Gavin's Stuff

Books I’ve enjoyed so far in 2017

2017-10-04T17:24:00-05:00

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Very long, very interesting read of Lincoln and everyone in his cabinet and social circle. Lots of great details their politics, showing Lincoln as a great mediator during a time when the civil war wasn’t the only thing tearing the nation apart. A movie or TV miniseries couldn’t do justice to all the stories and characters here. Lots of the content comes directly from the letters and telegraph records they sent to each other, and the diaries of their wives.

The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo—and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation

I like this book because it gives a great snapshot of history, through the lens of this one struggle, which ended up being very important in the history of America. It’s amazing how much detail the author was able to put together from all kinds of varying accounts.

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future

This is from Bill Gates’ 2016 list and I also found it to be pretty fascinating. I wish the book had been shorter, but more technical.

If You Survive: From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to the End of World War II - One American Officer’s Riveting True Story

If this were a ranked list, I would put this near the top. I saw somewhere that this was required reading for soldiers today. I can see why—this first-hand account of many WWII battles tells every detail as the author saw it. I couldn’t put it down.

Hero: Becoming the Strong Father Your Children Need

Good book for someone who needs to be reminded how important they are in their kids’ lives. Very basic stuff, in my opinion.

Product Demos That Sell: How to Deliver Winning SaaS Demos

$1 ebook with great tips for anyone in the software industry. I find that working toward a great demo is a really good motivator.

American Assassin: A Thriller (The Mitch Rapp Prequel Series Book 1)

Good bedtime novel about fighting terrorists. I guess there is a movie coming out with this character.

Ready Player One

I love the take on ‘80s nostalgia in this one. The writing isn’t a 10/10, but who cares? This was the biggest page-turner on the whole list.

Seveneves: A Novel

If this were a ranked list, I would put this right at the top, and it would be an easy decision. Also from Bill Gates’ recommendations. Hard sci-fi novel about our reaction to the moon exploding, that quickly turns into much more. Pretty easy to see real-life figures as some of these characters.

Watership Down: A Novel

A classic story that was never assigned to me in middle school. I can see why; it’s not very good.

Live by Night: A Novel

Great fictional story about a fledgling mobster during prohibition. Made into a sub-par Ben Affleck movie, from what I hear. Book is riveting, though.

Hyperion Cantos series:

I made it through all four pretty quickly because they are a really good blend of approachable sci-fi with some philosophy mised in. Very very thought-provoking, especially from a Christian perspective.

Creating NuGet Packages with WinJS

2014-03-21T00:00:00-05:00

Let’s say you’ve developed a native Windows 8 app, using HTML, CSS and Javascript, working with the WinJS runtime. Let’s also say that you’re hoping to share many components of your app with another app, which you (or another developer) are going to create. With c# or vb, you could create a shared class library; but that option isn’t available with WinJS.

One of my favorite features recently introduced into the Microsoft ecosystem is NuGet. NuGet is package management for Visual Studio. Coming from a CocoaPods and PIP background, I find it very familiar and handy for making modular bits of code which can be pulled down into your projects and shared with others. Getting into the NuGet mentality encourages me to build modular, reusable components rather than one monolithic codebase.

I couldn’t find a tutorial online for the best way to make a WinJS NuGet package, so I thought I might share my experience here. Keep in mind that a lot of this is subject to change in the near future, so just be aware of what your goals are, and research what you’re running on the command-line before you actually run it!

My first step was to install Chocolatey. It’s a great tool for installing all kinds of Windows software from the command-line, without going through a bunch of downloads and wizards. Think of it as NuGet for full-fledged apps. From the instructions on their site, all I had to do to install Chocolatey was run this command:

C:\> @powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%systemdrive%\chocolatey\bin

Now, we need the NuGet command-line tools. Chocolatey has them, so we can run Chocolatey’s cinst command within Powershell:

PS> cinst NuGet.CommandLine

Switch to your directory in which you store all of your code. For me, it’s this:

PS> cd $ENV:USERPROFILE\Documents\Projects

Make a new directory, with the name of your packages repository. I recommend this format, substituting CompanyName with your own:

PS> mkdir CompanyName.Packages
PS> cd .\CompanyName.Packages

Make another directory for the name of the package you want to create. For WinJS-related packages, I recommend this format, substituting PackageName for your own:

PS> mkdir WinJS.PackageName
PS> cd .\WinJS.PackageName

Make a ‘Content’ directory. Anything you put in this folder will be copied to the target project’s root folder:

PS> mkdir Content
PS> cd .\Content

Let’s add a javascript file, and use the Scripts folder as our target:

PS> mkdir Scripts
PS> cd .\Scripts
PS> echo "//my new javascript file" > myscript.js

Now, we need to make the .nuspec file. Luckily, nuget will make a template for us if we start in the package’s directory:

PS> cd ..\..\
PS> nuget spec

Now, we’ll have a Package.nuspec file. If you use sublime text, and have the command-line tools installed, you can launch it with this (otherwise, substitute subl with notepad):

PS> subl .\Package.nuspec

The default contents:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<package >
  <metadata>
    <id>Package</id>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <authors>your.user.name</authors>
    <owners>your.user.name</owners>
    <licenseUrl>http://LICENSE_URL_HERE_OR_DELETE_THIS_LINE</licenseUrl>
    <projectUrl>http://PROJECT_URL_HERE_OR_DELETE_THIS_LINE</projectUrl>
    <iconUrl>http://ICON_URL_HERE_OR_DELETE_THIS_LINE</iconUrl>
    <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>
    <description>Package description</description>
    <releaseNotes>Summary of changes made in this release of the package.</releaseNotes>
    <copyright>Copyright 2014</copyright>
    <tags>Tag1 Tag2</tags>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency id="SampleDependency" version="1.0" />
    </dependencies>
  </metadata>
</package>

Change the details in that file to fit your needs, and then pack the whole thing when you’re ready:

PS> nuget pack .\Package.nuspec

Don’t worry; it will give you a warning if you forget anything in the XML metadata.

Now, create a new project in Visual Studio, or open an existing project, in which you want to pull down the files in this package we just created. Then, follow the instructions on docs.nuget.org for referencing a local package feed. One thing that I found was that adding a folder as a feed will automatically add packages within that folder’s subfolders, so you can keep this directory organized however you like.

Hope this helps, let me know what your experience is!

Apple and Tesla

2014-03-03T00:00:00-06:00

I’m coming around on this.

