Category Archives: Jeffrey the Barak

The alleys turn to dust

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By Jeffrey the Barak.

When a city or a state runs out of money, it takes longer for potholes to be fixed in the roadway. It takes even longer for sidewalks to be repaired, despite their upheaval due to short-sighted tree planting decades ago.

But far behind on the priorities, are the service alleys. Behind the houses and the apartment buildings of Los Angeles, service alleys are slowly but surely turning back into the dust that lay there before humans arrived here.

There is no money to repair them, so every time a car drives over the remaining pieces of asphalt, the once smooth blacktop becomes smaller and smaller fragments, rubbing together to form finer and finer gravel, and finally dust. On a windy day, the average alley can shed a hundred pounds in weight, and that dust goes somewhere else.

There is enough gravel, that was formerly asphalt, in the storm drains to pave a small town. Assuming the city and state budgets never recover, we can also assume that our service alleys will one day become country dirt roads, dotted in mud puddles of various depths on a rainy day, and making their way slowly but surely into the Pacific ocean, as if this great flood plain never had a Los Angeles built on top of it.

Protecting your backup with a fire safe

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By Jeffrey the Barak

You may have a PC, or you may have a Mac. Either way your documents, pictures, movies , music and even your preferred settings are probably more important to you than the machine itself, which can be replaced at the store in a day or two.

That is why we back up. We may back up to a remote server via our Internet connection, or we may own an external hard drive, and vigilantly back up our computer so that our user profile could be restored to a new computer in a couple of clicks. Well isn’t that nice?

Nice, unless your building burns down. Let’s say for example that your computer is a Mac, and you back up to a LaCie external Firewire hard disk. I choose this example because that would be my situation. It is easy to leave that attractive LaCie with it’s pretty blue light sitting on the desk next to the Mac, backing up once every hour or so to Time Machine. But it is also risky, because if the computer is lost, then so is the backup.

A better idea is to disconnect that Time Machine backup and place it inside a fire safe. Once every couple of days, or once a week, you can pull it back out and run Time Machine. But then you should put the drive back in the fire safe and close that lid. The drive can keep your passport and insurance policies company in the fire safe until it is needed on the desktop again.

This may sound like a great inconvenience, but if you are tiptoeing through a black charred smoldering mess that used to be your home, would you be happier to see a fire safe, or the melted remains of a hard drive?

 

What is in that dust?

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By Jeffrey the Barak

As usual, I spent a few minutes today playing with my trusty vacuum cleaner and also a Swiffer duster. And as usual, the vacuum and the duster each had plenty of dust to pick up.

Sometimes I cannot see dust without putting on my eyeglasses, but that’s another problem altogether.

So what is this dust? What was it before it became dust? And how come the room smells so fresh when it has been dusted, but the dust itself seems odorless? Dust raises questions such as these, and cars in the desert raise dust, such as this.

A glance around my home reveals a big clue as to why my dust looks as it does. I may have hardwood floors, but there is a long pile rug in the living room, and that sheds as soon as you look at it. Then there is hair. I shed, and so does my wife. We shed. So much of our dust is from the wool of the rug, which finds its way to the furthest reaches of the other floor of the house, and some of it is our hair.

But not all of it. We are traditionally told that dust mainly comprises of human skin, which we shed constantly as a barely visible fine powder. But I don’t believe it. While I do not dispute the fact that our skin contributes to house dust, more than half of the components of house dust find their way in from outside. Yes outside where every solid object in sight is constantly turning to powder. It may take centuries for some objects to turn to powder, but you can see it happening. Paint does it, brake pads do it, asphalt does it and concrete does it. And the dry soil of the Los Angeles basin does it, a lot. This outside dust is in every breath we take, and it enters the home just as our air does, through the windows, doors, air vents, and even through the solid walls and floors and ceilings.

It joins our skin dust in the bedsheets, on the baseboards and along the edges of the floor. Every day there is a little more to suck up into the vacuum cleaner, or a lot if I am wearing my glasses.

And every three months I open my air filter and there on the media is a  big layer of compressed dust.

It would not be so bad if dust was dead, but it is teaming with life. There are mites in the dust, and the mites defecate. And there are bacteria feeding on the waste from the mites. And bacteria, tiny as they may be, are what produces the smell in a dusty room. So if you can smell it, there are millions of the poo-eating monsters. A room that smells dusty, especially a bedroom, is full of bacteria.

So keep on vacuuming, never choose wall-to-wall carpet if you can have a hard floor, change your bedsheets a lot, and be aware of just what it is you are looking at when you see dust, with or without your glasses on.

One time everywhere in the world

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Have you ever seen a time zone map? Its a rectangular projection of our globe, like most maps, where small distances at the poles are stretched for thousands of miles and large distances at the equator look tiny by comparison. But my preference for globes is not the focus of this article.

The time zone map has twenty-eight vertical lines showing the time from “Universal Time minus fourteen” to “Universal Time plus twelve”. And somewhere in between is the International Date Line.

Universal Time is the same as the old Greenwich Mean Time in the Winter, but Greenwich (the United Kingdom) jumps ahead by an hour in the Summer for “Daylight Savings Time”, as do many other, but not all time zones. Other time zones that jump forward and fall back with the seasons do not always do it on the same week of the year, and many areas closer to the tropics do not change their clocks at all.

Add to this the odd thirty minute time zones and forty-five minute time zones that are observed in some countries, and the H zone, or UT-8, which the whole of China follows despite the vast distance from West to East, and some places in the Pacific that have UT minus fourteen so they can match their date with other related islands, and we have a world with a giant mess of silly time zones.

We civilized humans are an adaptable bunch of animals. Each year most of us adapt twice, when we move the clocks forward in Spring and back in the Autumn. And we twirl our watch crowns whenever we take a long flight across lines of longitude. Nothing bad happens when we change our clocks and watches.

So why don’t we consider one major change, once and for all and stay with it? Why don’t we do what airline pilots already do? Why don’t we adopt Universal Time for every place on the planet, and stop changing it with the season, or the longitude?

Yes it may be strange at first to wake up at 15:00 instead of 7 AM in Los Angeles, or go to bed at 04:00 instead of at 11PM in Boston. And it may be strange at first to have one daylight work day spanning two calendar dates. But there are many advantages for the time and date to be the same everywhere on earth.

It would really help The Republic of Kiribati, which currently has to bend the imaginary International Date Line like giant snake in order to have the entire nation of islands on the same date. and it would really help large wide countries such as China, Russia, Canada, Australia and the United States.

It would make daylight and actual days as perceived from where we are in the world more important than the numbers on a clock. We would be farmers, harvesting the light of the day. We would still rise somewhere near dawn and retire sometime after sunset, and we would still sleep in the dark, but the clocks around the world would all be the same.

The British would still be the lucky ones to have the sun at its zenith at noon on the clock, as they are today in the winter months only, but the rest of us would quickly get used to living by the sun and having an international standard for time in the new modern globalized society that we do business in.

What do you think? Please leave comments with your agreement with, or opposition to this proposal.

Why our car seats and doors are where they are

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A response to the Doking HD
By Jeffrey the Barak

The Doking HD is car made in Croatia. Most cars are of course not made in Croatia, but this is not the most unusual aspect of the Doking HD.

It is an electric car, and it is competing for our attention against electric cars from better known manufacturers, such as Mitsubishi, Nissan, Rolls-Royce, Ford, Chevrolet etc.

While rival CODA, from Southern California has aimed for a boring, plain-vanilla car format, Doking has included several design features that are out of the ordinary, notably gullwing doors and a central driver position.

And it is these two features in particular that make the car stand out. But while gullwing doors and a central driver position are great for car shows, there are very good reasons why most cars have hinged doors and the driver seat on one side or the other.

Let’s take the doors. Right now my ordinary car is parked in the garage. A few feet above the car is a concrete roof, and below that are water, gas and sewer lines. Had my car been a Doking, I could have parked there, but I could not have opened the door to get out, without hitting the structure above.

