Steve

Sticky post

About me.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005 11:08:02 PM

Don't expect frequent updates ...

First of all, the required stuff. I'm a moderator in the forums, but I'm not an Opera employee. I don't pretend to speak for the company, as a volunteer I have no authority to do so.

Okay ... what I do. I'm trained as a mathematician, and have a background in programing. That means, I specialize in analyzing problems. I also have a prodigious memory, which makes me good at my real job too (strange as that may be) - but I'll get to that. The reason they chose me to be a moderator (as I understand it anyway) was that I spend so much time in the forums trying to help people anyway, that I'm reasonably professional in the way I handle myself, and that I don't live near the European time zone (they were looking for a few people who were likely to be around when Europeans slept).

My real job has almost nothing to do with all of that though. I deliver newspapers. I can figure out the best way to deliver a particular route in short order, I can memorize even a larger route in just a few days and remember it months later, and I'm also good with people. Yeah, if you figured it out, I'm a professional substitute carrier - when they have no one else to do a route or no time to find someone, they call me. And especially if it is a "motor route" (an out of town route that requires driving), I'm the only person that my real employer has who can take any motor route on short to zero notice.

"You have a Ph.D. in Mathematics, and you deliver newpapers for a living?!!" Yeah, that's me. I'm not enough of a disciplinarian to teach professionally, I can only teach those who are self-motivated.

And if you're asking, no, I'm not bragging about any of that ... well, mostly. I was born with it, I neither take nor desire any special credit for my analytical skills, my memory, or the way I handle myself. It seems like I've always been that way. It is just how I am, it is not a matter of any special pride - indeed it has been a liability at times.

If there is anything which I feel I can take pride in, it is every time someone tells me "Thank you." In my profile I listed my occupation as "Making the world a better place," and that is what I'm all about. I know, it probably sounds "corny", but all I really care about is helping people - well, that and having food on the table.

A couple of "rules" though ... it would take away from my time and from the forums in general to answer Opera questions posted in the comments. If I post something about Opera here, of course feel free to comment on that, but if you want me to help you with some problem then post in the forums. I can't answer every Opera question anyway, in the forums someone who is better with a particular subject can answer your question if I can't. And in the forums someone will probably get back to you faster - even if that someone is me.

Don't expect me to post regular updates. Right now between the new forum software (cleaning up duplicate posts and such) and the high traffic following the release of 8.50, I don't have all that much time to devote to a blog. Of course, things will quiet down eventually, but also I'm just not the sort of person who does this regularly. I'm not about "me", or about chat, I'm about getting things done. Maybe sometimes I'll actually use this as a way of getting things done - some of the other helpful people in the forums seem to do that quite well.

On the other hand, this is a blog, I don't want to turn it into an Opera tutorial either. I'll post what I'm thinking about at the time. I hope that I'll be offering a slightly different perspective - as I said in the description for this blog. No real point in me posting the same thing as everyone else, if I don't have something to say which I think is a little bit different then I won't say it.

(Yeah, in real life I'm not much of a coversationalist. When in a group, I'll add the parts I think people may have missed - the stuff I think might be important - but I feel no need to carry the conversation or just agree with everyone else. So, in the larger scope of the Opera community here, don't expect me to chime in on every single issue that comes along. And of course, in real life it would take you several hours or even days to drag all this out of me. That's who I am.)

134 comments

Six degrees of separation

Monday, January 9, 2012 10:34:37 AM

Everyone's familiar with the old story, yes? There is a claim out there (probably not true, as there are some aboriginal peoples with no outside contact, but still interesting) that there is no more than 6 degrees of separation between any two living people.

A friend of mine (Teresa) from work (who was in the same class as me in school) was telling me that she was helping her daughter with some homework, one of the questions involved Fibonacci numbers. When she used that term and her daughter asked about it, she said to look it up online.

Well, that's where I came up. One of the links was to artist Roman Verostko's page on Turing machines, where I happen to have contributed a universal Turing machine using a numbering system based on Fibonacci numbers. I wrote this thing about 15 years ago, when I came across this artist sometime later with a page on universal Turing machines I thought it might be interesting to contribute my own machine to the artist.

Reading through the description, she made a comment to her daughter "Did you know you're less than 6 degrees of separation from Stephen Hawking?"

