Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

Assembly line reading and writing

I remember once reading an interview with science fiction author William Gibson in which he argued that he could not keep a blog because it would sap his ability to write other things. I think he used a steam engine analogy: arguing that the minor releases of pressure associated with writing blog posts prevent him from developing the working force required for more substantial pieces of writing.

This lines up somewhat with something Nassim Nicholas Taleb said in his book. He argued that excessive focus on day-to-day and hour-to-hour news actually reduces one’s ability to understand the world. This is because it creates the spurious impression of trends when there is really only chatter; also, the time required for such constant perusal saps one’s ability to read more substantial things, like books.

While I don’t have any firm personal plans to respond to these observations, they do seem valid and indicative of a period in history where throughts are addressed in an increasingly frantic and disjointed manner.

Standardizing cell phone chargers

Backhoe

Forgetting my cell phone charger in Toronto has already resulted in a week of weak connectivity. It need not be so. While it must be a gold mine for cell phone shops and manufacturers, the absurd proliferation of charger types is clearly an anti-competitive practice.

A government keen to protect consumers and boost overall economic efficiency would do the following:

  1. Require that all cellular phones be rechargeable using a standard connector.
  2. Ideally, that connector should be mini-USB (second from the left), capable of transferring both power and data.
  3. Require that adapters be sold for all phones made in the past five years, and that the cost of the adapters equal just the cost of shipping and manufacture.

As long as any charger could be plugged into any phone and provide power, firms would be free to compete in designing and building chargers that connect to electrical outlets, car cigarette lighters, or whatever other source of power seems fitting.

The intervention in the market is justified for the same reason as with all standards: it produces societal welfare without adverse effects. It replaces self-serving confusion generated by private firms with an ordered approach that makes sense for everyone. It is not as though there is any major innovation which can occur with cell phone chargers. At root, they are just plastic-wrapped wires that run from a socket to a circuit board. Having fewer types – and making them go obsolete less frequently – would also reduce the usage of energy and materials in manufacturing, as well as the number of (potentially toxic) plastic trinkets populating landfills worldwide. A standard would allow people to share chargers, as well as permit buses and trains to have universal charging stations available.

Something similar could be done for laptop computers. Cell phones and laptops are both ubiquitous elements of modern life and commerce. Just think how many productive hours are needlessly lost because each manufacturer wants to ensure that last year’s charger cannot be sold to someone buying this year’s phone.

How to make a difference

If my aim is to make a positive impact on the emerging climate crisis, the least productive possible use of my time is spending 5-6 years in the U.S. doing a PhD in political science or international relations.

It could be argued that the best use would be getting an engineering degree. Then, I could either (a) contribute more intelligently to policy, by better understanding the physical dynamics of what we’re dealing with or (b) actually go off and try and build a better battery / solar panel / electricity grid.

Conversely, it could be argued that high-level direction is what is needed, serving to get more specific forms of expertise applied to a sufficient degree. Even if that contention is accepted, however, it seems unlikely that an additional degree in a social science would help.

Embassy artwork

Ugly statue outside the American Embassy, Ottawa

The city of Ottawa is quite well provisioned with public art. Some pieces, like the wooden spiral in the park near the mint, are quite charming. The piece above, located in the US embassy compound, is probably the worst of the lot.

As you can see, the sculpture looks a bit like a balloon animal where the balloons have been replaced by black steel beams and the angles have been randomly altered by twenty or thirty degrees. Sitting within a perimeter fence that never contains a visible human, the statue also symbolizes how faceless and harsh the whole compound is.

While concerns about security are obviously of enormous importance for an American diplomatic facility, nothing about them seems fundamentally at odds with good taste. A less ghastly bit of art, and an embassy that somehow demonstrates that the United States is a nation full of people basically just like Canadians rather than an imposing neo-military facade, might be a start along that road.

P.S. In the spirit of fairness, it should be noted that the British High Commission is equally externally unpopulated and far more lacking in architectural virtue.

P.P.S Two other statues notably for their oddness and lack of aesthetic appeal are the strange rocket ship / polar bear statue at the building formerly intended to become city hall and the giant evil spider outside the National Gallery.

Fevered imagination

Yellow spring flower

While sleeping off fever, I had a surprisingly coherent and well developed dream. If anyone wants to turn it into a Major Motion Picture Event, they can contact me about the rights.

It begins with a medium-sized dry cleaning shop in an American town dominated by a huge army base. The shop is struggling because the huge majority of the business comes from the armed forces, and it is all assigned through huge low-bid contracts. The owners decide that, small or not, they need to get into that system. Hoping to build some name recognition, at least, they decide to put in an a bid they feel sure will be higher than that of anyone else for the next thing to come up.

Meanwhile, some high ranking officers are discussing a problem. Due to a shipping problem, the dress uniforms of 1,000 soldiers returning from abroad have become soiled. (The film includes a shot of a non-waterproof cargo container sitting on the tarmac beside some jungle in the pouring rain. A mid-level officer has a muddy uniform half-pulled out and is shouting at someone more junior, though you cannot hear any of it through the rain.) They uniforms are needed clean for a big ceremony occurring in 24 hours. As a result, an urgent tender for contracts is posted on a government website.

Seeing the order, the dry cleaning shop owners decide that this is their chance to get noticed. They don’t have the resources to handle 1,000 uniforms in a day, but it’s not hugely beyond their capabilities. This is the kind of deal they want the military brass to consider them for. Not wanting to take on something they cannot handle, they bid $15,000,000 and leave it at that.