Okay so let’s assume I parked in a taller space. Normally we get in a car by opening a door, putting one leg on the floorpan, sitting down and then bringing the other leg in; in that order. But if the seat is not right beside the door, we have to come up with another way. We can step to the seat in a semi-crouch, or we can jump butt-first and backwards towards the seat, or perhaps hang our weight from overhead handles to maneuver into position. But we cannot just hop in, especially if the car is somehow not in clean show condition and the carpet has mud on it. And all the while, the entire side of the car is open, letting in the Croatian winter or the Arizonan heat, depending on where you are parked.

So Doking, the addition of gullwing doors and a central driving seat may be what sets this car apart from the Nissan Leaf or the Mitsubishi iMiev, but not necessarily to the advantage of Doking.

Besides these two areas of impracticality, this seems to be a nice car. It is fast, efficient, well-made and safe. Rather than retype everything from my Zagreb-penned press release, I will include this link to the very descriptive website: http://doking-automotiv.hr. I will say though, the tail light design is very clever and is sure to be copied by other marques by the time the next car show rolls by. See them in this article from two days ago:  the-art-at-the-auto-show

Have you seen the Doking? How do you like it?

The Art at the Auto Show

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The November 2011 L.A. Auto Show, Los Angeles Convention Center, California USA.

(click twice on any image to see it full size)

Honda Civic Instrument Panel

For years, the-vu has been lucky enough to have a couple of writers attend the LA Auto show on Press Days, and we have written selective reviews of cars, usually electric and alternative fuel cars. We used to have to search the back corners of Kentia Hall, where the accessories were shown, to find our hydrogen, electric and hybrid subjects, but the world has caught up with us and in 2011 all the news is about green technology.

So we are taking a left turn from the green news and focusing instead on the art of the automobile. Art often takes a back seat in new car models. Just look at a typical Buick, Toyota or Dodge and you will have to really search it inside and out to find much art in the car.

But art sometimes does make it into production, if you know where to look. It may be front and central, like the dashboard of a Mini-Cooper, or it may be hidden in the subtle belt-line curves of a new Hyundai.

This year our low flying cameraman follows our jazz, opera and ballroom-dancing inspired crew into the gallery that is the 2011 LA Auto Show. We only invested a couple of miles of walkaround into this project, but if you happen to attend and notice anything we missed, please post comments at the end of this article.

Not a Caddy, a Civic roof antenna.

Aside from the cars, some elements of the exhibition itself caught our attention. From perforated nylon partitions to shiny white floors, the cars benefitted from the latest in display innovation.

 

While the design criteria for a Rolls Royce, a Nissan and a Morgan have to be very different, as usual, judging all marques together  Volkswagen and Audi rise to the top of the pile for overall good aesthetics mixed with functionality.

VW Golf GTI nose

And as usual the BMW Mini has an interior that really stands out from all others, from the large clocks to the door trim to the stitching on the leather steering wheel.

 

But sometimes it can be a tiny detail such as a headlight, that uses art and design to elevate the car as a whole.

Bentley

Morgan

Even the mundane daily driver can be enhanced by trim and color to stand out from the crowd, as in the case of this lowly Hyundai.

Today’s Rolls Royces may have taken design far beyond either function or good taste, and I will spare your poor eyeballs by not showing the whole car here, but a nod to the classic wooden speedboat is always appreciated.

When presenting a small production electric car to go up against the major manufacturers, it helps to pull out all the stops, and Doking has a center driver seat, gull wing doors and cartoonish tail lights to grab the attention of the crowd.

Mitsubishi’s electric cars have become a reality, but the next generation take a leaf from the Beetle Book and also add some faux-wood-inlay micro-circuitry. (click once or twice on the small photo to zoom into image to see it in detail).

Have you been to the show and found any details that caught your artistic eye? If so please comment with your photo links.

Why I am not Linked In

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By Jeffrey the Barak

A Rant about multiple LinkedIn profiles.

I don’t use LinkedIn. (Linked In, linkedin.com). I really don’t need to because I’m not in the kind of business where I need to network with people and I don’t have a job working for someone else.

Still, there is no harm in having a LinkedIn profile is there? Well no, if you only have one. But what happened to me is apparently the same thing that that has made many other people cancel, delete and move on from LinkedIn.

You see, when it first started, several friends and few clients, who probably have more normal careers than myself, invited me to join LinkedIn, so I did. But they spelled my name differently, so each time I accepted I became a new, additional person on LinkedIn. Before long all these invitations began piling up, and some contacts went into one profile, others to another, and still more to as-yet uncreated profiles for different spellings of my name.

As commonplace as this situation seems to be, LinkedIn does not allow you to merge profiles. And it is not very obvious how to move contacts and networks of contacts from one to another in order to consolidate everything into one account.

Being a neat and tidy person, I found this quite disturbing. I mean, I have to tidy my desk and put everything away before I can feel comfortable, so this big, albeit virtual, mess created by LinkedIn was driving me nuts. I had to delete everything to be okay again.

For the past few years I have been dragging LinkedIn invitation emails to the trash every day, so I recently conducted some web-searches to see if LinkedIn had ever provided a solution. To my surprise, they have not.

And so, to the trash anything related to LinkedIn continues to be dragged, with a flourish of the wrist on my very tidy magic trackpad.

Jeffrey the Barak stays away from chain-link fences, sausage links and LinkedIn, and he used to enter banana eating races.

Nissan and Toyota ban each other from 25 countries.

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Nissan and Toyota sue each other for making similar products. Toyotas are to be banned in the UK while Nissans are to be banned in the USA.

Sounds ridiculous? Well it is and it’s not true. But this is exactly what Apple and Samsung are trying to do to each other.

the-vu thinks it makes all parties look silly and it’s very bad for public relations.

The money, time and effort wasted on this would be better spent on continuing to make the already excellent products even better.

KickPed versus Xootr, a scooter review

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By Jeffrey the Barak

The KickPed is a custom Know-Ped, manufactured in the same factory in California, Patmont Motor Werks, but made to a lean and mean customized set of specifications, exclusively for one retail store, NYCeWheels in New York City. In some ways it is less of a scooter than the Know-Ped but the customizers, the people at NYCeWheels,  think that what has been taken away from it, improve it.

The four differences between a Know-Ped and a KickPed are:

  1. The deck is shaved down to a narrow width, making it easier to scoot without having to trace a wide arc around the side of the board, or steer in a wavy line to get the board out of the way of the pushing foot.
  2. The entire front brake assembly has been omitted, leaving only the rear fender “spoon brake”.
  3. The simplified folding handlebars come in a choice of two fixed heights, 36 inches and 42 inches, the longer of which allows riders taller than about five and a half feet to ride comfortably upright without having to hunch over the bars and subject their palms to the forces of the road.
  4. Instead of the choice of four exceptionally attractive colors of the original Know-Ped, the KickPed’s frame comes in clear lacquer coat only, so you can see the steel and the welds.

Now despite these changes representing things that have been taken away, the KickPed costs (at time of writing) $229 plus $34 shipping, a total of $263, whereas a new Know-Ped in any of the four colors can be had for $199 including free shipping if you know how to do a good web-search. But you won’t be spending an extra $64 for nothing. The sellers are very clever people when it comes to knowing what works in an urban scooter, and of course they ride in New York City, meaning we should take note of what they advise.

The original Know-Ped

The deck is narrow because the original deck was designed for a pair of side by side feet. The original wide Know-Ped deck is from the motorized Go-Ped, and therefore it makes scooting inefficient because to get the ankle of your propelling foot around the footboard. or to swerve the vehicle around your propelling foot, you really have to bend your supporting leg too much, and that is the most tiring physical action in a kick. I’m sure you have noticed that if you scoot a while and don’t switch feet, it is the supporting leg up on the deck that gets tired, not the one you were scooting with.

