As I write this blog entry, there's exactly one week remaining in the campaign. Election Day is on November 8th. We've survived another Halloween season here in Salem, the police logs are still being tabulated but as far as crowds go, the nor'easter on Saturday night combined with a non-weekend Halloween to lower crowds a little on the final weekend. Still busy, but not as insane as the last few years have been. Not as good for the tourist-orinted businesses but better for a lot of the residents.
David's soccer team, by the way, is 5-1-1 going into the final week of the season. They had a scoreless tie as the storm got started this Saturday.
In campaign news, the buzz I'm getting back from people is good. We wound up having to print more signs and palm cards. I made some round button-sized stickers that people have been wearing around town - a ton of kids and parents wore them during the Halloween parade earlier in October. That was pretty cool. I've gotten out to do door-to-door campaigning at least 1-2 times per week, including a stint yesterday. We also did campaigning during trick-or-treating time last night. By about 9 when we finally shut the lights out, it was only our house and my opponent's that were still handing out candy. Kind of a perverse Halloween arms race.
During the past month plus, I've had my own debate (in September - still available at SATV's website), been to the main At-Large debate, traveled to Hull on the wind turbine fact-finding trip, met with at least 400 people between events and door knocking, and held 3 meet & greet events. Running for office may be more work than serving in office!
More seriously, I've enjoyed it a lot more than I ever thought I would have. I'm not the sort of person who normally revels in going out and mingling with rooms full of people, or knocking on the door of a stranger. The first few times are hard. Then it gets easier - and after a few more times you start enjoying the interaction. I've met people I normally never would have known existed, and it's turned out to be one of the highlights.
It's also awesome and a little scary the way people put their hopes in you. There's a lot of responsibility involved in any elected office, and you realize it pretty quickly. On the local level I never thought it was as big a deal as it was for national-level candidates. Then I became a candidate and saw it for myself. You lose your jadedness pretty quickly.
So we've still got some more activities to go in this final week, I've got a busy weekend of door knocking ahead of me (and a pair of soccer games - indoor season starts Saturday night!), and a lot of last-minute work. It'll likely be a close election in the end, and I've got to motivate people this week to show up on Tuesday.
See you all online in a week!
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The value of preparation
I've been running the Mac OS 10.7 Lion since release as my main OS. And I've been working with all the ensuing developer betas as well. I adopted the encrypted file system early in production, but when I migrated to a bigger SSD a few weeks ago I had to disable that to efficiently migrate over.
Well, yesterday I tried to re-enable it. Didn't go so well. The encryption process failed and left me with a not-quite-usable hard drive, and Disk Utility could have nothing to do with it. Were I a client of mine, I might well be out of luck at that point. But because I actually do the things I tell clients they should do, I had options. Here's how I was prepared for it, and what I did to fix it:
- First, I had a second SSD (a small one) installed in my laptop. I took out the Superdrive to install it last winter. On that SSD I keep a full install of the latest OS, in vanilla form. I also keep copies of Carbon Copy Cloner and Drive Genius on it. The main use for the drive is archiving installer files, though, and storing all my Parallels VMs.
- I also had a fairly current Time Machine backup from Friday if needed. That would have shut me out on some recent photo updates, though, so it wasn't my best option.
- I use Backblaze for offsite backup, and that was current if I needed it (photo recovery)
- And finally all my recent document changes were mirrored on Dropbox.
So at that point I had a plan to go forward as needed. First, I rebooted to Lion's Recovery Partition and tried to fix from there. No luck. Next step was to reboot from the second drive (at home, you could use a 16GB or 32GB flash stick much the same way as I use my SSD, but it'd be slower), and try Drive Genius. I couldn't fix the drive, but I could see it and mount it (along with the Finder warnings that it's not fixable, back up and erase ASAP). Now I was out of the weeds. I was out of the house (at a meeting) when this started happening, so I put the Mac to sleep and went home.
Once I put the Mac back on the desk at home, I connected my FW800 drive that I use for Time Machine backups. It's a 2TB drive, with plenty of space for additional backups. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy everything from the mounted drive to the external (this is still booted from my secondary SSD, by the way). Then I erased the drive, and re-cloned back to the now fixed volume.
After that was completed (took about 2 hours each way for the 260GB of data - I did the initial clone right when I got home and started the clone back before bed), I verified that the drive would now boot and changed the startup disk back to it.
Sure enough, it worked. Back to normal. I had to re-connect Dropbox and also change Backblaze's settings to accommodate the new volume ID, but that's it. Now that this was done, I went and updated my Time Machine backup to be 100% current. Usually I do it about twice per week, strictly manual.
Had the cloning effort failed (If I couldn't get the disk to mount), I simply would have restored from my Time Machine backup from last Friday, then remirrored Dropbox and restored my iPhoto pictures from Backblaze. That simply would have been more complicated but I could have done it fine.
The lesson for all of you: Even when you are a tech professional like me, things go wrong. When they do, don't panic, have a plan, have fallback methods ready just in case, and always make sure you have backup alternatives that you are using.
Under a month of campaigning to go!
