Sure, but does it have Dolby Noise Reduction?

Gail got a new Walkman last weekend. She wants to do some more walking once the weather gets nicer, so she wanted a new MP3 player. We did some looking around and she decided on the Sony one. Note that the price on the Sony page is $119, but we found it at Future Shop for $79. Gail's main criteria were that it be small, have a display screen that showed you the song and artist name, and have the ability to use playlists. The playlist idea is so that she can set up a "warmup" playlist, consisting of songs of an appropriate speed for warming up, and then once she's warmed up and wants to pick up the pace, she can switch to another playlist consisting of faster songs.

The Walkman came with a CD of software, which I presumed was Sony's equivalent of iTunes. I installed it and it let me browse through the iTunes directory and select directories and files to copy to the Walkman. The docs say that non-MP3 files need to be converted to MP3 format first, but that their software will do that. Well, it seemed to want to convert MP3 files as well (to what, I don't know), and took forever to do the conversion and copy the files to the device. Then I read in some other part of the docs that you can use Windows Media Player (MP) to create playlists and transfer songs and such instead of the Sony software, so I gave that a try. Holy crap, what a difference. MP is miles faster (in terms of overall application performance), didn't do any MP3-to-MP3 "conversion", and lets you create playlists, which the Sony software doesn't do. Copying the files to the device was also very fast. MP doesn't handle podcasts (I don't think), but the Sony software does, so if you want to listen to podcasts, you might have to use the Sony software. But unless you need it, I wouldn't bother with the Sony software. It did say that it needs MP version 11, but that comes on the CD as well, so if you are not already running MP version 11, you'll need to upgrade. Vista comes with 11 so I didn't have to do anything.

As for the actual device itself, well, it ain't no iPod. While looking around at the store, Gail played with an iPod for a minute or two and said simply "Apple really does it right, don't they?" Yes, they do, but the iPods were double the price of the Walkman. Gail also liked the look of the Zune, but apparently Microsoft won't allow the store to use a display model, and we didn't want to buy it without giving it a try first, so the Zune was quickly dropped. Anyway, I'm very used to my iPod, so it took me a minute to realize that you have to actually press buttons rather than just drag your finger around. But I got used to it pretty quickly, and didn't have to keep looking down at the buttons to figure out what to do. They say that a good interface is one that "disappears" while you're using it, so this would have to qualify. The menus and such are similar to the iPod, so you can choose what to listen to based on artist, album, song, and genre (I think), or you can play from a playlist. It seems to have shuffle capability as well.

Now, we haven't really used the Walkman yet, just played with it a bit and started to get things configured, so time will tell. Maybe after using it for a week, Gail will hate it and we'll take it back. Or she'll love it and wonder how she ever lived without it (like I do with my iPod), but more likely, it'll just be fine. Gail's not one to fall in love with technology (unlike her husband and his goddamned beloved iPod), so as long as it does the job that it's supposed to do, everything will be peachy.

Aside: The image above is one that I found online with a google search, but I chose it because it happens to be the same model as the second Walkman I had in high school. That model was very cool because it had MEGA BASS. It also had Auto Reverse, which was also a very cool feature, but not as cool as MEGA BASS because the first Walkman I had also had auto reverse. MEGA BASS was new. Oddly, my boss has a cassette Walkman in his office, which is the same model as my first Walkman. He does have an iPod which he uses when walking to and from work, so I have no idea what he uses the cassette player for.

The World Baseball Whatever

The second World Baseball Classic is in progress and once again, I just cannot get into it. The idea is great; as a baseball fan, any way to promote baseball around the world is fine by me. But until I looked up the wikipedia entry, I couldn't remember who won the last one. Off the top of my head, I can't name more than three members of the Canadian team (Jason Bay and Justin Morneau because they're awesome and Stubby Clapp because I can't imagine anyone willingly going by the name "Stubby").

I did watch a bit of a game earlier today while folding laundry, but I didn't finish watching it, and did not later feel compelled to find out the final score like I did watching women's softball during the Olympics. Now maybe that's because the game I happened to be watching was the Cubans wiping out the South Africans 7-0 in the 5th; if the game had been close, I might have been more interested. Canada plays Italy tomorrow night with the winner advancing to the next round and the loser going home, so I may check that game out, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it slips my mind.

It would be different if this was a competition featuring the best baseball players in the world, but it's not. It's a competition featuring the best baseball players in the world who aren't injured, weren't injured last year, didn't have off-season surgery, whose teams allowed them to play, and who give a damn about this tournament. When players like Halladay, Pujols, Beltre, Santana, Papelbon, Lincecum, and Dempster are all skipping it so that they don't miss spring training, you can tell the level of interest in this tournament. I don't remember many American basketball players or Canadian hockey players who have passed on the Olympics for any reason other than they were physically unable to play.

It's pretty simple, really — if the best players in the game don't care about the tournament, why should I?

Next morning update: I totally forgot about this game last night. Turns out that this might have been a good idea since Canada lost.

Mid-season NLL report

We're halfway through the NLL season, and it's time to look over my pre-season predictions and celebrate the fact that I was 100% bang-on with all of my predictions. Well, almost.

East Division

	Predicted	Actual
1	Buffalo	Buffalo
2	Philadelphia	Boston
3	New York	New York
4	Toronto	Philadelphia
5	Rochester	Rochester
6	Boston	Toronto

West Division

	Predicted	Actual
1	Minnesota	Calgary
2	Calgary	Portland
3	Colorado	Colorado
4	San Jose	Minnesota
5	Portland	San Jose
6	Edmonton	Edmonton

OK, not almost. I got a few right, but in some cases, I'm not even close. In the East, it's hard to get Buffalo wrong, I had New York contending, and Rochester near the bottom, but that's about it. Philly didn't weather the loss of Iannucci very well at all, and my fairly dire prediction for Toronto turned out to be really optimistic. I didn't have high hopes for Boston, but they've turned out to be much stronger than I thought. I did say in my original prediction that they would be stronger than your average expansion team, but for some reason that didn't get reflected in how I viewed the standings.

In the West, Minnesota hasn't been the powerhouse I thought they might be, and Portland is not sucking. I got Calgary and Colorado pretty much right, and Edmonton is no surprise.

But in the East, if you swap Boston and Philadelphia in the standings, you get something very close to my prediction. In the West, if you swap Minnesota and Portland, same thing.

Note for the record that I made end-of-season predictions, not mid-season. There's lots of lacrosse still to be played.

What if we give it away?

Hot on the heels of Harvey Danger making their album available for free download (which I've blogged about a couple of times), Nine Inch Nails have done the same thing. OK, well maybe not "hot on the heels", since Harvey Danger did it over three years ago, but this is another example of a band (or person actually, since NIN is Trent Reznor) that actually gets it when it comes to downloading music.

A lot of people and bands (Lars Ulrich of Metallica comes screaming to mind here) seem to think that downloading music is the scourge of society, and allows people to essentially pull money from their pockets. What they have to consider is that many of the people downloading their music illegally wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Would I have gone out and bought a Harvey Danger CD? No, because I'd never heard of the band, but I'm willing to download it and listen for free. If it sucks, I've lost nothing. But if I like it, I'm more likely to go back and buy it or some previous album (both of which I did for Harvey Danger), which is money that the band made that they wouldn't have otherwise.

Are there people who will download music instead of buying it? Absolutely. Back in high school, my friends and I would all negotiate who was going to buy the latest album from Kim Mitchell or Van Halen or whoever, and everyone else would give that person a blank tape and he'd tape it for the rest of us. So yes, we were pirating music. But at the time, I was a high school kid and didn't have much money anyway, so I was unlikely to buy 90% of the albums I taped, meaning that nobody was losing money by me doing this. On the contrary — while I may not have bought Akimbo Alogo at the time, I did listen to it and became a Kim Mitchell fan. Years later I did buy Akimbo Alogo on CD, along with a couple of other Kim Mitchell albums as well as all of the Max Webster albums, so Kim did end up benefitting from my piracy.

Similarly, I've been interested in hearing NIN for a while, but since I'd never actually heard any of their music, I was hesitant to just go out and buy something. Downloading the album gives me the chance to hear it and decide if I like it, and so far I do. So perhaps I'll buy some of their older stuff — once I do that, NIN will profit from my downloading their album. If they never released it for download, I wouldn't have bought it, and they'd have made nothing from me. Thus far, since I haven't bought any NIN stuff, they still haven't made anything from me, but now the potential's there.

Let me be clear: I may have done it in the past and even tried to justify it above, but I'm not advocating piracy, so chill out, Lars. I do have a handful of albums that I downloaded illegally a couple of years ago (none of which are Metallica, so chill out, Lars), and I feel a little guilty every time I listen to them. But I have bought copies of several of the ones I listen to often (I just bid on a copy of Abbey Road and two Rammstein CDs on eBay), and I've also deleted some that I don't. I haven't downloaded any music or videos (other than the odd TV show that I missed, none of which feature Metallica, so chill... OK, that joke's getting old) in a couple of years. I'm really not talking about stealing music, I'm talking more about the bands that choose to make their music available for download, most of which are indie bands like Harvey Danger. But it's nice to see some big-name bands like NIN doing the same thing.

