See Dick Sing. Sing, Dick, Sing!

Video games are often derided as the agent of laziness that are turning the brains of today's youth to mush. Some people, usually those who play videogames, attempt to defend viedeogames in a variety of ways. Some games have a certain amount of educational value. There are many successful programmers who grew up in front of their Ataris or TRS-80s. The increasing complexity of some games has allowed the defense that a military career may be a logical next step for the budding virtual special ops practitioner.

To these ideas we can add "helping Johnny read." Motivation being a primary component of effective learning, kids who are motivated to succeed at a videogame can achieve surprising results. For Christmas this year, we added Rock Band to our house of toys. The game allows up to four people to live out their Lizard King fantasies by playing and singing real rock songs in a videogame format. The vocal portion is essentially a karaoke machine. It is a non-trivial exercise for a little kid to keep up with the words scrolling across the screen, however. For the subset of wannabe rockers who are barely beyond the "Green Eggs and Ham" stage, song lyrics at tempo is a significant challenge. However, the urge to rock is strong.

This primal impulse is what leads seven year olds to warble, with great concentration, "I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride ... I'm wanted...dead or aliiiiiiive."

Thank you, Mr. Bon Jovi, for helping my son learn to read.

Christmas in The City

There is nothing quite like Christmas in a big city. Or so I've heard. I grew up in the suburbs, and lived in Los Angeles for the last 15 or so years, so I wouldn't know. Los Angeles is a big city, but it has no heart.

On the other hand, San Francisco, for all its looniness, is a world-class city on a par with any on the East Coast or Europe for its sense of an identifiable center. Christmas brings out the best in The City. It is lit beautifully, the many stores are brightly decorated, and, most importantly, it is alive with people out to experience the season.

We took advantage of our newfound proximity this year to spend an evening taking in the scene. We took BART to the Powell Street station, where the cable cars turn around to take tourists up the hill toward Union Square. We walked up to Union Square ourselves, where we watched people ice skate and take pictures by the huge Christmas tree:



We took a look at the chocolate castle at the St. Francis Hotel:



We had dinner at a festively decorated diner around the corner (my limited local knowledge came in handy):



Christmas is a time that is marked by busy-ness as much as anything else, so it was a treat to take some time to soak up the celebration of the season.

The Flawed Soul of a New Machine

It bears repeating, and shouting from the mountaintops, that Top Gear just may be the best show on television, let alone the best car show by orders of magnitude. Not only is it on BBC America several times a week, but it is also one of the most heavily downloaded shows in the world. For those of us in the U.S., downloading is the only way to see the current series, as BBC America is currently showing episodes that are one or more series in the past.

[If you have any interest in seeing the most recent episodes, let me know. I, um, might be able to suggest ways to find the new shows.]

The biggest delight of Top Gear is usually the sheer lunacy of the contests the three witty hosts engage in, the way only clever Englishmen can do it. The most recent Top Gear, though, broadcast last Sunday night, was journalistically unusually hard hitting. Top Gear conducted what must be among the very first full tests of the much-celebrated Tesla electric sports car. The Tesla, based upon a modified Lotus Elise chassis and built here in the Bay Area, has generated (sorry for the pun) a lot of publicity in the several years of its gestation. Hollywood celebrities have enthusiastically plunked down the requisite $100,000 to be the first on their blocks to have one.

The Tesla, for all of its high wattage publicity (pun again, sorry), has not had a smooth trip to market. The car has undergone a number of developmental problems. The most significant design issue has been with the transmission. The original two speed gearbox proved to be unable to handle the considerable torque of the electric motor, so production Teslas leave the showroom with a single speed gearbox (albeit connected to a motor that can spin upwards of 13,000 rpm). Rumors have also dogged the Tesla program that the car's range was nowhere near the 200 miles advertised.

The Top Gear boys put the car to a proper test, the first I can recall seeing anywhere, print or otherwise. The car proved to be extremely quick, dusting the Elise in a sprint. However, the tradeoff in the considerable extra weight of the batteries (and high-efficiency, non-sporting tires) revealed itself as the Tesla slewed about the handling course. More significantly, after some enthusiastic driving, the car came to a dead halt ... in 55 miles. While that car underwent its 12 hour charge, they brought out another one to continue the test. It stopped with an overheating motor within a few minutes. After charging, the first car was brought back out, whereupon it promptly suffered a brake failure.

As a new car maker on the world stage, trying to forge ahead with new technology amid plenty of politically correct hype, the Top Gear review was devastating. Not by anything the hosts said, but by the way the car performed under real, albeit heavy, use. The car exhibited a lot of failure for $100,000.

