Added layer of security

Also, I think from now on I will try to use my credit card instead of my debit card. I think credit cards have better arbitration than debit cards, plus they aren’t linked to my bank account.

I’ll just put everything on my credit cards and pay it off at the end of each month. Which is pretty much what I’ve been doing, but had been using my debit card as well.

Plus since I pay off my cards, I don’t pay interest, and get a couple percent back as rewards, so I think it actually works out slightly cheaper than cash.

Credit cards only from now on.

Bleh. I got scammed.

So I tried out this website, mint.com – you hook it to your bank and credit card accounts, it downloads and categorizes your transaction histories so you can see how much you spend on what. There’s also an iPhone app that goes with it. Of course, I’m anal about data, so went through and manually categorized the items that mint couldn’t match to a category.

Good thing I did.

Mint showed me a number of $40 transactions over the past two months, listed as “GMA soft”, “Trustedbillers.com”, and “Netschelp.com”.

I called the contact number on the transaction, they are porn sites.
So someone’s stolen my credit card number. Great.

Now I have to stop at Bank of America on the way home, contest the charges, and cancel the card and get a new card. Which will probably take a week or two, and since BoA uses card number as login on their site, I probably won’t be able to access my account online for a week or two.

Sigh. Why do people have to suck?

I guess I should look on the bright side, it will make me be more mindful of card security, I’m going to update all my passwords tonight. And at least it was small amounts and not my whole bank account.

I wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t tried out mint.com. Yay, mint!

Muggy

So after the disappointing performance of the “I am not a paper cup” mug, I got this one… Not as cool looking, but it holds more and hopefully doesn’t leak. Here’s hoping…

Home, Home on the range…

Sunday night I thought I’d try out Sony’s “open beta” of “Home”, their virtual world app where you create an avatar and wander around, essentially a closed version of Second Life.

I powered up the PS3 and selected the “Home” app.
Not surprisingly, the PS3 told me “a system update is required”. Sony’s system updates are slow, so I groan and hit ok.

About 45 minutes later, the update is done. The PS3 reboots, and I again select the “Home” app.
“You must install Home” it tells me. Ok, so the menu item for Home doesn’t actually have the app, it has to download. I hit ok.

Half and hour later, Home is downloaded and installed. I once more select the “Home” app.
“System update required,” it alerts me. Yup, ANOTHER one. I sigh and hit ok. Twenty or so minutes later, it’s installed. But now it’s time for bed. I shut down the PS3 and go to sleep.

So last night, I power the PS3 back up and select the “Home” app, and… you guessed it. “System update required.” I mash “ok” and wait another 20 minutes.

It restarts and I select the “Home” app. It actually launches! Or rather, it launches the EULA. After a lot of EULA stuff, it then tells me Home needs to install an update and reserve 3GB of space on the HD. Gah. I hit “ok” and after hitting “ok” a few more times to prompts like “Home will be using your HD, so don’t shut it down while it’s saving”, I finally get to the starting point of Home, building an avatar.

It only took a massive number of updates and patches, but I was finally able to build my sims-esque avatar. The selection of clothes was very limited (about 5 choices for shirts, pants, etc) – I knew Sony would do this, to try and get you to buy virtual clothing for your avatar. Once my fairly generic-looking avatar was done, it dropped me into my apartment, an extremely minimalist studio apartment overlooking the bay, with sailboats moored to the docks. It was rendered well enough, but very antiseptic looking.

I then went to a new location, oddly they have FarCry 2 and Uncharted locations, so I went to the FarCry 2 train station. The map took a little while to download, then I was dropped into the level. Other people have ghost-like templates until their models are loaded. I found this odd, shouldn’t the standard model textures be pre-cached? There aren’t that many options available…

There was very little to do on the map, except wander around. There was an upstairs, but that required another map to download. People were generally standing around going “**** you all!!!” or using one of the dance animations over and over (such as using the Metal fist-thrust to appear to be punching each other).

I then switched to the “movie theater” location. A bunch of people were dancing in the front, and there was a bubble machine there for some reason. On the screen was a giant progress bar, which took a long time to load. Seems instead of streaming, Sony chose a “download and play” model. Finally the movie was done downloading, and turned out to be a clip, maybe 5 or 10 minutes long, of some new CGI Resident Evil movie, which looked like an in-game cutscene but apparently is a direct-to-video movie. Once played, it started again.

