Japan in the process of proving the Austerians wrong.

Japan's recent push to provide a 2% inflation target -- a promise to do anything needed in order to achieve that inflation rate -- has led to some interesting changes.  Specifically, Reuters noted today that Japanese household spending had surged in March, 5.2% year over year, and unemployment has dropped to its lowest level in four years.

So can we kick out conservatives, yet?  By insisting on austerity policies, conservatives have been a drag on the American and European economies, destroying the middle class.

You should be absolutely mad at conservatives who've embraced opposition politics to offer us a false narrative for the past five years.  I'm willing to give them a chance to come clean and change their opinions.  But if they remain adamant to their broken dogma, then it's time to throw them out of office.

You see, this Summer we're about to see the debt ceiling fight -- yet again -- and Republicans haven't yet repented for their sins against the economy.

The Cynical View: Congress acts on the FAA cuts.

Despite warnings months ahead that these furloughs were required by the sequester (and since it was written to be painful, why would you think otherwise?), Republicans argued that the White House and the FAA were playing politics with the FAA furloughs.

It didn't matter that March 6th, the FAA formally issued 30-day notices to its employees of the furloughs, as required by workplace rules, Republicans played both sides of the argument, saying that the cuts would remain and that the FAA and White House were playing politics.

And then it happened: On April 7 those furloughs went into effect.

So be it, the flying public was inconvenienced, because Republicans didn't take the sequester cuts seriously.

So the question you should ask is: Why, after three weeks following the start of furloughs, did Congress finally move off its butt to give the FAA the flexibility to shift (currently unspent funds) to avoid the furloughs?

The answer: Congress was about to go on vacation, and didn't want to be inconvenienced by delays themselves, nor did they want to face angry constituents, of course!

No kidding: The day the furloughs were rescinded (Saturday) was the first day of a week-long vacation for Congress.

A couple of notes you might not have read about, on the Q1-2013 GDP report.

Yesterday, the government released the latest GDP figures, and as I'd previously said in February, the Q4-2012 number that was initially reported as a negative number would be adjusted upwards in subsequent revisions.  Thus what was initially reported in Q4-2012 real GDP as -0.1%, was revised upward to +0.1%, and now +0.4%.

Another thing about the report: Federal spending was the biggest drag on total GDP (-8.4%), and contrary to what you may have heard, private GDP (PCE+investment+exports) is outpacing federal GDP -- see the trend lines below in the chart.

CK picks Matt Barkley?

I couldn't help but wonder, why did Chip Kelly pick Matt Barkley in the fourth round of the 2013 NFL draft?  I thought it was a foregone conclusion that CK would try to find the most mobile QB, not the traditional west-coast pocket passer.  Not to mention, he's already got three mobile QBs in Dennis Dixon, Nick Foles (wow, three PAC-12 quarterbacks on the same roster?) and Michael Vick.  Surely, he's got his eyes set on 2014 draft and Marcus Mariota, no?

Barkley Against Oregon:

• 2009  187 YD / 2 TD / 1 INT / 108.7 rating
• 2010  264 YD / 1 TD / 2 INT / 96.9 rating
• 2011  323 YD / 4 TD / 1 INT / 189.2 rating
• 2012  484 YD / 5 TD / 2 INT / 163.3 rating

No way would the Eagles carry five (Barkley, Dixon, Foles, Kinne, Vick) quarterbacks on their active roster; at least two of them will be dropped / placed on the practice squad. I don't really see Barkley fitting into a team running the spread, except as a practice squad QB, but then that would be a waste of his talent.  Either he gets traded away during the Summer, or gets dropped during preseason, then picked up as a free agent...say Oakland, Arizona or San Diego?

I'm not a fanboy of anyone.

I sometimes look like a Google fanboy, but it's not true...I have my Google gripes, too.

I hate how they change the UI on Chrome, seemingly on a whim.  I also hate how they randomly cut off products -- Reader -- even though there's a diehard group of users.

I happen to be a huge fan of Windows 7: I preordered it, and today I have three devices running W7.  However, I'm no fan of Windows 8 or Windows Phone.  If they had built the Courier, I'd probably have gotten it; I wish I had a Surface table for my coffee table.

When the Justice Department went after Microsoft in 1998, I had mixed feelings.  As I told my mortgage broker at the time, while IE killed Netscape, it also meant that we no longer had to pay for browsers, and today it's a given that browsers are completely free.

But since IE7, I've skipped on Microsoft's browser.

I'm a big fan of Apple's industrial design, even though I'm not a fan of its closed ecosystem.  It's tough, really, because I've often wanted to buy Apple products over the last decade, but then the thought of the closed Apple ecosystem enters my mind, and I lose all desire to complete the transaction. If you need proof of why you shouldn't be a fanboy, just look at how large Apple's profit margins are, on all those fanboys who can't bear to think of living outside of the Apple ecosystem.

I have long adored Samsung products, going back well over a decade ago when I bought a LaserDisc / CD player from them.  But they also scare the shit out of me, because they are a chaebo, and by nature of the chaebo, they tend to act on monopolistic desires.  See: DRAM and monitors.

I hate to love Adobe, but I've tried open source graphic software and they suck balls.  I really hate the price of Adobe software, even the subscription prices.

It's the identical case for Autodesk.  I hate to love them because their prices are even more exorbitant, but it also speaks to the wider disparity between quality of software, to that of free or cheaper alternatives.

So you see, I'm not a fanboy.

Pearl District's final park, The Field, nearly ready.

With the nighttime area lights on, I don't think anyone has been able to avoid walking past The Fields, to see how things look, because it looks really awesome, even if delayed for years because of the Great Recession of 2008.

Though it has a proper dog park, there's no way I'm going to use it, because there are too many people who don't know how to read their dog's actions and think that their dog wants to play.  Not to mention, a lot of sick dogs used to just crap all over the old fallow field before they started construction on the park, and the current, temporary lot is no less full of mushy crap, piles of crap, and dried-shriveled crap.

Still, it'll be a great park, except the dog park portion, that is.  Can't wait to see all of the events that'll be held there.  It'll be open May 6, with a grand opening on May 17th.

Dwell "design industry discount"?

I had a good laugh just now.  I got an email offering me a "design industry discount" on Dwell: $20 / 10 issues (one year).

