The Otterman Empire @ work

Mini:Epilogue.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:02:50 GMT

We came to replace the Mini which was a fun car to drive and own for the most part. After you get rid of the run-flats it's propensity to chew tires isn't as expensive as it once was. Got a pretty decent trade in price on it too. We didn't buy another Mini re the treatment we received documented in this ,Minimum CS , and other posts as a result of a loss re the car not working in the way the manual said it would. Way to go Mini and BMW bought something else x 2 that directly compete in your class.

Arizona otter of the day.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:15:07 GMT

Arizona
Originally uploaded by mariancall.

Ah Dobh and the original "otter" This otter was stolen from the cinema in Phoenix after he forgot it and wasn't there on the way back. Yeah I know they pay the cleaning staff little but, hey , bastards

This was his first concert , in a backyard in the Phoenix heat, with Marian Call which is about as good as any first concert memory you're going to have.

Where the Mini key saga rests today.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:04:00 GMT

I have been quiet blogwise for quite some time but I followed up on my personal blog re Mini's manual being incorrect and their reluctance to do anything about it. I wonder if Small Claims court for the loss of the remote is even possible?

Mini Cooper kept mum. So what if our manual is incorrect. no keys for you

And then

End of the year Mini Bash or how to lose a sale by pissing off a customer.

an Inconvenient access truth. More about mini cooper s FOB :

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:07:59 GMT

First they tell me to read the manual, you know cos I’m not as cute,or as fast, as a Mini and am more likely to be in error. Well let’s look around page 24-25 ( close to it)

Is there any doubt here that the car should not start when the key is not in the car, when the key is five feet away from the car? Well the helpline , I eventually got to a manager, and asked them to consider that they could be owe me a new key / serious price break on the $300 item because their car is not working as stated.

That was a few days ago.

An interesting time with the Mini Cooper’s “convenience” key

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:28:48 GMT

The last car we bought was a Mini Cooper S which I see as the car that makes up for all the regular Minis I drove,you know the ones with a fixed L shaped seat, rusting sills, 10” wheels sliding mirrors, no heater worth a damn etc.

The “new” car ,a 2007 Cooper S, came with a remote key and what’s called a convenience feature in which you do not have to put your key into the slot to start it. E.G.,It can stay in your pocket , your bag or attached to a purse.

Common belief is that the car won’t start without the key being inside the car. Sadly , as we found out this weekend, that is not the case. My wife left her purse atop the pump, got in , door closed, started car and drove off. ( ended up having to get a ride then break into the house)

The car gave zero warning that key wasn’t within the car and 20 miles later, car turned off and couldn’t start it again.

No keys , no movement , no nothing! This is not the behavior I want from a car so I called the local Mini dealer, 2 days after they failed to return my wife’s call , to find out what the parameters of the keyless start are. I also sent a note to Mini asking the same.

So far nothing from Mini and an unhelpful “you’re the only one in 3000-4000 customers to have this problem.” from the dealer and an offer to look at it which I will have to take them up on.

I really want to know why the car wont let you lock it with the key inside, assumption that it knows where the key is in relation to the car, yet will let it drive off without one being present. Surely that’s not that hard a question for the people that sell it/ make it?

Couple that to the Airbag system that can be harmed just by moving your seat back and it looks like the LUCAS lord of darkness joke re the state of UK auto electrical systems has jumped over into the BMW made Mini.

Marian Call. House concert in Chandler 23 Jun 2010.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:32:30 GMT

Here’s a hint.

I am so late doing this I’m practically ashamed. E.G, The house only holds about 40 people and , well you think hell 40 people that’s easy Probably so easy that telling everyone would lead to a lot of disappointed folks which I’m still aiming for

Marian Call delivers whimsical Alaskan folk funk for the Coffee Counter-Culture. She sounds a little like Joni Mitchell & Regina Spektor raising the child of Jason Mraz & Erin McKeown. Call’s sound is always soulful, honest, and clever, loved by all types — computer geeks, church ladies, teenage thugs, NPR listeners, and urban hipsters worldwide. Marian is currently touring all 50 states and hopes to play for you soon — find more information at http://mariancall.com.