Lastly, I took a trip to the Sony Mall, which offers a scant selection of items to buy for your avatar. There is an alternate apartment for $5, clothing between $0.50 and $2, and furniture around $2. There were no free items.

I shut down Home, probably never to return. Definitely not worth the effort of installing. It’s basically Second Life without the user-generated content, which to me was the main interesting thing about Second Life.

To sum up: yawn.

Analog Man in the Digital Age

Analog Man in the Digital Age
-or-
The Engineer’s Dilemma

Being a Somewhat Rambling Musing on the Information Age


We live in an interesting time. We have come out of the Industrial Age and into the Information Age. More and more the world is connected digitally, but paradoxically, people feel more lost than ever.

Partly, this is caused by a disconnect between the analog and digital world, and a loss of tangibility and analog character.

Let’s take the example of a letter. In the old days (not so long ago) a letter would be written by hand, pen to paper. Then came the typewriter, and here is where the engineer’s dilemma comes in to play. The typewriter, when it comes to the task of conveying text, is vastly superior to handwriting. It is far more legible and consistent than handwriting. From an engineer’s perspective, it is a better solution to the problem of how to record text. It’s pretty black and white, there are a number of advantages to type over handwriting, from an engineering perspective.

But there is a sterility, a loss of analog character, that takes place when transitioning from handwriting to type. The essence of the message is intact, but the flavor of it, the subtle changes in handwriting, the ability for non-linear writing, the insertion of non-textual doodles, the feel of the line quality from pen or quill as ink grows lower, all that is lost.

Take that to the next stage, and the typewritten letter becomes an email. In that transition, the look is more or less the same, black type on a white surface. From an engineering perspective, the gains are substantial. By making the information digital, it can be transmitted nearly instantaneously anywhere in the world, copied to other locations for redundant backups, and indexed and searched easily. But here, there is also a loss of analog character. The transition from paper to screen has come at a cost of tangibility.

This is more substantial than it might seem, because we are analog animals, and all of our senses are important to us. For example, a letter might have a scent, applied either accidentally or intentionally by the sender, which not only relays sensation to the recipient, but also helps form stronger memories. In an email the physical form is gone, which to means not only a loss of tactile sensation (the thickness of the paper, the flipping from page to page) but also a loss of potential context.

Emails are usually always read in the same place: while sitting at one’s computer. A letter is received at the same place, the mailbox, but might be opened and read in any number of places. This loss of context removes potential context that could form more meaningful memories, such as reading a letter from your lover while sitting at a kitchen table, the sunlight glinting in and the smell of fresh-baked muffins in the air, or reading the same letter while on a noisy crowded subway on the way to work. Memories are more solidly formed when they are associated with all senses at once, and can be triggered in the future by stimulus to any of those senses. In the subway example, years later you might be on a train, and the swaying motion might suddenly bring back the memory of reading that letter, and bring a wistful smile to your face. By homogenizing the letter-reading experience, each email is much less likely to have unique environmental context, or indeed much content beyond purely visual.

Digital content is generally higher-quality than analog content at this point (from the view of production value and perceived “professional” quality), it is slicker and better produced. In a few clicks, a person can create a pleasing slide show of high-quality images. But it is the analog character, the “fiddly bits” that makes people yearn for an old photo album, with photos stuck in slightly crooked, and handwritten notes on the backs. “Scapbooking” is a hyper-extension of this analog character, and the abundance of textures and visuals, the crunchy analog feel, has made this hobby incredibly popular.

So this is the engineer’s dilemma: how to preserve the analog feel in a digital world?

Arthur C. Clarke once famously said “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – and this is one place that engineers can look. Engineers are technology-minded, so will most often look forward for solutions.

An example of this is the digital picture frame. It takes the intangible digital photos on your computer and places them in a tangible item. Displayed on the digital frame, the picture can be used in an analog way, it can be picked up, brought closer for examination, and carried around. As technology improves, it could become more and more analog, to the point where the frame could be the size of a polaroid, and a special pen could be used to write on the photo and on the back of the photo, and calling up a particular image would call up the handwritten notes as well. It will essentially become a magic polaroid, almost exactly like the analog ones, but able to be changed at will, perhaps responding to spoken command or even your mood.

