Book review – Emergency

Posted on 2009/04/12 by richardykuo

So, I finally managed to tear through another book.  The one is called "Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life", and it's written by Neil Strauss.

The book chronicles one author's quest to be able to survive in case the system breaks down.  Survivalists like to say … we are all only three days away from total chaos, and that's the three days you can survive without water, not be incredibly hungry, etc.  The scary thing is … it may not be the way most of us are used to looking at the world, but it's true.

Some helpful acronyms to know if you're speaking survivalist lingo, by the way:

  • WTSHTF (When The Shit Hits The Fan)
  • EOTWAWKI (End Of The World As We Know It)
  • BOB, BOV, BOL (Bug Out Bag, Vehicle, Location)

Warren Buffett has often been quoted as saying that your lot in life has a lot to do with timing and placement … where and when, in other words.  He's been famously quoted as saying something to effect of "Bill Gates may be a billionaire today, but if he had been born two centuries ago, he probably would have been eaten by a bear".

Personally, this resonates with me.  Most of us would probably be eaten by a bear.  It wasn't that long ago that all people could worry about was how to keep a roof over their heads and where the next meal would come from.  Society has built up such a tremendous amount of infrastructure around us that we end up thinking and worrying about completely different problems that the ones our ancestors were designed to face.  It's amazing, but also a little unsettling.

The chapters in the book are vanishingly small and plentiful … many running at the length of just a small anecdote of two to three pages.  It's not wrong, but perhaps a bit different.  I think the design is meant to capture some of the random stories and short thoughts that chronicle his experience.

The novel takes a while to get going.  I found myself already halfway way through the book and Neil was still recounting his experiences with trying to get an second citizenship in another country.  It's incredibly expensive to do if you don't just move there … tiny countries basically sell citizenship in return for investment or job creation.  The US doesn't make it easy on you either … in the aftermath of 9/11, the government has made it very difficult to keep international bank accounts and they want to keep an eye on everything you do just so they can try to gank your tax dollars even after you stop being a citizen.

While he waits for the citizenship to go through, however, the pace picks up.  The author starts taking gun lessons, wilderness survival training, knife fighting classes, and edible plant walks.  While the novelization of the details is light, the details are fun and interesting every time you do get them.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on his training at Gunsite.  The man who recommends the training program to Neil tells him "People with guns are dangerous.  Gunsite graduates are deadly."

Neil flys out there … and btw, it's still quite easy to check a weapon on a plane.  The instructor tells them at the beginning of the class "You don't rise to the occasion.  You default to your level of training.  When the stress hits, you will only be half as good as your best day of recent training."  I'm sure this applies to many situations, not just shooting!  People learn by doing!

He picks up some interesting tidbits.  Shooting for the head with a pistol is risky because the skull is excellent protection, meaning a bullet can simply glance off.  If you have a clear shot, you go for the eye.  If you are preparing to go into a gunfight, you bring a shotgun, not a pistol.  Pistols are portable self defense, but low damage weaponry.  Colonel Cooper recommeneded a 12-gauge shotgun with an 18.5 inch barrel.

The class concludes with the following advice.  "Be safe, and be good to everyone you meet … but always have a plan to kill them."  Funny guys.

In CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) class, they start off with the following.

"If there's a big disaster, you cannot expect assistance for how many days?

"Three to five days."

"So who's going to get you when there's an emergency?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody is coming to your aid in a disaster.  You have to be independent."

In retrospect, what happened during Katrina wasn't surprising.  Federal and local rescue planners already know it will take forever to get to survivors.  The indignance of the rest of the country is because we're ignorant.  Apparently, in the event of a major earthquake, it could take as long as 30 days to restore water everywhere.  The average person needs a gallon of water per day to survive.  Drink from the water heater if you have a house.

On the edible plant walks in California, Neil asks what the parsley like plant is that he keeps seeing all over the place.  One student quips "California parsley surprise".  The lead explains more seirously.  "Hemlock. Dead in 30 minutes."  Guess I'm not going to eat any plants out here.  In fact, the walk ends up being peppered with interesting trivia about how eating so and so plant will kill you in such a way (usually not a pleasant way).

