Mathematicians and their insane symbology

First of all, mathematicians never use descriptive names in their formulae.  They use letters, often starting with greek letters, then when they have exhausted all the greek letters they pull out other letters from other languages.

Most of us don't have keyboards with all those letters, or that can even reproduce them easily.  Let alone having learned them or not.  Sometimes the letters are barely distinguishable from other letters in the same formula, from another language perhaps.  And the names don't have meaning to the uninitiated, though that part may be the least bad, as over time one becomes so used to the greek letter, or whatever, that the technical name is barely used anymore or maybe even never well learned.  So it is with sigma, rho, and a few others, at least for me.

Then the letters can have an endless variety of qualifying marks, little hats, tick marks at varying angles, circles, crosses, bolded crosses, dots, underlines.  Then you can have subscripting, superscripting, repeated superscripting.

This of course provides a way to make the most complicated formulae compact.  It enables symbolic operations, and writing things down with variations to get at some end (though mathematicians and many math books forgo many if not all intermediate steps anyway).

So it may indeed be good, in most ways, for the professional, for it to be like this.

It's generally not good for explaining things to people who are not professional mathematicians.

The Missing Today

I think I see what's happening.  It's 2:30 am Monday and the low expected in the next 12 hours is 34F, around 6am, according to the projected temperature graph (and yesterday's forecast of "today", as of 11pm).

But you wouldn't know that looking at the "Today" projections at Weather Underground.  It predicts a low of 41F.  Which is what the graph says it will be at around 6am on Tuesday.

OK, so that fits the intuitive notion of "today" (though I don't see that spelled out) meaning that the low is in the night following the day. But what about the projected low in the next 3 hours, that was "Today" until 11 am.  Then at midnight, Today became Yesterday, but Yesterday seems to show a low of 36, which may have been the low on Saturday morning at 6am.

So in my view it's OK to have an intuitive notion of day, and in fact I'd start each day at 6am.  But if you start doing that sort of thing, you ought to be consistent or else "Today" disappears within a certain range of hours, as it has right now.

Tale of Two Spell Checkers

The spell checker in the Mac Mail tool that I use at work is constantly changing the technical terms I use (in my work) into other words, fundamentally destroying what I am attempting to communicate.  It does this automatically requiring an explicit click to defeat (requiring a reach for the mouse--a big nuisance when you have two hands on keyboard) and I sometimes overlook this.  No matter how many times I use a particular term unknown to it (which could be a private or common acronym, a computer language command, or an esoteric concept word) the spell checker never learns.  Even when the technical terms I use are in all letters, and may actually be valid if obscure english words, and I use them frequently, they aren't remembered.  Right now, typing into Blogger from another Mac, a similar if not identical checker seems to be working, so maybe it's Mac specific rather than tool specific (now I am using Safari, into Blogger).  I recall the spell checker in my iPhone working similarly, but it wasn't as much a nuisance with that, since I am rarely giving technical support via phone, and even if I did it would be very short.  Actually, on the phone, where misspelling was far too easy compared with keyboard at work, an aggressive spell checker with limited vocabulary may have been ideal.

The spell checker in my Android based Samsung Galaxy S4 message tool seems much different, and very inconveniently so in a different way.  It seems to have pre-memorized all the typical mistakes made on an Android keyboard, and added them to an official word list.  Especially, on the tiny keyboard, it's all too easy to type a number when you mean a letter.  So for example I am trying to enter "work" but enter "2ork" instead.  Then it doesn't show "work" as a correction choice (factoring in the proximity of numbers to the top row of letters).  It shows me 2ork (what I just entered wrongly!) 23rd, and 20th.  On the longer list of possibilities, not even one starts with a w, the letter right below 2 on the keyboard.  I've often entered digits invalidly in words and had the message tool checker give me all similar looking nonsense choices with digits in the middle of words.  And the same is true with many all-letter misspellings as well.  The choices I am offered are all horribly misspelled words--most often not sounding like any acronym I've ever heard.  And when one of my horribly misspelled words goes through (as happens all too often) I believe it will be around to haunt me even more in the future as a spell checker preferred choice.

And as it happens, the Galaxy S4 mail tool keyboard (portrait mode) has the spell corrected words just above the numbers…so I might just type another number when I intended to choose a spelling correction to a word with one number.  And then I will get only nonsense choices, with two or more numbers in them, or perhaps only just what I entered.  How useful is that?