The original wide Know-Ped deck is beautiful, especially with the bright powder-coated frame protruding at each end, but it’s extra width very much reduces the efficiency of the ride in terms of simple physics.

The front brake is gone from the KickPed because it was the one thing that frequently needed adjustment on the Know-Ped, and it was too aggressive when those metal calipers grabbed the grooved tire-walls, Remember, the Know-Ped is a Go-Ped without the engine, and it’s brakes can stop you from a high speed with a heavy load. The rear brake that spoons around the top of that fat back tire is simply good enough on it’s own, for a human-powered scooter and much less likely to lead to a sudden unintended dismount (accident).

The handlebars are not quite the same either, and in the case of the custom taller bar option, it allows taller riders to stand upright and watch where they are going, which is less uncomfortable than bending forward to face the road like a road racer, and then bending your neck back so you can see the road ahead through your eyebrows. Remember, an urban kick scooter is not for breaking speed records at the velodrome, it’s from getting to A to B efficiently, comfortably and safely.

And the clear lacquer coat looks okay also. Very industrial and strong looking.

 

Since I currently own one of each, I will compare the KickPed to the Xootr Mg. (I had a Know-Ped once but it was stolen before I had a chance to ride it much)

Xootr Mg on left, KickPed on right

Rolling resistance on smooth concrete, hardwood, vinyl.

If you are able to ride your scooter on a smooth surface, then the Xootr will live up to it’s reputation as the smoothest, most energy-efficient, fastest, easiest scooter in the world. It is second to none. On a perfectly smooth level surface, one kick will take a Xootr an unbelievably long way, whereas a KickPed may require an extra kick or two to make it quite as far. But the difference is not as great as other reviewers have written. It’s practically negligible based on my own comparison, switching back and forth from one scooter to the other. However…..

Rolling resistance in the real world.

In my normal scootering environment, there are uneven, un-repaired sidewalks, with large gaps and ridges caused by tree roots, lack of maintenance and general disrepair. The roadways, where the cars go, are often almost as bad, and the alleys are extremely degraded and have no hope of being repaired any time soon due to city finances.

In this environment, the slightly superior rolling resistance of the Xootr is completely lost to energy-robbing vibration and necessary slowing and stoppages, and the rubber-tired KickPed rolls just as far, even further when surfaces get really bad. I am assuming that most people who use a scooter for errands and commuting, as opposed to taking it to a specific place for a pre-planned pleasure ride, will find the same rough surfaces to some degree. The KickPed can often be ridden when the Xootr needs to be walked.

Decks from behind

Deck height.

The KickPed’s deck is half an inch higher (3.5 inches) off the ground than the deck of the Xootr Mg (3 inches). If you ride all day, this makes a difference to how tired your supporting leg gets, as you have to flex that standing leg to put your other foot down to scoot. But it’s only half an inch and most riders will never notice, nor will they ride for hours at a time. Some of the large European-style kick bikes have very high decks that really cause this fatigue, but the KickPed deck is low enough, narrow enough and the grip tape will keep you secure.

Ground clearance and wheelbase.

The Xootr Mg has 1.5 inches ground clearance and the KickPed has 1.75 inches. Of course it’s impossible to have both a low deck and high ground clearance, but the extra quarter inch under the KickPed will come in handy on the streets. Also, the bottom of the KickPed is a steel tube.  The Xootr’s magnesium rail can behave like a brake pad on concrete and unexpectedly stop you dead if the front wheel drops down onto lower pavement. The KickPed’s wheelbase is about an inch shorter, measured from axle to axle but it does not seem to negatively affect anything.

Tires, grip dry and wet.

Well this is the big one. If the pavement is wet or even slightly damp, the Xootr can skid and cause an accident. No such issue with the rubber tire of the KickPed. In dry conditions, the polyurethane tires on the Xootr will not let you down, but dampness is all it takes to ruin your day. Polyurethane and water add up to falling down painfully.

Noise.

Not all Xootrs are as noisy as the Mg, but the Mg with a rear fender brake makes one heck of a racket. Noise comes from the rear brake rattling and also from the area of the “Ergo” quick-release push button ball pin at the front. The loud clatter that the Xootr Mg makes on the street is well beyond reasonable.

Other Xootrs, like the old ones with the wooden decks, no rear brake and no Ergo pin are quieter but not as quiet as the KickPed. Even in a smooth concrete garage, the Xootr creates this other sound, hard to describe, but most likely from the polyurethane rolling on the concrete. Not a bad noise by any means, but in a comparison test with a super-quiet KickPed, it’s definitely there.

The KickPed will rattle a little bit if you deliberately pull and push on the folding handlebar, but for the most part it softly and quietly rolls along without disturbing the wildlife. Be ready to have to warn pedestrians that you are behind them and approaching because they will probably not hear you coming.

Vibration

Riding the Xootr on a rough surface is exhausting. Your teeth rattle and your vision can even blur. This makes it extra hard to avoid a mishap and it’s no fun. The ride on the KickPed is many times smoother. Let’s not get carried away though, the KickPed’s tires are solid rubber and there is no suspension, so it’s hardly ice skating, but compared to the Xootr, the KickPed’s ride does not suffer from undue vibration.

Portability

My KickPed Tall model has a nylon strap that hooks around the rear fender. Once folded the scooter is small and easy to carry and can be stowed in any car’s trunk etc.  The scooter can also be slung over one shoulder and carried hands-free

The folded Mg weighs a tiny bit less, (hardly noticeable) and is easy to carry in one hand.

Standability

The folded Xootr Mg can be stood on one end if the handlebar is adjusted to the right height. This allows it to be stored with a small footprint. The folded KickPed cannot stand up on it’s own.

Ease of folding

Both are easy to fold, but the KickPed is much easier. You just slide the tube that sleeves around the handlebar hinge, fold or unfold and allow the sleeve to spring back down . With the Xootr, the pin is depressed, removed and replaced after the fold, and the handlebars adjusted. It can be hard to line up the pin with the hole if you are holding the Xootr in one hand. But it is not difficult, just less simple than the KickPed, which can be deployed and ridden within one or two seconds of being carried folded up!

Durability

Both are super durable. Eventually after hundreds of miles, the brakes, tires, bearings etc. may need replacing or at least servicing, but the KickPed is designed to be maintenance-free for life and only very heavy use will require service of any kind. In fact the omission of the Know-Ped front brake is the main improvement here as that was something that required adjustment from time to time.

Safety

I really think highly of my Xootr but I have to be honest, it is potentially dangerous. Almost every ride includes a scary moment or two where I almost fall or crash or I come to a sudden unexpected stop due to a twig or pebble or bump in the sidewalk. It can also skid sideways on damp pavement and it really is a constant worry that spoils the enjoyment of the ride. Furthermore even on a smooth surface, high speed cornering on the Xootr’s skinny polyurethane tires does not inspire confidence, but they will keep you onboard if it’s dry.

In each of these situations, the KickPed just plows through without a moment’s hesitation, without a wobble, and without causing a scare. Any extra input effort required to cover the same distance is well worth it for the peaceful bliss of a smooth and uneventful ride. And on a speedy downhill in a parking garage, the KickPed feels very stable in banked turns. Not so the Xootr.

It should be noted here that I generally ride scooters with care from point A to point B, and never attempt tricks besides the occasional cautious downhill speed run.

Conclusion

The KickPed wins on safety and on quietness, so these factors alone make it a clear winner for me. Having fallen off my Xootr at low speed due to practically invisible cracks, uneven slabs and debris such as twigs, I am always worried about what might happen on my next Xootr ride. At 54 I cannot recover from an accident like a twenty year old would, and accident avoidance is very high on my list of criteria. And the considerable noise generated by the rattling Xootr only has one advantage, it signals pedestrians ahead to step aside, otherwise the rattling negates all of the brilliant design that went into the most widely acclaimed scooters ever made. The KickPed is quiet and rolls right over most objects that would upset the Xootr.

