Category Archives: Thoughts

Thoughts

ComeAcross Podcast 4

➡ Download ComeAcross Podcast 4

Summary: Author on trial in Turkey, stranger inherits Norway farm, ozone recovery slower than expected, aging computers hobble DHS, FCC backs VoIP phone taxes, Asimo ready for office work, Frenchman is killer driver, scientists find cure for gassy cows, wireless camera thrown to work, inventor of the Walkman.

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Thoughts

ComeAcross Podcast 3

➡ Download ComeAcross Podcast 3

Summary: Printing organs, torture in Iraq, grafts in Washington, new FM transmitter, CIA misled Italians, Pope gets steering wheel, putting old buildings to rest, LAME IS an MP3 Encoder, VLC and the French legislature, Costco’s way of business, server power too costly, the Rembrandt code, soothing pooches, drowning in fines, massacre in China, Islam women can stand on their own, Wikipedia prankster confesses, what has dating become, world’s oldest person, face scanners, product placements in TV shows and macro photography on a budget.

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Thoughts

Music players should match genres with equalizer presets

This idea is so simple I can’t believe it’s not already in use! There I was during lunch, listening to my iPod in Shuffle mode, and it dawned on me how annoying it was that if I wanted to change the Equalizer present, I’d have to maneuver through several menus, then when it advanced to the next song, which might be of a different genre, I’d have to adjust the Equalizer once again. Since I didn’t want to bother, I left the Equalizer on None, but how much better would it be if these Equalizer modes could be automatically changed!

It’s so simple, too! They’re already named about the same as Genres, and so all the player would have to do is to look for an Equalizer mode that matches the Genre of the music currently playing. When I’m playing Pop music on my iPod, the Equalizer should automatically switch to the Pop settings; by the way, if you haven’t noticed yet, my last name is Pop. 🙂

There should be some level of tweaking though. I should be able to select different Equalizer presets for different genres, and I should be able to edit presets, as well as create new ones. These last two options are already available in most music players, but what I’m trying to get across here is that they should work together with the genre/equalizer matching.

I look forward to seeing this feature in upcoming versions of the popular music players like iTunes or WMP! I think it should also be integrated into the portable players like the iPods, which were really the impetus for this idea in the first place.

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Thoughts

The next iPod?

I have a hunch the next generation iPod will have a widescreen. I just don’t think the current 4:3 screen is going to be around for long. Obviously the videos on iTunes are a success. The next step is to deliver them in 16:9 format, and then possibly deliver full movies as well. This could happen as early as next year.

Updated 2/4/2008: Well, it didn’t happen in 2006, as I’d hoped. Appled started selling movies through iTunes in 2007, and now, in 2008, has started renting movies online, in both HD and regular formats. They also started selling a widescreen iPod in 2007, not 2006.

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Thoughts

Speedometers should store speed for last 10-15 minutes of driving

I got a ticket on the 1st of December, a trumped up charge for “reckless driving” through the Virginia countryside. My wife and I both looked at the speedometer when the trooper started flashing his lights behind us, and we were doing 72-73 tops. We’ve got a MINI, and it’s really hard to miss the speeds. That speedo is stuck right in the middle of the dashboard and it’s big. The trooper said he clocked us at over 80, then came back with a nicely rounded figure on the ticket: 85 in a 65 mph zone. Isn’t it so nice of them to round up our speeds? I know that gives me a really warm and fuzzy feeling about cops… Anyway, I tried telling him about our real speed, but his desire to give a big, fat ticket was much stronger than his sense of justice.

Later in the evening, as I mulled over it, I got this idea. Why shouldn’t speedometers in our cars store the speeds we’ve been driving at for the past 10-15 minutes? The computer could sample our speed every 5 or 10 seconds, then graph it nicely and be able to spit back some figures at us: maximum speed, average speed, instant speed at certain time intervals, etc. We should be able to review that data, and confront these ticket-happy cops on the spot with real data from our cars. Of course, this sort of a system should be tamper-proof in one way or another, so it can’t be tweaked by hackers.

I really think this would solve a lot of the problems with false speeding tickets. One could go to court with a printout from our cars listing the speeds we drove at the time of the ticket, and we could also obtain a certification from our dealer or mechanic stating that our speedometer is accurate and hasn’t been tampered with, and then we’d have some real ammunition against all these cops out to make quotas.

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