Tag Archives: Quotidian

The Internet Revolution is Now Complete. My Grandma Has WiFi.

Posted on by
1

The Internet Revolution is now complete. My 88 year old grandmother has wi-fi.

I visited her this afternoon for our traditional New Year’s family lunch. I was surprised to find a router sitting beside her recliner, lights ablaze and signaling traffic. This shock was preceded a few weeks earlier by a Facebook friend request from my grandmother. What is going on?

Turns out my uncle activated a DSL connection, installed the router and established the Facebook account. He also bought a used Toshiba tablet so my grandma can Facebook. This is a bit of a head bender. My grandmother is an intelligent woman but I’m not sure if she knows that she internet access. I have never once seen her use a computer of any kind. She distrusts debit cards, does not carry a cell phone and uses only two TV channels — CNN and The Weather Channel. I’m not even certain she knows what the internet is.

But, that doesn’t matter. She now has wireless internet access, whether she realizes it or not, and it will make her life noticeably better in at least two practical ways. My grandmother is losing her hearing. She can still enjoy conversations in rooms without background noise but phone calls are a chore. For two years, she has been using a telephone-to-text relay service that is mediated by a third party listener who listens to the conversation and transcribes on the screen for my grandmother to read. It works okay but accuracy is about 60% and there is some lag. Like I said, phone calls are a chore. The DSL connnection was installed to connect her telephone to an internet-based transcription service which works faster with more accuracy. I am told the transcription is now 80% accurate and much faster. That alone is worth the price of the internet subscription.

Photographs are a big part of my grandmother’s life. She started taking snapshots as a kid and has carried the hobby ever since. Her pictures reveal what is most important in her life – family. I am sure she was tens of thousands of candid family photos, many of which are pressed in albums or are hanging on her living room walls. When she leaves her apartment, they will have to re-sheet rock the entire living room because there are so many nail holes from family pictures. It is a sight to behold.

The wireless connection and tablet allow my uncle to show my grandmother recent pictures from family in west Tennessee, Texas and Kansas through Facebook. Even if she never likes a post or publishes a status update, wireless internet access allows my grandmother to extend the reach of photo collection into virtual space. This is a good way to keep her from feeling quite so far away from the people she loves.

I write a lot about how the Internet shapes my daily life. When thinking about technology, I often succumb to the rhetoric of revolution. Today, it occurred to me that the revolution may be over. The Internet now truly underpins every aspect our quotidian lives. The Internet has become a utility like water and electricity, so ubiquitous in our daily lives we don’t even have to know it is there for it to bring value. The revolution is complete. Everything is different and the tools have disappeared. We can finally take this stuff for granted and expect it to work for us every time without special skill or training. Incredible to realize how boring and commonplace the magic has become. We live in fascinating times, even when we find them completely ordinary.

My Prius ran out of gas

Posted on by
Reply

My Prius ran out of gas today, and I got stuck on the side of the road. Let’s put aside the too obvious irony of a hybrid running out of fossil fuel for a moment. This post isn’t about irony. This post is about embarrassment.

This was pretty much the most embarrassing thing that has happened to me in a long time. Embarrassing because my wife, daughter and friend were all trapped in the car with me. Embarrassing because I had just intentionally driven past a gas station a few minutes earlier. Embarrassing because the Add Fuel message had been coming up on the dash display for the past two days.

I love my 2007 Prius. It gets 45 to 48 miles per gallon, drives great and is very comfortable. I also love my Prius because the dash display provides real-time analytics. I’m a sucker  for charts, bar graphs and real-time data calculation. While driving, my Prius shows a bar graph of the average estimated fuel consumption. This is a bar that escalates up to 100 MPG from 0 MPG. The more you coast, the more the electric motor carries the car and the lower the fuel consumption, which means higher gas mileage. Every five minutes a new plot point appears on the elapsed drive time chart that shows the average gas consumption over the life of the trip. At the bottom of these lovely graphs, is a real-time numeric average of miles per gallon over the life of the trip or the tank of gas. I generally set this to reflect the average fuel consumption for the current tank of gas. Like I said, 45 to 48 miles per gallon.

When I fill up, I zero the gas mileage calculation and also the odometer reading for Trip A. I reserve Trip B for mileage between oil changes. The 2007 Prius has an 11.9 gallon gas tank.

Generally when I start the car on a low tank of gas, the Add Fuel message appears and then disappears. This occurred on Friday. I didn’t worry about it right away because I can drive many miles on just a little gas. No worries.

