GLOBADOM

Pretty nice, huh?

That’s with the phone in the Nokia 6682 Matchstick and Rogers sent my way.

On the other hand, this was taken with the same camera:

Uh oh.

The moral of the story is that digital zoom is evil. Well, not really. But this camera is some combination of trying too hard and interpolating badly. The result is that I don’t use the digital zoom feature at all. No, never. Hardly ever.

When I got this phone, I was keenly interested in how the camera would work out: it’s a 1.3 megapixel sensor sitting behind what appears to be a typical phone-cam lens: focus-free, no optical zoom.

The result is not an impossible device. The photos are really only suitable for web work or (speaking very generously) standard prints, but they’re good enough for that.

Moreover, the camera gets some basic stuff right. The time from deciding to take a picture to taking a picture is nearly as fast as thought: slide open the lens cover, and the camera immediately goes to photo mode. Press the button, and you take a picture. It’s that fast, and it benefits from the fact that the phone is almost certainly on already. This fast reaction time is important to my theory of how one’s “always with you” camera should work: it has to be teeny tiny, and it has to be capable of catching a quick shot when you pull it out of your pocket. Full points on these issues.

The big question is whether I would replace my actual digital camera with this one. Not yet. The 6682 is more of a preview of the future than an ideal present, and reasonable versions of the future may already exist in Europe and Asia. No, seriously: check out this shot on flickr for an idea of what I’d consider “good enough.”

On this continent, the 6682 may be about as good as it gets. Note this review which picks it as one of the three best camera-phones available (presumably on this continent), alongside its big brother the N90, which is another camera that seems to be pushing into the land of good enough. Surprisingly, the even-better-spec’d Nokia N93 camera doesn’t seem much better than the 6682’s, judging by the rather fuzzy shots I can find on flickr.

But that’s really just talking about the phone as a camera. As a phone, it’s not half bad. It’s big by phone standards, small by PDA standards, and while I still wonder if there have been any improvements in mobile phone usability since my much-loved Nokia 5100 series phone.

But having a Series 60 phone means this thing is a nerdy delight: throw three more games on your phone? go for it? Add any app you can think of? Sure. This thing is as much a phone-PDA as a Treo 600 or a basic Windows Smartphone; it lacks only an acceptable keyboard (and T9 or whatever Nokia’s fast-input system is called) is not that much worse than a mini-QWERTY or Graffiti interface.

But navigation isn’t perfect, and I haven’t found a solution to some of my minor annoyances: being a wild eccentric, this phone is usually the only timepiece I have with me, and the two available clock displays are a very ugly 7-segment LCD emulation and a less-ugly analog clock that might be usable if it had some hour marks on the clock face. At least the screensaver mode simply displays the date and time in a perfectly reasonable way.

I’ve tried a surprising number of phones, and while I’m fairly impressed by the UI on the cheapo Motorola V551 I, ahem, specified as our standard departmental phone at work, these devices have a lot of features and functions, and I don’t think enough time has gone into making the UI truly intuitive. I get by, but that’s not the same as liking the user interfaces.

There’s a lot of rumor-buzz-hype-hope around the idea of an Apple iPhone, and I think that’s because where I see a hope for convergence of digital cameras and phones, other people see a hope for convergence of MP3 players and phones. Since Apple has already proven they are world leaders in MP3 player UI, hopeful phone users would like to see them apply that magic to the cel market (Motorola ROKR E1 need not apply, thanks).

Supafamous pointed out that I got mentioned in the TdF Blog for a goofy joke I’ve been posting to rec.bicycles.racing.

Ahem. So there we go. The charts above were done by Robert Chung, a dab hand with statistical visualization and a regular in rbr. You’ll probably have to open the full-sized versions to figure out what’s going on. This is a couple of graphs of the Stage 7 Time Trial that happened in the Tour de France on Saturday. TTs are key elements of the race, since that and the mountain stages are where favourites can make real time gains on their opponents.

It’s often interesting to see how a rider’s pace was in the first and last parts of the TT, since this tells you whether they went too hard early and blew up in the second bit, or whether they didn’t go hard enough and had lots left in the second half (arguably preferable, though I think the idea is to go hard all the way through.

The reason the first chart highlights David Millar’s result in red is because of my Millar Line jokes referenced in the rbr posts I mentioned. As for the second two charts, here’s what Robert said:

“As long as I’m at it, here are two other plots that show that Gonchar dogged it for the last leg (he caught Kessler just before the third time check but didn’t pass him until inside the final km), and a comparison of the first and last legs that shows Lang went out pretty slow considering how fast he finished.”

