Month: October 2007

I don’t normally get to pass on local news!

From ABC15.com => Scottsdale woman claims cyanide cloud in Sedona

A Scottsdale woman is behind bars for making a bizarre claim up in Sedona.

Christine Ann Long told people at two gas stations and two hotels that a giant cloud of cyanide was coming up from Phoenix.

…

The woman apparently told officials she had received her information about the cloud from a radio transmission using her soda can.

You can bet it must have been a Coca-Cola can rather than Dr. Pepper.

Technorati Tags: Arizona, Blog, Loonies, News

With all the bombastic rhetoric about militant “new” atheism that’s being shoveled around like so much fresh fertilizer, I found this (somewhat old) blog post to be about the most succinct answer to those claims I’ve read, and more than worthy of being spread as far and wide as possible.

Cheers to the The Secular Backlash for this…

Balancing precariously back on the point again, I might add that I was inspired in my choice of theme by Tobias Jones, whose piece in the Guardian a while back can be read here. He writes that us secular types are a new form of fundamentalist, and that what we want is the “eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth”.

He’s right about our goals, of course. What he doesn’t get is that, uniquely in the history of humanity’s grand metaphysical projects, we plan to do this by consent. Our strategy is partly to persuade one believer after another, but much more importantly to speak to the waverers, and to catch the young before the faithful can indoctrinate them. We understand that it will be necessary to wait for the recalcitrant remnants to pass away in the fullness of time. As long as we leave the Earth with less true believers that we found it with, we will be content to hand the torch on to the next generation, and the next after that, until religion is as historical an idea as human sacrifice or the divine right of kings.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Atheism

It’s a good thing that (to my knowledge) no sitcom writing teams live and work in Arizona, because if they did, AZ 511 would be airing right after America’s Most Asinine Idol – or whatever that puss-bucket of a show is called.

For those not in the know, AZ 511 is Arizona’s state-of-the-art information system about roadways and such. There’s a website, that’s actually useful, and then there’s the automatic phone response system that can keep you up-to-date on the latest roadway conditions.

Everybody knows how frustrating those automated phone attendants are, but I don’t find them all that difficult, but I met my match with AZ 511 today.

When the system first came out, Irene tried calling them once while I was driving and the results were hilarious – for me, that is. She found it incredibly frustrating. The system is designed to work on voice response, and despite the fact that Irene’s English is excellent for a non-English speaking immigrant, she does have a bit of an accent. She could not navigate the voice response system without the system misunderstanding and putting her on the wrong track. At the time we decided that it was technology whose time had not yet come.

About 2 weeks ago, someone was bragging to me how wonderful the system was. This person is easily impressed, so I challenged them on their opinion, and after just a few moments of discussion they admitted that the system was only useful if you used the touch tone system.

Today, many months after our first and only experiences with AZ 511, I was the passenger, and we were concerned about what appeared to be an accident on the I-17 that might delay our return home.

I dialed in. It went like this

“Touch tone mode. For roads, press 1, for transit press 2, for airports press 3, for tourism press 4, for quick reports press 5. You can leave a comment at any time by pressing 8. Press * at any time to return to speech mode.”

I press “1”

It says, “OK, enter roadway #”

I think… umm, I have an alphanumeric road number (I-17), well, I’ll try 17.

It says, “One Seven, I’m sorry, that’s not a valid road selection.”

I try 4-1-7 (4 being the numeric key that hosts “i” on the keypad“)

It says, ”Four One Seven, I’m sorry, that’s not a valid road selection.“

Pissed off already, I hit ”8“ to leave a comment.

It says, ”Eight, I’m sorry, that’s not a valid road selection.“

Even more irritated, I try something like 3-5-6-3-5

It says, ”Three Five Six Three Five, I’m sorry, that’s not a valid road selection.“

I hit 6-0

and it starts to ramble on about highway 60, and it won’t stop. On and on it drones, ending with a weather report that I don’t want to hear, but at least when it is done, it returns me to the menu. I choose ”8“ to leave a comment.

After a couple ”please-wait-while-I-transfer-you-to-leave-a-comments it tells me that’s not available and I hang up in anger.

That should have been enough for me, but it wasn’t. I called back to try the voice response system.

It goes something like this:

“Please say the word you want at any time. The menu choices are ROADS, TRANSIT, AIRPORTS, TOURISM, QUICK REPORTS and COMMENTS.”

“Roads”

“Say the name of the road you want. For a list, say LIST”

“LIST”

“Here is a list of roads. BLACK CANYON HIGHWAY” (For non-AZ folk, Black Canyon Highway is I-17).

I say, “Black canyon highway”, it says, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.”

I say, “Black Canyon highway”

It starts reading me the same report on highway 60.

“Stop! Menu! Exit! Roads!” But it won’t stop that damn report, so I hang up – again.