Steve Gibson needs a blog

Steve Gibson needs a blog. Seriously. I've been listening to his Security Now (SN) podcast for over a year, and I do enjoy it, but it seems to be getting longer and longer every week, mainly because of things that Steve and Leo start talking about that are not security-related.

I'm in the middle of episode 184 now, which is a Q&A episode. This is where Steve picks twelve questions from listeners and answers them. This episode is about an hour and fifty seven minutes long. The first question isn't even begun until forty two minutes into the podcast. Some of the topics discussed before the first question:

• a minute of advertising for the TWiT network.
• seven minutes of introduction and talking about Steve's appearance on another TWiT podcast next week regarding historical computers (PDP-8, PDP-11, and such)
• two minute commercial
• ten minutes of recent security news. He mentioned the Pirate Bay trial as well as an authentication problem he had with Paypal. Definitely security-relevant.
• seven minutes of talking about a couple of computer utilities he uses, his favourite sci-fi TV shows (Fringe is his current favourite, if you're wondering), more on historical computers, and how he maps his Caps Lock key to Ctrl because Caps Lock is not very useful. Can't disagree there.
• a seven-minute Spinrite "testimonial", i.e. commercial. He does one of these every week, and I'm sure this is one of the reasons he does SN — it lets him plug his software. Again, no big deal since I skip it anyway, other than the fact that it was very long.
• four minutes on how Steve's computer plays a "Yabba Dabba Doo!" sound whenever someone buys a copy of Spinrite, and how the number of times he hears this sound is inexplicably higher during the recording of SN than at other times. The only explanation that he and Leo have come up with is that some people like to buy Spinrite while SN is being recorded so that they can hear the sound bite for their purchase (you can listen to the podcast being recorded live at twit.tv on Thursday afternoons). This was kind of funny, actually.
• two minute commercial
• two more minutes on the Yabba Dabba Doo thing and other sound bites that Steve's computers play

The twelve questions take an hour and 15 minutes or so to read and answer, with at least one more two-minute commercial in there. This seems pretty long too, but this is the actual meat of the show, so I can't complain too much about that. There are some questions that could be answered a little more succinctly though.

Leo starts to read the first question at the 42:00 mark. Some of that 42 minutes was commercials, evil but necessary. Twelve minutes seems a little long though — the Spinrite commercial testimonial should be kept to three minutes. The security news section is part of why I listen to this podcast, so that's definitely fine. I get that Steve and Leo have interests outside of security, but there's twenty minutes of just general banter. If you guys want to shoot the shit, do it before recording.

If Steve had a blog, he could ramble on all he wanted about Fringe and sci-fi in general, and old computers, and his Yabba Dabba Doo sound bite, and his network setup, and his Kindle, and his favourite kind of coffee that he drinks seven times a day, and the fact that he gets his first coffee at Starbucks at 5:30 in the morning, and how he writes everything in assembly language, and so on. He could spend thirty seconds per episode plugging his blog and spend the rest of the podcast on actual security stuff. stevegibson.com seems to be taken by an organic farm in Texas, but perhaps he could pull a Dvorak and get gibson dot org slash blog.

Update: For some reason, this particular article has gotten a lot of comment spam, so I have had to disable comments on it. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Sushi IS for dummies?

We were in a bookstore yesterday, when I saw a book in the ubiquitous "... for Dummies" series called "Sushi for Dummies". Ryan saw it and said that a friend of his liked sushi. I asked "You know who else likes sushi?", expecting him to say "who?", at which point I'd say "me", but his response made me laugh:

"Dummies, I suppose."

Technical Debt

Jeff Attwood wrote an article on his blog Coding Horror yesterday all about paying down your technical debt. This is when you do something "the quick and dirty way", which then costs you "interest" in the future in terms of bug fixes, workarounds when new functionality is needed, and just extra time for developers unfamiliar with the code to understand why something was done the way it was. There are certainly times in every developer's life when you have a choice between doing something "the right way", which might take weeks to design and implement properly, or you could do it the easy way, which gets the job done for now, but may have consequences later. If you're under a tight deadline, often the easy way wins out — that's your debt.

People often complain about Microsoft Windows being bloated, and that's largely because of technical debt that they can't easily pay off. When they released Windows NT in 1993, they made sure that all existing Windows and DOS programs would still run. That decision saved them — who's going to upgrade to a brand new OS when there are no programs and drivers for it, and none of your existing stuff will work? — but they incurred a huge debt because of it. Backwards compatibility has always been a huge issue for Microsoft — it's only recently (2007) that they released an OS (Vista) that won't run 16-bit DOS software from the 80's. I cannot imagine how much of the Windows source code is dedicated to running legacy software.

I love this "technical debt" metaphor, as we've gone through it a couple of times on our mobile database product, SQL Anywhere, most notably a few years ago on SQL Anywhere version 10.

One of the advantages of SQL Anywhere is the way we save data in the database file. We do it in such a way that a database created on any supported platform can be copied and used on any other supported platform. Also, if you create your database with one version of our product, you can continue to use it when we release updates for that version, or even completely new versions. Version 9.0.2 of our server, released in 2005, can still run databases created with Watcom SQL 3.2, released in 1992. I remember my time as an Oracle DBA - every time we upgraded Oracle, we had to "fix" the database, and by "fix" I mean we had to rebuild it or upgrade it or something. I don't remember what we had to do, but we had to do something. We also had Oracle on our test server, which was a different platform than the production server, which means that we couldn't just copy the production database to our debug server for testing or debugging purposes, which was quite a pain.

Anyway, while this was a very convenient feature, we did accrue some "technical debt". This is not quite the same as described above, in that we never took the "quick and dirty way", but we still had to have code in the server to support features that had been removed from the product and very old bugs that had long been fixed. After six major versions and thirteen years, there was a lot of these. After much discussion, we decided to take the big plunge with the 10.0 release (known internally as "Jasper" — the last few releases have all had code names from ski resorts, "Aspen", "Vail", "Banff", "Panorama", and the next one is "Innsbruck"), since we were adding a ton of other new functionality with that release. The decision: version 10 servers would not run databases created with version 9 or earlier servers. Everyone would have to do a full unload of all their data and reload it into a new database when upgrading to version 10, and they'd have to do this for all their databases. This would allow us to remove thousands of lines of code from the product, making it smaller, and since we have far less cases of "what capabilities does this database have?", the code can be more efficient. As a simple example, we now know every database that the server can run supports strong encryption, checksums, clustered indexes, and compressed strings, among others, so we don't need to check for those capabilities before using them. There are a lot more assumptions we can make about the layout of the database that makes the code simpler, smaller, and more efficient. We can also add new features that might have clashed with old databases. We knew that the rebuild itself might be inconvenient, and upgrading to version 10 wouldn't be nearly as seamless as previous upgrades, but we also knew that once the initial pain of the rebuild was over with, life would be much better for everyone. We even put a lot of work into streamlining the rebuild process so that it was as fast and simple as possible.

As you can imagine, there was some resistance to this, and I'm sure product management had to handle more than one call from a customer asking "I have to do what with my multi-terabyte database?", but to their credit, they stuck to their guns and told the customers that yes, we know it's inconvenient, but it's really for the best, and you'll appreciate it once the rebuild is done. Or perhaps they blamed it on us, telling the customers "We know it's a pain, but engineering won't budge. They're determined to do this." Either way, it happened, and we did get some more bug reports because of problems with the rebuilds, but for the most part, things went pretty well. That pain paid off the technical debt that we'd accumulated over the previous decade.

Of course, we've since released version 11, which added new stuff to the database file, and we're working on version 12 which adds even more, so now some of those "if the database file has this capability, then do something, otherwise do something else" conditions are creeping back into the product. So far, there aren't a ton of them, so our current interest payments are pretty low, but perhaps in five or six more versions we'll have accumulated enough technical debt that we'll have to bite the bullet and pay it off again.

More on TTS (or maybe it should be Moron: TTS?)

I've never done this before so bear with me while I figure out exactly what I want to say. I'm sure I have written bad blog entries before (this is where you say "No! Absolutely not! This was your first! Well, not that it was bad really, just not up to your usual standards. What were we talking about again?"), but I'm not especially happy with parts of the one I wrote on Thursday night. It's not that I've changed my mind on how silly the NY Times article was, but my article focused on the fact that the technology to read the books is simply not there yet (as Wil Wheaton's test proved beyond any doubt). But upon reflection, I think I missed at least some of the point of Mr. Blount's article, so I'm going to post a semi-rebuttal to my own article.

The fact that the technology isn't there yet isn't really the point. I'm sure Mr. Blount would acknowledge that right now, a computer reading a book is not the same thing as a human reading it, and that right now the Kindle's TTS (text-to-speech) feature is not a huge threat to the audio book industry. Not to put words in Mr. Blount's mouth, but I think his issue is that in five or ten years, the technology may have advanced enough that it will be much harder to distinguish between a computer-read book and a human-read book. As hard as that is to believe, it could certainly be yet another in the long list of things that we take for granted today that would have been difficult to imagine a few years ago. If that happens, then computer-read books might pose a real threat to the audio book industry, and so he wants to head that off before it becomes a problem. I can understand that, but history is full of new inventions that were supposed to kill off entire industries and didn't. Remember how the VCR was going to kill the movie industry? Remember how PVR's were going to make commercials obsolete? MP3 players have reduced sales of CDs, but they haven't killed the industry entirely. Even sharing of digital media and places like Pirate Bay haven't killed music sales or movie revenues. There have been many movies made with completely computer-generated characters, and the animation is getting better all the time, but I don't hear the actor's guild advocating that filmmakers abandon the use of computers.