The original Know-Ped

So what if you own a shiny new Know-Ped and you wish you had found a KickPed first? Simply find a woodworker and shave down the sides of the plywood deck, and then consider removing the entire front brake assembly from caliper to handle, and then you basically have a KickPed in a fabulous frame color, but with the stock 36 inch handlebars. If you are five foot seven or below, you’ll be just fine, and the vehicle’s efficiency will get a big kick.

Jeffrey the Barak has owned many types of human-powered and electric scooters. These are the two smallest he has owned, and two of his favorites also. Search for scooter to see other reviews on the-vu.com

 

 

Goodbye Microsoft

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By Jeffrey the Barak

A couple of decades ago I bought a notebook computer and Windows 3.0 and Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Today, as I prepare my iMac for the upgrade to OSX Lion, I deleted all Power PC applications that will no longer work after the change. This included Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, which in my case, were seven year old versions of the ubiquitous programs.

And then I realized that these were the last Microsoft applications that I had. Not that I used them anymore, being a fan of Google Docs and an owner of Numbers and Pages, but nevertheless it felt strange to drag them into the trash and empty the can of a twenty year legacy.

Yes I can still collaborate with the un-liberated, opening XLS and DOC files in Google or iWorks and saving in the same format to share with the dinosaurs, but I wonder if now that OSX Lion is stepping away from the legacy Power PC based apps, how many others will be saying adios to the big MS.

 

Chromebook versus Macbook Air

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Very different capabilities and different prices, but this comparison is completely valid, because it’s about which system better serves lightweight, traveling, out of the home or office, on the go, computing.

I work at home, and in my office I use a 27” iMac. But almost everything I do is from inside a Chrome browser. I use Google Docs instead of iWork or MS Office, and I can honestly say it has never let me down.

Yes, I also use the iMac for more intensive computing at home. I use Garageband, Photoshop, and other programs that are not in the cloud, and are best suited to the desktop format and hard drives and peripherals. But when I travel, usually with a Macbook, and lately with my wife’s 15” MacBook Pro, it’s 100% Chrome browser work while on the road, and I need tabs and a real keyboard so all current tablets cannot fit the bill.

So for me, am I better off with a Macbook Air or a Samsung Chromebook or Acer Chromia?

There are several considerations here. If I were to get the 3G version of either Chromebook, I could connect and do a little slow email and Google Spreadsheet editing when there was no wi-fi, so right there, the Macbook Air is out of the race.

But the most important factors when traveling may be simply size and weight. The Macbook Air 11” version weighs much less, half a pound less than a couple of iPads. (see chart)

 

Of course a Macbook Air costs more than twice as much, but does it really? Most of us know, we can use an Apple product for a couple of years and resell it for a decent price later on to someone who cannot quite afford a new one. I doubt either of the initial Chrome laptops will have much of a resale value. So they could cost close to the same as the Apple over time.

I am an Apple Head, and also a Chrome Head. I love Apple and I love Google, which is an unusual thing to write, because along with Microsoft, these two companies get a lot of negativity in the press. So for some direct comparisons lets do this:

  • Cost: Chromebooks win
  • Weight: Macbook Air wins
  • 3G connection: Chromebooks win (well some of them)
  • Usability offline: Macbook Air wins
  • Size: the smaller Macbook Air wins (important if you carry a smaller satchel).

Of course I could buy both, or neither, but where’s the fun in that?

Jeffrey the Barak never puts a 27″ iMac in his bag and he loves condensed milk.

Magic Trackpad, no wrist pain

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Copyright © 2011 Apple Inc.

By Jeffrey the Barak

Back in the days of Windows 3.0, which I seem to remember being 1990, I acquired my first mouse. Then for twenty years I spent most of every day with my right hand on or near a mouse.

For the most part it did not hurt, and because it worked so well as an input system, I assumed that it would always be what I used. I even used a pen-based trackpad for while and owned a Windows Tablet PC for a while, but nothing matched the mouse for all round usefulness. In fact when traveling with a notebook computer I would often take a mouse along as well.

But then normal trackpads were rendered obsolete by the Magic Trackpad. Or to be more accurate, Macbook Pro users suddenly got very large trackpads that led to the Magic Trackpad.

My last couple of mice, the Mighty Mouse, and then the Magic Mouse has issues. The Mighty Mouse always needed to be cleaned to scroll properly because dust and hair would interfere with it, and the Magic Mouse, which I initially loved gave me my first ever computer related wrist pain.

It was this pain that led me to try the Magic Trackpad and yes, that is why my wrist does not hurt. But it’s not just about pain-free comfort, the gestures and general usefulness of the Magic Trackpad have transformed the interface of computing for me. Even in spreadsheets and photo editing and even when dragging and dropping, I prefer the trackpad to the mouse that I cradled for two decades.

It may take a day or two to get completely used to, but having a nice relaxed arm and the fingers resting comfortably on the desk in the handwriting position takes all of the physical stress away from navigation and control.

Add to this the tremendously useful gesture controls for scrolling, pinching, zooming and page turning etc., and the computer interface is transformed from the move and click of a mouse to something much more dimensional and intuitive. And activating the optional tap to click really adds to the utility of this device. The very idea of going back to a mouse after this is unthinkable.

When OSX Lion comes out this year it will be even better. I have already installed reverse scrolling under Snow Leopard and it makes much more sense after the short adjustment period.

So I have to say, my Magic Trackpad is a remarkable device and one of the best interface innovations I have yet to experience.

 

Jeffrey the Barak is not a mountain yak and he eats bananas.

 

End of the Pyramid

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Following a recent failed revamp of the original infamous fattening American Food Pyramid, the USDA has introduced The Food Plate.

It really is quite simple, and easy to see that half of our food should be fruits and vegetables. It should be noted that a typical American meal may contain as little as zero fruits and vegetables, but sometimes there is a lettuce leaf and a tomato slice between the cheeseburger and the bun.

Anyway, this diagram is really quite easy to remember, unlike either of the preceding triangles. Good eating!

Lahaina Noon in Hawai’i

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Lahaina noon no shadow

(c) KITV.com

By Jeffrey the Barak

The State of Hawai’i is the only place in the United States in which you can lose your shadow, outside, in the middle of the day. when there are no clouds. In Hawai’i this is known as Lahaina Noon and it happens twice a year, but on different dates, depending where you are within the State.

At the equator, which is far South of Hawai’i, the Sun is also overhead twice a year, at the spring and autumn equinoxes, which are usually around March 21st and September the 21st. The twice yearly equinox gives every place on Earth a day as long as the night, but since the twilight before dawn and after dusk is a kind of daylight, the days seem longer than the nights, even at the equinox, and the further you are from the equator, the longer the period of twilight.

On each Tropic, right on the imaginary line on the globe or map at 23.5 degrees North or South, the sun is overhead once a year. For the Northern Tropic of Cancer it’s on or near June 21st and for the Southern Tropic of Capricorn it’s on or near January 21st. These dates are Midsummer’s day in the corresponding hemisphere.

For any place in the tropics, that is between 23.5 degrees North and South, you can lose your shadow on two certain dates each year. North or South of the tropical zone, the sun is never overhead.

Lahaina Noon is named for the old Hawaiian capital Lahaina, on the Island of Maui. Because Hawai’i is spread over a large area, the dates for Lahaina noon vary greatly from the last piece of dry black lava rock at South Point on the Big Island to a small rock off the Northern tip of the island of Kauai near the Kilauea Lighthouse.

In Honolulu, O’ahu,  Lahaina Noon is on May 26th or 27th and June 15th or 16th as the sun approaches and recedes from it’s rendezvous with the Tropic of Cancer on June 21st. The dates may vary each year because while our solar system is fairly consistent, our calendars are flawed by their strange political history.

In Hilo, Hawai’i, it’s usually May 18th and July 24th, because its further South.

