Nokia's near and distant future?

If you need a break from all the bad news that seems to be following Nokia everywhere, there are things afoot with the Finnish giant, suggesting all is not done with the company after their momentous decision to hitch their wagon to Microsoft Mobile.

The first one is a story of Lumia 800, a product of the above decision. Finally a focus on design, that GigaOm calls Nokia's iPhone moment.

The second is more esoteric. A phone that will probably never see the insides of a retail store, but as a concept is somewhere between intriguing and stunning. I cannot quite make up my mind on which it is.

For someone who grew up with the brand being synonymous with mobile phones, any sign of Nokia fighting, is a welcome sign indeed.

Meeting requests in Gmail

A number of people have sworn by Google Calendars as a great way to keep oneself organized. I had two problems in getting onto the bandwagon - I did not have that Android phone yet. And keeping Google calendar synchronized with my work calendar seemed such a chore.

Turns out the second one isn't such a big issue. Gmail gracefully handles meeting requests from MS Outlook and my Exchange servers.

Yes, there is no way of choosing which Calendar the meeting goes to, but hey at least it is now possible to have my work and life overlap again.

Now for that Android phone.

The True Lord of the Rings

We had recently re-watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in its extended cut glory. All 11 hours of it. One of the advantages of the extended edition is that you not only get extra scenes, but you also get time to reflect on what you just saw. One thing that stood out for me was Galdalf's insistence at having his way, and his petulance when things were not according to his machinations. In that he was remarkably similar to Saruman, except for the fact that they were on opposing sides in the war for Middle Earth.

"The old world will burn in the fires of industry. Forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the machinery of war with the sword and the spear and the iron fist of the orcs."

The above quote from Saruman struck me not as evil, but as the exact same thing that we have all been doing since the dawn of the Industrial age. Or consider this, from the point of view of the Ents.

"There was a time, when Saruman would walk in my woods, but now, he has a mind of metal and wheels.
He no longer cares for growing things."

Tolkien's dislike for industrialization is well known. Within that context one could argue that the LOTR series is basically a re-write of history by the victors. Not convinced? Consider this. The men from Harad, were no different from Numenoreans, but for their appearance (tall, dark and fierce looking) and their choice of allies. For that Harad is portrayed a strange land and their people as barbarians. Xenophobia anyone?

One Kirill Yeskov, took this idea of LOTR as a victor's view of history to its logical conclusion. His russian book, The Last Ring-bearer, is the LOTR story told from the point of view of the vanquished. The English translation is available for free, in text, PDF formats. I converted the text to .MOBI format for use on my Kindle.

For the record, I am delighted Aragorn won. But unfortunately that also means we we will never quite know what Sauron was like. Did he like his beer cold? Was he a soft or hard taco guy? And what exactly was his purpose behind trying to decimate all humans from the face of Middle Earth?

Image is screen shot from lordoftherings.net

Average Human

We humans have the propensity to group and classify the world around us, including people. But it is not often that we get to put a single face to the group, a representative if you will. That is, until now.

The Postnational Monitor is the blog of a well traveled American, that struck upon an interesting idea - find out how the average person from a country looks like. So the blogger culled photographs of several people from each country, and ran them through an algorithm that produces an average face, representative of the people of that country. Here are a few excerpts:

The original blog has more, including countries in east-southeast Asia, middle Eastern, African, Americas, and Europe. This page has a good, well-attributed, summary.

This naturally got me thinking, how do these averages work. While I did not find much on the site itself, a bit o' Googling led me to faceresearch.org. These are the boffins that think about these things and make tools that help you make average faces. And turns out, in the world of faces, average is not a bad thing. Average is what makes a face more attractive.

Looking back to the list above, in addition to good looks, what is common between all the pictures above is that they are all average humans.

Technophobe John

John apparently is a technophobe. And so his phone is as bare-bones as it gets. Unfortunately, John is only a moniker. Fortunately, it is also a company that makes the most simplest of cell phones - no camera, no operating system, no apps, not even text messaging. In fact the only thing you can do with the phone is power it up, make calls, hang-up, and (if it tickles your fancy) set the ringer volume level.