When my gas indicator gets low, I do a little math. I glance at the average gas mileage for the current tank of gas, then multiply by 10. Then, I add the average gas mileage to that number to get the number of miles I should get from an 11 gallon tank. I subtract the miles showing on the odometer from the estimated miles for 11 gallons of gas to figure my zone of safety.

Today, when I passed the gas station on the way into town, I estimated an additional 15 miles before getting close to Actual Empty. I thought I would do my town a favor and give them the sales tax on my fuel purchase.

My car slowed down, sputtered and stopped about five miles past the last gas station. I was completely baffled. My math was good. I should have had at least another 10 miles or more before needing to fill up. Math doesn’t matter when you are stuck on the side of road. Or maybe math matters more than you care to admit when you are stuck on the side of the road. In either case, I called my mom-in-law to stop by the house to get the gas can, then deliver the mercy gallon we needed to get to the gas station.

Rather than wait on the side of the road, my friend and I decided to push the car to a parking lot not far away. As often happens, while pushing the car, a couple of other guys stopped by to help push. We got the car to the parking lot easily enough. The guys offered a spare gallon of gas from their emergency tank but we already had help coming so we declined.

They laughed a little about pushing the hybrid, climbed into their big, fuel-thirsty pickup and drove off.

My mom-in-law showed up pretty quick, we gassed up and drove to the gas station for a complete fill. No harm done and no real danger.

I learned few valuable lessons.

First, the Prius actually holds 11.9 gallons but you only get to use a little less than 10 gallons of that because a certain amount of gas gets caught in the fuel filter and fuel lines.

Also, my five-year-old daughter enjoys the opportunity to lecture me about the importance of paying attention to the messages on my car display:

Finally, I can see that the major lesson here is one of choosing where to place your attention. I was, after all, paying very close attention to the graphs, charts and numbers on my dash and was using an overly complex, sophisticated system to determine when I needed to refuel. Math is powerful, but when your car display tells you to Add Fuel, it isn’t time to argue. Best to keep some things simple. Sometimes, you should just receive the message, say thank you and fill up.

The Earth Moved (Just a Little)

Posted on by
Reply

The Earth moved today. Okay, the Earth actually moves everyday. Today I actually noticed it moving.

I was in my home office (Oak Ridge, TN), working on review notes for a friend’s article, when all the walls in the house began to shake. It was loud but not terribly frightening. It lasted only a few seconds.

At first, I thought the front of my house had been struck by a strong gust of wind, but I looked outside and none of the trees were moving.

Strangely enough, my first instinct was to post to Facebook and Twitter to see if anyone else had felt the tremor

While posting, my neighbor called to see if we felt the tremor. They had just had their pilot light activated and wondered if something had gone very wrong. We assured each other that we weren’t crazy.

A few seconds later the tweets and Facebook posts started rolling in. Friends felt it from miles away. Turns out a large part of the South

Fascinating to see so many people reach for Facebook to share the experience or just confirm sanity.  Equally fascinated to get a tweet from a friend in Nashville who didn’t feel the tremor but had seen a news article tweeted a few moments before.

This is how news travels now. We turn to Facebook to make sure our people are okay and Twitter provides the information on what’s going on.

A completely minor, non-event. Still, a nice, gentle reminder that it’s all connected.

Pay Attention. This Isn’t My Life.

Posted on by
Reply

There have been plenty of times I have thought to myself: this isn’t my life. My life isn’t the 45 to 50 hours I work every week. My life isn’t the stuff I do around the house or the trips to the grocery store. My life isn’t my Wunderlist website of long term projects or the daily Stky list of tasks I keep on my phone.

My life is the thousand beautiful moments happening every day, which I am usually too busy to notice.

Occasionally, my life leaps out and grabs me by the throat.

Today my life caught me by surprise. The trigger was a cataclysmic sunset, both beautiful and terrible, like the  edges of the world caught fire. This, like a poem, grabbed me and could not be ignored. I turned the car around to admire the conflagration and, too soon, it was gone.

Memories of another fleeting sunset while listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn play “Little Wing”. This is my life: small, subtle moments of profound beauty where the world is simultaneously made and unmade. Reaching out to capture me, when I pay attention.

Pointless Personal Data

Posted on by
Reply

This post isn’t about email. I’ve pretty much exhausted that topic for the moment and have completely ruined my reputation on campus as someone who is responsive and ready to help at the drop of an email. People have started emailing me to apologize for emailing me. Mission accomplished. That whole thread was more of a window into my soul than I expected. there’s one thing I didn’t mention. While writing those posts, I kept a spreadsheet of how many emails I sent and received from my work email account each day.

So, here’s another fun fact about me: I compulsively track pointless data about my daily life and habits.

