iPhone subsidies -- are Android users supporting Apple?

Subsidies are larger for the iPhone than for other smartphones.  Sprint's losing money on each iPhone it sold.  So are Verizon and AT&T.  If you sign a contract to buy iPhones, you can expect to watch your earnings per subscriber drop.

Makes sense therefore, that T-Mobile would not jump into the iPhone waters, only to end up losing big money, when it's already having trouble with money.  It would be a Pyrrhic victory to stem the loss of subscribers only to lose money on those subscribers.

But hold on, this begs the question: Are Android smartphone users by default supporting iPhone users, by way of higher data subscription and device prices, so that carriers can continue to fund Apple's profit growth?

Begs another question: Couldn't Microsoft buy its way into market share by simply removing the need for carriers to subsidize phones?  What exactly IS Microsoft's strategy to catch up, anyway?

Info fanatics: Google News carries live election data.

Google collects all sorts of data and loves showing it off.  Click thru to the Google News Election section and you'll see different data charts depending upon the current event.

In this case, the GOP Michigan primary for the Presidential election, is tracked live, with real-time updates without refreshing the page.  And that data is interactive -- select any candidate or district, and get more information.  Cool stuff.

How I achieve a state of calm peacefulness.

Lying on my back and eyes closed, I go back in my mind to a specific event in my past that I had intentionally stored away at the time, absorbing the entire environment including all my sensations of the moment:

A day in 2008 when I was floating on my back (no floating device needed), on the water, at Waikiki Beach, hands behind my head in a rested position, with the warmth and brightness of the sun glowing through my shut eyes, and a grin on my face.

San Souci near Waikiki.  I floated here too -- another perfect day, of many.

The happiness of the feeling of that moment, flows through my body from head to toe.  It is a tool of sorts, to use when I wish to relax and reach a state of complete peace, actively lowering my pulse to below 48 beats per minute - about 20 below my resting heart rate - without falling asleep.

It's probably the scene and memory I'll go back to, on my death bed...with the same grin on my face. --->  :)

Rick Santorum...is he too angry?

I was reading through this Christian Science Monitor opinion piece, and thought that Santorum reminded me of Doug Neidermeyer from Animal House...you know, the guy whose own soldiers shot him, according to the rolling credits?

But then I discovered that there really was something to this anger thing with Rick Santorum.  Dude's so angry, I think a clenched fist has become the natural position for his hand.  Is there no group that he doesn't hate?

I'm officially calling it:

"The Fists of Rick" 

Technically not a fist...but you know he was thinking  about it.

Dude was so angry, he showed his fist twice at the same event.

Once in a while he throws a left jab.

WP7 vs Android, a quick look going into 2012 MWC.

Last week Strategy Analytics reported that Windows Phone shipped 2.7M units in Q4, with Nokia taking the crown of most units shipped by a Windows Phone vendor, at around 900K.

Today, on the opening of Mobile World Congress, Google noted that Android has reached 850K activations per day, representing a 250% increase since last year's MWC.

Let me just say: there is no third platform.  Even as Windows Phone sales grow, iPhone and Android phone sales are exploding at a scale that is simply incomparable.

As if that wasn't enough, here's a little tidbit I found interesting from Nokia's press conference at MWC:  Of all the stories on Engadget covering Nokia's announcements, by far the one that captured the most interest on Facebook + Twitter + Google+ sharing, was Nokia's Symbian Belle OS phone, the 808 PureView.  The 808 story was shared 220x more than the announcement of the Lumia 610, and 300x more than the announcement of the Lumia 900 introduction to Canada and Europe.

They put a 41 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera into a Symbian phone, made it look really sexy, and priced it at €450.  I think some analysts will be scratching their heads over this, insofar that Nokia's brought its best to a non-WP phone.

Sure, they SAY there is no Plan B, but it looks like the secret Plan B is to ditch Stephen Elop and go back to Symbian.

Nokia's 808 PureView Symbian phone

Oh, and you should not have any doubt in your mind: MWC 2012 is ALL ABOUT ANDROID.

Sometimes, Clearwire crawls slower than snail mail.

Speed so slow, I can't even get Speedtest.net to run.  Seriously, if you can't even connect to a host server to run a speed check, how bad must your ISP be?  It's been 5 minutes and the host server still can't send a test file through my connection.

Clearwire is clearly going down the wireless tubes.  I was going to wait out until they finished their LTE network, but at this rate, they may never make it.

Worst government employee.

Rick Perry.  He's double dipping even as he complains about government spending.  Oh the conservative hypocrisy!

