Did That Car Just Wink At Me?

BMW has created a new concept vehicle, affectionately known as "GINA". The car is revolutionary, in that it does away with the traditional metal "skin" of the vehicle, and replaces it with a taut, flexible material. I hesitate to call it fabric, because I'm sure there's a lot more that went into engineering this material than your favorite flannel shirt.

For me, the coolest thing about this vehicle is the mechanisms underneath the skin. It must have taken a complex system of linkages and motors to shift the shape of the car.

There is an article about it from the New York Times here. Below, I've embedded a neat video with the lead designer, the infamous Chris Bangle, explaining his vision for this car.

NYC Waterfalls - First Real Photos

The New York Times has a gallery of the first photos to be taken of the new NYC Waterfalls exhibit along the East River. It looks pretty spectacular, and I think I may need to take a trip out to see them this weekend.

Urban Trials

More info about trials here.

And if you liked that video, here's something a little, hmm, classier.

Firefox 3.0 Released Today

Firefox 3.0 is being officially released to the public today. I've only just installed it, so I haven't had a chance to really dig into the new features yet.

Lifehacker has an article about the top 10 new features in Firefox 3.0. My favorite one so far is the "Smart Location Bar":

"Like a personal assistant who telepathically knows when you're going to need just the right phone number (or Starbucks fix), Firefox 3's address bar, now dubbed the Smart Location Bar, helps you get to your frequently visited, or recently discovered, sites in super-quick fashion. That application you just read about on Lifehacker, but can't remember the name? Type "li" into your address bar, and Firefox instantly pulls the relevant sites from your history. The bar also learns through repetition, so the next time you start searching with "li," it knows you're looking for Lifehacker, not Linux."

Charging by the Byte

This article was published in the Technology section of the New York Times yesterday.

It's bad news for users like me, who use A LOT of bandwidth. My torrent client is pretty much always open, except for those few hours at night where I bask in the rare silence that occurs when I shut down my computer (and if it wasn't so damn loud, I'd just leave it on while I sleep, too.).

ISP's are getting killed trying to keep up with the demand that high-bandwidth users place on their systems. Especially with our ancient backbones here in the US. In japan, the average home internet connection is somewhere around 100 Mbps. Here in the US, it's more like 10. My service from Cablevision is advertised as 30 Mbps, but it rarely hits that speed. It only comes close during the hours when no one else is online, or if I happen to hit a really good server, since you can only download as fast as someone else is uploading.

So what's causing this sudden increase in demand for bandwidth amongst internet users? Contrary to what you might think, it's not really people like me, who download large files over Bittorrent. No, the people that are breaking the internet are those who play streaming video files over the internet. Yes, those tiny, crappy quality streaming videos on sites like Hulu and network TV websites are KILLING THE INTERNET. Why, you might ask? Well, much like me, people don't like being forced to adhere to some arbitrary television schedule. It's much more convenient to time shift your viewing. TiVo has done it for ages, and those wise to Bittorrent have been doing it for ages, yet television networks and other content providers are just starting to get wise to the fact that there's a lot of money to be made in providing ad-supported entertainment for free.

And people love it. They're eating this shit up. They can just go to their favorite bookmarked website and catch up on the latest episodes of their favorite shows, or reruns of classics. It's convenient, there's no software to learn, etc... I can't stand watching these videos, due to the fact that their quality is often akin to a garbled YouTube video. The video is chock full of artifacts (anomalies that appear on the screen that shouldn't be there), and the sound is worse than AM radio. I much prefer to download high resolution videos that were recorded from the actual source (usually over-the-air HDTV) compressed into smaller files with a decent codec like DivX, along with true MP3 or AC3 audio that could be mistaken for the real thing.

If you made it through all that tech babble, congrats. Basically, what I'm saying is that the fact that people are willing to settle for these crappy videos of their shows has made it extremely profitable for networks to experiment with a new medium. And no one told the internet providers that this was going to be so damn popular. Now, they're trying to keep their level of service at the same level it was at before, all while juggling the increased bandwidth demands this has put on them.

So what's the solution here? Well, from the ISP standpoint, it's kind of obvious. Charge for usage, just like cell phone plans or car leases. The more you use, the more you pay per month. And if you use more than your plan's set allotment, then the ISP rejoices at the fact that they can suddenly charge you exorbitant overage fees, just like cell phone companies do.

