Monday, May 24, 2004
Hem is a great band. Besides their albums, they've made a handful of MP3s available of other songs they've recorded. They don't have them all listed on the MP3 download page on their website so I thought I'd collect a list here. There have been several other songs that have come and gone from their download page over time. In particular, if you can get ahold of "St. Charlene" I highly recommend it.
From their download page:
Beautiful Sea
Now The Day Is Over
From their News page:
Valentine's Day
From the Rabbit Song album pages:
Half Acre
Lazy Eye
Update: Unfortunately all of the above links are now dead, but on the plus side St. Charlene is available on the Birds, Beasts, & Flowers CD.
From their download page:
Beautiful Sea
Now The Day Is Over
From their News page:
Valentine's Day
From the Rabbit Song album pages:
Half Acre
Lazy Eye
Update: Unfortunately all of the above links are now dead, but on the plus side St. Charlene is available on the Birds, Beasts, & Flowers CD.
Sunday, May 02, 2004
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Several years ago, while riding the ferry out to the San Juans, I wrote up a new system for measuring time. I'm tired of carrying the piece of paper around so I'll put it here for the world to see.
We have this great metric system for measuring mass, volume, etc. But we still have 60 second minutes, 60 minute hours, and 24 hour days. What a mess. Instead I propose a system with 100,000 seconds a day. Each minute would consist of 100 seconds. Each hour would consist of 100 minutes. And each day would have 10 hours. Compared to old time (with 86,400 seconds/day):
New second = .864 old seconds
New minute = 1.44 old minutes
New hour = 2.4 old hours
You could name the new units something different if that would be less confusing to people. I'd propose the following lengths for common daily activities:
Work = 3 hours
Lunch = .5 hour
Sleep = 3.5-4 hours
Yes, that's a little more sleep and a little less work than Americans are used to. This is a good thing. :) I have some ideas for reseting the calendar system back to match the solar/lunar cycle, but that isn't fleshed out yet. It would be fun to write up a little clock program that displayed this time format.
We have this great metric system for measuring mass, volume, etc. But we still have 60 second minutes, 60 minute hours, and 24 hour days. What a mess. Instead I propose a system with 100,000 seconds a day. Each minute would consist of 100 seconds. Each hour would consist of 100 minutes. And each day would have 10 hours. Compared to old time (with 86,400 seconds/day):
New second = .864 old seconds
New minute = 1.44 old minutes
New hour = 2.4 old hours
You could name the new units something different if that would be less confusing to people. I'd propose the following lengths for common daily activities:
Work = 3 hours
Lunch = .5 hour
Sleep = 3.5-4 hours
Yes, that's a little more sleep and a little less work than Americans are used to. This is a good thing. :) I have some ideas for reseting the calendar system back to match the solar/lunar cycle, but that isn't fleshed out yet. It would be fun to write up a little clock program that displayed this time format.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
It's big, complicated and scary, but we need to do something about health insurance in the USA. I'm not saying this for my own benefit, I've always worked for employers that provided nice PPO health plans. But the system seems really broken to me.
First off, having employers as the primary providers of health insurance seems weird. You don't get your auto insurance from your employer... Having the insurance provided by your empolyer means you have to change plans, and frequently doctors as well, whenever you change jobs. I want to be able to shop for my own health insurance plan just like I can shop for my own auto, boat and life insurance. At the same time I think there is a real benefit to society of providing some basic health insurance for everyone.
So I think the federal government should ensure that everyone has basic health coverage. Nothing fancy, no transplants or super expensive drugs, but if you break your arm or whatever you should be able to get that taken care of. I'm on the fence as to whether the government should administer such a program or let various private insurance companies vie for your business. There are pros and cons either way.
But then I think individuals or employers should be able to supplement the basic government program with more full-featured plans from private insurance companies. Employers would certainly want to use this as a recruiting tool as they do now. And many people would want more complete coverage. In order to avoid payment disputes between the basic carrier and the employer/citizen funded carrier I would have the government program function as a voucher system, like some folks want to do with public schools. I.e. you would buy a higher-grade plan from Medical Insurance, Inc. or whoever and the goverment would kick in whatever they consider to be your share of the basic government plan and you and/or your employer would cover the rest. I also think that any employer contributions should also come in the form of a voucher so that you aren't locked into the Plan X that your employer has chosen like you are now, but rather can go out into the market and pick the one that works best for you.