Tesla controls their entire “stack,” starting with the batteries, which they are the best at in the world, and which they are heavily investing in. Just like Apple controls all of their hardware, starting with the processor.
Tesla isn’t trying to tackle the low-end of the market. They are happy with being supply-constrained and at the high end, catering to the buyer with high standards and deep pockets. Given time, their hardware becomes more affordable, but still aggressively priced. Just like Apple.
Tesla has started curating their own ecosystem of chargers, a network only available to their customers, and much of the benefit is free once you’ve bought the hardware (the car). Sounds just like the iTunes / App Store to me.
Tesla also writes all their own software for the cars, while making money off the hardware. The software is free, regularly-updated, and can change pretty much any of the behavior of the car, including its suspension height at highway speeds (see sub-headline here). Sounds like every iOS device to me.
Every other car has a system of buttons and knobs, while the Tesla uses a giant touchscreen glass panel. Sounds like the iPhone compared to its competitors in 2007, which all used hardware-based keyboards and styluses.
Assembling commodity materials with a world-class design team to create something so advanced yet so obvious that it’s a wonder why the competition is stuck with their complexities (solar electricity vs gas extracted from foreign crude oil) (aluminum and glass vs giant, complex mechanical hunks of iron requiring regular maintenance).
With self-driving cars, the auto industry is about to make a giant leap forward, just like the phone industry did with Apple as the leader.

OK, so there are some similarities. Apple would only build cars, though, if it could help their entire product line. How would that happen?

Most obviously, iOS in the car, running all of the best navigation and entertainment apps for the passengers. More ecosystem lock-in would mean their car customers would become iPhone and iPad customers.
Battery tech and materials used in the car would also be used in the phones, probably with a robust recycling system. Tim Cook likes green things.
When it comes to self-driving cars, deep integration with your iOS devices would let your robot car find you and pick you up at just the right moment.

I guess the biggest mark against this would be the potential loss of focus for Apple. Like I said before, they take deep pride in having very few products, and doing them very well, and allowing their small executive team to stay tightly involved with all aspects of every product. The Tesla acquisition would have to make the company more focused for it to start making sense.

The Next Microsoft

2014-02-07T00:00:00-06:00

Now that Microsoft has a fresh CEO, let’s think a little bit about the new possibilities this opens up.

Even though the “new” guy, Satya Nadella, is a 20-year veteran; he represents a meaningful committment to a fresh approach, since he is the only non-founder to be named CEO since the beginning. Before now, you could argue that Gates and Ballmer have guided the company with the same authority and principles all along, which may have made its entry into new markets difficult for the company culture. I think it’s evident by now that they aren’t coming in 1st place anymore in the consumer space, with the failures of Windows Phone, Bing, and the Surface tablets. A new set of priorities, launched by a new CEO, could change the way Microsoft is perceived, both within and outside of the company.

It seems that one thing Microsoft won’t be doing anymore is listening to Steve Ballmer. From his sudden “resignation” during a restructuring, and his refusal to say exactly what his new role will be in the company (short-term or long-term), it seems obvious to me that he was pushed aside. The board, perhaps convinced by Gates, probably told him to set a date and promised dignity if he went gently into the night.

Also interesting is that Gates is giving up his role as chairman to take a position as advisor to Nadella, and he says he is doing this at Nadella’s request. But we don’t know what kind of a personality Nadella is, yet. I view the possibilities as a combination of these three extremes:

Gates will not actually be advising the new CO, but Nadella won’t be making major changes anyway. The new Microsoft will be iterative and thoughtful, focusing on the enterprise first and slowly draw back its battle for consumer mindshare.
Gates has been itching to be back in a leadership role, and finally managed to get Ballmer out after witnessing his decade of mistakes from the sidelines. Gates picked Nadella because he will listen to his direction and be a fresh face for the company to rally around while he implements all of Gates’ ideas.
Nadella plans to make large, sweeping changes, and will rely on regular appearances from Gates to make employees and investors fall in line. Otherwise, the founder will stay out of the day-to-day and trust the new CEO.

The second option is the most fun to think about, but in reality, seems the most ridiculous to me. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is more than a full-time job, and one he clearly enjoys and sees as more important than anything Microsoft is doing. Besides, at the rate Gates is selling his own shares, he will soon no longer be the largest shareholder, reducing his influence even more.

We don’t know much about the new CEO’s style yet, but my guess is that the board wouldn’t have allowed this arrangement if he plans on doing anything close to #3. Microsoft isn’t a fast-moving company and a new CEO isn’t going to change that culture.

That leaves the first scenario. Microsoft will continue soaring with their strengths, which right now is the Azure and enterprise services division. My guess is that the next major release of Windows under Satya Nadella will essentially be a hardware-accellerated portal into Azure, where everyone’s information flows to and from their Microsoft account, and enterprises are married even deeper into Microsoft’s services.

Movie Critics Are the Worst

2014-01-06T00:00:00-06:00

It’s tough to know if a new movie is going to be worth your time. The ritual of driving to a theater, paying for a ticket, finding a seat, and sitting through someone else’s story with a room full of strangers is a high demand, even with a giant bowl of popcorn. If it’s a brand-new movie, none of your friends can recommend it yet, so you’re basing your choice on the trailers you saw on TV—but these are shot and edited before the rest of the movie, and always have whole teams of marketers workshop it with test audiences, cutting and pasting until they achieve a polished, generically-pleasing spot designed to churn up interest from anyone with a set of eyeballs.

Thus, the hopeful planner might turn to a movie critic for advice. But to me, reviewers typically fall into these two categories:

Older men who watch movies as a job
Young men who are movie geeks

The seasoned, professional reviewer (#1 above) is only interested in two types of movies: generically audience-pleasing, all-around favorites, starting with the kids (i.e. anything from Pixar); and award-show fodder like Lincoln or The King’s Speech. These movies are great for groups with kids or people who want to see a compelling performance by a famous actor. But what about the rest of us, who just want to go to a movie and have a good time, without having to think about it? Moviegoing is supposed to be a leisure activity, after all.

This might explain the sudden surge in comic book movies. When true to their roots as imaginative fantasy (for adults!), the latest Marvel and DC films can scare up huge crowds, starting with the most enthusiastic: the geeks.

Movie geeks, of course, come with their own movie geek reviewers, who come with their own set of personal standards. Left unchecked by an editor, they will either 100% love or 100% hate any comic book or nerd movie. See, for example, the reviews for Star Trek Into Darkness and The Dark Knight Rises. People loved it (both scored huge at the box office), experienced critics gave them high rankings, but the savvy young nerd fans hated it. While at the same time, this same group of snarky reviewers lifted up Pacific Rim, a movie which scored lower on Rotten Tomatoes, and grossed much lower at the (domestic) box office. Both types of reviewers disliked Man of Steel, yet it raked in huge piles of money and launched an even bigger sequel from the same team.