HATE the Supreme Court's conservative turn.

Two examples:

2010: Overturning of the McCain-Feingold Act and other prior, decades-old decisions have left this current election cycle (and beyond) to witness massive increases in corporate spending via political action committees.  By allowing corporations to speak freely with billions of dollars in political ad spending, the America we knew will become further distorted between the haves and have-nots, as regulations and criminal laws are changed to benefit corporations over individuals.

2007: Overturning of a 96-year old antitrust law written under the Sherman Act, that prevented vertical controls, the US Supreme Court allowed minimum advertised price (MAP) controls by manufacturers over sellers.  I've written about this evil before, with Nikon requiring authorized sellers to stick to MAPs, and this evil, anticompetitive tactic is spreading, including companies like Montague Bike.

This is bull shit, and here's why:

Each of those conservative appointees spoke in front of Congress, under questioning, specifically stating that they would respect settled law.  Except, this isn't what's happening here.  They are overturning decades or near-century old laws and decisions, to suit their ideology.

United States, a subsidiary of Corporate America, thanks to the conservatives in the SCOTUS.

Javascript / HTML5 example.

Sorry, no screen capture.  I thought I'd just give you a link to click thru and let you figure out what's going on.

Stop laughing.

Ash Wednesday.

I'm pretty sure that was Bill Schonely sitting behind me this morning at Ash Wednesday 7:30 am service.

And Father Jon Buffington mixed up the Order of Mass between the Imposition of Ashes and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, having to stop midway and backtracking.  I was wondering why things were different...it reminds me of this book about mindfulness (or the inverse: mindlessness) -- it happens to be a book on CD, that you can borrow from the library, if you're interested.  Most everyone lacks complete mindfulness, myself included, so no biggie.

With age comes change.

And by change, I'm not talking about the loose change that seemingly collect in the front pants pockets, only to be mysteriously lost during the day.

Tastes change.

I noticed it about a decade ago when the thought of watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers - aka sugar crack for kids - lost its appeal.  Instead, Belgian chocolates with finely ground hazelnuts were now part of my lexicon and I was not giving back my chocolate truffles.

This week I had a similar epiphany.

Instead of the typical desire for Pinot Grigio, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Muscat or Gewurztraminer (never had much love for Chardonnay), I went for Merlot.  The not-quite 2-Buck Chuck Merlot (Charles Shaw from Trader Joe), that is.  And it seems that the darker, fuller flavor with tannins, is quite appropriate in Winter, and the skies are dark.  Sorta like drinking stout beer in the Winter -- it feels hardy and hearty.

I think next time I'm buying the Cabernet Sauvignon, though.  Oh, but I'm through with the days of paying $20 for a bottle of Cab.

Grimm: Portland Police Precinct.

Building is currently up for auction.  It's the US Customs House, and it also happens to be Leverage's Boston Police Department Building.  It just screams government building, doesn't it?

It's in the North Park Blocks, on NW 8th between NW Davis and NW Everett.

Great building.

AutoCad 2013 / LT shipping March 16th.

In a word: Disappointed.

The differences between AutoCAD LT 2012 and LT 2013 are:

• Preview of property editing - allowing you to see before you make changes permanent (well, you can always UNDO);
• Strikethrough in text;
• Edit multiple selections of hatch instances at once;
• Autodesk cloud customization synchronization (feels like DRM to me).

That appears to be it...no big leap like LT 2011 to LT 2012.  These new features also are new for the regular AutoCAD 2013, and like the LT software, new features seem to be limited, so some people waiting for AutoCAD 2013 might also be disappointed.

But seriously, no multiline editor for LT, yet?  And you know, I get that they don't want people to downgrade to LT, but come now, why no LISP support?  Most programmers have already moved onto ObjectARX, after all.  And hey, what's with the 3D computer image for LT 2013?  You can't even do 3D in LT.

Suffice to say, expectations fell far short, at least for me.

An aside: Google SU 9 should be released relatively soon (March), no?  If nothing good is coming next month from Autodesk, maybe something good is coming from Google?  :D

Kureji Usagi Golfer.

Added one more, to my design blog / Cafepress store.

The 2011 USC Trojans football team: WOW!

Did a bunch of research for the past 50 years, and compiled the data and put it into a simple infographic.

What it comes down to, is that the 2011 USC Trojans football team did really well, by historical standards.  So Trojans, don't lose hope!

Kureji Usagi Mochitsuki.

More on my design blog.  Of course, the rabbit pounding mochi on the moon, right?

