First Date with Siri

So I got an iPhone. Two years on Blackberry, then two years on Android, and finally I've admitted that it really is just a great interface. There are still a few things I miss from my ol' Droid, but even after one day I'm rapidly getting used to it.

A colleague came with me to the store to get it, and on the way back to work he asked a question the magnitude of which had not previously occurred to me:

Have you used Siri yet?

Of course I've heard and read about Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface), the "intelligent" software that acts as a sort of personal assistant and voice-activated search engine. Mostly, I'd read the funny responses Apple engineers had pre-programmed in to certain questions like: "What are you wearing?" (Answer: Aluminum body with glass front and back), or "What's the meaning of life?" (Answer varies, I got: "I don't know, but I think there's an app for that."). Sometimes Siri needs extra information to help you out, as in when you say "I need to hide a body." Siri responds, "What kind of place are you looking for?" with options to search for nearby reservoirs, metal foundries, mines, dumps, or swamps.

But there's a bit more to Siri than that. I've heard several people commenting on "her" personality. Around Christmastime, even my mom talked about Siri as if she were an old friend who helps her out--and just happens to hang out in her purse.

So, walking down the street with my colleague, new iPhone in hand, I considered what my first interaction with Siri would be. I admit, I was a little nervous. What should I ask first? How do I introduce myself? What if she doesn't understand me? What if she doesn't like me? I held my finger over the button that activated Siri for a moment, then:

"Hello?"

"Hello, Andrew."

"Um, how are you today?"

"I am well. What can I help you with?"

"Um, nothing right now, thank you."

"Ok."

It seems Siri and I are off to a polite, if a little cool, start. We're still working a bit on our rapport, but I'm sure we'll get there. Even this morning I asked Siri to remind me to do something later, and was surprised at the accuracy of the dictation. I was a little skeptical, but I think I might be coming around.

Then I discovered Siri's Australian accent in the settings. Oh my, I think I'm in love.

Writing More

I'm hoping to write more. There's no big secret strategy here, just the good old brute-force method. I'll make some time regularly to site and write.

The good news is, I actually have been writing a very little bit more lately.  Just before the holidays, I wrote a post for Tor.com concerning the recent announcements out of CERN. Two research teams on different detectors are narrowing in on the infamous Higgs Boson, completing our understanding of the Standard Model of subatomic particles. Fascinating stuff.

Painting a giant movie poster.

More recently, I wrote an article on the very site I work for. Outside my office window I can see a 14-story-tall advert for movies, and every six weeks or so they paint over it for a new movie. It's fascinating to watch, and I've always wondered how it works. So I documented it with pictures and did some research to find out the process. Yes, they actually are painting--by hand--the entire side of a building. The article can be found here.

So yes, I've been writing a bit. Now to keep it going.

What's My Age Again?

Pens aside, I've been talking with a lot of people lately about what it means to be a grown-up.  Not surprisingly, I've gotten a lot of different answers.  Some say you're a grown-up when you're legally responsible for yourself at 18, others when you're out of college, or married, or buying a first house, or are responsible for another human being in some way, or have gone through some cultural rite of passage.  When you're in your twenties.  When you're in your thirties.  When people call you "sir."  When you have more married friends than single friends.  When you can't believe how young everyone else suddenly seems to be.  The definitions seem to be endless.

One of the best responses I've gotten has been, "You know when you can ask that question of yourself, and are genuinely concerned about your response."

It may be because both of my parents are in the mental health field, but I've come to believe that the mark of adulthood is a certain level of personal responsibility and self control.  (How's that for vague and high-minded?)  An adult is in control of themselves by choice.  They recognize and balance their own desires with those of their family, friends, and society.

And yet, by that definition, how many adults do I know?  Virtually none.  I know so few people who don't lose their temper publicly, make irrational decisions based on their temporary emotional state, or act out of selfishness or emotion, that I can count them in my head quickly.  Politicians cheat, celebrities party like teenagers discovering alcohol for the first time, and everyone lies to others or themselves.  I don't even qualify for adulthood myself by that generalized definition.  On the other hand, I know plenty of people over the age of 18, out of college, married, or in important positions who occasionally, some more than others, behave like they're under 18, schoolchildren, single, and face no consequences.

