Will's Thoughtstream

I'm one of the biggest advocates around for Wikipedia. I love using Wikipedia for just about any research on any topic, but especially for information on bands and movies. In my job, I hold out Wikipedia as a success story (THE success story) for how Web 2.0 and user-generated content is more effective and efficient than old-fashion command-and-control processes.

Although I use numerous wikis in different settings, including MediaWiki, the software that Wikipedia runs on, I have never actually made a contribution to Wikipedia before. I'm sure most of you have had the experience that on almost anything you care to look up, Wikipedia already has a comprehensive article. What more could I add?

Well, after going to the Fist of Dishonor show at Ash Street Salon on Oct 28th, I thought I would check out Wikipedia to see what they had on Fist of Dishonor. Nada! No article at all. I'm not associated with the band at all, so I have no conflict of interest. Finally an opportunity to contribute to Wikipedia!

I carved some time out of my busy, busy, busy work and life schedule. I reviewed independent articles about Fist of Dishonor published by several different music-oriented periodicals, visited the bands website, reviewed independent photos and blogs about the band, and write a short article about the band. I spent time tweaking the MediaWiki syntax (among the worst of all wiki engines that I've used) to get it just right, and posted it. Yay! My first contribution.

I went back a few minutes later, and the page was gone! My hours of hard work vanished. Was this a case of the infamous Wikipedia vandalism at work? I have previously tried to allay the concerns of others about vandalism: "the system is self-correcting", "you heard about the few bad cases, but the majority aren't like that", and so forth.

After a little investigation it turns out that it wasn't vandalism at all. It was the over-eager immune system of Wikipedia rejecting my article as being "not notable". My enthusiasm for Wikipedia has been crushed. Do the masses really have a voice, or are we just under the illusion that we have a voice until we test it? Is Wikipedia the new opiate of the masses?

Posted by will hertling at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

According to a post at the Triple Pundit, the Christian Science Monitor has an article on an upcoming UN report showing that CO2E has passed 450ppm, a threshhold which is expected to create an irreversible and self-reinforcing cycle of global warming. As my almost-two-year-old likes to say, "uh-oh". Or as REM put it, "It's the end of the world as we know it".

Posted by will hertling at 7:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Discover Magazine, learn what string theory is in two minutes or less.

Posted by will hertling at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My trusty Treo 650 died last week, so it was time for a new phone.

I wanted to compare the Palm Centro and the Helio Ocean side by side. I was really interested in the Ocean, but alas - I could not find an actual working model to play with in any of the three Portland area stores carrying Helio devices that I visited. The non-working floor demo models gave me a good idea of the side of the keyboard of the Ocean, and I realized that it would be nearly impossible to type on the Ocean with just one hand, which is not an uncommon situation I find myself in.

So I ended up ordering the Centro, which was really the easier and less expensive option. The Centro feels like a whole new phone compared to my Treo 650. It is so much smaller than the Treo 650. After two and a half years with the 650, I had gotten used to it's size, and now the Centro feels tiny by comparison. It can even fit in the mobile phone pocket of my pants, something that the Treo 650 could never do. It's mobile phone sized, not smartphone sized. And that's a good thing.

While the keyboard and screen are both smaller, they still seem usable, and worth the tradeoff for smaller phone size. My one complaint so far (and I've only had it for less than 24 hours) is that the touchscreen seems less responsive than the touchscreen on the Treo 650. On the other hand, the surfing the web is much faster.

On the whole, it is an exciting improvement over my old Treo 650, even if the Palm OS hasn't had any major updates.

But I'm still watching OpenMoko with excitement. An open source phone? With a 640x480 resolution screen? Sounds sweet. I just hope they add-on a compact Palm-style keyboard in a slider design.

Posted by will hertling at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was putting my four year old daughter to bed the other night, and one of our occasional bedtime rituals is to look through my jewelry box. She asked me to tell her the story about my Tibetan prayer beads, which led into a story about the Dalai Lama: who is he, why is he famous, etc. So I explained about Buddism, Tibet, the Dalai Lama's role as a spiritual leader, how prayer beads relate to prayer, and what prayer is. At the end of all this my daughter asked, "Is he really a llama?"

Of course he really isn't a llama, just a lama. And his mother isn't a llama either, which is the whole question behind my daughter's favorite book, Is Your Mama a Llama?

All of this brings us to President Bush. Who would have thought that President Bush would be more public in his support and recognition of the Dalai Lama than any past U.S. President?

Posted by will hertling at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was really surprised to learn a few years ago that when an environmental impact lifecycle analysis is done of an everyday personal printer, the biggest environmental impact turns out not to be the manufacturing of the printer, the ink cartridges, the packaging, or disposal of the electronic waste: the biggest environmental impact actually turns out to be the paper used during printing. Printing less definitely helps. But in addition, consistently printing on both sides of each sheet of paper is an easy and quick way to halve the amount of paper you use.

There's lots of printers that come with the ability to print on both sides of a sheet of paper. A few all-in-one style printers from HP that include this ability are the HP Photosmart C7280 All-in-One (about $240), HP Officejet 9110 All-in-One (about $400), and HP LaserJet 3390 All-in-One (about $425). Laser printers tend to be even more of a bonus from an environmental and economic perspective. My mom owns an HP laser printer, and she buys one toner cartridge every couple of years for about $80. Compared to the inkjet printers I've used, that's a lot fewer replacement cartridges.

If you just want a simple printer, without the scanner, copier, fax features of an all-in-one, then two HP products that come with automatic duplex printing are the HP Deskjet 6940dt Color Inkjet Printer (about $120), and the HP Deskjet 6980dt Color Inkjet Printer (about $160).