The knife instructor's slogan is "Cogito ergo armatum sum."  I think, therefore I am armed.  In addition to forging, sharpening, and the usual lessons on the types of swings and strikes, perhaps the most brutal part of the book is when the knife instructor teaches him how to slaughter, gut and skin a goat for food.  Although it's just words on a page, the description of the act as he cuts the goat's throat in front of the instructor made my queasy.  I'm pretty sure that if I did this in front of a friend, they would think differently of me.  Neil has the same thought as his girlfriend waits in the car.  But there wasn't a time long ago that everyone had to do this…and it was normal, because it was part of staying alive.  How can our moral standards be so different today?  It can't be possible for people to be bad because they slaughter a goat, or else everyone centuries ago would have been a bad person.

All in all, I found the book to be a rather light read, but still very informative.  Many of the instructors and other characters he meets are surprisingly quotable.   It would have been nice to get more in depth coverage of each of the topics in the book, but I suppose that wasn't really the point.

In the end, I think what you learn from this book, aside from the useful trivia, is that survivalism and training, isn't, as a practical matter, that useful of a skill to pick up right now.  On the list of things people die from, disasters are really, really low on the list.  But if the nagging sense that you wouldn't know what to do when a crisis hits is bothering you … if knowing you're ready for anything makes you walk around with a little more confidence and a little less fear …than these folks aren't as crazy as they sound.  After all, there's a lot of mental security built in when you're at the top of the food chain.

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Go-kart racing

Posted on 2009/03/15 by richardykuo

Last Wednesday, some folks from my team went to a self funded offsite.  The activity?  Go-kart racing.

As I drove up to the location, I noted that the building was a large warehouse like affair.  Indoors?  Interesting.

As we walked in, it was obvious that there were a few regulars on the track already … but otherwise, fairly empty.  Not unexpected given the time of day.

I filled out the requisite forms, including the standard "If you die, it's not our fault" stuff.  The cashier girl handed me a quarter for the locker and a complimentary head sock.  Honestly, I didn't know what a head sock was, but I figured it out pretty quickly from looking at it.  It's a balaclava … aka a ski mask.  Presumably this is to keep your head from catching something from the helmets.  I was actually pretty happy about getting the balaclava, because I've been meaning to get one for whenever I go skiing again.

We hopped into some jumpsuits, watched a safety video, and got to racing. 10 min of practice, followed by 5 min of qualifying and 15 min of real racing.

Getting strapped in was pretty easy.  They also make you wear a life preserver like neck brace while you drive.  When you get into the kart, the smell of exhaust is quite strong.

Racing the go-karts is a lot of work.  The kart is shaking all around you, and it takes quite a bit of effort to fight the steering.  This wouldn't be so bad, but given the races are 15 minutes, that's definitely enough to make it a workout.  However, I wasn't that tired at the end of the race, so I'm guessing this gets easier fairly quickly.

At first, I was drifting / skidding around corner.  I found this easier to do, but I knew in the back of my head this was probably slowing me down.  So I started experimenting with slowing down and going into turns with full traction.  I never really got the consistent hang of it, but did get a few good lap times here and there as a result.

In the middle of the race, I felt a sharp rap against my side, as if I had run through a branch of a tree.  There were no obstacles on the track (or trees), so I'm fairly certain one of the flag wavers in the middle of the track let his flag hang down when I was driving by.  Consequently, I have a huge bruise on the side of my chest right under my armpit that is healing right now.

Of course, my curiousity was piqued after the race, so I learned some basic racing technique later from a friend.  The idea is to:

1. Accelerate as much as possible thru straightaways.

2. Brake as much as possible as late as possible so that you are at the correct speed going into the turn.

3. Stay off the gas around the turn, and accelerate as you are come out of the turn.

Drifting/losing traction is usually bad for speed, so the idea is to do the above three things without slipping or skidding.  On most sharp turns, you tend to want to take an outside in type of turn, but the line you should be following around the track is shown to you already before you race, so you don't really need to try and figure this out yourself in this case.

