Calle's Journal

iP{od,hone,ad}

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:39:52 GMT

For the past month or so, pretty much every time I've been using an app on my iPhone, one particular question has been more or less actively in my mind. That question is "What would this be like on a ten-inch screen?". For some apps, the answer is "meh". For others, it's "WANT! NOW!". The reason for the question is, of course, the upcoming iPad. Which has been talked about a lot already, so if you're fed up with it you can stop reading here.

On the surface, the iPad is just a bigger and faster iPhone. A 9.7 inch screen instead of a 3.5 inch one. Which doesn't sound like much at first, but... Remember old 14-inch computer monitors? The difference between the iPhone and the iPad is like the difference between a 14-inch monitor and a 39-inch monitor. It's a big enough difference to move from quantitative to qualitative. While it's physically possible to do something on both screens, it may just not be viable on the smaller one. Reading longer texts is in that category, sort of. You can do it on the iPhone, but it's clunky. It's obvious that the experience will be much better on a bigger screen. For other things the difference may be smaller, or even in favour of the smaller screen. It's this sort of thing that I refer to above. But it's not the interesting thing, really.

The interesting thing is what can be done with the iPad that we haven't though of yet. Some suggestions have been cropping up in blogs and articles already. Interactive gameboard. Control panel for other hardware. Stuff like that. It's an easily portable, net-connected monitor with multitouch input. It seems obvious to me that the potential here is huge, and I really look forward to seeing what applications people come up with.

That's what the iPad looks like to me right now. A huge bundle of untapped potential. Sure, it'll be able to do nearly everything the iPhone already does -- but that's the least interesting bit. Apple have been calling the iPad "revolutionary", and I suspect they may be right. I think it's very possible that the iPad will be a forerunner in an almost entirely new way to interact with computers and the Internet.

And I'm pretty darn sure that Steve Jobs wants it to be exactly that, except instead of "forerunner" read "the dominant platform for the foreseeable future". I think what he's aiming for is for Apple to be dominant in an entirely new field of mass-market computer use. Microsoft used to talk about getting a Windows computer on every desk. Well, I think Jobs is aiming at getting at least one tablet into everyone's hands.

Which leads my thoughts back to the iPhone, and the reason for Apple to make it in the first place. Because it occurred to me that, if Jobs is really amazingly devious, the entire iPhone line may be marketing for the iPad.

Look at it like this. There has been talk about an Apple tablet for a really long time. Since the mid-90s, IIRC. I think we can assume that there has been an internal project aiming at it since at least Jobs' return to Apple in 1997. And I also think that we can safely assume that Jobs is clever enough to have seen what I write about above; that it has a potential for being a new way of using computers. Which becomes a marketing problem. You can't really build and sell hardware based on what people may do with it. If people don't see what it's good for, they won't buy it, and if people don't buy it, nobody will invent cool uses for it. So, enter the iPhone. It is a small tablet, so it's easier to build. And it's a phone, so people know what they'd want it. And I suspect that a lot of iPhone users have had the same experience I have: making phone calls is one of the least used functions of it. As soon as people realize that they have an Internet terminal in their hands, they start inventing stuff. Lots of stuff. After less than two years, the App Store has, IIRC, more than 140000 different apps on it. Almost all of which will, according to Apple, run on the iPad from day one. So instead of trying to sell the tablet in a vacuum, they sell it like a souped-up iPhone. Phrased like that, it makes sense. We know what it's for. We can see why we might want it (or not). And in the way that the iPhone turned it to be so much more than the mobile phones that existed when it was first introduced, I suspect (and hope) that the iPad will turn out to be a whole lot more than the iPhone.

But we'll see. I may be wrong. But I can still see enough ways that a bigger iPhone would be immediately usefui to me that I intend to buy one as soon as I can.

Um

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:18:15 GMT

They're making another Pirates of the Caribbean. And they're basing it on Tim Powers' "On Stranger Tides".

Talk about mixed feelings...

Avatar

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:59:16 GMT

This weekend jennyaxe and I went and saw Avatar. Since everyone and their neighbor have already reviewed it, I thought I'd just give my opinions in brief.

1) Computer graphics have come a long way since Tron.

2) Visually, this movie was awesome.

3) I liked the world, the background and much of that, but the plot was crap.

4) Zoë Saldana did an amazing job playing Neytiri. I can't really figure out how she did it, considering she never actually appears on the screen. Of all the Na'vi, I thought she was pretty much the only one that gave the impression of being an actual living being rather than a very good model.

