I made a little Skype Chat Stats script. You can run it on a Skype chat (most useful in group chats, although it works in 1:1 too) and it gives you this result. (Period is customizable.)

Chat statistics for 1.1.2007-31.12.2008

By message count:
  8235   Al Bino
  4925   Al Fresco
  4111   Amanda Lynn
  2947   Barb Dwyer
  2904   Barry Cade
  2881   Bea Minor
  2852   Bill Board

By text length:
404819   Bill Loney
328649   Billy Rubin
216267   Bud Light
175678   Dan D. Lyons
165080   Dick Bush
155606   Dick Tator
154309   Dilbert Pickles
134121   Don Key

By posted links:
  1063   Doug Graves
  1038   Dr. Butcher
   525   Dr. Kauff
   403   Earl E. Bird
   385   Fanny O'Rear
   365   Gene Poole
   341   Helen Back
   316   Herb Rice

Total traffic: 210 KB

Get it here. Following is a little discussion of bits and pieces of its architecture and composition.

I’ve now had Wii for a while. I was initially torn between Wii and Xbox 360, but I really wanted to check out the Wii’s nonconvential controls (well, I had tried it before, but I wanted to see what it is like to own one). And my understanding is that Xbox360 and PS3 are for much more hardcore gamers, while I am mostly a “casual gamer” these days. I don’t put too many crazy hours into it.

Even then, I had reservations about Wii as a First-Person Shooter console. In my mind, Nintendo and Wii are a whole lot about Super Mario and Zelda and other similar “kidsy”/”cartoony” type of games, and not really the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about “serious” war shooters. But at the same time, I was really curious to check out how the pointing in FPS works.

Well, I’m happy to report that it works very well. When you think about it, pointing at something is the most natural targeting action, and the Wii Remote is a great tool for that. I found the FPS controls to be really intuitive. Perhaps even a bit more natural than using PC and mouse+keyboard, and definitely better than Xbox remote. I played a bit of Halo once, and I found targeting by joysticks to be really awkward and not to my taste.

Medal of Honor: Vanguard

The specific game I played was MOH: Vanguard.

I said many kind words about the Wii as FPS controller, and yes, it worked great. But the game itself leaves a lot to be desired for. If you see its reviews, the ratings are also not so great, and now I understand why.

I don’t watch American news that much, so I’m not really following all the details of the campaign. But the current election is important enough that I try to at least keep myself generally posted. And tonight was Obama’s and McCain’s first live television debate, which was supposed to be the only one about foreign policy, so there were many reasons why I should watch it.

I am lucky enough to have HD TV and HD channels delivered to me, so I watched it on CNN HD. I also have “regular” CNN and I switched between them a few times, and the quality difference between the pictures is really remarkable (aside from the HD version also being widescreen). So seeing it in HD was really great.

The general feeling that I came away with is that McCain is just a sad old grandpa kind of man whose greatest asset is his ‘Nam stories, and I don’t really trust him. I sort of leaned towards Obama already before, and I’m doing more so now. There are many components to that.

One reason why I liked Obama was the looks. I know it sounds superficial, but that’s a component of how many people make decisions. So here’s the thing: Obama looked exactly as good on TV as he does on his ads and photos, whereas in McCain’s case, you can see that all his ads and things on the net are much much more doctored/photoshopped, and he looked old on TV.

The other thing was their conversation style. Obama actually tried to engage in a conversation with McCain, trying to talk with him directly. I think that’s the whole point of a debate — having candidates talk with each other, not just preaching. McCain only talked about Obama in third person, as “Senator Obama has done this and that”. It’s as if Obama wasn’t even in the room at the same time — McCain’s lines would have been the same.

The good news to me is that their views on Russia, which to me as an Estonian is important, did not really differ at all, they were pretty much saying the same thing. Both were distancing themselves from Bush who “saw Putin’s soul”, and both were saying that instead of the soul, you see a KGB-run nondemocratic regime now. And yet Obama recognized you still need to work together with them on some world affairs, which is my view too. But in general approach to Russia, both candidates are good news to Europe. (Obama also explicitly referred to Estonians and Lithunanians and some other countries as “fledgling democracies”. Which is not too far from the truth. Well, at least he said that the US should stand for them.)