Some 20 years ago now, a friend of mine bought me a copy of Roger Penrose's book The Emperor's New Mind. Very interesting reading of course, but Penrose had written his own universal Turing machine and published it, in an encoded form, in the book (and of course Verostko had used that machine in some of his works). I had actually taken the time to convert the machine back to a usable form (the encoding was also in the book) and actually emulate it on my PC. In the process I discovered a typo in the book (I presume it was a typo anyway), so I emailed Penrose to let him know. He was so impressed, he actually included me as a footnote in his second book, Shadows of the Mind. (No, I'm not recommending you go out and buy the book, it is not anywhere near as readable as the earlier one. But if you're in the library sometime you could look it up.)

Anyway, back to the story ... her daughter was skeptical, so she explained. "Stephen Hawking is 1. This professor (Penrose) is a friend of Hawking's, so that's 2. The guy who wrote this code there is 3, since he 'corrected' Penrose. That makes me 4, since I went to school with him and work with him, and you're 5." (If you're paying attention, that's not correct - Stephen Hawking would be 0, and all other numbers adjusted accordingly. But I didn't think of that until later.)

That got into a discussion of why a guy like me would be working at Wal-mart, but she said "Not everyone's cut out to be a teacher" which is exactly correct. The story as related ended with her telling her daughter that the world is a lot smaller than we think.

I notice (interesting coincidence?) an article on the Reuters news website that yesterday (Sunday) was apparently Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday, which of course included the fact that when he was diagnosed with ALS at age 21 they didn't expect him to survive more than about 2 years. I guess he just had too many ideas for a mere 23 years to contain.

It is a small world, or alternatively we are all much bigger than we give ourselves credit for. It is hard for me to look back and see everything I've done, everyone I've touched in my time; when I do get reminded of it you have to just sit and wonder. Okay, I'm no Hawking (or Penrose for that matter), though I get the feeling reading that article that he might feel much the same way about his own life.

Happy Birthday, Stephen, and thanks for your contributions not just to science but to our lives.

2 comments

Customer Service

Wednesday, December 28, 2011 4:31:06 AM

I've been thinking about this topic for some time really, though reading through this latest example of bad customer service prompted me to actually write this as a blog post.

Doesn't matter if you're in a phone bank somewhere, in retail, even in manufacturing somewhere. The name of the game is to keep whoever pays the bills happy, and for most of us that person or group of people can be called "the customer(s)". In manufacturing, that translates to having a quality product that people will buy, the rest of us deal with the customer in a more direct fashion. (Okay, maybe bureaucrats have no incentive to keep people happy - we don't get to choose not to pay their bills. But other than that ...)

I am currently involved in retail, it's no big secret. No, you don't get a commission working in frozen food ... but it's not like I had any sort of direct incentive when I was delivering newspapers either. My current employer does have a form of profit-sharing where I get a quarterly bonus based on how the store as a whole did, but in any case I'm not actually paid more based on my customer service. However for me I just like to try to make people happy, that's as much of the reason why I'm still here on My Opera 9 years later as anything. (Opera doesn't pay me, though I do get the occasional Christmas gift and whatnot.) I live for, well, things like this, and I'm sure Opera appreciates it too.

Of course, 99% of the people who go through the store in any given week probably never interact with anyone except the cashier and door greeter - they just pop in, grab what they are looking for and check out. But yes, the people who unload the freight or stock shelves (stocking shelves is about half of my job) or even keep the floor clean are all contributing to their positive experience, even if they never saw us.

Sometimes it isn't that easy though. Maybe a customer can't reach something on the shelf (shelves are too high, or maybe they have an injury or disability), or maybe the item they want isn't on the shelf. Or they just can't find it. I have a slight disadvantage, I'm easier to find than the people in the main grocery part of the store. (Not sure if it's because I'm the one wearing the coat in July or what, but ...) I get people asking me where, oh, the Monster energy drink is or something else completely unrelated to my area.

Now okay, we can all laugh at some of the things that happen. A lady walks up to me and asks if we carry the frozen White Castle hamburgers. Just by coincidence I'd been working in the section right next to that, since she's standing next to me I tell her they're in the door in front of her. Amusing in its fashion, but I know the only reason she was there is because that's where I was. No doubt she'd looked around and missed them, it's just a humorous coincidence.

No, I mean like a while ago I had someone ask where the pierogies were. (for some reason the spell checker doesn't like that, but I know it's correct) I said I'd show her, she said I didn't have to do that - I could just tell her and she'd find them. I said "No you wouldn't, we have people walk by them every day without finding them." When I took her there and pointed them out she agreed, she'd never have seen them.

