Got Google Music?

Since last week's move to offer free, ad-supported radio streaming, I've been enjoying dozens of hours of listening of Google Music's radio. After spending about 15 minutes of providing input on musical tastes (selecting artists) Google Music threw out a bunch of curated (from Songza) stations to stream. Here are my favorites that I've added to my personal library:

Jazz for Reading -- Down tempo jazz for chilling out. I use it as background music for doing anything and everything. Seems like it'd be perfect for a cafe, too.

Lazy Summer Radio -- This one features 60s and 70s mellow tunes, but not exclusively. It's perfect for Sunday mornings in the summer.

Celebrate Good Times! Radio -- It's a collection of classic party tunes, centered in the 70s through the 90s.

Bust a Move Radio -- Club dance music classics from the 80s on forward. Skip the DJ and just stream this station into your loudspeaker.

Arthur Lyman Radio -- If I need to explain who Arthur Lyman is, you're not hip enough to appreciate this sort of lounge music that goes well with tiki torches.

The Crystal Method Radio -- Love Crystal Method and electronic.

Bon Bon Radio -- This one is a lot of fun. If you can understand Pitbull, Far East Movement and The Black Eyed Peas mashed up, then you'll appreciate this station. Lots of energy.

If you've noticed, there's no classical radio station in my list. Their classical listings are tougher to figure out. 

I don't really want to listen to a station mixing Debussy and Beethoven -- talk about mixed periods and emotions. If I want symphonic band music and search for Frederick Fennell, I get a hodge podge of stuff from his studio orchestra days mixed in.

Heck, they don't even have a station dedicated to classical music for Halloween; who doesn't want a station with O Fortuna (from Carmina Burana) mixed with Night on Bald Mountain, George Crumb's Black Angels, Bach's Toccata and Fugue and Dream of the Night of the Sabbath from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique?

Well, I made my own YouTube playlist, called the Classical Halloween. :D

Aurora watching in Portland.

I probably drove out an hour too late, trying to scrounge up my wireless remote shutter release. I got out to Sauvie Island around 1:45 am; it's all about the adventure, right? Instead of going straight off the bridge, I instead turned left to make a loop, just so that I could drive along the section of the island that was flat and all farmland, hoping to see if the lights were bright enough to view. Instead, I got treated to two deer grazing off to the side of the road and a jack rabbit running across.

Finally, I reached the spot that I more or less figured I'd settle in on, and take some photos. It's normally a bird sanctuary viewing spot, but it happens to be one of the rare areas on the island with an actual area to park your car, when the park section is closed. Never mind that, apparently across the street is a home with three or four dogs, and won't stop barking if they think you're out there.

Anyway, I set up the gear, and settled in to take some photos, only problem is, it was still too bright in the sky to actually see anything. Or so I thought.

You've seen photos of auroras. What I actually experienced while being in an area still too close to town to be really dark, was a handful of shimmering flashes of a tiny wave of light. There was no possible means of capturing that flash of light waves, as they were too short and too dim. Instead, I had to adjust from 1600 ISO to 6400 ISO, and did longer exposures, in the range of a minute to nearly five minutes. It was only then that I could see, that in fact there was a faint aurora visible, in the purple - pink range.

Another cool thing I found out, was that I was pointed towards the north star, as the longest exposure -- 5 minutes -- showed the rotation around it.

Anyway, long story short, I did capture some tiny part of the aurora, and probably could have done better if I had taken the time to drive out to Mt. Hood or Mt. St. Helen areas, but hey, now I know what it takes to capture the aurora on camera.

If you want to see higher resolution photos (medium resolution, not the highest setting) you can check them out in my Flickr album.

Huge opportunity for aurora sighting, June 22, 2015.

In the next few hours, you're definitely going to want to go outside and check out the skies above Portland Oregon, as a very strong geomagnetic storm is in progress and at its peak, at the right time: NOW. And since it's clear, we're talking perfect opportunity!

If you're anywhere in Canada, stick your head out of the window!

The difference between Android Pay and Google Wallet.

Ever since the announcement of Android Pay, it has stuck in my crawl that people somehow think that Android Pay is Google's response to Apple Pay. Even the tech media keeps repeating the same line, that somehow Android Pay is Google's answer to Apple Pay.

Google Wallet has been available for the last three years, and the only differences between Android Pay and Google Wallet, is that Google has decided to change the API to its payment system and isolate fund transfers to its Wallet. Before Android Pay, apps had access to Google Wallet API; take for instance Newegg.