The phone clocks in with impressive specifications. It comes quad-band unlocked, includes a screen at the top edge to display inbound and outbound calls. The 1200 mAh battery stays on standby for about three weeks. The best part is that the phone comes in with two ways to store numbers - either linked to speed dial or noted on a paper phone-book embedded at the back of the phone (slot available, paper and pen sold separately at 3x for €9.95). Thankfully, it uses a micro-USB cable for charging, reducing your charger clutter. The question of course is, if you were technophobe John, why would you have a charger clutter.

By first impressions this seems to be a phone designed for John and Jane, the technophobes. But there is potentially a bigger market out there. Standard issue for sensitive workplaces - like the army or defense installations. A daily-swap program for contractors having access to classified information. An unbreakable version for every kid. And the list goes on.

But that is not going to happen at €69.95 (euros). Here to a solid demand that drives the price of this puppy down. And just maybe, John will need to buy a blackberry to keep up with the explosion of demand.

Snakes on a video

Ok, here is something cool. Ever wonder why Youtube takes so long to load these days - apparently there is a Easter Egg hidden within every video. A Snake video game. All you need to do is:

1. Open a video in YouTube, any video
2. Pause it
3. Hit the Up and Right arrows together and look out for the tiny snake as it begins running across your screen

A hint - when you pause, look for a relatively dark frame. Will help with visibility of your snake and its food.

Photocopy my Car

This is a post about how mother nature tried to photocopy my car. At least that is what I think it is. Consider the first picture on the left - at the bottom are three receipts I had left in the car, clipped under the visor, while I waited for my shirts from the laundry. They were normal when I left them, but when I reached to pull them out three days later, what I saw surprised me. I got this darkened mess, that clearly reproduces the child seat warning message from the inside of the visor.

Quick background. The receipts are generally printed on what is called a 'thermal paper'. A thermal paper works by darkening in response to applied heat above a particular threshold. For example, you could cause the paper to darken if you left it in a car under direct sunlight for an extended period.

However, I do not think that is the reason for the darkening. Consider the following - firstly, I parked my car at work in a covered parking structure for the entire time. Secondly a closer examination of the darkening shows that it was not the gradual darkening of a car left in sunlight. Instead it was hot enough and short enough to cause the darker printed portions of the visor to visibly absorb more heat than the whiter parts of the visor. Finally, there was an electrostatic discharge event (aka thunder storm) during the period with the receipts under the visor that landed close enough to blow out the garage opener, about 10 feet away.

Which brings me to my conclusion. The lightning during the night struck close, probably the car itself. This caused a quick but intense heating of the air around. During the dissipation of this heat, the darker parts of the car heated up quicker than the lighter parts resulting in a “natural” photocopy of my car.

Iron Man Cometh

After living in the minds of kids, nerds and movie makers for decades, a true practical jet pack has finally emerged. The Martin Jetpack is the world's first usable personal flying vehicle.

This is definitely not the first successful jet pack. Earlier attempts like the Bell Rocket Belt, had been successful, but barely usable. The initial version had a flight time of about 20 seconds that increased to 30 seconds through later innovations.

The Martin Jetpack achieves almost 30 minutes of flight time. Built from carbon fiber composite, the device has a dry weight of about 250 lbs driven by a 2.0 L V4 2 stroke engine rated at 200 hp (150 kw). The best part - the fuel for the jet pack is premium gasoline.

The jetpacks are now available for commercial sale. Some reports have put the price at around $86,000. Not bad if it means you will fly to your next big evening.

Enter Swingman

Who here likes Enter Sandman?
Me, me, oh me!
Who here thinks swing is foot-tappilicious?
Uhm, me?
Who here thinks Enter Sandman should swing?
???

Enter Sandman- the Swing Version by plamere

Someone over Music Machinery, decided to post a few songs, that had been through a piece of Python code, that produced a swing version of the song by - taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. A couple more songs below, but more available here.

Every Breath You Take (swing version) by TeeJay

Sweet Child O' Mine (Swing Version) by plamere