In general, I think Obama did well in this debate and I am looking forward to next Thursday debate between Biden and Palin. I am expecting it to be entertaining, as the odds are there that Biden will do better. We’ll see.

I’ve had a US mobile number for more than a year. And I am happy to say that during that year, I only got maybe two or three spam calls (meaning calls from people who were trying to sell me something). And none of those were really spam in the traditional sense, from people I had no relation with. Instead, they were from businesses that I already had a relationship with, and who were trying to sell me additional products. For example, I had an apartment insurance, and they called me to sell me car insurance. How are they supposed to know I don’t even have a car here? Aww, those poor things. So it’s annoying, but tolerable.

And yet, when I got Time Warner Cable here in New York, I also got a home phone. The only reason I got it was because “triple play” was cheaper than leaving out the phone. And since I got Internet and TV, I thought yep, why not, let’s get a phone.

During installation, they told me that if I wanted to have my phone unlisted from some directories, I would have to pay extra, so I didn’t have my phone unlisted. So now it’s listed in some directories or phone books or something, I don’t know.

And now, less than a week after the installation, I already got not one, but two spam calls in a row from people who wanted to sell me a newspaper subscription or magazines or something. Ugh. I haven’t ever bought anything due to spam and I don’t think I will. I wish there was some way to et all those people know that we just live in completely different worlds. If you spam or call me without me permitting you to do so by some form of permission marketing, then this fact alone is enough for me to not do business with you. If you lower your price from $39.99 to just $19.95, that has no effect on my decision. It does not matter however nice you sound. Just don’t annoy me and we’re OK.

Having said that, I went to the local supermarket the other day and there was a nice young lady there who was doing some form of promotion and managed to persuade me to buy a sixpack of beer that was on sale, without me intending to originally buy it. Some might argue that this is also spam. But I was in the supermarket anyway so I was already looking for other things to buy, and it was a fun interruption in my day to talk with her. I sometimes also sample food and drinks in supermarkets, because I consider all these activities to be part of my regular supermarket experience and much less intrusive. Whereas phone spam is very intrusive, as it forces me to drop whatever stuff I may be doing and switch into a completely different mode, and it’s this loss of control that I’m most angry about. (Since I’m not using it, I could as well unplug my home phone… but this would be almost admitting that spam has won, and I’m not there yet.) And in supermarkets, if they start spamming you too much, you can just shop some place else, whereas switching a phone number is much more costly.

So back to phones… now I went and signed up both my mobile and home phone to the Do Not Call registry. I hope this stops the calls.

This takes me to another thought. I am worried about fraud through stolen credentials (also called “identity theft”). I am very careful about my financials and the only credit relation I want to have is with my bank. I don’t want people buying things in my name or opening cards or doing other stupid things that I would be responsible for. So, if there is something like a Do Not Call registry, then how come there isn’t something like Do Not Open Credit Lines Without My Physical Presence registry? Well, actually there are companies who sell you a service like that, but they face tough times from other players in the financial industry. Getting your credentials copied and clearing up the financial mess later is a much bigger deal for people than getting a few spam calls, so shouldn’t the US government step in here and do something similar to Do Not Call registry on their own?

And while we’re at it, there’s no such thing as identity theft, OK? Your identity can’t be stolen because you still have it. So we’re talking about fraud and impersonation. Again, if you don’t believe me, read the expert.

Oops, this post published a bit early, so if you saw an old, empty one, you should have refreshed

I’m upgrading my computers from a year-and-half-old MacBook Pro (2.33 GHz, 3GB, 160 GB) to a current, updated one (2.5 GHz, 4GB, 200 GB). I thought I’d note down the slight differences between their hardware that I’ve found.