The problem with geek movie reviewers is expectations. The geeky reviewer is going to review the new Star Trek as a Star Trek fan, comparing it to the best from the series. Since Into Darkness has so many parallels to The Wrath Of Khan, this reviewer is going to measure it next to this movie, along with all of their conversations and endless fan theories about that movie. It was destined to fail among Star Trek geeks from the start.

I would propose that the main problem is too much snark. (See also: this article’s title, which of course is meant to be ironic). These writers are always looking for something wrong with things, it’s the very definition of the word that makes up their job description. The average moviegoer just wants to have a good time: find something pleasing for themselves and their date. When we leave a movie, most people don’t want to talk about what went wrong in the movie, that’s not very fun. But a much more fun discussion is reliving the best parts with our friends afterward. Critics are stacking a movie against all of the other ones they’ve seen that week, and writing about what sticks out. The rest of us, who watch movies less frequently, leave a movie with our eyes opened to the telling of a story in contrast with the rest of our lives.

I listen to Chris Hardwick’s podcast, The Nerdist, and he refers to himself as a “lover of things.” It took me a while to get what he meant. But then I heard some hardcore reviewers at HitFix refer to Hardwick as a softball, and I got it: Chris Hardwick sees himself as the guy who is enthusiastic about pretty much any type of creativity, and how people film their expression of it. In other words, the opposite of a critic. I think this mirrors my own experiences as well, and I suspect, many others.

Going to a movie theater should be a fun experience. Otherwise, why take the trouble to go to movies at all?

Trust, and the NSA

2014-01-02T00:00:00-06:00

Due to the Snowden revelations, we now know that anything stored in the cloud stands a pretty good chance of being duplicated on an NSA server. This includes email, SkyDrive / Google Documents files, and all of your phone texts and chat transcripts. They copy everything since this makes it easier for them to search later, across all services a target might employ. If the NSA needs to tap into Google’s fiber lines to monitor one high-value target who uses Gmail, they may as well collect everything else that travels through that pipe, too, since they may need to run queries on an additional target.

Very soon, the White House is going to announce some compromises designed to appease the public outcry over this invasion of privacy. Here is what they need to effectively show U.S. citizens:

The NSA does an important job fighting terrorism.
These tools are only used on foreigners.
You can trust the government to curb abuses, not that there have been any.
All we ask of you is your continued (involuntary and passive) participation in this secret program.

In addition, the White House needs to use this moment to respond to the Snowden revelations in general, including future ones—only a small fraction of the leaked documents have been published, and more damaging headlines are on their way.

If the administration doesn’t communicate effectively in the coming weeks, the public’s mistrust in the NSA will encroach on the rest of the federal government.

AT&T Is Paying Us To Switch To Verizon

2012-09-19T17:24:00-05:00

I don’t have many vices. But one thing I am guilty of is upgrading to the latest iPhone every year. I’ve owned the 4S, 4, 3GS, 3G and even the original phone. But there is always some sort of carrier penalty for upgrading early, since they subsidize the cost of the phone over the duration of your contract.

This year, AT&T has determined my penalty for upgrading early is $450, so the $299 32GB iPhone 5 will cost me a total of $750. Meainwhile, the cost for me to just leave is $125. So the obvious thing to do is pay the $125, then go to Verizon and pay $299, right?

I couldn’t understand why they would structure it this way. I mean, in economic terms, they are paying me $325 to switch carriers! So I called up AT&T, waited on hold for 20 minutes, and asked the gentleman why, in any universe, I would stay on AT&T, when:

Staying on AT&T would cost $750, while switching to Verizon would only cost $425 (to pay the penalty, and to buy a new phone)
I can keep the same number on Verizon
Verizon has much better 3G and LTE coverage in rural areas
In large cities, I’ve found that AT&T coverage is actually worse: I couldn’t make a phone call anywhere in downtown San Francisco last year
About 1/3 of my phone calls over 20 minutes are dropped on AT&T, even when I have five bars, am completely stationary and calling a land line
FaceTime works over cellular on Verizon, while AT&T is charging extra for it
AT&T publicly and blatantly lies about their “unlimited” plan, so if you were grandfathered in with this, there’s no point in staying on it
Internationally, Verizon actually stacks up nicer than AT&T

I actively tried to help him. I wanted him to prove me wrong, to find a flaw in my logic somewhere. He didn’t have an answer, and politely said that he couldn’t “mess with the numbers” as long as I was buying an iPhone. But he did mention that he could cut me a sweet deal if I wanted to switch to a Samsung Galaxy S3.

Yeah.

How to Scrape a Web Site with Node.js, JSDOM and jQuery

2012-07-05T18:35:00-05:00

Scraping a web site has never been easier. Node.js runs on any platform, and if you’re using Windows, you can install it with Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer. From there, it’s as simple as launching a command window and typing:

node myJavascriptFile.js

This executes the code from the console, without the need for a browser. Pretty cool, huh? Because it runs from the console, you can request all sorts of web resources at once and log to any kind of database you want.

Let’s say you want to grab all the front page web links from reddit.com. Here’s the step-by-step process we would like our robot to follow:

Request the web page
Inject jQuery into the web page
Grab a bunch of stuff from the site using jQuery’s syntax, since it’s super simple
Log that stuff to a text file

With node and the jsdom package, we can do this in less than 20 lines of code. First, open a command window, navigate to your working directory, and use npm to install jsdom:

npm install jsdom

Then, create a new file named ParseReddit.js and put this in it:

var jsdom = require('jsdom');

jsdom.env({
    html: 'http://reddit.com',
    scripts: ['http://code.jquery.com/jquery.js'],
    done: (function (errors, window) {
        var $ = window.$;
        // we're interested in the title, subreddit, URL,
        // score, and the number of comments for each link
        var stories = $.map($('#siteTable .thing'), function (thing) {
            return {
                title: $('a.title', thing).text(),
                subreddit: $('a.subreddit', thing).text(),
                href: $('a.title', thing).attr('href'),
                score: $('.score.unvoted', thing).text(),
                numComments: $('a.comments', thing).text().match(/^[0-9]*/)[0] || 0
            };
        });

        console.log(stories);

    })
});

After that, just switch back to the command line and run:

node ParseReddit.js

You’ll see a bunch of JSON show up in a few seconds, this is our parsed home page. Pipe that into a file to recall it later:

node ParseReddit.js > stories.json

From there, you can look at it through JS Beautifier or open it in Excel using json-csv.com.

The Code Explained

jsdom.env: This is the main function which takes care of most of the legwork. It opens the specified URL and injects any scripts you like, giving you a working DOM. Querying the DOM is the easiest way to extract information from a web page, since jQuery was built for this.