Well, yesterday I tried to re-enable it. Didn't go so well. The encryption process failed and left me with a not-quite-usable hard drive, and Disk Utility could have nothing to do with it. Were I a client of mine, I might well be out of luck at that point. But because I actually do the things I tell clients they should do, I had options. Here's how I was prepared for it, and what I did to fix it:
- First, I had a second SSD (a small one) installed in my laptop. I took out the Superdrive to install it last winter. On that SSD I keep a full install of the latest OS, in vanilla form. I also keep copies of Carbon Copy Cloner and Drive Genius on it. The main use for the drive is archiving installer files, though, and storing all my Parallels VMs.
- I also had a fairly current Time Machine backup from Friday if needed. That would have shut me out on some recent photo updates, though, so it wasn't my best option.
- I use Backblaze for offsite backup, and that was current if I needed it (photo recovery)
- And finally all my recent document changes were mirrored on Dropbox.
So at that point I had a plan to go forward as needed. First, I rebooted to Lion's Recovery Partition and tried to fix from there. No luck. Next step was to reboot from the second drive (at home, you could use a 16GB or 32GB flash stick much the same way as I use my SSD, but it'd be slower), and try Drive Genius. I couldn't fix the drive, but I could see it and mount it (along with the Finder warnings that it's not fixable, back up and erase ASAP). Now I was out of the weeds. I was out of the house (at a meeting) when this started happening, so I put the Mac to sleep and went home.
Once I put the Mac back on the desk at home, I connected my FW800 drive that I use for Time Machine backups. It's a 2TB drive, with plenty of space for additional backups. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy everything from the mounted drive to the external (this is still booted from my secondary SSD, by the way). Then I erased the drive, and re-cloned back to the now fixed volume.
After that was completed (took about 2 hours each way for the 260GB of data - I did the initial clone right when I got home and started the clone back before bed), I verified that the drive would now boot and changed the startup disk back to it.
Sure enough, it worked. Back to normal. I had to re-connect Dropbox and also change Backblaze's settings to accommodate the new volume ID, but that's it. Now that this was done, I went and updated my Time Machine backup to be 100% current. Usually I do it about twice per week, strictly manual.
Had the cloning effort failed (If I couldn't get the disk to mount), I simply would have restored from my Time Machine backup from last Friday, then remirrored Dropbox and restored my iPhoto pictures from Backblaze. That simply would have been more complicated but I could have done it fine.
The lesson for all of you: Even when you are a tech professional like me, things go wrong. When they do, don't panic, have a plan, have fallback methods ready just in case, and always make sure you have backup alternatives that you are using.
Under a month of campaigning to go!
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
iPhone 4S - the "S" is for Steady as She Goes
So once again, Apple's done an incremental update instead of a radical one. Millions of dollars have been lost - mainly by case makers who got faked out on the design. Why did Apple just release an incremental upgrade to last year's iPhone? Well, that depends on your perspective:
In the end, Apple doesn't sell you speeds and feeds. They don't say a lot about RAM or processors or gigahertz. They say as little as possible about the guts of their devices. What Apple focuses on is the experience, the underlying glue that ties a computer to the user. And it's not a language that analysts speak well - which is why the iPhone 4S is so underwhelming to them.
The lines at every Apple Store next Friday will say otherwise. Consumers get it.
- First of all, it's not really incremental. The outer shell is basically identical. That's it. Oh yeah, the screen as well. Battery life is a little better, performance matches that of the iPad 2 (2+ tines the speed of the iPhone 4), it's got a new radio and improved antenna system (the death of "you're holding it wrong") the imaging system is all new and way better, and I'll give good odds that when it's torn down you'll find more than 512MB of RAM in it. This is a far bigger update than the update from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS was.
- That said, the iPhone 4 has been an enormous success, and is still pretty much a state-of-the-art form factor. And it's still the best-selling smartphone on Earth. Why mess with it too much?
- The biggest thing in the iPhone 4S is Siri. Plain and simple. Between Siri and the Nuance dictation system that has been built into iOS 5, the iPhone 4S has the muscle to handle voice processing and the integration only Apple can really do (as the only company besides RIM that builds the phone and the OS both). Siri is going to be huge. It's Jetsons stuff.
In the end, Apple doesn't sell you speeds and feeds. They don't say a lot about RAM or processors or gigahertz. They say as little as possible about the guts of their devices. What Apple focuses on is the experience, the underlying glue that ties a computer to the user. And it's not a language that analysts speak well - which is why the iPhone 4S is so underwhelming to them.
The lines at every Apple Store next Friday will say otherwise. Consumers get it.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
2-odd months in
So after a little over 2 months as a politician wannabe, here's where we are at:
For starters, the campaign seems to be going better than I expected. My opponent has just begun getting signs out (I've counted 2 so far), compared to over 30 from my supporters. Obviously he's got more supporters than that - he won handily 2 years ago to win the seat in the first place. But he's not distinguished himself in this term, and there is a lot of opposition to him, even from people who nominally would otherwise agree with him politically.
The lesson here - service and listening are really important. In fact, they are key. My major objective in the ground game is just to learn what I can about issues important to each person. Simple things like a loose piece of sidewalk caused by a city-planted tree. Issues in getting trash collected on a dead-end street. Plowing problems at a city-owned parking lot. These are the everyday problems that people face in the neighborhood, and I'm trying to do what I can about them even at this early point. Even if I can't solve them all myself, I can't help but try.