People are not stupid - generally anyway - and in neither of those stories would I have considered the person asking to be so. In a few cases (like that first one) it is difficult to phrase your answer in a way that doesn't make them think they look stupid. You try the best you can, but you have to answer the question don't you?

One of the first things I heard when I was taking education classes was "There's no such thing as a dumb question." I'm not completely sure I agree, I'm sure there are "questions" where the person isn't looking for a serious answer that would qualify. Barring that, the dumbest question is the one that didn't get asked. As long as you actually want an answer, the question deserves a serious response. Dave (the customer in the original article) deserved a serious response, that's the one thing he didn't get - well, okay, besides his controller ... he hadn't (yet) gotten that either.

There's a saying, "The customer is always right." That's not really true - if you come into my store wanting me to give you stuff and not having to pay for it, that's not right. The store had to pay for that stuff, we can't just give it away. Or getting back to the earlier metaphor, that doesn't pay my bills. But as long as you are paying my bills, I should do whatever I can to keep you coming back - to keep you happy. Apparently there are a few people out there who can't get something as simple as that.

6 comments

Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 25, 2011 8:30:14 AM

Having said that ... Of course, Christmas is as much a social occasion as a religious and civil holiday these days. Traditionally Christmas is the celebration of Christ's birth, and you'll find various and sundry Christmas carols which refer to it as His birthday, or refer to his birthday being about that time. However, really it wasn't ...

Scholars will tell you that shepherds wouldn't have been out in the fields nearby in the middle of winter. Fact is, they deduce from such references in the Bible that he was probably born in April. The celebration of Christmas was put in December to correspond to the traditional festival of Saturnalia.

Jesus also wasn't even born in the year 0 - well, if you want to be technical about it there is no year 0 anyway, though computers and such couldn't really deal with that. But ignoring that ... scholars will tell you he was probably born in the year 6 B.C. (as we would reckon the date - I suppose "Before Christ" wouldn't be a correct term when you get down to it). They figure the "star" was probably actually a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn which occurred that year - though I've also seen it suggested the star was a supernova which occurred about that time. (Supernovas are visible during the day, whereas planets are not. And yes, they actually know which supernova occurred about that time - they aren't just guessing that there was one then.)

So despite Christmas carols that talk about "on a cold winter's night that was so deep" and such, Christmas is not actually Christ's birthday. Just as we observe Washington's birthday and Lincoln's Birthday on a day which is more convenient for us (President's Day, which is always on a Monday in February), or people in the former British Empire observe the Queen's birthday on a Monday in May, likewise Christmas is a day which was convenient for the early church.

I'm not saying we shouldn't celebrate Christmas today - well, those of us who believe in the Christian religion anyway - just saying that you shouldn't believe everything you hear in a Christmas carol. And those of you who aren't Christian but still enjoy the day off, the exchange of presents and the time with family and friends, there's nothing wrong with all that too. And of course all the major retailers are glad you do, too.

No, seriously, I hope everyone enjoys their holiday (whichever one it is for those of you who aren't actually observing Christmas, there's too many to choose from), but remember it isn't about what you get or how much you spend. I'd much rather have the joy and goodwill and peace on Earth than some xx inch television anyway. I'll join you in whatever traditional toast you might offer for the season.

1 comment

One hundred years ago ...

Friday, November 11, 2011 8:20:42 AM

I wasn't around of course, and it seems like a lot of my countrymen have no idea of the signifcance of this date. No, it's not related to a movie - not a recent one anyway.

In this country, today is "Veteran's Day". I suppose that's fairly appropriate - that we would recognize our military veterans on this day. But before it was Veteran's Day, it was called Armistice Day (and still is in most other countries).

One hundred years ago, at 11:11 AM on 11/11/1918 is when the armistice that ended hostilities between Germany and the Allies ended the "Great War" (now called World War 1).

I was listening to someone on the radio talking about Veteran's Day and about a new movie called simply 11/11/11 which (from his description) seems to be about an alien that is supposed to land on that (which is to say, this) day and I realized neither the host nor most of the people he was talking to had any idea what today was really commemorating. (And one may presume, neither did the people involved in the movie.) All of which is ... well, disheartening.

It's a safe bet that no one reading this actually remembers that day per se, very few people would be that old. But that so few even know about it - that is just plan sad. What's the old saying ... "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." Let us all fervently hope not.

