Jeremey's Weblog

Grinder!

It's here! It's here! :)

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grinder, espresso, macap

M7 Edit in XP in VMWare on MacBook Pro

This is one of my Spaces on my MBP right now (VMWare in full screen mode).

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yamaha, m7, pro audio

Symbian Goes Open Source

Symbian is going open source. This is a pretty interesting development, but I think it may be too little, too late, and it doesn't imply any major changes in the Symbian platform.

The real problem with Symbian isn't the fact that it's closed, it's the fact that it's Symbian. It's a difficult platform to develop for, its UI concepts are dated and accelerating towards antiquated, the "access point" scheme for managing IP connectivity is appallingly difficult for users, etc. Perhaps going open source will provide a catalyst for some serious changes and revolutions in the platform, that would be great. We'll see. Increasingly, the features of the Symbian platform that made it compelling are becoming unnecessary... the hardware platforms for mobile phones are no longer the exceedingly resource-constrained, battery-sipping environments they once were, and that will only become more true.

2010 is a long way off... the iPhone 3G ships in 3 weeks, Android phones this year. Developers finally get their hands on Symbian innards one year after that? I can't see that being very interesting to new developers.

It could be a huge boon for existing Symbian developers though, who've wished for access to deeper APIs, or even just to understand what is going on down deeper in the idiosyncratic Symbian brain. But again, in a year or two... it doesn't help now.

Interesting times!

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symbian, nokia, mobile

Grinder!

I did it... I ordered it... a thing of beauty. I decided to go with the MACAP M4 stepless w/ doser. The doser is a known quantity and great shops (Catalina!) get excellent results with them.

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coffee, espresso, grinder

Epic Espresso

Max at Catalina is bringing in guest espressos every month, and this month it's Epic Espresso from 49th Parallel Roasters.

WOW. It's really good stuff... if you're in Houston and you drink espresso, you need to go by Catalina and check it out.

Epic is rich and deep and smooth... flavors are predominantly "rich and smooth" flavors like chocolate. There's some brightness but it's definitely muted... maybe a little citrus, a little floral. Just enough to give it depth and character. It's the best I've had, certainly.

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coffee, espresso, catalina, 49th parallel

TUAW: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

I love the famous Mark Twain quote, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

TUAW seems to have forgotten that in a pretty pathetic post about the Japanese not wanting the iPhone. Or maybe they're just groping for traffic. Or maybe they're just parroting the news article without thinking about it.

The title of the article is "Survey: 91% of Japanese don't want an iPhone". Assuming that's true, that would be almost as many iPhones sold in Japan as sold in the US in its entire first year (roughly 11 million and 14 million, respectively). 95% of US Americans (snicker) didn't want an iPhone either.

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iphone, tuaw, statistics

Great Talk on Bigtable

http://sites.google.com/site/io/under-the-covers-of-the-google-app-engine-datastore

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appengine, bigtable

Downtown: A Different Look

Great Post on Why the iPhone is Game-changing

Here's a hint... it's not the feature list...

Smartphone makers- better wake up and smell the Applesauce from @jkendrick.

Though, I have to say, I'm about as geek as one gets in many ways, and I love my iPhone too... for the same reason. My "other" phones are broken in so many ways I can't count. They're frustrating. The iPhone is almost never frustrating.

Take GPS for example... I have three phones with GPS in them... however, the GPS apps are so poorly written that I couldn't figure out how to use them, and to get real benefit, you have to subscribe to yet another service from some company I've never heard of. So do I use the GPS? Nope, never. Will I use the GPS in the iPhone 3G? Almost certainly.

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iphone, usability

Discovery Green

Discovery Green is a very cool park smack in the middle of downtown Houston... I went this morning to check it out and get some photos before it got TOO hot. I like forward to spending more time there in cooler weather. :)

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houston, discovery green