Once more. This time I’m ready. At the first menu I say, “roads”…

…and it says, “OK, Tourism. Do you want information from the Arizona Department of Tourism or the Grand Canyon National Monument?”

“Menu”

And it returns me to the main menu. I say “Roads”, it says “OK, Tourism”

and round and round we go. My first idea was, the woman recording the message has a bit of down-in-the-swamp states accent, so I try a southern drawl. No luck. I try BBC standard english. I try talking like a pirate. I try slow, fast, loud, soft, Russian, Australian, Bostonian. All I get is “Tourism” or “Airports.” No matter how you slice it, nobody could misunderstand the word “roads” as tourism or airports. Was this system even tested?!

Finally, finally I get the right response by using a hybrid combination Alabama drawl with just a hint of Scottish Highland lilt.

I am overjoyed! Can you imagine my feeling of triumph?! Can you guess how long it lasted? Exactly 15 seconds – because then I had to say, “Black Canyon Highway.”

To which the satanic mechanical monster from the seventh ring of hell at the other end said, “OK, Grand Canyon”.

“Menu” “Stop”

“I think you said ‘end call’ is that right?”

“No”

“Returning to main menu”

“Roads”

“OK, tourism”

“No”

“I think you just said ‘Grand Canyon’, is that right?”

“No”

“OK, transferring your call to the Grand Canyon.” And the call started to ring through.

I hung up, tried once more and got transferred to the Arizona Tourism Board, but finally, I got my road condition report. Of course, we were no longer driving by this time and didn’t need the report anymore.

Clearly a folly with taxpayers’ money.

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While I was writing this up, I called the 511 number a few times from my home phone to get the wording “just right” on some of the inane voice prompts and, from my home phone, it worked almost, but not quite flawlessly. Now, they do say that you should try to minimize background noise, but I ask you: Under what conditions is someone most likely to be calling a road condition information line?

Answer: On a cellphone, in a car, on the road. If the system doesn’t work reliably under those conditions, it’s complete waste of money and a total failure.

Technorati Tags: Arizona, Blog, Comedy, Technology

Apparently, today is “Blog Action Day”, where bloggers are supposed to write about “green” issues.

Never one to buck a vapid meme, I’ve decided to write about Shaun The Sheep.

I’m really pleased to see a program, such as Shaun The Sheep, set on a smallholding farm. It’s been too long on our TV screens since farming was seen as a glamorous or positive profession. Even if it is only a plasticine farm.

Technorati Tags: Blog

I’m sure these would run afoul of some country’s “truth in advertising” laws – but not here.

Link from Eatnineghost.com

Technorati Tags: Blog, Japan, Japanese, Video

James wakes up yesterday morning, stumbles sleepily into the living room, plops down on the floor and what does he say?

“Good morning, daddy”? No, he says, “I want a mango smoothie.”

Luxury!

When I was a lad, we counted ourselves lucky if we got a lump of old coal ground up in a glass of dirty water!

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids

I’ve had iPhoto for years and, time and time again, I’ve been sorely tempted to create an iPhoto book.

In fact, I’ve started to create several – none of which I’ve been ultimately happy with and so never had them published.

They’re so beguiling, aren’t they? I’ve seen them in the Apple store and they look marvelous. You try the “make book” tool in iPhoto and almost instantly, it’s all done for you, isn’t it?

Therein lies the problem. Those books in the Apple store aren’t really done by mere mortals, are they? Those seemingly family photos are taken by professional photographers, using professional models under controlled settings and then the photos are processed and color-corrected on pro equipment, prior to being assembled in iPhoto by some professional designer.

They look great, but do they look like what the unwashed masses would get?

In the past, I’ve tried using the automatic tools to create a book out of a photo album. Initially, it looks great, but then I start to see the problems. This page chose a 6-picture layout, but only 5 pictures are of the same theme. Or, there are six pictures on the same theme but one is on the preceding page.

No problem, right? You can edit what was automatically created. That rapidly becomes more trouble than it is worth. Change this page layout here, move these photos there, add pages, delete pages. The alternating page colors get screwed up. You end up pushing or pulling an increasing number of photos to new pages as each change gets made. By the end, I’m completely dissatisfied with the result.

Finally, last week, I decided that it was now or never and I started a new book project and I was determined to let nothing stop me.

I decided to go with a theme, and took at the photos from this year’s trip to Taiwan and then pick out the ones that I thought were best. “best” being a subjective term. In this case, my idea was to document the events of the trip from a family perspective. (That may sound obvious, but in the past I’ve tended to favor my best photos from a photographic standpoint.)

I made no attempt to limit the number of pictures. The book would be as big as the book needed to be to tell the story.

I manually sorted and grouped them within the album and then I created a book without autoflowing the photos. I looked at each group, and where I was in the book, I chose the page layouts based on the number of photos in the group. I moved them, I tweaked them, I spent hours over the course of several days. Finally it was done.

Then came the worse part: waiting.

Yesterday it arrived.