Robert has also done illuminating charts on things like power meters, posting levels in rec.bicycles.racing (huge spike in July), and the Body-mass indices of some very special groups of people.

He’s very Tuftean.

And so I shall. It’s arrived today. It came with a small memory card, a big memory card, a bluetooth headset, two sets of stereo headphones/headsets, identical except for color, a mini-jack-to-nokia plug adapter, and probably something I forgot. I’m now putting the software on The Lovely One’s laptop, since iSync sync is via Bluetooth only (and probably less capable than Nokia’s wacky Lifeblog).

The new toy promises it can be an everything-device: good-enough camera, video recorder, audio recorder, MP3 player, and possibly the ability to make phone calls, though I haven’t checked that yet. What I really want to know is if it is good enough at those things. My personal dream is of a phone that packs a camera that could be compared to a Canon Digital ELPH, a UI that compares well to an iPod’s, and a phone that works well as a phone. music is a secondary issue. Voice recording would be a nice extra. And oh yes, I want it to sync with two different Groupwise calendars I have at work. I don’t ask for much.

What I did check already is that it can do very long movies. Apparently it’s limited only by the card size, and the format is reasonably efficient.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Probably not. I’m thinking I’ll find a way to strap this thing securely to my bicycle and do a one-take onboard camera shot of an entire race. Because I’ve always wanted to do that.

Oh, the phone? Nokia 6682.

My brother asked me how many cell phones I had, and including ones I have from work, and the cel I technically share with TLO, the answer is four, plus a fifth I probably could use if I pulled it out of the box, and not including the Blackberry I was playing with last week.

I would entertain any suggestions for what to play with on this phone. Nokia and Rogers have combined to push a couple hundred dollars worth of toys at me, and I don’t intend to leave ’em in a drawer.

I’ve been thinking lately. Here’s an update.

-I just wrote–well, mostly The Lovely One wrote–a few hundred “tips” for “Divas” and “Playas.” I suppose the politic thing to do would be to talk about how interesting it was (the contractor may or may not read this blog), but in truth it was a weird experience. I got to write in a different dialect, trying to think up livestyle tips for people very much unlike me. True story: I used Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” as the inspiration for some of the tips. Any port in a storm.

-I’ve been thinking about monetization and career goals. As in I fear that I’d better get some and soon. It’s not so much about the money: sure, I’d find things to do with that (read: more bicycles), but it’s also about some sort of misplaced puritanical instinct that to stay in my current station in life would be a mortal waste of talent. Yeah, I think I’m better than where I am. I’m not ashamed to admit it.

-Should I turn this blog into a paying venture? Well, for once it has paid me something: I’m one of the people benefitting from db’s annoyance, or to put it another way, if all goes well I’ll have a new Nokia phone to play with in the next few days. More about that when it arrives, but given a not-bad free phone, I have a few ideas about what to do with it. Back to the original topic, I think it’s time to get the traffic up here so I can make this monetizeable. I’m not joking when I reference “all 20 of you,” though it’s a consistent 20/day no matter how lazy I am about posting. Daily posts would probably improve that considerably, but I’d like some advice on better blogging interfaces. Friction is my demon: small improvements in performance and ease of access lead to large productivity improvements when I’m part of the system.

-When did I become a phone expert? In the last few months I have personally messed with everything from a Blackberry to a Treo, with stops at consumer and high-end Motos, and can probably tell you a little something about just about every decent phone available in this market. BTW, I think the biggest bottleneck to a more interesting mobile experience right now is the exorbitant cost of data packages from mobile phone providers. They’re worth it for business, not for home users. The sole exception seems to be Fido’s $25 unlimited data plan, a special Danger Hiptop-only deal. That’s really cheap.

Questions? Suggestions? I need some help here.

So, as part of my ongoing attempt to recover from EFS (excessive fat syndrome: it can be cured!), I decided to do a mountain bike race out at Buntzen Lake.

Circumstances being what they were, I chose to ride there, since it’s only 8km from my house. Can’t beat that!

I rode the 12 km from work to home, fed the pets, changed into my race gear and grabbed my mountain bike, then rode to Buntzen Lake.

It’s mostly uphill.

Then I rode a race which I thought would be about an hour. For me, I think it was 1:20 or so. Ouch. I finished dead last. I got beat by a miniscule junior rider from my own club, old guys, young guys, fast guys, slow guys, and two women. It was crushing, and on this lots-of-climbing course, a sure sign of what 20 pounds and virtually no mountain biking skills can do to a guy.

Then I rode home. At least that was mostly downhill.

