Greg and Kat's blog

I have ad an iPod Touch since Xmas. As most of you know, it’s pretty much a first gen iPhone without the phone part. I actually hate it a little bit: allow me to summarize.

User Interface

Yes, I know this device is sold as having god’s-own user interface. I disagree. The interface is very pretty, but not actually as functional as it could be.

Part of the problem might be that I use my iPod primarily as a music player. It’s crazy I know, but what I mostly want to do with my digital music player is play music. The problem is that the interface of the music player actually sucks a little.

The only way I can think to illustrate this is by comparing what can be done in the various player modes it has. You can hold the thing vertically so it displays in portrait mode, horizontally for landscape mode, or double-click the menu button when it’s locked to bring up some controls there. Here is a summary of what you can do in each mode:

This is the kind of inconsistency that should make anybody who has taken a usability course cringe. It means I have to hold my device in a certain way to actually use it the way I want.

In all cases, most of the device’s big, luxurious screen is taken up displaying information I don’t care about in the slightest: the cover art (or background when locked). Even if I had all of the cover art there (it seems to be displayed only for songs purchased from iTunes: songs I have ripped and have perfectly good metadata for have nothing), I don’t want to look at it. Coverflow is sexy to be sure, but it’s not actually displaying anything useful to me. Think of all the useful information that could be there if they had chosen function over form. Or the buttons to touch could have been bigger and easier to hit.

Lock-in

As I mentioned earlier, Apple’s hamfisted attempts at vendor-lockin are a big deal for me.

First is the locking of the device itself: no software can be installed on this device that has really cool UI and portable computing potential. In order to install your own software, you either have to be a registered developer (I think) or do a jailbreak and risk Apple bricking your phone (or committing a criminal act if C-61 passes). [UPDATE 07/10: I’m reminded by an Apple announcement that by this I mean “unapproved software” in this paragraph.]

This is just unacceptable stupidity: on the Touch, there’s no conceivable reason to not have designed the OS to isolate applications from each other (so a junky app can’t crash the whole device), and then allowing installation. For the iPhone, the additional argument of junking up the carrier’s network is also used and is also crap: other phones allow software installation and the mobile networks haven’t been brought to their knees.

Now we move from this (which is annoying and shortsighted) to Apple’s cartoonishly evil behaviour: cryptographically signing the song databases. This makes it effectively impossible to use any software other than iTunes to put music on the device (or sync contacts, calendar, etc.).

I don’t have a Windows or Mac computer easily accessible, so here’s how I sync music to my iPod: (1) take my work laptop home and boot into Windows; (2) install iTunes if it’s not there already; (3) connect it to my network and make sure the music is being shared properly from my main computer; (4) import that music into iTunes; (5) connect the iPod and pray that it actually works. This seems to actually happen about as often as I visit the dentist, and it’s about as pleasurable.

Backlight

This is a small niggle, but the backlight on the display doesn’t turn off when playing music. On my old 4th generation iPod, the backlight would go off after 10 seconds or so to save power. On the Touch, it sits there draining battery until I lock the screen.

Voice/Data Plans

This doesn’t really have anything to do with my iPod, but it is relevant to iPhones. There has been great furore over the plans that Rogers has introduced to go with the iPhone.

On this point, however, I have no issue. Unlike many of the petition signers, when the plans were announced, I did not weep openly or consider self-immolating in front of a Rogers kiosk.

Yes, the Rogers plans are worse than the plans from AT&T in the US. But if my memory and this chart are correct, they are an order of magnitude better than previous data plans. I’ll take that as a win for Canadian wireless-fu, and leave it there.

And they are not offering unlimited data plans. I agree wholeheartedly with Allen on this one: there are no unlimited plans anywhere, so get over it.

Anyway…

Yeah, the iPhone is pretty, but I don’t think it’s worth trampling your own mother in the crowd to get one… or even paying the sticker price.

I’ve said before that I am quite enamoured with my Blackberry. I also considered the HTC Touch but obviously haven’t used it enough to give a good review.

And, there’s so much shake-up on the way for the handset makers that it might be worth waiting: Google’s Android OS, the OpenMoku phone shipping, the LiMo Foundation. All good news for people that actually think they should be in control of the device that they bought.

In my 470 lecture today, I was making comment about MySpace. To point out that I wasn’t a MySpace user, I said

Since I’m neither a 14 year old nor a musician, I don’t have a MySpace account.

Moments later, I realized that what I should have said was

Since I’m neither a 14 year old, nor a musician, nor a pedophile, I don’t have a MySpace account.

I’m very disappointed in myself. George Carlin would be disappointed as well.