Consequences, by the way, factored largely into the responses I've been hearing as well.  Some say an adult has to face consequences.  Others say an adult is able to face consequences.  Yet others claim an adult is someone who foresees consequences and adjusts their own behavior accordingly.  All variations on the theme.

I am in my late twenties.  I am married.  I am (tying to) buy a home.  I have a job where I lead a team of people with little oversight.  I pay bills.  I analyze consequences before acting.  Well, most of the time anyway.  Do I get it?  Am I a grown-up now?

Are you?

Slow Down, You Move to Fast

Things are a bit hectic at the moment. We're moving tomorrow, our lives are in boxes and the apartment of two years feels foreign. The office, and indeed my whole company, is going through big changes, and many of us are waiting to see what happens next.

At this point, everything feels up in the air.

Then I cam across the video below, and it reminded me to slow down, look around, and remember where I am.


The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

Taking It to the Limit

After an incredibly difficult week both in and out of work, Lynn and I decided to run away for the weekend. We went up to Killington, VT to meet some friends and ski our troubles away.

I went skiing a lot with my dad growing up, but during college almost completely stopped as other concerns crept in and time became a luxury I no longer enjoyed. Moving to NYC certainly didn't help get me out-of-doors, until Lynn and I started going up to Killington once or twice a year. I found, though, that while I remembered how to ski, the practice of skiing had considerably changed. My body has changed, and certainly the way I use it. And even the skis themselves had changed, the last pair I owned were straight and longer than I am tall. Nowadays with the parabolic skis, they're shorter, lighter, and feel quite a bit different.

Once or twice a year, for three years now, did not make me immediately recall the days when I was young and just wanted to go fast. But as I pushed myself a little more each time, I found the memories return, the muscles recall, and the technique slowly improve. Two weeks ago, skiing with Lynn's family, I went down the first black diamond run in at least a decade. Two days ago, I pushed my own limits much further.

We were skiing this weekend with a good friend who stood in our wedding and his girlfriend. They are both excellent skiers, and we find ourselves pushing a little harder when around them to keep up. My friend in particular is also a good motivator, and he knows just when I need a little nudge.

Our first run from the condo down to the base lodge was green, if only because there were no other trails to take. The second and third runs were half blue and half black diamonds—the real warm-up runs. As we rode up the Bear Mountain quad lift, along the famous Outer Limits trail, we couldn't help but all feel good about our skiing and our weekend. My friend, seizing the opportunity, noted how the snow was good, the moguls smaller than usual, and that this was the day—if ever there was one—to take Outer Limits.

Outer Limits is long and steep. It's known for being one of the steepest and toughest trails in the East. It's a double-black diamond trail.

And we did it.

I won't claim it was pretty, but I made it to the bottom without falling, and that's an accomplishment I'll take pride in. It was frightening, slowly moving toward the brink at the top of the mountain. But I heard a voice behind me, a friend saying "Don't stop! Don't stop!" and I kept going. Once over the edge and making way down the mountain, it became much easier. Where else was I to go but down? I focused on the snow ahead of me and where I should make my turns, rather than how steep the hill was and very far it was to the bottom. As with many things, once I'd committed to doing it, the act of doing it was a much smaller hurdle.

When I reached the bottom, the four of us celebrated with a well-deserved waffle at the base.


Images of Outer Limits from Wikipedia

Learning Relativity in the Subway

On the subway home from yesterday, there was a boy and his parents. I'm not a very good judge of age, but I'd put him around 2 years old; he was talking, but not the most steady on his feet. Generally, my reaction to toddlers on the subway quickly falls into one of two possibilities: "aww, cute" or more frequently "please stop screaming."

This child was well-behaved enough, and I saw a very interesting thing happen. He was sitting on his mother's lap, on the right-hand side of the train. Thus, to his right was the direction of travel. His father, sitting across from him, was asking if he knew how many stops they had before they got off the train. The child, thinking hard, decided instead to point out that everything outside the train windows was moving "that way," to his left.

The father said, no, the train was moving "that way," pointing to the child's right and the direction of travel. Having none of it, the boy insisted, no, that way--left and against the direction of travel. They went on like this for a while, before the father gave up, and the mother distracted the boy with a small box of goldfish.