Interestingly, when I came out of the building and drove off in my actual car, I had this urge to drive very quickly.  My brain was thinking "Why isn't the car slipping a little?" and "Why am I not gunning the accelerator?"  Turning the wheel also felt abnormally effortless due to the return of power steering.  I compensated quickly, so no harm done. =)

Not surprisingly, at the end of the day my arms felt pretty wobbly.  The next day, my left arm felt sore and difficult to extend … but not my right.  That must be because we were constantly turning left during the race. 

Anyway, while I found go-karting somewhat interesting, I can't say I'm planning on making this a regular hobby.  At least I got a free balaclava out of it … a fact which I proudly demonstrated to my friends later that evening.  It's quite a menacing clothing item!

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Fruity pebbles are for kids. Try miracle berries!

Posted on 2009/03/01 by richardykuo

In non tech related matters, I got a chance last week to try a quirky little food that I've had my eye on for years.

The miracle fruit (see the Wikipedia page) was discovered (by Europeans, god bless our Euro-centric culture) in 1725 when an explorer noticed native Africans chewing the berry before meals.  In a nutshell, when the fruit is chewed, one's sense of taste is altered such that sour foods taste sweet!

Pretty crazy, huh?  In fact, it represent such a huge change in one's sense that most people start questioning whether or not it's legal when they hear what it does. (The answer is yes, of course, it is legal.)

Reading the New York Times article on flavor-tripping parties certainly did nothing to lessen my curiosity.  And, as an aside, the name "flavor tripping" certainly does nothing to lessen the questionability of the activity.  So when a friend casually mentioned hearing about miracle fruit, my ears perked up and we decideed to make a little event of it.

The berries themselves don't keep very long … apparently, you have to eat them within a couple of days of being picked.  Sorry, but I don't schedule my activities around fruit.  So instead, we opted to try a set of packaged tablets from ThinkGeek.

The day of, we made a field trip to the local Safeway and wandered through the aisles grabbing anything that looked tasty or tart.  The cashier gave us an odd glance or two as we checked out single fruits of several different types, but nothing we couldn't handle.

The tablets appear to be manufactured here in the States but are courtesy of some "pan-biotic" Taiwanese company.  We put 911 on speed dial just in case.

The tablet itself must be taken by dissolving it all over your tongue.  Resist the temptation to wash it down like medication … the effect is produced by binding the active compound of the berries to your taste buds, so just suck on the tablet like candy.  To me, the tablet tasted chalky, sort of like a slightly sweet vitamin, but not acidic at all.  You should be through it in a couple of minutes.

Then the fun begins.

Lemons – Sweet!

Limes – Also sweet.

Oranges – Awesome.  Kind of like an orange without the rind.

Tabasco sauce – tasty sweet at first! The heat hits you slightly afterwards.

Sriracha hot sauce – No difference.  Just spicy.

Chocolate – tastes the same.

Chocolate pudding – not much different.  But I do love me some pudding.

Tomatos – Awesomely sweet.  You know that whole debate about whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable?  Officially a fruit with miracle berries.

Strawberries – Fantastic!

Vodka – Still strong, but goes down smoother.

Guinness – Much less bitter, even slightly sweet.

Pickles – Sweet and crunchy.

Dried fruit – No difference.  Except dried apples tasted kind of bland.  Honestly, tho … could've just been the apples.

Peppered beef jerky – very slightly sweeter.  No effect on the peppery taste.

Olives – no change.

Jamaican ginger ale – No difference.

Towards the end of our flavor trip, we ate another tomato and realized the effect was wearing off.  That was about 40 minutes in.  We also slowly came to the realization that we were surrounded by half eaten snacks and various fruits, all of which needed cleaning up.

I think it's worth trying a range of foods just to see for yourself, even if you kind of know they aren't going to work.  Also, it should be pretty obvious from the above, but drinking alcohol is a lot easier after eating a miracle berry … so be sure to pace yourself.  Then again, maybe getting a little tipsy isn't so bad.

Overall, I would sum it up as definitely worth trying, and a lot of fun all around.  I'm curious to see what an overnight shipment of a berry or two will do, but I'm sure we'll get to that at some point.  Do it with friends … I think a party tasting is an excellent idea and is now definitely in the cards.