Then I mowed the back lawn.

That’s the kind of day that leaves you ready for bed.

The race itself was fun. I did it for training and entertainment, and by the last of the three laps, I was already passed and pretty philosophical. I rode within my limits and just enjoyed the ride (I was still hurting, mind). No suck factor rating: mountain bike races where you don’t wreck a bike part are just for fun.

On the other hand, my post-race Power Bar tasted far better than it had any right to. So I guess it was serious.

On the way home, riding with another racer, we saw an enormous owl that sat about 15 feet off the trail and just watched us for about 30 seconds before taking off.

I hardly ever do read-and-rip commentaries on other articles, but here I am doing two in one day. Victim the second: Richard Ginelli. He thinks that Vladimir Horowitz’ special piano is analgous to Barry Bonds’ steroid use.

Apparently I missed the part where piano concerts had become a competitive sport.

Yes, yes, I know about piano competitions. I suppose that, if for no other reasons than space, time, and cost, in most competitions all the performers use the same piano (or pool of pianos). But piano competitions are not the focus of professional (or, more to the point, great) piano performances.

Piano competitions exist almost solely to discern among the many student and amateur pianists to find the few pianists who have a chance of becoming world-class pianists.

But really, I’m missing the point with my little digression. Let me sum up the article for you: Horowitz used his own personal (and “doctored”) piano for almost all concerts and recordings during his later years. This is tantamount to Bonds taking steroids, as in each case a great performer used a special enhancement to improve his edge.

I am moved to bloggery by the stupidity of this argument.

Barry Bonds is in a competitive sport which contains meaning only to the extent that it is played among competitors who abide by the rules of the game (which include, among others, “don’t take so many roids that your hat size grows noticeably”). Steroid abuse includes a non-trivial risk of really horrendous side effects including liver damage and tiny testes. The key reason steroids are banned is that they are an extraordinary and risky enhancement, and permitting them for those competitors foolish enough to risk the consequences would effectively force clean athletes to take the same risks just to keep up.

Since competitive sports should not have “don’t care about long-term liver damage” as a prerequisite for participation, we choose to ban steroids (and lots of other bad stuff) in almost every form of pro sport.

Now how does this compare to concert piano performances? Well, first of all, I think the goal of a great pianist’s performance is to extract the most transcendent sound possible from performer and instrument. It’s not a competition, though: pianists approach music in a variety of ways, and while one can certainly distinguish technically capable players from most lousy pianists, the question of “best” pianist eludes easy answers.

Not only would it be a bit tedious to debate “Glenn Gould versus Oscar Peterson versus Vladimir Horowitz,” I’m not sure it would have a sensible answer: the way that each played the piano was completely different, and unlike sport statistics, there are no practical measures of “best” pianists that sensibly distinguish great pianists from each other. Maybe best-selling, but I am doubtful that many would take that to mean “best.” Not even a free-marketeer like me believes in the market’s taste.

One might as well ask what the best food is. Consensus exists about where greatness and badness may be found, and yet the question of “best” dissolves into arguments that are emotional and personal at best.

But again, I miss the point, which is this: If Horowitz, as the article suggests, had his piano modified with an especially light action so it suited his style better, does that make him a cheater, or just an astute pianist who used the best piano he could find? Best question of all: what possible knock-on effects would Horowitz’ use of a special piano have on the rest of the world’s concert pianists?

In other words, the author is just being dumb. I don’t even feel like elaborating on the twists and turns musical instrument technology has taken in the last few hundred years, except to say that we now routinely hear Bach’s keyboard music on the piano, an instrument existed in an entirely different form than today during his lifetime.

As Wired Cola’s Director of Security, Erick, will attest, I am nearly innumerate.

As just about everybody who knows me will attest, I hardly ever ride a bicycle or motorcycle without a helmet. I have my reasons, but after reading the numbers in this article about motorcycle fatality rates in Florida, I’m beginning to wonder about how compelling the case for helmets is.

More importantly, I’m pretty sure the statistics presented in that article mean exactly the opposite of what the reporter thinks they mean.

Motorcycle fatalities involving riders without helmets have soared in the nearly six years since Gov. Jeb Bush repealed the state’s mandatory helmet law, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Okay, so Florida doesn’t have a mandatory helmet law any more, and now more of the dead bikers aren’t wearing helmets. I already have one question…

A Florida Today analysis of federal motorcycle crash statistics found “unhelmeted” deaths in Florida rose from 22 in 1998 and 1999, the years before the helmet law repeal, to 250 in 2004, the most recent year of available data.