Mmmm, goldfish.

I found it strangely fascinating, watching the two argue about what exactly was moving, and in which direction. The boy, knowing full well that he was sitting down, and clearly watching the stations and lights whiz by from right to left, correctly stated his observations from the center of his at-rest coordinate system. The father, aware of his position in the larger coordinate system consisting of the whole city, correctly stated his observations from a moving point within that larger system. Both were right, but both continued to try and convince the other to change coordinate systems.

The source of their confusion is that the boy is still thinking concretely, unable to change his frame of reference to the world outside the train. Adults, though able to think abstractly and change their frame of reference, often refuse to change once they've chosen one. Most adults would never say, "get on the 1 train, and wait for the third stop to arrive." But both father and child sat there, staring at each other across the subway car, teetering on the edge of one of the first principles of Relativity.

Sometimes we need to remember, when talking to each other, to define our frame of reference.

"And Another Thing..."

I was surprised when the BBC produced the Tertiary Phase, Quandary Phase and Quintessential Phase of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio program. The Primary and Secondary Phases, of course, being the original version of the Hitchhiker's Guide, first broadcast in England in 1978. I was surprised because the three new phases of the HHG radio program were recorded in 2003, 23 years after the completion of the Secondary Phase, and two years after the tragic death of Douglas Adams. But it seems Adams left some pretty explicit instructions on how to complete the radio program, always his favorite medium through with he brought the Guide to the world. He had scoped out scripts for most of the fits (episodes) and left little to interpretation.

In the spring 2001, just weeks before his fatal heart attack, I had the great pleasure of meeting Douglas Adams. He spoke at my college, the last stop on what was to be his last tour. Being a college of engineers and scientists, he talked a lot about technology and the way we interact with it. He was so excited, so enthusiastic, standing on stage half-pleading and half-commanding us to bring him his dream: a real, interactive Guide to everything. Adams helped create h2g2 back in 1999 as a community-generated encyclopedia of everything. An early wikipedia, h2g2 has a section for peer-edited factual entries, as well as one for unedited entries that are more creative and fun.

After his talk, I asked him why he came around to colleges like mine. His response was immediate: technology can be amazing, and if we're as excited about evolving and innovating it as he is, then it surely will be even more amazing.

Today I was surprised again. A friend of mine pointed me to this article on the BBC's website. A sixth Hitchhiker's book? Written by a different author? Adams had said many times that he was always slightly disappointed with how dark Mostly Harmless turned out. He had intended to end the book series on a bit more of an upbeat tone, as he did the radio program. But can another author fill those rather large shoes? (Adams was 6' 5" after all!)

Eoin Colfer is already a well-established author, and a Hitchhiker's fan. It will be interesting to see what hits the stands in October 2009.

Population in Perspective

Since we're thinking about maps.

I often have a hard time explaining to my friends and family back in the Midwest just how many people live in this fair city. I've spent most of my life in small towns whose "downtown" areas consisted of two blocks of storefronts. So I was ambling along through the webs and found this map. It's a simple population of comparison, matching each borough of New York to the state whose population most closely matches it.


Yes, there as many people on my 14-mile long island as their are in the entire great state of Idaho. (And yes, what happens in Brooklyn, stays in Brooklyn.)

I find it fascinating to see this so plainly laid out. I see more people—and different people—each day than existed in either of the small Michigan towns in which I lived, or even both combined. When people talk about the "New York bad attitude" and how hard it is to get to know people here, I have to admit I'm not that surprised. Look at how many people we have in our lives daily. It's incomprehensible to think of getting to know an entire state—and any one of the five boroughs is no different. Add to this the 45 million tourists who come through each year, and is it really any wonder that most New Yorkers just can't deal with thinking about any more people? (Granted, we could all be a little nicer about it, but that applies across the planet and is just concentrated in cities.)

And if you really want food for thought, think about what this means about the way the electoral college is set up.

As an interesting aside, Manhattan and Idaho both suffer from confusion over the origin of their names. There are several possible origins for the word Manhattan, all deriving from the original "Manna hata" that Henry Hudson noted in his log book in 1609. Mannahata can be translated from the native Lenape tribe as "island of many hills." However, the Munsee dialect of the Lenape translates the word variously as manahachtanienk—meaning "general place of inebriation", manahatouh—"place where timber is procured for bows and arrows" or simply menatay—"island."