In it’s namesake town of Lahaina, Maui, the dates are usually May 24th and July 18th.

 

Author Jeffrey the Barak thinks too much about stuff like this when he could be doing something useful.

 

Chrome at last

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Today at the Google I/O 2011, the Chrome operating system finally became a reality. Google executives, whom many expected to announce the death of the project, instead proclaimed the Chrome future and expounded upon the advantages of Chrome, a browser-based operating system, over the more traditional OS of Microsoft, Apple, Linux et al.

Two manufacturers, Samsung and Acer, will be selling Chromebooks at Best Buy and on Amazon within a few weeks.

The wait is over. I will go on file as saying “watch out everyone else”. Chrome will still change the world. Mark my nostrils people.

http://www.google.com/chromebook/chromebooks-acer.html#chromebooks

 

 

Waiting for Google Chrome, part 20

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New logo, less Simon-like, but still no product!

By Jeffrey the Barak.

We all still wait, or maybe we don’t. I titled this article Waiting for Google Chrome, part 20, but I’m not really waiting so intently as I was in the first 19 parts. Things move quickly in the world of computers and software, but Google’s Chrome operating system is continuing to move very slowly. With so much money at stake, Google, one of the three most influential companies along with Microsoft and Apple, are being very slow about this.

While I have been waiting, I have been continuing to work almost entirely in a Chrome world. I use the Chrome browser on my Mac and have tabs open for my control panel interfaces, Gmail, Google Docs etc. I rarely step outside the browser.

I tried a netbook running Jolicloud, but there were too many issues with dropped wi-fi connections due to the Asus EeePC and Joli not getting along, so I sold that and am currently without a portable, although I can borrow my wife’s Macbook until I finally give in and get a Macbook Air, or the elusive, never quite here, Chrome netbook.

There are a few websites that were originally themed around the upcoming Chrome OS, and they have pretty much changed their subject as time marches on and Chrome never comes.

So as usual I am ready, and fully committed to Chrome bookmarks, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail contacts, Picasa etc etc. Google all the way, but still I wait. And wait.

By the time Chrome appears, it will probably be tablet friendly, and therefore closely related to Android Honeycomb. Google always said that eventually Chrome and Android could merge, but they also say that Android is for touch screens and Chrome is for keyboard and mouse/trackpad. In all probability there will be no merging before Chrome finally becomes a reality, but until that day comes, many will find themselves guessing.

I am reminded of the Segway. It is not a very important vehicle, but before it came out, speculation made it one of the most exciting mystery products ever. So much so, that as amazing as it is, it was quite disappointing that it could not fly or perform magic. There is much less speculation about Chrome, but a lot of negativity. I think the general feeling is too-little-too-late, but I still think it may become a very important and widespread operating system in the world, as long as the hardware is inexpensive and connectivity is affordable.

I really hope there is no part 21 to this saga.

Jeffrey the Barak is still waiting, and drinking a lot of espresso.

 

 

How the Gnarl Jump will change the world

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By Jeffrey the Barak
April 1st 2011

Now that we have discovered the Gnarl Jump, and matter can be made to jump from spot to spot indefinitely, it can be used to turn wheels with pistons, or it can be used to endlessly power huge turbines.

The implications of using the Gnarl Jump to power turbines is huge. It can power the world, either through the traditional power grids, or via small generators on location.

Turbines are used to generate almost all electricity in the world, and they are driven by steam, water, fluid or air.

All of the following power generating systems employ turbines:

  • Nuclear fission
  • Coal burning
  • Gas burning
  • Oil burning
  • Solar parabolic collectors
  • Geothermal direct steam
  • Geothermal heat transfer
  • Hydro electric via dams or tidal blades
  • Windmills
  • Solar updraft towers.

In each case the turbines generate electricity with spinning magnets and the power goes down the transmission lines.

Now we can take each and every one of these systems offline and replace the turbine’s driving force with a Gnarl Jump device.

Obviously there is no associated global warming as no fossil fuel is burned. A little oil is needed to lubricate the turbine, but that is all. Nuclear fission does not emit greenhouse gasses but the obvious potential danger of the fuel is really too much of a risk. Even if there are no accidents, the fuel remains dangerous for thousands of years, and the chances of that being abused and used to kill are near 100% over such a long time scale and taking human history into consideration.

If each home and or business had it’s own Gnarl Jump turbine, we could eventually dismantle the grid and clean up the skyline.

And of course one little device in each bus, truck, car and motorcycle will make petrol and diesel fuels of the past. Electric vehicles will run forever around the clock without stopping for a recharge.

All former discussions about green power, global warming and nuclear dangers are now moot. All we have to do is figure out how to put the forests back.

For more information on Gnarl Jump, see GJaprilfools.org

Comparison: CBTL, Nespresso, Single-Serve Espresso

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Single serve coffee and single serve espresso are the fastest growing trends in home coffee preparation. While the cost per cup can be a lot higher than you would pay with a normal coffee maker or home espresso machine, capsule systems take away the guesswork, the mess, the constant cleanup and the wastage

In an older article on the-vu, I compared the Keurig, which only makes brewed coffee, and not espresso, and the Tassimo, which makes both, except it does not make high BAR pressure espresso but rather a close facsimile. My review of these two systems can be found at http://www.the-vu.com/2009/05/discovering-single-serve-coffee-keurig-versus-tassimo/

But the world is going nuts for Nespresso, an espresso making system that delivers a perfect pull with every shot, and no cleaning required. Having pulled many a lousy shot with an array of manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic espresso machines over the years, The consistently perfect shots delivered from the Nespresso system are beyond impressive and I would challenge any highly practiced barista to consistently match the results.

But as perfect as the system is, the only place to get the capsules of coffee, unless you are close to a very rare Nespresso boutique store, is at Nespresso.com. Customers say they arrive in two days and Nespresso has the best customer service, even if a problem develops with the machine. Nespresso will even send out a loaner to use while the customer’s own rig is being fixed.

But Nespresso is not the only player. There are several aspiring single-serve, pod or capsule, espresso and/or coffee competitors in the world including  Dolce Gusto, also owned by Nestle (as is Nespresso), Gaggia, Flavia (Mars), Illy (with or without Francis Francis), Comobar, Lavazza, Italcaffe, Benotti, La Piccola, Tuttocialde and several more, including Caffitaly.

And it is Caffitaly that has struck distribution deals in various countries. In the United States, the partner is The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and the brand name for the machines in the U.S. is CBTL. In the States, the coffee varieties available for the CBTL machine are all from The Coffee Bean, and this is not such a bad thing, as the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf have some of the best coffee in the world. Customers far away from any Coffee Bean store can order capsules online, just as they would be forced to if they chose to buy a Nespresso machine.

The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf started as a local Los Angeles family-owned firm that was closely watched by the Seattle giants and in many areas beat all to the start line with new innovations. For example, one day a couple of decades ago, the manager of a Coffee Bean invented the Ice-Blended Mocha. Cinnabon has another claim for the invention of this concoction, but It seems that the Coffee Bean manager was probably unaware of it when she dreamed it up, and the Coffee Bean’s unique use of cold-brewed “Toddy” coffee did contribute greatly to its success. Now every cafe, ice-cream store and donut shop has some version of a coffee smoothie, most noticeably, the cleverly named Starbucks Frappuccino.

And it is Starbucks who is strangely absent from the single serve revolution. True, they partnered with Tassimo (Kraft) to make Starbucks brewed coffee T-Cups, and they also make paper Pods to fit in E.S.E compatible machines, but they have not partnered with a single-serve espresso machine manufacturer so far. CBTL with Caffitaly have beaten them to market.

As mentioned earlier, the Keurig and Tassimo were compared in the aforementioned article, and so here we will compare side-by-side, a Nespresso machine and a CBTL machine. In each case we will focus on a single short shot of espresso, and simply note that both providers offer a virtually identical electric milk frother/heater should you want to incorporate your shot into a latte, cappuccino or machiatto.