• Many keys are now labeled more explicitly on the keyboard. “ctrl” is now “control”, “alt-with-weird-symbol” is now “alt / option”, and “apple-icon-with-cloverleaf” is now “cloverleaf / command”. “left-arrow-meaning-backspace” is now “delete”. “weird-looking arrow” is now “enter / return”. “arrow-hitting-a-wall” is “tab”. Good… I guess. Especially for new users. Then again, arrow keys don’t have “pgup” / “pgdown” / “home” / “end” labels.

• There is no more “return” (next to left “command”). Instead, it is now an alt/option key. Nice, because the first thing with the previous models that I did, was to get DoubleCommand and remap that key to be alt/option anyway, so there’s one less action.

• Alternative functions for function keys are in different places. While F1 and F2 are the same to change brightness and contrast, mute/volumeup/volumedown used to be F3 through F5, which are now F10 through F12. F3 and F4 appear to be Exposé and Dashboard. So now I have two functions for them: fn-F3 and fn-F4, and F9 and F12, two pairs that do the same thing. Oh well.

• Another function key change: there is no more Num Lock. Which I never used anyway.

• I like that there are now keys (fn-F7 through fn-F9) to go to previous/next song and pause iTunes. These are global shortcuts. I always had to install Quicksilver for that, but now I no longer have to, as I can use these keys, which is also faster, as Quicksilver iTunes control keys sometimes worked with a lag.

• Not really a difference between the models, but the keyboard layouts. The old one had Swedish layout, the new one has US. But I use Estonian layout with both which is a bit tricky with the US one, as it has one less key. I have yet to find how do I do the “greater/less than” signs. The pipe character is shift-alt-tilde And around the Enter key, the layout is also different. The reason why this post got prematurely posted in the first place was that I hit Enter when I meant to hit apostrophe… have to retrain my finger memory a bit.

I had a different intro to this post previously, but things have changed and here’s what’s up. Someone set up a fake/satirical children’s drawing contest page which me and some other people initially took for real. But as was pointed out in comments like this, the whole thing is most probably a fake and satire and the drawings are all by adults. My bad.

So, I have two questions now. 1) who’s running that site and what exactly is being satirized? Are they laughing at Russian propaganda or people like me who will believe everything they want to believe? 2) if children in Ukraine, Russia and Georgia were to actually draw pictures about the contest, would they be any different?

Well, anyway, I’ll leave the material up. Maybe you find it funny. Or ironic. Or whatever. Below are the Russian originals with my translations/edits.

Широкая детская общественность широко откликнулась на агрессию Грузии против беззащитного осетинского народа. Редакция Правды ПДРС получила сотни рисунков, в которых дети обличают грузинско-украинскую военщину, клеймят преступления фашистов и выражают стремление.

Публикуем подборку рисунков наиболее политически подкованных детей рабочих.

Many children reacted to the Georgian agression against defenceless Ossetian people. The local newspaper received hundreds of drawings, in which children denounce the Georgian and Ukrainian militarists, condemn the fascist crimes and express their aspirations.

Here are the most politically telling children’s drawings.

Putin executes Saakashvili

Maratik Ivanov, from Melitopol, 9 yrs

Путин казнит Саакашвили — Маратик Иванов, г. Мелитополь, 9 лет

Маратик пишет: “Дядя Путин поймал Саакашвили и отрубывает иму голову, а собачка Кони лает на Саакашвили, потому что она умная”

Maratik writes: “Uncle Putin caught Saakashvili and is cutting off his head. Koni the dog is barking at Saakashvili because it is smart.”

This will be my last IKEA post for a while but I wanted to post about the contrast I experienced between the buying and home delivery experiences while going to their new Brooklyn store. In short, I was done selecting and buying and paying in 30 minutes, and I had to wait the next full hour in an overcrowded delivery line.

I find the IKEA purchase process to be very well suited for my taste. You first go through the showroom, noting down the things that you like.Then, you go through “Marketplace” and pick up any accessories and smaller items that you like. Last, you go to the storage area and pick up the packages for the furniture that you selected beforehand. Then, you pay and are out.