Our only scheduled debate is this coming Tuesday evening. I'm looking forward to it. I've written down facts that can be helpful in making my points about the state of politics here in Salem. The current Council has given me plenty to work with.
Otherwise, as I noted above, the ground game is underway. We're still doing backyard gatherings where we can, but I'm letting Jane worry about those logistics (book it and tell me where to go and when to show up), and I'm trying to make sure to get out into neighborhoods to meet people door-to-door. I did it for about an hour and a half yesterday in between family obligations, and I'll be doing it right after I post this blog entry. At least once a week, trying to get it done more than that and cover all the ground I can.
In the rest of life, things are decent. Business has been stronger than it was earlier in the year. We're all fairly healthy, school is going well for David at his school's temporary home (they're doing extensive renovations so they moved to a Catholic school on the other side of town that closed two years ago). And best of all, his soccer team is undefeated at 3-0, and I'm one of the coaches. Yay!
Keep following the campaign at joshturiel.com, Twitter at @joshturiel, or Facebook (I finally caved) at Facebook.com/TurielForSalemCouncil
For starters, the campaign seems to be going better than I expected. My opponent has just begun getting signs out (I've counted 2 so far), compared to over 30 from my supporters. Obviously he's got more supporters than that - he won handily 2 years ago to win the seat in the first place. But he's not distinguished himself in this term, and there is a lot of opposition to him, even from people who nominally would otherwise agree with him politically.
The lesson here - service and listening are really important. In fact, they are key. My major objective in the ground game is just to learn what I can about issues important to each person. Simple things like a loose piece of sidewalk caused by a city-planted tree. Issues in getting trash collected on a dead-end street. Plowing problems at a city-owned parking lot. These are the everyday problems that people face in the neighborhood, and I'm trying to do what I can about them even at this early point. Even if I can't solve them all myself, I can't help but try.
Our only scheduled debate is this coming Tuesday evening. I'm looking forward to it. I've written down facts that can be helpful in making my points about the state of politics here in Salem. The current Council has given me plenty to work with.
Otherwise, as I noted above, the ground game is underway. We're still doing backyard gatherings where we can, but I'm letting Jane worry about those logistics (book it and tell me where to go and when to show up), and I'm trying to make sure to get out into neighborhoods to meet people door-to-door. I did it for about an hour and a half yesterday in between family obligations, and I'll be doing it right after I post this blog entry. At least once a week, trying to get it done more than that and cover all the ground I can.
In the rest of life, things are decent. Business has been stronger than it was earlier in the year. We're all fairly healthy, school is going well for David at his school's temporary home (they're doing extensive renovations so they moved to a Catholic school on the other side of town that closed two years ago). And best of all, his soccer team is undefeated at 3-0, and I'm one of the coaches. Yay!
Keep following the campaign at joshturiel.com, Twitter at @joshturiel, or Facebook (I finally caved) at Facebook.com/TurielForSalemCouncil
Saturday, September 10, 2011
10 years later
Everyone else out there has written a 9/11 post. Here's mine. 10 years ago, I was at Interop in Atlanta with my friend Jim. We'd flown down on Friday night, and stayed with my friends who lived down in Alpharetta. Played golf all weekend, then went in on Sunday evening for registration and to get our rooms at the Marriott downtown. Monday was a day of classes. I still have all the curriculum books.
Tuesday morning was gorgeous. Jim and I had breakfast at the hotel early, then walked to the convention center for the 8AM classes we were in. Different ones. The room started buzzing right before 9AM. Pagers were going off, and cell phones were ringing. Seemed odd to me. Right around 9, someone from the conference went up and spoke briefly to the lecturer - who announced what had happened at that moment and dismissed class.
I walked outside to see both towers burning on TV. A short time later, the Pentagon was hit - and suddenly news coverage was cutting in for that as well. Cell phones were overwhelmed, though my email-only Blackberry (the Blackberries we all know and I make fun of didn't exist yet) worked fine. So I had some access to information, though not much.
The biggest thing about those first few hours is the uncertainty. Two major cities had just been attacked. I was in the downtown of one of the biggest other cities in the country - and nobody had any idea what, if anything, was coming next. It didn't seem likely that terrorists would be attacking a convention center full of nerds in the middle of Atlanta, but on the other hand it wasn't unthinkable anymore either. After all, a few hours before nobody thought that planes would be used as missiles, and that the WTC and Pentagon were invulnerable.
Later that afternoon, after the towers had fallen and before the fires were out, we left Atlanta, got a ride back out to my friend's house, and sat to regroup. We all thought getting out of the city was a Good Idea. My wife's parents were back in Salem visiting her while I was away. They'd driven up and they stayed at the house with her - home was all set. One of Jim's relatives worked for TJX at the time and was originally slated to be on Flight 11 but got moved to a different trip.