At computer terminals across the city, brief scenes show the big cleaning companies considering the contract and deciding it is too small to bother with. As a result, nobody else files a bid.

As a result, the small firm finds itself with a contract to clean 1,000 uniforms in 24 hours, for $15,000 each. Working flat out themselves, they are sure they can manage about 350. In the opportunity of a lifetime, they offer two other similarly sized companies the opportunity to clean 350 uniforms each for $10,000 a piece.

The portion involving the actual cleaning has your standard movie mixture of minor problems, clever solutions, and emotive demonstrations of why the various cleaners really need the money (to deal with higher interest mortgages, pay medical expenses, etc). At the last minute, the biggest truck owned by the dry cleaning firm breaks down, but, through a favour from the Hispanic army officer cousin of one of the owners, a big army truck comes by to collect the uniforms.

Sitting around celebrating with pizza and beer, the cleaners are surprised when a flashing message appears on the army requisition computer. For completing their contract on time and on budget, they are being given a 20% bonus.

One odd thing about my experience in dreaming the above is that the actual dream alternated between watching segments of the film which I had made in a room in my high school and walking around the building explaining various aspects to friends and acquaintances of mine. For instance, I was explaining to my friend Kate how, ideally, the film would work on two levels: as a feel-good story about an upstart out-maneuvering big competitors and winning a big reward and as a comment on the wastefulness of the armed forces. It would appear the the combination of influenza, NyQuil, and chocolate chunk cookies can have strange effects on the human subconscious.

Day three of illness

Rubble and the CN Tower

Sorry to have nothing interesting to say this morning. Unfortunately, I have been laid low by some bug with a fondness for the cells in my larynx. This seems to be the season for upper respiratory tract infections. Half my floor at work has become an impromptu orchestra of hacking coughs. The situation is similar with my neighbors.

The worst thing about all this is just how draining the illness is: demanding twelve hours of fitful attempts at sleep per day, yet still leaving you exhausted whenever you are up and about. The curious oscillations between only being comfortable when wrapped in several layers of wool and blankets and feeling hot when sitting around at room temperature in ordinary clothing are also notable. Falling asleep is also made challenging by the constant headache and joint pain. Even when one has managed to fall asleep for a few minutes, either a bout of coughing or a perceived temperature swing is sure to end that before long.

I am very much hoping that a weekend spent tossing and turning in bed will vanquish this bug.

Apartment hunting redux

Bookstore readers

The lease on my apartment expires in August and I intend to spend a portion of the time between now and then looking for a superior option. For the most part, this place has been quite good. Located near LeBreton, it is very close to work. It also has a very good landlord, a large basement with laundry equipment, and a tolerable though flawed layout.

Important characteristics I am looking for:

  1. Location: either close to work (Gatineau) and reasonably close to somewhere interesting (Elgin Street, Bank Street, etc) or very close to somewhere interesting and close to the transitway.
  2. Relatively quiet, especially in terms of traffic noise.
  3. Offers somewhere secure, covered, and convenient to store a bike.
  4. Well laid out, particularly in terms of offering a good space for parties, as well as space for a few guests to stay over.
  5. Large enough that two people could conceivably live there indefinitely, without driving one another crazy.
  6. Good water pressure.
  7. Ideally, includes one bedroom and one room that will serve as a study (see #5 above).
  8. Ideally, well insulated and otherwise energy efficient.
  9. Ideally, compatible with all of my existing furniture.
  10. Hardwood floors and laundry gear are an advantage.

The price range being considered is about $700-800 a month, though more would be possible for a really excellent place. There was an amazing $850 option I found while searching last summer; unfortunately, it got snapped up by the one couple who saw it before I did.

Two Toronto discoveries

My weekend in Toronto yielded knowledge of two new interesting places:

The first is a Louisiana Cajun restaurant called Southern Accent. It is located at 595 Markham Street, near the Honest Ed discount store. Their serving staff are very friendly and accommodating, the decor is pleasantly unusual, and the food is novel and tasty.

The second is an excellent used book store called A Good Read. It is located at 341 Roncesvalles Avenue. It is a boutique-style shop, rather than an encyclopaedic warehouse like Chapters, and it seems to be stocked almost exclusively with the kind of books you would feel lucky to find in a normal used book shop. I picked up a massive tome on the history of cryptography that I mean to work through over the course of many lunch hours.

Prints from digital

Recently, I was pleased to discover that one can make perfectly good 4 x 6″ prints from photos taken with a 3.2 megapixel camera. With images of just 2048 by 1536 pixels, I was worried that the images would be blocky or would show lots of JPEG artefacts. As it happens, I think it would be very difficult to tell these prints from ones taken with an otherwise identical camera of much higher resolution. The only really problematic images are those shot at a high ISO, largely owing to the small sensor in the Canon A510 with which most of my recent images were taken.

Now that I know that decent (small) prints can be made from my digital files, I may be inclined to make a lot more of them. It is certainly good to have a physical backup accompanying the many digital ones. The only really annoying thing is the need to crop each photo from 4:3 aspect ratio to 3:2 aspect ratio. That works decently for most prints, but those with very geometric compositions can suffer a lot from the conversion. For instance, while a photo like this can be cropped pretty painlessly, one like this is considerably worsened by cropping it into a narrower form.