Stop blaming Washington and blame ourselves

You sometimes hear something on the radio that just clicks with you. NPR had that this morning with a segment on which countries are doing well right now and which are doing poorly. I don't agree with all its findings but a clear factor indicator is the US dollar to Canadian dollar. Its pretty much 1=1 right now. There are lots of variables involved and such macro economic indicators put the Canadian dollar so high are complex. Also during a recession you expect the more fiscally conservative to do better. What's interesting is that fiscally conservative countries that are doing so well are socialist. America is capitalist country and at that its doing very well, most corporations have record profit and those that are rich are doing better than they ever have. So if you are a Republican stop complaining about the economy it working for you low taxes, cheaper and abundant labor. If you feel that the recession has hurt you and your voting republican you have to ask yourself why. I'm not saying vote Democrat or for the tea party. But just understand that if you stop thinking and just use rhetoric provided by Political commercials and talk show hosts on both sides of the argument then when we voted the current politicians into office don't expect them to hold any loyalty to you but to those talking heads and their interests. If we stop asking the tough questions and outsourced our think to somebody else don't be surprised when the politicians stop respecting the general public. Don't blame the politicians blame ourselves for not bothering to vote in primaries and understand the issues. Don't expect Washington to respect you if your world focuses on Sports or Hollywood or Talk Radio and the only contact you send to your congressman is a canned email forwarded from a action group based on a 30 second ad. Read/Listen to real news sources guys. If Rush or Fox News tells you how bad the New York Times, Washington Post, the Standard or Economist is he's doing so don't learn the truth and will continue to vote for interests who make them rich.

Celebrity vs Geek

Dennis Ritchie just died. If your not a geek you might not know who that is but he probably more important than Steve Jobs as far as the smart phone you are running or the web page your are viewing. He was not cool, he was not a Billionaire but he was amazing. Its kind of sad that he made just the bottom of the web page of the New York Times while Steve Job dominated it for a week. He invented much of what we use today. Back in the 70's with big iron costing millions of dollars he invented a small flexible operating system called Unix and a programming an equally flexible. That technology is parent or grandparent of IOS, Linux, CPM (which was copied to become Windows). MacOSX. Thanks Mr. Ritchie you were amazing.

Netflix and the stock market

Netflix and the stock market. The CEO of Netflix R. Hastings has been given a panning by investors in the last couple of months. OK they've made some bad decisions and lost a few customers but $304 -> $103 that ridiculous. Clearly $304 was stupid but I imagine when their numbers are finally posted we are not going to a total wipe out I think they will probably still be making money. There only real competition is Hulu and that much more of a disaster given that the only true people who will buy them is blockbuster which is a rebranded Dish Network. If you look at the viewership numbers on Network Television its a disaster HBOGo only real viewership numbers is on few set top boxes. Give it a year or two and Amazon, Blockbuster and Google have spent their war chests on content, HBO, Showtime, Epix and Starz have to start factoring increased streaming costs on their contract renewals. A scared network/film/cable television realizing their viewership is still plummeting then Netflix money will star to look good and Netflix stock price will rebound. It's more a question on what is a stock price and its amazing how fear works.

"Berkeley Blue"

Steve Job was amazing, he annoyed me quite often but I like his iPhone and use one everyday. I often wished I had purchased an Apple II rather than a TRS-80 back in 1979 but in Europe an Apple II was over $1,500 dollars out of the reach of a sixteen year old.

With all that Steve has done it been interesting that we have not mentioned how he got his start.

Even as a teenager he saw a need of how to make cheap phone calls and created a product to meet that need. The blue box. He went from Dorm room to Dorm room selling his device.

Even today we are still trying to find ways to make free phone calls. Aka the OBI110 and Google Voice. I set this combo up at home and it works. He saw a need 40 years ago as "Berkeley Blue" that we are still looking for today. I see a lot of the real Steve Job in that sixteen year old kid rather than the polished image of today. RIP "Berkeley Blue".

Been using windows 8 for a week. It's very different. The metro interface is so window-less but really works. For a developer preview it seems pretty good (Solid, no blue screens or hangs). The only thing I did not like was the sample clock HTML5 web application seemed very high on CPU usage and did not suspend. But its a developer preview so I can't complain. I think that Microsoft has learned a lot over last few years. Still not sold on Javascript/HTML5 but since Microsoft is pushing C++ (they've done some good integration with XMAL.)

Iphone surgery aftermath

Some people have a few parts left over after fixing a car. These are the parts after I fixed my iphone. I keep smashing the screen, luckly its pretty cheap to fix it yourself (<$20).

seussical 2011 musical

IMGP0172, a photo by kariato on Flickr.

My Son in the Seussical Musical

Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.

Loved this

Nook Color Update

I'd hoped that HoneyComb on the nook would be going places, I was wrong. Deeper Blue is blocked on moving from HC 3.0 to 3.1/3.2 and its a very buggy experience, at least 50% of the market place apps don't work. Deeper Blue did an amazing job but it is clearly not on Googles roadmap to open source the source. I moved to 2.3.3 using CM7, I'm tempted to say down graded but the UX is much better so it clearly an upgrade. HoneyComb is not ready for primetime. CM7 is sweet and makes the nook run as well as the samsung galaxy.