And the comparison is fairly easy. Both Nespresso and CBTL have a good variety of coffee capsules. Both offer at least four excellent espresso varieties. But only the CBTL machine can also brew a lower pressure large size drip coffee drink. So if you want both espresso and brewed coffee, and choose Nespresso, you will also need a Keurig to sit beside it.

Both machines accept and eject the capsules in much the same way, but the Nespresso excels in finishing cleaner with less post-shot dripping

And as for price, the CBTL machines are significantly less expensive. For visual design, Nespresso wins with the narrow profile $279 Citz, but the $150 CBTL Kaldi looks great, and so does their less expensive CBTL Cantata, which has identical specs and function for just $130. I personally have an aversion to the shape of the $200 Nespresso Essenza but that’s just me.

Nespresso, being an espresso-only machine, has more varieties of espresso, but most of these are very mild and therefore not what you would expect to receive if you ordered a real espresso at any self respecting cafe. So both systems only have three or four truly excellent proper espresso blends in their line up. That’s right, not very many! But these few are excellent, authentic, and of course completely consistent from shot to shot, something of which few baristas can boast.

My own top capsule picks, based on the criteria that espresso should be the strength and intensity of proper espresso, not just a tiny little cup of fairly strong coffee:

  • Nespresso Ristretto
  • CBTL Italian,
  • CBTL Premium,
  • Nespresso Arpegio,
  • CBTL Continental,
  • Nespresso Roma,
  • Nespresso Indriya.

Decafs and lungos were not included in this comparison, and my order of favorites is preliminary because I have not yet experienced several of each and considered them over a reasonable period of time. Your preferences will of course vary.

I think the Nespresso and CBTL systems are both excellent and both will give better shots than your best effort with a portafilter or a super automatic, and do so every time with never a bad shot pulled. While the Nespresso generates 19 BAR of pressure and the CBTL only gives 15 BAR, the difference is not possible to notice in the extraction and crema, so 15 must be enough.

But the price difference makes the CBTL the winner, for now. They are too new to have many reviews and Nespresso fans will be alarmed this verdict, and the long establishment of Nespresso means you could find old used machines at a bargain price etc., but assuming you want a new one, it’s CBTL who wins today.

References:

Milk:

As a final aside, since these systems focus on convenience, I would recommend that if you drink lattes, cappuccinos etc., that you pair your CBTL or Nespresso machine with the $60 CBTL milk frother or the similar $100 Nespresso Aeroccino, rather than pick a machine with a difficult to master steam wand. Or take the even lower cost route with CBTL’s $13 hand-held frother and heat your milk in your microwave! (Or even pick up the $3 version at Ikea). Having practiced micro-foaming milk for years with several steam wands, I would not recommend the procedure to anyone seeking convenience and consistency!

Jeffrey the Barak is a coffee enthusiast and is the publisher of the-vu.

National Crazy Breakfast

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By Jeffrey the Barak

In the tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson, first published in 1837, the hero of the story is the little boy who screams “He’s naked”. In his innocence and honesty, he sees the truth.

This little boy is sorely needed today. Today we have organizations convincing people of untruths. Terrorists kill because they believe at that moment that it is the right path. And intelligence and reason are constantly suppressed by the world’s religions. Millions believe in the imaginary, and are seemingly quite oblivious of the beauty of truth, reason and intelligence.

And even our great President, arguably the most intelligent we’ve had, right about most things, has endorsed the organization named The Fellowship Foundation, also known as “The Family,” who’s goal it seems is to ignore separation of “Church and State”. When religion and politics kill or oppress millions every day, why do we invite a “National Prayer Breakfast” to occur in Washington and show such disregard for the letter and spirit of our First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States?

Praying should have no place in our government. Religion and God do not belong there. In fact that’s the law of our nation. When omnipotent imaginary characters are invoked (God, son of God, the Devil, Angels etc.,) and these organizations of hate, intolerance and discrimination are given credibility and respect by our leaders, then the dream of fairness for all recedes ever further into the future. Minorities will be victimized, and the tricksters and megalomaniacs of the religion business will continue to amass wealth and power over the weak and gullible.

Today, the modern American fundamentalist Christians are as scary and dangerous as the radical Islamists that our armed forces are sacrificing themselves to protect us from. They may not attack in a deadly fashion with explosives, but they apply pressure en masse and bully the more reasonable people who share residence in their strongholds. If you imagine it is safe for a mixed-race couple or a same-sex couple to go, for example, into a Southern restaurant and hold hands, then you don’t realize how dangerous the American Christians are. The good people of the South are being taught intolerance, dressed up in a cloak called “Family Values”. And of course the most obvious victims are the Americans who were born gay, but it does not end with them.

By legitimizing American religion in the American government we are sowing the seeds for an internal culture war, and reinforcing narrow-mindedness and hatred. Those who do not comply with the predominant philosophy will be the victims.

Human beings, ordinary men and women, are using the God myth to control people for their evil ends, and they have succeeded, because belief in God is legitimized and made to seem correct and normal. If you dare to interrupt a prayer at the start of a sporting event, you are being “disrespectful”, but why is the inclusion of a prayer, when religious affiliation is not required of a person attending, not also disrespectful? After all, we non-believers have the law and the Constitution on our side, don’t we?

Personally I feel disappointment when I see my President endorsing an organization such as The Family. But I put my feeling aside and continue to support him as the least unreasonable man in Washington. Perhaps the outcry should not be directed at the President himself, but we need that innocent and honest little boy from The Emperor’s New Clothes to jump up and shout out the truth, and stop the crazy train before anyone else gets victimized.

Jeffrey the Barak is a non-believer, and is proud to live in a free country, with a reasonable constitution.

Jolicloud 1.1 Review

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Some of you may have browsed to this review on the-vu between December 16th 2010 and January 17th 2011 and found a very different story. Due to a hardware conflict, namely a radio device in my particular computer, I failed to get Joicloud to work properly in December 2010, but with some kind and patient support from Cedric of Jolicloud, I now have a speedy little Asus netbook that is smaller and lighter than Google’s CR-48 and Jolicloud’s own Jolibook.

The in-depth technical review of the Jolicloud OS (operating system) is not to be found here, and you will also not see any jargon or abbreviations that only Linux-Heads can understand.

For nine out of ten computer users, Jolicloud theoretically gives you everything you need and removes all maintenance. It is designed to be the Linux for the rest of us, no Geek required. There is, in theory, no complicated setup, the system becomes familiar to almost anyone within minutes, and you won’t have to waste time with virus protection, system maintenance, updates, customization, steep learning curves etc. It is designed to be simple and it is officially available many months before Google Chrome OS.

So if you spend most of your time in a web browser, and do only basic editing of pictures, and do not use the most advanced features of say, Excel, for example, then you can find an old computer for thirty, or three hundred dollars, and install Jolicloud and you are set. You only need 1GB of RAM to fly along at breakneck speed, and it will run okay on half that, and your storage, as in hard drive, or perhaps solid state drive, can be tiny if you use the online storage. The only thing you really need is good fast Internet and you are laughing.

Jolicloud and Me:

So my story is, I was waiting and waiting for Google Chrome. I gave up my iPhone because it was too little to work on. I bought and then re-sold an iPad because iOS was not able to allow me to do my work, which basically requires tabbed browsing and the full, non-mobile-telephone versions of web pages such as Google Spreadsheets.

And all the while I had one eye on Jolicloud. So I needed a device that was not heavy  (the iPad was nice and light at least) and there was the Macbook Air for around $1,100 including taxes and fees (California), but everything I do whilst away from my desk is in the browser, and the Chrome browser at that. So if I live in a browser, I don’t need the very powerful and capable Macbook Air since I’m not going to use Garageband or iMovie while I’m on the road.