The Amazon people could easily change their TTS feature to only read blogs, newspapers, and magazines, and would not read books, which would solve the problem of the guy listening to the newspaper while in the car. I don't know the numbers for sure, but I'm sure there are thousands of books available for the Kindle that are not available as an audio book, so people who want to listen to those books are screwed.

It's possible that the best solution to this "problem" is for the audio book industry to expand their advertising and PR to make sure that people know that audio books exist and how cool they are. They need to make sure that they stress the point that they have talented actors (sometimes the authors themselves) reading the books, not just some nobody off the street. Once people are hooked on audio books, the thought of having a computer read to them will be unthinkable, regardless of how good the technology gets.

Stephen Hawking performs Wil Wheaton

Roy Blount Jr., the President of the Authors Guild, has written an article^* in the NY Times about the Amazon Kindle, and its built-in text-to-speech feature. He says that this feature essentially takes money out of the hands of authors and publishers because it's essentially turning any book you buy for your Kindle into an audio book, without paying audio book royalties. This is ridiculous beyond belief.

^* I originally read the article without logging into NYTimes (since I don't have an account there), but now when I visit that link, it says I have to log in. Don't know why. If you don't have a login, you can use "bugmenot555" as the user and "bugmenot" as the password. Thanks bugmenot.com.

Wil Wheaton, an author and audio book performer himself, wrote a blog post about it today, in which he attached a ten-minute audio snippet. The file contained a short portion of his latest book which he read himself, and then the same portion read by some software on his computer. Not surprisingly, there's just no comparison. The text-to-speech software was actually more impressive than I expected. It wasn't just words said in a monotone computer voice, it did almost sound like someone reading it aloud, complete with pauses where a comma would be found. The intonation (not sure if that's the right word) was mostly correct, meaning that the person's voice went down at the end of a sentence, and things like that. There was even the sound of someone taking a breath at the beginning of sentences. But it was still obviously a computer voice.

Wheaton's reading was just so much more expressive. In some cases, there were pauses missing in the computer version, and even though there was no way for the computer to know that there was supposed to be a pause there because there's no punctuation, the way the sentence or paragraph is written makes it obvious to a human reader. The one part where Wil talks semi-sarcastically about a Walkman being something like a iPod "that used these things called “cassette tapes”" — to a human reader, it's obvious that that sentence should be read in a slightly different tone than the surrounding sentences, but there's no way to encode that in the text passed to the software. You just gotta know.

While reading the Times article, my first thought was "I guess I shouldn't be reading to my kids at night", and Blount indeed addresses this at the end of his piece:

For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of “Goodnight Moon.” If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it’s another matter.

Why is it another matter? If I'm reading to my kids, I'm being as expressive as possible. If someone in the book is happy, I try to sound happy. If someone is unhappy, I try to sound unhappy. I even sometimes try accents (though that got old really quick during the first Harry Potter book, when we realized that almost every character would have an English accent. I always did it for Hagrid though). So my "performance" would be a lot closer to the one you might get if you bought an audio book than the one the Kindle would give you. Wouldn't that be more "threatening" to the audio book publishers?

The other obvious point that Mr. Blount missed is that the Kindle can read any text that it has. Once the Authors Guild provides an audio recording of every book available through the Kindle, plus the daily newspapers (New York Times, Wall Street Journal), weekly magazines (Time, Newsweek), and over 1000 blogs, in real time, then maybe Amazon will remove this feature. Until then, I cannot believe that authors really feel threatened by this. People who like audio books are not going to stop buying them because they can get their Kindle to read them. It's just not the same. The people using this feature are people who might want to listen to the newspaper during their morning commute or while riding the stationary bike at the gym. I imagine this would be a great feature for the blind (though as Blount points out, using the on-screen controls would be impossible for the blind anyway).

I've bought a couple of audio books, and they're OK. (I joined audible.com for a while (got a free book because I listen to TWiT, and then bought another), but I quit it because the way their accounts work, you have to buy a book every month. If I could be a member and then just buy books whenever I wanted to, I might do that.) Either way, the computer voice is just not real enough for me to listen to a computer read me stuff for any length of time. I think the technology still has a long way to go before it's even going to be remotely comparable.

Stupid people shouldn't be allowed to drive

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said:

Evolution is a theory
Creation is a fact

Sigh.

The Fab Four, and some really old CD reviews

Over the last couple of years, I have become a pretty big Beatles fan. I've always liked the Beatles; my parents have an audio recording of me singing "Hey Jude" when I was about 3. My dad had the Red and Blue albums, and I remember being fascinated by the two pictures of the Beatles looking over the balcony, eight (or so) years apart:

I have the first Anthology CD, but it's a lot of the older stuff — Love Me Do, Please Please Me, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, stuff like that, and I'm more into the later Beatles. I also have the "1" album, which is yet another "Best Of..." album. But other than the hits (of which there are several), I never really knew much else.

I was going to start off the first sentence of this story by saying "I'm not really sure why", but that's not true — the reason I'm such a big Beatles fan these days is because of my guitar teachers over the last couple of years. I've had three different teachers, and the last two were huge Beatles fans. My current teacher, who is probably ten years younger than I am, knows how to play just about every Beatles song there is (though Eleanor Rigby might be challenging on guitar), and a few months ago we went through and played about three quarters of the Abbey Road album. Something, Here Comes The Sun, and Blackbird are some of my favourite Beatles songs to play.

Thanks to him, I've become more interested in the rest of the Beatles catalogue. Gail gave me Let It Be for Christmas, and this past week I bought Revolver, Magical Mystery Tour, Rubber Soul, and the White Album on eBay (and was outbid for Anthology 2 and 3). I also have (illegal... shhhhh) copies of Abbey Road and the Red and Blue albums, although I intend on buying those too.

I'm also really interested in Beatles trivia, and I love reading the Wikipedia entries on various albums. I don't know what it is about Beatles trivia that makes it more interesting to me than trivia about the Stones or the Who or any other band. Things like:

• the drums you hear on "Back in the U.S.S.R." were played by Paul because Ringo had temporarily left the band when it was recorded.
• John hated Paul's song "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da", and came into the recording studio one day claiming to be more stoned than any of them had ever been, and sat down at the piano and played the opening that was used on the recorded version. (A lot of people consider that to be the worst Beatles song ever, but I kind of like it. It's better than Revolution 9, anyway.)
• Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was based on a picture that Julian Lennon drew while he was in kindergarten and had nothing to do with LSD. Some real fanatics have gone through the history books, and figured out who Lucy really was.
• George Harrison left the band for a week or so during the recording of Let It Be, and the remaining Beatles considered asking Eric Clapton to replace him, but then decided that if anyone left the band, it just wouldn't be the Beatles anymore. They were right.
• At various times, each of John, George, and Ringo left the band, only to be coaxed back by Paul. But the Beatles disbanded because Paul left.

I look at some famous musicians and marvel at what a great piano player or guitar player or whatever he is. It's even more amazing when that person has other musical talents, like singing or songwriting. You can look at Eric Clapton, and he's one of the best guitar players ever. He's a pretty good songwriter as well, and he's a decent singer, but as far as I know can't play any other instruments. Elton John is an amazing piano player, and a good singer, but only writes music, not lyrics, and doesn't play guitar or bass or drums. The amazing thing about the Beatles is not just that they have someone like that — George Harrison is also an excellent guitar player who can sing and has written some really great songs — but then they also have two more who are even better. Paul McCartney and John Lennon both play guitar, they both play piano, they both play bass, Paul plays drums, they are both great singers, they are both great songwriters (music and lyrics), and they work very well together as well as individually. And then there's Ringo, who I've complained about before. He can't sing, wrote a total of two songs during the entire life of the Beatles, and plays no instruments other than drums. But there's no denying that he's a very good drummer, and I've heard of tons of modern-day rock drummers who cite him as an influence.

You don't often see CD reviews that are not of recent releases, and very rarely of albums that are over forty years old, but here are a couple:

Abbey Road

Abbey Road is not considered one of the best rock albums of all time for no reason. It's certainly got its share of big hits (Come Together, Something, Here Comes The Sun, Octopus's Garden), but most of the other songs are just as strong. Maxwell's Silver Hammer is a little silly, but kind of fun. I love Paul McCartney's Oh! Darling — it sounds like the kind of song that John Lennon would normally sing, but Paul does a good job with it. I Want You (She's So Heavy) is a little repetitive and the end goes on a bit too long, but different stanzas using the same lyrics with different musical styles is kind of cool. The only songs I'm really not thrilled with are Octopus's Garden, because Ringo is a crappy singer and Because, which is just a little too dreamy and psychadelic.