What's the problem with this? The internet is full of CRAP. A fairly large proportion of the bandwidth that passes over your connection is crap. Ads, useless images, poor web design, etc... Do we really want to spend our precious LIMITED bandwidth on this stuff? I, for one, am completely and absolutely opposed to this concept of varied rate plans dependent on usage for this sole reason. In its current state, a "per byte" rate plan is totally wrong for the internet.

Totally Shameless

At this point, I'd like to apologize to all of my female readers. (It's ok, you can admit it, you like this video, too. It's not weird, it's ok to experiment. That's it, touch her bottom... Gently... Caress it...)

Whoa, hey, what happened there?

Some of you might have heard of a little video game called Wii Fit for the Nintendo Wii. Well, this video (Entitled: Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit) was posted on the internet a while ago, and I loved it when I saw it back then, but neglected to post it here. Well, today I stumbled upon it again (just stumbled out of nowhere, I swear!) and I've decided it's too glorious to not post here.



Like I said, totally shameless.

Signs of Our Impending Doom

Can someone please explain to the British government why it's a bad idea to name your defense satellites "SkyNet"? Thanks.

This Apartment is Like an Adventure Game

Anyone that's ever played the classic Lucas Arts adventure games knows how frustrating it can be to figure out how the game programmer wants you to use some ordinary object to perform some extraordinary task or open some lock, or whatever.

The classic example I can think of is in Maniac Mansion, where you had to record some sort of sound to a cassette tape and then use that tape to break a chandelier and get a key or something.

Anyways, Eric Clough, a renowned NYC architect, has designed an apartment with a built in "scavenger hunt." It's pretty epic, and I'd love to have a go at it.

Update: Link changed.

NYC Weekend Recap

On Saturday night, Vanessa and I ventured to NYC to meet up with Mike and catch a Norwegian film called "Reprise." It was one of those nights that kind of takes you on an unexpected adventure.

We met at the Chatham train station, in the 95 degree heat. I had a pounding headache, bordering on a migraine, but I was determined to endure it. I seem to remember it disappearing right around the time I got back into the air conditioning on the train.

The ride to the city started off like any other train ride. Until we got to the Maplewood station (Also known as the tilted station.). Apparently, there was some sort of a scuffle or disagreement over a bicycle. The police had to be summoned, and we had to wait until they arrived. Well, let me tell you this: I never want to get shot in Maplewood, because we sat there for about 45 minutes before the cops showed up. I know this, because there was one of those bank clocks outside the train window, taunting us with the passing minutes. Vanessa was screaming inside her head, much like Elaine in that episode of Seinfeld where she gets stuck on the subway. She knew that the movie was starting at 9:00, with or without us, and to miss the start of the movie would be a serious detriment to the evening's plans. I had given up on worrying about it, as I knew my worrying wasn't going to make the train go any faster.

To top it all off, there was a crazy crackhead woman sitting in front of us. She chugged an entire party mug of beer as she got on the train, and then proceeded to bang said party mug on the window in her frustration at the long wait, screaming about how "this is some bull****!" She even peered over the seat to have a word with Vanessa, who did her best to not look like a frightened deer. Once the train started moving again, someone stole her seat, and she walked back and forth along the train looking for her bag. I could've sworn she went back and forth about at least 15 times. In hindsight, I should have been less of a jerk and told her that some punks had stolen her seat and that her bag was in the seat ahead of us. In all honesty, the German in me was getting a kick out of the schadenfreude.

We finally got to Penn Station, and walked up to the street level. We were too late to chance the subway, so we decided to catch a cab. We quickly walked past the suckers in line for cabs outside Penn station, and made our way down the street a little bit to flag a cab of our own. Luckily, a few people were getting out right at Penn station, and we were able to grab their cab as they got out.

We drove downtown, and made it just in time to meet up with Mike and catch the previews. The movie was definitely enjoyable, if a bit out there.

Afterwards, we made our way to an upscale diner in the East Village known as 7A. Vanessa got the biggest bowl of vegetables ("The Healthy Bowl") I've ever seen in my life. The girl seated at the table behind me even muttered, "That's a big salad!" as it was brought out. I got some delicious tortilla chips and some of the best guacamole I've had in a long time. Mike had an Avocado Tuna Melt that looked equally delicious. The restaurant had a nice atmosphere. I always enjoy taking a trip to NYC, because I often find myself at some interesting places.

While we were sitting there, eating our late night meal, a trio of horns (And tuba. Is a tuba a horn?) put on an impromptu performance to serenade the diners outside. The big windows in 7A gave us a nice view of the spectacle, and just enough sound came through to make the atmosphere that much more phantasmal.

New iPhone Details Announced (And Mike's Kinda Disappointed...)