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I bought another computer – Dell Inspiron Mini 9

Posted on 2009/03/01 by richardykuo

I really don't need another one, but at these prices, it sort of made sense.

Since TV is sort of a background activity for me, it's nice to be able to surf the web or look up things that pop into my head while I watch the tube.  It's also not bad to have an available computer sitting around in the living room when guests come over … after all, god forbid someone should visit and not be able to check their e-mail, update their Facebook status, or look random things up on the Internet. 

I still have my ThinkPad X300 (which by the way, is ranking pretty low on my list of satisfactory computer purchases).  The problem with using that out in the living room is that A. I have to actually be here and B. It's a pain to unhook all the cables and reattach them just so that I can use the laptop in a different room.  And, really, all I want is something I can leave out in the living room and surf the web on.

For 200 bucks, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 much fits the bill.  It would have been more like 185, but CA seems to see fit to charge tax and some sort of bogus recycling fee.

So now it's sitting out on the living room couch.  The speed is completely satisfactory … the only thing this little computer can't handle is YouTube HD video.  Google Docs and Apps work great.  1024×600 is just enough to surf the web without wanting to claw my eyes out.

My main complaints with the Mini, if I have to list them, are the following.

One, the keyboard is unusually tiny and has a strange layout. Now, I'm used to tiny keyboards, and I can get used to this one, but the size of this thing is definitely pushing it.  The apostrophe key, in particular, is on the bottom of the keyboard instead of next to the Enter key, which is causing me to accidentally hit Enter a LOT.

The touchpad also has a bad habit of activating when my palm touches it while I'm typing.  This leads to all sorts of strange things happening when I type into the browser as the cursor jumps to odd places.

That's pretty much all of the legitimate complaints I can think of.  Disk space and RAM are barely there, but since I'm only using it to surf the web, it's more than sufficient.  And, like I said, the Mini 9 browses the web quite speedily.  I could remedy that by buying a bigger Mini, but that would cost literally twice as much.  I'll live.

Ubuntu is a pretty amazing OS for being free.  I built my entire home network around it using VM's just to re-familiarize myself with Linux, and, while the whole process was and still is quite painful, it manages to get the job done.  If you can ignore everything else about the OS and just surf the web, it works even for normal people.

Honestly, I always wondered why it took so long to commoditize computer hardware to these levels.  I've always found it frustrating to see computer power rise and rise and just see the extra power get sucked up by a bloated operating system and applications.  Palm OS still has some of the most productive apps I've ever used and it runs on a 33 MHz processor.  Meanwhile, my 200 MHz Windows Mobile phone takes 5 seconds to show me a freaking menu.  Ridiculous.

In short, a lot of computing usability advances have nothing to do with the power of the available platform and everything to do with how we make use of the existing power … battery life, human interfaces, and simple cost, cost, cost being among them.  When the industry can put a full fledged computer into anyone's hands for 200 bucks … well, thank god something is going right in this country.

I have high hopes that the widespread availbility of Internet access and computing is going to cause a marked increase in general intelligence amongst the populace.  Although I happen to think that giving away computers ala the OLPC effort is a little silly.  A Mini running Ubuntu completely outclasses anything the OLPC can do, runs an open OS and uses standard hardware, and it's available to anyone.  I enjoy it when the market begins solving some of these problems for us.

Unfortunately, lower costs aren't good thing for computer manufacturers.   Commoditization is the inevitable killer of companies and a sure sign that an industry is going "over the hill", if you look at industry lifecycles.

Anyway, if you're looking for a secondary PC to throw around the house, the Mini 9 is a good fit.  And hey, if you're on a tight budget, it's about the cheapest primary PC you can get out there right now too.

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Observations on skiing

Posted on 2009/02/15 by richardykuo

I'm writing this from Squaw Valley in Tahoe, where there's a bit of a snowstorm going.

I can basically count the number of times that I've gone skiing on one hand.  The first was a week long ski trip in high school.  The second was a single day my junior year of college where I visited a friend in Vermont.  The third was last year here in Tahoe for a weekend (ski'd one day).  And the fourth was earlier this week via a company/employee funded offsite (another one day).

