Well, I'll talk about the personal year in another day or so. This is about technology. Yeah, I know it's not thrilling, but I have a pretty good track record of predictions here - way better than most of those who call themselves pundits. Then again, maybe it's because I do this for a living. Go figure.
First - Apple will introduce an iPad 3 sometime in the February-March timeframe. Done deal. This year's model with have their "A6" processor and it'll be quad-core. Graphics will be via a 2048*1536 "Retina Display" for the iPad. It'll be the same size as the iPad 2, and get about the same battery life. RAM may go up to 1GB, but I'm not so sure about it. Storage will increase to a maximum of 128GB, but the low-end model may or may not stay at 16GB. I kind of thing they'll go to 32GB.
And the iPad 3 will still dominate the tablet ecosystem, with pundits saying Android will take over any day now.
Second - Amazon will sell the Kindle Fire well enough to keep it on the market. After a minor hardware revision mid-year (addressing things like volume buttons) it'll be clear that the Fire crushes the tablet market from below the way the iPad does in the mainstream. At least one second-tier vendor will abandon the market entirely.
Third - RIM won't finish the year as an independent company. They will either collapse and be broken up Nortel-style, or be sold as a server and software company. Their handset market will vanish. That sign has already started to appear.
Fourth - Apple will have an "iPhone 5" this year, but only if an LTE chipset of adequate power usage can be gotten. Right now I'm not sure. When the LTE iPhone does ship, it will have a form factor change, though I doubt a radical one.
If the chipset isn't there, we might see the iPhone 4S last through all of 2012.
Fifth - Android apps will start to sell better, but iOS will remain the developer platform of choice, and the sales will continue to reflect that. But some developers will be able to make a living catering to Android first, which hasn't been the case to date.
Sixth - Although I'm not really making many desktop predictions, I'll make two here: Windows 8 will ship late in the year, and be decent. It won't be more than a blip in the numbers until 2013, and won't ever make much of an impact in the tablet market. Also, Apple will have an update to the Mac Pro in 2012. That will be the swan song for the platform. Any redesign will be shrunken to a more mini tower form factor, and cheaper to manufacture. Don't expect that until 2013, either. But I wouldn't be surprised to be wrong about the Mac Pro in any way at all.
That gets us through most of the year. I didn't make any real predictions in desktop/server areas because all the action is mobile nowadays - not a lot of change will happen there, and not many new developments. Chipzilla will have a new desktop/laptop chipset platform shipping in the spring, everyone will revise their systems to use it. Linux still won't be on any desktops. Done deal.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Why I use Kerio Connect instead of MS Exchange
A week ago, my server died. I raced up to the office, grabbed a spare MacBook Pro I was about to give to my new employee (so he had to wait a little bit, oh well), and in about an hour I'd transferred the whole system over to the laptop and had it all running again. Try that with Exchange!
Then this past Sunday, armed with a rebuilt server i was back up there again and transferred it all back up. Not a message was lost.
Then this past Sunday, armed with a rebuilt server i was back up there again and transferred it all back up. Not a message was lost.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Speaking of tech: One More Thing:
One more thing for the moment: I had a post back in June predicting the next iPhone. I missed that they would keep the RAM the same (512MB) and that they wouldn't support VoRA. other than that? Nailed it. Even said it would be probably called the iPhone 4S.
I am patting myself on the back in congratulations now.
I am patting myself on the back in congratulations now.
Anatomy of a (successful) campaign
So as those of you who have followed me through any other media (Twitter, Facebook, my website, or local print/online news) know by now, the election is over and I won my race - the vote was 466-288 in my favor and I will be taking office on January second. I've gotten a lot more local attention than I really expected with the win, and I've used all the other places I post to thank my wife, Matt Veno, and all the other people who helped me. I thought here in longer form I could discuss the dynamics of the race and also why I believe it is we won. This isn't an all-purpose blueprint for local politics, but it worked here.
I think most would-be politicians wouldn't necessarily share most of this, but I'm trying hard to do things a little differently. I want to be as transparent as possible (of course I'm not going to share things told to me in confidence), and help people understand how I'll work, and why I'm voting the way I will. This, to me, is part of that process. Also of note, though: When you are an actual in-office politician, there are legal and other reasons for being careful about what you say in print and online. I'll still be maintaining this blog, but I'll likely be posting pretty rarely and sticking to non-political subjects. Not that I write a lot of political and/or local issue stuff here, but I'll be doing even less of that and mainly sticking to things like sports and tech.
I also haven't been a major poster on Patch, but I've participated in some issue discussions as a candidate that I won't be able to do as an elected official. I haven't posted on Salemweb in about 6 years, but I won't be starting now... My Facebook page will still be a place to keep people informed, but mainly targeted to residents of the ward I'll be representing. A lot of city officials have some form or another of electronic presence, but I think I'm pretty much the first to use it so heavily. So there's going to be a period of finding a balance. Don't expect any postmortems of Council meetings here, though.
