Zeigen

Yesterday Kimi took Sophie to her four-month checkup.

• Weight: 13 pounds 4 ounces — 40th percentile
• Length: 24 1/4 inches — 45th percentile
• Head circumference: 16 inches — 37th percentile

By coincidence, at Sammy’s school it was measurement day yesterday, and he was reported as 36 inches, average for his class. Looking at the official CDC growth charts, turns out that that’s only slightly above average for a boy of 28 months. Sammy had always been taller than average previously, but looks like either we aren’t feeding him enough, or the averages have caught up to him.

Sophie also got three shots yesterday. I know quite a few people are worried about the link between vaccines and autism (and there’s the Eli Stone controversy stirring things up, with a pilot episode about that issue set to air tomorrow).

I don’t know any doctors or scientists who believe the link between vaccines and autism. Skeptical coverage was recently the cover story of the Nov/Dec Skeptical Inquirer. I was going to write up a debunker post with a summary of the refutation, but it turns out my friend Geoff did a great job on this already.

(Sorry, iPhone haters! Three blog posts in a row about the iPhone… Go read The Sneeze or something.)

Maybe everyone already knows this, but I just found out about it by accident: Holding down a virtual letter key can produce alternate versions of that letter for different languages.

For example, if you want to enter a character such as é (for you francophiles) or ö (for you Mötörhëäd enthusiasts), just hold down the E or O buttons on the keyboard for a second or two.

• E offers È É Ê Ë Ę
• Y offers Ÿ
• U offers Ú Ù Ü Û
• I offers í ì ï î
• O offers Ø Œ Õ Ó Ò Ö Ô
• A offers À Á Â Ä Æ Ã Å Ą
• S offers ß Ś Š
• L offers Ł
• Z offers Ź Ž Ż
• C offers Ç Ć
• N offers Ń Ñ
• ? offers ¿
• ! offers ¡

Now I’ve got a question for the world. When entering a URL, how can you enter in a # character? It’s used for web page anchors within a page. There doesn’t seem to be a way to enter that character at all (other than bookmarking on your computer and syncing that bookmark over).

Update: Kevin Fox answered this in the comments. Use the shift button after hitting @123.

Web development for Safari on the iPhone is a pain in the button.

• No label support, requiring a stupid JavaScript workaround? Check.
• Inconsistent and kinda messed up DOM? Check.
• Required use of bizarre meta tags for appearance? Check.
• Limited troubleshooting methods? Check.
• Bugs when you change orientation? Check.
• Some really bizarre and buggy behavior with the built-in Go button upon form submission? Check.

(If you don’t have an iPhone, move along… Nothing to see here.)

The newest version of software on the iPhone, 1.1.3, lets you save buttons on your home screen that point to web pages.

I ran across an article with a method to let you make a button that automatically dials a number you choose. But that hack was a bit too cumbersome for me to use, plus it requires you entering in your phone numbers in a URL that could be logged on someone else’s server.

So, I wrote a front-end to make it a little easier to create speed dial buttons. Full credit to Nate True for his discovery and method; I just put a nice form in front of it and made it so no logging is possible.

This doesn’t interact with your contacts at all — it’s just a virtual web page. Once you’ve created it, you just touch your home screen button, tap Call, then — voila — you’re dialing.

To create your own buttons, just go to zeigen.com/dial using Safari on your iPhone, and follow the instructions. (Requires javascript on, and 1.1.3 or later.)

Nothing you submit is stored on my server, and once you create the Home button, it dials automatically without Safari needing to be connected to Edge or wireless.

You can view-source on that page to see how it works. It’s basically a data URI built with JavaScript that uses meta refresh and the tel URI to make your phone dial.

I’m working with a friend to provide some sample icons to select from. I also hope to add more error checking of entries and a preview of the icon you’ve selected.

Let me know how you like it!

Update: Version 4 released around 9pm 1/26 — implements version checking and a message if JavaScript is off, and lets you switch off the instructions, plus a little cleanup of language.

New Update: Version 0.5 (with retroactive re-versioning!) released around 1:30am on 1/28 — adds a selection of spiffy icons you can choose, thanks to Kevin Fox.

The Alaska PodShow, a new channel for PodShowTV, has been added to the TiVoCast lineup. Alaska Podshow is a video guide into the hikes around Alaska, offering GPS info, reviews, and views live from the trail. New programs will be published each week.

As always, its free to subscribe; you just need a broadband-connected Series2 or Series3 TiVo DVR.

You can subscribe by visiting its page on TiVoCast on TiVo Central Online, or on your DVR by visiting TiVo Central -> Find Programs -> Download TV & Movies -> PodShow TV

My wife’s parents live in Alaska. I’m sure I’ll get to visit someday. I’ve always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis.

Or London, for that matter.