So then in early December 2010 Google said, “sorry but it may be the second half of 2011 before Chrome OS is ready”. However a few thousand people are testing the Beta on free-of-charge 2GB RAM Atom N550 notebooks supplied by Google. So far, those who write about Chrome OS without using it, don’t like it, and those who write about Chrome OS who are on the pilot program, love it, for the most part. I would have applied myself, but I have a reason for not wanting a portable computer that large and heavy. I already have a five-pound Macbook and that is too big and heavy to be something I want to take around with me.

So with the unavailability of a really nice, extremely lightweight netbook with no hard drive, I decided to get an Asus Eee PC 1015PEM-MU17 netbook and download Jolicloud 1.1 to an installation USB key and run Jolicloud 1.1 as my sole operating system on the Netbook. I went for a dual core, high end Netbook, but still, I got where I am now for a third of the price of the Macbook Air. And it is a nice enough netbook that I can probably resell it without too much of a loss if I grow to dislike it for any reason. Yes, a Macbook Air is worth three times as much, but I just need the browser.

In preparation, I migrated from Apple’s Address Book and iCal to Google contacts and calendar. I did so with a nagging issue in my head. Offline access to the Google calendar and address book is temporarily unavailable until Google rolls out the full new HTML5 version in early 2011, so unless I’m in a hotspot, I will not have access to my calendar and address book by using the netbook that’s sitting in my satchel. These are two things that have always been with me for decades, since the pre-electronic era, so I am feeling a little compromised by this, and have been searching for a good locally installed address book and calendar that can live in Jolicloud and be synched with these two Google services. But I broke down and added an iPod Touch to my arsenal, and that displays my address book and calendar, offline, that is synced with Google whenever it’s near a hotspot. Very nice.

Also in preparation, I created the aforementioned USB key to install Jolicloud 1.1 on the new netbook, which ships with Windows 7, an operating system that I was intending to discard immediately so that the netbook will work for me, instead of the other way around.  It was very easy to download Jolicloud and to create the USB key. Jolicloud.com has the instructions.

I also set up an account on Jolicloud and interfaced with the Jolicloud working environment by logging into my account from the Chrome browser on my 27″ iMac. Very nice and simple!

Proir to trying Jolicloud on the new netbook, I played around in Windows 7, the operatiing system that came free with the netbook. It is a horrible OS, that constantly boasts about what it has updated and waits for you to reward it by clicking OK, and it constantly asks you to protect it with anti-virus software, which in itself keeps you busy all day with dialog boxes and wants you to work for your computer and maintain it so that it will be nice enough to work for you, until the next round of dialogs pop up.

I of course lived in Windows for many years, from 3.0 to XP, but abandoned it just prior to Vista and became a Mac fan. Macs work for the user, users work for Windows.

My first dipping of a toe into the vast cold ocean of Linux was about to begin, and I installed Jolicloud 1.1. It was after all the reason I purchased this netbook.

Back in December I hit a wall of frustration, because I could not get the wireless to work and stay working. So I temporarily gave up on Jolicloud and tried installing two other versions of Linux. Eeebuntu, supposedly designed for EeePC’s, looked terrible and did not work well. Ubuntu Netbook Edition worked well, wifi radio included, but sleep, hibernate, shut down etc did not work at all.

So I decided to ask Jolicloud for help, after all Cedric of Jolicloud had offered some helpful words in response to my not-so-favorable Jolicloud 1.1 review published in December, and since replaced by this article that you are now reading.  And I am glad I did. I was invited to send the contents of two files, “lspci” and “lsusb”, so that my problem could be addressed at Jolicloud. (Okay well that did sound a bit geeky, but they did send easy instructions.) And all the problem was, was a new type of wifi radio in the Asus EeePC 1015-PEM that was not supported in the Jolicloud 1.1 download. All I had to do was run an update and restart, and Bob’s yer Uncle. Jolicloud will soon be changing the download file to the updated configuration to spare everyone else from hitting my wall.

So now that I have Jolicloud running nicely on a nice little netbook I am happy. But I should disclose that all I really intend to run is the Chrome browser, which, once synced to my Google stuff, contains my online universe. Jolicloud is a fast way to get there. And since I have poked around on a couple of other Linux flavors over the weeks, I have to say what I was expecting to say all along, Jolicloud is an excellent interface for simple computing. Again, if you want a more geeky techie complex review of this excellent operating system, Google around for another review,  and if you are the type of person who has bad luck getting any computer to do what you want, then see if you can get an expert to pre-configure and test Jolicloud to your device on your behalf, but once it’s setup, for the end user, Jolicloud is as simple as can be.

Please feel free to post comments on this article.

Jeffrey the Barak is not a computer expert, but is savvy enough to be a go-to-guy for many friends with computer questions.

Waiting for Google Chrome, part 17

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Yesterday Google held a press conference which included the sad news that Chrome and Chrome-based netbooks will most likely not be on sale until the second half of 2011. Having abandoned smartphones because I find them too tiny, (I sold my last iPhone), and having also sold my iPad, because it was useless for Google Docs and my other cloud interfaces, I decided to buy a netbook and install the Joliloud 1.1 operating system. The netbook will be delivered here in a week, a dual-core Asus Eeeeeeeeeee which is like an Eee PC but with extra e’s typed in. Today I created a USB key with the Jolicloud 1.1  install and that is now ready for the arrival of my netbook.

My plan is to use the entire disk and get rid of Microsoft Windows and any pre-installed bloatware. And in seven months, if a nicer form-factor Chromebook appears, I’ll sell the netbook on. I would have preferred a thinner, lighter netbook with a SSD instead of a hard drive, but today’s netbooks are practically all the same as each other so this 10.1″ white plastic Seashell Asus should have some resale value in half a year.

Of course, being a Mac user, I could have just bought the fabulous 11″ Macbook Air, but when I’m away from my iMac, all I need to do is done in a browser, and I therefore do not need a Macbook Air, which is a thousand dollars and is not a netbook, but is a more of a full OS, powerful computer in a blade-thin form. So in a way the Asus will be a replacement for my old 5 lb Macbook which is a bit too heavy to take everywhere and is operating in slow motion these days, and also for my iPhone and iPad, both of which live with new owners now, because I sold them.

So in the continuing absence of the real Chrome OS, Jolicloud and it’s tabbed Chromium browser should do the same job, at least for six or seven months, and I may even get into storing some things locally on the included hard drive. I have already prepared by taking the step of migrating from Apple’s Address Book and iCal, to Google Contacts and Google Calendar, so they’ll be ready for the Chrome browser tabs on the netbook. This means my Mobile Me subscription is now a waste of money, but based on the slow speed of the interface, it has been asking to get kicked out for years. I do not anticipate my home made Jolibook will be completely problem-free, or annoyance-free, but based on what other users are saying, it should be just fine, and I’ll have my Google Spreadsheets along with me again.

2010 L.A. Auto Show

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By Jeffrey the Barak

As usual, the L.A. Auto Show welcomed the-vu to press days, where we took our usual meandering course through the convention center, staying out of the way of the TV and magazine writers, and looking in all the wrong places, on purpose. Not for the first time, the winners for aestethics were the two German cousins, Volkswagen and Audi. As usual they had the perfect balance of style, luxury, common-sense and quality that just stood out above the crowd. As usual the Rolls Royces looked a bit silly and the American cars were designed by and for strange aliens from another planet.

The automotive press will tell you all about the boring stuff, and I will pick out a tiny sampling of other stuff, illustrated with shot-from-the-hip snaps. Click on any picture to see the big-ass version.

As usual, the sensible supercar award went to Audi. They also had a topless version of the classic A8, but I think it is twice as nice with a proper roof. Here it is with that wacky doctor Michael at the wheel and the official model off to one side.

What would the Mercedes-Benz area be without a Mercedes Van giving away cupcakes? Well much the same, but despite being wheat intolerant, it was nice to see and sniff these sweet little creations.