The whole thing above took me less than 30 minutes, start to finish. And if you had your own car, the story would end right then and there, as you could just walk down to the parking lot and load your stuff in your car and drive away. But a lot of New Yorkers don’t have cars — and even if they do, it’s hard to fit a full sofa in a small car. So, at some point, you will need home delivery which IKEA offers.

I had the luxury/annoyance (depends on how you look at it ) of having to sit at home all day, being forced to wait for some plumbers who never came. But, today was also the day when Google Chrome was released. So, not only did I go through their comic book, but I also learned about the webcast and watched it. And downloaded the thing itself and played with it too.

Marketing

I like the “comic book + webcast” approach. I don’t think their webcast was intended for a lot of distribution beyond the press, and some questions asked were outright silly (I don’t think mentioning Tor browsing at this stage was very relevant), but it showcased the browser very nicely. It surely didn’t have the reality distortion and hype aspects of what Steve Jobs does with Apple (the next Apple event is Tuesday Sep 9 btw), but it made it clear that the browser is about speed (new V8 JavaScript virtual machine), stability (multiprocess approach), security (checking URL-s against blacklists and sandboxing) and new UI (there is very little, er, chrome). It had a lovely homebrew feel to it, with the big teleprompter visible to the viewers, and Lars Bak going “errr… so what else is there to say?”, but it was all for good.

User interface

A lot has been said about the UI already and I won’t do a comprehensive review. There are a lot of tidbits to be worked out. Here are just a few random observations that are interesting to me.

The first impression is very good. It feels very stable and pretty snappy. The pages that I regularly visit render very well.

The Options dialog is a mess. Upon installation, Chrome picked a language for the UI which I do not want. I had non-English regional settings in Windows, but I want apps to be in English. It took a while to figure out that to change it, you need to “Options”, go to “Minor Tweaks” tab and click “Change font and language settings”. I don’t think that the UI language is a “Minor Tweak”; for me, it is a pretty big deal. So in general the Options of Chrome feel very Internet-Explorer-esque in the worst sense of the word, meaning that tabs are arbitrary, the options don’t make sense and it is hard to find anything. One more bad thing about the Options: it shows me the passwords I have stored, but what if I have said “Never remember passwords for this site”, and later want to reverse the decision? There’s no place for this in Options. So, in general, dear Google, please rework the whole Options part of Chrome.

I like the “Omnibar”. This is the first browser in a very long time that does not have separate search and address bars. It just has one bar, and I think that’s the way it should be. It started with Firefox 3’s “awesomebar”, that can do quickfiltering based not only on URL-s, but recently visited sites’ titles, which is already awesome. But Chrome keeps pushing it and builds up history based on what you visit and can then filter from there. I like. I’m not a very good bookmarks maintainer, but often I want to go back to sites that I’ve been to before. So I think this Omnibar approach is great to me, and in general, confuses people less. Novices are known to be confusing the two boxes. I shouldn’t have to pick.

Someone in the webcast asked about snapping tabs “in” and “out” of separate windows. This works well, but there is a trick. It is easy to drag tabs out — just grab the tab and drag it away and lo and behold, you got a new window with one tab in it. But if you want to get the same tab back to the other tabs, you can’t just drag the window title back to the tabs — you need to grab the solitary tab itself from the new window and drag it back. A bit confusing, but works fine once you figure it out.

There’s a lot of nuance work put into the UI. For example, there is a dynamic mini-status-bar in the bottom right, and when you hover over a link, it displays the destination URL. Nice.

Notice, though, that if you move your cursor to the bottom left of the window to hover over something that is covered by the status bar, the status bar notices this and shifts itself out of the way below the content window. Cute.

I’m currently in the process of setting up my new life in New York City. (I’m going to work here now for a while… more on the work stuff some other time.) I found a decent apartment that came without anything in it, aside from the very nicely furnished new kitchen. And as I didn’t own any furniture before in the US, I’ve been buying stuff from IKEA to furnish my place, which set off a stream of several loosely connected thoughts.