1 comment

Farewell to an old friend

Saturday, September 17, 2011 4:20:41 PM

Early in 2000 I got involved with a software project called XBasic. No, not the scripting language for XBASE, this is sort of an extended version of the old BASIC language. Sort of ... as a C programmer would design it.

I'm not sure if you know how these open source projects go ... I discovered a bug in some of the math functions and I reported it, and they said "Okay, fix it."

Needless to say I did, eventually ... it took a while to figure out what I was trying to do. In the interim I got involved with their support email list (10 years ago support forums weren't so common), helping people fix their own issues - well, like I do here.

In July of 2000, someone posted about a bug that occured only in the Linux version. At the time I was using Windows 98 SE, but there didn't seem to be anyone else around who knew anything about it either. So I went to the local "office superstore" (downloading something like that on dial-up ... without being able to tell what you were even getting into ... wasn't really an option) to see if they had anything. Back then, they did - they had a couple of packages of RedHat, and a couple of packages of Mandrake. Mandrake looked like the safer one to try to install and still keep my Windows system, and the "Power Pack" edition was the one that indicated it actually included libraries necessary for development, so that's what I got. At the time, that was Mandrake 7.0.

(While Mandrake was based on RedHat, they set their version numbers at that time one full version higher than RedHat. RedHat was at 6.0 back then, Mandrake at 7.0.)

Oh, for the record, the guy with the bug figured out the answer himself before I was familiar enough with Linux to actually try it myself. But I kept at it and eventually got proficient with Linux as well.

Of course Linux versions don't stand still, but as I said downloading them over dial-up wasn't exactly feasible ... and the local store stopped carrying Linux also.

Eventually it got to the point where I decided I'd have to drive about 50 miles to the larger city and see if they had an updated version in one of the real computer stores. They did, by then it was Mandrake 7.2. Again I got the PowerPack edition, though actually reading the package I thought the standard edition might have what I needed to run XBasic - from time to time they seemed to change their minds about what belonged in the standard edition and what didn't.

I did find some bug in 7.2 though, I forget what exactly it was. Something both severe in its effects and fairly trivial to fix once you found a way around it. I emailed them to report the problem, someone replied asking what help I needed and I said something like "I don't need any help, I fixed it on my system, but I'm sure some other people must be having problems with it so here's what needs to be changed ..."

I guess they were somewhat impressed, they asked me if I wanted to be a tester and sent me a free copy of 7.2 (though I'd already bought one). I'm not exactly a major hacker in either sense of the word ... I'm resourceful, I think in terms of the bigger picture, and so it is that I can find a way to get around a severe bug. I am a hacker in the old sense, someone who will modify code to better suit his needs rather than just "making do". There's probably a few lawyers out there who think that's wrong - I'm sure you've seen those licenses which say that you may not modify the software? I paid for it, I'm not selling anything ... in fact, I'm probably helping them since I'm making their product more useful.

Anyway ... I was a "Crash tester" for about 3 years I guess, even have a T-shirt and so on. But eventually they reached a point where my (by then) 5-year-old hardware was no longer supported.

About that same time there were a couple of Linux magazines that actually included a different CD every month, I picked up the ones that sounded interesting and tried different ones. Several did still work with my system, though Fedora 3 (the successor to the original RedHat) kept removing and then reinstalling my printer at every startup, etc. Some of the live CDs were not intended to be installed, some - while it was possible to install, they left you in a sort of "no man's land" ... the disk was technically a modified version of some other distro, installing it would put you into a bare-bones version of the original distro. But many of them worked, the one that seemed most suitable was openSUSE.

But it wasn't Mandrake. There were several things they just did in a more clumsy fashion ... when I inherited my brother's computer in 2006, the first thing I did was install Mandrake.

Okay, that needs just a little explanation. My brother had owned the computer for about 3 years, it had Windows XP, but for most of those 3 years he had no internet service at all. That means, the anti-virus which came with the system had expired 2 years earlier, the computer had no security updates - nothing. When he finally decided to join the modern world, he was susceptible to every virus and malware out there. One week after finally getting (dial-up) internet service, he had so many viruses and whatever that his system would no longer boot Windows properly. So of course he decided to give the computer to me and get himself a new one.

The 3-year-old reinstall disk would have removed all the bugs of course, but that would just put me back where he'd been a week earlier ... and we do know where that went. So instead I just wiped the disk to install a new OS, and of course my preference there was Mandrake. (Okay, I think they were Mandriva by that time.) I did also install openSUSE (you can dual boot two different kinds of Linux if you want), but Mandriva was my primary OS. And it stayed that way for a couple of years.