With the news yesterday of the untimely passing of Heath Ledger, I’ve heard several people remark on the frequently-expressed belief that deaths (like sneezes?) come in threes. Since Suzanne Pleshette recently succumbed to cancer (on January 17), some wondered who will be the “third” actor/actress to die. Others who were familiar with Brad Renfro’s death (on January 15) expressed instead the idea that Heath’s overdose was the completion of a series of three.

I have to wonder about this superstition. On one hand, it’s not falsifiable. People die all the time. Since the belief doesn’t express a timeframe for how close in succession the deaths have to occur, eventually three people in a related field will die, and the “prophecy” of death coming in threes will be fulfilled.

Any belief that isn’t falsifiable contributes nothing. Suppose ten musicians were to die in quick succession starting next week. Adherents to this belief would group them into three groups of three deaths, then posit after the tenth that two more musicians would die — and eventually (once we wait long enough) indeed two more would. So the prediction has come true! But the actual number of people dying doesn’t change the superstition (they’d believe the same thing even if the number was two, eight, nine, ten, or twenty), and the superstition doesn’t actually predict anything — just that over time people do, in fact, die.

Secondly, who or what is the agent that enforces the trio of deaths? If I learn about two bloggers who die, does that knowledge somehow make me more likely to get into an accident? Is there a grim reaper with a quota of three who (like in the movie series Final Destination) sets up a fatal chain of events for arbitrary professions?

Monitoring a list of recent deaths to see if the number is divisible by three turns up the quite predictable result that the number is only divisible by three about a third of the time.

In conclusion, this belief is an example of selective perception; You tend to remember the times when there was a grouping of three seemingly-related deaths in a short period of time, which reinforces the belief, but tend to forget the times when there wasn’t a pattern.

As I’ve said before, our brains are remarkably good similarity detectors (whereas computers are excellent difference detectors; this is why captchas work), so we often find ourselves picking out plausible-seeming patterns to events that ultimately are chaotic and unpredictable.

And on a personal note, I thought Heath was a gifted actor with a great career in front of him, and I was saddened to hear the news of his death.

I love idioms from other languages that have a different tilt on common phrases used in English.

An example is the French phrase « chacun à son goût », which literally translates as “to each his taste,” and is equivalent to the English phrase “to each his own.”

Or take « on ne saurait faire boire un âne qui n’a pas soif », which translates as “you can’t force a donkey to drink when he’s not thirsty” — which we know better as “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” (Somewhere along the line, the donkey became a horse, or vice versa.)

In his influential 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote, “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” One way to keep your writing sounding original is to replace the English cliché you were going to use with a foreign equivalent. But it has to be well-known; in that same essay, Orwell says, “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

I only speak French, but I know a few idioms from other languages. Another one I like is from Spanish: «Empezar la casa por el tejado», which literally means “to start the house with the roof” and is a relative of the English cliché, “To put the cart before the horse.”

And that reminds me of a bad joke I used to tell when I was a kid. A construction foreman walks into the architect’s office and says, “Say, did you want us to build this skyscraper from the bottom up, or the top down?” And the architect is a bit confused and says, “Well, from the bottom up, I’d say.” The foreman nods and then turns around and yells, “Rip ‘er down, boys, we gotta start over!”

I close with this thought: Mixed metaphors are a pain in the butt and should be thrown out the window.

This Sunday, like most Sundays, I took Sophie and Sammy to the farmer’s market in Mountain View (at the Caltrain station off Castro), brought some fruit and pastries, headed off to the Red Rock Cafe on Castro for a white mocha (no whip), met up with some other families, had story time, then headed off to a local bookstore for even more stories. When we have time we stop off at the fish store too.

If you’re in the area, have a young kid, hey, why not drop me a line to coordinate and join us for story time some Sunday?

Today’s selections were train-themed: Trains; Engine, Engine, Number Nine; and I Knew You Could.

Caught Cloverfield last night, after the kiddies went to bed (and after a super great date night where Kimi and I had a wonderful dinner out at Castro Point).

Look, this is a really well-made version of The Blair Witch Project reborn as a giant monster movie, and if you get motion sickness at all, the camera work here is going induce severe nausea.

It’s basically real-time (playing back the tape of a home movie), and so that means there’s no explanation and less resolution than you might hope for. There’s really less of everything that you might hope for. That said, I thought it was well-acted and exhilarating, unconventional, and even unpredictable (all things I’m really looking for), with first-rate production and special effects — and I’d rather it left me wanting more instead of feeling it had overstayed its welcome.

My main complaint is I’m not ready for 9/11 imagery to be reused in a monster movie. Early on, you get the clouds of smoke billowing down New York streets as panicked Manhattanistas take cover. I know this is 2008, over six years from 9/11, but trivializing the terror of that day by co-opting those emotions for a $10 carnival ride of a movie seems reprehensible to me. The movie would not have worked as well set in L.A., but I think Boston or San Francisco or Chicago or London or Paris would have served much better.