If you like what you hear then how about hearing it live, like two days from now?

When we originally requested a house concert it seemed plausible. laughably in hindsight, that we could accommodate this at our house. Thankfully friend and fellow fan Mandi stepped in to save the day and for this Phoenix and surrounding areas all you have to do is leave your house on a Wednesday night and come out for live music.

RSVP to

mandi AT neuroticbynature.com

For details on where to go, what to bring and how much fun you are going to have.

Some slow mo and water

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:29:16 GMT

Basically testing out an embed.

here we are

Google may be the future of mobile search but can’t find it’s ass with both hands in the present.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:32:54 GMT

The other day I was searching for the opening hours of a local restaurant. After running to find a phone-booth to covertly speak a request into the iPhone (sardellas) that I was looking for which was about a mile away from my current location.

Google’s mobile iPhone app gave me a restaurant in Rhode Island a couple of thousand miles away as my number one and two result.

What the hell is the use in that? A geo-enabled device making a request from a mobile app gets results for places that are hours away by jet!

Yes it’s rather cool that I can talk into my phone, have it get the right phrase, and see results within a few seconds but it would be nice if it could be done with more attention paid to the context of the search.

here come the abc's

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:22:00 GMT

here we are with otters

Mm, Pandora is a bit insensitive to this case.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:44:58 GMT

Now there’s a single minded dedication to ensuring that you get only the “real” Amanda Fucking Palmer, oh wait they don’t return any results for that. May as well ask which Bjork, which Tori Amos and which Jean Michel Jarre which I kid you not occurs. Anyway that’s my UI annoyance for today.

It's interesting but we seem to have to rediscover that exchanging value is a valid business model.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:31:02 GMT

From the 500 hats blog comes a nice summation that matches many of my feelings with regards to how programs are pitched, created and go to 2 cups (He has a much better line but I'll not steal it totally out of context.) He brings up login friction, e.g., how easy it is to actually use the service and creating infrequent use apps can cause problems by itself.

So listen up I'll share a little secret with you -- there is one very simple way to avoid forgotten passwords.Basically, it's this:

Make a Frequent-Use Product.
That's it, you say?

Yeah, that's it Sherlock.Make a brain-dead simple, frequent-use product.If users login a lot, then they don't forget their passwords

While my favourite inner-Austrian applauds lines such as

Newsflash folks: The Internet does NOT want to be FREE... It wants to GET PAID on Fucking Friday, just like everybody else on the damn planet.

It's kind of sad that this has to be restated that making a program that needs to be useful is another.

Thinking small to think big. Why are so many sites so bloody miserable on a netbook

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:23:25 GMT

We’ve had a year and a half of strong netbook sales yet the majority of sites make no concessions to accommodate the people on them.While it’s particularly stupid for stores to shoo away visitors I’m perplexed that we’ll happily support IE6 but make few,if any, concessions those with a case of vertical screen interuptus.

Scroll wheel on desktop is a finger puzzle on netbooks that support it,banners that often leave your most important items below the fold, workflows that DON’T and just a complete lack of attention to the expected usage of the products make the netbooks look bad in the same way that most sites shrunk for mobile phones do.

Netbook sales 2009

Yet another CL scam and why I hate affiliate programs that don’t vet their agents.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:56:09 GMT

There should be a show were people that fight computer crime use guns, baseball bats and other implements of destruction on the detritus that try to scam the populace.

I’m selling a car,trying to,presently on Craigslist which leads to the kind of interactions with people I’d rather not have. People that are possibly worse to deal with than car sales types.