In general, I'm not too bad at skiing, having done sufficient amounts of rollerblading in the past to have some sense of balance on my feet.  I did a black on my last day of skiing in high school without falling (apparently a banner day for me since I remember that).  On these single day trips, since then, I've hovered between blue and black difficulties ever since.

As with any new physical activity, I find myself barely able to move after the first round of exertion. All the straining with my legs to keep my balance adds up after the first day.  For this reason, I opted not to go for a second day earlier this week.  However, yesterday I ski'd for about 2/3'rds of the day and I was tired at the end, but not completely wrecked like before.  Today I actually feel pretty good, so presumably I'm adapting quickly.  I don't have any plans to go again this season, however, so that physical improvement may be for naught.

A list of random thoughts over the past week or so.

  1. What's the difference between these 50 dollar goggles and these 100 dollar goggles?
  2. This thermal underwear is really comfy!
  3. God, I wish I had a face mask.
  4. God, I wish I had a face mask.  Wait, why didn't I buy one last week when I thought the same thing?
  5. I'm going to wish I had a face mask next year, aren't I?
  6. These ski house rentals are totally low tech (no internet). Thank god for 3G phone tethering.
  7. Here's the fairly steep and very powdery place where I lost my ski in the snow for half an hour last week.  I deem the potential pain of that experience to be more than the potential pain of just zooming straight down the slope. GOOOOO!
  8. Is that melted snow from my glasses or snot coming out of my nose?
  9. My single layer of ski gloves are clearly not keeping my hands warm.
  10. Riding up and down on this cable car is like Groundhog Day.  Everyone says the same things every time.  "OOO, look how far down it is!"  "If this cable breaks, we are so dead." General yelps as the cable car passes a support tower and swings for a bit.
  11. Skiing in tons of powder presents its own set of problems.  Namely, how to get out of it if you fall.  Snowboarders are particularly screwed.
  12. I clearly strapped my boots in too tightly in previous runs of skiing.  My shins aren't nearly as bruised these past two runs and they were much more comfortable.
  13. My arms aren't tired at all.  Does this have anything to do with Rock Band? (seriously, it probably does)

My approach to skiing, not taking it too seriously, is to just do it as much as possible without causing myself annoying pain.  I don't see much point in killing myself just because I'm here.  My ideal approach would be to go for half a day every couple of days or so when I feel like it.  Unfortunately, the sport itself doesn't really lend itself to that model, given that I have a job and don't live in the area.  So I do what I can.

One nice thing this weekend is that I can see some improvement aside from the physical aspects.  After talking with some friends, I decided to think of skiing as more of my body carrying my momentum and my feet keeping me afloat (like shock absorbers on a car).  This was a conclusion I had reached on my own, but apparently it's just basic knowledge, and I just needed verification.  Anyway, after trying it out, this is clearly a superior approach.  Relying too much on my feet to balance myself makes me far more vulnerable to the random bumps and terrain that I encounter as I make my way down the slopes.  Keeping my feet light lets me ride over those bumps with much less impact to my overall direction and momentum.

In general, skiing seems like a tremendous amount of overhead to me …
involving expensive equipment, lodging, travel time, not to mention the
cold and trudging through snow and limited windows of availability and good conditions.  It certainly isn't what I would call a poor man's sport.  Frankly, there are cheaper and more convenient ways to exert yourself.  I see nothing particularly appealing about skiing except for the unique merits of the experience, which has to compete against all of the downsides I mention above.  Still, if you like the experience of plowing down the slopes that much, there really isn't anything comparable.

With all the overhead involved with skiing, I find myself wondering how the sport evolved.  Lifts certainly haven't been around forever, so the sport seems like it must have been completely inaccessible until the latter half of the 20th century.  I know this must be easily discovered information via the Internet, but I haven't bothered looking yet.

As it is, I find this to be a sport that I either do a lot or a little, and a little bit seems to be the right amount.  A "Variety is the spice of life" approach, if you will.  I certainly wouldn't mind seeing myself graduate to consistent black runs in a few more visits or so, if my skill level can survive the long gap between visits.