Don’t actually read this entry. Skip on to something else.

Some of my favorite long words include dithyrambic, exothermal, disambiguate, ostentatious, loquacious, and confabulate. In business, we frequently hear phrases such as de minimis, the word “architect” used as a verb (a vile neologism, to be sure), discussions of emolument, and other variegated farrago and miscellany.

I inscribe this with stoic fervor solely to determine if I can unduly influence The Blog Readability Test, which previously rated this blog at the Junior High School level, a lachrymose result which induced acrimonious umbrage.

EDIT: No effect? Still Junior High? I didn’t know any of these words in Junior High. Feh.

On Tuesday, both Sammy and Sophie became full-time pre-school kids. And on Thursday, Kimi had another surgical procedure (injecting steroids in her spine) to alleviate her back pain, which was greatly increased following Sophie’s birth.

So far, all three are adjusting well.

Sammy has been reluctant to go to school in the morning, but settles in nicely and has a great time. When I picked him up yesterday (close to 6pm, making that his longest day there so far), he was in excellent spirits.

Sophie is in a phase where she’s very prone to smiling, and genuinely seems to thrive with other infants around.

Kimi is reacting well to the procedure, although it’s still a bit too early to tell.

Previously we had a nanny; it was sad to not see her and her daughter anymore. I was thinking about the tradeoffs this morning as I dropped off the kids at school.

• When the nanny shows up, she takes over and I can go to work almost immediately. In contrast, bundling up the kids, packing all the stuff they need, driving them to school, checking them in (and calming them down) — all that takes a long time.
• With the nanny, all your eggs are in one basket; if she’s sick or late or quits suddenly, you have no recourse. On the other hand, if the kids are even a little bit sick, they can’t go to preschool.
• The nanny creates a highly personal and individual experience for the kids. But at the preschool they meet and interact with a range of adults and kids, helping their social development a lot.

Kids change so fast, and each day brings new behaviors and experiences for Sammy and Sophie. Preschool is a big step, and making the adjustment is a bit stressful — but I’m confident we’ve made the right choice for our kids.

I can’t add a lot of details at the moment, but check out this press release about Jaman that went live today.

Browing Jaman’s catalog reveals a wide variety of interesting and off-beat films.

As much as I hate getting distracted from real news by things like this, I’m pretty much obsessed over the tiger-escaping-from-the-SF-Zoo story.

As an operations guy, my first thought on 12/26 when I read the headlines was, “Woah, the zoo is open on Christmas day? Wonder how they manage that.”

Either one of my Loyal Readers may recall our visit to said zoo a while back. If you’d asked me after that visit about the possibility of a tiger escaping, I would have said it wasn’t possible. I mean, those tigers were so far away you could barely see them.

Yesterday’s Merc featured a transcript of the 911 calls. (Audio links on the right of that article.)

I know a lot of people haven’t had a lot of sympathy for the victims, arguing they provoked the tiger or possibly used a slingshot or were drinking vodka or whatever. But once you listen to that audio, I don’t really think you can view the zoo and authorities as blameless.

If a jury hears that audio, it’s all over. The zoo will be sued into oblivion. The only thing they’ll have left is a couple of rats and a bunny rabbit. And they’ll be required to have an armed guard standing next to the bunny to make sure no one gets bitten.

As a Linguistics undergrad at U.C. Berkeley in the late ’80s, the best course I took was by George Lakoff, centering on his book, Metaphors We Live By.

In that wide-ranging course, one of Professor Lakoff’s observations was that the horse race metaphor for presidential elections has come to dominate our thinking of politics so much that the media rarely covers anything else.

If a candidate gives a speech proposing, say, a new health plan, the media reaction is not to analyze the health plan or quote experts discussing whether it is a good health plan or a bad health plan. Instead, the media reaction is, invariably, to quote experts who analyze whether or not the proposed health plan would help the candidate in the polls or hurt the candidate in the polls.

(Certainly a good health plan might be expected to help the candidate in the polls, but instead of analyzing the effectiveness of the plan first and the impact on the election second, we do it backwards, and the deeper analysis is often an afterthought or even not included at all.)

I am wearied by the current coverage of the primaries because of just this. I will not link to prime examples on the major news sites, yet. But I assure you that if you watch for this in the newspaper articles you read, or the TV news coverage that you watch, you will rarely see anything else.

I grant that knowing who is in the lead is important. But should it be all that we care about?

Update: Back online after about 1pm. Glad to see 1.1.3 supports map auto-locate, multiple SMS delivery, customized home screen layout, web shortcut buttons, chapters in video playback, video rental, IMAP for GMail, and probably more.