The Blog with No Name

My current web hosting company is shutting down, so I’m in the process of moving to a new host. This will probably involve some downtime and inaccessibility especially as my domains are rerouted and I transfer the databases. Seeing as I’m not posting too much these days, there will probably not be very much disruption of normal steevak.com activity. I hope to have a new home by early next week.

Seattle is a pretty cool town. I love living here, but stupid crap like this makes me a bit itchier to get out of the city limits. Here’s the gist:

All single-family homes in Seattle must sign up for table-scrap recycling in 2009, the City Council decided Monday.

While residents will have to pay for the service, the city will not check whether they are actually dumping food in the new separate bin.

That’s right. Seattle’s city council in all its foresight and wisdom deemed it necessary to force people to pay for food-scrap recycling while not enforcing the law. We’re talking about food-scraps. Last time I checked food-scraps are biodegradable and quite quickly turn into what is essentially dirt, you know, the stuff of which Mother Earth is made. So how are we going to “recycle” table-scraps? One giant community compost pile?

And here’s another rich part:

Recycling food waste will be voluntary for apartments, as well as for businesses, which produce twice as much food waste as residents.

Conlin said he hopes garbage-collection rates can be adjusted to absorb some of the additional cost homeowners will have to pay for food recycling.

So, the real producers of food waste, apartments and businesses, can opt out of this regulatory nitpicking. I’m glad for them, but if food waste was really a problem wouldn’t be smart to try to stop the major source of the problem? This is like plugging a small hole in the dam while ignoring the big gushing hole next to it. Very very smart.

Luckily, I don’t plan on being a homeowner any time soon, and I am seriously considering moving out of the city limits. I’d move out of the county limits if it wasn’t obnoxious to do so.

(via Soundpolitics)

“You always talk about the ending.” He gave a serious look and then reached for the pitcher. The ice cubes chimed softly as he poured another glass.
“Yes, well, the end is what matters the most. It’s where the punchline is. It’s where all the emotion is finally wrapped up for better or for worse. The ending tells you whether it was worthwhile and whether it was meaningful.”
“And what about the whole middle part. The journey to the end. Are you saying that’s pointless?”
“No, not at all. The middle is the necessary steps to get to the ending, where the true meaning lies. The middle, the journey can’t be pointless if it’s the necessary steps to get you to the final point. The point that really matters.”
“So are you saying the end justifies the means?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. I don’t like that idea. I’m skeptical of it.”
They were quiet for a while both lost in thought.
“Yes, I’m skeptical of it. I wouldn’t say the end justifies the means.”
“What about the beginning? The beginning can have a lot of meaning and emotional content too. It’s the fateful first step that starts it all. Without a beginning you can’t have an end.”
“True, but that’s a boring observation to make. It’s like saying you can’t exhale unless you inhale.”
“Fine, but it’s still true.”
“So perhaps I wouldn’t say the end justifies the means, but I may say that the end justifies the beginning.”
“Interesting. Are you sure about that?”
“No, I’m not sure at all. Maybe I just like endings.”
“Fair enough.”
Both sat quietly again watching the daylight fade and felt the heat dissipate from the air.

I thought Apple, not Apollo, brought us the iPhone, but I was clearly wrong. Fringe blog has the true — and surprisingly entertaining! — story.

Happy Fourth of July!

As we Americans celebrate our country’s independence and history, it’s good to keep certain things in mind. Douglas Wilson at his blog has some wise words about American exceptionalism:

Advocates of the new global neo-conservatism have been pressing heavily on what they call American exceptionalism. There is a trick here, so I want everyone to follow closely. I agree that America’s founders were exceptional men, and they established our form of government on an exceptional document, unlike anything in the history of the world up to that point. So I do believe in a form of American exceptionalism.

But what was exceptional about it? Here is the trick. They knew that Americans were not in the slightest bit exceptional. That’s exceptional. A patriotic pride in your nation being the apex of whatever it is we are doing on this planet — a belief that “we” (whoever “we” might be) are somehow unique — is as ordinary as brown dirt.

Calling yourself exceptional isn’t. Recognizing that we are mortal men just like other mortal men, and that we are vulnerable to all the same temptations, is rare. Boasting in American achievements barely manages to clear that Ozymandian low bar — it is the kind of ordinary hubris nailed in a poem that was written before we defeated the Nazis, landed on the moon, built the space shuttle, and started selling iPhones that could serve as navigation systems for the space shuttle — and when we invite mighty observers to look on our works and despair, we are acting like pretty much everybody else in the history of the world.

Humbling words, especially for somebody like me. America may have accomplished many great things in this world, but it’s not because we are exceptional. And we are not destined to greater things just because we are Americans. Our treacherous path at the top of the world is just as dangerous as it has been for all nations who’ve risen and fallen in centuries past.

The iPhone is a stunning device. It’s astonishing to me that not only does the iPhone live up to the majority of the hype but also that Apple got it so right on the very first try. Handset manufacturers everywhere better be very very embarrassed. Some have been making phones for 20 years, and their phones still lag far behind Apple’s Jesusphone.

The iPhone has many virtues the most important is it’s user interface. The interface! The pure slickness of the interface is superb and smothered in smooth GUI butter. The brilliant, colorful, clear display makes the whole phone look like one big candy bar of sweet silicon-based goodness. It’s a marvel to see. There are other fine features too such as the multi-touch and the intuitive yet surprising implementations in many of the apps. For example, you just need to play with the maps application. It’s slicker than anything else I’ve seen.

Sure, there are some flaws and shortcomings on the iPhone, but I think most of them can be fixed with minor and inexpensive hardware additions or software updates:

• I’m just not convinced that the touchscreen virtual keyboard is going to hack it for power users. There’s not enough tactile feedback to give the user the confidence to whiz through a text message. Though there are audio cues when a keypress is logged and Apple smartly made it so the keystroke registers when the finger is lifted (rather than pressed), it’s still an inferior functional experience than a normal button-based keypad. I do have faith that Apple can improve this, but it may take a lot.
• Limits on communication flexibility. No MMS, no multi-recipient SMS, and no IM (what?!). My guess is all of these will be resolved by Christmas.
• Weak external speakers. When it rings, it just doesn’t sound as clear and nice as it should. It was easy to get the speakers to distort the sound.
• Weak camera. “So, what complements an awesome photo viewer and top-notch screen? Oh, I know, a sub-par camera! Stick one of those suckers on there.” It seems that was the design philosophy at that stage of iPhone development.
• Proprietary speaker jack. The user is forced to use official earphones rather than any hundreds of other normal headphones. This is a mistake (though a very profitable mistake) that many other handset manufacturers are finally figuring out. It’s lame to see Apple, who is so user focused, start down the wrong path right out of the gates.
• Closed system that only allows approved 3rd party apps and web-based apps. This is fine just as long as Apple has the coolest stuff out there. But there are a lot of functional apps that will never make it to the iPhone because Apple chose to lock everything down. I believe Apple will lose this fight and will eventually switch to a more open development environment. This will probably occur either when a very competitive phone comes out that’s more open or the consumer mind-set finally sees the mobile phone as a computer in his or her pocket. I think we’ll see the former scenario first, but the second is inevitable and ultimately will be a more powerful force in the market.

All of this being said, would I buy an iPhone if it could be reliably unlocked? Almost definitely. The thing is amazing and will hopefully revolutionize how mobile phones are made.

Oh, and here’s some irony for you. UGH.