How MySQL logins work

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:03:31 GMT

Today I had to figure out why we could log in to the database using the same credentials from all machines except the one the database server was running on. To possibly ease the pain of anyone reading this who may ever have MySQL's login system inflicted on them, I am now going to describe how MySQL logins work. Hopefully, it will be clearer than their documentation.

The most important factor in deciding if you're let in (and if you are, as which user) is not your username or password. It's the host you're connecting from.
The right to connect to a MySQL server depends on three things: the host you're connecting from, a username and a password. The host can be specified explicitly or with wildcards. A more specific host trumps a less specific one.
When making the decision to let you in or not, MySQL uses the most specific entry (or entries) available for the host you're connecting from that also has a matching username.
An empty username works as a wildcard.
This means that if there is a wildcard name with a narrower matching host specification than for any entry with the username you gave, MySQL will try to log you in as the anonymous (wildcard) user instead of the one you wanted.
If that wildcard user has a different password from the one you gave, you will not be allowed in. If it does have the same password (the empty one, for example) you will be logged in as another user than the one you expected.
The MySQL documentation suggests doing SELECT CURRENT_USER(); to see which user you really got logged in as if you're experiencing privilege problems.

It was the second to last one that bit us, of course. The database server machine had a wildcard user entry with no password, so when we tried to connect from there with a user and a password we were not let in. Once you know how it works, it's kind of obvious.

For the question of why in Cthulhu's name it works this way in the first place, I have not been able to find an answer in the documentation.

Crossover

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:56:14 GMT

jennyaxe had an idea. So, for fact-checking reasons we watched Angel S5:20 "The Girl in Question" while eating dinner. And her idea really fits the canon extremely well.

You remember the guy that Buffy is said to be dating in that episode, the Immortal? Who had been in a pain in the ass for Angel and Spike several times before over a period of centuries? Who had had a threesome with Darla and Drusilla? It's totally Jack Harkness from Torchwood. Everything we hear about him, from appearance to tastes to behaviour, just fits perfectly.

Landmarks

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:37:58 GMT

Today is my 14611th day alive.

On newspapers and their survival (or lack thereof)

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:47:02 GMT

Clay Shirky just posted a very interesting blog entry on newspapers.

Bah

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:37:40 GMT

Maybe it is time to move over to Dreamwidth after all.

Little Red Riding Hood, a modern version

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:03:48 GMT

At this point, I've heard about the game The Path from as wildly different sources as ursulav's LJ and a blog on computer game design. In all cases, the verdict has been along the lines of "weird and/or brilliant, but definitely trying something new". Which makes me curious. Curious enough to go and have a look at the game's website, just to verify that it's as usual Windows-only.

Only it turns out it has a Mac version. So now I have to make up my mind if I want to buy it or not. At only US$10, I probably should give it a try. If nothing else, it'd give me something to play when WoW is down for maintenance.

Picture

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:31:52 GMT

Eliza Dushku posted a picture to her Twitter feed that kinda looks like it's for Dollhouse femslash fans.

Scenes from a home

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:29:25 GMT

jennyaxe is watering the kitten. With the watering can she uses for flowers.

Stupid Business Moves-R-Us

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:41:44 GMT

It seems that Associated Press have decided to shoot themselves squarely in the head.

Fic

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:39:47 GMT

For those interested, I have now posted a Martha Jones/Sarah Jane Smith story to femslash09.

Wanted: Beta reader

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:46:09 GMT

I have written a story for the femslash09 ficathon. Since I am for once in plenty of time, a beta-read would be nice. It's a Doctor Who (new series) story, and quite short (3200 words). It'd be a bonus if you're British, or familiar enough with UK English to spot my USAisms. To the best of my knowledge, the person I'm writing for does not read my LJ, so if you see this it should be safe for you to read the story before it's published. You should have watched the show up to the end of the 2008 season.

So? Anyone?

The death of a scarcity

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:17:48 GMT

A week and a bit has passed since the Swedish EU parliament elections. Before and after those, there was (and, I believe, still is) quite a lot of noise about the Pirate Party. What I have seen of that noise in old-style media has focused heavily on the sharing of copyrighted material on the Internet, and if that is wrong or not.

The answer to that question is that the question itself is faulty.

Online filesharing is not a problem. It is, in itself, just a technology that makes something that was once hard very easy. And therein lies the rub.

