Mylos

I have been running Temboz, my home-made RSS/Atom aggregator, for half a year now, and it is interesting to take stock. I ran a report on the database to count how many items per day I read, how many are filtered out automatically, and how many I flagged as interesting.

The most obvious thing is the steady increase in the number of articles per day, while the number of articles I flag as interesting remains mostly constant (perhaps a sign of greater selectivity). The increase is primarily due to an increase in the number of feeds I subscribe to — as the ergonomics of the feed reader improved (at least from my perspective), I can read more feeds. The addition of filtering also allows me to read via RSS sources of information I used to check daily, such as the Photo.net forums. As time goes, I find I seldom regularly visit web sites on a daily basis any more, not even the New York Times (granted, the steadily deteriorating quality of their journalism might have something to do with that).

My filtering scheme is manual and rules-based. I am a bit leery of implementing something like Bayesian filtering, as articles I flag as “uninteresting” are not necessarily articles I would like to be filtered away – some are duplicates, some are worth a chuckle but not much more. The risk with the “Daily Me” is to lock oneself into a routine and self-reinforcing echo chamber, so I try and keep a balanced diet of information. Some subjects I am completely uninterested in, however, for instance one of my rules filters out anything sports-related from The Guardian.

As I enrich my library of filtering rules, the proportion of articles filtered is increasing steadily (the recent dip in September was caused by a flurry of feed subscriptions). A 20% time savings is nothing to sniff at. Fatigue plays a role — I dislike phones and finally got fed up with the plethora of cell phone reviews this week and filtered out all articles dealing with phones altogether.

One big win would be an algorithm that could reliably detect and group together articles that are on the same topic, the way Google News does (Google News has the potential to be the ultimate RSS/Atom aggregator). I experimented with a scheme to look for duplicated URLs inside the articles, but this didn’t work very well. Some form of statistical natural language processing would be needed, but that is more work than I am prepared to put in right now.

As is his wont, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put his foot in his mouth when he accused iPod owners of being thieves. Actually, the journalists’ reports are not entirely accurate – while he used the iPod as an example, what he was really implying is that any music format that is not encumbered with mandatory digital rights management (DRM) restrictions induces “theft”.

Copyright infringement is certainly illegal, and should remain so, but merely repeating the mantra that copyright infringement is tantamount to theft does not make it so. This is beyond the point. Many stores have to deal with shoplifting, which is indeed theft. What if a store you were in accused you of shoplifting and performed a strip search? You would feel humiliated and enraged, certainly stop patronizing them and almost certainly sue them for false imprisonment. DRM is no different.

There is no acceptable form of digital rights management, period. And yes, that includes the iTunes Music Store’s AAC/Fairplay.

Britain is not known for being a gastronomic haven (although the situation has improved dramatically in London over the last 20 years or so). Still, they have some decent grocery products, like shortbread or Ribena blackcurrant drinks. US specialty groceries carry some, but by no means all British delights.

A few weeks ago, a small shop specialized in imported British foodstuffs opened in my neighborhood. The product it carries are the kind you would expect to find in a regular grocery store in the UK, don’t expect esoteric Fortnum & Mason luxuries here, but a solid and growing selection, and a good destination for anyone who would like a little diversity in their daily vittles.

You Say Tomato, 1526 California (between Larkin and Polk), 415-921-2828

Update (2021-04-15):

It closed a few years ago.

Gubernator Arnold Schwarzenegger signed on Wednesday a bill to ban the production and sale of foie gras in California in 2012. The bill was pushed by his outgoing horse-trading partner, Democratic state senator John Burton. The highly dubious rationale is that the force-feeding of ducks or geese to produce foie gras is “cruel”. I can think of many culinary preparations that would qualify, such as lobsters or crabs boiled alive. Then again, many more people eat crustaceans than foie gras, thus they are not as safe a target for a grandstanding politician who has no compunctions about trying to stuff his unwanted offspring down San Francisco voters’ throats.

I think the last thing San Francisco’s stricken economy needs is another coup de grâce to its’ restaurants, one of the few local industries that can (just barely) survive its business-hostile climate (our restaurateur mayor Gavin Newsom seems to agree). In the meantime, better to make your reservations at the French Laundry while you still can. In seven years’ time, the only place you will be able to get your fix will be from shady characters in the dark alleys of the Tenderloin, if its gentrification is not complete by then. If you think foie gras is expensive today…

Since Gizmodo isn’t going to ask me that question anytime soon, and since I haven’t written a blog entry in all of September yet, I have decided to take matters in my own hands.

I carry the following in the pockets of my jacket:

• PalmOne Zire 72: far better ergonomics in practice than my previous Sony Clié UX50
• A pair of Maui Jim sunglasses (changed recently from a pair of Serengeti driver’s). The shades are polarized and mirrored to minimize glare, and have an incredibly flexible and lightweight “Flexon” nitinol memory-alloy frame. I got mine in bronze tinted glasses — they are also availabe in a darker neutral gray, but the warmer tint was more comfortable.
• A Sony-Ericsson T68i cell phone, somewhat dated but perfectly functional (this means a synchronized phone book thanks to iSync). It alsod provides my Zire 72 with Internet access via Bluetooth and GPRS.
• A PQI Intelligent Stick 256MB USB flash drive, small enough to fit in my wallet
• Three fountain pens in a leather case, a Montblanc Meisterstück (Aurora black ink), a Waterman Edson (Herbin Vert Pré green) and a S.T. Dupont (Private Reserve Naples blue).