Idaho, meanwhile, is disputedly from the Shoshone term "ee-da-how," meaning variously "the sun comes from the mountains," "gem of the mountains," or "Behold! the sun coming down the mountain." But this may have been completely fabricated by a lobbyist named George Willing around the time the northwest part of the country was being carved into territories. However, a tribal chief of the native Coeur d'Alene Nation explains that in their language Idaho would be pronounced "Ah-d'Hoo." He translates the first syllable as a greeting and second as an expression of surprise, coming up with "Welcome, with open arms! We're just surprised that there are so many of you!"

That very phrase has been what New York has greeted newcomers with for four hundred years.

It's A Jungle Out There

Richard Florida, the pop economist, has released an intriguing new map of the U.S. that displays the relative ratios of men and women in cities. It seems that for men, the eastern half of the country is the place to find a match, while women should go west.


New York and its environs seem to be the absolute worst for women, with there being more than 200,000 more single women than single men. Sorry, ladies.

But wait, there's more! Brooklynite John Soma, who apparently truly does have all the time in the world, contends that the above map is misleading. Why? It ranges in age from 18 to 64--and ignores the trends across ages. His interactive map allows you to set an age range, and adjust for population. This gives a far more "fair" description of the singles scene across the U.S. Here is his map of the whole age range, 18 to 64:


NYC still doesn't look too good for women, and single men are still battling it out on the west coast. But once you adjust for population, it looks like this:


And here's where it gets interesting. As it turns out, it's not that are really so few single men in the east, it's just that there is a dearth of single older men. There are plenty—more than plenty—single young men in the east. If we narrow the age range, here's what we see (raw data on top, adjusted for population below):



It's raining men!

And if you're wondering why I'm blogging about this, it's because there's one dot on these maps that makes me laugh uncontrollably. Can you spot it? Do you see, way up north? Yes, it's my very own college town! A large population of young men, lost in the wilderness of the UP, trying in vain to become engineers under the delusion that it will impress all the women who are nowhere to be found!

Emily Creeps Me Out

I saw this in AdRants. (Yes, I'm trying to pay attention to the industry that supports me!) They point to this video that is currently flying around the web:



I'm not afraid to admit it, Emily creeps me out. She really is so life-like. Apparently, only after 1:30 mark is it actually the actress on screen. Before that her face is completely digital. Will actors and actresses become the next endangered species? Or will we see an overabundance of waiters and waitresses?

And all this in the wake of some other distressing ad-related news. Gawker reports that other ad companies are experimenting with face recognition software a la "Minority Report." Soon, the ads will know who you are, and create a life-like person to talk to you about what they're selling. I'm both amazed and afraid!

East Side, West Side, All Around the....Country

It's been a summer of quick little trips around the country. I'm always amazed at the little quirks of each little place. Especially in these times of big-box stores and generic chain stores, it's wonderful to see something unique to an area.

A while back I spent a wonderful day down in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ. Point Pleasant is fairly typical Jersey Shore beach town, with a long boardwalk lined with restaurants and shops. Further north along the boardwalk, these give way to houses large and small with cute, beach-appropriate names tacked over their doors. One of these is named "Seascape," but to everyone who's been to Point Pleasant, it's simply known as the "Sinatra House." Here, Ol' Blues Eyes plays from speakers built into the porch every day from 8am to 9pm. I found an archived NYT article with some more details. The house is owned by the Smith family, and although Mr. Smith may have passed on, the residents of Point Pleasant were glad to hear his family is continuing the tradition. This is my kind of place.

The following weekend, I spent a few days in Silicon Valley. Here again, the people who live in this area have an interesting quirk. There are shopping carts everywhere. Everywhere. This string of cities are neither as pedestrian friendly as New York nor as car-centric as Detroit. Most people have cars, and most use them every day to run errands. But many people walk to the grocery store. In New York, where everything, as they say, is bigger, people take little fold-up carts that they own to the little grocers to pack the little foodstuffs into their little refrigerators. But in the Valley, people seem to walk to the grocery stores, buy a shopping cart full of groceries, and then walk home with their groceries in the cart. They don't need a shopping cart, of course, so they leave it on the side of the road. At first I figured all these shopping carts along the roads were an indication of homelessness. But the carts outnumbered the homeless by far. The friend I stayed with told me that people just use them and leave them--and that he hadn't really noticed how many there were because they're simply always around.