Today was a big day in the Apple community. The 2nd Generation iPhone was officially announced. We got what was expected, 3G capability, A-GPS, the app store, Enterprise support, and games.

Not much of this is that much of an improvement over the original iPhone, though. Most of it is software updates. And with the 2.0 firmware that includes all the new software updates, the only real features that differentiate this new version from the old one are 3G capability and A-GPS.

Not only that, but the back of the phone is going to be completely plastic now. This bodes well for the reception and call quality, yet doesn't say so much for the build quality.

The price for the data plan has also jumped up $10/month. I expected this with the 3G data plan, but I was hoping that AT&T would take pity on us. It's not terrible, I suppose, it could've been raised even more and people would have still paid it.

So what else was left out that people have been clamoring for? Here's a portion of the list from Gizmodo:

- No 32 GB model.
- No better camera.
- No MMS.
- No front-facing camera for video conferencing.
- No video recording.

The good news? $199 for the 8GB model. That's half the price of the old one! And the 16GB model comes in at $299. AT&T is subsidizing the price of this new model, hence the lower price. Of course, this also means you'll have to sign up for a new 2-year contract, but apparently buyers of the original iPhone should have no problem "overlapping" their current contracts. That means you won't need to sign up for yet another 2 years, making for a total of 3-4 years, but instead are only committed for 2 years after the renewal date.

It will be released July 11th. I'm settling in for the (seemingly) long wait. :o)

Oh yeah, this "MobileMe" thing sounds pretty cool, too. Too bad it costs $99/year.

Urban Mountaineering

As I was cooking my dinner last night, I turned on the television to kill some time while I waited for a pot of water to boil. On NBC, a man was climbing the NY Times building without a harness. I thought it was the world-famous Frenchman, Alain Robert, also known as "Spiderman", since he's known for these kinds of stunts.

It turns out Robert had climbed the building earlier that day, though. The man I was witnessing scale the NY Times building was 32 year old Renaldo Clarke, of Brooklyn. I'm more impressed with his performance, since no one knows anything about this guy. Is he an accomplished climber? Just some crazy dude who decided to follow suit after Robert? My curiosity is certainly piqued. I think this is a more interesting story than the Robert story.

Stuff Like This Doesn't Get Enough Media Coverage

These are some breathtaking photos of Saturn and its moons. Stuff like this doesn't get enough media coverage these days, and I think that's part of the reason NASA is so underfunded. That, and the U.S.'s tendency to favor defense spending over scientific research.

Every day, we are making tremendous scientific breakthroughs, yet the new Sex and the City movie probably got more press coverage than the Phoenix Mars Lander (More about this in the future. Long story short: The Phoenix may have landed right on a giant block of ice covered by dust. This is a huge deal.)

Pound It!

What a way to celebrate. It made me smile. :o)

Well that was quick.

Wow, today I sold my iPhone for my asking price fairly quickly. I posted it on Craigslist at about 1:20, and had the cash in my hand at about 8:00.

The buyer barely looked it over, too. The whole process was fairly painless. That is, aside from having to hand over my precious... My sweet, sweet precious...

So why would I part with this object of my affection? Well, there's some new hotness coming out very soon.

Selling My iPhone

I'm selling my iPhone, if anyone is interested.

Here is the Craigslist link.

Finally...

Last night, Barack Obama clinched the nomination to be the Presidential candidate of the Democratic party. This is a milestone in U.S. history, as it's the first time a black man or woman has been chosen as the nominee for either major political party.

Now the question remains, is Obama a strong enough candidate to defeat McCain in November? I would say that he seems to have more public and media support than McCain, yet the rift that has been torn across the Democratic party may create problems for Obama down the line. Many of Clinton's supporters have been quoted as saying that they would vote for John McCain come November before they would ever vote for Obama.

To me, this is the epitome of stupidity. "Our candidate didn't win, so we're going to vote for someone whose policy starkly contrasts our candidate's, rather than THE OTHER FREAKING DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE."

I think the people saying this are the same people wearing "Clinton '08" stickers on their foreheads. Gawker seems to think they belong to some strange Clinton cult. I think they might be right.

WTF of the Day

Saw this woman pull into a gas station as I was about to leave today. Yes, that is a bird on the passenger seat headrest...

Guerrilla Gardening

The L.A. Times has an interesting article about "Geurrilla Gardening" today. I'm lovin this concept. It's socially disobedient, environmentally friendly, and an urban beautification project, all rolled into one.

More at GeurrillaGardening.org