Update: Now I’m stuck watching George Carlin on YouTube. Best curse ever: “Holy jumpin’ fuckin’ shitballs!” [@0:53]. Also my favourite Carlin rant: Airport Security (which happened well before September 2001, and rings true even in our stupid, stupid post-911 world).

The outcome of my new phone search was a Blackberry Pearl 8110 from Rogers (who was also my old carrier).

When I first got the phone, I knew it would be pretty reasonable, being a Blackberry and all. But, the more I use it, the more I think it may be the Best Phone Evar™.

1. I can sync the contacts and calendar with Linux. OpenSync and the OpenSync Barry plugin do the job nicely. I had to edit one line in the Barry source for it to recognize the Pearl (which has a different USB product ID than earlier models). That’s way less pain than I thought would be involved.

2. The interface isn’t exactly intuitive, but it is at least consistent. The trackball thing will move you around, the menu button will bring up a menu, the other keys will be used to enter characters or as shortcuts.

   Typing is quite easy because of the two-character-per-key QWERTY keypad (instead of 3–4 character alphabetical keypad on most phones), and “SureType” (their predictive text entry thing).

   Generally, it appears to be designed for people who want to get shit done, rather than for 17 year olds with ADD. This is no surprise, considering RIM’s heritage targeting the business market.

3. It’s physically surprisingly small. It’s exactly the same thickness as my RAZR (when closed), slightly narrower, but a little taller. I think the RAZR is deceptive: it’s thin when open, but not crazy-thin when folded.

4. It’s possible to install software on the phone (although I have to use the Windows connector software to do it). There are a couple of good sources of software: RIM’s software page, Blackberry Freeware, and probably others I haven’t found yet.

   The one thing I’d like to install but haven’t gotten to work is the Blackberry Facebook application: it’s installer uses some piece-of-crap ActiveX component that crashes every IE I’ve put it on and doesn’t work on any other browser (including the provided Rogers browser on the phone).

5. Four words: Google Maps for Mobile. This is a free application that basically provides a nice phone interface to Google Maps. But, it’s clever enough to know where I am in two ways. First is the built-in GPS, which it picks up magically and puts a dot on the map where I am. Second, it can read info from the cell towers and estimate its location within some margin of error.

   That means that it always knows where it is, unlike most GPS units (that don’t work without a clear view of the sky). It can immediatey estimate its position from the towers and narrow once the GPS kicks in. Frankly, GMM makes me feel a little funny in my special areas.

6. I have also installed Opera Mini which, as mobile browsers go, it quite nice. I’m actually shocked how usable it is.

7. It’s made by RIM, a Canadian company that hires many SFU co-op students and grads.

Of course, many of these things aren’t unique to the Blackberry and would apply to most higher-end phones. There are certainly some imperfections, but I’ll hold off on writing about those until I’ve lived with the phone for a while: I’m sure I’ll find more.

I have a few technical things about the setup that I’ll blog about at some point as well.

Yay! Kat’s back!

But that’s not really what I want to write about. Since Kat’s back in Vancouver, she needs to get a Canadian cell phone. My RAZR is starting to slowly degrade, so I’m thinking about replacing it before it falls apart totally. So, we’re both in the market for phones.

There are two issues here: the phone and the service plan. As much as the mobile industry would like to confound those two decisions, I’m going to treat them separately.

I would appreciate any thoughts people have on how to satisfy these requirements…

Phone

For the phone, our needs are relatively modest. It should be able to… (in approximate priority order)

1. make calls.
2. send/receive text messages with a decent interface.
3. be small and easily back-pocketable.
4. sync its addressbook and calendar with a computer with open/free/common technologies. For me, that means Google Calendar (or an iCalendar file) and Linux. For Kat, it’s Apple iCal and a Mac. This is a dealbreaker for me, possibly not for Kat.
5. send/receive emails in some suitably rudimentary way.
6. take pictures, I suppose.
7. maybe access the web, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope for mobile browsers not sucking.
8. things that might be nice, but I don’t really care: speaker phone, GPS, wi-fi.

I have been playing with a phone finder, but don’t have much to report.

Motorola phones are totally out for me: the RAZR was a nice enough phone, but the software sucks hard. The browser is unusable (e.g. no way that I can find to enter a URL: I had to email a link to Google to myself so I could get there), the calendar won’t sync with anything as far as I can tell, and it generally won’t talk to anything computer-wise.

The worst example of its usability are the outside buttons. On the left of the phone, there is a rocker switch, and a single pushbutton (which you can see in this picture). The rocker switch is used to toggle ring setting/do nothing modes, and the pushbutton is used to scroll through ring settings. Let me say that again: the up/down buttons are used to toggle, and the toggle button is used to scroll. Dead to me.