Apart from the usual people that want to buy the car for $1000 less than posted without even looking it over, those that want to come tell you why it’s crap and that they don’t like the brand, those that want to buy it for a college student and expect a six year old car to carry the kind of guarantee that a new one would etc and the most interesting? A ,can I politely say, less than mentally capable person that doesn’t –even- have a driving license showing up at the door at 2130 ( 9 30 at night for those of you that can’t add twelve) unannounced that we didn’t give the address out to which is kind of spooky. Not a fan of this guy to say the least.

I still have the car and some information on a new scheme/scam. Person mails me, asks some info and to arrange to see car.I send it. They then say oh prior to me coming out can I get some idea of the auto insurance via this site. Auto insurance tips dot com,but the link went to tamiesunshine144 .blogspot . com and then redirected with the affiliate ID to the insurance site. E.G., trolling for affiliate commissions.

CL is turning in Ebay and it’s usefulness is only possible when using a third party to search it when you are looking for something specific though as a means of exposing yourself to jerks it’s first class.

Threadsy. The most useful aggregator I've found to date.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:42:45 GMT

Over the last couple of months I've been playing with many an aggregation tool that aims to let you make personal dams in the torrent that's laughingly referred to as a life-stream.

I've fallen in the Atlantic,in large rivers and streams in the past and have to say that one is certainly not manageable without assistance.Sure you get the life jacket that keeps your head above water as it flows around you but you can't actually do much but sit back till someone pulls you out.

To help pull me out from my info addiction the nice people at lifeio.com streamy and threadsy.com have offerings which seek to provide a nice paddle with which to beat back the creek of crap we're exposed to daily.

The one that apparently does the least, on the surface,is my current favorite.
Threadsy is in the lead with it being a constant presence on one monitor while I just dip into the other two. It's interesting as Threadsy started out doing less than the other two offering but it does it so well.It also solves a very real problem that the mainstream users haven't encountered yet, they probably won't encounter it till more of them actually use FB and Twitter in their daily lives.

Threadsy , pardon the sewing puns, seamlessly brings together the contents of tweets, Facebook updates and your mail account. I don't have to chase many windows around to see, reply to tweets, post status updates, see incoming mail. Nothing revolutionary that alt - tab or the amazing Firefox extension Foxtab couldn't do for you but it's the thread part of the name that makes this so useful.

Most of the interesting stuff in twitter are links to images, videos or pages that obviously make no sense to a human when a URL shortener is used, no mind , i get a preview of each item, can play video in place,see the image, reply to or make a comment on the tweet/ update and go about my day without closing out a pile of windows each time curiosity gets the better of me,about 10-12 seconds.

When I open up a mail, tweet or update the author panel to the side shows me the services they use, their latest posts, tweets, images. Single click. Yum!

Plus it has Meebo chat built in accounting for just about any messenger service you'd care to use. Aggregating the streams is one of those emergent/ obvious things ( has to be I thought of the same damn thing way back) but execution is everything and so far these software tailors have provided this Emperor* with an impressive suit of new clothes

*Much in the same way Joshua Norton was

7 of 9 Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris), female, marine mammal, with her baby pup

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:35:13 GMT

7 of 9 Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris), female, marine mammal, with her baby pup
Originally uploaded by mikebaird.

This is definitely my otter of the day maybe even the month.

Wow.

We’re so cool we’ll tell you how to use your voice. That is if you can even hear ours.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:06:29 GMT

The etymology of the word expert is strangely prescient when applied to the world of social media. It’s older than the advent of recording, microphones and video cameras. Yet I get the feeling that most of the experts are really more old school than they let on. So old that a rock, a mount and a sermon could be forthcoming.

Attempting to watch presentations live this weekend was the usual frustration of presenter,unmiked,using a fixed microphone on the desk in the room.

The presenter's moved and talked with people off screen and to the side that we couldn’t hear and after a few minutes in each case couldn’t follow.

If that’s not bad enough the presentations were on how to use technology to advance your cause, business or ego.