Later, the show demonstrated a better way forward. One of the hosts made a rare trip to Los Angeles to sample the Honda FCX-Clarity, a remarkable car in very limited release. Also an electric car, it is powered not by heavy and environmentally disastrous batteries, but by a fuel cell powered by compressed hydrogen. With a range of at least 200 miles, emissions consisting only of water, and refueling taking only the usual couple of minutes, the host made the salient point that cars like the Clarity are likely the best bet for the future because they are the most like the present. No overnight charging, no hazardous and heavy batteries, and quick fill-ups make for a consumer-friendly product. If Honda can convince energy companies to enlarge the distribution chain for compressed hydrogen, a real paradigm shift may take hold in the automotive world, one that even car enthusiasts could embrace.

The Fullest Full Moon

If you have clear skies in your area Friday night, be sure to draw the shades if you want to get any sleep. The full moon on Friday will be larger than usual, because the Moon's elliptical orbit will bring it to its closest approach to the Earth this year.

Remembering the Dawn of an Era

Forty years ago this week, the Stanford Research Institute demonstrated a machine that was the progenitor of the computer you are using right now. It had a visual display interface, a mouse, and could connect with other computers miles away. Given that the typical computer of the day took up much of a room, was controlled with punch cards and gave its output in printouts, the new machine was a quantum leap forward. It took more than a decade for all of the innovations shown that day to be put to widespread use, but the die was cast, and the world changed forever.

If you want to see the original 1968 presentation, click through to the Stanford site for the video.

Diamonds in the Sky

The stars truly will be aligned tonight. Or rather, a couple of planets and a moon. If you have clear skies this evening just after sundown, don't miss the show to be put on by Venus, Jupiter and Earth's crescent moon, which will be in rare close proximity to each other (as viewed from the Earth, anyway). We saw a preview last night; the kids thought it looked like a very long happy face in the sky.

Making the House a Home

At the time we bought the new house, it came with a non-functional old refrigerator. It was housed next to a slim cabinet that was further subdivided into a messy broom closet. It was one of the few real weak spots of the house: there was no pantry in the kitchen, or enough cabinets to serve that purpose. One of our priorities upon moving in was to somehow clear some space in the cabinets to make a pantry.

While we were having some other work done before we moved in, we decided to rip out the cabinet by the old refrigerator. We had discovered, in the course of shopping for a new fridge, that the old refrigerator was a size that is no longer available (42" wide, as opposed to the now-standard 36"). As a result, in a 72" wide space, the fridge took up 42", leaving only 30" for the cabinet. Knowing that we would buy a 36" wide new appliance, we could fit in a standard 36" wide cabinet as well.

We selected and ordered the cabinet from Lowes weeks ago, but the installer was only able to come out this past Saturday to put it in. After a similar number of weeks of putting off prepping the space, I put two coats of paint up Friday night, and the cabinet went in as scheduled on Saturday. Having never had a real pantry before, we are delighted. The house is starting to feel like ours now.

Before:


With paint:


After:

The Daily Grind

My commute these days is a bit of an improvement over LA freeways:

Night Launch

Last week, the space shuttle Endeavor made what is likely the last night launch for the shuttle program. An acquaintance from one of my online car clubs who lives in central Florida made the trek to the NASA causeway about 7 miles from the launch site to view the launch. He managed to get this spectacular 166-second exposure photograph of the launch itself:


I'm afraid it's looking more likely that I will never see a shuttle liftoff, much to my regret.

November in Moraga

After a few rainy days, a last heatwave is on its way.

The Cy Young Award Comes to the Giants

In the middle of a miserable sports year for the area, San Francisco received the happy news today that Giants pitcher Tim Lincicum won the National League Cy Young Award today, the first Giant to win the award in over 40 years. Lincicum won 18 games for a mediocre Giants team, setting a San Francisco Giants record for strikeouts in a season, while pitching the third most innings in the league with the second lowest earned run average.

Lincicum is a physical anomaly. He stands under 6 feet tall and weighs less than 180 pounds, the antithesis of the big horse physique that most teams look for in a pitcher. However, with a home-built wind up that makes the most of his slight stature through the miracles of flexibility and torque, he can gas it up into the high 90s with a delivery that hides the ball well from hitters. Thanks to his unusually well-developed tactical and physical abilities, he also throws a changeup that is nearly unhittable.

Even in the midst of a poor season, Lincicum starts became must-see events. We were fortunate enough to see one of his starts on a Friday night in late August this year. As expected, he pitched well, overpowering the San Diego Padres. The buzz in the stadium when he is on his game, which is most of the time when he has the ball in his hand, is a genuine thrill. At the tender age of 24, he is already a regional treasure and is expected to be the centerpiece of the Giants for many years to come.