The normal discount rate is $19.95 / 10 issues.  I would have paid an extra nickel for that extra-special "design industry discount".  But they've offered me deeper discounts via direct-mail before, and you can find even bigger discounts via third-party subscription sales.

I'm still waiting for Dwell to offer digital subscriptions for less than the print discount rate of $19.95, though.  I've more or less run out of bookcase space, and I've decided to try to move my subs to all-digital.

Spring 2013 in Portland: Dogwoods and tulips

Yes, it was such a lovely day, I had to go outside and photograph flowers.

Bald eagle over the Pearl District.

I was sitting along the waterfront, north of the Broadway Bridge, when I spotted an obvious raptor gliding high in the sky.  It so happened that I had my camera with me and my (kit) zoom telephoto lens with me.  I grabbed a shot of this bald eagle flying in circles.

It was a clear, blue sky and 73° F, so, perfect day.  :D

Lord and Taylor and the Tsarnaevs are not linked by irony.

Maybe you didn't know, but last year the mother of the Boston bombers, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, was caught shoplifting by Lord and Taylor theft prevention workers...I'm guessing via video surveillance.  It turns out, those FBI surveillance videos released of the two suspects from the Boston Marathon bombings, were taken from exterior Lord and Taylor cameras.

That's not irony, as others online have referred to (damn you, Alanis Morissette for confusing people).

Again, the definition of irony is: " incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result", or, "the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning."

Instead, I proffer karmic entanglement or accidental coincidence.

Karmic entanglement -- because you believe in Fate, and Fate inevitably and unavoidably linked two separate crimes committed by different members of a family, by means of Lord and Taylor surveillance cameras.

Accidental coincidence -- because you don't believe in Fate, but nonetheless find it humorous at the unlikelihood that two, separate crimes committed by different members of a family, are coincidentally caught by Lord and Taylor surveillance cameras.

What the Wall Street drop on false AP tweet really revealed.

In about three minutes (from 21:07 to 21:10 EDT), US stock markets dropped nearly 150 points; nine minutes after the false tweet had been sent out, the market had recovered.

Not you, not I, not the average Joe, would have been able to avoid a massive loss, were the events reported true.  Wall Street quants have built algorithms that troll the headlines (and the tweets) of important sources to automatically buy/sell faster than you could read a headline, pick your phone up and call your broker, or pull up your smartphone and enter into a transaction.

The war is lost; you cannot trade faster than a series of servers that have been programmed to react at the speed of a fiber optic cable with teraflops of processing each second.  And of course, you cannot invest in the hedge funds driven by quants, unless you have at least $100K for those "lite" funds, and $1M for the standard hedge funds.

You and I -- the lower 90% -- are screwed...screwed, I tell you.

Even a politically homogeneous group has in-group politics.

Had a fun afternoon today, meeting with a client group that is politically homogeneous.  Opinions, it turns out, are no less diverse within the group, than outside of it, making consensus no less complex and difficult.  Gender is a fairly big factor too.  What I saw today:

• The facilitators
• The dominant cynic
• The wishful thinkers
• The eager participators
• The self-defeated
• The comedian

After the first half-hour, I had to hold back my chuckles because I had a read on most everyone in the room.

It was great though, as new themes popped up and would contribute to my schematic design (which I haven't yet tackled except for the entryway).  Got the contract signed, and now we're ready to go.

Portland's Rose Festival Fleet Week pretty much dead?

The Portland Rose Festival's Fleet Week got the bad news, as did other places around the nation (San Diego, NY, Broward, etc), when the Navy pulled its ships out.  Then the Coast Guard followed suit and pulled out, too.  Not directly a part of the Rose Festival but nonetheless painful, was the Navy's decision to pull its Blue Angels out of the Oregon International Air Show, and other events around the nation.

If you've got to cut back money, you're going to cut back spending on non-critical items, rather than cut back on things that affect readiness and capabilities.  Eventually, the sequester may be restored, but if it isn't, then Fleet Week and the Rose Festival will have a critical void (no offense Canada, but your fleet, and everyone else's in the world, just isn't in the same category as the US Navy's...just look at the Littoral Combat Ship Class and the future Zumwalt Class destroyers).

So why not replace it with either an FIA Formula E street race, or create a Rose Festival original e-kart grand prix race on the streets of Downtown / Waterfront? It's the perfect way to boost Portland's green cred while bringing back racing to the Rose Festival.  It's not loud like traditional car racing, unlike the old open wheel CART / Indycar racing at PIR, so a street course would be perfect.

Uncle of Boston Marathon bombing suspects gives awesome interview.

Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, was in the middle of a swarm of reporters, openly answering all questions asked, no holds-barred, completely truthful.  Here are some choice quotes:

On why they might have committed murder: "Being losers.  Not being able to settle themselves, and hating everyone else who did."

On what he thinks of this country: "This is the ideal microworld and the entire world.  I love this country."

"They put a shame on the entire Chechan ethnicity".

Love this guy.  A naturalized citizen and 100% American.

A quick thought on the failed firearms bill.

A lot of people are going to ask questions about how these two terrorists were able to load up on hundreds of bullets and a bunch of assault rifles.

And the NRA and many Republicans will say that the firearms bill would not have prevented this.

Of course what they won't tell you, is that they -- the NRA are Republicans -- fought to allow the Brady Act to expire, allowing these terrorists to acquire these assault weapons legally.

Oh the irony.

A quick thought on the sequester.

Now that we know there is a foreign connection (Chechnya no less) to the Boston Marathon bombers, watch for a building wall of pressure for Congress and the White House to repeal  the sequester cuts that slashed federal spending on defense and discretionary programs, including the TSA and FAA.

Web 2.0: A view into the pursuit of the Boston Marathon bombers

It’s breathtaking, how rapidly we've gone from the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday, to the release of images of two suspects on Thursday morning, to a violent incident at a 7/11 Thursday evening resulting in the death of an MIT police officer, that led to the eventual capture (and death at a hospital) of one of the suspects (in front of a funeral home, no less), and the continued pursuit of another, in Watertown, MA.

Throughout it all, Web 2.0 delivered all of the drama and connections, as it unfolded.  Six degrees of separation?  With social media, it’s now just one or two degrees of separation.  As events unfolded, all you needed to do was to follow the right people and you’d get the news in real-time.

