House prices placed in perspective

Wow- this is amazing.

A Week in the Life of Allan Johannes

The adventures of Allan Johannes, a man of routine who one evening places popcorn into his microwave and pushes the "Poultry" button instead of the "Popcorn" button.

A short story I wrote in December 1999.

Here's the first installment.

Pick up the whole story at the Amazon Kindle store.

1500

More than fifteen years ago, in a town not so far away...

When Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Willow, and the writing of David Eddings were inspiration, as opposed to indulgence...

I dreamed up my own epic fantasy, to be told over hundreds of pages and many years.

Here are the very first few pages from back then.

Street With A View

This is cute.

Social Collapse Best Practices in the Former United States of America

A fascinating talk by Dmitry Orlov.

Boeing 787 and lightning

Potential trouble ahead.

Fascinating and troubling podcast that features an interview with a reporter who wrote an article about how the FAA is loosening safety requirements vis-a-vis lightning strikes and fuel tanks- requirements that Boeing's 787 would not be able to fulfill if left unchanged.

Jesse Chan-Norris on kottke.org

Funny how things intersect... my high-school friend Jesse Chan-Norris just popped up on kottke.org.

iPhone notifications on a local network

I would love to be able to access my iPhone's status from any computer that's connected to the same WiFi network as my iPhone.

Have a window that would show me if anyone has called, allow me to play back any voicemails, send/receive text messages, etc. Hell, why not be able to make and receive phone calls directly from a computer, using the built-in mic and speaker and some sort of tethered connected to the iPhone?

The Apple TV should also support this in some way.

That is all.

Head game (or "good head")

From here.

1234567890 Day

http://www.kottke.org/09/02/1234567890-day

Chad After Dentist

Link from Mike.

Obama's press conference

Kindle 2 released today

Engadget has a nice overview and hands-on.

Seems like it's better than the original in every respect, but not enough to justify an upgrade.

Still waiting to hear about licensing deals to allow other devices to read Kindle content...

Christian Bale takes David to the Dentist (Mash-Up)

When I saw the original version of this video, I thought it was funny, but also disturbing and somewhat exploitative. Not a fair thing for a parent to do to a kid.

But add Christian Bale to the mix, and it's got my stamp of approval.



Thanks for the link, Mike.

Dave Hill on This American Life

Ira Glass and Dave Hill, together at last.

Trevor's path

My friend Trevor got creative while shoveling snow a few weeks back. The result is actually somewhat philosophical.

SNL on Phelps

"If you're at a party and you see Michael Phelps smoking a bong, and your first thought isn't 'Wow, I get to party with Michael Phelps,' and instead you take a picture and sell it to a tabloid, you should take a long look in the mirror because you're a dick."

Well put.

Looks like Amazon's Kindle store is coming to the iPhone

Interesting article.

Still speculation at this point, but hopefully I'll be able to access my Kindle library from my iPhone in short order. That would be fantastic.

How is babby formed?

Reenactment of supposedly real exchanges from Yahoo! Answers.

Floor waxing tips

How To Wax Your Floors Without Slipping And Severing Your Spine

My new Mac has been purchased

Tonight was a big night.

My current primary personal computer is a 1.25GHz 15" PowerBook G4, with 2GB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. I bought this at the end of 2003 shortly after this model was announced. When it came out, this computer was the first 15" aluminum PowerBook, a model that was long anticipated and which shipped much later than the 12" and 17" aluminum PowerBooks that came before it.

This computer has served me well for the past five years, though it's been augmented in recent years by my work laptop- a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro- and my wife's laptop, a 1.83GHz Core Duo (not a Core 2 Duo) white MacBook.

Over the past year or so, my 15" aluminum has really started to show its age, most dramatically in regard to Flash-based web video, which often does not play reliably (particularly larger, higher definition video), and H.264 video clips shot using my Kodak Zi6, which essentially don't play back at all on this unit.

I've been content to use my 15" PB less and less, since I've got the MacBook Pro at work and my wife's MacBook on the sofa at home. Documents in the cloud make shuffling back and forth between computers less of a chore than it used to be. I was hoping to keep this routine up for a while longer, but the reality is that the cloud doesn't do personal media storage very well, and Apple's new iLife '09 has some extremely impressive features that make me want to use it with my personal photographs and videos... and to do that, I really need to bite the bullet and upgrade the hardware that supports my personal media libraries.

I've been almost ready to do this for a while. Shortly after the unibody aluminum MacBooks were released toward the end of last year, I went to an Apple store and tried to purchase one, only to discover that I couldn't walk out with a custom-configured unit (I wanted to bump the RAM and hard drive size up to the max). On the ride home that night, with my need for instant gratification doused, I decided to cool it for a while- particularly since there were rumors at the time that the new glass trackpads weren't working properly, and who knew what other first-generation gremlins were lurking beneath the hood. I resigned myself to hold off on purchasing a new computer until the first round of updates- however trivial- came out for the MacBook.