Video: Tornadoes on the Sun.

This is fascinating stuff...all fluids, even hot plasma, acting in the same manner.


via MSNBC, source: Space.com

Grimm: Nick Burkhardt's trailer at Forest Hills Storage.

500 feet from this spot, is where Nick's trailer is supposed to be, with the Fremont Bridge in the background.  

Next to Forest Hills Storage (not real) is the Dockside Saloon, a place where you can tell a few truckers and blue-collar workers from the industrial waterfront area go to.  Across Front Avenue of the Dockside Saloon, are a series of condos (the Pacifica) and townhouses that were three-quarters completed until the Great Recession hit, and then all work stopped; it is now - more or less - completed.  In the Summer, it's a great walk along the waterfront, if you can manage to walk long distances (it's 3 1/2 miles each way), to go all the way from South Waterfront, all the way up to the Pacifica condos.  I like the townhouses, but the noise from the Fremont Bridge is unbelievable in the daytime.

BTW, I really dig the nighttime photos I get from my Samsung Galaxy S-II.

About 500' from Nick's trailer

Nick's trailer at Forest Hills Storage

Yar. Kureji Usagi pirates.

No, I haven't lost my mind.  Well, at least I don't think I have.

My latest obsession: rabbits.  In this case, pirate rabbits using fur and check patterns.  See my other blog entry for the full spiel.

Privacyscore: Eddie Bauer, WTH?

Eddie Bauer, what's up with this extremely low score?  Are you "sharing" customer data with unaffiliated websites, as is indicated?

Damn...I might have to unsubscribe your emails.

Privacyscore, update.

Well that was fast.  I requested a privacyscore report for Wolfram Alpha, and got it today:

So there you go, Wolfram Alpha has a score that is somewhere in between Google and  Microsoft's Bing / Yahoo search.

Also, they have this really cool Firefox add-on / Chrome extension that gives you a quick score in the toolbar area, and if you press on the score, a translucent box pops up with more data.

Here be dragons.

Says so, in Weatherunderground maps.

Smoking gun?: anti-warming group exposed.

Prominent anti-global warming group, Heartland Institute, has had a leak, and it's a really bad one for them.

Confidential documents have been released, showing that anti-warming folks are scared of losing in a one-on-one debate on Forbes' website, concluding that, "it is important to keep opposing voices out."  Yes, it really says that in their climate strategy memo.

When you look over their fundraising information, "ECN" projects refers to "Environment and Climate News" issues including fracking and climate change.  On their list of directed contributions towards ECN projects, some strike me as notable:

• Nucor ($502,000 for 2010-2011) -- a steel company has that kind of money to spend around like water?
• Baldwin Crosstown Animal Clinic ($12,276) -- really, an animal clinic in Texas is spending money on global warming issues?

With some groups, you obviously know why they're trying to counter global-warming science:

• Murray Energy Corporation ($100,000) -- largest US private coal company.
• Marathon Petroleum Company LLC ($2500) -- curious, but does the LLC mean that it is a legal entity designed to keep liability away from its parent corporation, Marathon Petroleum Corporation?

And then there's the curious Heartland board member, from Comcast.  Sure I understand Comcast's issues are over telecom regulations, but it has a board seat at a pseudo think tank that expects to spend over $620,000 on attacking climate science in 2012, as opposed to the $84,000 it spends on telecom and broadband issues.  Consider: Comcast gave Heartland $35,000 in 2010-2011, which is a drop in the bucket.

Curious, isn't it, all this concerted efforts of corporations to spend money to attack science?

WiFi protected setup (WPS).

Had to turn it off on my router last night.  The WPS button was flashing -- what happens when someone is sending out a signal of trying to connect to the router, or when one pushes the WPS button on the router.

The router utilizes an 8-digit PIN for its WPS, which is not particularly difficult to break when it is all-numerical,  but a brute force attack is made difficult on Netgear - which is what I have - routers because they go into WPS shutdown after a series of failed WPS attempts.

Since this US-CERT report last December of a successful brute-force attack made simple by WPS' inherent design flaws, I'd been meaning to turn off my WPS and switch back to manual WiFi setup.  Seeing the flashing WPS button last night was the trigger that made me finally attach my netbook to the router and change router settings.  Updated the firmware, too, while I was at it.

Now someone could still attempt an older-style brute force attack, but it is made much more difficult after I reverted to my 24-character PIN.  It would take several dozen years (for most casual hackers), even after taking into consideration, Moore's Law.

Gambatte!