First off, having employers as the primary providers of health insurance seems weird. You don't get your auto insurance from your employer... Having the insurance provided by your empolyer means you have to change plans, and frequently doctors as well, whenever you change jobs. I want to be able to shop for my own health insurance plan just like I can shop for my own auto, boat and life insurance. At the same time I think there is a real benefit to society of providing some basic health insurance for everyone.
So I think the federal government should ensure that everyone has basic health coverage. Nothing fancy, no transplants or super expensive drugs, but if you break your arm or whatever you should be able to get that taken care of. I'm on the fence as to whether the government should administer such a program or let various private insurance companies vie for your business. There are pros and cons either way.
But then I think individuals or employers should be able to supplement the basic government program with more full-featured plans from private insurance companies. Employers would certainly want to use this as a recruiting tool as they do now. And many people would want more complete coverage. In order to avoid payment disputes between the basic carrier and the employer/citizen funded carrier I would have the government program function as a voucher system, like some folks want to do with public schools. I.e. you would buy a higher-grade plan from Medical Insurance, Inc. or whoever and the goverment would kick in whatever they consider to be your share of the basic government plan and you and/or your employer would cover the rest. I also think that any employer contributions should also come in the form of a voucher so that you aren't locked into the Plan X that your employer has chosen like you are now, but rather can go out into the market and pick the one that works best for you.
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
I bought a PalmPilot Professional in 1997 from Fry's. It was the top of the line of the second-generation of what are now Palm PDAs. It served me well for many years but was starting to show its age.
So I went and bought myself a shiny new Palm Zire 21, from Fry's again. I transfered the data I wanted to keep and went on my merry way. Well, until I got to work the next morning and found that the Zire had hard-reset itself (Palm speak for clearing out all data, applications, settings, etc.) Gah?! Thankfully I'd hotsync'd my data to my PowerBook.
I'll save you the details, but this repeated itself several times over the next week. I emailed Palm Support but they weren't terribly helpful, so I returned the Zire to Fry's and got a new one, figuring I got a bad device. Nope, the resets still happened with the new one. Ok, so it's got to be something with me. A little detective work and I discovered that if my cell phone was in close proximity to my Zire and rang, the Zire reset itself. Some testing with other cell phones confirmed that it wasn't just my phone. So I fired off an email to Palm Support. They confirmed that they could replicate the behavior and informed me that the "Palm research team" was looking into the issue. This seemed like good news, so I waited for a reply. After no word for a week I pinged them. "Nope, still working on it" they replied. Two more weeks, again no word, so I pinged them again. Now I guess I've angered the gods:
"Currently, our engineers at palmOne, Inc. are working towards this issue for a resolution. However, we are unable to comment on the exact date of the release of the patch to resolve for this issue. Therefore, I request you visit the Palm Site occassionally as the updates on this issue will be posted on the Palm Site."
Maybe that's the best I can expect from technical support these days, but it seems somewhat lacking. In the meantime I'm very careful not to put my phone in my bag with my Zire.
So I went and bought myself a shiny new Palm Zire 21, from Fry's again. I transfered the data I wanted to keep and went on my merry way. Well, until I got to work the next morning and found that the Zire had hard-reset itself (Palm speak for clearing out all data, applications, settings, etc.) Gah?! Thankfully I'd hotsync'd my data to my PowerBook.
I'll save you the details, but this repeated itself several times over the next week. I emailed Palm Support but they weren't terribly helpful, so I returned the Zire to Fry's and got a new one, figuring I got a bad device. Nope, the resets still happened with the new one. Ok, so it's got to be something with me. A little detective work and I discovered that if my cell phone was in close proximity to my Zire and rang, the Zire reset itself. Some testing with other cell phones confirmed that it wasn't just my phone. So I fired off an email to Palm Support. They confirmed that they could replicate the behavior and informed me that the "Palm research team" was looking into the issue. This seemed like good news, so I waited for a reply. After no word for a week I pinged them. "Nope, still working on it" they replied. Two more weeks, again no word, so I pinged them again. Now I guess I've angered the gods:
"Currently, our engineers at palmOne, Inc. are working towards this issue for a resolution. However, we are unable to comment on the exact date of the release of the patch to resolve for this issue. Therefore, I request you visit the Palm Site occassionally as the updates on this issue will be posted on the Palm Site."
Maybe that's the best I can expect from technical support these days, but it seems somewhat lacking. In the meantime I'm very careful not to put my phone in my bag with my Zire.
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
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