When we got back to Alpharetta, we realized quickly that we wanted to get back home. We also had no idea when and how we could do so. The air system was shut down, no estimate on reopening (it wound up being about a week before the system was back up to normal). My wife had been planning to fly down to meet us the following weekend (we then were flying home together) - that was cancelled. After some brainstorming, we arranged to rent a minivan (we had a lot of gear, plus our golf gear needed to get home with us), and made plans to drive home. We picked up the minivan at the Atlanta airport. Otherwise deserted. We left Thursday morning, drove the back highways through the Blue Ridge Mountains, and after stopping at Jim's sister's house outside Philly overnight Thursday, we made it back to Boston Friday afternoon - again taking back roads to avoid New York City. We didn't want to see the smoke.
In my small, relatively insignificant life there was minor fallout in comparison. A friend of ours back home stopped speaking with Jane a few weeks later - she basically felt Jane was insufficiently sympathetic to her 9/11 experience (which was a tough one - she heard the doomed traders on the box at her office, working inside one of Boston's high towers). Jane was focused on her family's safety and getting her husband home. I can't blame either side for it. There was other personal things that were strained over the experience. There were people we had strained relationships with before that we reconnected with - 9/11 was an experience that put a lot of little things into perspective.
Time marches on, things happen, and the world heals somewhat. We had scheduled a vacation for the end of September to Martha's Vineyard. After some discussion, we went ahead on the trip. It was nice to get away, though obviously subdued. After coming home from vacation we found out that Jane was pregnant. And our son was born that following May. I grew up in a world where 9/11 doesn't happen. He's growing up in a world where that does happen, in a nation that's been at war for 10 years, and where suspicion is the new normal. Times change. We lost more than 3000 human lives that day. It's a cliche, but we lost our way as a nation and as a planet on September 11th, 2001. I only hope, for my son's sake and the sake of an entire generation, that we find it again.
Tuesday morning was gorgeous. Jim and I had breakfast at the hotel early, then walked to the convention center for the 8AM classes we were in. Different ones. The room started buzzing right before 9AM. Pagers were going off, and cell phones were ringing. Seemed odd to me. Right around 9, someone from the conference went up and spoke briefly to the lecturer - who announced what had happened at that moment and dismissed class.
I walked outside to see both towers burning on TV. A short time later, the Pentagon was hit - and suddenly news coverage was cutting in for that as well. Cell phones were overwhelmed, though my email-only Blackberry (the Blackberries we all know and I make fun of didn't exist yet) worked fine. So I had some access to information, though not much.
The biggest thing about those first few hours is the uncertainty. Two major cities had just been attacked. I was in the downtown of one of the biggest other cities in the country - and nobody had any idea what, if anything, was coming next. It didn't seem likely that terrorists would be attacking a convention center full of nerds in the middle of Atlanta, but on the other hand it wasn't unthinkable anymore either. After all, a few hours before nobody thought that planes would be used as missiles, and that the WTC and Pentagon were invulnerable.
Later that afternoon, after the towers had fallen and before the fires were out, we left Atlanta, got a ride back out to my friend's house, and sat to regroup. We all thought getting out of the city was a Good Idea. My wife's parents were back in Salem visiting her while I was away. They'd driven up and they stayed at the house with her - home was all set. One of Jim's relatives worked for TJX at the time and was originally slated to be on Flight 11 but got moved to a different trip.
When we got back to Alpharetta, we realized quickly that we wanted to get back home. We also had no idea when and how we could do so. The air system was shut down, no estimate on reopening (it wound up being about a week before the system was back up to normal). My wife had been planning to fly down to meet us the following weekend (we then were flying home together) - that was cancelled. After some brainstorming, we arranged to rent a minivan (we had a lot of gear, plus our golf gear needed to get home with us), and made plans to drive home. We picked up the minivan at the Atlanta airport. Otherwise deserted. We left Thursday morning, drove the back highways through the Blue Ridge Mountains, and after stopping at Jim's sister's house outside Philly overnight Thursday, we made it back to Boston Friday afternoon - again taking back roads to avoid New York City. We didn't want to see the smoke.
In my small, relatively insignificant life there was minor fallout in comparison. A friend of ours back home stopped speaking with Jane a few weeks later - she basically felt Jane was insufficiently sympathetic to her 9/11 experience (which was a tough one - she heard the doomed traders on the box at her office, working inside one of Boston's high towers). Jane was focused on her family's safety and getting her husband home. I can't blame either side for it. There was other personal things that were strained over the experience. There were people we had strained relationships with before that we reconnected with - 9/11 was an experience that put a lot of little things into perspective.
Time marches on, things happen, and the world heals somewhat. We had scheduled a vacation for the end of September to Martha's Vineyard. After some discussion, we went ahead on the trip. It was nice to get away, though obviously subdued. After coming home from vacation we found out that Jane was pregnant. And our son was born that following May. I grew up in a world where 9/11 doesn't happen. He's growing up in a world where that does happen, in a nation that's been at war for 10 years, and where suspicion is the new normal. Times change. We lost more than 3000 human lives that day. It's a cliche, but we lost our way as a nation and as a planet on September 11th, 2001. I only hope, for my son's sake and the sake of an entire generation, that we find it again.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
A mighty wind
So there's been a massive controversy here in Salem about a proposal to put a single wind turbine up at Winter Island. It would be a little less than half a mile from the nearest houses (there's a few houses on Winter Island Road), near the shoreline by the Harbormaster's office. It's big (to make power usable you have to be big), and I'm a little skeptical as to how much power it will actually generate, but I'm interested.