Separated by 3000 miles, I could watch streaming live news from Boston, follow the real-time tweets of reporters and others involved who would then be retweeted by thousands of others.  The mainstream media, aware of the pitfalls of transmitting information that hadn't yet been confirmed, has held back details that have otherwise been circulated around the internet on social media.

Out of respect of one of the family and friends of a possible suspect, I won’t link to the YouTube video message they posted to him -- a missing person from Brown University.  There is NO proof that he is one of the suspects.  The point is however, that for better or worse, social media has been offering up connections and links to possible suspects, while the mainstream media has been holding back.  And in fact, the AP is now reporting online that the two suspects are actually from Chechnya.

BREAKING: AP: Surviving Boston bomb suspect identified as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass. -SS
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 19, 2013

Knowing now, that the two suspects had been throwing out explosive devices while in pursuit and later engaged in a wild shootout with officers, it's clear that they had meant to do a lot more damage than what they had done at the Boston Marathon.  If the FBI hadn't released those images to place tremendous pressure on these suspects, we could have seen a string of bombings; instead, their plans were fully disrupted, knowing that they were being actively pursued by law enforcement and social media.

Instead, we're nearing very close to the end of the situation, covered live by social media and broadcast via the internet.

If interested in the chase being tracked online: https://twitter.com/WCVB and http://livewire.wcvb.com/Event/117th_Running_of_Boston_Marathon

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By the way, even the suspect's history is being tracked online.  There's some confusion who this person is, and a lot of the media is now speculating that this 19 year old somehow received military training and may be linked to Al Qaeda, so the story is going to continue for some time.

Q1-2013 Nokia results: At least the spin is positive.

Nokia had a nice 27% boost in Windows Phone sales (Lumia), but their total smartphone sales (WP and Symbian combined) was actually down 7.6%, as Symbian sales nosedived.  And what was a small profit last quarter, turned into a small loss for the D-S division.

The 27% increase in Lumia sales could be good news for the Windows Phone platform as it's the first, full quarter of Windows Phone 8 devices availability.  Or it could be cannibalization of the platform, with Nokia taking up marketshare of WP sales, and everyone else sagging -- something worth considering, because Netmarketshare says that WP OS had 1.5% global marketshare of mobile OSes, while Statcounter says that WP is at 1.19%.

To me, they're just treading water at the shallow end of the pool, going nowhere.  To put this into perspective, the other day Google's Chairman of the Board, Eric Schmidt, stated that Android had risen to 1.5M daily activations.  In four days, there are more Androids activated around the world, than are Lumia phones sold by Nokia.

Waco Texas explosion video.

This video is going viral, because it captures the explosion.  Turn your audio down, and be prepared to be freaked out, at 29 seconds into the video.  It was a massive explosion and is just unimaginable how many people are affected.  The explosion was big enough to move the ground and register a 2.1 magnitude on the Richter scale.

Best photo displaying North Korea's high tech capabilities.

Via Reuters (Jacky Chen).

I call it, "North Korean soldier, uses high-tech stealth binocular, that cannot be seen, with technology borrowed from Harry Potter."

#sarcasm

WTH Portland, why aren't we getting Google Fiber?

I'm a bit miffed right now.  First it was Kansas City, then Austin, now Provo.  What about Portland?  There are tens of thousands of technology workers in the area and creative industries exploding.  Did former Mayor Sam Adams screw up the application?

Akamai's State of the Internet data, average connection speed of various states, below.  Note that Utah is at the top of internet speeds.  They're beefing up Provo internet speeds because...?

Or is this some sort of tactic to appeal to Red States and their federal representation?

Utah's Mighty 5 and HTML5.

I dunno...when I saw this video on TV the other week, the first thing that popped into my head was: HTML5 logo.  I know that if I were designing this, even though a five-sided element would make sense, I would have specifically gone out of my way to not use a pentagon-like shield, and I would have been disinclined to use an inside offset line.

What do you think?

One is dead, the other is a zombie idea: Firearms regulation bill and Charles Grassley's lie.

Firearm regulation bills in the Senate failed to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, to go to a vote.  Where to start?  Well, there's Senator Charles Grassley with his fat lie:

"The real way to fight gun crimes, is to prosecute criminals."  -- Senator (R-IA) Charles Grassley.

I suppose the equivalent therefore, is that we don't need laws to regulate the purchase of drugs, radioactive technology, or viruses that may be used for biological warfare.  We just need to prosecute those who use them illegally, right?

I don't think anyone would doubt that in a hypothetical, deregulating things that could be used to kill lots of people easily, would result in more terrorism, not less.

Oh well.

The bill -- the Manchin-Toomey Compromise -- was really bad, anyway.  I'd probably vote against it, for all of its doublespeak.  Rather than tighten some laws, it perversely expanded the ability of people to buy guns by circumventing local laws -- in effect it was neutering recently passed Colorado and Connecticut firearm regulation laws.

Twofer: Existential humor and the cure.

First up: "Youth and Aging", by Lev Yilmaz



Favorite line, is at the end: "One of the main reasons why older people get nostalgic about their youth, is that when they were young, they didn't know how things were going to turn out, yet."

Second up: "Death".



Best quote: "We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

And to follow up, the cure for your existential crisis -- occasionally known as The Middle Age -- it turns out, to be Acetaminophen.

Sleep seems to do the trick for me.

Best post for iOS and Android fanbois.

Time's Harry McCracken's got the best post ever, sure to appeal to both iOS and Android fanbois.  It left me smiling.

If you love pie charts, you'll love McCracken's summary of data of the current state of the iOS-Android war.

Oregon Ducks football in trouble?

Local (Portland) news station KATU, broke the big news Monday evening -- go read it, because it details all of the violations.

The Oregonian followed up with some background.

Addicted to Quack blog gives a nice review, but they seem like they're in denial.  They did hit the nail on the head when noting that these documents are old, insofar that they date back to last September and we really don't know where things are today, now that the two sides agreed to disagree on coming to a summary judgment over the violations.

(An aside: I really don't know how UO can concur that certain violations occurred, only to take it back.  I want a do-over too: I want to go back to my high school years and change my choices of girls that I got involved with.)

Still, until now, we didn't know what was in those documents, and now that we do know what's inside, it's clear that the breadth of violations (secondary and major) is just an itty bitty more extensive than previously reported.  So take a moment right now, and consider what all these people would be saying, if it was USC and Lane Kiffin, who'd been accused of the long list of violations -- would they still be dismissive?  I think not; I think they would have been insinuating that USC was dirty and needed to throw the book at the Trojans.