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New Year’s resolutions so far

Posted on 2009/02/01 by richardykuo

I don't generally believe in New Year's resolutions, but starting off the year did remind me that there were quite a few todos on my list that I haven't done anything with recently.  So I went ahead and decided to kick myself in the ass on a few of them.  See below.

1. Drink less soda and juices, drink lighter stuff (like water and tea)

Doing pretty good.  I'd say I've cut back on soda by about 60% or so…substituting for water and tea.  Damn, soda really does taste pretty good when you haven't had it for a while.  After a while, I get a craving for the fizzy kick that only soda can give you.

2. Exercise regularly

Aside from all the fake drumming I do (which, while not completely intense, is not an insignificant amount of exercise either), I need to do more "regular" exercise.  I'm only about 30% on this right now.  I've scheduled time from 11-12PM to do push-ups and sit-ups while watching TV, but I always seem to get caught in the middle of doing something else.  I think what I need to do here is block out time next to other things I do … mainly so that I'm not tempted to be in the middle of something when it comes time to exercise.

3.  Blog more.

I've been shooting for weekly.  Missed a week so far, but otherwise on track.  I actually find I have a plethora of things to write about, and it's hard to restrict myself to just Sundays because sometimes when you're thinking about something, you just want to get it out there.  But, on the other hand, I don't want it to take too much time either.  I need to find a balance.

4.   Change my hair style.

I've had a rather short buzzcut since the middle of college, solely because it was easier for me to maintain rather than any other number of reasons.  I've finally decided to change this up.  I'm letting it grow out right now.  In general, it will still be a short cut, but may require gel/hair drying/combing in the morning.  We'll see how this goes.  I'm due for a trim and a check up next week.

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Take advantage of your 401K, people

Posted on 2009/01/25 by richardykuo

I recently surveyed several friends to see whether they were maxing out their 401K's.  To my surprise, many of them weren't.  In fact, from general experience a lot of people ignore this seemingly no brainer piece of money management.

In short, the 401K is an investment vehicle designed to encourage savings by the government.  You can contribute a maximum set amount it each year … in 2009, you can contribute up to $16,500.

The way the government "encourages" your participation involves taxation.  You only pay taxes once on the money going into and coming out of your 401K.  Normally, you would have to pay taxes on money when you earn it and on any gains thereafter.  Essentially, if you use a 401K to invest, the government takes a lot less in taxes from you than it would otherwise.  However, because the goal is to get you to save, you must wait until 59 1/2 years of age to begin tapping the savings account without penalties.

OK, not having to pay taxes is great on its own.  But, on top of that, your employer often has match programs.  For example, if you look at the benefits page for Google, Google matches up to 100% up to $2500 or 50% up to the contribution limit, whichever is greater.  Let me sum that one up for you.  If you contribute $16,500 this year at Google, you get $8,250 in free money from the company on top of that initial contribution. Granted, Google has great benefits, but other companies have quite generous match plans as well.  If you had $8,250 sitting in front of you right now, would you just throw it away?  Because if you aren't contributing to your 401K, you're doing something pretty close.

Now, due to the penalties, some people are worried about not having that money around to make a big purchase because there are penalties on taking that money out ahead of retirement.  Generally, you can borrow against the 401K to do things like pay for college tuition or buy a home, so if you're worried about liquidity, you probably shouldn't be.  Also, there are hardship clauses where you can take money out without penalty to deal with unexpected medical expenses, etc.  In general, your 401K is liquid for you if you really need it to be, but it's not there to be abused.

The standard 401K is not taxed when income goes in.  Taxation only happens when you pull money out at retirement.  There is a second form of the 401K known as the Roth 401K.  This plan allows you to contribute your after tax earnings now, and not get taxed when you start pulling the money out near retirement.

Why pick one over the other?  Well, if you believe your tax rates will be higher near retirement, then taking the tax hit now is a pretty smart thing to do.  In short, having climbed the corporate ladder (or whatever ladder you're climbing) and observing the spending patterns of the country in general, quite a few people are betting on their taxes being higher in retirement.  In this case, the Roth 401K is a good idea.