I eventually did buy another computer - one with an up-to-date version of Windows on it. And while I did install Mandriva to it as well, I also kept Windows (XP SP2).

Unfortunately, last year Mandriva fired a lot of their people and kicked out several of their volunteers (you can't technically fire a volunteer) ... we all know the economy has been pretty poor of late, that doesn't explain why they'd remove volunteers.

But Mandriva was an open-source project, the former developers and volunteers who felt very strongly about their product couldn't be stopped from developing it on their own. (In open-source terms, this is called a "fork", as in "a fork in the road". They would go their own way from that point, but started from the same common point.)

So it was that I waited to see what would happen. The new fork was given the name Mageia. Mandriva did release an update they called "2010.2" but really it wasn't even an update, it was more of a rolling release (it included all the bug fixes since 2010.1, but nothing new).

Finally about 3 months ago, Mageia announced that version 1.0 was ready. I downloaded it ... it wasn't a big change since Mandriva 2010.2. Okay, they changed OpenOffice to LibreOffice, they had a new kernel and so on. Didn't seem like anything really special there. Not that I expected anything ... oh, I suppose "daring" would be a good term. No, on the contrary I expected them to "play it safe", and not to do too much with their first release separate from Mandriva - and that's what they did.

I didn't really keep my eyes on Mandriva during this time, but I noticed they seemed to be running a little slower than I'd expected. Then I noticed a couple of posts to Distrowatch that they were pushing back their release date, and something about a new interface or some such...

At the time I figured this would be something like Ubuntu's new Unity desktop, which people have described as a netbook interface. I don't use Ubuntu, I have never even seen what Unity looks like, so I have to use my imagination there. Maybe Unity isn't that bad - I have no way of knowing - though I do get to hear lots of complaints, of course it is those who are upset who make the most noise. And likewise I had no idea at all what this new "Rosa" desktop would be like.

Well, they finally did release Mandriva 2011 late last month, and I downloaded it to give it a try. (Of course I downloaded the live version, so that I could try it without having to replace Mageia 1.0). And I have to say ... I still have no idea what Rosa is like.

I'm not sure what's going on, it seems like it doesn't have enough RAM on this system. Possible, I only have 1 GB of RAM and onboard video (which means the video chip steals some of that RAM for its own use) but either way it just keeps reading different parts of the disk swapping stuff into memory. I decided maybe some of that was start-up related, and so perhaps if I let it idle for a while some processes might complete and eventually it would settle down ... but after 3 hours it was still at it. And still unresponsive in any practical sense. I could move the mouse and eventually the cursor would catch up, I could right-click and maybe several minutes later the context menu would appear ... and for that reason I never have gotten to really see what their new interface is like.

I can say, they are using some sort of a KDE 4 desktop - though you could have found that out at their website. And yes, it looks a lot like KDE 4 on any other distro (when nothing is open anyway). They've supposedly replaced what on Windows would be the Start menu with something a bit more graphical, but I never was able to look at it. I even had to use the power button on my computer since I couldn't shut down any other way - so of course I didn't get to look at any of this new stuff they talk about on the website.

I guess I'm just disappointed. Well ... that's not really an adequate word. I wasn't sure what to expect - whether it would be something impressive or perhaps just "not for me" - but I'm deprived of even that because whatever it is, is just to demanding for my system. Maybe it has a place, but I'll never really know.

So it is after 11 years that I have to bid a final farewll to Mandriva. While they've left me behind before, I really had nowhere else to go back then. This time, I have no reason to go back. Yes, I'm sad to see it end - especially this way. I do wish them well, though at this point I have my doubts in that regard.

1 comment

Grasping at straws

Thursday, August 18, 2011 8:01:16 AM

You hear the one about the comet yet?

Seems there are tons of stories going around about a fairly insignificant comet, so much so that NASA actually felt the needed to debunk the whole thing.

To tell the truth, I hadn't heard the stories either - if not for the NASA story I wouldn't even know about it. The whole thing is rather fantastical ... and (if you read the article) more than a bit of a stretch.

As a logical person, this sort of illogic bothers me. No, not in that way - I've given up trying to make lunatics make sense, it doesn't work. No, what bothers me is trying to figure out which lunatics we're talking about here.