In the US, when we want someone to do well, we say either "break a leg" or "good luck".  In Japan, they say "gambatte".  Translated, it means "try your best".

I had spent 10 years playing the french horn while growing up, before dropping it in college to focus on architecture.  My family didn't have the money to pay for private lessons, but I'd practice at a minimum, 10 hours a week outside of rehearsals.

In elementary school, I moved up from second to first seat (there was only the two of us); in middle school I worked my way up from fourth to first; in high school I worked my way up from fourth to first.  Along the way, each time I'd earn my seat by beating everyone else in the state (except for one person), in auditions for the all-state band.  Everyone else who'd auditioned and earned their spot on the roster for the all-state bands, at least for french horns, were taking private lessons.

(An aside: my friend - the one person I could never beat - told me one time after an audition, that we had been tied, but that they picked her over me for some convoluted reason.  She was better than me, but I was competitive and did not like losing, and in retrospect, she deserved to win.)

I didn't achieve these things by a stroke of luck, or a series of lucky incidences.  I got to the top by trying my best, and that meant pouring hours of hard work and knowing what my weaknesses were.

So I think we shouldn't say such niceties as "good luck", but instead encourage others to "try your best".   When you work really hard, you might surprise yourself as to how far you end up.

Gambatte!

To reiterate: Austerity is contraction, not expansion.

Portugal is learning this the hard way.

Britain is learning the hard way.

Greece is learning the hard way.

Ireland is learning the hard way.

Romania is learning the hard way.

Will US follow?

US Catholic Bishops: Life ain't that precious.

This is going to be a whopper, and I'm not using hyperbole.

Reuters is reporting that the US Catholic Bishops are "lobbying Congress to enact a law that would let any employer opt out of covering any medical treatment he disagreed with as a matter of his personal faith."

In other words, they're giving employers the right to make medical decisions of what is and isn't important to them, under the guise of religious freedom.  No need for vaccinations, because your employer insists it's not befitting his or her religious (guise) beliefs.  No need for treatment, because your employer insists that faith and prayer is all you need.

You see where this is going, don't you?

America is going to fall apart at the seams as medical spending explodes because people get sick over preventable diseases which EMPLOYERS rejected coverage over, under the guise of religious freedom.  Suffering from Avian Influenza that kills -- prayer will save you?  (But what about all the other people you infected?)

The US Catholic Bishops are wrong, and they will end up having a hand in helping kill hundreds of thousands of innocent humans, and millions more around the world.  I shudder to think how Saint Damien would respond to word that the US Catholic Bishops would find it acceptable to not medically treat someone suffering from leprosy.

This is my type of Valentines.

Via Happy Tree Friends...

Q: Can NBC get any crappier?

Between Sunday and Tuesday, there's just two original script shows: Parenthood and Smash.  It's all pseudo-news (Dateline) and faux reality shows during those three days.

Damn NBC, scraping the bottom of the barrel.  No wonder I don't have any shows on NBC, bookmarked in my Hulu account.

Entrepreneur refutes Romney.

In my obtuse way, at least one entrepreneur is refuting Mitt Romney's claim that his VC - Bain Capital - created jobs.  Via Felix Salmon, entrepreneur Tamara Mellon tweets, "Remember – Its entrepreneurs that create jobs, not Private Equity or Investment bankers."

Don't you feel just a bit uneasy when a venture capitalist claims to have directly created jobs?  After all, if a VC is allowed to make such claims, then perhaps we should be placing the CEOs of all banks, up on a pedestal, for having "created" millions of jobs in the US?

Obviously that won't happen, given the too-big-to-fail bailouts.  And therein you get the point: banks enable, but entrepreneurs are the real creators and innovators.  Same thing goes for venture capitalists.

Privacyscore ranking of search engines.

Via Wired, a new privacy ranking tool: Privacyscore.

So I thought I'd check out some commonly used sites, amid the hot air about website privacy coming from the big internet names.  It goes without saying - but I'll say it anyway - the loudest trash talker happens to have the lowest scores.  No surprises there, eh?

More on Greece's debt.

What's that I just read?  A conservative-minded economist suggesting that austerity isn't working for Greece, and that it all stems from the Euro currency?

Why yes it is!

"Germany’s whole economic policy is premised on a euro that is overvalued for the Mediterranean states but undervalued for Germany, Holland and a few others." 

Peter Morici for Fox News.

Heck, all free market economists should be agreeing on this: Greece needs to exit the Eurozone to save itself from Angela Merkel Germany -- something I wrote about just yesterday, and a few months back.