With any of these printers, it's important that your printer settings are set to use the auto-duplexer. Under Windows XP, go to Settings->Printers and Faxes. Right-click on your printer and choose Printing Preferences. Under the Finishing tab, check Print on both sides, and underneath check Automatic. Then click OK to save your settings.

If you already have an HP printer, and it doesn't support automatic duplex printing, check out this video for a demo of how to manually duplex print.

Posted by will hertling at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We have two baby monitors, both of them audio-only models. The first one we used with our older daughter was the typical Graco baby monitor that almost everyone has. It works fairly well, and we continue to use it. It's analog, on the 49mhz frequency.

Then we needed a second monitor for our twins. To insure that it wouldn't interfere with our daughter's monitor, we got a digital monitor, since digital monitors usually run on a completely different frequency. It's called the Summer Infant Secure Digital Monitor, and it uses 900mhz. This particular monitor is awesome in that the receiver has a docking bay, and it automatically recharges in the docking bay. Then the built-in rechargeable battery is good for 8 to 10 hours of usage. This means that you can carry the receiver around with you, clipped onto your belt, or put it on the kitchen counter, and you're not worrying about power cords or AA batteries running out every couple of hours. Even now, two years later, the built-in battery stills holds a good, long charge, and it's never given us a problem. Plus it always has very clear reception.

One difference between our older daughter and the twins is that we always wore our daughter to sleep in good attachment parenting style. We never really missed the video feature with hr, because we really only needed the monitor to know if she woke up - and if she did, then we would go get her. But with the twins, after about a year, we started putting them in their cribs at the start of the night for them to fall asleep on their own. Most of the time they fall asleep quickly, but on some nights, they might cry for a little while. Then we're always wondering, "are they crying because they're having a hard time falling asleep, or because they got their leg stuck in the crib or  some similar other disaster that requires parental intervention?" Because of this, it really would be handy to have the video feature to be able to know this without having to go in the room.

Summer Infant also makes a handheld video model that similar to our digital model in that it has a built-in rechargeable battery. From the reviews on Amazons, customers seem to have left pretty good feedback, both on the product itself, and on their experiences with the company. Without having had a video baby monitor ourselves, I'd probably look first at the Summer Infant video models first, based on the good quality of the Summer Infant monitor we already have.

Posted by will hertling at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a photo of our current state. The cement floor was broken up, and the new wastelines put in place. It turns out that our basement floor is a full 4" thick cement slab, which is quite unusual for Portland. Most homes have a 1" or 2" thick concrete slurry poured on top of the dirt.

Posted by will hertling at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Blog Action Day. Do It!

Posted by will hertling at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm in the midst of trying to baby proof a mirror my daughter received for her fourth birthday. Even though she is way more careful than her two year old twin brothers, there's still a reasonable risk of it breaking. And if her brothers get a hold of it, it wouldn't last an hour. My first tactic is to glue felt to the back of the mirror so that if it does break, the glass won't scatter and go everywhere. Then I'm going to try to mount the whole thing to a sturdy wood frame, and then mount that to the wall in her room.

All of this work made me wonder about better solutions: are there unbreakable mirrors for children? A quick search on Amazon found unbreakable travel mirrors, a Soft N Style brand unbreakable handheld mirror, and a Salon Mirrors unbreakable boudoir mirror, all for under $20. And if you want an unbreakable wall-size mirror, then there's the $76 Soft Frame Mirror.

Posted by will hertling at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Until my daughter got one, I was never exactly clear on what a tiara was. But now I know that it is among the most special thing a four year old can own. Since I'm now in the process of gluing the tiara for the fourth time, I got to looking for tiaras on the web, and found that there really is an ultimate tiara website. They have over 500 tiaras, and at surprisingly reasonable prices.

I just wish they were available in titanium so they could stand up to a 4 year old and two 2 year olds.

Posted by will hertling at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When we bought our new house, it was with the plan of putting a bathroom in the basement. Luckily the place we wanted the bathroom was located immediately over the waste line and directly below the incoming hot and cold water. So plumbing would be kept to a minimum. Two of the walls and the door always existed too. We wanted plain white fixtures (sink, toilet, stall shower), and no tile. So we got bids from three local contractors with a reputation for doing environmentally friendly construction. The lowest of the three bids was $24,000.

That was about double what I was expecting and seemed totally outrageous. My dad, who worked in construction on the East coast, suggested that he could fly an entire team of construction workers out from NY, put them up in a nice hotel, and airfare+hotel+contractors would still cost less than the local contractors. It seemed a bit too complicated and absurd though, so we didn't go that route.

So even though I measure my spare time in minutes per week, I decided to take on the task of adding a bathroom basement myself. Since I have no experience with plumbing at all, I found a good local plumber, and hired him to do the plumbing work. So far he's broken up the concrete floor and installed the waste lines. Next, we get the waste lines inspected and then put down new concrete.

Based on a rough estimate of materials and the bid from the plumber, I expect the entire project will cost about $6,500. From experience with my estimates on previous projects, I know that means it will be closer to $8,000, but that's still only a third of the lowest contractor bid.

I'm glad for construction workers that they're now earning a decent wage for the skilled and physically challenging work that they do, but it's hard for me to understand how anyone can afford to pay the rates they're asking.

Posted by will hertling at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had no idea that Wil Wheaton had a blog.

Posted by will hertling at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just found Tiny Suns Infused With Sour: A Sleater-Kinney News blog. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to keep up with news of the ex-band members.

Posted by will hertling at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)