Most of the second side (going back to the record days with that terminology — I don't suggest turning the CD over) is a medley of short songs. It almost seems like they took a bunch of half-written half-recorded songs and mashed them together, which I believe is what they actually did, but it really works. Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, and The End are simply fantastic, containing both a drum solo (the only one Ringo ever did) and a triple guitar solo. It's hard to believe while listening to this album (which I have done numerous times over the past month or two) that the Beatles were barely even a functioning group at this point.

Let It Be

Let It Be was recorded before Abbey Road but for various reasons was released after. It's kind of too bad, since it would have been nice for the Beatles to end their run with an amazing farewell album. Instead, we got Let It Be. This is kind of unfair, since it is not a bad album by any stretch, but is just not as strong as Abbey Road. The title track is one of my favourite Beatles songs ever, despite being very repetitive, which is something I generally dislike (George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set On You" drives me batty for that very reason). The Long and Winding Road, Two of Us, Get Back, and Across The Universe (even with the indecipherable chorus "Jai guru deva om") are also really great songs. I really like One After 909, at least partially because it's so different from the other tracks on the album. I was about to write that it sounds more like a very early Beatles song than the rest of Let It Be, and then I checked the Wikipedia entry and found that it was indeed written by John Lennon more than ten years earlier, even before the Beatles were the Beatles.

I should receive the CDs I bought sometime next week. I'll give them a few listens and then post my thoughts on them sometime after that.

Steroids in lacrosse

Former NLL player Ted Jenner wrote a column on nllinsider.com yesterday about steroids and how nobody in the NLL is taking them. Before I say anything else, let me say that I have no proof, evidence, or even the slightest hint that any NLL player is on steroids, HGH, or any other banned or controlled substance. It wouldn't surprise me if the percentage of juiced NLL players is far less than the other major sports. But the reasons that Jenner gives for believing this are either naïve or blindly optimistic.

I don't think it would surprise anyone if 70% of all NFL players were taking some sort of performance enhancing drug. The number of baseball players taking them has dropped dramatically in the last few years, but Alex Rodriguez is one of 104 players who have apparently tested positive during 2003, and nobody believes that number has dropped to zero. I have heard no steroid stats about basketball, but that's a sport for mutants anyway, so nobody's going to look twice at a six-foot-ten two-hundred-eighty pound man with raisin-sized testicles. The NHL, for some reason, is convinced that their sport is clean, and that seems to be what Jenner is saying about the NLL. The question for the hockey and lacrosse people is: what makes your sports so different from the others?

Sure, being a big bulky mass of muscle (see Mark McGwire or the "after" picture of Barry Bonds) would not help you as a hockey or lacrosse player. But that's not what steroids always do. They don't make you bigger; they allow you to train harder and recover faster. Some allow you to retain muscle while losing fat. There is no reason to believe that lacrosse players wouldn't benefit from some use of these drugs.

From Jenner's article:

There is no room for steroids in the 'little brother of war'. It goes against everything the game stands for... But more importantly it's about having that sense of Zen and being in a sort of Nirvana like state. A clouded mind can only hamper a lacrosse player's ability to play at the top of his game.

First off, the whole "it goes against everything the game stands for" is nice to say, but a little idealistic. Does he honestly think that every single one of the 250+ NLL players has such a deep respect for the history and traditions of the sport that they wouldn't consider taking a substance that could make them perform better? This is almost laughable. I'm sure that's true for some, but for others, lacrosse is simply a fun sport that they are good at. If there's a way for them to get better, illegal or not, some are going to jump at that chance. There have been frightening surveys of young athletes preparing and hoping to make the Olympics — when asked if they would consider taking a drug that would guarantee them a gold medal but would also kill them within five years, the majority of athletes surveyed said they would take it. It's kind of a meaningless survey, since no such gold-medal-guaranteeing drug exists, but the thought processes of these athletes is clear.

Secondly, to my knowledge (and I could be wrong here), HGH and steroids don't have any kind of "clouding" effect on the mind. We're not talking about weed or LSD here. And give me a break with the "Zen" / "Nirvana" crap.

I think the one saving grace for the NLL here is that they don't make a ton of money, so the incentive to abuse your body or risk your health is far less than if you were making millions as a football or baseball player. Someone who wouldn't normally dream of taking steroids might change his mind for the possibility of a ten million dollar contract. The highest paid players in the NLL make about $25K a year. But there are high school students who are not athletes who take steroids simply to look good for the girls. These guys are highly competitive by nature, so who knows what lengths they will go to to give themselves or their team a slight competitive edge?

I'm not saying that NLL players are juiced, and I honestly think the majority of them aren't. I believe that the vast majority are simply great athletes and work hard to take care of their bodies without drugs. But honestly, it is highly unlikely that that there are no NLL players taking steroids. Jenner's deluding himself if he thinks otherwise.

Update to prove my point: The other day (May 2010), a Google search hit this article. The search was "what roids would i take to become better at lacrosse".

Dumb question of the day

I am investigating a couple of compression libraries, and comparing both their compression and speed. zlib is what we use now, and is moderately fast and gives pretty good compression. fastlz is blindingly fast, but doesn't compress quite as well, and the code isn't "stable". lzma is one that I just started looking at, and my initial tests were abysmal. It gave the best compression ratio, but compression took over sixty times as long as fastlz (0.27 seconds vs. 16.47 seconds for the same 11 MB file). I posted a question on their forum asking what I was doing wrong, and got this reply (emphasis mine):

What do you compress and why do you need it faster?

Excuse me? Your algorithm runs an order of magnitude slower than the others I'm looking at, and you are seriously asking why I need it faster? To his credit, the suggestion he gave me did speed it up so that it was about 3.2 seconds; still the slowest of the bunch, but at least it's now acceptable. And it did still have the best compression ratio. I'm just stunned that any software guy would ask such a question.

Fighting in hockey

Today's Pearls Before Swine:

The most wonderful time of the year

Every year, in the middle of February, comes an event that men across North America and indeed, the world, look forward to all year long. Feelings of love and lust may be renewed and heightened, and many men spend a great deal of time learning new things about the objects of their affections.

Women, on the other hand, don't generally care much about this event, and some women even have very negative feelings about it.

Yes, I must admit, I am one of the men who enjoy this event every February. For me, it occurred last Thursday, and once again, I was not disappointed. That's when my copy of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition arrived.

The New OS from Micro-apple

I recently started using sitemeter.com to measure stats on my blog — which pages are read, where people came from (the vast majority from google searches), how long they stay, stuff like that. Sitemeter can also give you information on each visit, like what kind of browser was being used, what OS, even what screen resolution. But this one puzzled me:

What exactly is "Macintosh WinXP"?

Hotwash.... ain't so hot

For Christmas about three years ago, Gail bought me a thing from Canadian Tire called "HotWash". It's a device that you insert between the windshield washer fluid pump and the wipers, and it heats up the wiper fluid on the fly to help melt ice and snow from the windshield, and it also helps get rid of bug juice in the summer. Great idea, right? I thought it was. Did it work? I still don't know for sure.

When I first got it, I looked over the installation instructions and figured I could install it myself. After a half hour in the garage with the hood up, I decided that I should probably let a professional do it, since I'm no auto mechanic. I can change my air filter and wiper blades, but that's about it. I took it into Canadian Tire and had them do it, and figured I was all set. We had a relatively warm winter that year, so I didn't get to really try it out for several weeks. It did eventually get cold and snowy again, and driving home from work after a day of snow and ice, I remember hitting "wash", ready to watch in amazement as the ice on my windshield quickly melted away. Never happened.

When I got home, I remember standing in the garage for about ten minutes, repeatedly spraying the windshield and feeling how warm the spray was, but I never noticed a temperature change. According to the manual, once you spray it the first time, it takes 10-15 seconds to warm up, and then if you spray again after that, everything is warmed. The actual temperature was a mystery — it was listed in the manual in at least two different places, with two vastly different values. One said something like 60°C — warm enough that you should see steam (I never did) when you use it on a cold day. I don't remember the other number, but it was different from the first one by a significant margin, and wasn't simply 60°C converted into Farenheit or anything like that. Either way, the water coming out of mine was no warmer than the air temperature. The thing just plain didn't work. I took it back the next week and told them it wasn't working. They had a look and told me that it was, but that the manual was wrong — the fluid is heated up to above freezing so that it will still melt the ice, but it's nowhere near 60°. I decided that this was why I didn't notice a difference in temperature and assumed that everything was OK.

Over the two years, everything seemed fine, but I was unable to notice any kind of difference. I then had to bring the car in for service a couple of times for an unexplained power loss — the engine would just stop while I was driving. I'd quickly put the car in neutral, restart it, and get back into drive. Only once was I not able to restart it this way, and that was in the parking lot of a Canadian Tire. Three different Canadian Tire stores (Waterloo, Kitchener, and Burlington) were unable to find any problem. Finally I brought it into a local shop in Waterdown, Al's Auto Service, and he basically unplugged a bunch of things and plugged them back in to make sure the fittings were all tight and weren't corroded. He found no problems either, but after he did that, the problem vanished and I never had it again. Then last winter I brought the car into the brand spankin' new Canadian Tire in Waterdown. They fixed something (don't remember what) but while doing that, they noticed that my HotWash wasn't plugged in. I have no idea how long I'd been driving with the thing unplugged (and therefore doing nothing), but I suspect that during his investigation of my problem, Al unplugged it and simply forgot to plug it back in. They re-enabled it and once again, I didn't notice any difference.