Music

I keep track of how often I have listened to every song in my iTunes library. I keep a spreadsheet listing the Top 15 songs played since 2006. The sheet is updated on the first day of every month. The top track (150 plays) is “Ruby Blue” by Roisin Murphy. “Ruby Blue” has been my most listened to track since January 2012 when it replaced Radiohead’s “Street Spirit” (112 plays).

I am on a mission to rate every song in my iTunes. This is an important project because it allows me to make the most of smart playlists. (Note: I’ll need to write an entirely separate post on smart playlists).

My monthly spreadsheet also includes my progress with this project. Of the 12,127 songs currently in my iTunes, 2328 are currently unrated. That’s 19.2%. I’ve been tracking this since June 2011. I figure I’ll be finished by this time next year.

To make my rating easier, I keep several smart playlists of unrated songs (alpha by album, alpha by song, jazz alpha by album, jazz alpha by song, classical alpha by album). Shocker: my monthly spreadsheet lists my progress by album and also by song. (By album: Lennon (Disc 2) by John Lennon; by song: Marble Halls by Enya). (Note: Enya is a yawn and this particular song will probably be a two star. My rating system is another entirely separate post for later.)

This isn’t as much work as it sounds. I don’t spend lots of time doing this, and it makes me happy. I don’t know why. I use to automate the process of tracking play frequencies by scrobbling my iTunes to Last.fm. They give lots of good data about frequency of plays segmented by week, month and year with a sub-sort by artist. Lots of fun until I noticed that the Last.fm database couldn’t disambiguate songs with the same title. I was listening to lots of Yo-Yo Ma and getting crazy high counts for Allemande and Courante which isn’t really a unique song title. Last.fm was collapsing every play for a song by that name into one entry. Major problem since each title occurs at least 7 times in my iTunes and each is a different song.

Books

I have kept an Access database of every book I have read since May 2005. I haven’t updated in a little while since I post everything to GoodReads now. I need to go back and update the database. It gives me a nice report of every book read sorted by author.

Workouts

I use the Run Keeper app to track my runs. This is great because it automates the collection of time, distance, pace and calories burned.

Calories and Weight

I use the Live Strong app to keep track of daily calorie intake and also track my weekly weight gains/losses. Super easy to use because it is backed by a database populated with common, name-brand foods with authenticated calorie values pre-entered. That’s all I’m going to say about that for right now.

Anyway, you get the point. I like to count things. I like to put things in a spreadsheet and keep track of them. I can’t say this makes me a better, more effective person. I also can’t tell you exactly why I’m doing this and what the specific appeal is for me.

Please tell me somebody else out there is a complete nut job about keeping track of the pointless, quantifiable minutia of everyday life. This blog is called Ubiquitous. Quotidian for a reason. File this one under Quotidian.

Better than a birthday card

Posted on by
2

Yesterday was my 38th birthday. I had a very nice day. We picked up my daughter early from school. Had a free sandwich from Firehouse Subs. Went to the zoo. Had dinner with my mom, dad, mom-in-law and grandmothers.

I kept checking Facebook along the way. The very kind wishes and quick messages through the day made the whole day more special. Just small, constant reminders that people were thinking of me. It made me happy in a way that birthday cards rarely do.

Birthday cards are pre-fab. They rarely say what you need them to say and, even when they do, you have to decide whether to keep it filed away someplace or recycle. I generally recycle.

That’s not to say that birthday cards are bad. My grandmother always takes a lot of time to pick out the best card and writes a long, special message every time. Then, she further personalizes by underlining the key phrases in the card that she wants to emphasize. Something very special will be gone from my life when she isn’t around to do that. I don’t want my grandmother to post to my Facebook Wall.

But everybody else, thanks for thinking of me. Your thoughts, messages and notes made me feel like I had friends with me all day.

How my iPhone helped a blind student

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s one of those small daily miracles that comes from having ubiquitous internet access in your pocket and ready for action.

A blind student came into the library today. He asked for someone patient to help him scan his chemistry lecture notes into Word using OCR so the text to speech reader could parse his instructor’s notes for him. We talked about this a bit, and I told him I thought we could help.

I quickly discovered that our lab scanner is not currently equipped with OCR capability. You scan a document and can only get JPG, TIFF and PNG files. No good for text to speech readers.

Turns out there isn’t a single public use OCR scanner at the entire college. That’s a problem I intend to fix pretty quick. In the meantime, this student was out of luck and his chemistry notes were inaccessible.