The done() function: This is fired when the web page is finished. The window object is the exact same object you would use if you opened the javascript console (Ctrl+Shift+I in Chrome, Cmd+Shift+I in Chrome for Mac).

$: We’re mapping window.$ to just $ to save us some work in this function.

$.map: This is a super handy function for transforming one array into another. I could have used .each(), but using non-iterative code is always better. In this case, we’re translating each div with a class of “thing” on the site into our custom array, which consists of objects we are defining. These objects have title, category, href, score and numComments properties, but really, we can use any terminology we want. For each of those properties, we’re querying inside the “thing” div for more information (yes, reddit’s HTML code really calls each story a “thing”). In Chrome, I used the “Inspect Element” feature to show the DOM and help me craft these.

Another hint: I plugged in the entire line after “var stories =” into Chrome’s javascript console to help me quickly test these out. Chrome is great about letting us inspect each of the returned objects to make sure everything is working OK.

What’s with that .match()? Oh no… are you using a regular expression?: Yep. And I’m really sorry. I’m using it here to translate “29 comments” into just “29”, since the “comments” is redundant. I dropped an “|| 0” on there since reddit just says “comment” if there are no comments yet, so if there are no matches, .match returns undefined and “ is used for the numComments property.

A Word of Caution

If you automate this to pull down more than a couple pages on a site, you might get caught and your IP address could be blacklisted. Web sites implicitly trust all users until they start pulling down more than their fair share of resources, and bandwidth costs money. Don’t be mean.

Site Owners

It’s important to recognize the reality of scrapers. With the right configuration, it’s not hard to imagine a script similar to this one pulling down the entire content of reddit by following every link. And with a little more effort, a programmer could make a scraper look just like regular traffic, by simply changing the user agent, carefully timing the web requests, and spreading the requests across a rented server farm. I don’t think it would take a B-level programmer longer than a weekend to pull down a site like Amazon.

In the past, I worked with a company which dedicated umpteen programmer hours to preventing this. IP address limits, user agent sniffing and even honeypots (hidden links which only scrapers could find, which would immediately blacklist their IP address) were employed on a regular basis, as well as CAPTCHAs at every turn. Regular users were incorrectly identified as scrapers every day, and at one point, Google de-listed them after their bot (which is just another type of scraper) triggered their filters. Preventing scrapers is probably impossible and even dangerous, because it defies the open nature of the web. Instead, try and figure out the other party’s motivations—maybe a paid API or a referral program could crack open a new revenue stream for you.

How to Successfully Negotiate A New Car

2012-02-15T13:53:00-06:00

Two weeks ago I test drove a beautiful new car and bought it the same night, doing only about 20 minutes of research that very night. Oh, and I saved $1300+ off the dealer’s “best price.” Here’s how I did it.

Stage One: Have a price range in mind. You have to know what you want to spend before you test drive anything. At this point you can optionally start researching cars, I used Consumer Reports and bought a 3-month online subscription for cheap.

Step Two: Test drive. Politely listen to the sales rep, but insist on a test drive as early as possible on any or all the cars you want to drive. Is the seat comfortable? Do you bang your head against the ceiling? Will your family fit into the back seat? Does it merge onto the interstate well? How about rear-end visibility? These things are important. Don’t let the rep influence you: you’re testing how the manufacturer built the car, not his ability to sell it to you. He didn’t design the car.

Step Three: Make a decision. You now know exactly which car you want, and it is roughly in line with your budget. Make it abundantly clear to the sales rep that this is the car and that you want the lowest possible price. Sometimes they will try to steer you toward another model during negotiations. Don’t fall for this.

Step Four: Get their no-negotiation price. Get him or her to call over their sales manager by insisting that you want the absolute, rock-bottom, lowest price. Tell them that you don’t want to negotiate. But you’re going to negotiate because they will not give you their lowest price right away.

Step Five: Negotiate. Leave the dealership and go to TrueCar.com and figure out where to start. You can also purchase a $14 price report from ConsumerReports.com which will give you the TrueCar rates and a whole lot more. $14 is nothing compared to the amount you will save with this knowledge. Look at the rock-bottom rate on TrueCar and go back to the dealership. Proudly tell their sales manager that you will pay this price and NO MORE. That is the absolute maximum you can pay. If he asks how you got that price, tell him. No reason to be anything but completely honest about which price you want.

A side note about politeness: You need to be polite but insistent this entire process. At the negotiating table, your politeness will cost you actual money. Think about it this way: if I paid you $1300 to be only 80% polite to a stranger for 20 minutes, would you do it? Of course you would. This is your chance to make $1300 in one conversation. It’s called doing business: they are professionals and they will respect you more if you give them blunt answers. They may try to make you feel bad for this, as if they were some sort of charity you are funding. Don’t fall for it.

Step Six: Wait for them to come down in price. Even though they said they didn’t, they will. Just sit there and stare at whatever piece of paper they offered you with the price on it. This will make them insecure if you do it right.

Step Seven: Walk out. Seriously. Thank them for their time, state that you are sorry that you didn’t come to an agreement, and tell them that you are happy to resume negotiating “first thing tomorrow morning.” Get up and leave, shaking their hands and thanking them by name. There is a good chance they will either agree to your rate right before you head out the door, or at least give you a better offer. You can choose whether you want to stay or continue the walk-out at that point, but they are professionals and will know if you do a fake walk-out. So make sure you mean it or you will be embarrassed when they call your bluff (I say this from experience).

Step Eight: Extras. When the dealer comes down to a price that you are happy with, tell them you will agree to pay $100 lower than that price, but only if they throw in three oil changes. For my last purchase, I asked for three oil changes and an auto-dimming mirror (a $450+ value in total) at this stage, and got it. You know your’ve reached a good price when they leave the room to “check with their boss.”

Happy car hunting!

Windows 8

2011-09-17T10:39:00-05:00

I like what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8 and I look forward to using it on a tablet. A lot of apps are going to come out for it and a lot of developers will become very rich. The frameworks are easy, flexible, and designed to make very consistent apps which integrate very well with what Microsoft has invented.

But two things come to mind:

I don’t think people will like using this for their desktop machines. No one wants to hold their arm up to touch their screen, a mouse is just better when you’re at your desk. Your arm will get tired if you have to move it all around just to work with a spreadsheet or scroll a web page. The problem gets bigger when you’re talking about 21 and 24-inch monitors. So, people will either use only the “legacy” interface for a long time or deal with the Metro interface with a mouse, which it wasn’t designed for.
This stuff is all such a long ways from coming out. At least a year. Lots can change in a year—Google will no doubt start their copying machines and have a workable competitor by then (since their tablet strategy is pretty much doomed right now), and we have no idea what Apple has in the works because they only announce it when it’s ready. When Windows 8 comes out maybe enough people will already have tablets that no one will want to switch.