Weeks went by and I began to consider the iMac. Why try to replace my current unit with another portable that could do everything but with compromises, my thinking went. My 15" PB sits on my desk at home and never moves. I've got my work laptop and my wife's laptop to use as needed. So if my goal is to replace the computer on my desk at home with something more suited to media, why not go for an iMac, which would get me a much bigger screen and more hard drive space- at roughly the same cost? I'd still have the others to fall back on for portability. And besides, a little voice said- you can always get an Air if you really need to go portable. Heh. And I smiled.

This line of thinking lasted for a while, and then I went back and forth over subsequent weeks, and even considered the new 15" unibody aluminum MacBook Pro for a while, because- damnit- I deserve a bigger screen than the 13" for my media tasks, and the MacBook lacks a FireWire port, which would suck for me because I have several FireWire drives that are an important (but not absolutely critical) part of my workflow. The 15" seemed like the ideal compromise.

Until today, when I felt a bolt of inspiration, made a decision, sat on it for a few hours, and then made my purchase.

The white MacBook.

The lowest-end Mac, save for the Mini.

The value holdover, so easily passed over in comparison to the shiny new unibody MacBooks.

Surely I'd never consider something like that.

Except that... a few weeks ago, Apple quietly upgraded it. They replaced the integrated Intel graphics chip with the same NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chip used on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros (which is supposedly five times faster than the Intel chip previously used). They upgraded the front-side bus to 1066MHz. And they kept the magical FireWire port.

So there you have it. It's not sexy. It's not a powerhouse. But it's brand new, highly evolved, and more than powerful enough for iLife and the multimedia web. 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor. 4GB RAM. 320GB hard drive. FireWire port.

$1399.

This is going to give me everything I want for now, with a nice head-start toward funding the next Mac...

The new white MacBook is a unique value in Apple's lineup and I think it will earn a place in the classic Mac hall of fame. I don't think it's going to be around much longer, but as long as it's here, it's a great deal.

Should Apple buy Palm?

I think maybe so.

I just finished watching Palm's CES keynote where they unveiled the Pre and webOS, and I'm just blown away. This is some really innovative software- truly a generation beyond the current iPhone software. Check out the video- particularly chapters 4 through 8- to see what I'm referring to.

The Pre and webOS borrow heavily from the iPhone and its OS and grow upward from there. There is no doubt that this device never could have existed in its current form if not for the iPhone. To make matters more interesting, last week came news that Apple had successfully patented the multi-touch functionality used by the iPhone. Clearly, Apple and Palm are in for some serious negotiating, if not legal wrangling.

So, with the Pre and webOS we have a resurgent Palm that has come out of the gate with the first mobile platform to truly challenge the iPhone (though it's not shipping yet, and won't be for some time). Palm has been a major player in mobile technology for more than a decade, and for much of that time, they've had better technology and more marketable mobile information products than Apple (the Palm Pilot vs. the Newton, followed by a generation of advanced PDAs and smart phones before Apple entered the game).

The future of the mobile platform wars is difficult to predict, but for now, the major players are Apple, RIM (BlackBerry), and Google (Android). And now Palm, right up there with them and I would argue ahead of RIM and Google for now (though again, this is based purely on the demo and not shipping units). Microsoft (Windows Mobile) and Nokia (Symbian) are off on the sidelines, not currently top-tier competitors, though not to be completely overlooked.

This is a healthy ecosystem for competition and one in which the iPhone will need to innovate dramatically in order to retain the mindshare and growing marketshare momentum it currently possesses. This is good for consumers.

But I wonder: what if Apple were to buy Palm in the near future? Palm's got a market cap of $825 million, and Apple's got over $28 billion in cash. So the finances would be easy.

Plus, an Apple takeover would negate any patent issues and allow Apple to digest and incorporate all of the relevant innovations in webOS. And it would give Apple a relationship with Sprint, the Pre's launch network, which would dovetail nicely with Apple's AT&T relationship for the iPhone.

If I were to plot such a takeover, I'd plan for it to be announced right after the Pre is launched. Apple would retain Palm in more or less its present form and would continue to sell and evolve the Pre and webOS product lines for the immediate future, while cross-pollinating technologies where appropriate (i.e. iTunes support on the Palm, webOS functionality, such as Synergy, support on the iPhone).

This would culminate in a reconciliation of the two product lines into a single family a few years down the road.

And in the interim, Apple would have eliminated a major competitor, gained a strategic relationship with a major competitor to AT&T, and consolidated its hold on innovation in the marketplace.

Sounds like an intriguing idea to me.