On the desktop, Newegg's checkout allows you to use your Google Wallet.

And on its mobile app from the Play Store, you can use Google Wallet to pay for your cart.

In both cases I'm purchasing a set of 2x8GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM. With the mobile app, the discount code was automatically applied, whereas the desktop website did not. The takeaway here, is that contrary to any BS you might have read elsewhere, apps and websites alike already had a Google Wallet API to use.

So why the change in the API?

With Apple Pay, your financial institution must support Apple Pay; with Google Wallet, you can add anyone's credit or debit card or bank account, period. It goes back to how Apple Pay is set up to make those wireless payments, via tokenization, whereas Google Wallet issues a temporary card number for each transaction.

In moving from Google Wallet to Android Pay, instead of relying on a temporary card number for each transaction, Android Pay will go the route of Apple Pay, and use tokenization, thus requiring the support of each financial institution.

At this point, I can only offer speculation as to why Google would want to limit its ecosystem to financial institutions who support Android Pay, but it appears that it was a concession of sorts, in order to shut down Isis / Softcard, when Google bought them out. I obviously think that it's a bad idea to require the support of institutions when you can bypass them, and according to the WSJ, those institutions (Visa / MC) are using their heft to block Google from getting a cut in the share of the mobile payment transaction fees.

In other words, Google got PWND by the system, and we're about to get a lame (re: Apple) payment system, where you'll have to wait to participate, if you use a credit union or regional bank.

10 Thoughts for June 11, 2015

1. You must absolutely read this story about the independent reporter, whose work and actions were at the center of how the FBI was able to shake the FIFA tree. This is what Journalism really is about. Of course, there's also John Oliver, whose public takedown of FIFA was so impressive and popular, one can't help but give him some credit for Sepp Blatter's resignation.
2. Test your ears. Out of the six samples, I was able to correctly identify four as the uncompressed track, and the other two were 320Kbps. I can pick out the 128 Kbps samples, fairly easily; it's the 320Kbps and uncompressed ones that are much more difficult to discern. I archived my CDs into uncompressed FLAC, but most of the time I'm streaming my library -- via Google Music -- at 320Kbps.
3. Stories like this one, are why you can't trust what the news media often says. What the US Office of Personnel Management had was a breach; what the IRS experienced was fraud. The two are not similar. One can be resolved fairly quickly with much fewer repercussions, while the other is going to stick around for a very long time.
4. Over a month ago, my mother didn't know which was she was going to vote on the NEE buyout of HEI. I told her that either way, she should sell half her stock to lock in the gains that came with the initial buyout announcement. This way, if the buyout failed, she would have realized a profit that could then buy new shares at the lowered price, and if the buyout succeeded, the share price would only increase to roughly the buyout price, allowing her to get buy the shares back with a modest cost. I don't think she paid any attention to my advice, though. Well, the turnout for the vote was poor, and they failed to meet the minimum stock buyout vote required, so they extended the voting period, and finally got shareholder approval. Exactly as I said, there was no jump in the stock price as the buyout offer was pretty much the cap on the stock price.
5. I saw this one morning this week and thought to myself, why didn't someone locate the overflow downspout at the column? Locating it over a window just seems like asking for trouble. But also, notice how the downspout could have had a chain attached to it, to flow into the hanging basket? Two stones.
6. Sticking with photos, have you ever seen up close, the flowering dogwood's flower? Very fascinating structure, I think -- it's like a bunch of flowers within a flower.
7. I thought that I had fixed my Nexus 5 battery issues; apparently not. The camera-battery flaw remains with me, but now, instead of shutting down and showing roughly 4% battery left, it now shuts down and won't allow me to restart without first plugging it into a power source. The other day it just shut down, and when I plugged it back in, I had well over 80% battery left. So you're going to laugh: The makeshift solution is to carry a portable (external) battery pack to plug in, just so that I can reboot while outside. I bought (and received today) a Motorola P893 Portable Battery Pack. It works out fairly well for me, because it means that I can recharge my headset on the go, too.
8. So, the Mi store finally had things in stock, available for purchase. And so I thought I'd try to put stuff in my cart and see how much the shipping would cost. My eyes nearly popped out. For the two items in my cart which totaled $94, the shipping was $41! I then removed one item -- the Mi headphones -- and kept just the Mi Band, which cost $14.99, but then I checked the shipping and the shipping was *more*, at $15.99! Yikes...I tossed out the Mi Band and logged out. If you're charging more for shipping than the item you're selling, you've got logistics issues and need to open a physical warehouse in the US so that you can ship in bulk.
9. The USPS main office in downtown Portland has curtailed its PO Box counter hours to standard working hours, which means that if you work normal hours, you have very tiny windows to grab any package they're holding onto. Suddenly, having a PO Box at this branch seems worth a lot less than what I've paid for, yet the prices have increased.
10. One of the things I bought (and just received) in the past few weeks, was this Aukey Portable Wireless Bluetooth 3.0. It's a receiver you can attach to your car stereo, or speaker, or headphones; in other words, it's versatile. I'm using it to connect my desktop and other devices to my AV stereo, so that I can listen without having to use my Chromecast which would require having the TV on. Less power use, greater flexibility, given that I can do it without an internet connection.
    