The first couple of public meetings that have discussed it created a massive fuss - folks down at the Willows were talking about how you'd have to block off massive portions of the park to maintain a "Fall Zone", how ice would be flung from it like shrapnel, and how a "giant machine" could't help but cause health and enjoyment issues for everyone. Other people complained about vibrations, sound, shadow flicker, and everything they could throw at it. Marbleheaders showed up to complain about the views (except for the Healthlink folks, who love it because it doesn't burn coal).
Now, I'm naturally a cynic - but on the flip side of that I tend to trust technology given that I'm an engineer by trade. So I started doing some of my own research by looking at actual peer-reviewed data. Sure, there have been issues with early-generation wind turbines. Newer (as in the last decade or so) technology turbines run slower and are quieter than the older-generation models that have justified complaints. I'm still going to go listen to one, though.
The biggest thing I was worried about was the potential to close off a large portion of Winter Island. If we had to lose a lot of parkland to support this, I'd be firmly against it. For this, I turned to Google Earth as my friend. So first, I looked at Hull:
Link to Hull Turbine
As you may notice, it's not exactly sealed off. It's a few feet past the outfield fence at the high school. This was Hull's first turbine.
Hull Wind #2 is in a more conventional location - and old landfill:
Link to Hull #2
No special access restrictions appear to be in place there, either, other than it being a place that folks aren't exactly going to for fun.
You can find other sites worth looking at through a DOE site that I found, but the bottom line I see here is that for the most part, wind projects nowadays integrate fairly well with their surroundings. My concerns at this point are based on costs rather than safety. And unless I see compelling data otherwise (from either a cost or a safety perspective), I'd support a turbine at Winter Island.
Though I'd prefer to see a bunch of them out in the ocean by the Miseries.
The first couple of public meetings that have discussed it created a massive fuss - folks down at the Willows were talking about how you'd have to block off massive portions of the park to maintain a "Fall Zone", how ice would be flung from it like shrapnel, and how a "giant machine" could't help but cause health and enjoyment issues for everyone. Other people complained about vibrations, sound, shadow flicker, and everything they could throw at it. Marbleheaders showed up to complain about the views (except for the Healthlink folks, who love it because it doesn't burn coal).
Now, I'm naturally a cynic - but on the flip side of that I tend to trust technology given that I'm an engineer by trade. So I started doing some of my own research by looking at actual peer-reviewed data. Sure, there have been issues with early-generation wind turbines. Newer (as in the last decade or so) technology turbines run slower and are quieter than the older-generation models that have justified complaints. I'm still going to go listen to one, though.
The biggest thing I was worried about was the potential to close off a large portion of Winter Island. If we had to lose a lot of parkland to support this, I'd be firmly against it. For this, I turned to Google Earth as my friend. So first, I looked at Hull:
Link to Hull Turbine
As you may notice, it's not exactly sealed off. It's a few feet past the outfield fence at the high school. This was Hull's first turbine.
Hull Wind #2 is in a more conventional location - and old landfill:
Link to Hull #2
No special access restrictions appear to be in place there, either, other than it being a place that folks aren't exactly going to for fun.
You can find other sites worth looking at through a DOE site that I found, but the bottom line I see here is that for the most part, wind projects nowadays integrate fairly well with their surroundings. My concerns at this point are based on costs rather than safety. And unless I see compelling data otherwise (from either a cost or a safety perspective), I'd support a turbine at Winter Island.
Though I'd prefer to see a bunch of them out in the ocean by the Miseries.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Another one bites the dust
The mobile dominos are toppling fast. This week, Motorola comes off the market with their purchase by Google (not sure how that's going to pay for itself) and now HP had pulled out of the tablet/phone market entirely - only about 6 weeks after entering the tablet market in the first place. Go figure. Meanwhile, Apple's the only company in the hardware biz with sales increases.
What's the secret here? I think it's kind of simple. Apple recreated the mobile phone with iPhone. Google frantically redesigned their nascent OS (Android) to clone as much of iOS as possible, and gave it away to make sure that Google services would remain available in the new mobile world. Meanwhile, all the phone vendors who previously built their own operating systems all united behind Android because it was free. Thus saving a few dollars per handset - which may seem like a small amount but remember how slim margins are.
Meanwhile, RIM and Microsoft were so late to the party as to render themselves irrelevant. Symbian was DOA. Palm rebooted themselves with the WebOS, but it was too little too late and they sold to HP last year.
So now the phone business is realistically two contenders: Apple at the high end (with their single handset model and by far the most robust developer ecosystem) and Android. Android, though, isn't a monolithic platform. It's just what everyone who doesn't sell an iPhone puts on their commodity hardware.
The dirty secret of Android is that its market share is irrelevant because they dominate the low-end of the market - people who get "smartphones" because that's what phones look like nowadays. People who shop on carriers that don't offer iPhones. And a lot of people without the money to spend on the apps that make a platform a worthy development environment.
