3rd party push notifications, YET - though that's supposed to be coming in the fall with the next version of the SDK. That means that for now, it can't give me push notifications of new emails - but honestly, that's OK. I don't really need to be pinged by every email.
No ability (that I've found) to use different outgoing aliases for emails.
A few apps that aren't there that I wish were: Google cal sync to iphone cal, native Flickr uploader, remote terminal / ssh app. But I'm sure they'll come soon, with many I haven't even thought of yet.
Sometimes the GPS just doesn't seem to work, even when I'm outside on a clear day. What's up with that? At the very least, I'd like it to give a status screen with more info, besides just waiting with no indication of whether it's getting a signal, etc.

On balance, definitely psyched about it.

And now I promise not to talk about my iPhone anymore.

Across The Pond

2008-06-07T20:04:00.002-04:00

So, Uberjam and I recently returned from a quick vacation overseas, to visit our good friends Mo & James in London. It was a fantastic time. Here are a few highlights:

Drinking shandies on the pebble beach in Brighton:

Seeing "Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Globe theater:

Traipsing around Paris:

Having a few pints at London's coolest ancient-underground-labyrnth-cum-trendy-new-bar, Shunt:

Riding in the London critical mass (here's our route, as well as a photoset by a Londoner with several shots of us in it):

Plus many other adventures with some of the most excellent folks on earth. Lots (loads) more photos here on Flickr. (JAM's got some too on her Flickr page.)

Good times! Can't wait to travel again, it is good for the soul. (If, perhaps, a little rough on the wallet, with the exchange rate being rubbish at the moment).

I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords

2008-05-13T22:54:00.003-04:00

So: my semester is done. I think it came out well, though we'll wait for the grades to say for sure. Since the end of the semester, I have:

Gotten all 120 stars in Super Mario Galaxy (plus another 10 as Luigi)
Recorded a full length album with Black Joe Lewis
Taken pictures of our new house, which is now framed
Caught up on all my emails and feeds, and all the other work I'd been shirking during crunch time
Made a couple other changes (???)

Now, the wife and I are preparing for a vacation in sunny old London, starting late next week. Lo and behold, Google Maps has taken it up another couple notches since last I looked, and is now totally usable as a one-stop vacation planner:

You can create your own maps with placemarks, shapes & notes, and collaborate on them with other people
You can turn on a Wikipedia layer that shows geo-located wikipedia links for anything on the map area
Not to mention all the other layers that you can turn on now in Google Maps, for restaurants, coffee shops, etc.

Here's the neighborhood we're starting in. Any suggestions?

View Larger Map

Food vs. nutrition: Michael Pollan @ Google

2008-05-06T10:25:00.002-04:00

This is a fantastic video lecture by Michael Pollan (who wrote the Omnivore's Dilemma).

The Home Stretch

2008-04-28T21:34:00.002-04:00

I've got about 10 days of productive work left before the end of the semester, so I'm battening down hard at the moment. In celebration thereof, here are a few procrastinatory web goodies:

TV = 2000 Wikipedias a year: Looking at how much time people spend watching TV in units of "wikipedias" - that is, the estimate of how much human effort has gone into wikipedia (around 100 million hours). How many wikipedias are spent watching TV each year? 2000.

A good quote from an article on SuperMemo:

Given the chance to observe our behaviors, computers can run simulations, modeling different versions of our path through the world. By tuning these models for top performance, computers will give us rules to live by. They will be able to tell us when to wake, sleep, learn, and exercise; they will cue us to remember what we've read, help us track whom we've met, and remind us of our goals. Computers, in Wozniak's scheme, will increase our intellectual capacity and enhance our rational self-control.

I welcome our new robot overlords.

Paul Graham considers whether benevolence might be the wellspring of corporate profit:

"Don't be evil" may be the most valuable thing Paul Buchheit made for Google, because it may turn out to be an elixir of corporate youth. I'm sure they find it constraining, but think how valuable it will be if it saves them from lapsing into the fatal laziness that afflicted Microsoft and IBM.

Another good quote: "truth = statelessness":

Being good is a particularly useful strategy for making decisions in complex situations because it's stateless. It's like telling the truth. The trouble with lying is that you have to remember everything you've said in the past to make sure you don't contradict yourself. If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything, and that's a really useful property in domains where things happen fast.

Here's a cool artwork / game where you can see the code that's running the game and interact with it while the game is running: The Naked Game (Don't worry, SFW).

Ok, back to ~~trying to get my last 9 stars in Mario Galaxy~~ working on my Data Mining and Software Validation projects.

ps - Here are some pictures of the newly poured foundation of our house: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Goings On

2008-04-13T17:25:00.002-04:00

Been quiet on this blog for a couple months, eh? Well, as they say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. :) Not that I have anything particularly un-nice to say, I've just been busy ...

What's new? Last weekend, Jill and I went to the wedding of our good friends of many years, Emily & Matt. We went to Balcones Springs, which was amazingly beautiful

More photos here. They allow dogs, which Mr. Emmet was very excited about:

I'm now entering the last month of classes (just finished my last mid-term, and now I have two projects left to go), so don't expect to hear much out of me until mid-May. Not that you did anyway. :)

Yes We Can

2008-02-03T19:45:00.001-05:00

So, I've been reading Obama's book, and I have to say: I will be pretty excited when he is elected president. He's a smart, inspiring person who tends to bring people together, which is exactly what we need. This video captures the feeling pretty well:

Can you imagine such an honest, heart-felt video starring a speech by Senator Clinton? I can't.

Also, the white house is not a time share. :)

50K: Some Passings

2007-12-25T12:53:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays, all.

So, I got my 50,000th saved email this week. It was from my friend Paul, and the subject was:

Singer Dan Fogelberg Dies of Cancer

That's too bad, I have always liked Dan's music. "Longer", in particular, is one of my favorites. I know, it's sappy. So sue me.

And a couple other notable entertainer passings in the past couple weeks. Closest to my heart is my favorite piano player, Mr. Oscar Peterson. He was, almost without argument, the most technically proficient pianist of our time, maybe even of all time. I loved his music so much growing up - pretty much every year, that's what I wanted for Christmas, one of his albums. It taught me both that jazz could be exciting and highly structured, and that I could never actually be an amazing technical pianist (a valuable lesson to learn BEFORE practicing a zillion hours a day for your entire young adult life). Don't believe me? Watch this.

This dude was way over the top. RIP, Oscar.

And of course, the third notable one is Ike Turner. This happened (or at least, we found out about it) while we were in the studio recording Gunpowder with Black Joe Lewis. Seemed fitting. My favorite part of the whole thing, though, is the headline from some inspired journalist: "Ike Turner beats Tina to death."