10 Thoughts for June 2, 2015

1. Google Cardboard 2.0 came out. On the same day, I ordered a bunch of them from Unofficial Cardboard's website, with the adjustable PD, for $19.95. It currently says, "Ships by June 15", but when I ordered it, it said it would ship by the 11th -- shows just how popular it is. I was going to buy a Cardboard based on the original design from last year, from Amazon, until I read an article suggesting that 2.0 was coming out. Good thing I waited. I've previously mentioned that I've tried out Oculus' VR headset. That hasn't yet been released for sale, but in the meantime Google has now pumped out two versions of a VR headset. 
2. Speaking of VR and Google Cardboard, Google also previewed an open platform, Jump, to allow anyone to produce immersive 360° video / photo VR. The rig includes 16 specialty GoPro cameras and utilizes software to splice together the images to produce depth perception. This gets me excited; very soon, we'll be able to design buildings and objects with VR, on the cheap, as a primary tool.
3. My Nexus 7 (2012) tablet got its 5.1.1 update just a few days ago, while my Nexus 5 got it a few days earlier. It seems that the rollout is being pushed out faster. Previously, the gap was a couple of weeks between my two devices. There's a rumor that Nexus devices will be limited in updates to a max of 2 years, once Android M is released. I'm curious if they hold steadfast on that one, but right now Google's policy is, "Nexus devices may not receive the latest version of Android if they fall outside of the update window, which is usually around 18 months after a device has been released." At some point after the updates end on my Nexus 7, I might load CyanogenMod onto it; mind you, once you go with a custom ROM, you lose access to Google Play Store and Google apps, which must then be sideloaded from other sources.
4. I now have a special setup with my work space. On my main screen is my trusty old 24" monitor attached to my i7-4790 rig as my main work station, and to my side, sitting on a 42" high rig (IKEA desk + legs + wall support) is my 4 year old lappy, and my 12.2" tablet in-between the two. Think of it as an alternative to a multi-monitor rig, but with the benefit of using multiple CPUs that won't slow down with the workload. I still have to unload all the stuff from my old Xeon workstation, so that's still sitting to the left of me, taking up space.
5. The Ebola outbreak is probably within a few more weeks of reaching its end. The number of new cases -- 80 -- and new deaths -- 11 -- over the past week, is the lowest since last summer, and is rapidly falling. At its height in December, there were separately 1210 new cases and 673 deaths in a week. If you add up all of the cases and deaths from all previous outbreaks, it doesn't come close to the current outbreak. This outbreak will be researched for decades.
6. Earlier this week, NOAA issued a prediction that central Pacific (Hawaii) would have an above-average hurricane season, with 7-8 tropical cyclones. If you take a glance at the sea surface temperatures, you can clearly see an El Nino (note: the link is to a constantly updated png) pattern setting up. Current temperatures off Hawaii (southern shores) are roughly 27°C, or about 2 degrees warmer than average.
7. Nonstick woks are an oxymoron. The nonstick surface is damaged at the optimal heat for stir-frying. Just buy a cast-iron / iron wok and treat it well.
8. I just ordered a ream of 11x17 copy paper from Amazon. I tried in vain to find it locally (via website) at Staples and Office Depot, but what they had in-store was their own brand, and it cost $4 more. If you wanted to buy cheaper (and better) paper, you had to order at least $50 worth of goods. Amazon had lower prices on paper, and a lower threshold for free shipping.
9. Yes Virginia, the Russian Internet Troll Army exists.
10. You know, I had a suspicion that our government was conducting some sort of surveillance, when at night, I'd see a single plane circle overhead a dozen or so times in roughly the same area. I had never seen this in the day, but within the last 3-4 years I had seen this plane circling at night, at least 5 times. Now I know that it really was government spying.