Can you build a better App Store?

2011-08-31T18:19:00-05:00

The App Store has always confused me.

Browsing apps today seems more like browsing the yellow pages. For users to get the best experience, they should be able to look around in a more immersive interface, without so much text. You go to Foot Locker to try on the shoes. People don’t read.

Maybe we need a full-screen carousel of app interfaces, with videos, demos and other interactive content, instead of lists and lists of icons tucked inside a single “App Store” icon. Maybe the app store should be integrated with Safari better. But one thing is for sure: for it to succeed, we need to be able to install apps as easily as visiting a website.

Ripping the user out of the app store and making her type in a password, and then making her wait for the entire app to download, and then tap again before using it, is about the most disruptive experience possible. That is no way to sell shoes.

Local Newspaper Paywalls

2011-07-01T08:45:00-05:00

Newspapers such as my local Omaha World Herald are starting to experiment with paywalls. The basic premise is that print subscribers get free online access, while everyone else needs to pay $10/month for access. This raises a number of questions and has been analyzed bylots of smart people. Here are the questions I have for Omaha.com:

What does Omaha.com offer that I can’t get on a combination of free sources, such as the AP (for national news), JournalStar.com (local news and commentary) and over-the-air TV (local/national news)? Bonus points if the answer doesn’t include the words, “Cindy Lange-Kubick.” Local commentary is not a business model by itself.
How did you settle on $10/month? This invites the comparison to Netflix and Wall Street Journal, both of which charge around $8/month.
Will you distinguish your digital offering, or are you sticking to a “print first” approach for all articles? For example, do you plan on having interactive infographics, long-form articles, blogs, wikis, an enhanced taxonomy and social content to make use of the medium? Or will you be following the inverted pyramid, strictly enforcing article word counts, and tacking on comments/discussion as an afterthought?
Right now reading Omaha.com is a chore. The layout is not easy to navigate, there is a lot of scrolling to get to the narrow channel of content down the middle, and it is dominated by ads. How will this change when the paywall comes up? The type of readers who pay for content are the type who care about the experience of reading it.

The internet is changing the distribution methods for intellectual property. In the same way that Apple is succeeding with iPod and iTunes, Amazon is succeeding because they make it easy to purchase books and pleasant to read them on their device. Maybe newspapers could learn a thing or two from these models.

What is Yahoo doing, exactly?

2011-06-27T17:48:00-05:00

Yahoo has been flailing for quite a while now in the traffic numbers and they are having problems focusing. Google stole their search and advertising traffic, Facebook is de facto home of social connections, both are stealing their best employees and no one is interested in creating a personalized home page anymore.

Yahoo mail is doing great, but who cares? You can get free email anywhere, and people are using less and less of it now that Facebook is getting serious about their Messages feature. Besides, putting ads next to personal emails is not a respectable business model, and it just won’t work if your core business isn’t advertising.

Why hasn’t more attention been brought to Flickr, a service that many people are happy to pay for? Does Yahoo’s CEO even use it? (She seems more like a Snapfish user to me.) People with iPhones have snatched up Instagram in record time. Flickr for iPhone would be more popular if they had actually put some effort into making it useful. Right now it’s great for browsing my own photos but that’s about it.

How about Delicious? Just as Flickr used to be the de-facto photo sharing site on the web, Delicious used to be the best way to store, tag and share your bookmarks. But just like Flickr, they stopped innovating five years ago and have festered while competitors (like Pinboard) snatch up their most important users.

So what’s left for Yahoo? I think their main users see it as a “web portal,” a home page with a bunch of ever-changing links they can click on when they get bored. Does the world need a web portal anymore? Do people need their hand held or can they type in a URL all by themselves? Isn’t this why AOL went under?

How To Do To-Do Lists

2011-02-04T23:13:00-06:00

This is the simplest and, to me, the most effective way to manage priorities. You already have this program installed and you already know how to use it. It’s called Notepad, and it’s all you need.

Every time you discover something that needs to be on your to-do list, just enter it into a file (I call mine “todo.txt”), and make it easily accessible and open all day. I like to use an outline format for this, using spaces and tabs to indent and make things look nice. You can copy and paste to reorder things and group your priorities by weekday in order to set goals. When something is done, just delete it.

This seems ridiculously simple, there is really no trick to it. But keeping it in a text file gives you complete control over the format, rather than some random program. And keeping it separate from your inbox allows you to set your own priorities, rather than listen to everyone else’s. It’s all about finding what works best for you.

How To Do Email

2011-01-30T23:08:00-06:00

I get around 250 messages per day, and it’s tough to manage all of that and still get other stuff done. Email, to me, is something that has to be wresled with on a constant basis to keep it from taking over. Here’s what I do to keep it from creeping into the rest of my life:

Ignore as much of it as possible. Look back at last Tuesday’s messages: how many of them were critical, or really needed your response? Lower your threshold for replying to messages, and shorten your replies. If something requires extra communication that can’t be done quickly, there’s an app for that: it’s called “Phone.”

Have a routine for handling each one of your messages. Here’s mine:

Can this be ignored? If so, move on to the next message.
Do I need to do something with this information? If so, flag the message and immediately move on to the next one.
Can I quickly reply to this message, to ask for clarification or to provide some critical information to somebody? If so, do it, but keep it to three sentences.

Now that you’ve cleared out your unread messages, take a look at your flagged messages, and act on them accordingly. Each one of them should be quickly handled by re-entering the info somewhere else, such as:

Your to-do list (you have one of these, right?) (And don’t even try to tell me that your inbox is your to-do list)
Your calendar
Someone else’s inbox (in the case of forwarded messages)
Any other program where you file information

As soon as you have re-entered the flagged information somewhere useful, un-flag it.

Close it for a full 60 minutes, and don’t check it again before that 60 minutes is up. Disable any “new message” popups and resist the urge to crack it open “just to check in.” Constantly allowing for interruptions is a sign of procrastination and you will not get anything done. Of all the tips here, this is the one I am worst at, and probably the most important. I’ve written about this before.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Lots of people ask me questions all day and expect immediate repsonses! Whatever shall I do?
They are only doing this because you have trained them this way. You’re going to have to do the opposite: encourage them to rely less on you for quick responses by delaying or just not responding. Allowing a colleague to figure something out on their own is a sign of respect and trust. Your newfound productivity gain will speak for itself.

What if I have to write a long reply?
You probably don’t, but if you do, enter it on your to-do list, where you are already managing all of your other priorities.