This is Tako's take, from 2011:

"Ten days into his tenure at USC, Kiffin committed his first recruiting violation by picking up a recruit from the airport in a limo. Ten days. His teams are carrying the recruiting sanctions stemming from the Pete Carroll-era violations, but who was the recruiting coordinator for USC in 2005, the year that, along with Reggie Bush's Heisman, was wiped from the record books? Lane Kiffin."

This is what David Piper wrote in 2007:

"At the very least, don't give the cheating schools an unfair advantage by failing to punish them. 

In the near future, the NCAA will have another chance to decide who they want to be.  All accounts are that payments were made to Reggie Bush during his time at USC.  Will the NCAA have the balls to give SC a tangible punishment for their violations?  I wouldn't hold my breath."

Don't throw stones from your glass house, right?

Tax Day: Post Office car line.

Perhaps it's a sign that the economy has turned around.  The line of cars was exceptionally busy, early.  Years ago when there was no electronic filing, the lines were so long there were tents and several postal employees going car to car to grab your returns from your car window.  It's obvious that most people simply file online.  But this year seems like a spike.

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The almost midnight update: Well, it looks like traffic has been steady this evening, with the last rush of cars coming in, honking, causing a stir to get their spot in line to park.  The concession stand inside is open, which is entertaining in itself.

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By the way, I'm specifically avoiding writing up an entire post about the Boston Marathon Bombings because the people who do these things, tend to bask in their inglorious acts, by taking in all of the expressions of sorrow, fear and anger, online and in the media.

Like the rest of you, the victims and all those affected are in the front of my thoughts and have my sympathies.  And a big middle finger to the people who caused this.

Taxes done. :D

The hit was close to what I expected.  An additional $700 in federal, and $180 in state -- all below the penalty levels, because, it turns out, my mental calculations were about right.

And then, of course, prepayment (self-employment) checks had to be sent out, too.  I added a bit more to the federal, just because the worksheet seemed to be too low for my comfort level.  I guess I'll find out this time next year.  ;)

Finally, ahead of the extended deadline (May 15th), I figured I'd do the Portland Arts Tax filing online, too.  I voted for the tax, and I love the idea of arts education being well-funded.

If you add it all up, the total amount I just sent out today was fairly big (by my percentile income group, that is), but because it was all planned from the start, none of it was a shock.  In fact, I'm thrilled it all worked out exactly as planned. :D

Now, if we were to go back 13 years ago when I quit my job and tried the self-employed bit the first time, everything was a shock and overwhelming.  One year after that first return, I started using software to do it all.  Now, it's just a matter of organizing all my stuff to make the filing process easy.

Speaking of organization, I got my Google Docs forms and spreadsheets better written so that I can add info on-the-fly and just pop the receipts into a folder -- I'm getting there, eventually (hopefully I don't die the day after I reach maximum efficiency.)

The two hardest parts of doing my taxes.

1. Finding the desire to do them.
2. Getting things organized properly, in order to do them.

Writing checks out, or getting returns back, is neither here nor there -- it's just a matter of settling your account balance, so I neither dislike nor enjoy that part.

And yes, by writing this post, I'm procrastinating while in the middle of both doing my tax filing and organizing 2012's stuff, as well as incrementally getting 2013 stuff better organized.  By 2015, I'm sure I'll be perfectly organized.  ;)

Awesome goldbug quote, from Felix Salmon.

As Felix Salmon says:

"Goldbugs are by their nature defeatist and pessimistic; get enough of them together at the same time and they become self-fulfilling. (That’s why they tend to be so evangelical about their beliefs.)"

Point 1: Confirmation bias is too easy to fall for, that I, for one, am constantly looking out for it.  It's why Republicans thought that Mitt Romney was on his way towards a presidential win, but more critically, it's why so many people think that the 2009 economic stimulus failed.

Point 2: As Matthew Yglesias noted this past weekend, if there is inflation, everything goes up, not just gold.

Point 3: By the way, if you click through to the BBC link talking about the current amount of gold in the world, you'll notice that the BBC specifically qualifies their figures, based on gold that is "above ground".  And if you click through to their link to the USGS' below-ground reserves estimates, another 24% is still underground.  But that's only based on current extraction technology; as you've seen with shale oil and tar sands, as prices go up, newer, more exotic (and therefore more expensive) technologies are employed, and eventually the scale of known reserves goes up.  The classic definition of "inflation", is an increase in the supply of money.

Point 4: Unlike gold, and its yet undiscovered, underground reserves, Bitcoin is capped, period.  That might seem like a reason to believe that it is a true hedge against inflation, but you have to convert it to a sovereign currency.  If it were possible to avoid conversion, instead of inflation now you're faced with the problems of massive deflation, as people horde it as an investment.  The classic definition of "deflation", is a decrease in the supply of money.

Quick guide for donated goods valuations.

(Again, I'm procrastinating.)  I'm organized enough, such that each year I maintain an online spreadsheet of all the things I've donated through the tax year.  Usually, I add the value to the item, but I forgot to do so this year, so I just finished checking Goodwill's valuation guide (hasn't been upped / modified since 2010), and thought that I should share it here, as a quick reference.

Goodwill Valuation Guide.

Okay, back to collecting all my necessary files and data. :P

Google Offers / Maps screw ups.

I don't get it.  I'm subscribed to Google Offers in Portland, but when I click on some national offers, they serve me up Nampa, ID addresses, all because my home ISP's IP address, for whatever reason, tracks back to Nampa.

So naturally I clicked on the Google Maps to get walking directions from Portland to Nampa Idaho, out of good fun (again, just more procrastination from doing my taxes).  It's all good on US26, right up until past Warm Springs, where Maps suggests that I get off US26 and take a couple of Forest Service roads and trails, instead.  After getting back onto US26, it later directs me to take a private logging road (Ellingson Lumber) as a shortcut, and then in Idaho, it points me to a shortcut through the Rotary Park in Caldwell Idaho, which closes at night.

By the way, it says it'll take 137 hours to walk their route.

I tried Bing, but Bing said, "Walking directions are not available for a route of this length. Try driving directions instead."

No, dammit, I want to walk for 137+ hours!

I still stand behind what I said 15 years ago.