One thought that I had is that going to IKEA feels a whole lot like going to an Apple store. Not only the actual retail store, but also looking at their printed catalog. Both IKEA and Apple meet my “smart writing” criterion. Well, that’s actually not entirely true for IKEA: towards the end of their catalog, there are a few exclamation marks, and there is a big one right on their US site homepage. But still, the typography is good, the color scheme is a fairly quiet pastel, and the whole experience is better than most of others that I am these days exposed to. The only bad thing in their catalog is that on some pages, there’s white print on white background that’s impossible to read. The layout person was asleep when doing those pages or something.

So, the experience of IKEA and Apple is so similar in one way, and yet sometimes they are seen at completely opposite ends of the market. Nobody argues that Apple is the high end, and yet some fancypants people dismiss IKEA as throwaway stuff and brag about how they buy “quality” furniture that will last a lifetime. As if the price of something is indicative of its quality or real value. I guess it goes down to the theme of “your stuff shows who you are”. Lovely consumerism and conspicuous consumption.

Well, I happen to believe that furniture, as well as most other stuff, SHOULD be “throwaway”. I should be able to throw away what I own and replace it with something new if my preference has changed. I don’t want to keep old expensive stuff around. Stuff is ephemeral anyway. The only things of true value are in my heart and head, and maybe in my backpack where I carry my computer. The rest, well, comes and goes, and there’s no real reason to get antsy if, say, you wreck your car or something gets stolen. Just hope you had it insured. And this realization about ephemeral stuff makes life so much easier. There are so few things that are actually worth worrying about. The rest just comes and goes. But at the same time, I do care about my trash footprint and I don’t just want to throw my stuff to the street. I want help taking care of it.

So, going back to that IKEA story. I think there’s an opportunity here for both them and other companies that are selling me stuff, that goes back to my other favorite theme, “maintenance / upkeep / lifecycle”. At the end of the day, the best-performing companies will be those who realize that the real value to customer from transacting with them does not only come at the point of sale, where everything is focused these days, but it comes helping the customer through the whole lifecycle of the product. The objective of any right-minded retail company these days is to get you to their store to buy stuff. This is the culmination of all their work and this is where money and profits are made. What happens to either you or the stuff you bought later is no longer their business or worry.

The latter is no longer true, though, with electronics and other hazardous materials (car tires) takeback regulations. In many cases, if you buy new electronics or tires, the store has to take back your old stuff. I think there’s a lot of potential here for other businesses, such as IKEA in the furniture domain. Suppose that after three years, my work takes me from NYC to, say, San Francisco. The thing to do these days is to disassemble your furniture and put it in a moving truck. Well, what happens if I just don’t like the old stuff any more and would rather buy new stuff? A lot of the IKEA furniture is so cheap that economically this is a very viable option. So they could offer me a takeback service whereby they just come to my old place and take away my old furniture, and I know that it gets recycled responsibly. And they could give me something like 10% of the furniture’s original value as credit towards future purchases from them. This increases their turnover, as I now buy twice from them, and this decreases my hassle, as I don’t have to move my stuff around anymore. And the planet is happier because my old furniture gets responsibly recycled and I don’t have to get as big of a moving truck and won’t produce as much CO2 driving across the continent as I would otherwise.

The third story is about how I ended up going to IKEA in the first place. That is because IKEA is European Even though I live in America, I consider myself an European. And at this day and age, it’s easy in practice, as you can get news, food and other things that you care about anywhere from any corner of the world. I had gone to IKEA before with someone to buy stuff from another place we had in Europe. So as I was walking down the isles of the Brooklyn IKEA store, I had kind of a déjà vu experience. In a way, IKEA is the McDonald’s of furniture for me, as you know what you are getting in any corner of the world, and you can trust it, instead of being forced to go through unfamiliar brands and experiences over and over again.

UPDATE: one interesting parallel about how little IKEA stuff cost to me is that I also bought a used Aeron. (Why? Because I spend too much time sitting behind the desk at home to go with anything less that would give me back trouble as has happened before.) And the rest of my apartment contents, combined, cost less that a used Aeron.