Finally a few weeks ago, I noticed a big ad in the local paper saying that Canadian Tire was recalling the HotWash things for safety reasons, and were giving full refunds of the purchase price. Ironically, the problem was that they were overheating, which was certainly not the case with mine, which never got warm in the first place. I brought my car in earlier today and asked them to remove it, which they did. They also refunded the purchase price and the cost of installation, so when I picked up my car from the service desk, they gave me about $92. When was the last time you got your car serviced and they gave you money?

Why I respect A-Rod... well, kinda

Alex Rodriguez, one of the best players in the baseball, has been accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs. OK, so nobody's jaw hit the floor because of that, but be prepared to let it drop for this one: he's admitted to taking them. The fact that he took the drugs shouldn't surprise anyone — this was from 2001-2003, and everyone was doin' it — but the fact that he has taken the high road and stated publicly that he took them is a little surprising. In fact, my respect for Rodriguez actually increased a little because of this whole event, and I'll tell you why.

Aside: Don't you hate when people end a statement with "and I'll tell you why"? Why bother telling me that you're going to tell me why? Why not just tell me why? <shakes head> Anyway, here's why.

I'm not a huge fan of A-Rod. He's probably the best all-around player in the game today, and likely one of the best of all time, but there have been a couple of incidents since he joined the Yankees that have tarnished my image of him. There was the one where he was running down the first base line and slapped at the glove of the first baseman who had already caught the ball. Then there was the incident in Toronto where he was running from second to third and yelled "I got it" while running behind the Toronto third baseman who was waiting to catch a fly ball. The third baseman, thinking the shortstop was calling him off, moved out of the way and the ball dropped. These are both silly and childish, and wouldn't be tolerated in a Saturday beer league, let alone the majors. You can maybe see some rookie pulling stuff like that, not a multiple MVP-winning superstar who just happens to be the highest-paid player in baseball. Then again, firing his agent and negotiating his own contract with the Yankees was a bold move — anyone who tells Scott Boras to go F himself gets a thumbs-up from me.

There's been a lot of talk in the past year or so about his relationship with Madonna, but I have no interest in his love life. Maybe he left his wife for Madonna, maybe his marriage was over anyway and he and Madonna hooked up after, I don't know and I don't care. I don't really understand why anyone else does either, but it seems that a lot of people care about a lot of these types of things that have no bearing on anything. If that weren't the case, what would Perez Hilton do with his life?

As for the steroid thing, my impression of A-Rod didn't get any worse after hearing this, mainly because it's almost an assumption that at the time, everyone was taking something, so this is hardly a revelation. But (I'm "telling you why" now) at least Rodriguez had the stones to say "Yes I did it. It was stupid and I'm sorry" which is more than you can say for the likes of Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa. Yes, he was interviewed last year and specifically asked whether he took the drugs, and he lied. I'm not absolving him of that, but you can understand that nobody is going to admit to something like that if there isn't any proof. But once the allegations came out, he did the same as Andy Pettitte and immediately came clean. With Clemens, Bonds, et al, there is proof, or at least very strong evidence, and still they deny taking the drugs. Who do they think they're fooling?

Is it possible that A-Rod doesn't regret a second of it and is just saying this because it's what people want him to say? Absolutely. But even if his regret is fake, it still takes balls to say it knowing that now that he's admitted it, thousands (if not millions) of baseball fans will never forgive him. Barring injury, Rodriguez likely has at least seven or eight years left in his career (there's nine left on his Yankee contract) but is already a lock for the Hall of Fame. For someone in that position, admitting something like this could have serious repercussions on whether he gets in at all (just ask the aforementioned Mr. McGwire, although McGwire was never a lock in the first place even without the drug scandal) — as someone on SportsCentre said this morning, "sports writers have long memories". For someone who has aspirations of entering the Hall of Fame (and what ball player doesn't?), this kind of admission takes courage.

Now, it could also be argued that once the allegations came out, A-Rod had two options:

1. Admit taking the drugs and look like a cheating douchebag, or
2. Lie about taking the drugs and look like a lying douchebag since nobody would believe him anyway

so it's not like he just called up SI out of the blue and said "Hey guess what? I did steroids!" But not only did Rodriguez do the "honourable" thing and admit wrongdoing, he did not blame his trainer or doctor or anyone else. He did not say that someone gave him this stuff without his knowledge or consent, or told him it was legal. He took responsibility himself, saying that he didn't know exactly what the stuff was (i.e. the names of the drugs), but he knew full well that it was illegal (though technically not banned by baseball at the time) and he took it anyway. He specifically said during his interview that he did not take responsibility for every substance entering his body, and that was his own fault. While I can't respect what he did, I do respect him for telling the truth, unlike so many of his fellow players.

Becks and Bucks

On Prime Time Sports the other day, McCown and Brunt were talking about soccer, and how David Beckham is currently "on loan" from the LA Galaxy to an Italian soccer team. Now there is talk that he or the Italian team will ask the Galaxy if he can stay permanently, presumably dissolving his $20 million/year contract with MLS.

So let's go over this: Becks signs a contract that makes him one of the highest paid athletes in the world, rivalling baseball players like Alex Rodriguez. This in a league where the minimum player salary is $11,000/year. Becks makes 15 times the salary of the second-highest-paid player in the league.

He played in MLS for one year. He was injured for much of the season and when he did play, he didn't play very well, or at least not head and shoulders better than everyone else. His team finished tied for last overall. Then after the season, he went to Italy and has been playing like a star again, and now he may not return to the Galaxy at all.

Brunt says that the Galaxy may actually let him go, but the thing that stunned me was him saying that even if Beckham never returns to MLS, the deal was worth it because of all the publicity they got, as well as extra tickets sold and stuff. "They sold a lotta t-shirts", Brunt says. How is the deal worth it? Sure MLS made a ton of extra money last season by signing Beckham (I'm assuming here that the extra revenue brought in last year was more than the money paid to Beckham), but what's the long term impact? There were a lot of people who bought tickets and t-shirts last year strictly because of Beckham, and I'm sure that some of them will return as MLS fans this year even if he doesn't come back, but I suspect that those that do return will be in the minority. ESPN has already cancelled their regular Thursday night soccer telecast because of declining ratings, and that was with Beckham in the league.

It's all about perception. From an outsider, like me and the vast majority of North America, it looked like once Beckham got to the US, he realized how low the level of play was compared to Europe and as soon as a European club gave him a chance to play there, he bolted. If this happens, the league will look like a joke, and the MLS people will look like idiots for giving him this immense contract that turned out to be such a colossal failure that they cancelled it after only one year.

I suspect that if Becks does not return, MLS revenues next season will return to their pre-Beckham days, meaning that other than the windfall of extra cash brought in during 2008, the long-term impact of the Beckham contract was precisely zero.

Movie Reviews: Inkheart and Hotel for Dogs

We saw a couple of movies in the last week with the boys. Last Friday we saw Inkheart, based on a very popular book series. Gail's read the first book of the series, but I knew nothing about it going in. We were a bit concerned about this one, since Ryan is pretty sensitive when it comes to movies — he doesn't like anything scary, and tends to really empathize with the characters, so if something bad happens to them, he gets pretty upset. Gail and I rented a movie called Bridge to Terabithia a little while ago to see if the boys would like it — we thought it was very good, and there were certainly parts that the boys would like, but one very sad thing happens in the film, and Ryan would have cried for a week. We won't be suggesting that movie to him anytime soon. Anyway, like I said, we were a little concerned that this one might be too scary, but they were fine.

The plot was interesting — there are people who have the ability to bring characters out of books by reading the books aloud. Unfortunately, when they bring someone out, someone from our world goes in. Brendan Fraser is one such person, but hasn't read anything aloud in nine years, after bringing characters out of a book called Inkheart and losing his wife into the book in the process. The character he brought out has been chasing him ever since, trying to get Fraser's character to read him back into the book. Gail said that a bunch of things were cut from the book or rewritten, as pretty much always happens when making a movie from a book. Since I hadn't read the book, I figure I shouldn't have been able to tell what had been changed, but there were a few instances where I could, usually because things that should be quite difficult and time-consuming happened quickly and easily - Elinor's change of heart for example, as well as convincing Fenoglio (who was very English for a guy with an Italian name living in Italy) that characters had been pulled out of his book into the real world.

ObNit: OK, this one is really pushing it. It's never revealed where Fraser's character and his daughter live, but considering they hop in the car and drive to Italy on a moment's notice, it's likely somewhere in continental Europe. (The book is German, so presumably the book's characters live in Germany.) After twelve years of living in Germany, wouldn't the father's American accent change somewhat? And why would his daughter have a British accent after living in Germany with her American father (her British mother has been gone since she was three)? I agree, in terms of plot holes, that's one pretty thin.

I thought the acting was very good, particularly Paul Bettany, who was excellent as Dustfinger (and completely unrecognizable from his Silas character from The Da Vinci Code). Fraser is no Dustin Hoffman, but he has become an actual actor, not just the doofus from George of the Jungle. Eliza Bennett (I got a kick out of the actress's name) was also very good, though she seemed older than the twelve her character is supposed to be. Andy Serkis was suitably slimy as the bad guy Capricorn, and Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren were also good in smaller roles.