Do you ever delete messages?
No. Why should I have to delete messages? Storage is dirt cheap, my time is much, much more expensive. It takes time to delete messages and causes stress whenever I worry about whether or not I deleted something I once thought was unimportant.

Why don’t you use folders?
Folders are poison. It takes much longer to file and categorize things than it does to simply search for them later, when I need them. Your email program has a fast search function, right? Besides, if you’re using your email program as a documentation tool, you’re doing it wrong. Use Evernote or OneNote. My inbox has tens of thousands of messages and I’m OK with that, the only ones I need to act on are the ones I have flagged. You should be able to sort so that the flagged ones are always at the top.

Why don’t you use your inbox as a to-do list?
My inbox is a raw stream if random thoughts that anybody in the world can put in front of my eyes. Using it as a to-do list is a great way to screw up my own priorities by mixing them in with everyone else’s.

I flagged too many messages!
It’s time to process each and every one of them, like you should have been doing all along. If this list gets too long, it becomes daunting and you will be afraid of it, rendering it useless. Remember: your flagged messages are not a to-do list. That’s what your to-do list is for.

How To Get Stuff Done at Work

2010-06-20T15:43:00-05:00

Entire blogs are dedicated to the idea that you shouldn’t let technology get in the way of actually doing work. The philosophy is to use software as a tool, as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Let’s say you’re not interested in reading hundreds of productivity blogs, which is decidedly not very productive. Let’s also say that you’re ready to admit that you’re an easily distracted human and have tons of small interruptions throughout the day which prevent you from getting anything meaningful done and leave you with a general feeling of unsatisfaction at the end of the workday until you find yourself consuming copious amounts of boxed wine and chocolate ice cream in front of your DVR recording of Mad Chef and crying at the lack of purpose in your professional life. Let’s also say that you stumbled upon this blog post and are interested in learning the details promised by its title, but may be a little bit overwhelmed by the curious attention to detail of this introduction. Well, you’re in the right place - you’ve made it through the introduction, and may now proceed on to the actual tips.

The Actual Tips

Remove all icons from the desktop, except for the Recycle Bin. Remove that, too, if you think you can remember where the “delete” key is on your keyboard whenever you want to delete a file. If you’re on OSX, the Trash icon is already on the dock, so you’re all set. Icons on the desktop are shiny little distractions that your brain has to process every time your desktop comes into view. Make it a blank slate and put up a pretty landscape or something in the background. There’s a reason mechanics use a toolbox instead of leaving their tools strewn about the workshop floor.
Remove all icons from the Quick Launch bar / doc / taskbar, except for the 5-6 you actually use. If on a Mac, set the dock to auto-hide and put it on the side of the screen. Anything else can be launched very quickly by searching for it - just hit the Windows key (or Command-Space on OSX) and start typing.
Map a mouse button to your task switcher. If you have a 5-button mouse, this is super handy. On OSX, map it to Expose. Lots of times, a task will require several programs to be open, and it’s important that they’re all at your fingertips so you don’t have to think about how to switch to them.
Remove all desktop widgets and notifications. Anything that pops up randomly as a quick “For Your Information” causes you to break your concentration from your current task, which is incredibly harmful to your productivity and work ethic. This includes all mail notifications (we’ll get to that in a bit). The goal is to let you control your environment, not to let technology tell you what to do.
Turn off vibrate-only mode on your phone, so that it is either completely silent or ringing. There is no halfway point: if you are in a situation where you can’t answer calls or respond to text messages, why even read them? And for pete’s sake, turn off that little *ding* your phone makes when you get an email. Your friends and family will thank you for it. A true friend is one who never shows their cell phone in your presence.
Hide your browser’s bookmarks bar. Make the “New Tab” page load a blank page. Nothing distracts me more than wanting to go to a web site and being presented with a bunch of toys to click on instead (see: the default “New Tab” page on Chrome and Safari).
Close everything - everything - besides the one thing you’re working on. Music? If you need it (you don’t), choose an album, hit “play”, minimize iTunes and leave it alone. Everything you see on your screen should relate to the one task at hand.

Regarding Email

Close it down. Close it down and hide the icon. Why? Because you can’t let everyone else run your day. Check it every two hours or so, on your own schedule. That stuff people send you all the time can wait. I work in a highly collaborative environment in which managers and programmers need my input 15-20 times per day. Handling all of them in a batch every few hours allows me to concentrate on my work at hand, and they quickly learn not to expect immediate responses. You’ll be surprised at how often you won’t actually be needed (the thing someone emailed you about resolved itself), is no longer relevant, or was never relevant (that thing never applied to you in the first place). Look through all the email you sent yesterday, and see if there were any that actually needed responses as fast as you sent them. By the way, I didn’t come up with this radical idea myself, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Find out more about it via the “Inbox Zero” link below.

Three Rules to Work By

There’s no such thing as multitasking (see link below). All those little distractions add up. You don’t text and drive, do you? Then why do you answer emails while concentrating on a task? Handle them in batches and delegate everything you can.
Don’t spend your day responding to everyone else. Actually *do* something with your time. Build a legacy of work, not a mountain of email responses.
Take breaks. No need to do a marathon, you’ll get exhausted. Your brain probably needs to breathe a little bit, depending on how technical your profession is. That’s what Twitter’s for. ;)

Addendum: A few more tips on email

Respond in 3 sentences or less. If it’s longer, stare at it for a while, then chop it up or delete it altogether. You’ll get good after a while. I’m terrible at this and need to try harder. Writing a concise email is a sign of respect to the recipient.
After the initial introduction, don’t put a salutation or manually sign your emails. No one cares. It helps to have an automatic signature, but keep it tiny, tiny, tiny (name, company, role, phone number) and make sure it isn’t included in your responses. Every time someone’s signature has more than two lines, I get distracted and forget everything your email was about.
To avoid typing out multiple long emails, schedule a quick meeting, just you and one other person, to handle whatever you’re emailing about. Pick a time in the next couple of hours to meet, while it’s still fresh in your minds. Of course, meetings are usually awful, too, but that’s another post.

Links referenced by this post:

(I put ‘em at the bottom so you wouldn’t be distracted while reading)

http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/ - The Ultimate Productivity Blog. Worth a quick read.
http://inboxzero.com/inboxzero/ - I recommend watching the “Internet Famous” video featured here.
http://lateralaction.com/articles/multitasking/ - There’s No Such Thing as Multitasking

Why doesn’t the iPhone have flash?

2010-03-01T05:24:00-06:00

Why doesn’t my iPhone have Flash?
Why should it?

Games! Videos! The Dr. Phil sound board!
I hate to say it, but for every one of those, there’s an app for that.