Also note that the iPhone is totally out for me: the cryptographic signing of the database to eliminate any software other than iTunes is totally unacceptable and I won’t have anything to do with it, or any other Apple products as long as it’s there.

Plan

We are fairly light users and have a Vonage line at home, so these aren’t main phones. Things I would like (and I think Kat is fairly similar):

• some reasonably small number of any-time minutes per month talk. (Rogers’ web site isn’t currently functional enough for me to check my recent usage.)
• unlimited text (because there’s simply no excuse to charge money to send or receive 160 byte messages, and I don’t want to deal with any company that would do so).
• no charge for call display (providers actually have to filter out call display information to not provide it if you don’t subscribe: I’m not paying them to turn off their antifeature).
• some trivial amount of data for email reading.
• A “family plan” for the two of us is a possibility.
• Now that I’m looking at the Rogers web site for my recent account activity, I realize that a web site that didn’t suck donkey balls would be a plus.

Any suggestions on these? I will post updates below as I have useful insights to share.

The realistic life plans #1 and #2 are going to have to wait longer. This is a companion to the fanciful Life Plan #3. First, the context…

I went out to Hats Off Day on Saturday. It’s the Burnaby Heights festival-thing. They close Hastings from Gamma to Boundary and have your general civic festivities: a parade, car show, local merchants, etc.

What I didn’t get many pictures of were the PR booths. These are pretty common anywhere there is a gathers. They are used by groups that want to get the word out one way or the other: BC Hydro Powersmart, local politicians, emergency preparedness, and so on. I did get a picture of the kids activity that Parks Canada had: kids put down forts and trading posts on the map and then they were told why it was/wasn’t a good place for one.

While I was out there, fresh off the SFU Open House, I started to think about the University’s public outreach activities. Or more to the point, our lack of them. Core premise to the line of thought here: the vast majority of the University’s budget comes out of the public purse in one way or another. (Sorry, but your tuition dollars are only like a third of the cost of your education.) The public should feel involved in what we do.

This brings us to Life Plan #4. It involves getting job that doesn’t actually exist: SFU Outreach Coordinator. The job would be to put together a roadshow that could go around to these things and show the community what we do, and subtly attempt to convince them that it’s important.

Many faculty members already do school visits (for their kids classes or whatever) and this might be a way to support those a little too. Presumably, this would also be the point person for the Open House.

If it was me, I’d put together a list of a dozen or two faculty members that had demos that could be taken out (either by them or their grad students) and would be understandable down to about 8 years old. There were a bunch of these at the Open House; it shouldn’t be too hard to find them. If there’s an understandable open question at the end of the demo, all the better.

At each community festival we can get to, take one or two research demos, preferably with faculty/grads who are actually part of that community. I’d pair that with some kind of “what SFU does” posters to give people an idea of what a university is actually for. We’d probably need swag or a prize draw to get people to the table too.

So there’s Life Plan #4: I want a job that doesn’t exist, paid for out of a budget that doesn’t exist, to do something that isn’t done.

My lectures this semester are three hour chunks on Wednesday evenings. Evening lectures are late, but that’s not too big a deal. The problem is the three hour marathon.

Lecturing is more draining that people probably realize. There’s a lot of pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly, and staring into an overhead projector. Three hours at a stretch is pretty long.

Of course it’s mentally draining. The problem is talking while trying to figure out what you’re going to say next. Not saying something retarded in a three-hour span is pretty hard. I have a great deal of sympathy for politicians and celebrities who spend a lot of time on camera: the odds of saying something stupid are really high and that’s naturally the thing that gets remembered.

I think I have stumbled on a winning strategy to not feel like I have been beaten with a stick after three hours. I have been going down to the food course in Harbour Centre and getting a smoothie just before class. I drink it just before/at the start of class

My theory is that the smoothie does two things: keeps me hydrated and keeps the blood sugar up. I haven’t felt too bad after lecture the weeks when I have done that.

A coffee in the morning (which I don’t usually have, so I’m sensitive to the caffeine) seems to help too.

We had the SFU Open House today. It all went down well. I took some pictures that I’m quite pleased with. My only complaint would have been the attendance—it wasn’t as busy as two years ago—50% more people would have been awesome.

