Ghost Goblets: Wine Glasses inside Tumblers
You have to check out these wine glasses from Cocktail Vibe. A set of four handblown glasses can be bought for just $74.95; the unique design features a glass sculpture holding your drink inside of a clear tumber; absolutely unique!
I know the above reads like ad copy, but these are the most innovative glasses I’ve seen in a while. SO COOL!!
Las Vegas Photos
I recently went on a short weekend vacation in Las Vegas, and while I was there I took a few photos for you to enjoy. Here are the ones that came out best, the highlights as I’d like to call them. You can download high resolution versions from Flickr, if you like.
The Mirage casino, advertising the Cirque du Soleil “The Beatles Love” show.
Circus Circus’ high flying trapeze act, visible from the gaming floor!
The Ibis was spotted at the Flamingo, trying hard to blend in.
The Flamingo, as seen reflected off the inner courtyard, which has very shiny windows.
My girlfriend, Wendy, got the 007 reference and made the appropriate and cute action for this shot of Casino Royale!
Wendy and her mother posing in front of a shopping center fountain.
A beautiful sculpture/fountain at Caesar’s Palace.
High-voltage power lines fanning out from Hoover Dam.
Las Vegas isn’t France, but Paris Las Vegas has an Eiffel Tower replica.
A gaming table at Circus Circus.
Wendy’s Uncle and I at the Flamingo courtyard.
Some Joshua Tree near the Grand Canyon.
Hoover Dam and Lake Meade; it’s amazing how far the water level has fallen (the white marks) since it was created.
Wendy at the Grand Canyon west rim.
We went on the skywalk here, an interesting experience given that I’m terrified of heights–but Wendy loved it.
Twitter is Shared Perception, Not Science
Today’s post by Robert Scoble on the earthquake that rocked China brings out an important distinction about the nature of a distributed messenging service like Twitter. Scoble eulogizes over the speed of information delivery in his post, thrilled that he knew about the earthquake 50 miles from Chengdu three minutes before anyone else did:
I reported the major quake to my followers on Twitter before the USGS Website had a report up and about an hour before CNN or major press started talking about it. […] Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT WAS GOING ON!!!
While this is a great leap in keeping the world informed about what is going on in any part of it literally at the speed of light, what Twitter does is let you share perception and opinion with the rest of the world. This is different than sharing facts about what is going on. For example, the USGS report which came out three minutes after Chinese citizens began twittering that there was seismic activity, is full of precise details:
Magnitude: 7.9
Monday, May 12, 2008 at 06:28:00 UTCLocation: 31.099°N, 103.279°E
Depth: 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region: EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA
Distances 90 km (55 miles) WNW of Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Location Uncertainty: horizontal +/- 5.8 km (3.6 miles); depth fixed by location program
Event ID: us2008ryan
If you look at Robert Scoble’s twitter stream, what you get instead is a succession of misinformation, subsequent corrections, noise, predictions of doom, and frenzy:
- 06:37:49 - @dtan just reported an earthquake in Beijing. Wonder how large it is?
- 06:40:50 - @keso reported earthquake too. @dtan said it lasted 10 seconds. I’d guess it’s a 4.5 then.
- 06:41:21 - @michaelrice says it was a 7.8.
- 06:44:14 - @gaberivera says it’s 57 miles from Chengdu, which has 11 million residents.
- 06:57:46 - @jwalkerjr says to hold off on predictions. Well, I need to pass along my experience with earthquakes. This is a HUGE one.
- 07:15:20 - @casperodj just said it felt like the earth was going to split. Literally everything was shaking.
- For more just wade through the mud…
To his credit, you can get an impression of the event, as seen through his and others’ eyes. You can get an idea of the scope, and the impact it has had on people around the world. But, you can’t get trustworthy facts from listen to what the general public is saying in the face of a disaster. A calm rationality is needed that Twitter cannot provide.
Still, Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC is holding out hope that Twitter can mature into a real-time news service:
Let’s see, as this story unfolds, whether this is the moment when Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news event than traditional media, while allowing participants and onlookers to share their experiences.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen. Twitter is fast, and it will let you share your experiences, but it will never replace solid journalism and hard facts. What do you think?