In other words, you've got iPhone and then everyone else - and the iPhone thus far continues to dominate where it matters.
In the tablet space, this is even more of a mismatch. With the carrier lock out of the equation, iPads sell through at a 1:1 ratio. There's virtually no inventory. On the other hand, all the other tablet devices combined sell at a lower rate than Apple sells their Smart Covers (probably less than whatever the bestselling Smart Cover color may be), and the figures on HP's sell through that leaked this week indicated that fewer than 1:10 of the TouchPads sold to Best Buy made it into customer hands - not even factoring in returns. And this for the 3rd place (if that) tablet platform. RIM's results with the PlayBook are about as dismal, but RIM is stubborn. And Samsung has had middling results at best.
See, people don't want tablet computers. They want iPads. And unlike in the phone market where other factors are at play (carrier choice, plan pricing, contracts) the iPad doesn't have those constraints. Plus they have an ecosystem that dominates. No wonder Apple sells them as fast as they can make them.
We'll see what Google does as Motorola's owner. Either they become a unified hardware/software vendor that can compete effectively (screwing all the vendors who have come to depend on Android in favor of their own Moto division), or Google just shot themselves in the foot. Remember, Motorola Mobility isn't profitable, hasn't had a true hit since the RAZR, and their leading US product doesn't even get Moto branding - it gets Verizon's Droid brand. They have patents and middling industrial design. That's pretty much it.
Check back with me in 6 months on this one.
What's the secret here? I think it's kind of simple. Apple recreated the mobile phone with iPhone. Google frantically redesigned their nascent OS (Android) to clone as much of iOS as possible, and gave it away to make sure that Google services would remain available in the new mobile world. Meanwhile, all the phone vendors who previously built their own operating systems all united behind Android because it was free. Thus saving a few dollars per handset - which may seem like a small amount but remember how slim margins are.
Meanwhile, RIM and Microsoft were so late to the party as to render themselves irrelevant. Symbian was DOA. Palm rebooted themselves with the WebOS, but it was too little too late and they sold to HP last year.
So now the phone business is realistically two contenders: Apple at the high end (with their single handset model and by far the most robust developer ecosystem) and Android. Android, though, isn't a monolithic platform. It's just what everyone who doesn't sell an iPhone puts on their commodity hardware.
The dirty secret of Android is that its market share is irrelevant because they dominate the low-end of the market - people who get "smartphones" because that's what phones look like nowadays. People who shop on carriers that don't offer iPhones. And a lot of people without the money to spend on the apps that make a platform a worthy development environment.
In other words, you've got iPhone and then everyone else - and the iPhone thus far continues to dominate where it matters.
In the tablet space, this is even more of a mismatch. With the carrier lock out of the equation, iPads sell through at a 1:1 ratio. There's virtually no inventory. On the other hand, all the other tablet devices combined sell at a lower rate than Apple sells their Smart Covers (probably less than whatever the bestselling Smart Cover color may be), and the figures on HP's sell through that leaked this week indicated that fewer than 1:10 of the TouchPads sold to Best Buy made it into customer hands - not even factoring in returns. And this for the 3rd place (if that) tablet platform. RIM's results with the PlayBook are about as dismal, but RIM is stubborn. And Samsung has had middling results at best.
See, people don't want tablet computers. They want iPads. And unlike in the phone market where other factors are at play (carrier choice, plan pricing, contracts) the iPad doesn't have those constraints. Plus they have an ecosystem that dominates. No wonder Apple sells them as fast as they can make them.
We'll see what Google does as Motorola's owner. Either they become a unified hardware/software vendor that can compete effectively (screwing all the vendors who have come to depend on Android in favor of their own Moto division), or Google just shot themselves in the foot. Remember, Motorola Mobility isn't profitable, hasn't had a true hit since the RAZR, and their leading US product doesn't even get Moto branding - it gets Verizon's Droid brand. They have patents and middling industrial design. That's pretty much it.
Check back with me in 6 months on this one.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Running for office - month 1 update
So I'm a month into my candidacy. If you follow me on Twitter (@joshturiel) you see regular updates - I've converted it mainly to follow the run. My old vanity site (joshturiel.com) which had bare-bones info about me is now a full campaign site with news updates, position statements, and a photo gallery. A month in, there will be no primary (I'm the only challenger in Ward 5), so it's full-on for November.
Here's what's been going on, for those who like to see sausage made:
I had all my campaign materials made, thanks to Gloucester Graphics who made the signs and bumper stickers, and Deschamps Printing here in Salem, who made our palm cards. They look great!
We had a fundraiser and kickoff party on the 9th over at the Witches' Brew here in town. Well-attended, and we were fortunate to get enough donations to really help with the run. We're in pretty good shape. Too much food left over, but we sent a lot of it home with people, and donated some.
Former councilor Matt Veno has been a big help to us, helping organize and introducing me to lots of important people to know. I'm learning a lot about what issues people care about. I've had great conversations with At-Large Councilor Tom Furey (who was happy to endorse me - a real stand-up guy and one of the true old-school politicians in the business), Mayor Driscoll, Ward 7 Councilor Joe O'Keefe, At-Large Candidate Darek Barcikowski (owner of the excellent Cafe Polonia downtown) former Council candidate Jerry Tache, and many others so far. I'm new to this game and definitely not a pro, but it's turning out to be kind of fun.