If you're having trouble maxing out your contribution to leverage your company match, then you probably want to just do the standard 401K so that you get the maximum benefit from matching.

If you're already maxing out your contribution, then the Roth 401K can be pretty smart.  In particular, independent of the whole taxation issue, using the Roth 401K lets you leverage significantly more money into the 401K.  For example, if you think now is a good time to invest in general, then getting money into your 401K right now via the Roth is a great way to dump more money with the 401K tax advantage into investments than you could otherwise do with a regular 401K.

The bottom line is this.  If you aren't maxing your 401K plan out, you're giving up a lot of free money.  If you aren't sure whether you should be or not, then odds are you should be.  Feel free to do your own research, but hopefully this gives some people a kick in the pants to check their contributions and start saving some money.

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Problems with the Palm Pre

Posted on 2009/01/11 by richardykuo

The new Palm Pre just debuted.  Here's the coverage at Engadget.

This announcement, for your reference, comes after multiple years of false starts on products like the Foleo, a slightly harebrained idea to tether a shell of a keyboard and screen to the phone (it's not completely insane actually, just not a timely idea) and the completely decrepit Palm OS, which should have been overhauled years ago.  Palm practically invented the smartphone, but it entered some sort of dark period for years where it couldn't get beyond its original technological roots.  People have been waiting for something big out of Palm for a LONG time … and they got it last week.

For your reference, I've used Palm products for a long time.  I really liked my Palm Treo 650,  before the technological limitations of the thing caused me to switch to a new phone.  However, in terms of productivity … being able to access my key applications quickly, synchronize with Outlook, and fill in the gaps with third party software that actually did the job correctly … nothing did it better.  My current phone, a Sprint Touch, is somehow less usable and slower … even though it has vastly more hardware power and is native Windows Mobile.

The Pre is in a tough spot tho.  What niche does it occupy?  The iPhone already has a first mover advantage with two generations of the "usable and cool smartphone" product under its belt … so when it comes to the Pre, it's hard to see how the product is going to dislodge the iPhone from its particular niche.  I don't see Palm taking over the image and style motivator from Apple.  To Palm's credit, the phone at least does not seem to drop the ball on that front.

The Pre will have some refinements to usability here and there that surpass the iPhone.  However, it's too early to tell at this point what those would be.  It's also not easy to imagine a lot of headroom is available on this front to sway potential buyers.

The key differentiator we do have from the iPhone is that an open platform allows application developers to go hog wild.  This sounds promising.  However, with a healthy development ecosystem already up and running on the iPhone, some of that impact is blunted.  On top of that … Android OS phones, starting with the T-Mobile G1, are also looking to occupy this space.  So Palm will be splitting the whole "open platform" market with another major player.

Last, the Pre is rolling out on Sprint.  God bless em, I love my 30/month Sprint plan, but you aren't exactly blowing out to a ton of users by rolling out on them.  This seems to be an issue of AT&T got the iPhone, T-Mobile got the G1, so Sprint had to get the Pre.

So really, we're left with the same question … what niche does the Palm Pre occupy?  Anyone concerned about style or going with simple brand momentum picks the iPhone.  A large portion of those thinking slightly geekier and liking lots of options on their phones are going to go Android.  The carrier being Sprint cuts down the pie even further.

I have a hard time seeing anyone buy the Pre except for former Palm users who really appreciated the phones (a group which I do happen to be a part of).  The rest will have to happen by word of mouth.  Is that a big enough market to sustain them?  Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the smartphone market to answer that question, but I'm certainly wondering about it.

At some point, I need to blog about what makes a perfect phone.  I will say that the Pre, from a hardware perspective, looks pretty great to me, so there is that!

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How far can your car go after the gas light comes on?

Posted on 2009/01/11 by richardykuo

I'm back from vacation as of earlier this week, but the blogging continues with a weekly Sunday schedule. =)

Do you know the answer to the title of this blog post?  Do you want to know?  If so, then keep reading, dear friends.