I admire lots of styles / archetypes / vernacular designs, but as I told some friends 15 years ago, I am not a romanticist: I am an ultra-modern.

I personally, do not care to contribute to what I consider to be the decontextualization of styles / archetypes / vernacular work, even if others enjoy doing so.  At the same time, I believe that it's perfectly acceptable for people to follow whatever path they wish to go down.  And of course the reality is, most people want you to apply a romanticist vision, not a forward-looking vision, to their projects -- sometimes one can't be an ultra-modern in practice.  Yet, I constantly strive to test new means, new ideas, new materials, new processes.  I'm always looking forward to the newest idea, and I don't think that's such a bad thing.

Therefore, (at least in all intentions) I am, and probably always will be, an ultra-modern.

(I'm trying my best to procrastinate doing my taxes.  I finally got onto Amazon, bought (it's the cheapest way to do it) and downloaded H&R Block Deluxe, installed, updated then imported last year's return, upon which, I found myself on Pinterest and I suddenly felt like writing about being an ultra-modern.)

50 GB of free (promotional) cloud storage via Tresorit.

A new(ish) company called Tresorit is offering 50GB of free, super-secured cloud storage.  (I know, your first question is, is tresor a real word?  Tresor is a German word for vault or safe, not trésor, which would be French for treasure.  I'm assuming of course, that because German is the official minority language (second-most used language) in Hungary, and because this cloud storage is meant to be a secured vault, that the German word was intended.)

I'm actually excited because they use client-side 256-bit AES encryption and a couple other layers of security, so it's impractical -- for the time being -- for anyone to break into their servers and steal your data, then read it.  In fact, if you lose your password, there is no reset and no means to recover it, since they don't store that in some database server -- love that, actually, considering that many cloud companies have faced this problem including Dropbox and Evernote.  Now remember, there are easier ways to steal your data:

Someone could surreptitiously install a keylogger or use an open port for remote access via a trojan horse virus, then just sit back and watch all of your actions on your computer.

So, you could have the most secure cloud storage / sync service in the world, but if your computer is already compromised, it won't do you any good.

I know what you're thinking: Why bother?  Hey, free storage is free storage, especially when it's 50GB worth.  With the several layers of security built in, it's the perfect way to store the most important stuff you have, in the cloud: projects you're currently working on, your business records, etc.

Drawbacks: It's client-side software based, so no browser-based operation, and for the time being it's limited to Windows (no Mac and no mobile apps, yet).  The offer for 50GB free is only good until May 20th, and it's only available through that Lifehacker link or the GigaOm link (it's a download link for the Tresor Windows client).

via Lifehacker / GigaOm

Breaking down Bitcoins as possible currency of the future, in four steps.

I just love reading opinions suggesting that Bitcoin, as a transactional currency, is the future of trade.  I can break down the logic in four steps (and I won't even use the volatility of Bitcoins as an argument!):

1. A Bitcoin's value is meaningless until it is converted to a sovereign currency -- in this case, the US Dollar -- which makes Bitcoins no less fiat than the US Dollar.  If the value of a Bitcoin drops to $0.01 or the real cost of a new car goes up from $20,000 to $30,000, good luck trying to convince someone to sell that new car to you for your 100 Bitcoins.  One of the reasons people proffer for avoiding fiat money, is to avoid inflation; well, too bad because so long as you have to covert it back to a sovereign currency, you'll always have inflation.
2. But if Bitcoins never needed to be converted to a sovereign currency (that is to say that you could live your real life exclusively in Bitcoins), the cap on the total number of Bitcoins means that there is a cap on wealth creation.  That is the antithesis of Capitalism.
1. Some will argue that during the gold standard, there was no cap on wealth creation (and its inverse, wealth destruction).  But they are forgetting that gold, as a commodity no different than oil, was not capped insofar that, when the value of the commodity increased, so did the effort to find more of it; gold was a rare commodity, not capped.  Bitcoin is capped, no exceptions.
2. Others will say that, because there is no inflation, the value of Bitcoins will only go up as demand increases.  True, but what you're getting is deflation.  As the population grows, if one Bitcoin was worth one sandwich, in the future it would be worth two sandwiches, and even further into the future, it would be worth 100 sandwiches.  Before you know it, your income will go from 1000 monthly Bitcoins to 500 Bitcoins to 1 Bitcoin.  Older people who have had the most amount of time in the Bitcoin system that they've horded the most amount of Bitcoins, will be permanently wealthy.
3. But you can't turn Bitcoins into a universal currency, because as it's currently set up, there is no taxation on income -- illegally, of course -- so, in order for Bitcoins to gain relevance as a universal currency, it needs to have a built-in transactional tax, which defeats the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin system, because the transactional tax will require tracking of where the buyer is located, in order for that tax money to follow.
4. So, let's say that some of the smarter folks decide that Bitcoin needs to be adjusted, such that the cap of Bitcoins is eliminated, that a transactional tax (consumption tax) is needed, and, so that there is no currency conversion, all sovereign currencies are eliminated in favor of the Bitcoin.  Now you've got the Euro and the PIIGS.

There you go.

Windows 8's fortunes in 4 charts.

Chart 1: Windows 8's marketshare growth lags behind Windows 7's, tracking from the first month of retail sales for each version of OS.  This chart alone tells you how badly Windows 8 is trailing.  (Note that the first month of retail sales, both OSes already had small market shares (not starting from zero), due to pre-release installs, and even then, Windows 8 preinstalls trailed Windows 7.)

Chart 2: If Windows 8 was merely suffering from a shift to tablets, it didn't show up during Windows 7's marketshare growth.  Note that right up until Windows 8, despite drop in shipments, Windows 7's growth in marketshare continued to increase.  Windows 8 is under attack from more than just tablets.

Chart 3: Mac OSX (implied but not shown) has been eating at total Windows OS marketshare for some time.  Because IDC's numbers are not seasonally adjusted, there is a sharp falloff between each Q4 and the following Q1.  However, over time it's clear that total PC shipments have declined of late, and most of the burden is carried by Windows computer suppliers, indicated by the drop in total Windows OS marketshare.

Chart 4: The concurrent flatline of both Windows 7 and all Windows OSes marketshare in the last six months, in conjunction with the shrinkage of total PC shipments, points to a real shift to tablets.  Note: Windows RT's marketshare does not show up in mobile OS tracking, possibly an indication that it has not yet gained 0.01% global marketshare.  The shift to tablets is a shift away from Microsoft's desktop and tablet operating systems.