Liberty Smarter Than Nicrosoft

Liberty media is about to buy Barnes & Noble for 1B$ while Microsoft buy skyoe forn 8.5B$. B & N is a good bridge to an online market place and skype does'nt seem like a good fit.

When new media meets old media

I'm in my late 40's so for the television industry I don't exist. But I'm amazed how hard change is for large companies/established industry. Hulu recently made its way to my XBOX and it was kind of sad. First off I'm not what Hulu is aimed at since is advertiser based and seems to have a lot of reality based programming.

Traditional television reminds me of factory farms. You sit at home at a set time and are feed commercials for watching a program. You are the product for the television industry. Recently the farm animals have become annoying. The have decided that will skip the commercial or watch a program when they want. The chickens are in revolt.

Hulu is the industries factory farm for the internet age. Hulu plus is even more of an insult than normal, they place conditions on what you can watch (delays & web only), make you watch commercials and expect you to pay for all the rules. Thanks but no thanks. Netflix has plenty of better programming (my taste) than Hulu, no commercials, no restrictions and the same cost.

What is sad is that television really want young people and they are the people who are not playing by the media company rules. Watching programming on the internet and not in the traditional 30/60 minute format. The twenty something & teens are loosing interest in the traditional model but that who the advertisers want.

The result is that Google will own the advertising market and broadcast TV will become the realm of adult diapers commercials (both actual and figuratively).

Tutorial: Android Application Development - A 9,000 foot overview

Note just to myself

Nook Color

Who thought the first real challenger to the Ipad would come out of the dark. The nook color as quietly been taking the USA by storm. Nearly 3 million units sold by some news stories. I've got a Kindle and my son has the Nook color and they are very different experiences. I've tried to like e-ink and it great in direct sunlight but I want to read a book before I fall asleep in bed and e-ink on my poor old far sighted. E-ink has those led lights but they don't seem to help my eyes. The LCD display is great on the nook and the resolution reminds me of the iphone 4 retina display. Whats even nicer is that the NOOK is very hackable. Honeycomb hacks are available on the net turning the nook into a slow but very usable tablet. Nook default latest release has flash and a few apps. A simple rooted nook can access the android market and alot of applications work. A list of working apps can be found online a nook dev. Amazon is rumored to working with samsung on a stripped/locked down galaxy tab to be branded as a Kindle Tablet. Apple sued Samsung recently I wonder why, a Kindle tablet could seriously attack their Ipad sales, the nook may be hurting their sales already. One problem for the nook color is battery life but I can live with that.

MOG

Finally a music service that is worth the money $5. My CD's are slowly collecting dust and should be stored away in a box. I ripped them to AAC a long time ago but I've finally given up on owning music after experiencing MOG. MOG is simply put amazing. You want to listen to something an 5 seconds later it's playing. I've found a few songs it does not have but 99% of time it's there. I listen to the new Foo Fighters album, then pulled up deadmau5 tracks followed by Dire Straits, Philip Glass, then Carmen. When I think I used to pay $15 for a CD with a couple of tracks which I listened to for a few months and then forgot.

I've heard a lot about cord cutting. I believe it is possible if you are the right person but if you are a sports fan or love a particular live show it not going to happen. I've noticed that the following service are 100% internet based and provide my 360 of services.
1) First netflix is now great. I've got 250 things in my queue and it beats cable.
2) Second Audible: Not only can I get great books but the new york times everyday.
3) NPR has a create web site and the chrome plugin works great.
4) MOG is amazing and provides music well
5) XBOX live works well and provides great gaming
6) ROKU works well with the above services.
7) Itunes for podcasts.
Now most of these services are not free but combined they are lot less than I'm paying for dish.

What a wonderful surprise

My wife andI have been sharing the new volume 1 of Mark Twains Autobiography. Such a joy to read such thoughts as these.

Mr Steve Jobs. When can a HTML 5 browser without Flash render Google Earth in 3d. Flash may no longer be needed for video but HTML 5/JavaScript has its limitations and until something like action-script is added into the browser certain content will be missing from the IPad. http://code.google.com/apis/earth/. Stop bashing Flash and admit there are somethings HTML 5 cannot do.

Funny thing happen yesterday. My facebook account magically reenabled itself after I deactivated it and said since I was a facebook developer I could not deactivate my account unless I delete my facebook developer account ugh. Don’t join its like Hotel California by the Eagles. “You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave”.

Facebook has become a joke.

Facebook is horrible. When I first started on facebook it was very private. Now they post everything. I strongly suggest you lock down your account so only friends etc can see you. Deactivate your account for a few days hopefully. Facebook will wake up and take your privacy seriously.

Nashville is a mess. Drove in on Monday morning after the storms and it was amazing. Mud everywhere in Parking lots, co workers with wrecked homes. Downtown underwater. Just like a major earthquake effects a city. Power has been horrible it keeps going on and off.