I can’t show you what it looks like in a blog post, but it is pretty impressive. The pictures are not quite as glossy as I was thinking, which alters their appearance a bit, and my color-correcting wasn’t always right. But overall it’s really impressive.

My biggest complaint is that it’s too small. I ended up with just shy of 200 photos in the book. That’s about the size of one standard photo album, which would measure over an inch thick and over 12“ tall and 6” wide.

The size of the iPhoto book is spectacularly unimpressive, at 8“X11” and just 20 (physical) pages, it’s only just over 1/8“ thick. It’s about the size of a comic book.

It’s illogical, but it is hard to reconcile that size book with the price. It helped when I took Costco standard printing rates for photos and priced out a 200 photo run of various sizes. The iPhoto is actually competitive, on a cost per photo basis.

Still, I think I need to try to make a bigger book next time.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, MacBook, OSX, Photos, iLife, iPhoto

Speaking of science, here’s the cool kind… or, perhaps you could say the “hot” kind.

Clemson University is working on producing more efficient thermoelectric materials. Thermoelectric materials are used to make thermoelectric generators – a solid-state technology that converts heat to energy.

Any process, such as automobile engines, that produces waste heat can be harnessed to generate additional power.

“Even at the current efficiencies of thermoelectric devices, 7 to 8 percent, more than 1.5 billion gallons of diesel could be saved each year in the U.S. if thermoelectric generators were used on the exhaust of heavy trucks. That translates into billions of dollars saved,”

From: Scientific Blogging => Untapped Energy Source: Waste Heat From Engines

They should setup shop here in Arizona. We’ve got plenty of waste heat.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Science, Technology

Michelle has the week off from school. We’d originally kicked around the idea of going to Disneyland.

It was too expensive, so that became, “What a great week to work on the second half of the kitchen cabinet renovation.

After the car accident, that deteriorated into, “Maybe we could finish the secondary bathroom renovation.”

After termite infestation that became, “Maybe we could just get water line hooked up for the refrigerator.”

After the dishwasher died, that became, We’re just sitting around all week doing nothing.”

Still, I want to try to do some ”fun“ things with Michelle. Today was out because the termite people were coming, and she had a dentist’s appointment. The termite people miss-scheduled the date and the dentist cancelled, leaving us flat-footed, with half the day gone, and nothing planned.

We decided to take the kids down to the Arizona Science Center. I’ve been there before. it was brand new at the time and wasn’t too impressed as it seemed incomplete and had the most mind-numbingly dull exhibits, but I decided to give it another try.

I’m not really sure what to expect from a ”science center“, as I’ve only ever been to a handful of them, the most notable being the Singapore Science Centre.

The Singapore Science Centre was cool. There’s lots of fun and informative exhibits, although, as I recall, it was somewhat heavily loaded towards technology. It was great and I’d love to take the kids to a place like that again.

The Arizona Science Center is… I hate to say it, but, the Arizona Science Center is rubbish. It has loads of so-called science stations, which are really incredibly dull. Most of them seem to be supplied by local businesses. I’ve got no problem with sponsorships, but surely they can come up with some interesting exhibits.

What’s with the gallery that’s entirely comprised of explaining how a house works? Yes, I suppose making a light switch work is science, but that was the most exciting exhibit in that gallery. What’s the science lessons behind learning how to install hot and cold water pipes?

You could probably spend hours of tedium in the largest part of the center, the section on life sciences. There are completely dull displays on various aspects of the human body. Most of which are as engaging as reading a textbook on the subject, except that you get to move from chapter to chapter by changing seats, and occasionally pushing a button to hear some narration, watch a video or see a light turn on.

Earth sciences were marginally better. There was a bit of amusement to be had playing with the various exhibits that erode sand via wind, water and vibration, but for every mildly fun one, there’s another like the ”crank a wheel to make a row of lights turn on and as they pass points, a little block of text pops up to tell you about the water table.“ Ho Ho Hum!

Then there was what I believe to be a temporary exhibit on strange matter. The ferro-magnetic liquids were fun, but the display was so dirty you could barely see it. Many of the exhibits were on material stress. I suppose that might induce certain types of engineers to get a hard on, but as an interesting display for kids (or most anyone else) it was repetitive and static. Not surprisingly, the one really dynamic display, attempting to put a bowling ball through tempered glass, was the most popular.

A more interesting lesson might have been in explaining some of the mechanical processed used by the crank mechanism to raise the bowling ball into strike position, but there was nothing on that.

Where are the displays on light, sound, astronomy and physics? It’s as if they missed everything important and jumped right the whatever cheap junk they could get sponsored by local companies. Despite their colossal, expensive white albatross of a modern building, they whole place seems like it was done on the cheap.

The whole fiasco really saddens me.

I made a (small) donation to the science center. I hope they use it to go look at other science centers and pick up a few pointers.

Technorati Tags: Arizona, Blog, Natural Sciences, Science