Bottom line: Windows 8 and Microsoft's OS ambitions are under attack from many angles.

So, the question is: When XP support ends in April 2014, where will businesses and governments shift to?

It'll likely be split between Windows 7 and 8, and ChromeOS.  A move to Mac OSX will be too difficult a transition for most.  The move to Windows 8's UI, combined with the incrementally higher cost of moving to touchscreen capable devices, would seem to limit Windows 8.  In fact, if new computers are shipped with Windows 8, they might be downgraded to Windows 7.  Since ChromeOS is not much more than a browser as an operating system, it would be extremely easy for people to shift to ChromeOS.

The future is not so bright for Windows 8, even after an 8.1 update.

Data sources: Netmarketshare, IDC

Google's Death Panel. :D

Google's done something that all cloud companies should do: Allow users to control what happens to their data, after a period of inactivity, sometimes known as death.

Via Google's Inactive Account Manager, aka the Death Panel, you're able to set up a living will of sorts, for your cloud data.  You can have your data deleted or not; you can automate emails sent to people notifying them of your departure from Google (or this world), etc.

You can choose the number of months of inactivity (3, 6, 9 or 12 months).  They'll alert you (via SMS) a month in advance that you've been inactive, so that you can stop the automated process from executing your de facto cloud living will.

Nice eh?

Tree falls in the forest: Zynga breaks DrawSomething

Just over a month ago, DrawSomething broke.  It now takes several minutes to load data, and then when it does finally load, you have to wait another several minutes for coins, bombs and colors to show up.  On top of that, sometimes games also lag in loading.

The problem has persisted even though I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app, purging all data.  One time, I left my tablet on (with 75% battery remaining) to wait for DrawSomething to load, and by the time I came back, my tablet had shut down due to low battery levels.

Nearly a month and a half later, it dawned on me: The folks at Zynga may be somewhat clueless to what's going on, and therefore haven't bothered to fix it: If people stop playing, people stop caring / no players, no complaints!

As they say, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, did it really fall?  Likewise, if no one is around to complain, is there really a bug in the software?

I guess it's time for me to leave Zynga's game, too.

The economy is picking up, even as it's being held back.

I don't think it's a coincidence that, within a span of a month, two clients have decided to take a time out and look at expanding the scope of projects.  Followed up by a contractor saying that things really are expanding rapidly that they're looking to hire a handful of people, I'm sure that the economy is picking up.

It seems the message has finally gotten out: Interest rates are at historic lows, and if you're going to borrow money, you better do it now before the party ends and rates go up.

Now, there's no reason to think that the US will escape unaffected from the EU's ongoing recession, the continued shrinking of the federal government payrolls and the sequester -- in effect, the economy is being driven with the parking brake still on -- but as plainly as I can see at night, people seem confident enough about the economy, that they're now going out and spending money.

It's an awful shame that so many people are conspiring to hold back the economy for self-interested political reasons, or from lack of knowledge.

---

On a separate note

Anyone else see the parallels of Paul Krugman 1998 reference to the story about a babysitting co-op that issued a fixed number of scrips for babysitting, and Bitcoin?

The total number of Bitcoin units is fixed.  Over time, as more Bitcoins are "minted", we come closer to that point where this cap is reached.  Since so many people are upset at fiat money, I suggest these folks invest all of their money into Bitcoins -- a de facto gold coin -- not because it makes financial sense, but because they ought to put their money where their mouth is.

Enjoy the ride.

LSC's mass-stabbings: A counterfactual to the idea that guns don't kill people.

It's the same story: A quiet, nice kid who didn't have many friends, fantasized about killing people.  But here's where the story diverges: Instead of shooting people to kill them, he tried to slash and stab them with a box-cutter knife.  Thus, instead of 14 deaths, we have possibly 14 survivors.

Cynically, some people have taken to Twitter to suggest that we have knife background checks.  Well, there's a reason why the TSA has decided to chuck the small knife rule: It's not that easy to kill a lot of people with a small knife.

Put another way: If you are facing 30 zombies, do you want a box cutter with you, or a semiautomatic gun with a 30 ammo clip?  If guns can't kill people (or zombies), then maybe you should choose the box cutter.

The obvious truth is, that while both guns and knives might be used to kill, one is far more efficient in killing.

US Marines don't go to a battle field with box cutters.

SWAT doesn't swarm with box cutters.

Al Qaeda doesn't throw knives at you from 500 feet away.

Chicks with Guns isn't an equivalent meme to Chicks with Knifes.

[Rolling eyes] AT&T's feeble bluff on Google Fiber.

Yesterday, AT&T announced that they were going to bring fiber optic 1 gigabit connections to homes in Austin Texas, the same day that Google officially announced that they were bringing Google Fiber to Austin.  Considering how the rumors were circulating the internet for over a week, it's not entirely shocking that AT&T pulled this stunt.

In their announcement, AT&T remarked that they expected to get the same terms as Google did, and would also bring a free-level internet service to Austin residents.

They can't be serious
AT&T's profit (in this market segment) is based on ISP and add-on services such as TV and phone.  Google's profit is based on ad clicks.  Yes, Google Fiber would rely on the same sort of income as AT&T's fiber network, but again, those clicks add to Google's bottom line, which AT&T does not have.

AT&T's leap into this market race (at least in public relations rhetoric) seems like an attempt to protect its Texas turf, but Google could lower prices below that of AT&T's tolerance level.  Again, it's those ad clicks, and to improve those click opportunities, Google's Fiber TV comes with a free Nexus 7 as a remote control.  You just know that customers will use their Nexus 7 to do a lot of things other than just as a glorified TV remote control.

Finally, ask Verizon why they haven't continued their build-out of FiOS: "Wall Street punished us for investing in FIOS."

It's quite simple: If you're trying to earn a living off the income from that traffic on your pipes, you can't offer it for free without getting punished by Wall Street; if you earn your income on the transactions in that traffic (ad clicks, Wallet, etc), you can offer it for free, and Wall Street will be happy.

Google wins.

Did Jong-Un Kim indirectly says he wants to kill South Koreans?

Well that was odd: Via Reuters, KCNA, the official propaganda machine news agency of North Korea told foreigners to evacuate South Korea, saying that, "It does not want to see foreigners in South Korea fall victim to the war."