OK, fine. But there’s still lots of websites that use flash. Most of my favorite local restaurants do! 99% of computers have it installed, and Apple ships OS X with it!
Flash is all over the place on computers. But mobile flash has several challenges. For example, dragging the slider on a YouTube video with your mouse is easy - hold down the button and move the mouse. But on an iPhone, dragging your finger just scrolls one direction.

So what? Apple has solved problems like that before - look at what they did with copy and paste! It’s really good!
Wow, you’re really enthusiastic about this! You must be a fanboy. Why don’t you just marry Apple and get it over with?

You’re the one who has dedicated 40% of his posts so far to them.
You’re… you’re right. I’ve come to a sad realization.

Here’s the thing: if Apple allowed flash, all sorts of new games would be instantly usable, and it would be easier to make something in Flash than learning Objective-C.
Possibly. But look at the performance of Flash on the Mac - it’s terrible. If you’re on YouTube, your CPU will skyrocket, your computer gets really hot and your battery life suffers. Do you want that to happen to your phone?

But they’re solving problems like that already! Android is getting flash. Sounds like you’re just making excuses for Apple. What do they say when people ask about this?
Not a whole lot. But I don’t think their issue is with performance.

So if flash ran a lot better, Apple would still reject it?
Yes. It’s all about control.

You mean, Steve Jobs wants to control Adobe?
Not exactly. Apple wants to own the entire device from top to bottom. They design the hardware, manufacture the chips and can change any part of the software they want. They can reject any app for any reason just to “control the experience”. They can fix any bugs that crop up, too. Browser plugins like flash cause the vast majority of crashes on desktop computers, and Microsoft and Apple can’t do a whole lot about it.

OK, interesting. That’s why the iPhone is really stable and there aren’t any viruses affecting them - Apple has to approve every piece of code that runs on it.
Pretty much. Flash would allow you to write something and run it without Apple’s blessing.

You can still write an app in javascript, though, and anyone can use it without Apple’s approval.
You sure can.

So what happens when javascript gets as fast as flash?
That will be pretty sweet! I’ll bet the next iPhone will have a faster processor, so this could happen really soon.

You’ll be able to run all kinds of useful webapps still, right? Like you can now, only faster?
Yeah, it will be neat. You’ll see games and stuff that are webapps instead of native apps, and you won’t be able to tell the difference.

But won’t that “hurt the experience” if people no longer need the app store? Apple can’t control every website.
That’s… a good point. I guess we’ll wait and see on that one.

The Apple Tablet

2010-01-24T15:52:00-06:00

If there’s one thing I enjoy it’s thinking about future Apple products. Not only is the company good at revolutionizing the tech industry with every one of their recent ventures (iPod Touch, iPhone, new Macbooks), but they are the only company able to launch a product with almost complete obscurity. I like to think of them as the anti-Google since Google releases projects in early beta with great fanfare (see: Google Wave). Maybe their secrecy explains their ability to launch products above and beyond what the competition has to offer, but I digress - analyzing this is above my pay grade. At the risk of grouping myself with all the Apple rumor sites and being instantly and exhaustively wrong this Wednesday when Apple releases a product completely different from the one advertised here, I’ll try my hand at predicting what we’re going to see from Cupertino in 2010.

What’s a tablet computer, anyway? Didn’t Microsoft try this a decade ago? Also, aren’t the iPhone / iPod Touch just mini-tablets? Lots of people seem to think there’s a space that needs to be filled between the iPhone and PC, hence the “netbook” category. I don’t understand these, and I don’t think Apple does, either - they’re not going to release something that does less than a laptop for less money. So what would a tablet do that a laptop, netbook or iPod Touch couldn’t? And how is it going to appeal to Jim Bob McAmerica?

We know a little bit about the hardware and software thanks to leaks from companies Apple is working with - David Pogue has a good roundup. As far as the finer details of the software, though, we’re on our own. Apple has reportedly been trying to make The Tablet work for years, with Steve Jobs noting that tablets weren’t good for much besides “surfing the web in the bathroom“. When you think about it, he’s right - tablets are too large for carrying in your pocket, but too small to have a useful keyboard, so what’s left?

Let’s examine Apple’s strengths. They revolutionized the music industry by offering an online store that let you buy music by the track and do whatever you wanted with it. Then they started doing the same with the movie and television industry, offering TV shows and movie downloads. Most recently, they launched the app store, a massive undertaking that allows developers to profit from the “walled garden” of the iPhone environment. Apple is a hardware company that partners with content creators to bring services to consumers. After music, TV, movies and applications, what’s next in line in their strategy? I say newspapers. Paying $0.25 per article makes sense to me, and I’d do it all the time if given the chance. Buying a subscription to a paper, on the other hand, locks you into them for all your news. Micropayments seems to be the future, the papers just need a unifying strategy. Apple can give it to them.

If The Tablet needs to offer more than a sophisticated e-reader. I’d like to finally see handheld iChat. The iPod Touch and iPhone don’t do it yet, probably because they don’t have front-facing cameras which would be cool for video chatting, but maybe The Tablet will.

Beyond reading and chatting, the device is going to appeal to us because it will have incredible video capabilities. I wouldn’t put it past Apple to offer 720p streaming movie rentals on this thing. Watching a movie while holding the screen doesn’t appeal to everybody, but it’s better than watching it on your iPod, which people for some reason do all the time.

The core operating system has to be radically different from what we’ve seen before. Apple changed OSX dramatically for the iPhone, they’ll do it again for The Tablet. It’s going to be gesture-based to the extreme since it will require your whole hand to operate. OSX on the desktop is designed for the mouse, a single pixel which allows for clicking and dragging. OSX on the iPhone is designed for one or two fingers, which allow for some gestures (for things like zooming) but means the touchable interface elements (buttons, etc) have to be “blown up”. OSX on The Tablet will probably need you to use two, three or four fingers, plus your thumb, to do anything but has much more space and better hardware to work with than an iPhone. I think this alone is going to make people want to give up their laptops for a tablet just because using it will look “fun”.

One issue they’re going to have to work around is text input. On the desktop, you’ve got a full keyboard, which is the most universal and fastest way of getting data from your head onto your screen. On the iPhone, you’ve got a virtual keyboard which is pretty good but I wouldn’t want to type a novel on it. On the tablet, a virtual keyboard seems less practical since most peoples’ thumbs can’t reach each other on a 10” screen. It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple brought back the stylus. Then again, no one thought the virtual keyboard on the iPhone would work, so I’m ready to let them challenge my assumptions and release something entirely different from what I’m expecting.