This weekend I'm starting a first real round of door-knocking (we've done it here around the house, but not in the rest of the ward) - we have a database assembled that will help me focus my efforts in the best places to start out with. It's not really a secret, it's just having good information available in public records. Next Sunday there's tentatively a backyard meet-the-candidate scheduled at the home of one of our supporters, and that'll be posted on my website as soon as it's set. We'll have more of them over the next month. September 13th will be a candidate's forum sponsored by the South Salem Neighborhood Association down at the SSU Enterprise Center.
I'm not going to write as much here in the next few months as I normally would have (I'm focusing my efforts on the campaign site and my Twitter updates), but I will keep posting as the election progresses. I'm enjoying it, and this blog gives me a more free-form forum to educate people who are interested in how this election works. Hopefully culminating in a victory post come November.
Also, my first campaign sign was stolen today off our lawn. So I guess I've officially arrived!
Here's what's been going on, for those who like to see sausage made:
I had all my campaign materials made, thanks to Gloucester Graphics who made the signs and bumper stickers, and Deschamps Printing here in Salem, who made our palm cards. They look great!
We had a fundraiser and kickoff party on the 9th over at the Witches' Brew here in town. Well-attended, and we were fortunate to get enough donations to really help with the run. We're in pretty good shape. Too much food left over, but we sent a lot of it home with people, and donated some.
Former councilor Matt Veno has been a big help to us, helping organize and introducing me to lots of important people to know. I'm learning a lot about what issues people care about. I've had great conversations with At-Large Councilor Tom Furey (who was happy to endorse me - a real stand-up guy and one of the true old-school politicians in the business), Mayor Driscoll, Ward 7 Councilor Joe O'Keefe, At-Large Candidate Darek Barcikowski (owner of the excellent Cafe Polonia downtown) former Council candidate Jerry Tache, and many others so far. I'm new to this game and definitely not a pro, but it's turning out to be kind of fun.
This weekend I'm starting a first real round of door-knocking (we've done it here around the house, but not in the rest of the ward) - we have a database assembled that will help me focus my efforts in the best places to start out with. It's not really a secret, it's just having good information available in public records. Next Sunday there's tentatively a backyard meet-the-candidate scheduled at the home of one of our supporters, and that'll be posted on my website as soon as it's set. We'll have more of them over the next month. September 13th will be a candidate's forum sponsored by the South Salem Neighborhood Association down at the SSU Enterprise Center.
I'm not going to write as much here in the next few months as I normally would have (I'm focusing my efforts on the campaign site and my Twitter updates), but I will keep posting as the election progresses. I'm enjoying it, and this blog gives me a more free-form forum to educate people who are interested in how this election works. Hopefully culminating in a victory post come November.
Also, my first campaign sign was stolen today off our lawn. So I guess I've officially arrived!
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Enough's enough!
So I have been getting progressively more and more fed up with the state of the City Council in my lovely seaside town of Salem. I live in Ward 5 - and when long-time Councillor Matt Veno stepped down in 2009 he had two people vie to replace him. Both were local attorneys, Jerry Taché and the other John Ronan. John lives down the street from me, and seemed like a fairly reasonable fellow (and he is a nice guy - I don't have any personal animosity towards him), so I voted for him. Most did - he won the ward handily.
Over the next year, it started to become obvious that we weren't getting what I'd voted for. As Councillor, John started working with a group that became crassly obstructionist, and demonstrated what in my view is a clear misunderstanding of the Council's role and a shortsighted view of the City's finances. Read the Salem News' archives and Real_World's blog for more background. As the year began, I started hoping that we'd have a challenger emerge in Ward 5 for Ronan. Once the filing period began, I was disappointed to see that wasn't the case. As we got closer to the filing deadline, two things became obvious:
- There wasn't anybody interested in running
- There was also a lot of people sharing my sentiments
So after the proverbial "discussing with family", we got a candidate. Me. I went in on Tuesday after the holiday weekend and filed paperwork for the race, and Jane's planning to bring it in tomorrow. Getting signatures isn't that hard, it turns out, when people care.
Some people run for offices like this to make connections. Some do it to get lined up for bigger things later. That's not my plan. I'm doing it because City Council seems to have gone off the rails again (this happens on occasion in this and many other towns) and if nobody else is game then I may as well do it. Win or lose, I don't see myself trying for anything else down the road. Remember, I own an IT company in my real life. Two thankless jobs are enough!
Over the next year, it started to become obvious that we weren't getting what I'd voted for. As Councillor, John started working with a group that became crassly obstructionist, and demonstrated what in my view is a clear misunderstanding of the Council's role and a shortsighted view of the City's finances. Read the Salem News' archives and Real_World's blog for more background. As the year began, I started hoping that we'd have a challenger emerge in Ward 5 for Ronan. Once the filing period began, I was disappointed to see that wasn't the case. As we got closer to the filing deadline, two things became obvious:
- There wasn't anybody interested in running
- There was also a lot of people sharing my sentiments
So after the proverbial "discussing with family", we got a candidate. Me. I went in on Tuesday after the holiday weekend and filed paperwork for the race, and Jane's planning to bring it in tomorrow. Getting signatures isn't that hard, it turns out, when people care.