Another example is the Nabaztag, which acts as an analog bridge from your computer – it is a rabbit-shaped gadget that can flash different colors or wiggle its ears to indicate things like incoming emails, or the weather forecast. Silly and frivolous, yes, but by branching a tendril into the analog world, it allows the computer to interact with people more on their own plane, and in so doing, become potentially more relate-able, more lovable.

The loss of analog character and tangibility makes it harder to make an emotional connection to digital content than similar analog content. Although a child can form a connection to an animated teddy bear on a computer screen, that connection comes much easier if it is an analog teddy bear that they can touch. In the movie A.I., one character is a robotic teddy bear, designed to play with children. He bridges the digital/analog gap, like Nabaztag. He is a tangible conduit to digital data, a computer in the shape of a teddy bear, able to interact by engaging multiple senses.

DRM issues aside, one objection people have to digital books is the experience. The screen is capable of displaying text very similar to printed text, but the tactile experience is a flat, cold device, with buttons and menus and plugs and wires. But it is not inconceivable that in the not-too-distant future, you could pick up a book and say “I would like to read Homer’s Odyssey” and the cover would change to Homer’s Odyssey, and all the pages would magically fill with the text. Perhaps a bookmark would even unfurl, showing where you left off last time.

But that is the not-too-distant future. One thing that can be done relatively easily, and right now, is personalization. Allowing data to be displayed in the manner a user wants allows a digital experience to have a more analog feel, without electronic rabbits or nanotechnology. This is clearly evident in cellphones, where users can change the ring sound, background, menu, and other things to make the device more unique. This customization imbues the device with some analog character. Recently Google added an option to customize the look of your Gmail account, which gives the interface a more analog feel.


It’s a situation that arises again and again, as newer technologies try to supplant older ones.

Current computer operating systems represent the ongoing struggle to provide analog metaphors for digital content. “File Folders”, icons that look like pages, tabbed and windowed documents… all symbolic representations to give things a more analog feel.

It’s an interesting problem, from an engineering perspective. And not just in an academic sense. This problem, in fact, is what I currently do for a living, as I try to convert print catalog production systems from sheafs of paper and handwritten notes in a folder into a database with a (hopefully) user-friendly front-end.

It’s very difficult to supplant an analog system with a digital one, even if the digital system will speed production and reduce costs. Even though the system being used is now the web-based application that I am working on, some users still pass around folders with catalog section names written on them, even though the folders are now empty, and only symbolic. They persist because we are analog creatures, and tactile, physical things are more meaningful to us then digital representations on a screen.

It’s my dilemma.

“I Am not a Paper Cup” redux

Hmm… seems the lid on the ceramic “paper cup” I got is not making as good a seal as I thought, seems leaky now.

Sigh – great design, but looks like the functionality’s not all there.

The quest for a decent cup continues.

I’ve seen some travel mugs that have a cover that flips up on a hinge, I might try one of those next.
The ones that have a cover that slides tend to get gunk under the sliding part, so perhaps the flip-top is the answer…

The little things

Interesting how tiny things can form drama, a little act on a tiny stage, with a breathless audience of one.

On the drive to work this morning, I noticed my odometer was 77770.

“Ooo,” I thought, “it’s going to change to 77777 in just a few miles!”

I remembered that I had my camera in my pocket, and I fished it out. Without looking, I turned the mode knob all the way to the left, then one click to the right. It was now in “auto”. All I would have to do is turn it on and press the shutter, which I could also do without looking. I was all set to capture the event.

As I neared work, I periodically eyed the odometer, watching it tick slowly forward. It looked like it might line up perfectly with my arrival at work, then I could take my time and actually get a shot that was in focus.

Finally I came to a a stop in the parking lot, camera resting in my lap. The odometer read: 77776.

I considered driving a couple circuits around the parking lot, but there was a lot of traffic from people arriving at work, so I decided it would have to wait.

Driving home after work, I stopped for gas and suddenly remembered the odometer from that morning. I quickly glanced down, knowing it was too late: 77781. I sighed, shut the car off, and got out of the car to pump some gas.