He didn't issue a warning for all people to get out; just the foreigners.

So in essence, Jong-Un Kim is saying indirectly, that he wants to kill South Koreans (and of course, Americans, since he's got his missiles pointed at us), but not foreigners, don't you think?

Maybe something was lost in translation, but they've always used some very careful language (even this latest message avoids directly saying that NK will fire the first shot).  This time something does not feel right.

Oh kick ass! T-Mo GS-II Jelly Bean update via Kies!

Exciting!  I read via Android Central that T-Mobile's Samsung Galaxy S-II phones could be updated manually through Samsung's Kies software.  And it turns out, there was an announcement yesterday morning, about an optional update to Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean via Kies, on T-Mobile's support forum.  So I hooked up my phone to my computer, flipped Kies on (which required an update itself), and there it was, ready to download.

But, there was a little (or maybe I should say big?) issue here: The update was 768MB.  In other words, this update was going to take a while.  Easily, thirty minutes or more.

But hey, it's all worth it for two things:

• Project Butter makes everything run smooth.
• Google Now is tons more useful on a phone with 4G, than on a tablet with WiFi.

No kidding, Project Butter made an enormously distinctive difference in the phone's operations.

As usual, there are some great add-ons with Samsung's TouchWiz and the month-calendar widget is a huge improvement over the previous version, and then you have your usual boatload of bloatware.

The worst example of bloat: Samsung's Media Hub, on top of T-Mobile's Music Hub, on top of Google Play Music, in addition to the stock music player.  It's not a matter of choice though, because once you pick one, you can't uninstall the others (except Google Play Music).

Some downside: You have to redo a lot of the modifications (widgets, apps on your screens, lock screen background, etc) to get back to your old setup.

Bought myself an REI folding bike.

Well, I placed my order, just minutes before the 20% off one item coupon had expired.  (Love those coupons by the way...a few times a year they have those 20% off one item coupons.)

This REI Novara FlyBy folding bike has a Shimano Nexus 7 internally-geared hub, so there are fewer parts for the "chain" to get entangled with, and requires very little maintenance.  Best of all, it's made by Dahon, and, a matching Dahon bike costs $799.

With the 20% off coupon, it cost just $479.

By comparison, Citizen Bike's folding Alhambra bike with a Nexus 3 internally-geared hub (3 gears) cost $399, but after shipping / handling, costs $438.  Essentially for another $41 I got an extra four gears, and the REI is just a few blocks from me.  I'd been staring a very long time at the Citizen Bike models, but I couldn't get past the limited 3-gear hub.  In real life, I would use much more than 3 gears.

So what's not to get excited about buying a Dahon bike with an internal 7-gear hub for $479?

A confession: I'm mildly dyslexic with some ADHD tendencies.

Well, to be honest I haven't gone to a doctor for a diagnosis of dyslexia or ADHD, but I do know that my mind is very different from most people's, and I have the tell-tale signs of being dyslexic.  Of course, I could have some other neurological problem -- yikes! -- but like I said, I've had these quirks as far back as I can remember.

For one thing, my mind jumps around all the time, and sometimes it just tries to skip ahead too quickly.  All my life, whenever I've taken a multiple choice test, my mind would know what the answer was, but would scan through the answers and pick the opposite answer, i.e. Fred didn't read carefully as opposed to Fred read carefully.  I'd feel ashamed frequently, for picking the obviously wrong answer.

Have you ever listened to Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach?  The first time I heard this (see embedded YouTube clip), I thought that this might be me.  Let me explain the narration:

The choir counting is the conscious mind counting while staring at the clock (or attempting to process logic); the whispering female voice is the subconscious mind worrying and thinking about all sorts of things; the loud male voice is the willful attempt to get the mind focused on a particular matter.  All this, going off at the same time, would you go crazy?  Well, that's what goes on all the time in my head.



Written logical tests are sometimes difficult, because my brain ends up dissecting each word, and before I know it, I'm trying to figure out what the word "IS" is.  If I stare at some words too long, they start to look foreign.  The next thing I know, my mind is either riffing off variations of words with "IS" in it, or repeating ad nauseum the same, written statement, as it considers how much time is left on the exam.  This is not to say that I can't figure out the logical problem, but that my mind gets cluttered and loses focus on the logical statements, and until I scream at my brain to stop it, I can't get back to figuring out the problem.

Spatially, I could always see things others couldn't.  If you gave me a medium -- clay, wood, plastic, paper, Lincoln Logs, Lego, etc -- I'd build things constantly.  Form mattered to me long before function.

Yes, I too get characters backwards.  It's the oddest thing I tell you, that I'll be typing in a word and I'll switch the placement of different characters around.  I can tell my mind, "Okay you idiot, it's A-L-W-A-Y-S", but my fingers will pop out "A-Y-W-A-L-S" or some variant of that.

No kidding, over the course of this post, I've switched over a two three dozen letters backwards in different words. It's an inevitability, because even though I know how the word is spelled, my fingers will type words backwards.

Speaking is an issue of sorts.  I sometimes do not pronounce words carefully and they come out wrong or blurred together, even when I speak s-l-o-w-l-y.

And why haven't I bothered to get a diagnosis?  Well, because there's no point to it.  I clearly know how to work around my shortcomings, and it does not impede me from doing what I want to do, although I do worry that I might be regressing (doesn't everyone?).  I'm already obsessed with a lifetime of learning and fostering an analytical mind; that's on top of my very high IQ (again, I hope I haven't regressed!).

But don't worry.  I have a fallback in case my dyslexia and ADHD increases: become a beach bum and do nothing but swim, snorkel, sleep, eat, and sell expository writing poetry and drawings.

Why confess?  Because having dyslexia and ADHD isn't the end of the world; in fact, I see it as a gift -- a gift to think different.

Spring showers and Springtime flowers.

It's all-day Spring showers in Portland, but in-between we have Spring flowers, by way of more cherry blossoms.  Also noted: dogwoods are starting to blossom.

Japan: The counterfactual to the EU.

We're well underway of testing two (or more) Conservative counterfactuals:

1. Maintaining a proper debt/GDP ratio is critical to growth.
2. Expanding the monetary supply -- a la quantitative easing -- will entail a rapid and large rise in inflation.