Then I remembered the document scanner app I recently downloaded onto my iPhone (ImagetoText). A 25 page document. I snapped a picture of each page with my phone, let the app translate the image into text and then emailed the file to myself so the txt file could be pasted into Word. Somewhat labor intense but worked pretty well. I was impressed by how well the text rendered. His notes are complete since the chemistry diagrams are non-textual but a pretty great solution in a pinch.

I like choices.

Posted on by
2

I’ve been hearing quite a bit lately about the paralyzing effects of having too many choices. I hear it most frequently in the context of students choosing majors, but it also applies on a lesser scale, perhaps, to the grocery store cereal aisle, long distance carriers (do people still do that?), and cable TV channels (again, do people still do that?).

The idea is that the human brain cannot adequately process the complexities created by a surfeit of choices. That’s why in our very diverse society we tend to keep things simple: Republican/Democrat; Coke/Pepsi; Boxers/Briefs. The reality is usually much more interesting and complex. But interesting and complex don’t really sell very well, so… keep things simple.

I like choices. I like complexity. It may be my buddha-nature shining through. My allergy to artificial choice reduction. Buddhists call it non-duality.

I most recently embraced my love for choices while eating dinner at Firehouse Subs. Last Saturday, I had dinner at Firehouse. They’ve got a brand new, shiny soda fountain that features a touch screen with your basic drink options and then a sub-menu to put a different flavor twist on each of these main options. First you select Coke and then you decide if you want regular Coke, cherry Coke, orange Coke, vanilla Coke, etc, etc.

I flipped out. This is, of course, the 21st century soda fountain. The soda fountain was an institution my generation pretty much entirely missed out on. Sonic tries to give you the same experience but it isn’t really the same.

What a lovely machine to offer so many ridiculous options and subtle variations. You could visit something like 120 times and never experience the same drink twice. Fascinating.

Of course, my wife thinks I just like to touch buttons on screens. She may be right. It was almost an iOS soft drink experience.

In case you are wondering, I started with vanilla, cherry Coke and then refilled with raspberry Coke. Both terrific. Only 118 more flavors to go.

I like choices. Let’s keep choices, please.

21st century soda fountain

Paging Dr. Jung. Is Dr. Jung in the house?

Posted on by
Reply

This morning I woke up from a dream in which I was crawling between two enormous rocks. The crevice between them was just barely big enough for me to squeeze through.

At the end of the crevice stood a tall tree. Once through the rocks, there was no where for me to go but up. So I climb the impossibly tall tree until I found myself stranded on the highest, most precarious branch with no good way down.

If you listen, your dreams can tell you a lot. Mine are not usually quite so straightforwardly metaphorical.

My iOS5 dilemna

Posted on by
1

People are asking me what I think about all the great new features loaded into iOS5. It is sweet of them to ask. By asking, they are implying that they think of me as one of those people who is always at the leading edge of things. I like to be thought of that way. Unfortunately, it isn’t true. Here’s the blog post to burst that bubble.

I haven’t upgraded to iOS5 yet. I tried to but I don’t have enough free memory on my laptop. More precisely, I no longer have enough free memory on my laptop to fully backup my iPad and iPhone, which is, in my mind, a requirement before installing a new operating system.

Not enough memory? How is that possible, you ask? Isn’t memory pretty much free these days. Yes and no. Here’s my situation:

I use an HP Pavilion with a 105 GB hard drive. I have only 2.25GB free. Most of the used space is occupied by music. All of the music on my laptop is currently also backed up on a 60 GB book. The rest of my music is on a 120GB external hard drive which I currently have no way to back up.

In order to free enough space to back up my iPad and iPhone, I will need to offload some or all of my music files onto the external hard drive. Since I have no way to backup that off-loaded data once it is moved, this option makes me very nervous.

Still, I’m planning to move it all over to the external hard drive and free up lots of space on my laptop so I can do backups, update operating systems and resume podcast downloads as well.

First, I’ve got to find time to move the files and then have iTunes map the files out again. Not much for me to actually do while this is happening, but I want to keep an eye on it in case there are problems.

Then the actual updates for iTunes, iPhone and iPad. That’s probably an hour or so of patiently waiting.

Simplest solution: get a new laptop with more memory. I’m eager to move from Vista to Windows 7 anyway. That, however, costs money, which is, by the way, in short supply these days.

So there you have it. The simple, sad but true reason why I haven’t upgraded yet. I expect to upgrade this weekend so I can once again be the kind of person people ask for an opinion on the swank new features hidden in the new OS.

And yes, I am fully aware that there is nothing in this post of sufficient import to set the world on fire. To my social activist friends, yes, I do realize that these are fake, First World problems. I say with all humility, “The First World is where I live.”