Stick play day.

It was dry enough, long enough to go play outside with the stick, this evening.  It's been a while since this was possible, without work getting in the way on the weekend.

Greece: Time to EXIT the Euro?

From MSNBC's coverage of the growing riots, Greece's finance minister Evangelos Venizelos said, "The question is not whether some salaries and pensions will be curtailed, but whether we will be able to pay even these reduced wages and pensions."

Additionally, the German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Greece, "cannot be a bottomless pit."

But the problem is -- assuming you believe in austerity -- Germans and the rest of the core EU have no friggin clue as to what labor price level would stabilize Greece and make it competitive with the rest of the EU.  So their response for the past three years, has been to order more cuts to Greek spending and wages, until Greece reaches that equilibrium.  Both sides seem to implicitly acknowledge this, yet they continue on with austerity insanity.

With EU intransigence, the only solution for Greece is to exit the Euro currency.  That way, they will be able to float their own currency once again on the open market and immediately make their goods and services price competitive.  In other words, reverse the effects of the creation of the Euro, which contributed to Greece's problems in the first place.

And if those Greek ministers were smart enough, they'd be deep in the planning stages already.  This, after all, is the Plan B when austerity fails to keep Greece from a disorderly bankruptcy.

Speaking of the late 80s and Whitney.

I never really thought about it until now, but I must have seemed like some crazy person by my peers, in my senior year in high school.

Here's what happened in senior year:

• Love triangle (the second of three in my entire life) with two freshmen who were each other's best friend.  Both liked me, both tried frequently to sit on my lap.  I didn't actually end up with either one of them, but we had some great times together after football games.
• Short-lived relationship with a freshman girl from an all-girl private school.  We met at the McDonald's All-American Marching Band practices, and ended up having a great time slow dancing.  It ended quickly however, when I called her one night and her mother told me in absolute terms, that I shouldn't be seeing a freshman girl.
• There was this other girl from another school...I think if I pushed it, we could have dated, but she was a junior and well, I already knew that I was going away for college.  That would have been too rough.  Still, I remember the moonlight in her eyes one night when we were alone at a park -- it's my favorite memory of her.
• Got asked to go to a sophomore ball.  Went.  Meh.
• Took a great friend to prom (not from my school), stayed out until 4:30 am.  Went to USC orientation and placement tests about 4 hours later.  Parents were not happy at all about that, but I aced the math exam allowing me to bypass all math courses in college, and the English exam allowed me to gain free credits to apply for general studies.  The parents couldn't complain when I told them how I did.

Ain't life grand?

So in celebration of the good times in 1988, here's my list of songs (nearly 90 minutes long) that I would have played in 1988, if I were the DJ (in this specific order with ballads at the end):

• Say it's Going to Rain - Will to Power (The best song to kick off a dance!)
• Push It - Salt n Pepa
• It Takes Two - Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock
• Pump Up the Volume - MARRS
• Girlfriend - Pebbles
• Come Go With Me - Expose
• Red Red Wine - UB40
• So Emotional - Whitney Houston
• Looking for a New Love - Jody Watley
• Naughty Girls Need Love Too - Samantha Fox
• Sade - Paradise
• New Sensation - INXS
• Wild, Wild West - The Escape Club
• Wild Thing - Tone Loc
• Hazy Shade of Winter - Bangles
• Going Back to Cali - LL Cool J
• Anything For You - Gloria Estefan and the MSM
• Groovy Kind Of Love - Phil Collins
• The Flame - Cheap Trick
• Always - Atlantic Starr
• Make it Real - The Jets
• Anytime - The Jets (I really really really like The Jets)

Goodbye Whitney.

So talented, but poisoned by an addiction to drugs, just like Michael Jackson.

Ten great Whitney Houston songs, ranked in the order of my favorites:

1. Saving All My Love for You -- The absolute best in my mind.
2. I Wanna Dance with Somebody -- I loved this song, especially Whitney's crazy hair in the video.
3. I Will Always Love You - Dolly Parton song for the movie, The Bodyguard.
4. One Moment in Time - For the (best ever) 1988 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
5. Didn't We Almost Have it All - Felt this way a couple of times.
6. All At Once - I still remember sophomore year in high school, this senior girl starts telling me in class that she loves this song.
7. Greatest Love of All - I know, this is at the top for most people, but not me -- that's another story.
8. So Emotional - I love this uplifting song -- reminds me of this freshman girl when I was a senior... :D
9. Where Do Broken Hearts Go - Where do they go?  I wanna know.
10. I'm Every Woman - The other song from the movie, The Bodyguard.  Loved that movie.