Well, we already know the answers to both, but Conservatives insist that the US' experience is an anomaly due to the US Dollar's preferential treatment as a global currency (oil priced to the USD, etc).

But more so, it would serve to disrupt the importance of creating thresholds of debt/GDP ratios, such as the 60% limit created under the EU's Maastricht Treaty.  And in the United States, it could disrupt and marginalize the Libertarian attack on fiat money -- if smart monetary policy can push economies out of recession / depression, then gold bugs have nothing to stand on.

March 2013 BLS jobs report: Four things you probably didn't know.

The March 2013 BLS employment report is out, and the shocking disappointment is that there were just 88,000 new jobs in March.  And just as I said that Q4-2012 GDP would be revised upward from a negative to a positive number (which it was), so too, I believe that this number will be revised upward.

I'm here to frame this report into the larger picture, in four points:

1. Since January 2010, there have been 8 months with worse employment creation data.
2. The number is about half that of ADP's March 2013 Employment Report of private employment: 158,000.  This gives most people the sense that the BLS number will be revised upward.
3. We might or might not be seeing the effects of sequestration, but the fact remains, we've been on a long downward trend of federal employment -- seasonally adjusted -- for the last several years, excluding the one-time bump of temporary Census workers.  Its percentage of total non-farm employment has also shrunk, faster than at any time in the last 13 years.
4. The total non-farm job growth rate is remarkably similar to that of the mid-2000s.

Why I blog and comment online.

I'm argumentative, without a doubt, but, it's primarily because I want to learn as much as possible from people who know more than I do -- it's very intellectually stimulating!  I mean, I always approach a subject with the belief that I am right, knowing full well that it is subject to nuanced revisions, or total abandonment.

Let me explain.

I'm always stumbling on something that interests me.  Even if it is on the same topic -- say quantitative easing -- there's always some tidbit of information that I might not have considered or known about, previously.  So then I set about researching a position that I think I'd like to adopt.  Sometimes during research, I discover that my hypothesis is wrong, so I abandon the topic and keep that info in the back of my head for future reference.

Or other times I'll come across an assertion that piques my interest, because it either backs up a prior stance
or implausibly flies in the face of what I believe to be true.  Naturally, I examine it closely then research it, test it, and come to some sort of conclusion.

I'll then write down my position, backed up with some of my research, and wait to see if anyone has something to either subtract or add to it.  Over time, repeating this process tends to distill a nuanced but clear belief structure.

For instance, years ago, before the current Second Amendment rights discussion was before us, I formulated a basic idea of my understanding of the issue -- that even under a strict interpretation the US Constitution did not prohibit the regulation of firearms. I then spent many hours researching and reading up on it from all sides, not just that which I agreed with.  And, over the course of a few years, I read up on some differing views and performed additional research on it.  Over time, this developed my carefully nuanced position on the Second Amendment.

I learned to do this in college, decades ago, from this awesome guy.

A huge benefit to all this work is that over time there is a lot of clutter in my head.  I've come to realize that all this seemingly disparate information can frequently be connected to each other, in order to synthesize more complex ideas and theories.  It is a lot more fun when you can see things that others can't, and I'm not talking about hallucinations or tin foil conspiracist paranoia.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

And that's why I blog and comment profusely: I want to have my pudding...I want to be able to see things that most others can't.

I support legalization of marijuana, but I could never partake in a toke...

I already have a non-stop munchies problem.

February 2013 comScore US market share report: Android past its peak?

At some point you knew it might happen: (three) consecutive months of declining market share of Android in the US.  With comScore's February 2013 US smartphone market share report, Apple is outpacing everyone.

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Feb. 2013 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Nov. 2012 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Nov-12	Feb-13	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google	53.7%	51.7%	-2.0
Apple	35.0%	38.9%	3.9
BlackBerry	7.3%	5.4%	-1.9
Microsoft	3.0%	3.2%	0.2

Extrapolating comScore's numbers, Apple had twice as many new subscribers than Google in February, but this is a dramatic turnaround from the previous month, where Apple had 7x as many new subscribers than Google's Android.

Still, if you look over the long haul, it looks as though Android may have hit some sort of peak.

This is where Facebook Home comes in.  With its exclusivity on Android, FH may reverse Apple's growth.  It may not exactly help Google sell ads on Androids, but it will reverse Android's market share decline.

Why Nokia should have moved to Android: Facebook Home

Going back to Stephen Elop's 2011 announcement that Nokia was ditching Symbian for the Windows Phone platform, I've been critical of his reasoning for not hitching up to Android:

"There are already so many companies piling into that space, all doing innovative and interesting things...that it would be hard to stand out amongst them."

Ridiculous, because Amazon and B&N have both shown that you can all but strip away much of the surface and recreate the UI to your liking.  Or as I've previously pointed out, there are many apps which allow you to reskin from top to bottom, your Android phone, which you can see for yourself at mycolorscreen.  Add a few apps and a distinctive shell, and you can build a Neon Genesis Evangelion phone.  If you really have doubts about how easy it is to customize a UI into Android, take a look at Frog Design's work for Sharp Aquos.

Now that we've been introduced to Facebook Home -- which for the most part, is a mirror of what Frog Design had already demonstrated -- can there be any question that Stephen Elop was wrong?

Like Facebook, Nokia could have asserted and integrated its own lineup of apps and UI layers into their phones.  With Windows Phone, you really don't have that opportunity because you're forced to operate within the static nature of Live Tiles and UI motions.

Yippee! Got my (refurb'd) wireless keyboard!

My refurbished wireless Logitech K360 keyboard arrived today.  It took some time, but after downloading the unifying receiver software, I was able to get the new keyboard up and running.

Best part of this, was that I decided to see if my current wireless Logitech M310 mouse could also work off the unifying receiver, and it does!  Now I don't have to worry about a thing if/when I move to the next workstation, or want to move to and from my laptop and workstation...just plug and play with one wireless receiver.

Now, I just need to buy another mouse (for backup) and link it too.  I even have one in mind.  How crazy is it, to have a complete wireless mouse and keyboard for $25?

Life is purdy good.  :)

Spring 2013: Cherry blossoms at night.

I had a desire to try this out last night. Armed with a telephoto lens and flash, I took photos of some cherry blossoms at night, from about 7 feet away.

Here's a couple of them, after Photoshopping (got up the HDR tinting and boosted the contrast and colors during RAW conversion)...just to play around.