There’s a reason radio studios don’t place the mike 5 – 10 feet away from the host and allow them to walk around the studio. There oughta be a law?

There is.

And I think I’ll use the kind of technology espoused,least I think it was, to bludgeon my point a bit further.

Asian small-clawed otters

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:49:02 GMT

Asian small-clawed otters
Originally uploaded by Marie Hale.

This is my favorite otter shot of the day.

hey iPhone video can we hear you now? Owle solves two large issues re iPhone video.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:19:08 GMT

Anyone that improves sound capture, stability and control of the main function of a camera ( the amount of lighting getting in) are friends of mine, at least in the Facebook sense.

Owle, not a Pixar sequel, is an acronym for Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement housing that allows you to add additional lenses, an inbuilt mic,add lighting and stability to your iPhone 3gs which markedly improves real time video gathering while remaining hand held portable. Why write what you can see

It’s pretty obvious how much the viewer stands to benefit from this platform ,YEP that’s the viewer. Local company too : )

I’ve often thought of the iPhone as being a glorified controller that just happens to make phone calls.

Cloudy with no chance of data. Like many super heroic efforts sometimes the Sidekicks suffer.

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:49:03 GMT

Danger, Danger Will Tmobile get away with giving two months of free service for losing all of your data?

I’m not a fan of clouds , other than flying through them, when it’s the sole method of storage. User’s of the Sidekick have found out that the distance between back up and fuck up is a little more then inconvenient.

How would you like this mail from a service you PAY for ( It would be easy to bitch at 2.0 companies that have lost my data but realistically I got what I paid for)

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

Inconvenience in the street lawyers thesaurus sounds a little more like negligence

Own your own data or lose it and three years later win a class action suit, with 100k of your “friends” that gives you a month’s free service but only when renewing your contract for two years.

http://mashable.com/2009/10/10/t-mobile-sidekick-data/

An amusing title. Akamai is bringing "HD" to the iPhone. How would we know?

haltse@gmail.com (Hal-Tse) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:54:09 GMT

Today's "O'Really moment"

Akamai Technologies is extending its content delivery network to the Apple iPhone as it introduces the Akamai HD Network, a system for streaming high-definition live and on-demand video to a variety of devices. Source.

It's been said twice in the comments over at Mashable that HD streaming to a device that cannot render HD is a bit of a non starter. It's not been said with a Douglas Adams line from Dr Who. May as well get started then.

"The concept is simply staggering. Pointless, but staggering"

Actually it's not that staggering. While there's a case for streaming HD it's maybe better if the end device could actually utilize it.The iPhone can not and has likely been mentioned just to fulfill the buzzworthy compliant criteria of the release.

The iPhone's max output currently is 640 x480,the screen resolution of the device itself is is 480 x 320. HD is usually considered to be 720 or above but realistically anything under x2 ( 960) the resolution is really stretching the term and even the mighty 3GS currently falls far short of either mark without an external screen and short of the mark with one.

Thankfully a better post than I can justify the time in writing,without need to claim lack-of-talent, appears over on the streaming media blog. with the main thrust of the argument coming from the Workflowed blog.

Akamai.....as long as it's above 700 kbps and starts as an HD source, it can be considered HD. So the house of cards of the iPhone claims in the rollout of the Akamai HD Network rests on HD 'quality' that's below that of today's average standard-definition stream

And in my unrefined language.

Just because you start out with a HD source doesn't make that which you receive HD. If I were to hold my cell phone to a speaker for you to hear a song would you be happy with the term CD quality being used to describe it? If I have ATT iPhone it's unlikely the call would last long enough to finish this experiment. That's the second part. Even running at 640x480 with 2.5Mbps , back to those iPhone specs again, you are still not HD and are still exceeding what you could likely extract from ATT on your iPhone.

In short Penn and Teller don't need to do a show about this claim because it's prima fascia Bullshit!

Want HD Video on the iPhone? Akamai Is Making it Possible