Flying Blind

I can think of only a few things more terrifying than being in control of an airplane and suddenly losing one's sight. The chances of that situation being resolved happily would seem to be very slim. The knowledge that you were far above the ground with no way to land safely, knowing that you were only minutes from near-certain calamity.

Or so it would seem.

The pilot of a small airplane in England recently suffered a stroke while flying, suddenly and severely impairing his eyesight. The RAF managed to talk him down by sending up an airplane to fly next to him, guiding him all the way to the landing without further incident.

I would be scared to drive down my street into my driveway with a blindfold on and a guide talking me through it. I can't imagine how frightening and difficult landing an airplane would be under those conditions. The minute and constant reactions necessary to keep the craft on target would be nearly impossible to pull off.

Well done, chaps.

First Term Grades

Moving is never easy; uprooting kids and forcing them to make new friends and find their way in new schools can be the most wrenching part of the process. We have been blessed. Kelly and Michael have been nothing but supportive and excited about our move from just after we told them it was coming more than a year ago. Even so, we harbored normal concerns about the schools they would be going to. Both had done well where they were. How would what they had done translate to new schools that are, by all measurable means and reputation, very high quality if not downright ruthlessly competitive?

So far, so good. Both kids have made a lot of friends, have had fun with soccer, and are doing great in the classroom. Kelly brought home her first quarter report card yesterday: an A in every class (A+ in PE, she would want me to point out), with nice remarks from several of the teachers about her contributions to the class. She agonizes over every lost point (or half point), so earning the perfect grades pleased her to no end.

Lest this come across as churlish for bragging about my kids, the interesting part of this process is not so much the grades (of which we are all proud) but how hard Kelly has had to work to get them. She routinely puts in two to three hours of homework every night, usually covering almost all of her classes. She has had special projects in just about every class already. The substantive work does not seem to be that hard, but the amount of work is considerable. We figure it is our job at this point in her schooling to teach her how to study and budget her time, which is probably her biggest weakness. She is learning, though, and having her effort rewarded with great grades should help reinforce what we're trying to do.

The classwork does not get easier. The school has even warned sixth grade parents that the workload will increase over the course of the year, presumably as the kids develop the skills to cope with it. The local high school is the best in the state and, by all accounts, extremely competitive. Our goal for the kids is not necessarily that they always get the top grades, but that they learn how to put in the effort necessary to get the best grade they are able to attain based on their innate abilities. I find that it is the effort and efficiency skills that are the most useful out in the real world; learning them now in ways I never did can only help them down the road.

It looks like the education the kids received in the Glendale public school has not left them playing catch up. Learning how to study is going to be the ongoing effort this year, but it is off to a solid start.

And You Thought Your SatNav Was Complicated

In another life, this would have been my office. It's the cockpit of the new Airbus A380 jetliner, an enormous two-deck commercial aircraft that has recently begun passenger service.

For an aircraft designed so recently, the seats look surprisingly drab and uncomfortable. Perhaps we don't want the pilots to be too comfortable, although these airplanes can fly themselves from takeoff to touchdown with only a minimal amount of human interaction.

Note, too, that there are no control yokes in front of the pilots. Instead, it looks like Airbus took advantage of a CompUSA blowout sale to pick up a couple of Logitech flight joysticks. That's good to know; if there is ever a problem with the pilots, I know I can count on the fifteen-year-old gamer in row 33 to fly us to safety.

Internet Pet Peeve of the Day

I understand why they exist, but word verification applications are a constant annoyance, and an example of a half-baked solution to an ongoing problem.

Anyone who has ever posted a comment to a blog or news article online within the last few years has had to deal with a word verification program. It usually consists of typing a series of letters or numbers depicted on the screen in graphical format rather than as regular text. This, as I understand it, is to deter spambots that used to flourish by blitzing comments. The spambots cannot read the images generated by the word verification system, so no spam can be deposited.

It's a simple solution, which is usually the best solution, but it is the details that sometimes let the system down. I have often found that the image generated by the word verification program is so distorted that I cannot read it. This is a mild annoyance when posting here (where it is a constant problem), but when I'm trying to buy concert tickets or something else of value that I may lose if I can't complete the transaction, it becomes a major problem.

Please, anti-spammers, don't throw the legitimate user baby out with the spammy bathwater. Give us a tool we can actually use!

Why Tuesday?

Among the many arcane rules of political life that have survived the decades without notice, why is election day the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November? It seems like a rather arbitrary selection.

It is not.