Something about the dashboard of the BMW Mini makes it the coolest lump of design at the show. There was a giant oversized Mini making it’s debut today, but this is the original dash, seen here from behind the convertible.

The admirable Nissan Corporation showed it’s squeaky clean Leaf , but something about it’s visual design may keep some people away.

Not far away, Honda showed an all-electric version of the popular Fit, which may be more in-line with current (no pun intended) tastes.

We stopped for espresso, which almost every exhibitor had on offer today, at the splendidly designed Fiat display. Nothing new about Fiat in Europe, but America is seing it again for the first time in many years.

This year we again became acquainted with the Mitsubishi MIEV, an electric car that just never seems to fully arrive on the streets of America. Where are they all?

Down in the basement, electric cars were scattered around. Some have been covered here in years past, and some were new. Some still looked like kit cars, and others looked like quality, full-production, buy me now, clean machines. Wheego (from Atlanta, GA) have Smart cars, with their engines replaced by electric motors. These zero-emission full-speed all-electric LiFe models look ready for prime time. But I wonder what they did with all those new engines and transmissions?

It used to be that the-vu was one of the few publications that took any notice of the electric cars at the auto-show, but now all the press does. It’s only a matter of time before our streets have plenty of them, and plenty of places to plug them in for a recharge. The utility companies and the car-makers are getting ready to change things, and here in L.A. we should be seeing chargers appearing all over the place., and I don’t mean those silly Dodge Chargers.

This picture (below left) taken at the Mitsubishi display shows the public version beside the home version. Designs will vary, but the plug is standardized across all brands and can be seen here at the Nissan Leaf display.

Drive safe, and watch out for the nostrils.

Mobo, recumbent cruising in style.

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By Jeffrey the Barak.

Sometimes the L.A. Auto Show presents a gem in the basement. In the underground part of the convention center, 2010′s fun booth is Mobo. Recumbent cycles are nothing new but the 2010 line up of human powered vehicles from City of Industry, CA are a blast. They are easy to ride, once you get your head around the fact that the rear wheels steer, so it’s like reversing a car or being at the helm of a speedboat as far as steering is concerned.

But the great thing about all recumbents is the riding position. Instead of every bump in the road banging you in the ass like a sledgehammer, your entire easy-chair spreads the shock enough to make it feel more like a massage than a hammer in the butt. After a day’s riding on a Mobo, the only place you’ll want to ride your conventional bicycle is to the for sale listings on Craig’s List. Once you sit in the chair, you won’t want to balance on your skinny saddle any more.

Costing between $300 and $600, the 2011 Mobo’s compare well to the prices of decent bicycles, but as well as no pain in  the wallet, you’ll have no pain in the butt either, unless you literally bash it with a sledgehammer after each ride. See mobocruiser.com for details.

2011 Fisker Karma

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By Jeffrey the Barak.

Hidden away off to one side at the 2010 L.A. Auto Show was the Fisker booth. This year the Fisker Karma is looking like a ready-for-sale luxury car, crouched and ready to spring out onto the public streets.

The Karma is a four-door curvacious Plug-in Hybrid Elecric luxury car that really catches the eye of  a guy walking around on press day with a “the-vu” press pass.

This car is light in weight, being constructed with as much aluminum and composite materials as possible, and the creature comforts , rather than being future forward and stark, embrace the past with coach-builders’ favorites such as glossy wood and fine leather surfaces.

The powertrain is all today, or tomorrow, depending on your point of view. The raw power comes from it’s batteries, and unlike other hybrids, the Fisker is faster when in all-electric “stealth” mode. But it’s pretty quick in “sport” mode also, when a mix of gasoline engine power and electric motor power comes together to move you along for around 300 miles per tank of gas.

In today’s Prius on every block world, it’s still a novelty to see something like a supercar calling itself a hybrid, but this all-American lump of quality has raised the standard in this segment.

The jury is out on just how green a hybrid really is. These batteries, in this case 20 kW/h, 180 kW lithium ion w/Nanophosphate™ technology, have to be made and eventually recycled, and the electricity drawn from the charging station is usually coming from a coal-fired power station, but the Fisker is no more or less green than most hybrids on the road. The difference is, it has the feel of a Jaguar or a BMW. It’s a true luxury car.

GDocs and iOS: Surrender

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By Jeffrey the Barak

I have set up a table on the battleship Missouri and have invited my Google Spreadsheets to take seats across from my iPad and shake hands.

I am waiting, but my fellow sailors are reminding me that there is a $1000 Macbook Air available that runs OSX, and that Google is busy readying the Chrome OS netbook.  And if I had all the time in the world to mess around with complicated syncs on the way in and the way out, I could use Numbers on the iPad.

Still, the meeting table is here in the sunshine, waiting for my invited guests to shake hands.

UPDATE November 17th 2010

Google have announced something at last! I’m grabbing my iPad to test it.

SECOND UPDATE November 17th 2010

There are two views, versions or modes for Google Spreadsheets in iOS. Today’s update to Google Docs is focused on the Mobile version, more properly called list view, and it really does not change much. And as before, the full web version is awkward to use on an iPad. I think I have to finally give up at this point. The iPad and iOS are very nice, and quite useful for millions of happy padders, but to me, the iPad has failed to meet my needs. I will have to get a Macbook Air, which runs OSX, or hang on to see what happens with Chrome and netbooks.

An opportunity for Jolicloud

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By Jeffrey the Barak.

Jolicloud is a Linux-based operating system for netbooks and also PC’s that is available now and very easy to use. It is all you need if your computing life is all about email, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other activities that require little power and little to no local storage.

But a rumor surfaced a few days ago that Jolicloud my be coming out with hardware, in the form of a cheap netbook, pre-installed with and optimized for, Jolicloud.

This really is OLPP, one laptop per person, at an affordable level.

Why will it succeed? Two reasons. Firstly Google. Everyone is waiting for Chrome, but it never comes out. Each month the expected date gets shoved further into the future and it’s very very late in terms of demand. And secondly, weight. The success of the new Macbook Air which starts at a thousand dollars shows this. No-one chooses to carry a heavy computer, and people are willing to give up quite a lot to get that weight down.

Just as an SLR camera is useless if you left it at home, and an inferior pocket camera is 100% better if you have it with you, the lighter weight of your computer in hand, whether it be an iPad, a Macbook Air or a Netbook, is crucial to how useful it is.

Jolicloud is out now, and it is practically the same as Chrome. It runs your Gmail, your Google Spreadsheets and everything else the as-yet non-appearing Chromebooks would have been running, had they existed today. It easily does things that are very difficult to achieve on your fun, but inherently limited, iPad.

So now it’s all down to marketing. Jolicloud could remain as obscure and scary as everything else based on Linux, and consequently it could be adopted by a tiny fraction of the world, or it could sell in the millions. Clever marketing, a decent quality netbook with a  $200 to $300 price and a 10″ screen are all it needs to become a huge factor in computing, and another major pain in the spleen for that big ship with a hole in it’s hull called Microsoft. The question is, can they break out from the Linux mold and actually succeed, and can they do it soon enough to grab some customers before Google finally brings out those elusive Chromebooks?

Waiting for Google Chrome, part 16

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Since the Chrome project started, we’ve seen many changes.

  • Microsoft is advertising Windows 7 as a cloud application, showing a normal lady editing photos in the cloud, in a TV commercial,
  • Jolicloud has been out for months, and is now rumored to be about to sell a Jolicloud netbook,
  • The iPad came out and made a big difference in how people see simple daily computing.
  • Starting last week, the new Macbook Airs have introduced the concept of a full operating system fast portable computing without the heavy weight of a normal notebook.
  • And three weeks after Google Docs was rumored to be becoming fully usable on iPads and Androids,  it still isn’t.
  • Meanwhile some things never change, Google Chrome OS is late, and Google Chrome OS is still eagerly awaited.

So we wait, and wait for a really good old idea to materialize, and meanwhile hardware and software move forward.