Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

I’m thinking of taking up iPhone programming. Anyone have any suggestions on something simple, interesting, and useful to do as a learning project? The first thought that comes to my head by way of example is an app that provides quick way to toggle data roaming on and off.

Seen on the menu of an Irish pub in Windsor, Ontario, Canada:

• Paddy Thai
• Irish Poutine

We were in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt for a couple of weeks of beach / resort vacation… random thoughts…

• Air temperature: 36°C (97°F). Pool temperature: 24°C (75°F). Sea temperature 26°C (79°F).
• The first night, I had nine mosquito bites… on my left arm. Within the first day, we easily killed two dozen mosquitos in our room. I had about 50 bites total. The worst part is that the bits really itched and felt oddly, heavily numb almost immediately after getting bitten. When there weren’t mosquitos, it was impossible for me to relax by the pool or beach because of the flies.
• Knowing English, French, German, and Italian means that I notice how badly the resort staff murdered punctuation, grammar, and spelling in four different languages. Thankfully I don’t understand Russian.
• Prices were confusingly listed in a mixture of Egyptian Pounds, Pounds Sterling, US Dollars, and Euros.
• The alcohol was atrocious. Egyptian spirits will give you a splitting headache. Egyptian wine tastes like it was mixed with both grape juice and vinegar. I finally found wine worse than what my dad use to make when I was in my teens / twenties (his wine has since gotten better). Egyptian beer is only good when the sun is out. As soon as the sun sets, it tastes horrible.
• Maitre D’: “Tuesday is Chinese food… you know… sushi.”
• Working backwards: If you want to have a beautiful bikini body with a six-year old kid yet younger than N/2 + 7 (where N = Nick’s age) then you have to be (married and) pregnant around 18 then you have to be wearing heels that I’ve only seen professionals wearing and show plumber’s crack or whale tail at 15. I’m guessing that’s why their parents let them dress that way?
• Nick to Arianna: Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb, it was tasty. Arianna, eating lamb: Lamb is sheep. Yummy. Baaaa!
• Arianna, eating duck: Mmmm… duck. Quack!
• Book Reviews:
  • Crystal Express, Bruce Sterling: Nice set of short stories.
  • Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner: Nice future world. Though, it is about events in 2011 written in 1969. Ending was a bit abrupt, but overall a sprawling, satisfying book.
  • Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys, Mick Farren: Didn’t like the ending. Some characters weren’t well developed or explained. Eh.
  • A Bait of Dreams, Jo Clayton: Reasonable sci-fi quest book. I bit simplistic.
  • Song of the Beast, Carol Berg: Very good book. Well written. Engaging characters and nice story.
  • Startide Rising: David Brin: Very good space opera.
• I tanned… I am actually no longer white enough to be mistaken for a lighthouse. As I get older, I find that sunlight tends to help my mood. Two weeks in the sun was great.
• Immodium (and, in this case, some form of yeast) is an Egyptian tourist’s best friend.
• Alex, in the bath, grinning madly and frantically waving his hands: When I fart, bubbles come out, and go pop! pop! pop!
• It seems like none of the tour companies owned a reasonable laser printer or photocopier. I should have brought business cards and handed them out.
• Alex learned to snorkel. Some people recognized him as, “The kid that talks to himself non-stop while he’s snorkelling in the pool.”
• Alex loved parasailing. He also talked non-stop during the 10-ish minutes we were up in the air. Among other things, he said that he liked soaring in the air like a falcon, and that he’s lucky because he got to be like a fish (snorkelling) and a bird in the same vacation.
• Arianna kept complaining it was “too hot.”
• It’s easier to creep quietly around a room when your skin is desert dry.
• Two separate thoughts for plot / character / novel ideas:
  • A vampire (traditional, not the sparkly kind) that has seasonal affective disorder.
  • People who realize that they are characters in a video game… where the player is saving / reloading all the time. Somehow have the characters remember past game dead ends, have the save games interact like parallel universes, etc.
• With 5 minutes to go before landing in Zurich, Alex had to go pee. Upon peeing into a ½ full water bottle, he exclaimed, “Look! I made a potion!”