It's not the 2012 people per se, that's over a year later. Just why did they pick on this particular comet?

And then I remembered, that crazy preacher from Washington, Harold Camping. When his earlier prediction of the Rapture on May 21st of this year failed to come true, he explained it by saying that he'd misunderstood the prophecies but that the end of the world was still going to be in October. Okay, October 21 rather than October 16 (when the comet comes closest to Earth) ... I'm sure they can come up with some "explanation" as to why it actually takes 5 days after the comet does whatever it's supposed to do before the world ends.

I do feel sorry for NASA though. These are a bunch of fanatics grasping at anything they can make fit (somehow) with the "prophecies", no amount of logical explanation will dissuade them. They've made up their minds this has to be what it is, anyone who disagrees with them is either wrong or actively conspiring to withhold the truth from the public.

I'll still be here on October 22nd - I hope anyway. If I'm not, it won't have anything to do with some minor comet that we won't even be able to see with the naked eye, it'll be a car accident or some similarly mundane reason.

1 comment

Deal of the day?

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 3:32:38 AM

Everyone seems to be talking about tablets of late ... I guess I'll find out.

First of all, there are several different classes of tablets. The latest rage is of course the iPad from Apple and the various Android tablets from several vendors (Android being a smartphone OS developed by Google), at one time these were referred to as "web tablets" but the term has since been shortened. Prior to this there were a variety of "tablet PCs" running standard computer operating systems (Windows, Linux ... not certain if Apple ever had a Mac tablet PC).

In one sense, I'm not sure why those web tablets cost so much. You can still buy a netbook for around $200, I saw some on sale in the store for "Back to School". Okay, a tablet is somewhat smaller (depending on which size you get of course) and thus slightly more convenient to carry with you, but there's something to be said for a real keyboard. But when the latest HP tablet costs more than a netbook and probably does less ... well, you get what I'm talking about here.

Of course, no way I'd get a 3G (or 4G) tablet, cellular data plans cost way too much in this country. But there are also plenty of wi-fi models. On the other hand, I did get my brother an e-reader last Christmas. Something of similar size which could function as a reader and also browse the web and read email and play games, that might be useful.

Over a month ago they set up a case to display tablets in the store. I mean, besides the iPad which has been there since before Christmas. But for a while all they had was the HP tablet (though they did have the price tags up for 3 others) ... judging by what I could see the HP was way overpriced, and at 10" was bigger than what I wanted anyway. One of the other tags was for a 7" Acer Iconia tablet, though in that regard the $349 they wanted for that still seemed a bit much. Still, whenever they finally came in I'd have a look - maybe they'd be something interesting.

Well anyway, a couple of weeks later they finally had another model come in - the 10" Acer. Only about $400 compared to $500 for the HP (and way too much for the iPad), but that's still a bit much - and still way too big anyway. But at least I could look at the general features.

One big problem I haven't mentioned yet with the HP is of course the limited availability of software (aka "apps") for it. iOS (used on iPads and iPhones) and Android have a huge selection of software available in their respective "app stores" - there's even a version of Opera for each of those. HP's WebOS is just too new, maybe next year they'll have a decent selection of apps. If they're still selling tablets by then, that is. It is at least equally likely their tablet will fail since everyone else is so far ahead.

Anyway ... I noticed in our weekend paper that they'd dropped the price on the 7" Acer tablet. Hmm, neat trick since they weren't even in the store yet, but maybe they were finally coming.

And indeed they were, they arrived overnight Sunday night, they were on display yesterday. Mind you, since they didn't even have the tablets when the sale flier came out, someone had forgotten to change the price tags, but I knew (and the register did too) what the real price was. Not that saving $21 was that big a deal of course ... (in fact I've since found out that Acer has a suggested retail of $330 on them, so really they had to lower the price in the store). Mind you, this is the store I work at, I also get an employee discount which puts it closer to $300.

However, there was also a promotion going on at the same time. They were handing out a free $50 "shopping card" (call it an in-store voucher, only electronic) with the 7" tablet, or a $100 card with the 10". That would have given the 10" and 7" the same effective price, if not for the sale - but then again, I wasn't interested in the 10" anyway, so I guess that's immaterial.

So ... a 7" tablet effectively for about $250 (plus tax of course), that is somewhat more in line with netbooks. Needless to say, I have one now. No, I'm not writing this post on it - on-screen keyboards are still terrible. Not completely sure what I'll do with it, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

2 comments

Relativity

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 6:23:38 AM

A science post ...