Forgive for for having a bias for the late 80's and early 90's.

Saw my first "BBW".

Yesterday, I had a strange experience.  I sat opposite my BFF having dinner at a restaurant, facing the wall that was lined with mirrors the entire length of the wall, above the seated bench.  In comes a couple of young women, who sat down next to us.  This is where things get weird.

The mirror cuts off at just below the nose of this woman, so all I see is her eyes and nose, and boy is she attractive!  Eyes that would make you melt, and a cute nose, and then I turn to my side to look at her, and I see.........

A 110 lb woman stuck in a 170+ lb body, with biceps as large as my calves -- and I have large calves!

You've seen those books where there is a top middle and bottom section, allowing you to mix a person's head with a different torso and yet another variety of lower appendage?  That's what I saw....a hot face attached to an extremely obese woman.

She was the first obese woman I would ever call "BBW".

Diagram of what I saw.

Grimm: Tarantella

First, totally loving Amy Acker, aka the Tarantella on Grimm, aka Fred from Angel, and her appearance on a show after all these years.  Big fan of the show, Angel.

Secondly, wow, I didn't realize they'd been filming this much, in the Pearl.  I love how they show all the local stuff, including the Grand Central Bakery stuff; they do actually have a location near the Pearl.  It's been a game to recognize all the landmarks they've filmed from.

I love the show, and it's not just because it's filmed in Portland.  But being in Portland makes it totally awesome.

Some trivia for a couple of scenes from Tarantella:

Irony: Google Apps for Government allows for move from RIM to iPhone.

NOAA and GSA have both moved away from Microsoft's services to Google Apps for Government.  In doing so, according to Reuters, Google has enabled them to move away from RIM products, and instead embracing the iPhone, by way of Google's device management services.

Sure, not the outcome that Google would have preferred, but in some ways, this is better for Google, because these groups now provide fixed income to Google by way of Apps subscriptions.  And anyway, other governmental groups are beginning to embrace Android for secure communications.

Ironic, but not terribly bad in any way, for Google.

March: Least romantic month of the year?

I couldn't help it.  According to Google Trends, "romantic" is, for obvious reasons, a very popular search term in February.  What is amusing, is that the next month - March - searches for "romantic" reaches a nadir for the year.

Maybe it's a result of March Madness?

Candians: America should spend more money on missions to Mars.

I had to laugh at this...CBC's carrying a story about NASA's planned cuts on its missions to Mars.  So they've decided to ask Canadians if they agree with NASA's plan to cut spending on Mars missions.

No one ever asks if Greeks should be spending more money on Mars missions.

A bitch moment: InDesign - EPUB - video.

You would think, if Adobe sells you software (InDesign) that allows you to embed video into a file and export it as an EPUB file, that you would be able to play it back in Adobe's Digital Editions EPUB viewer, right?

WRONG!

It took a lot of online research after failing to produce an EPUB document that played embedded video.  For hours I kept figuring I must be doing it wrong, and tried to find other references to properly adding video into an InDesign document to export to EPUB.  It played fine in interactive PDF exports, but it never showed up in the EPUB document (which is just a zipped file), even though it clearly had the video embedded into the document, made obvious by the size of the EPUB file.

It turns out that only the iOS platform and the B&N Nook (presumably the Nook Color and Tablet) support embedded video.

You know, they don't mention this explicitly in the Adobe TV videos, or in the help menu...it's very subtle that they only show how the embedded video in an EPUB works on an iPad.

I had a WTF?!? moment.

This is why I harbor a love-hate relationship with Adobe...they're so friggin discombobulated when it comes to coordinating their products.  HTML5 and CSS3 support is a mess.  To use HTML5 in Dreamweaver you need to change out the preference and/or convert the file to HTML5...but you only get code hints, not full blown tag support for HTML5 elements in the drop-down menus.

It's a Grimm nightlight.

The other week they were filming in Old Town.  For the next two nights, they're filming in the Pearl and they have two of these giant light props hung atop 75 foot tall cranes.  The lights are so bright, they highlight the facades on buildings with a soft orange glow.

It's a Grimm nightlight.  :D

Samsung Galaxy S-II does panorama photos.

No additional software needed, the SG S-II allows you to do a couple of cool things with its photo app: photo subject tracking and auto-stitched panoramic photos.

Here's the panorama shot from today, at the Portland Opera building (the former KPTV-12 building) near the Portland OMSI, while on a visit for a project.