I know I’m missing a lot here, but I don’t think anyone can guess accurately what exactly Apple is going to offer without inside knowledge. In order to keep score, here’s a list of predictions I outlined above - maybe after it’s announced I’ll do a follow-up and we’ll see what I missed:

The Tablet will offer newspaper content and micropayments via your iTunes account
It will have strong support for video iChat
720p streaming movie rentals
Text input will be with a stylus or split-screen keyboard (left-hand keys on the left side, right-hand keys on the right so your thumbs can reach them)
Gestures that require all 5 of your fingers
Trickle-down of new features from The Tablet to the iPhone’s operating system (new home screen, new theme, new multitouch gestures, etc.)

And here’s a list of things I don’t expect The Tablet to have:

Support for bluetooth keyboards
Support for non-apple-approved apps (I’m predicting everything must go through the App Store, and has Apple’s approval)
E-ink screen (definitely going to be full-color)
A virtual keyboard that requires both hands
A roaming data plan that has anything to do with AT&T
A browser that has anything to do with Adobe Flash

Oh, and one more thing… if I was going to bet on a name for The Tablet, it would be “Canvas”.

2001: An HD Odyssey

2009-12-13T17:33:00-06:00

I jumped on the Blu-Ray bandwagon this week after noticing the nicely priced 2001: A Space Odyssey on Amazon (it’s now $9.49). Besides being a deeply philosophical film, this movie notable to me because of its attention to detail in all of the props Stanley Kubrick used. In this format, you can’t help but notice that the screens, ships and space itself are as much characters in this movie as the cast, and that the industrial design of the minute details is remarkable for any movie, let alone one released in 1968. Each shot is now finally devoid of flicker, warping and color degradation, exposing us every lighting nuance, lens flare and screen reflection the eccentric director intended, presenting us the story in its purest format yet.

One thing that I thought about in this latest viewing was the de-humanization of the characters. The astronauts are reduced to infants when it comes to sleeping (or hibernating) in cribs, eating a mush similar to baby food, and learning to use a complicated restroom. But when it comes to their actual duties, they simply carry out HAL’s orders – he’s able to see and process everything, but needs Dave and Frank to perform the physical work. After delegating the higher-level thinking to HAL, does man become the tool? This is exemplified by Frank’s birthday message from his parents: he shows no emotion at their enthusiastic video greeting, yet the artificial HAL expresses good will to him. What’s left for Frank to do in this environment if HAL imitates even his feelings? Man’s tools now challenge man himself, making him nearly obsolete. At the same time, HAL fails at reaching an entirely human level of emotion, running berserk when asked by his makers to hide information from the astronauts – contradicting his prerogative to be “as reliable as possible”.

It’s sporadic realizations like this that make this movie so rewarding on repeat viewings.

Very Specific Dating Advice… for Men!

2009-10-30T18:12:00-05:00

Target Audience: Men who are in their mid 20s, are interested in women, are getting ready to host one in their home, and normally spend their evenings playing my roommate’s copy of a Batman video game because I won’t pay $40 for something I only use for one week.

Some tips for getting your house ready:

Leave the toy helicopter in the drawer. Your man friends all probably find this fascinating, and will play with it for hours on end, but to the ladies, you may as well have pulled out your baby tooth collection.
If it is around Halloween, don’t worry about cleaning up those cobwebs. They are “good decorations”.
15 minutes before she comes over, don’t drop a wine glass, attempt to catch it, spear the webbing between your thumb and forefinger and get blood and broken glass all over your kitchen floor.
Clean well, but don’t overdo it. There is “clean” and then there is “creepy clean”. Leave a few cheetos between the couch cushions.
Buy an acoustic guitar and leave it propped up against the couch, even if you don’t play. This will make you look sensitive.
Leave a few books lying around with bookmarks in random places. Minimum of 300 pages, with no pictures on the cover. This will make you look educated. Leaving a chess set out, with a game “in progress”, would have a similar effect.
Hang a map of a foreign country no one cares about on your wall. For example, Nepal. Then, memorize one fact about it (“Last year, they became a republic after 239 years of monarchy”). Practice staring longingly at it with a drink in your hand, as if you are reminiscing about an extended vacation there. This will make you look cultured.
Have an obscure wine on hand. Complement its “rustic, venison-like piercing” with “flashes of boysenberry”. This will make you look refined. Follow this up with a comment on sports so that you don’t appear snobby.
Try to limit the time spent discussing your latest tweets.
Keep the discussion away from any conspiracy theories you might subscribe to. For one night, pretend the moon landings were real.

There’s Nothing Routine About ‘Paranormal Activity’

2009-10-04T23:03:00-05:00

This weekend I had the chance to catch Paranormal Activity, and since it has only appeared in 14 theaters and I enjoyed it, I had better do my part to generate some buzz.

I’m not going to give away the plot, and for full effect, you shouldn’t read any review that does. This film is about surprises - not plot twists, since there isn’t a plot in the traditional sense (nor would you want there to be), but elements in the timeline which you somehow find plausible in a terrifying way. I was in a theater full of skeptical college students and movie buffs, and not one of them disrupted the show, whether it be by shouting out an inconsistency (tends to happen at horror movies) or even strolling out for a bathroom break. It’s subtle and transfixing and the polar opposite of whatever ADD-infused abomination the Rob Zombie remake factory is churning out this year.

This is a unique breed of film, and it has to be, because of its lower-five-figure budget. And it’s nothing like Blair Witch, if that’s what you’re thinking – the camera isn’t shaky, and the events unfold entirely inside the confines of a modern home, starring the sophisticated and rational-thinking couple Mikah and Katie. Katie makes bead necklaces while Mikah knows his way around a computer as a day-trader who just brought a camera home. They don’t follow a script and are often times hilarious in their banter, with relatable fears, reactions, curiosities and vigilance. They’re just two people poking the camera around the house to prove or disprove Katie’s vivid ideas on what has been bothering her since her last home mysteriously burned down. They’re not trapped, but you’ll eventually feel that way as they fumble in the dark over and over only to be horrified after they find a light switch.

After a few escalating rounds of this, you’ll be dreading the next segment of the story, which is bookended by time-lapse footage of them sleeping. When it’s interrupted by a freakish incident, you’re as unglued out as they are and you’ll beg for the them to turn the shut the door, call the police or even leave - all of which they consider at one point or another before realizing it might be hopeless.

If you haven’t caught some of the buzz, I’ll just warn you right here: expect to be scared out of your pants as the rest of it unfolds. No one even spoke as we left the theater. My advice? Don’t come home to a dark house after seeing this. Leave the lights on beforehand, or spend the night at the nearest Denny’s. At least there, the night demons are predictable.