Phillyist’s Math Problems
Their article on city corruption, Audit Reveals City Employees Stole $21 Million Worth Of Office Supplies, came through my feed reader, but since leaving a comment requires registration, I’ll just do it here instead:
Let’s say it’s 100 cell phones, with each cell phone costing $199. That comes out to $19,900. Now let’s say 100 employees did the same thing. That comes to $190,000. Wow!
By my math, 10^4 * $199 is $1.99M. Sorry, Don Montrey and the Phillyist, this kind of mathematical typo is simply unforgivable. It’s why “journalist” is a term that applies to someone working with editorial oversight to catch and prevent these sorts of stupid errors, and why bloggers simply aren’t there yet.
Update: I should have toned down the weekend snark, as you can see from the comments, I neglected a power of ten (wrote 10^3) in my correction, although the sum did come out ok. I guess we all need editors.
Sony’s Warranty Support Review
Sony support doesn’t suck, but having experienced it for the first time, I have to say it’s not as good as Dell’s. It started almost 3 years ago, in the fall of 2005, when I bought a new Sony Vaio FS-790 laptop, and this service plan:
Product: 4 Year Onsite Service Plan plus Accidental Damage Protection for Notebooks
Total Price: $ 439.99
From then till know I’ve had a great, portable, machine with a great screen and decent specs. But, last Friday, after putting the Vaio into standby mode, it just wouldn’t turn on. I noticed that:
- removing RAM from the primary slot would let it boot
- … but the LCD backlight wouldn’t turn on
- … and putting in the battery shut it down immediately
To me, when one RAM slot fails for memory you know is good, it screams a motherboard issue, so I called the Sony support line. That was where I ran into my first hitch, with a conversation like:
Sony: Can we have you service contract id number?
Me: Yes, but I don’t have it, can you look it up?
Sony: Tell us your phone number?
Me: Tells them my current and previous number.
Sony: We can’t find it!!!!!?!?
This went on for about 5 calls spread over two days, until someone was helpful enough to actually find it. I’m not sure what she did differently, since she asked and got from me the same information I’d been giving out previously, but I finally had my service contract number. I was forwarded to Level 2 tech support, put on hold for 20 minutes, and asked about my symptoms, which I described as above. The tech said he’d replace the motherboard and LCD backlight inverter and schedule me to talk to the onsite guy. Three days later, I get a call from the onsite technician, and schedule the appointment for two days hence.
When the technician arrived, he first assessed the state of the laptop, verified that the problems I had been experiencing could be reproduced, and then slowly–over the course of two hours–took the laptop apart and replaced the motherboard and inverter.
The monitor got prints all over it from the Sony repairs
I can live with fingerprints. I cleaned them off, and put in a live CD memory test to make sure the RAM really was ok. Two hours later I come back and see that my RAM passed all the tests (and that my L1 cache runs at 25Gb/s), and noticed that the laptop was extremely hot everywhere, and that the fan wasn’t blowing. Want to guess why?
The fan assembly, lying on the motherboard
Can you see it? Let me help:
Yeah, the fan wasn’t plugged into the motherboard. I had to take out all the screws on the back of it again, just to connect that one little missing bit. To Sony’s credit, their technician, if not meticulous and brilliant, was good-natured and careful. On the other hand, my previous experience with Dell stacks up just a little bit better:
| Sony | Dell | |
| SLA | 1 week | 1 Day |
| Cost | $439 | $329 |
| Model | Send someone to do it | Send you parts to DIY |
| Chance of Failure | Low | High |
| Support rating | Low | High |
I am happy with Sony; it took a week, but they fixed my notebook. But, they’re just providing what they have to. They’re not actually trying to get a fast, responsive, integrated support experience like Apple or Dell gives. The fact that they outsource their warranties to divers numbers of third party companies is evidence of that. If I had to do the notebook thing again, I would probably be going with Apple, both for their support and for the quality of the macbook line.
