Harry Potter

So I finally laid Harry Potter to rest tonight, and what an experience it's been. Jo Rowling has managed to climb on top of the shoulders of Gilgamesh, Frodo, Luke, and Indiana- and to get millions of children excited about reading thousands
of pages worth of books in the process.

One interesting thing to note: while digitized photographs of each and every page of the book were leaked online prior to its publication, many of the "spoilers" people were throwing around turned out not to be true. In the end, the only way to know what really happened was to have read the whole book (scanned version or real version).

Got game?

http://view.break.com/336209 - Watch more free videos

More cool stuff from TED

Check this out. (Thanks, Kevin.)

"Children of Men"

Overall, I thought this movie failed to live up to the hype, but it does have some of the best slow-speed chases I've ever seen. (You'll know what I mean if you've seen it.)

A gift to all who give corporate gifts

An intriguing new blog...

Washlet

The Washlet.

"...I never thought my toilet could be an oasis of comfort and happiness..."

Hillary Clinton

A few years ago, I don't think I would have imagined that she would be my candidate. But she is. (In fairness, I also really like Joe Biden.)

As one of several exhibits, I point to her response to a question during tonight's CNN/YouTube debate, where she was asked how seriously she thought Arab and Muslim leaders would take a woman president.

"It would be quite appropriate to have a woman president deal with the Arab and Muslim countries on behalf of the United States of America."

Every inch of the notoriety she has achieved I believe she has fought for and earned, and much of the mud surrounding her candidacy is probably due to old-fashioned ignorance.

November 2008 is a lifetime away, but right now, President Hillary Clinton would be a pretty damn good thing for all of us.

Bank Street Writer!

Hahaha.

Been a while...

Internet crashed

Great collection of 787 information

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/boeing/787/787primer.asp

A few of the less publicized iPhone features

myPhone

I didn't think I was going to get an iPhone- certainly not within a day of its release. But I guess that goes to show how strong the power of self-deception can be.

As I followed, in near real-time, the excitement of the opening day lines, and then watched with amazement as nearly all of the initial reviews from the first users came in and were essentially confirmations that, yes, the iPhone pretty much delivered on the hype, I simply could not hold out any longer.

There are a million reasons not to get an iPhone. But really- REALLY- there are only 599 or so (plus tax and service plan). That's a lot of money, but in the end, it was worth it for me to buy a first-hand ticket to what is no doubt the tech party of the century so far.

Here are my initial thoughts:

• I love it.
• The device is physically gorgeous and feels great.
• The screen is absolutely stunning to look at.
• The touch interface is extremely intuitive- and the one-button "home" metaphor is awesome.
• My biggest problem: I'm afraid to use the thing.  I get pretty anal about my stuff, and this is one of the most expensive and theoretically delicate things I own.  For a phone to be useful, you've got to be able to just use it and not worry about treating it like a vial of plutonium, but so far, I have not been able to get past the over-protective stage.
• Bug: I have a number of calendars set up in iCal, but the iPhone only supports one.  No big deal- you can actually have multiple iCal calendars sync down to the iPhone's single calendar, and then you designate a single iCal calendar as the calendar where new iPhone events appear.  However, new iPhone events were not appearing in the proper iPhone calendar when I was syncing.  I've been futzing with this for two days, and I think I've got it working, but there's definitely something weird going on here.
• Bug: After about a day of hard-core use, I plugged the iPhone into my cradle at about 8PM last night to let it recharge.  At 8AM this morning (twelve hours later), the iPhone still had not registered a full charge.  The battery looked full, but the icon didn't read "charged" while it was plugged in; it still indicated "charging".  The computer did not go to sleep over night, so I'm not sure what happened- but I hope I can get the thing to register as "fully charged" tonight when I try again using the wall adapter.
• The keyboard is not as difficult as I thought it would be- the real trick is to realize that the bottom of your finger- the part that actually touches the screen- is lower down your finger (away from the tip) than you might think.  It's a little counter-intuitive, but when you're touching something that has a 3D shape, it's easy to figure out where the bottom of your finger is- not as easy when you're just touching glass.
• I hope Apple has some kind of upgrade policy in place when they release new versions of the iPhone.  This would make sense for three reasons: 1) it would dampen the wave of frustration that the multitudes of people who have bought the first model will inevitably feel; 2) it will further enhance Apple's "green quotient" if they allow you to trade in your old model and have it recycled; 3) it would make more sense to offer upgrades for the iPhone compared to other Apple products, since it's easy to justify owning multiple iPods per person, but really, a person only needs one iPhone at a time, and allowing for a discounted purchase would encourage people to trade up as opposed to safeguarding their original purchase.
• I wish the Mail app included full support for Gmail (threads, etc.)- and not just POP support.