The next weekend I went back down to Brevard, NC to see Lynn's opera. I didn't get much time to socialize with locals, as it was a very short trip. Still, in my three weekends in three parts of the country, it was nice to see first-hand that there still is quite a bit of diversity in behavior and ideas, if not in choice of fast-food eats.

What Next?

Several of my coworkers have seen and enjoyed having the business card robot around. They've started donating their own business cards right and left. As of today, here are the cards I now have to play with.

....and there's yet another box that didn't make it into that picture. Each box contains around 500 cards. The entire figure from the last post is only 432 cards.

What to build next?

Busy at Work

I don't really fiddle when there are slow times at work. Strangely, I fiddle more when it's very busy. When I'm really on a roll, getting lots done with still more to do, I get a kind of excess of energy. There are inevitably times when I'm waiting on something or someone, and my OCD tendencies take over. So it was in the last couple of weeks, when I've been busier than ever, I also fiddled in the downtime and came up with this:

He's a little over four feet tall (the magazine is for scale), and is comprised of about 432 out-of-date business cards (mine and a coworker's). No glue, no tape, just the cards. The secret? Click here.

Another coworker has given me a box of her cards, too. If things stay as busy as they have been, there might be a puppy in the window soon.

Harry Potter and the Converted Fan

I never thought I'd like Harry Potter. I avoided the first book, all those years ago, when all my friends were raving about it. I laughed when it hit number one on the New York Times Bestseller list. And I flat-out refused when the first movie arrived in theaters.

My family, as in many cases, decided for me. On Thanksgiving of that year, it was decided that the whole family would go see the first movie together after our Thanksgiving dinner. My younger cousin and I were the lucky ones who had the privilege to go to the theater and block off an entire row for the rest of our family. I've never been called so many nasty names by angry parents in my life. The movie was alright. It was fun, but definitely a kids movie. It was, after all, about a bunch of eleven-year-olds.

It was a few years, and four books, later when a friend of mine convinced me to give Harry Potter a chance. Reading the first book, I found, was much better than the only move I'd seen. The second, third, fourth, and even fifth only continued to get better and better. I wouldn't consider myself a fan, but they were definitely enjoyable to read.

When the sixth book came out a year ago, I read it after my girlfriend, and was transfixed. It was gripping, and I found myself frustrated by all the things I'd forgotten in the two years since I'd last read the series. I started over again, and read through all six books.

The seventh and final book, as if I even needed to say, came out last weekend. It's the first one that I've bought, and not borrowed. It's the first one that I acquired and started reading the day it was sold. It's also the longest book I've ever read in a single weekend--a weekend that also included a trip out to Connecticut.

Around 7pm, my fiancé and I went down to Harry Potter Place. Scholastic, the US publisher of the books, converted the small cobble stoned Soho street behind their headquarters into a veritable Diagon Alley. Here you could find a whomping willow, magicians, face-painting, a sneak peak at the final book, and a few other activities that would allow muggles to escape to Harry's world--if only as a pretext to get in line for the book. More interesting than the activities, though, were all the people, dressed as various characters real and imaginary. Unfortunately for us, the line to get into this tightly controlled space was quite long, and we'd hoped to find a better way to spend the evening.

And so we did. Down where I live, there's a Borders on Wall Street. Since there aren't many people who live in the financial district, we figured it would be a far better alternative to standing in line for ages and ages in Soho. We made the right choice. We got numbered wrist bands upon arrival, and were then free to peruse the store, or even leave. No lines! We whiled away, chatting and reading bits of books around the store. We took part in a brief debate on whether Snape was a friend or foe, and watched all the kids--and a few adults--in their costumes. When midnight struck, we bought our books and headed home to begin reading. We read nearly all weekend, with brief pauses to eat, sleep, and view possible wedding venues. It was so gripping, and so well-crafted, that I couldn't put it down. I even woke up a little early yesterday morning to finish it before work as I was so close to the end. It was wholly satisfying.

What a great story.