I was driving back from the airport, coming back from vacation, and I had a little over 1/8th of the tank in the rental car.  Time was a little short and I didn't particularly feel like taking a big detour to hit a different gas station from the one next to the airport.  The gas light came on about 20 miles away from the airport.  Was I going to make it?

Turns out that tankonempty.com is a great resource to figure out exactly that without having to run down the tank yourself.  The average distance is listed for all car models so you can figure out the answer yourself … but, in general, you have about 30-40 miles to go from that point.  The Toyota Corolla I was driving averages 46 miles before running out of steam.  One less thing to stress about on the way back to the Bay. 🙂

Note that running down to the gas light is not really a good idea, because the fuel pumps in many cars are designed to run submerged.  So regularly burning thru that reserve actually can cause damage to the fuel pump in your car over time.  Try to refill at around 1/8th to 1/4th of the meter.

 

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Training your brain

Posted on 2009/01/01 by richardykuo

It's 2009, and what better way to kick a new year off than with a blog post?  I can think of a few better things, actually, but, since I've been lazy with the blogging, let's knock something out today.

I imagine a lot of you were busy killing some brain cells yesterday, but during the rest of your waking hours, a lot of you get paid to think for a living.  Which begs the question … maybe you get paid to write software or trade stocks … but isn't that all just exercising the brain muscle at some abstract level?  Wouldn't it be nice if you could divorce your brain from the subject matter at hand and just train yourself to think faster about everything?

In fact, a burgeoning little industry has popped up around the idea, starting with games like Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!  This relatively simple game sold millions of copies internationally in under a year.  We can surmise one of the reasons is because the premise of the game has such universal appeal … to men, women, and children alike.  You count syllables, match items, and do little math problems … all under the guise of training your brain.  Isn't it odd that the torturous homework of second grade suddenly becomes entertainment when repackaged into a game?

At any rate, the huge success of this game spawned a predictable sequel … and lately, all kinds of clones on social networks have been popping up, because the game concept is so simple to replicate.  "Who Has The Biggest Brain?" is the Facebook equivalent … and it's made even more addictive by that fact that it's accessible to your friends, which adds a bit of a competitive element to the whole shebang. 

That's all well and good … but we come back to the original question.  Does this stuff really help?  So I did a little checking.  Turns out that these brain training games have very little correlation with general brain improvements … although getting better at these games will make anyone feel better about themselves.

The idea of doing something fundamental with our brains, like abstract shape matching or math exercises, and seeing those improvements appear in other areas of our life, such as our jobs, is referred to as the transfer effects of the exercise.  For the most part, people don't actually see a lot of transfer effects from these activities.  What we see are very specific improvements to whatever we're being tasked with.  For example, improving your ability to memorize numbers off a screen won't translate to your ability to remember the items on your grocery list.  That's one less box of Fruit Roll-Ups coming off the shelf.

Keep hope alive, tho.  Most activities don't necessarily produce transfer effects, but that's not to say that all activities don't.  New studies suggest that there are certain types of exercises that produce benefits … it just so happens that the vast majority have not.  The promising activities mentioned in the article seem to revolve around multitasking types of exercises which ask the user to process multiples streams of activities at once.  As studies start to hone in on the types of activities that do work, we'll be sure to see some exciting improvements in this space.  Just don't expect results from the random smorgasbord of activities in any particular brain training game.

I also came across an interesting series of five articles from Psychology Today (Brain Exercises: Do They Work) which details one person's journey through brain training programs.  It's worth a read.  From the same blog, the article Brain Exercises: Better Than Googling? suggests that only one program has gone through extensive clinical trials and been peer reviewed.  That program comes from Posit Science.  The programs from Posit Science are based on the fairly widely accepted notion that memory function loss as we progress through life is not necessarily based on pure deterioration … it's based on a decrease in our ability to pay attention to things.  I suppose, in layman's terms, if you give a shiitake, you'll remember as much as you ever did.  But in the mean time, what these programs do is train your auditory system to help you pay more attention.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it?  It's also expensive … at a few hundred a pop.  Admit it, though … you're curious, aren't you? =)  Shoot me a mail if any of you try it out.

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