Ok… this post is long overdue… I was in Amsterdam at the end of August with a friend/co-worker on vacation.

• iPad
  • Fruit Ninja for iPad is way better than Fruit Ninja for iPhone, especially the head-to-head mode.
  • Osmos for iPad is and amazingly fun game… even though I suck at orbital mechanics. Also, Osmos is a palindrome if you consider “os” as a single character.
• It still gets me every time I go to The Netherlands that Dutch tax policy means that my knees hurt by the end of the trip.
• Overheard while searching through the pharmacy section, “You don’t need ‘Diacure’, you need ‘Diacause’.”
• Shopkeepers no longer take 1 and 2 cent coins.
• I travelled very light. Just a minimally packed backpack.
• My backpack was stolen. I got careless and lifted my foot off of it at a bar. The only things they took were the earphones and iPhone charger. They left ~ 100CHF in cash, my passport, some jewelry, and random other things that might have been of value. It was returned after I was at the airport, so my friend had things shipped to me.
• As a result, I travelled home very light. The contents of my pockets (wallet, phone), an umbrella I bought there for Alex, and a book I bought at the airport.

Went to bed at 10:00PM (04:00). Woke up at 2:20AM (08:20).

… did I give my clogs to?

Any recommendations for cloud backups?

• Mainly pictures.
• ~ 150GB and counting.
• Reliability is obviously important.
• The files live on our file server. The solution needs to be able to handle that somehow.
• Encryption is a nice-to-have for backing up things like taxes. That said, I’m willing to use TrueCrypt to encrypt the stuff myself.

Swiss trains need beer holders.

Please don’t make me go back to Microsoft (or worse, Facebook).

• Apple, washing the colours out of your UI doesn’t really help me find the icon (menu bar, toolbar, etc.) quickly.
• … and now it’s catching on. Evernote did it to. Ugh.
• … and Google. Really? The new Google Docs toolbar is fughly. At least Apple’s icons are cute and hard to find.
• Apple, it’s about time you made it easier to invoke pretty much anything from the keyboard.
• … as much as people deride Microsoft’s Ribbon, it has nice big icons (yes friends, laugh and point out that my eyesight is as bad as Mr. Magoo’s), it’s colourful, and as soon as you press the Alt key it gives you nice visual indicators of what you can press next.
• … though I have to admit, most of Google’s web products do have nice keyboard shortcuts.
• Apple, why can’t I make my cursors bigger? Any idea how hard it is to find a few dozen pixels among ~3,000,000?
• Google, really? Your claim is that it’s an Identity Service, not a Social Network? If you’re trying to beat Facebook because people spend more screen time in front of Facebook, you’re doing a stupid, evil job.
• Windows 7 lets me use a mixer to make some things loud (e.g., video conferencing) and some things less so (e.g., IM notifications). Why don’t you, Lion?

On a plane, why are the announcements eardrum-shatteringly loud compared to the movie you’re listening to on headphones?

First the power went out in our building from about 08:30 to 15:00. Then as I was driving to the pharmacy and then the hotel, I was unable to get reliable signal for my phone. It’s great being back in the USA.

Where are my four pots of gold?

Why do we eat snails but not slugs? Why do I ask? In German slugs are called “naked snails”.

[We are making sushi at home. Besides the normal fixings, we have caviar from Ikea.] Nick: Arianna, do you want fish eggs on your rice or your spoon? Arianna: Rice. [Nick puts some on Arianna's rice.] Arianna: *AND* spoon.

[Arianna wipes her chili-stained lips on Dina's shirt.] Dina: ARIANNA! STOP wiping your mouth on mommy’s sleeve! Arianna: Mommy, chill out.

Both of our kids consider frozen peas to be an acceptable treat / dessert.