Hey, that sounds pretty bad! So, like, these riders are probably dying because they’re not wearing helmets. I bet we could tell if you told us how this death rate compares to helmet-wearing rates in the state.

Total motorcycle deaths in the state have increased 67 percent, from 259 in 2000 to 432 in 2004, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics.

Wow, this is just worser and worser! So deaths have risen like crazy of late. So, the level of ridership has presumably been pretty constant over that time period, thus making these shocking numbers comparable to each other, right?

Records, though, also show motorcycle registrations have increased 87 percent in Florida since Bush signed the helmet law repeal on July 1, 2000.

Oh! So what you’re saying is that per-rider fatality rates have declined since the helmet law was repealed. You know, I would have thought that was the sort of counterfactual result that might have, oh, made this an interesting news item!

The rest of the article is unimportant filler.

I’d like to be clear about one thing which I have avoided saying so far: motorcycles are authentically hazardous to the health of their riders. There’s lots you can do to avoid becoming a statistic, but the numbers I have seen suggest that motorcycling is about ten times more risky (per capita) than being in a car. (Cycling seems to be closer to driving than motorcycling, risk-per-capita wise, but there are some ways of fudging the measurements to make it look nearly as safe as driving. If you include the net health benefits of riding a bicycle, you might come out ahead.)

Extra credit: construct a plausible hypothesis for the decline in per-rider fatalities in Florida. I can think of two, though I don’t have enough data to test either one.

So there you go. Isn’t innumeracy fun?

Let me put it this way: during my morning bicycle commute, I rode over a diesel fuel spill, slid and fell going around the next corner, and rashed myself up on my arm and leg enough to justify a trip to the first aid attendant at work.

That was, at best, about the fifth-worst thing that happened this week. If I think about it carefully, it might not even rank that high.

The dog has been crazy, I have three dysfunctional lawn mowers in my back yard, and let’s not even get into the trip to the hospital that was the culmination of a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

The Lovely One and I lived through the week. The pets are as healthy as they ever get. I found a new bike at a garage sale this weekend, and I wasn’t even really garage sailing. The Chinatown Night Market was a fun trip on the weekend.

Small things. Hold on to the small things. Play the Glad Game.

I’m really writing this item to test a new feed toy I’m experimenting with, thanks to a tip from Gord, that while not itself the solution, may have inspired the solution.

Since I’m here, you’ll all be thrilled to hear that I finished a big seventh-ish in my race tonight, and it hurt so much it had to be good for me. I was out of breath and completely useless for a good 15 minutes after the race, and spent considerable time after that feeling pretty woozy, which must be the sign of a good sprint.

Then I celebrated by eating about a thousand calories worth of burrito. A joke you say? No Joke [danger: PDF, large portions]. But it’s okay, because I am an athlete!

Note for the kids: it’s not okay. But the burrito was really good.

Sometimes, that’s just how it is. I’m not taking photos right now, because my digital camera is vacationing in Greece. My bike racing is hobbled by ten pounds too many, and I’m not helping that much the way I’m eating right now (but…let’s keep this in perspective: bike racing is for fun).

I’m still keeping most of the secrets I alluded to a post or two ago, but I can say that I have a side job I’m doing with The Lovely One right now that is truly exquisite in its irony.

Sure, I’m not in Europe like my in-laws, my camera, or the no-longer-proximate Drea. But I’m happy, and well-rested after a weekend spent mostly catching up on sleep and poking at a lawnmower. I’m optimistic that I’ll have some new toys to play with soon, from one source or another, and that’s all a novelty-craving fan of middlebrow culture like me needs to be happy for a while.

Now, some rampant bleggary:

-I’m looking for a way to filter and combine multiple RSS/Atom feeds into one super-feed. I’d like to provide a feed of Wired Cola, my Flickr photos, and my metblog posts into one OmniRyan channel. Scary, no? I still have my SFU account, so scripting and serving and rolling my own is not out of the question. Just annoying.

-I’m looking for a track bike frame. In short, something with track “dropouts” at the back end, in my size (50-54 cm for a track frame, probably). Should be cheap. Can be in almost any shape, otherwise.

-I’m looking for a cyclocross or hybrid frame, see above for size. Just something that can take a big tire and has cantilever posts, by preference. I actually picked up a fairly nice one that met all my needs, but Imaginary Dave needed it more and sooner.

-I need some answers: do you have a lot of durable goods around your house that you’d be willing to lend out? Do you wish you had an easy way of knowing if your friends had similar stuff? Why don’t you lend things to others right now, or do you?

Other than that? The usual. Walking two dogs. Riding too little. Eating to excess. More later.