As with so many computer "conveniences" one wonders how much the designers actually used these designs before foisting them on the public.  Or how many kinds of other people they got feedback from in refining the design.  It seems often that flaws in technical products should have been noticed and corrected in the very first prototype.  Or not made in the first place by a thoughtful designer.

But then if designs are created only from the top down, from directives like "make a spell checker which learns new words and presents choices", without much further thought or testing on the part of the designers and others working from that directive, we might get these kinds of deeply flawed products.

Fun not FUD !

Fun not FUD!

Bread having seeds should have warning label

I always go for the most whole wheat of breads as they are the most healthy.  But in the healthy spectrum of bread, something that's all too popularly sold in my opinion is bread with seeds.  Somehow seeds are supposed to be associated with something healthy.  But I have never heard that seeds are an essential part of diet, they may not be well digested, and they get stuck in teeth (that happens to me a lot).

Every once in awhile I find myself buying bread with seeds because it's not necessarily clear from the packaging which bread has seeds and which doesn't.  Then, when I do, about 4 days later I have serious gum pain which lasts for days even if I remember to cut out the bread with seeds.

Since they don't much advertise which breads have seeds and which don't, or even have any markings on the packaging, it seems like the plan is to dump seeds on customers, as though they were some waste product which is most profitably discharged by mixing it with the product sold.

My latest mistake was "Oroweat 12 Grains" whose seeds made my gums hurt in 3 days.  I don't see that it warns about seeds anywhere on the package.  My usual bread is Oroweat 100% Whole Wheat.  Oroweat used to make their top 100% Whole Wheat bread with Stone Ground Whole Wheat, but this has disappeared in the list of ingredients.  Still, the bread has texture more like stone ground than most.  A doctor in 1973 advised me to always find "the real whole wheat, stone ground whole wheat."  And by now that is not easy anymore.

3rd time's the charm, maybe

I had to enter this review at yellowpages.com three times (wrt Taco Cabana, 1255 NE Loop 410, San Antonio).

Worst T.C. Experience. Long line, then other clerk had to be called for alcohol. I was told wait would be too long for steak fajita so I ordered chicken fajita tacos instead. 15 minutes after ordering, I was told no more chicken fajita, would I be OK with shredded chicken. 4 minutes later the shredded chicken was more like sauce with a few strands of chicken and only one small piece of actual chicken in two tacos. I had long wait in this store last year when no one else present. A friend says they do table delivery so as to hire fewer cooks. Other stores in S.A. have been better.

I went to YP to enter a review, and I conveniently saw they had a box for me to enter a review, so I started typing.  After review added, I clicked to publish.  Only then it asked for identity.  I wasn't sure if I had a YP identity but I do have Facebook identity, so I chose that.  Facebook asked me to log in.  I typed in the wrong password (I recall I had to change it this year, and I don't use Facebook much).  So then I came to an error page,  Refresh page only showed the same error page.

So I started all over, doing the Google search, seeing the YellowPages.com link near the top, searching for Taco Cabana's in San Antonio, etc.  Finally I entered the review in all over again.  But just before I was done checking it, a friend called.  She graciously agreed to call back in 5 minutes.  I finished the review and clicked publish again, and this time it took me to a page saying I already had a YP identity, would I like to merge that with my Facebook identity?  I clicked yes, but once again, that lead to a lost review and no way of getting back to the review page.

I only knew the review was lost because I did the restaurant search all over again, and sure enough my review wasn't there.  So I entered it a third time, clicked publish, and this time it did immediately appear on top of the reviews on the review page, which was being shown.

I could have cut the review into my Mac, which I finally did remember to do the third time, when everything worked.  I've had these hassles so many times wherever you are allowed/required to write text into a dialog box, it gets tossed at some later stage.  But I'm concentrating on my content, trying to get that right, not perusing the rulebook of coping with web interfaces.

But how about this: when you click publish you stay on the publication page, with the text editor open and everything.  Pop up boxes in new windows or tabs lead you through the identification process.  No matter what happens there, unless you have to restart the browser, you can go back to your original writing.