Let's rewind time half a century or so. It's the heyday of radio, TV, newspapers, movie studios and record companies. They all thrive like crazy, they to a very large degree drive youth (and other) culture. Lots and lots and lots of money pass through them and their cousin Advertising. Megastars are born, some people make enormous fortunes, all that stuff. You're familiar with this. Now, all these companies have one thing in common: what they actually do is to produce, reproduce and distribute information. Radio program? Just information, when you come down to it. TV? Also information. Newspapers, movies, LP records? Just the same. Now, the actual production of that information isn't much harder or easier than it has been for as long as humanity has existed. It was no harder for Shakespeare to write his plays than it was for a scriptwriter in the 1950s. What was different was that reproduction and distribution of the information on a massive scale was possible but hard. To have a radio show you needed a radio station, which was a serious investment. The same goes for TV stations, printing presses, trucks to ship LP records and so on. So companies grew up to get over that threshold; they made the investments and made a big profit from the fact that at the bottom of it all people are social creatures who want to communicate in some fashion with each other.

Fast forward to today again. In between then and now, something appeared: the Internet. Millions of computers hooked up to each other, through which people are talking to each other all day every day all the time. And here's the thing: what the internet does, at a very basic level, is reproduce and distribute information. I write this text here on my laptop, the laptop copies it to the LiveJournal servers, which will copy it to your webbrowsers where you can read it. It's all very easy. The threshold for publishing things like this is extremely low. As long as you can get the use of a web browser for a few minutes you can do it.

Now compare this to the earlier situation. The difficulties that those entire industries grew up to overcome are no longer there. The thresholds to publication that used to exist have been not so much lowered as completely obliterated by the Internet. There used to be a limit on the number of newspapers that could be printed per day, the number of records that could be pressed, the hours of TV or radio that could be broadcast. Publication used to be a scarce resource. It's not any more. The Internet's capacity to transmit information is so vast and so scalable that this scarcity has gone away. I, here, writing while I'm waiting for a script to finish running, can put my words where they are available to almost a quarter of the human species. Reproduction and distribution of information is no longer a problem.

And that is a problem for the companies that were created to solve the problem. They no longer have a reason to exist!

Back to the online filesharing debate. What that is all about is those companies' attempts to by legal means recreate an environment where reproduction and distribution of information is hard. To make it so that you can't use this wonderful planet-spanning tool to transmit the kind of information they traditionally control, not because it's beyond your ability to do so (as used to be the case in the past), but because you're not allowed to. They are trying to create an artificial scarcity of certain information.

In a way you can understand them. Any entity will fight for its own survival. But that doesn't make it any less objectionable. The hurdles they create will be with us for a long time, and be unnecessary problems for many things totally unrelated to their businesses. They are, in a metaphorical sense, spreading broken glass all over the path to even more powerful information technologies. If it wasn't for the widespread damage they're doing, we could just ignore them. There are certainly more than enough information sources popping up all over the Internet, and some of them will figure out business models that work in the new environment, and we could just start ignoring the locked-in produce from the old companies. There will be enough to read and watch and listen to, of that I am certain. But the old companies still have vast amounts of money and influence, and they will mess things up for all of us while they die (or change into something that works, of course, although I find that hard to believe in).

And that is why they must be fought. If you like the Internet as it is now, if you use services like LiveJournal or Facebook or flickr or Wikipedia or any number of new things, then you need to object to what the representatives of the old world are doing. Because what they are doing is aimed at destroying the potential of the Internet. They live on information not flowing freely, and therefore they must stop it.

It's not about file sharing. It's about leaving the greatest social tool our species has ever created alive and well. It's about making the future better for people instead of corporations.

Mystery, or something

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:29:45 GMT

On my way to work I listen to podcasts. Today, it was BBC World Service's Digital Planet and the Swedish P1's Vetandets Värld ("Knowledge's World", literally translated). The first happened to be about blogging and the second about podcasting. Both of them at some point talked about why people blog or make podcasts, treating it as some kind of unknown mystery. Am I weird in thinking it totally freaking obvious that when given an opportunity to communicate, people will do so?

Chuck

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:22:31 GMT

There must be Sarah Walker slash. Where do I find it?

Cats!

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:54:30 GMT

One of the cats was playing with a piece of Lego in the hallway. This would not be noteworthy, except that we don't have any Lego.

Well...