Some people run for offices like this to make connections. Some do it to get lined up for bigger things later. That's not my plan. I'm doing it because City Council seems to have gone off the rails again (this happens on occasion in this and many other towns) and if nobody else is game then I may as well do it. Win or lose, I don't see myself trying for anything else down the road. Remember, I own an IT company in my real life. Two thankless jobs are enough!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
My technical summer
I finally had a vacation a couple of weeks ago - we spent 10 days on the Vineyard. Delightful, and I miss the crap out of the place the second I drive onto the ferry to leave and look out at the harbor behind me as the boat pulls away from the dock. Business has been respectable, though not fantastic. New clients are coming on board pretty regularly and there are some opportunities that seem to be available that may be able to get us back in growth mode. Which would be nice.
Some of those are due to the upcoming Summer of Technology that I can look forward to. All I can say right now about iOS 5 is that I'm running the first beta on my iPad 2, and I'm expecting Beta 2 this week. Pesky NDAs. It is not yet at the point where I will trust my iPhone to it - I depend far too much on my iPhone whereas the iPad is a luxury.
But when iOS 5 arrives in the next few months it'll be awesome.
The next iPhone itself will be due in late August/early September. Maybe in conjunction with the 2011 iPods, but more likely a separate announcement. I'm expecting the iPhone 5 to be more of an "iPhone 4S", similar to how the iPhone 3GS kept the form factor of the 3 but beefed up the underlying specs. Well, I'm figuring on a dual-core A5 chip, possibly more RAM (768MB or 1GB, up from 512MB), a better imaging chip, a little better battery life, and not much else. It'll probably be a single phone for both GSM and CDMA networks, and will likely support VoRA on CDMA.
Next year will be the super-duper iPhone LTE. When both major US carriers are ready to support it and the chipsets are more mature.
Then, sometime between tomorrow and a month from now we can expect Apple to release new Mac minis (with i5 processors and Thunderbolt), new MacBook Airs (with i5 low-voltage processors and Thunderbolt), and new Mac Pros (with newer Xeons, Thunderbolt, and a redesigned chassis that should support rackmounting).
The only question to me is whether they ship pre-Lion or post-Lion. I'm hoping for pre-Lion as that way I'll have a higher adoption rate early. A lot of my clients aren't ready for Lion and are holding off on some new purchases waiting for upgraded models - they'll buy sooner if the new systems ship with Snow Leopard.
Windows has almost become an afterthought to the business - we support it but don't really actively seek new clients on the platform, and I can't remember the last Exchange server I installed from scratch (I've upgraded a couple). Windows 7 doesn't suck, but it's not enough to keep people who want to switch to Apple from making the leap.
And a lot of them do.
So I think I've pretty much got my time all booked out through September now, just on Apple's new kit. I haven't even had time to buy any more Bluetooth headsets. Still relying mainly on my Jawbone Era.
Some of those are due to the upcoming Summer of Technology that I can look forward to. All I can say right now about iOS 5 is that I'm running the first beta on my iPad 2, and I'm expecting Beta 2 this week. Pesky NDAs. It is not yet at the point where I will trust my iPhone to it - I depend far too much on my iPhone whereas the iPad is a luxury.
But when iOS 5 arrives in the next few months it'll be awesome.
The next iPhone itself will be due in late August/early September. Maybe in conjunction with the 2011 iPods, but more likely a separate announcement. I'm expecting the iPhone 5 to be more of an "iPhone 4S", similar to how the iPhone 3GS kept the form factor of the 3 but beefed up the underlying specs. Well, I'm figuring on a dual-core A5 chip, possibly more RAM (768MB or 1GB, up from 512MB), a better imaging chip, a little better battery life, and not much else. It'll probably be a single phone for both GSM and CDMA networks, and will likely support VoRA on CDMA.
Next year will be the super-duper iPhone LTE. When both major US carriers are ready to support it and the chipsets are more mature.
Then, sometime between tomorrow and a month from now we can expect Apple to release new Mac minis (with i5 processors and Thunderbolt), new MacBook Airs (with i5 low-voltage processors and Thunderbolt), and new Mac Pros (with newer Xeons, Thunderbolt, and a redesigned chassis that should support rackmounting).
The only question to me is whether they ship pre-Lion or post-Lion. I'm hoping for pre-Lion as that way I'll have a higher adoption rate early. A lot of my clients aren't ready for Lion and are holding off on some new purchases waiting for upgraded models - they'll buy sooner if the new systems ship with Snow Leopard.
Windows has almost become an afterthought to the business - we support it but don't really actively seek new clients on the platform, and I can't remember the last Exchange server I installed from scratch (I've upgraded a couple). Windows 7 doesn't suck, but it's not enough to keep people who want to switch to Apple from making the leap.
And a lot of them do.
So I think I've pretty much got my time all booked out through September now, just on Apple's new kit. I haven't even had time to buy any more Bluetooth headsets. Still relying mainly on my Jawbone Era.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