According to this Congressional Research Service Report, there are very specific reasons why that day was selected as election day:

Elections for all federal elected officials are held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even-numbered years . . . ; presidential elections are held in every year divisible by four. Congress selected this day in 1845 (5 Stat. 721); previously, states held elections on different days between September and November, a practice that sometimes led to multiple voting across state lines, and other fraudulent practices.
By tradition, November was chosen because the harvest was in, and farmers were able to take the time needed to vote. Tuesday was selected because it gave a full day's travel between Sunday, which was widely observed as a strict day of rest, and election day. Travel was also easier throughout the north during November, before winter had set in.

The accommodation for travel time is apparently because most voting was conducted at the county seat, and horses could only take you so far each day.

So get your harvest in, people, and point your horse toward the county courthouse. There's electin' to do!

I Want My MTV!

Remember when MTV stood for "Music Television"? It has been many years since MTV actually featured music as a substantial portion of its programming, now preferring instead to broadcast a steady diet of reality shows exploiting teens striving to be a lot cooler and sexier than they really are.

Good news for those with a nostalgic longing for old Duran Duran videos, however -- the music is coming back. MTV is not changing its programming; instead, MTV has enabled online access to all of its videos. This may be a bit trivial in the grand scheme of things, but MTV is not without significance in pop culture history. There was a span of years in which exposure on MTV could absolutely create a career (see, Madonna) or give eternal life to one-hit-wonders that would never have been known otherwise (see, a-ha).

For those of a certain age, imagine yourself dropping your backpack at the front door, pouring a bowl of cereal and settling down in front of the Trinitron for an afternoon of mindless radio on TV until mom nags you to get started on your homework. In this small way, you can go home again ... to 1982.

The Inevitability of the Useful Lifespan

It is axiomatic that appliances will blow a fuse or spring a leak the day after their warranties expire. A little known codicil to this truism (or at least one that was not known to me) is that the moving gods will punish the affront of a homebuyer discarding appliances that came with the house by causing the buyer's own appliances to spew their guts within a month of moving in.

We asked for the existing washer (relatively new, front loading) and dryer (older, but gas heated) to be removed in conjunction with the sale of our new house. The seller did not remove them, so we had to go to the extra effort of having them hauled away after we moved in to make room for our 12 year old matching washer and dryer set. Maybe we should have taken their stubborn determination to remain in the house as a sign.

Just before soccer games began this morning, our washer decided it no longer wanted to keep its water to itself. It wasn't an inlet or drain hose problem; the main tub overflow blew a seal of some kind, flooding the laundry room and adjacent bathroom.

It will be a busy week upcoming. Our friendly neighborhood Sears delivery man will be bringing a replacement washer tomorrow. A pantry will be coming sometime this week. Living room shutters will finally arrive on Wednesday. A breakfast table will be here Thursday. The guest room closet organizer was installed on Friday. In the span of about a week, most of the final pieces of the basic move-in improvements will be done. The broken washer was just the unexpected cherry on top.

Superior, Relatively Speaking

I flew again this week for the first time in a while, and the first time since the airlines began charging fees for just about everything. One phrase came to mind:

"Lower your standards!"

John Lovitz was about 15 years ahead of his time (a phrase that cannot often be uttered) when he created this catchphrase. There was a time when Southwest Airlines was a punchline itself, the place you went to be crammed into an aluminum tube like cattle, fed only with peanuts.

My, how times have changed.

With airlines now charging for every service they provide, all the way down to a simple cup of water, Southwest now looks pretty good. Look, peanuts! And they're free!

New Proof of Media Bias!

Big Media can no longer sanctimoniously claim it is not taking sides. The revealing gaffe was right out there for everyone to see.

Last night, in the sixth inning of the Tampa Bay Rays' 7-0 blowout of the Boston Red Sox in the fifth game of the American League Championship Series, when a win by the Rays would send them to the World Series, the announcers began thanking their audio engineers for a great season. The obvious implication is that the TBS crew believed it was working its last game.

To make things worse, in the top of the seventh inning, TBS sent its sideline reporter into the stands to talk to a high ranking executive of the Philadelphia Phillies, the National League representative in the World Series. The reporter and executive proceeded to congratulate the Rays on a terrific season and spoke of the Phillies' task in facing them in the next round.

It is so transparent. The TV guys know you do not assume a win in a big playoff game, as anyone who watched Dusty Baker present departing pitcher Russ Ortiz with the game ball in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series would know (on the verge of elimination, the Angels staged a miracle comeback in that game, then won the series in the next game against a shellshocked Giants squad).

What this all means is that -- no surprise -- the big media outlets want big-market Boston to win. The best way to accomplish that goal, obviously, is to poke the baseball gods in the eye, throw karma to the wind, proclaiming Tampa Bay the winner nine outs before the game was over. If I could have, I would have put money on the Red Sox to win that game the minute the guys in the truck received their on-air thanks.

Yeah, baseball. What did you think this was about?