I seem to get questions along the lines of "How long would it take to reach a speed of half the speed of light accelerating at 1 g?" or "How long would it take to reach a certain star system accelerating at 1 g?" fairly frequently, so maybe I should post about special relativity.

First of all, it probably isn't covered in your typical science class - it wasn't covered in mine - but most scientific calculators do have the functions you'd need to answer these questions. If you've had third semester calculus you can actually prove the formulas I'll be using, if not then you'll just have to take them on faith.

It turns out that both of those questions involve hyperbolic functions.

If you accelerate at a constant rate, your velocity after t seconds is given by the formula v = c tanh(at/c) where a is your acceleration and c is the speed of light. For the first question above, v = 0.5c and a = g, so

0.5 = tanh(gt/c)
tanh^-1(0.5) = gt/c
c tanh^-1(0.5)/g = t

Many calculators these days include a number of physical constants, in case yours doesn't g = 9.81 m/s² and c = 299792458 m/s (though for some reason my calculator actually calls it c₀ ... (yes, we use the metric system for science here in the US - though if you prefer I could give you values in ft/sec as well)

So ... the answer is 16792466 seconds. Divide by 86400 to convert to days, you get 194.357 days (somewhat over 6 months).

Note that t is your time, not time as measured by someone on earth ... due to time dilation the time as measured by someone on earth would be longer - how much longer depending on how fast you were actually going. The formula for that is

T = c sinh(at/c)/a

(I'll let you work it out, then post my answer later.)

The formula for distance is the third hyperbolic function, hyperbolic cosine (aka cosh) as follows

s = c² (cosh(at/c) - 1)/a

If you're going to try to answer a question like "How long would it take to reach α-Centauri accelerating at 1 g", keep in mind - you probably want to stop when you get there. Unless you're planning on colliding with the nearest planet

that would mean turning around half way there - so you actually want to figure out how long it would take you to go half the distance, then take the same amount of time slowing down.

It being as late as it is now, I'll leave it at that. Okay ... I'm sure you could have used Wikipedia as easily as I did, but if you want to know they list the distance to α-Centauri as

4.365 ± 0.007 ly (1.338 ± 0.002 pc)

Mind you, the formula is in meters and seconds (as long as a and c are in meters and seconds) so you'll still have to convert that.

4 comments

I remember ...

Monday, July 4, 2011 8:20:21 PM

I've always had a good memory. Back when I worked for the newspaper, I could memorize a 50 mile long motor route with 50 subscribers in about a week. I must have memorized 15 different routes while I worked there. And I still remember most of it, though I'm sure there have been many changes since.

These days, I know where to find just about anything in the grocery section of the store I work in, I've had the customer service people come back and ask me where to find something.

Sometimes though, I think I remember too much. I went to the movies last week to see the Green Lantern movie ... of course there were previews before the movie. One in particular caught my attention (I mean, besides the fact they had a preview for an upcoming TV show) ...

The premise seems interesting enough - they were testing a new therapy that they thought would help people recover from brain injuries. Of course they really couldn't test it on humans first - that would be illegal because it might have unexpected side-effects, you have to prove that it is safe before testing it on people. On the other hand, you can't say too much about its safety on people by testing on rats, so of course they were testing it on a chimpanzee. But then they let drop that the chimp's name in the movie was Caesar. (Not certain if that's how they spelled it, that's how my spell-checker wants to spell it.)

I imagine most people are too young to remember that reference, but to me it was completely obvious what the movie was about right there. The original Planet of the Apes movie was released in 1968, the name Caesar didn't come up until the third movie in the series, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, when they were talking about what was to them ancient history - the first talking ape. The fourth movie introduced Caesar as the child of the characters in the prior movie ... Wikipedia says this movie was from 1972 - nearly 40 years ago.

Mind you, the plot in the new movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes bears little resemblance to that one. It may even be an interesting movie in its own right. But you know ... it just feels like they are trying to play on the original series' popularity.

This is a case where it would be better if I didn't remember. If I could see this movie distinct from the previous series I think it might even be pretty good ... but I can't help it. No matter what I do, I will remember the original and that will color how I look at this one.

Oh, for the record - that 1972 date doesn't really mean much to me, I saw it on television a few years later, not in the theater. Must have been about 1978 I guess. I was only 9 in 1972 (depending on when in the year it was released of course) and we'd never have seen a movie like that when I was that young.

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