OR, force you to navigate the identification process upfront, before you've wasted 15 minutes writing a review which got lost in cyberspace…

By the time I had the review posted it had been more like 10 minutes and my friend still hadn't called back.  So I waited another 3 minutes and called back.  Perhaps I shouldn't have made her wait at all, but she was very happy to hear I had posted the review, she was there too and had originally suggested I contact Taco Cabana about our awful experience.  I read the review to her and she would have added something about the food being too salty.  Then we talked lovingly for 45 minutes about such things as a program she was watching about Otters in Monterrey California being saved, how little she said she had gotten done that day, and how much alcohol I was drinking (not much, btw, half glass of beer in the afternoon and half glass of wine started just then).

Smartphones are NOT the best home controllers

More and more home automation systems are pushing smartphones as home controllers.  This has absolutely no appeal for me.

Dedicated home controllers are more convenient because you do not first have to open and/or authenticate your smartphone.  Though I have only the minimum swipe-to-open on my Android phone (and it's actually a pain, not just any swipe will do, I often have to swipe 2 or 3 times, and sometimes more, to get it to actually open).  Then, you have to scroll to your home control application, and open it.  Finally you may have to navigate to get to the particular room or device you actually want to control.

And I should also mention, though perhaps it's just me, that before any of that you actually have to find your smartphone.  And sometimes that is a considerable challenge.

Dedicated home controllers, by contrast, are usually best just left in a convenient spot to control the things you want to control in that room.  Therefore the controls are localized to the room, and always available in the right place, ready to go, with often as little as one button push to start some action.

I was very saddened to find out that Sonos had discontinued making any handheld controllers.  It was the cool color LCD screened Sonos remote that brought me to choose Sonos in the first place.  Thankfully I picked up a nice controller on eBay.

OS Upgrades are really Downgrades

When a computer OS creator comes out with a new version, you can be absolutely certain it is even more complex than the previous one.  You can also be fairly certain that running on the same hardware it is going to be slower (though, often end-of-life updates for the older version also add in that slowness, so the brand new version may be slightly faster than a fully updated old version).  And, most important to me, a person who likes to do things in my own ways, OS upgrades nearly always create a system which is less transparent.  The curtains behind which the inner wizard resides get heavier and heavier to the point where mere mortals cannot pull them back any more.  And we can be fairly sure that was the whole point, as far as the OS creator is concerned.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen this, and I'm sick of it.

Slow Motion

As a viewer of erotic films, slow motion is one of my favorite features.  When it comes to anything erotic or fantastic, the ability to slow down and examine or savor each frame instant feels godlike…and that's the feeling you want.

As time has gone on, the technology to deliver slow motion video has improved immensely; now it is no longer to design complex video tape head geometries or motions to achieve it.  (An aside: the beta video recording system seems particularly superior to vhs in being able to be changed in direction and run in reverse at any speed even normal speed.  I thought this derived from the head design.  I always hoped beta would triumph for that reason alone.)

But as it has become technically rather trivial to have slow motion, almost equally it has become clumsy, hard to find, limited, or unavailable.  I wonder if design of video viewing programs isn't being directed by uncompromising antiporns or some other kind of spoil sports.

I have long felt that the ultimate super beta machine, the Sony 900, had the best remote control for slow motion, with direction buttons flanking the pause button.  At the time it seemed so amazing to have slow motion forwards and backwards, and the 1/5 speed was quite a nice compromise single speed.  (One of the Pioneer Laserdisk machines may have done it one better with a bunch of speeds conveniently selectable on the remote).  Then came the cool looking jog shuttle wheel systems…but guess what.  You now had to hold the control just so to shuttle at a slower speed.  Believe me this becomes very inconvenient for one-handed operation.  Those antiporns were just beginning to exert their will.

Now we have picture viewers on computer screens where similarly you can get slow motion at any conceivable speed, so long as you are willing to hold your hand just so (or sometimes two).  So now I'd have to hire somebody to keep the slow motion going.

Slow motion is one of the reasons that stand alone video devices like vcrs and the later hard drive (sometimes with dvd recorder) devices are superior to computer systems.  And it's ironic, because hard drive recorders, like my new wonderful Pioneer DVR-LX70, is really just a computer with a dvd drive.