For a while, whenever I heard the name Brendan Fraser, I thought of movies like Encino Man, Airheads, George of the Jungle, Blast from the Past, Dudley Do-Right (to be fair, none of which I have ever seen). I would see his name on a movie poster and immediately think "OK, there's a movie I can skip". I remember wondering if I could ever take him seriously as an actor. But after The Mummy series, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and now Inkheart, he seems to have done a pretty good job of reinventing himself as a real actor, not just a goofy guy that does physical comedy.

The other movie we saw was Hotel for Dogs, which we saw specifically because the kids wanted to see it. I had precisely zero interest in seeing this movie, but hey, when you're a dad, that's what you do. But it turned out to be a pretty decent movie. Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon (Matt's brother) are very funny as wanna-be hair-rocker foster parents, though how they would remain foster parents once any child care worker sees their apartment is beyond me. The movie did have its silly parts (which is why the kids liked it), but the poop humour was kept to a minimum, and thankfully, there wasn't a single scene where the dogs talked or winked or raised their eyebrows or otherwise had their faces digitally enhanced and anthropomorphized. I hate that. If you're want to have an animal with human characteristics in your movie, make it animated (Bolt, Finding Nemo, a zillion others).

I do wonder why more wasn't made of Bruce's ability to conjure up crazy devices for entertaining the dogs. Bernie really couldn't find foster parents to look after a sweet and caring girl and her genius brother? I also thought it was awfully nice of the unseen pet store owner to let his employees leave the store and use the van whenever they wanted. And where did the kids come up with the hundreds of dollars to buy all the required dog food? And who arranged (and paid) for the dumpster full of "doggy doo" to be picked up? Did none of the strays they found have fleas or any other condition that might require the services of a vet?

Near the end, when Bernie stood up and looked like he was going to make a speech, I was kind of hoping that he would explain some loophole in the law that got the kids off, or that he had purchased the hotel and so the dog catchers were on his property, or something like that rather than making a "Come on, everyone, just look at these adorable dogs! They're a family!" type speech, but no such luck. But overall, this was less of a kid movie and more of a family movie. Don't bother going without the kids — it ain't that good — but kids and parents alike will enjoy it. Not like Curious George, during which Gail and I both fell asleep.

I suppose I really should just shut up and enjoy movies, rather than continually pointing out flaws. But I can't.

Out go the lights

I've written a couple of times in the past about environmentalism (here) and energy conservation (here and here), and it's becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Humans have apparently used up about half of all the oil reserves on Earth. Not only are we using oil at an ever-increasing rate, which means we're going to burn through the second half (see what I did there?) much faster than the first half, but second half of the oil reserves are much harder to get to than the first. Since we've only really been using oil since the industrial revolution, this means that we might have a couple of hundred years of oil left, probably much less. If we don't find sustainable and renewable sources of energy by then, well, pardon my French, but we're pooched. And then there is the added complication of global warming and carbon emissions. There are some that say that global warming may be happening but is not caused by humans. This is certainly possible, and I don't pretend to be an expert on it, but I cannot imagine that the chemicals we're regularly dumping into the atmosphere in unbelievable amounts are having no impact.

And yet, there are still people who don't get the message, and we as a society don't seem concerned. It's February, for crying out loud, and there are still houses in my neighbourhood that have their Christmas lights on. I'm not talking about lights still being up (ours remain up until spring, when it's safe to climb on the roof to take them down), I mean actually on.

We were in Brantford on Friday, and on the way home (around 9:30pm) we drove by a garden centre on Hwy 5 that had a big illuminated sign out front that said "Closed for the season". I understand that they want to keep their business in people's minds so that in the spring, people will remember that garden centre on Hwy 5 and go there. If the sign is off all winter, people might think that it's closed permanently, or might simply not see it and therefore not register that there's a garden centre there. In that respect, it's in the business's best interest to have the sign lit.

But the garden centre is closed from roughly October until April, so it's possible that for seven months of the year, this sign is on all night every night, advertising a business that is closed. I suspect that the number of people who drive by that sign at 3:30am and think "Hey, there's a garden centre here! I'll have to come back here in the spring!" is pretty low. Perhaps I'm not giving the business owners enough credit; it could be that the sign comes on at dusk and goes off around midnight rather than staying on all night. This is certainly not unlikely. And perhaps they're using very energy-efficient lighting — also not unlikely. And maybe there's a little solar panel on top that gives some energy so they use less from the power grid. Hmmm.... possible, but probably not. Or maybe there's a big solar panel on top that provides all the energy and this sign is completely off the grid. Now we're getting into pipe dream territory.

On a somewhat-related note, the men's bathroom at work used to have a sign by the door asking people to turn the lights off when they leave if there's nobody there. For a few months, this worked — most of the time when I entered the room and it was empty, the lights were off. (There's one light that stays on all the time, but the switch controls three or four other lights. I think that one light is fine by itself, so I almost never turn the lights on anyway.) Then the sign by the door fell down and vanished, and now when I enter the room, the lights are on about half the time. People: just because the sign isn't there anymore doesn't mean you need to leave the lights on!

Ship it now, test it later

There's a question on StackOverflow entitled "What real life bad habits has programming given you?", which is quite hilarious for programmers. Answers include things like thinking 256 is a nice round number, wanting to use Ctrl-F on an actual book, or starting to count items at 0 and ending up with one less than everyone else.

This may seem unrelated, but bear with me. Shortly after Ryan was first born, I decided that children, particularly babies, were badly designed:

• babies need to eat, but don't know how right away, and frequently spit up what they've already eaten or refuse to eat. It takes years before a child can even make himself a bowl of cereal.
• babies need to sleep, but getting them to go to sleep (or stay asleep) can be challenging. When Ryan was a baby, he wouldn't go to sleep by himself; we had to walk with him until he fell asleep in our arms and then gently put him in his crib. If he wasn't sufficiently asleep (read: unconscious), he'd wake up and you'd have to start all over. Sometimes we'd have to walk with him for 45 minutes before we could go back to sleep ourselves.
• babies can't roll over for a few months after they're born, can't crawl until six months, and can't walk for the better part of a year. Baby deer are walking within minutes of birth.
• children are self-centred. They have tantrums when things don't go the way they want, even if the circumstances are beyond anyone's control, or if getting their way would inconvenience or even hurt others. Older kids have been known to give their parents attitude (and I'm one of the lucky parents whose children have reached that stage), and teenagers sometimes take "attitude" to a whole new level.
• some babies in the animal kingdom are on their own from the moment they are born. Others are under the care of their parents for a few years. Human children frequently live with their parents for twenty years (sometimes more), or about 25% of the average human lifespan.

Despite these challenges, parents continue to love and nurture their children, so obviously parents are generally better designed than children. However, children turn into parents without having been "re-designed", so it occurs to me that the real problem is not with design, which means it must be implementation. Obviously babies are born before they're really ready — before all the bugs have been worked out, before things have been streamlined and optimized.

The real problem is that babies are shipped while still in early beta.

Games people play

I read an article on BoingBoing today called "The case against Candy Land". The author writes (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) about how video games are far more educational for kids than some classic board games like Candy Land, where whether you win or lose depends entirely on the random arrangement of the cards, and not on any skill on the part of the player. If I play chess with my six-year-old, I can almost guarantee that I will beat him every time, because I have some skill at the game — very limited skill, admittedly, but more than him, which is all that matters. If we play Candy Land, however, he is just as likely to win as I am, since no skill is necessary. You don't even have to know how to count. In particular, there are no decisions to be made.

I have noticed this with my kids' games as they get older. The older the kids at which the game is targetted, the more decisions they need to make to be good at the game. As a kid, my sister and I played a card game called "war". You shuffled the deck, then dealt out half the deck to each player. Each player turned over a card and whoever had the higher card won both cards. When you run out of cards, you take the cards you've won, shuffle them up, and keep going. If you both put down the same card, that's a war. Each player deals out three cards face down, then turns one over, and the same rules apply. First one out of cards loses. It didn't take long before I got completely bored with this game because even as a kid I realized that nothing I did mattered. There were no decisions to be made. Other than the speed at which I could deal the cards out or turn them over, there was no "getting good" at war. Candy Land is the same, as is snakes and ladders.

A game like Sorry or Trouble, or a similar game we like called Aggravation, also involves counting, but some decision-making as well. When you roll a one, do you bring out a new piece, or move an existing piece one space? If you have more than one piece out, which one do you move on any given turn? If you have the chance to either take someone out ("Sorry!") or move one of your pieces into your safe area, which do you do? I really noticed the difference when playing snakes and ladders one day with Gail and Nicky. The phone rang and Gail went to answer it, asking me to play for her. I did and after three or four turns, she returned. It had never really occurred to me before, but that's when I realized that the outcome of the game was going to be exactly the same whether I played her pieces or she did.