I’m putting the blame for that squarely on Media and Public Relations. There wasn’t nearly as much advertising as last time, and I think that was the difference. I really do hate media and PR. We have had this conversation with them many times: “Hey, CS has this cool story. Maybe we can get it publicised?” “Sure. We’ll write an article for the SFU News.” “*seethe* Not publicised to SFU people that are already here: to the outside world! With the ‘media’?!? The ‘public’ that you’re supposed to be ‘relating’ with?!?” “Oh yeah… uh… *wanders off*”

I’m sure there was a very nice article about the Open House in the SFU News. But, that’s not what I’m here to rant about.

During the Open House, I spent most of my time at the “unplugged” table. Our “unplugged” demos are demonstrations of CS concepts that don’t use a computer, and were inspired by CS Unplugged which I love very much.

At one point, a woman came up with her kid. I have no real idea how old the child was because I have no interest: still had a diaper, but could probably walk okay, and talk a bit. 18 months?

She proceeded to heave the kid up onto the table and start futzing with one of the demos, so I started to explain it to her. There were a lot of things wrong with what came next. These are the things that make me subscribe to Childfree Ghetto.

1. The kids shoes weren’t pristinely clean. The white tablecloth was (up until just then, at least).
2. The child didn’t have the motor control to manipulate the game, and certainly wasn’t old enough to make any sense out of it. Having the kid near the game was pointless.
3. The mother used the child’s presence to avoid actually thinking. She clearly wasn’t stupid, so could have done this thing that 10 year olds can figure out. If she wasn’t interested, she could have wandered off. Instead, she just glanced around and went with “What should we do, Jason/Madison/Nicholas/Samantha/Whateveridontcare?” The child thought we should suck on our fingers. Waste of my time.
4. The mother had no interest in keeping the child from breaking anything. My as-subtle-as-I-get “I don’t really know how well this thing is put together” was not a sufficient clue to keep her child from leaning it’s full weight on the game.
5. I can only imagine the whole thing was part of some poorly-thought-out attempt to raise a gifted child. Read to your kid and leave me out of it, ferchrissake.
6. During all of this, her SUV-style stroller was left arranged so it blocked both table and aisle space.

There were probably other things too. Honestly, I think #3 bugged me the most. Procreating does not allow you to waive your right to higher brain function.

I recently decided that I needed more space to backup/archive data. So, I went out and bought a terabyte external drive ($240 at Costco). This drive is a WD MyBook Studio, which happens to come with USB, FireWire, and eSATA connections. I started to wonder how different those connections really are. The theoretical bandwidth of each is 60MB/s, 50MB/s, and 384MB/s, respectively.

First of all, I could have sworn my motherboard had a eSATA connector, but it doesn’t. So, that’s out.

I decided to do some benchmarking with Bonnie++. This seems to be the standard Linux disk benchmarker. I used the default configuration for all the tests, since I figure they knew what they were doing when they decided what the defaults were.

After seeing an FAQ about benchmarking RAID, I decided to also try tiobench. It tests multithreaded IO performance. I decided to look at 2 threads doing sequential reads and writes.

Then, I started to wonder how these stacked up against my internal drives. SATA is back, but internal, and with a different disk on the end. I have two internal drives, both 400 GB, 7200 RPM, 16MB cache. They are used along with the Linux software RAID stuff to create a RAID 1 (for even moderately important stuff) and a RAID 0 (a big bit bucket).

I also tried a straight-up non-RAID partition on an internal disk (and I had to temporarily degrade my RAID to do it—I hope you appreciate this). The last tests I did were on my laptop and its 60 GB, 5400 RPM disk.

Here’s what I came up with. In all cases, larger numbers are better.

[Intel D975XBX motherboard, Intel Core 2 Duo 6600, 2GB RAM, Ubuntu Hardy, relatively idle system, ReiserFS 3.6 partitions. Laptop is a Pentium M 1.86 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Ubuntu Hardy, idle, EXT3 filesystem.]

So… what did we learn from that?

1. I’m too lazy (and non-visual) to bother making useful graphs in situations like these.
2. USB 2.0 and Firewire are close enough in speed that it’s not worth mentioning.
3. Damn, I wish I had eSATA on my motherboard to see how that fared.
4. If possible, keep your disks inside the computer where they belong. The external performance is pretty impressive, but much slower than internals.
5. … unless your other option is a slow laptop drive, then the externals start to look pretty snappy. I didn’t try the external connected to the laptop, though. There might be a processor/bus bottleneck.
6. The RAID arrays aren’t nearly as fast as I thought they’d be. This could be a result of the Linux software RAID slowing things down. I have never used hardware RAID controllers (either the ones on many motherboards or dedicated cards).
7. Seriously… who’s stealing all my RAID performance? I want it back!

Edit [05/23]: I feel I should add: All benchmarks are crap. They are positively correlated with the thing you want and call “performance”, but are definitely not directly related.