But it seems that the czars who design computer operating systems, and especially Steve Jobs, had a strong anti-hedonic streak.  None of the Mac facilities are nice for being a lazy godlike viewer of it all.  They all seem to be tailored into making you into a nerd, a curator, or gasp a creator of new work.  Passive one-handed (or half-handed) browsing, viewing, scanning, and slowing?  Forget it!  And tablets further this direction.  A laptop is superior for viewing erotic pictures precisely because it holds up it's own screen at an adjustable angle.  Normally you hold a tablet, that's using up a whole hand, which could be useful for doing something else.  Now I would have realized this immediately, and never bothered to make as useless a machine as a tablet.  (I also hate that tablets lack real keyboards, and seem them as inherently closed systems, intended to make you a slave, dependent on the masters to do the real programming.  But that's another matter.)

Now the Pioneer does my old Sony RDR-HX900 (passable in the UI department, I had nothing but complaints about it's clunky user interface until I realized I had the end of the line in such devices…Sony no longer imports an untethered consumer video recording device to the USA, selling a whole household of Blu Ray recorders in other countries only) a bit better.  The slow motion keys the Pioneer can be engaged immediately from play (instead of pausing first) and don't have to be held down for an uncertain amount of time to engage the slow motion (because otherwise you could simply be using the same keys to signify frame advance).  Plus, the Pioneer has 4 slow motion speeds and even does regular speed--in reverse.  (WHY was that so impossible to do, even with DVD drives turning many times as fast as necessary?  I smell antihedonic conspiracy again.)

The disappearing DVR

One of the most popular categories of electronic equipment has been recording devices, audio and video.  As time has gone on, these recording devices have been disappearing.  I believe that most of this disappearance is driven by content aggregators (record companies, movie companies) and not actually consumer disinterest.  Much of this is out in the open, for example, the Digitial Millennium Copyright Act and the people who lobbied for it.  But once there are laws like DMCA, electronics companies that used to push the letter of the law in selling copying devices, now shrank back into selling only in non-US markets, professional devices, etc.  And given that many of the "standards" used in AV are proprietary, no manufacturer wants to offend the standards-owners.  Etc.  There is more than just fear of law enforcement here.  There is fear of and cooperation among different companies.

The great example of this is Sony, the electronics AND media mogul.  They were among the first to push video recording with Beta (and Super Beta and ED Beta) video recorders, starting in the 1970's.  Now they don't sell any consumer video recorders in US markets.  They do make a reportedly excellent line of  Blu Ray recorders, such as the BDZ-EX200, but none of them are sold in the USA.  Sony wants the movie studios (and they own lots of movie studios too) to use Blu Ray, so they want to make movie companies feel their properties aren't going to get copied.  Of course it's not only illegal to copy a Blu Ray movie on a Blu Ray recorder, it's technically impossible.  You are locked out of copying protected data by all digital copying devices.  But that doesn't seem to be enough for the studios and the standards owners who cater to them.  They seem to want you not to think about copying anything.

You won't find many Blu Ray recorders in the USA actually.  The least expensive one I know of is the JVC SR-HD1250, which now sells for about $1000.  This is, of course, a "professional" model.  JVC makes two other models which sell for $2500 and $3500.  Panasonic makes a line of consumer recorders, but as with Sony they are not available in the USA or compatible with US standards.

Funny because it wasn't that long ago that many companies made DVD recorders.  Of course DVD is not a standard owned by a single giant media company.  It's not exactly an open standard, but it's far more open that a strictly proprietary standard like Blu Ray.  Sony quit selling DVD recorders in the USA first, ending with their great RDR-HX900 in the USA.  I bought one of those in 2005, and when it started to have problems in 2010 I first looked to Sony for a replacement.  Then I looked to anyone for a replacement.  Finally I decided I had a limited edition classic and I should just keep fixing it forever.  It wasn't long after Sony stopped selling these units that they stopped selling the unique DVD drive it uses, which seems to go bad in a few years.  And if you've been inside one of these units trying to fix it, you strongly get the feeling the whole thing was specifically engineered to be difficult to repair.

Of course, Sony wants you to believe that DVD is old shit, and you should move on to Blu Ray, so perhaps it was understandable that Sony would stop selling DVD recorders first.  But other manufacturers gradually followed, and now there is only one company (Funai) selling a standalone DVD recorder in the USA (under the Magnavox brand name, which they now own).  That unit is available in three hard drive capacities, with the largest being the MDR537H/F7.  It is an 8th generation DVD recorder from Magnavox and people fear it may be the last.  It is very reasonably priced and I'm buying one right now.