Ryan is starting to figure this out. There are some games, like snakes and ladders, that he used to like but doesn't like so much anymore. I'm sure if I asked him, he couldn't say specifically why; he'd just say that it's a game for younger kids and he wants to play older kids games. I'm sure that the real reason is that he realizes at some level that what he does has no effect on the outcome of the game. When playing snakes and ladders once, I told Ryan that I could write a computer program to play this game and it would be just as good as any human player. I think he was impressed by that, but someday he'll realize that it's really not that impressive. It's not that I can do it because I'm a great programmer — I couldn't write a similar program for Monopoly, for example — but because it's purely an algorithm with no decisions. Pick a random number from 1 to 6, move that many squares, go up a ladder if you're at the bottom and down a snake if you're at the top, and repeat until you get to the top.

As you get older, you get into games where more decisions are necessary, from Uno to checkers to Monopoly to backgammon to the game where all you do is make decisions, chess. In fact if you get to a point in a chess game where you don't have a decision to make about what to do, you may be in check and are very likely in deep trouble.

Of course, this doesn't mean that games such as Candy Land serve no purpose. They teach things like playing nicely with others, taking turns, and how to win and lose graciously. But if you're over the age of 6 and looking for a challenging game, Candy Land may not be the one for you.

The Rock needs a Brian

A couple of years ago, the Toronto Raptors hired Bryan Colangelo as their new president and general manager. Colangelo was a successful GM in Phoenix, and is widely respected throughout the league. He replaced Rob Babcock, a rookie GM who did a lousy job with the Raptors and made them into a laughing stock. Hiring Colangelo was seen as a very important move for the Raptors, showing that they were willing to spend the money to hire the best person to rebuild the team, regardless of how much it cost.

This past month, the Leafs hired Brian Burke as their new president and general manager. Burke was a successful GM in Anaheim, and is widely respected throughout the league. Ignoring Cliff Fletcher's brief stint as interim GM, Burke replaced John Ferguson, Jr., a rookie GM who did a lousy job with the Leafs and made them into a laughing stock. Hiring Burke was a seen as a very important move for the Leafs, showing that they were willing to spend the money to hire the best person to rebuild the team, regardless of how much it cost. (It also showed that they were willing to give Burke complete control over the hockey operations, something that Ferguson did not have.)

The Toronto Rock currently have Mike Kloepfer as general manager. This is his first such job in the NLL (i.e. he was a rookie GM when hired), and he has done a lousy job with the Rock, turning them into a laughing stock. Superstar Colin Doyle was traded away because he didn't get along with rookie coach Glenn Clark — this before Clark had ever coached an NLL game. In return, the Rock got Ryan Benesch, who went on to be named Rookie of the Year in 2007. But Benesch was inexplicably benched for the last two games of 2008 and the first two games of 2009, and then traded to Edmonton for draft picks. Once in Edmonton, Benesch admitted that he had also had disagreements with Clark, and so he was also shipped off. The inescapable conclusion: "Disagree with Coach Clark, and you are outta here. We got rid of Doyle and Benesch for doing it, so don't think your job is safe, regardless of how good you are." The Rock are in trouble if Luke Wiles or Lewis Ratcliff (or, God forbid, Bob Watson) have issues with Clark. I wonder if Rock management has considered the possibility that if both Doyle and Benesch had issues with Clark, maybe it's Clark who should have been fired?

See a pattern here? In all three cases, a rookie GM took over and screwed up the team. In two of those cases, he was then fired and replaced with someone who is successful and respected. And the guy's name was Br[i|y]an. We can only hope that the Rock will follow the same pattern (even though they're not owned by MLSE like the other two). So who's the Rock's Br[i|y]an?

The best GMs in the league right now would have to be Darris Kilgour and Marty O'Neill. Darris (who's a helluva coach as well) is likely a Bandit for life, and I can't imagine the Rock being able to lure him away from Buffalo, so count him out. Marty O'Neill has been named GM of the year for two straight years. He's the original GM of the Minnesota Swarm, and they have improved every year. It's likely that O'Neill won't want to leave Minnesota while the Swarm are still improving, so until they've peaked he's not likely going anywhere. Now, it's possible that having my vote to win the west this year is not what O'Neill would consider to be the aforementioned peak, so he is probably out until at least the end of this season.

Would the Rock follow their fellow Toronto teams and grab a name from the past (Cliff Fletcher, Don Matthews, Cito Gaston)? There are three former Rock GMs currently in the NLL: Ed Comeau in New York, Johnny Mouradian in San Jose, and Terry Sanderson, who's an assistant coach in Calgary. It's unlikely they'd go back to Sanderson (who'd immediately trade for Josh again) since they only fired him two seasons ago and replaced him with the current guy. Comeau was never really given a chance — after only six games, he was fired and replaced with Sanderson. Mouradian is the only real possibility here, since he is the only one who wasn't fired; he left to become the San Jose GM and coach. He's since been named GM of the year and inducted into the NLL Hall of Fame.

Other possibilities:

• there is a Brian that has experience in the NLL — Brian Silcott. He's never been a GM, but he has been an NLL and MLL player and MLL head coach, and he is the VP of the Portland LumberJax.
• Brian's brother Kurt Silcott was the GM of the both the Buffalo Bandits and the Calgary Roughnecks. He's currently employed by the Knighthawks, though not as their GM.
• Jamie Batley was GM and head coach of the Chicago Shamrox, and has also been the coach of the Colorado Mammoth.
• Chris Hall was the head coach of the Calgary Roughnecks for several years, though he's never been a GM.

I know! I have the solution. It's foolproof. Hire Whoopi Goldberg and have her channel the spirit of the late Les Bartley. She'd have to change her name to Brian first.

Update: Less than four hours after I posted this, the Rock have fired Glenn Clark and hired Jamie Batley as head coach. No mention of replacing the GM, and no mention of what's happening to assistant coach Jim Veltman.

The planet's really bad now because of the Dark Side

For any Star Wars fans out there, like me, this video really made me laugh. It's a video of someone who hasn't seen Star Wars ("I've seen bits of it") telling the story of Star Wars. Her retelling of it is very funny, but the animation is priceless.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Another stupid trade

The Rock made another stupid trade today. 2006 2007 Rookie of the Year Ryan Benesch, who the Rock received in the Colin Doyle trade, and solid defender Derek Suddons were sent to the Edmonton Rush for a couple of draft picks. Benesch was benched for the last two games of last season and the first two of this season, but during the off-season, Rock GM Mike Kloepfer was quoted as saying that there was no problem with Benesch, and he was an important part of the Rock's future. Guess not.

I don't understand this move at all. First off, Benesch had a great rookie year (did I mention he was Rookie of the Year?) and his numbers did drop last year, but it's not like they fell off substantially. He was still the third leading scorer on the team. Good defenders are never flashy and don't put up big numbers, but Suddons was one of the better defenders on the team. And yet all the Rock get in return are two draft picks? Granted, next year's draft is said to be one of the strongest ever, but still, you never know what you're going to get with draft picks. And now, what do the Rock have to show for getting rid of Colin Doyle (who, incidentally was recently ranked number one on NLLInsider.com's top 50 players in the NLL)? Chad Thompson, Cam Woods (traded for Kevin Fines) and a few draft picks. Thompson is decent and Woods is a very good defender, but I'd take Doyle over them any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I didn't have a problem with the Wilson/Wiles/Hoar trade this past off-season, but after the Doyle/Benesch one, this one ranks right up there with the dumbest trades in Rock history.

Movie Review: Eagle Eye

We watched Eagle Eye the other night. I was looking forward to it since it looked like a pretty good action flick and from an action point of view it certainly fit the bill. From a plausibility standpoint, however, it was just way the hell out there. I understand about suspension of disbelief and all that, but holy crap.

Without giving away too much, some of the things the lady on the phone is able to do are just way beyond belief. She can control every cell phone and security camera in the country, not to mention street lights, construction cranes, subways, and even the demo TVs at Circuit City. At one point Jerry (Shia) turned his phone off, and within seconds, the phone of the guy sitting next to him on the train started to ring. To make that work, she'd have to:

• have a high-quality camera in the train car
• use it to take a picture of the guy's face
• use facial recognition software to figure out who the guy is, with an accuracy of one person out of 350 million
• find that person's cell phone number

Or maybe she could analyze the GPS coordinates of every cell phone in that area and figure out which one was physically closest to Jerry's. Which is off. On a moving train.

In another scene, she kills someone by somehow causing a power line to break. The broken wire falls and fries the guy. Even with complete control over the power grid, how could she cause a power line to break? And assuming she could do that, how could she do it in such a way that she knew that it would fall and hit the guy, who happened to be running at the time? Later she has Jerry and Rachel rob an armored car for a briefcase with a time-release lock that they risk their lives several times to try and protect. And when you think about where they are when it opens and what's in it, you realize that there were a thousand simpler ways to do it, all of which are less likely to fail that the one she chose.

One of the reasons she needed Jerry in the first place (to impersonate his twin brother) is moot, since the FBI would have revoked all of his security codes once he died. This part did make me wonder, however, if the real-life military (or CIA or FBI or whatever) would give top secret clearance to someone who had an identical twin, just for this reason. Their fingerprints and retinal scans would differ, but their DNA would be identical. Don't know about voice prints or even how accurate voice print identification is.