About the race itself - Councillor Ronan (my opponent) is a good person - and I actually like him, but in office he was much more conservative than I think most of the ward expected from him based on his pre-election talk two years ago. There's plenty of places online where you can look up specific policy issues over the last two years, but I believe that voting away from the ward's interests opened up an opportunity to challenge (it is what galvanized me - before this June I had no interest at all in getting into politics). Similar things happened in Ward 3, and there was also a successful challenge there.
The next factor was our campaign strategy. Our early effort was to get support from families we knew were aligned with us politically. We also tried to place as many signs early as possible. We started in early August with stickers and signs - at times it seemed like our house was full of them but over the four months of the campaign we placed about fifty signs and got almost a hundred stickers on cars. Lawn signs and stickers don't move many voters. What they do is solidify supporters psychologically (after all, they care enough to display support in public) and they also help you establish a level of credibility to the rest of the voters. Without signs you're an unknown. We had signs out over a month before our opponent, and I believe that provided a show of strength early. We also got crucial early support from Councillor (at large) Furey, who knew me well enough to expect the sort of change on the council he was hoping to see.
We also obtained the registered voter list from the city and put it into a spreadsheet for analysis and into a Filemaker database for reporting. That was roughly 3200 voters. We also bought the list of voters that came out in 2009 to the last municipal election. That list was our bible. 2009 had only about 830 voters show up. They were likeliest to show this year as well, assuming they were still living in the ward (most were). And we had a very good turnout among that group, despite not having a mayoral race on the ballot this year. So our strategy was to target the heck out of the 830, make sure I met as many of them as possible, and got exposed to them as much as we could. Then came the hard work. I didn't ignore the other 2370 voters entirely, but I didn't go out of my way to target them - they weren't likely to vote and most didn't.
I walked to almost every door of the 830, and met a good number of them in person. When they weren't home, I generally left a hand-written note on my palm card and left it in their mail slot or door. I also left cards with neighbors who were available to talk to, or displayed a sign for another citywide candidate - even if they weren't on my 830 it meant they were interested this year. We printed well over a thousand cards and there's only a handful left in my house. I finished door-to-door last Sunday, doing it from August onwards and pretty much only taking the Columbus Day holiday off to go on a fishing trip with my son.
We also sent out a mailing of a letter that former Councillor Matt Veno (who was the campaign head along with my wife) wrote along with a copy of my card. This was sent to about 500 households (the 830 - removing hard supporters of mine and my opponent's, and accounting for homes with multiple voters) on Halloween weekend. We wanted to make sure it was seen and the closer to election time, the better. That helped us move the needle.
A few days later, in the middle of the final week, we then followed up by dropping (by hand) a letter I'd written myself introducing me and asking for support. My wife and a number of our friends delivered them to the 830 over a 3-day period. We also guessed that if the Salem News provided any endorsement at all, it would be of me. So we designed a 4-up postcard that we could drop it into if that happened (in the hope it would be something we could use). When it did, we had the text pasted into the postcard by 9AM Friday, and we printed and hand-cut over 800 postcards Friday into Sunday that were delivered right up to Monday morning - again, Jane and all our friends did the delivery by hand. I did all the printing/cutting.
Besides this, we had several friends and supporters making phone calls on my behalf to their friends and neighbors. We had meet and greet events in each neighborhood of the ward over the four months - the last one was the Sunday before the election. Our initial fundraiser was in early August. That was a big success because a lot of people came who needed to know that we were credible. The biggest issue with it, though, was that the cost there was a lot higher than we'd anticipated so we only came out a little bit ahead. That put us in an early fundraising hole but we were able to keep costs down otherwise.
Finally, the electronic portion of the race mattered as well. I used my Twitter account (@joshturiel) as a tool to communicate with supporters and to help find them. I set up a personal Facebook page (I'd avoided it until this year - my wife is the big Facebook user in the family) and then used it to create a campaign page. That proved to be an effective way to help get even information, photos, and even video out to people in the ward and around Salem. Lastly, I also set up an email list of all the people who gave me their addresses - around 50 so far. We sent out a few email list updates during the campaign and it helped with support.
I met people during the campaign that I hadn't known before at all, and some that I only had known online. It was really one of the most rewarding experiences I'd ever had, and I surprised myself by enjoying the in-person aspect of it so much. Election Day was nerve-wracking even though we were fairly confident by then. The video of me on Patch that night? Yep, I was exhausted. Now the hard part begins.
It's a heck of a challenge to serve in elected office. Even the people I have political issues with are people I respect for taking on the responsibility. Now I get a turn at it, and I hope I can do my city and my ward proud.
I think most would-be politicians wouldn't necessarily share most of this, but I'm trying hard to do things a little differently. I want to be as transparent as possible (of course I'm not going to share things told to me in confidence), and help people understand how I'll work, and why I'm voting the way I will. This, to me, is part of that process. Also of note, though: When you are an actual in-office politician, there are legal and other reasons for being careful about what you say in print and online. I'll still be maintaining this blog, but I'll likely be posting pretty rarely and sticking to non-political subjects. Not that I write a lot of political and/or local issue stuff here, but I'll be doing even less of that and mainly sticking to things like sports and tech.