Sun, 24 May 2009 10:30:04 GMT

Thursday night when we came home from the cinema the kitten had managed to shut us out of half the flat.

We went to see the new Star Trek, jennyaxe, citikas and I. It was a lot better than we expected. A decent action-oriented SF movie in its own right, and a surprisingly fun reimagining of ST:TOS. At first I had a serious case of cognitive dissonance from Sylar the Vulcan, but that passed. All in all, Quinto did a good of his Spock. As did most of the actors, with a bit of an edge for Karl Urban's Dr McCoy, who was simply awesome. Uhura didn't have much to do, which was disappointing but very much in line with the original series. Overall, I think her role was more active and participating than the original's. Also, Zoë Saldana is every bit as hot as Nichelle Nicholls was back then (possibly more). The plot wasn't too bad for a Trek movie, and the occasional screaming scientific wrongness gave it the feel of a true Trek movie. The shockwave from the supernova unexpectedly reached Romulus? WTF, people? You can figure out how to build FTL spacecraft but not how long it takes for something with a fixed speed to cover a linear distance? Back here on Earth we cover that in seventh grade. Maybe the Federation Academy scientists could go back in time and get a couple of 13-year-olds from the 20th century to help them out.

And then we went home.

First a word about our flat. It's a two-story four-bedroom one. The entrance is on the upper floor, which also holds the kitchen, one bedroom, the computer room and the living room. In the living room there is a staircase going down to the other bedroom and the sewing room. There is a door between the living room and the rest of the upper floor, which is rarely closed.

This time, we came home to find the living room door closed. Which was suprising, since it had been open when we left. We quickly discovered that it was not only closed, on the other side of it was an ironing board that had previously been leaning against the wall now solidly wedged between the door and the side of a bookcase. As well as a kitten looking at us through the glass inset in the door with an expression of "O HAI! WHY ARE YOU OVER THERE, HOOMANS? OPEN DOOR SO I CAN REACH FUD PLZ". On our side of the door were two cats looking increasingly like "Yeah, ok, food is on this side, but, you know, food turns to, like, other stuff, and that goes on the other side of that there door, so, like, open the door, please? Nowish, if you don't mind?"

Some upset ensued. Different way of breaking into our own flat through the back without actually damaging anything were tried, with the result that we now have greater confidence in the flat's ability to resist burglars. Eventually, we pried loose the wooden ribs holding the glass pane into the door and lifted the pane out. Later still, we reassembled the door and made sure to move the ironing board elsewhere. Still need to repaint the door a bit, but that can wait.

Possibly we should not have named the kitten Arthas.

Pushing Daisies S2E12

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:22:18 GMT

And they cancelled this show! The bastards.

That other place

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:12:12 GMT

Since so many on my friends list were writing about Dreamwidth, I went over and OpenID-registered. And this morning they sent me a proper invitation. So now I have an account there, under the same name as here. I'd appreciate it if those of you who see this and have Deramwidth account would somehow prod me over there, so I can add you to my reading list.

Spring!

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:46:27 GMT

Best thing about early warm spring days: warm!

Second best thing about early warm spring days: scantily clad pretty women.

Watching "Merlin"

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:03:52 GMT

Morgana is cool. And pretty.

http://xkcd.com/571/

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:52:50 GMT

Note to self: do not read XKCD while the students are doing exercises. Sudden laughs make you look weird.

Painting

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:38:40 GMT

This Friday, jennyaxe, citikas, shady_fox and I went to the National Museum in Stockholm to watch their special exhibition on the Pre-Rafaelite Brotherhood. Which was nice. That art is a lot more interesting than most from that time. If you don't know what it looks like, one of the more famous examples is Millais' Ophelia.You almost certainly have seen that one, and/or one of the works it has inspired (like the video to Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue's Where the Wild Roses Grow).

Anyway.

Once we'd walked through that (and jennyaxe and citikas had done some hard-core textile geeking over it), we went on to have a look at the rest of the stuff in the museum. Or, rather, as much as we could stand before getting too tired. And one of the things we found, in an unassuming glass case in a small room, was Peter Paul Rubens' The Discovery of the Child Erichthonius by the Daughters of Cecrops. Which at first look seemed like your average Greek myth image from the time. Until one of us (I think it was shady_fox) noticed that the child has tentacles. Dude! That's like, Lovecraftian hentai horror from 1616!

Just goes to show that there really is nothing new under the sun.