Charles in Japan

Which way is north?

One of the iPhone's current faults us the the GPS won't tell you which way you are traveling. Not a huge loss, but someone came up with a good solution, at least if of sunny. The reverse sundial. Place your finger at the center at a 90 degree angle to the screen. Rotate the iPod or iPhone until the shadow matches the highlighted line. The compass will now be accurate and you know which way is north.

Evils of the internet

A trend that I hate has gotten worse and worse lately.  Articles on the web sites that have been split into pages.  In many ways there is no real reason you should have to split them up anyway, although if it's really long it might be tolerable. 

I wanted to read this article about Apple vs Microsoft and the WWW.  Look at this blasted page?  Huge fricken banner, an incomplete tab list duplicated on the side, way too much white space and finally halfway down the page the article starts.  You start reading, hit the down arrow twice and it's already asking you to go to the next page.  Their navigation bar still continues on past the bottom of the page.  Hell, on the right side they have a huge graphical ad the text of the article doesn't even reach.  I'd be pissed if I paid for it.  The second page is just as bad and the third only has two paragraphs.  I know you want to show more ads, but at the very least make the content go to the bottom of the page.

This interview with Bjarne Stroustrup I thought would be interesting, but look at this page.  Left sidebar, two right sidebars!  Mostly filled with ads leaving a 20% of the page for the article averaging about 8 words per line.  Seriously, can you tone it down a little bit and still stay in business? 

This is another reason I tend to enjoy reading personal blogs.  They tend to have a much better layout.  I'd call them biased, but most sites are just as bad and try to hide it more.  Some sites like Reid Reviews put most professional publications to shame. 

This article on the rescue of the Cougar Ace is how articles should be put on the web.  One nice long page to scroll and scroll.  Actually I think it was orginally paged, but they have a link clearly labeled 'Full Page'.  This is an amazing article and if you have the time go read it. 

In related interesting articles I've bookmarked I love this one about a Coke machine in Seattle.  I'd almost expect to see something like this in Japan, but I don't think the Japanese would appreciate the humor of the 'mystery' button. 

After seeing kids run around here in Tokyo all by themselves I loved this story about a mother leaving her 9 year old to find his way home.  And no, not about of cruelty, but he wanted to do it himself.  As she points out we aren't living in Baghdad.

Lastly, check out what dogs are learning in Moscow.  In Tokyo all you see are cats and rarely the occasional rat and neither are particularly friendly.

HD DVD is dead, long live Blu-ray

HD DVD has offically been declared dead.  You can go buy your HD players now.  Thank god this story has finally come to an end.  My only regret is seeing Sony win.

Average of 10 views a day!

A big moment for this blog!  I've passed an average of 10 views a day!  Ok, it's not the democratic nomination, but it feels like I've accomplished something.  Actually, this blog was started almost 2 months before I started posting so actually it's higher then that.  Hopefully you'll continue to read and find it interesting.

While reading the news trying to keep up to date with America, I came across this headline: "Latest ID snowstorm keeps state police busy with traffic mishaps".  I couldn't exactly figure it out thinking it had something to do with the nation ID?  not that it made any sense.  No, ID refers to the state of Idaho.  Seriously people, who knows that ID is Idaho?  Nothing happens in Idaho.  Occasionally it spews potatoes out, but that's hardly news.  The only people that probably know are those that send letters there.  Apparently the reporters didn't get the memo, abbreviations are bad!  Take the time and spell it out so the rest of the country can understand.  (This wasn't even a local paper, so they have no excuse)

It appears Giuliani is going to quit the race.  Thank god.  The results for Florida are in.  Clinton did well, but not that it matters with no delegates.  I can see why she wanted it to count.  Of course she is the only Democrat to go there.  Looking at the exit data, Florida is OLD!  39% of democratic voters were over 60 and 44% of republicans.  Hillary has been more popular with the older crowd.  Barak does seem to be improving with more people recently deciding to support him.  A interesting point looking at the exit polls.  When Edwards does well he seems to take almost all his votes from Hillary with Obama remaining relatively unchanged.  If/When he leaves the race it will be interesting where his voters go.  Same thing when some more of the Republicans leave.  Obama seems to pulling from different groups and fewer candidates might help him.  I'm talking out of my ass here and having nothing to base that on.  I have a couple interesting articles on Obama I'd like to post up here later.  One has some rather good arguments on why he'd be a good choice for president.  It also talks about why he's running now, rather then in 4, 8 or 12 more years.  One other tidbit from the exit polls, Hillary's earlier comments about having more experience seem to have done a good job of brainwashing the masses.  She also does a fantastic job of avoiding answering the question when it comes to Obama's experience.  I wish I had some articles to link to right now, but when you look closer you start to question a lot of Hillary's 'experience' and Obama's looks better and better.  Not to mention Obama has 4 more years in elected office then Hillary.  I'm looking forward to super tuesday and keeping my fingers crossed.