I also haven't been a major poster on Patch, but I've participated in some issue discussions as a candidate that I won't be able to do as an elected official. I haven't posted on Salemweb in about 6 years, but I won't be starting now... My Facebook page will still be a place to keep people informed, but mainly targeted to residents of the ward I'll be representing. A lot of city officials have some form or another of electronic presence, but I think I'm pretty much the first to use it so heavily. So there's going to be a period of finding a balance. Don't expect any postmortems of Council meetings here, though.
About the race itself - Councillor Ronan (my opponent) is a good person - and I actually like him, but in office he was much more conservative than I think most of the ward expected from him based on his pre-election talk two years ago. There's plenty of places online where you can look up specific policy issues over the last two years, but I believe that voting away from the ward's interests opened up an opportunity to challenge (it is what galvanized me - before this June I had no interest at all in getting into politics). Similar things happened in Ward 3, and there was also a successful challenge there.
The next factor was our campaign strategy. Our early effort was to get support from families we knew were aligned with us politically. We also tried to place as many signs early as possible. We started in early August with stickers and signs - at times it seemed like our house was full of them but over the four months of the campaign we placed about fifty signs and got almost a hundred stickers on cars. Lawn signs and stickers don't move many voters. What they do is solidify supporters psychologically (after all, they care enough to display support in public) and they also help you establish a level of credibility to the rest of the voters. Without signs you're an unknown. We had signs out over a month before our opponent, and I believe that provided a show of strength early. We also got crucial early support from Councillor (at large) Furey, who knew me well enough to expect the sort of change on the council he was hoping to see.
We also obtained the registered voter list from the city and put it into a spreadsheet for analysis and into a Filemaker database for reporting. That was roughly 3200 voters. We also bought the list of voters that came out in 2009 to the last municipal election. That list was our bible. 2009 had only about 830 voters show up. They were likeliest to show this year as well, assuming they were still living in the ward (most were). And we had a very good turnout among that group, despite not having a mayoral race on the ballot this year. So our strategy was to target the heck out of the 830, make sure I met as many of them as possible, and got exposed to them as much as we could. Then came the hard work. I didn't ignore the other 2370 voters entirely, but I didn't go out of my way to target them - they weren't likely to vote and most didn't.
I walked to almost every door of the 830, and met a good number of them in person. When they weren't home, I generally left a hand-written note on my palm card and left it in their mail slot or door. I also left cards with neighbors who were available to talk to, or displayed a sign for another citywide candidate - even if they weren't on my 830 it meant they were interested this year. We printed well over a thousand cards and there's only a handful left in my house. I finished door-to-door last Sunday, doing it from August onwards and pretty much only taking the Columbus Day holiday off to go on a fishing trip with my son.
We also sent out a mailing of a letter that former Councillor Matt Veno (who was the campaign head along with my wife) wrote along with a copy of my card. This was sent to about 500 households (the 830 - removing hard supporters of mine and my opponent's, and accounting for homes with multiple voters) on Halloween weekend. We wanted to make sure it was seen and the closer to election time, the better. That helped us move the needle.
A few days later, in the middle of the final week, we then followed up by dropping (by hand) a letter I'd written myself introducing me and asking for support. My wife and a number of our friends delivered them to the 830 over a 3-day period. We also guessed that if the Salem News provided any endorsement at all, it would be of me. So we designed a 4-up postcard that we could drop it into if that happened (in the hope it would be something we could use). When it did, we had the text pasted into the postcard by 9AM Friday, and we printed and hand-cut over 800 postcards Friday into Sunday that were delivered right up to Monday morning - again, Jane and all our friends did the delivery by hand. I did all the printing/cutting.
Besides this, we had several friends and supporters making phone calls on my behalf to their friends and neighbors. We had meet and greet events in each neighborhood of the ward over the four months - the last one was the Sunday before the election. Our initial fundraiser was in early August. That was a big success because a lot of people came who needed to know that we were credible. The biggest issue with it, though, was that the cost there was a lot higher than we'd anticipated so we only came out a little bit ahead. That put us in an early fundraising hole but we were able to keep costs down otherwise.
Finally, the electronic portion of the race mattered as well. I used my Twitter account (@joshturiel) as a tool to communicate with supporters and to help find them. I set up a personal Facebook page (I'd avoided it until this year - my wife is the big Facebook user in the family) and then used it to create a campaign page. That proved to be an effective way to help get even information, photos, and even video out to people in the ward and around Salem. Lastly, I also set up an email list of all the people who gave me their addresses - around 50 so far. We sent out a few email list updates during the campaign and it helped with support.
I met people during the campaign that I hadn't known before at all, and some that I only had known online. It was really one of the most rewarding experiences I'd ever had, and I surprised myself by enjoying the in-person aspect of it so much. Election Day was nerve-wracking even though we were fairly confident by then. The video of me on Patch that night? Yep, I was exhausted. Now the hard part begins.
It's a heck of a challenge to serve in elected office. Even the people I have political issues with are people I respect for taking on the responsibility. Now I get a turn at it, and I hope I can do my city and my ward proud.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Education of a candidate - Final Week
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!
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!
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