Anyway, LaBeouf was pretty good, though his character seemed unnecessarily abrasive at times. If someone put $750,000 in my bank account and filled my apartment with stolen military stuff and then I was arrested because of it, I might decide that being a dick to the FBI agent who's interrogating me would be a bad idea.

Having said all that, I have to say I did enjoy it. There were lots of car chases and explosions and overall, it was fun, if silly.

On a side note, I cannot watch a Shia LaBeouf movie without thinking he looks like Wil Wheaton:

Shia LaBeouf	Wil Wheaton

Geek humour

How cool is it that my StackOverflow reputation is exactly 4k? Answer: very cool.

The Harry Potter-a-thon

On New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, Gail and the boys and I had a Harry Potter marathon. We watched all five movies back to back, and Gail had fun making Harry Potter-themed snacks. We're all big fans of the Harry Potter series, but as with Star Wars, when you see a movie enough times and get to know the characters well enough, you start to notice little things that don't make sense. I have fun coming up with these things. These are not a knock on the movies — I know that they are fantasy and that they don't need to be 100% realistic to be enjoyable, in fact, any fantasy movie that's 100% realistic isn't really fantasy, now is it?

Philosopher's Stone

• Hagrid says about Gringotts "ain't no place safer! Not one! 'cept perhaps Hogwarts." Rrrrright. Hogwarts is guarding possibly the most important and valuable object in the wizarding world, and three eleven-year-olds — including one who's only known about the wizarding world for less than a year — are able to get by the traps. Not to mention the fact that when Harry finally does arrive at the end, Quirrell is already there, which means that he got by all the traps too — and Harry had help, while Quirrel did it by himself. Hey, bang-up job on those traps, Hogwarts professors.
• Nicolas Flamel has had the stone, presumably in Gringotts, for well over 600 years. Why did they decide to move it to Hogwarts? Ron makes a good point about keeping a creature like Fluffy in a school. Surely they suspected that Voldemort might try to steal the Stone, so why bring it to Hogwarts and put the students in danger?
• To get into the room where Fluffy is guarding the trap door, Hermione performs a simple "alohomora" spell. Shouldn't the teachers have magically locked that door so that simple spells wouldn't open it?
• Similarly, if the restricted section of the library is truly restricted, surely the gate should be magically locked.
• When Voldemort tells Quirrell to kill Harry, why does he attempt to choke him? Why not just use avada kedavra? And why is he able to touch Harry's throat, but turns to dust when Harry touches him? Quirrell says he tried to kill Harry a number of times previously as well — why use a complicated curse to make Harry's broom fly all over the place and not just use the killing curse? He had plenty of opportunities...

Chamber of Secrets

• If Hagrid was at Hogwarts when the Chamber was opened fifty years ago, that would make him between sixty-one and sixty-seven years old at the time of this film. Does Hagrid look that old to you?
• On a similar note, Professor Dumbledore had a fairly long grey beard in the fifty-year-old flashbacks. My beard has a fair bit of grey in it, and if I hadn't shaved in ten years, it could be that long, so it's possible that Dumbledore is as young as forty in the flashback, but likely older. That makes him at least ninety now.
• Gilderoy Lockhart is a fraud, and yet he takes a number of opportunities to perform spells in front of people, with disastrous results. If I were pretending to be awesome when I really wasn't, I'd try to avoid performing in front of people, lest my inadequacies be publicly displayed. Why would he choose to try to fix Harry's broken arm? Why would he choose to start the dueling club when he knows he can't fight? For that matter, why would he take this teaching job in the first place?
• Speaking of the dueling club, Snape says "perhaps it would be a good idea to teach them how to block unfriendly spells", to which Lockhart answers "An excellent suggestion!" and then doesn't do it. He picks two students and basically says "go!" without any advice on what to do.
• Why do some "expelliarmus" charms flick the victim's wand away harmlessly (Lupin on Snape) while others (Snape on Lockhart, Harry on Snape) knock the victim twenty feet back?
• When trying to stop the flying car, Ron pulls out his wand and taps the steering wheel saying "Stop! Stop! Stop!". He's been around magic all his life — does he really think this will work? I know it's a plot device to have him break his wand, but it could have been done better.
• Is "eat slugs!" really a spell, or did Ron just say that out loud and then do a non-vocal spell, something they don't learn until sixth year?

Prisoner of Azkaban

• Fred and George said they took the Maurauder's Map from Filch's office during their first year, which means that they've had it since before Ron arrived at Hogwarts. During that time, if they had looked up the Gryffindor dormatories, they'd have seen the name "Peter Pettigrew" on the map because Scabbers lived there. Either they never looked up the Gryffindor dorms in that time (which seems unlikely), or they never thought it weird that the name of a person who they didn't know kept showing up in the Gryffindor dorms.
• Sirius got past the dementors and into Hogwarts, presumably, because he was an animagus and turned into a dog. Are dementors really fooled by animagi? The Maurauder's Map isn't. Wouldn't this mean that any animagus sent to Azkaban could simply transform and walk out?
• Hermione says something like "Bad things happen to wizards who mess with time". If that's the case, why would a professor give a time-turner to a thirteen year old witch just so that she could take extra classes? Doesn't this seem dangerous?

Goblet of Fire

• Already done.

Order of the Phoenix

I've only seen this movie two or three times, so I don't really have any comments about this one. One thing I do want to mention is that the character of Luna Lovegood was perfectly cast. She is exactly how I pictured her when reading the books, seemingly kind of ditzy, but sweet and strangely wise. She's got the right dreamy sort of look and voice.

Updated NLL predictions

Since I posted my predictions of the NLL East and West divisions, there have been a few changes in the league. The team rosters have been released, a number of players have announced that they will not play in 2009, but most importantly the Chicago Shamrox have ceased to exist, and their players scattered to the four winds in the umpteenth NLL dispersal draft. Here are my updates to my previous comments:

East

Toronto

All the rumours I've read about Craig Conn say that he'll be ready for action mid-January, so me might miss the first two or maybe three games. If he's fully recovered and as good as he can be, he's a big addition for the Rock. The Rock also picked up Bill McGlone from Chicago, and I know nothing about him. He had 40 points in 16 games in 2007, which is hardly MVP-worthy but pretty decent, though his production dropped by 50% in 2008. Goaltending is still a concern. I watched the first game of the season, and the Rock's offense looked pretty solid, even without Conn.

Buffalo

They've lost Brett Bucktooth, possibly for the year, and I forgot that they will now have Sean Greenhalgh, who missed all of last year.

Rochester

So much for "not many changes". Grant is still gone, but so now is Scott Evans, and the Gaits reunite once again as Gary's twin brother Paul is the new head coach. As far as I know, Paul has zero pro lacrosse coaching experience, so that will be interesting.

Philadelphia

Athan Iannucci had surgery in the off-season, and from what I heard, was supposed to be out for a couple of games at most. Now there are rumours that he should be back mid-season, and I've read at least once that he may be out for the entire season. Losing the reigning scoring champ and league MVP is a pretty big blow.

Also Peter Jacobs retired.

Boston

They were going to be a pretty decent expansion team anyway, and now adding former Goalie of the Year Anthony Cosmo makes them even better. Jake Bergey chose to sit out the year rather than play with someone other than the Wings. I think this is odd, considering the Wings have twice left Bergey unprotected in expansion drafts, and he was chosen by Boston each time. The first time he was traded back to the Wings, this time he decides to sit out. Perhaps the Boston GM shoud have given Bergey a phone call before picking him?

Chicago

Ummm, gone.

Prediction

Losing Iannucci is major, so Philly is no longer my pick to win the division. I'm a little more optimistic on Toronto and a little less on Rochester. Chicago was last anyway, so that doesn't really affect anything. Boston got better, but I don't think they improved enough to put them into the playoffs. End result:

1. Buffalo
2. Philadelphia
3. New York
4. Toronto
5. Rochester
6. Boston

West

Calgary

One thing I missed that's different about 2009 for the Roughies is the return of captain Tracey Kelusky, who missed half of last season. Shawn Cable is not on the roster, but he only played 7 games last year (for 5 points), so that's not much of a loss points-wise. Avery was released, so it's only Campbell and King in goal.

San Jose

Much-hyped rookie Paul Rabil has been signed, so add one to the list of potential offensive stars on the Stealth.

Portland

The only change here is that Dallas Eliuk has now officially retired. No big surprise, and he wasn't going to be playing anyway.

Prediction

No changes.

The NLL season is on...

...and the Rock are tied for first overall! And that's after the game! A few thoughts about the game:

• Great that we could watch it for free through nll.com!
• The video quality wasn't any worse than the $7 B2 games from last year, I didn't think. Not bad in a small window, but not really watchable full-screen for any length of time.
• Nice to see the Rock offense spread around — hat-tricks by Manning, Biernes, Wiles, and Ratcliffe. McGlone's goal was very nice, and Manning's seeing-eye goal to win it was nice too. Crosbie with 6 assists, Ratcliffe with 5, Wiles with 4.
• No Craig Conn. No big surprise.
• More of a surprise: no Ryan Benesch. He was benched at the end of last year, but Mike Kloepfer said during the off-season that there's no problem with Benesch and that he's a big part of the Rock's future. Then he doesn't play the opener. An upcoming trade, perhaps?