My gadget bag is a Tumi expandable messenger bag. It holds:

• Contax T3: This diminutive 35mm film camera has a superlative Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 Sonnar lens. Compact digital cameras are based on small sensors with high levels of electronic noise, and are totally unsuited to low-light shooting in available light.
• A Pedco Ultrapod mini folding tripod with a built-in ball head. Small and light, but quite versatile.
• Leica Trinovid BC 8×20 binoculars: these ultra-compact folding binoculars have excellent optics and can be used by eyeglass wearers thanks to their innovative fold-out eyecup design.
• A Moleskine pocket notebook
• An Edmund Optics Hastings triplet 10x folding magnifier, with high resolution and excellent achromatic correction.
• An Alumicolor pocket architect’s scale, metric, of course, and a self-winding tape measure.
• A Faber-Castell e-motion mechanical pencil: its thick 1.4mm lead makes it glide across paper and its cigar shape is very ergonomic.
• Surefire L1 LumaMax LED flashlight: I used to have mini Mag-Lites, but these flashlights, derived from military and law enforcement versions, have much more power (two beam intensities) and an even beam without dark spots. Ideal for reading. The only downside is they run off Lithium batteries, which can be hard to find (but Surefire will sell them to you in bulk at a significant discount).
• Apple iPod 15GB, with either Etymotic Research ER-4P or Bang & Olufsen earphones. The in-ear Etymotics offer significant passive noise suppression (ideal for airplane use) but are dangerous to use in environments where you need to hear some ambient noise for safety reasons, like when you are in the street. Ordinary earphones like those supplied with the iPod don’t stay put, the clip on the B&O ones will keep them in place. They also have excellent efficiency and sound quality.
• Böker Orion Ti-Carbone pocket knife. The Boy Scouts were started as an imperialist means of youth mass regimentation, much like the Nazi Hitlerjügend, Fascist Balilla or Soviet Komsomol. That does not make their motto “Be Prepared” less apt, and a pocket knife is always handy. While at it, why not get a good looking one like this carbon-fiber and anodized titanium-aluminum alloy one? Just remember to take it out before a flight…
• A Socket Bluetooth GPS receiver. This tiny gizmo (smaller than my T68i) has a rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery and will last over 6 hours on a charge. Combined with the free Cetus GPS software for PalmOS, it makes a decent handheld combo that can still be used with a phone. I have yet to look closely at navigation software for the Palm.

Update (2004-09-30):

Somebody at Gizmodo clearly has a sense of humor…

Update (2005-07-10):

I have altered my standard gadget bag configuration. The messenger bag is wider than deep, and does not hug the hips well, not to mention the weight. I now use a Tumi expandable messenger bag (apparently discontinued). This bag is deeper than wide, which gives it a low center of gravity and improves handling. The flap with magnetic closures looks hip, but is in practice more of a hindrance than anything (you cannot put anything substantial in the flap otherwise it stiffens and does not snap shut any more), and I am considering getting a Waterfield Designs Vertigo instead. The bag’s liner for expansion acts as a form of padding, which is just great as I now pack either a Leica MP with a 50mm Summilux-M ASPH or a Canon Digital Rebel XT with a 35mm f/1.4L.

Many gadgets from the bigger bag did not make the cut. The Edmunds loupe, Surefire flashlight, Faber-Castell pencil did. The regular Moleskine was replaced by the thinner notebook with a soft cover. The iPod — well, the only time I ever use an iPod is during long flights

Update (2012-03-16):

For some odd reason people still read this post (perhaps this has to do with the EDC craze), so I may as well post an update.

I still use the Tumi Messenger bag for work, at least when it is raining. I have way too many bags and will use one or the other depending on the mood and how much stuff I need to carry. I have also taken to wearing Scottevest jackets, which have absolutely gargantuan capacity.

My EDC camera is a Fuji X100, that I keep in my jacket pocket. Excellent optics, high quality sensor. It’s bulkier than a Contax T3, but more versatile than the Leica X1 it replaced. I keep a Manfrotto Modopocket miniature folding tripod, although I have been testing a Gorillapod Micro 800.

I replaced the binoculars with a Leica Monovid, which is lighter, and for someone with a strong dominant eye, makes little difference.

The Moleskine was replaced with a Rhodia Webnotebook with dot grid pages. The dot grid is less obtrusive than squared paper, and the Rhodia paper from Clairefontaine is leagues ahead of the kind Moleskine uses. It doesn’t feather with fountain pens, for starters.

The Surefire L1 was replaced by a tiny Fenix E05 AAA flashlight with a nice floody beam that I keep on my keychain, along with a  now discontinued Leatherman Squirt S4 (the scissors on the S4 are way more useful to me than pliers) and a minimalist PNY 16GB USB flash drive.

The iPod, Palm, GPS and cell phone were replaced by an iPhone 4 and an iPad 3. I seldom listen to music on the go, so the Etymotic ER-4P or B&W P5 headphones more often than not don’t make the cut.