I have a small Jack Spade messanger bag that I bought from the Greene Street store from a very long time ago. I use it my weekend city bag all the time. Now that I am in Shanghai, I do not have a car and I run around the city a lot more on foot and subway. I need a slightly larger bag to carry my stuff. So when Jack Spade ran a secret sale earlier this, I bought myself a new bag -- a grey work twill Haversack messanger.
I like watches. My first new analog watch was the Orange Monster that is ultra low tech. I knew not for long I would be picking up another analog watch that has more tech in it. Hence this Citizen AT-8020 Eco Drive. It is as loaded with feature as an analog watch can be:
I have the 54L model -- stainless steel band. There is also the 3L band with a blue synthentic leather band. This watch uses the H800 module that are also in other mid-range Eco Drive Citizen watches as well.
Click for Image Gallery
If you are looking for a very easy to setup and use wireless network security camera for your home, get this camera. It will make a good baby cam as well. For the details, read on. You can also watch and hear this review in greater details in the review video.
I have been using network security camera for the last ten years. I used them in the office for security, and used it at home for security when I travel, as a baby cam when my kids were little. I have always used expensive professional grade camera made by Axis. These are camera that you will see used in department store and other professional locations.
The cheap home grade cameras like the Foscam never appeal to me. Their video quality is too low. Their software too buggy. They have no customer support. For example, one of my Axis camera had a problem and I spend hours with their real technical support person, and they ended up replacing my faulty camera.
So why do I switched to dropcam pro?
The good Axis cameras are very expensive. Compare to the dropcam pro, with a very good video quality (1080p HD) and a good optical lens with a wide field of vision, the drop cam pro, at $200, is a very good price. A equivalent Axis would have cost $300 (Axis M1034-W) and up.
The dropcam pro packaging reminds me of a well designed and packaged Apple product. The camera and the base comes in a mostly metal body. The base is weighted enough I have no problem just placing it on a shelf for one of my location. The enclosed USB cable is thick and flexible. The camera comes with a plastic mounting base and a set of mounting anchor and screws that can be used to mount the camera onto a dry wall. The only thing I find bad about the camera is that the supplied drywall anchor is terrible. They have problem gripping my drywall. I would use regular anchors that you can find from a home improvement store.
The video quality is very good. You can see it in the video review, towards the end. Or take a look at some of the live demo featured on the drop cam website. The camera has a very wide field of vision. This means you can see a lot of the room(s) that you are monitoring with just one camera mounted on the side. The night vision of the camera is amazing. Again you can see it on their demos or in my review.
The software and the cloud service is where the dropcam really shines. Their free iPhone and iPad apps let you connect to any of your camera to view live feed, view recorded activities earlier, and to change the settings on the cameras. It has nice touches like the app will update the camera displays periodically (think animated GIF) when you are viewing all your cameras in the app. You have to click on a specific camera to stream actual content.
The camera has good motion detection. When it detects motion or light changes, it has the option of sending a notification to my mobile app(s) and email me. It has schedule capability to switch the camera and/or activity notification on and off by time. All the settings can be changed remotely.
You can assign names to activities. I assume that you program the software to recognize different activities in different location of the monitored areas so that the notification are named. If not set, all the notifications are called "unnamed activities". I have not tried the named activity feature yet.
The setup process for the camera is quick and easy. When I first open the package, I notice the camera is powered by a micro USB port and cable. I thought that was strange until I realized that the installation software is *inside* the camera. You plug the camera, using the included USB cable, into your computer. The installation software shows up as a disk image (for my Mac) and you can run the installation right from it. No need to download installer, or pop in CD's.
Are there any Issues? The first is the bad mounting anchor. The second is that, for a few times, it takes the camera a long time to reboot after I change settings. One time I gave up and just powered the camera off and on.
This is a great camera. I use it to monitor the house when we are away. I travel a lot so I use it to check on the family. We are past that phase now, but it can be a great baby cam. Highly recommended.
Note: A shout out to my 9 year old. He filmed me and then edited this entire review - completely self taught, using a HD handicam and iMovie.
This is a review of the Japanese Zojirushi hot water dispensing pot, CD-LCC30. Or the Micom 3.0 Liter Electric Dispensing Pot, as it is called. I bought it from Amazon when they were having a sale. There are three different models with different sizes, the 3.0 Liter is the smaller one. For what I need that is enough.
My parents have a lower tech version of this for a long time. It is very useful if you want to have hot water for tea or cooking. I drink lots of tea, and sometimes coffee. I am the lazy type where I microwave cup(s) of hot water. Seems like a waste of energy, and it takes time. This hot water pot works well as a high tech solution.
The basic operation is that the pot will boil water and then keep it at one of three temperatures, 208, 195 or 175 degrees F. There is an electric pump that dispenses the hot water. There are two different buttons for the pump, you have to press UNLOCK, then press the DISPENSE button to pump the water. The unit will auto lock after 10 seconds of unused. A good safety feature.
There are a few very neat design things that is not obvious if you look at the product description:
Conclusion — highly recommended.
Since I switched over to the Mac, I am without a scanner. Evening when I was using Windows XP, my Dell multifunction printer/scanner wasn't that good. The document feeder is slow, and image quality is bad.
I saw a few ads on the ScanSnap scanner from Fujitsu. The few reviews that I found seems to say that it is a great scanner. It is not cheap, and the Mac version costs more, which makes NO sense. But I really want to go as paperless as I can, so I bought it.
It arrived in a little box, enhancing the mobile/portable scanner image. It comes with all cables including the USB cable. You can power it either via AC adaptor, or via a second USB cable. I went with AC since I am not really using it as a portable scanner.
Setup was easy. I downloaded the latest scan manager software from the Fujitsu website. It is a point release higher than the one supplied on the CD. I was up and running in a few minutes.
First surprise? This thing is fast. Check out the mini video below to see the speed.
The Bell & Ross Fusion wrist watch is one of the few digital and analog watches in the market today. It comes in two different version -- one with a black face and one with a white face. I have the black face one since it defaults come with the black rubber strap. I am considering also getting the crocodile strap as well. The rubber strap is not very comfortable. The watch weights exactly 2.8 oz.
The reason I bought this watch is that I really need a watch that have a calendar display and multiple time zone. Since I don't think/work following the 7 day week I need some reminder from my watch to sync up with the "normal" people, to know what is the current day of the week, and the current day of the month.
I really would like a watch that can easily display four time zones, but that is hard to find. Some of the Casio G-Shock watches has that feature, but it is so hard and slow to switch between the displays that it really is not useful. The Fusion can show one time zone on the analog hand, and simultaneously another on the digital display. That is useful. In fact I now regularly use it to display three time zone when I am away from home.
Some initial observations:
The setting of the seconds is different from the setting of the hour and minute. It assumes correctly that you set the second value once accurately, and you only need to adjust the hour and minutes based on time zone changes. You will not accidentally (or not too easily anyway) changed the second setting, so that the watch will always be accurate.
This watch has a single crown/dial to set and change all the modes and settings on the watch. Consider that it has 8 digital display modes of: two time zones, alarm, chronograph, and timer, it is quite a user interface. It works nicely. The crown is digital -- in the sense that if you turn it quickly it advances the hour setting, and if you turn it slowly it advances the minutes setting. Clever huh?
When you use the crown to adjust the analog hand's hour setting, each quick turn of the crown makes the minute hand fast forward or backward an whole hour. Really cool to watch.
The analog time display and the Time Zone 1 digital display can be set differently. So you could set the watch to display three time zones.
For the Time Zone two display, you can only change the hour setting. This is useful since you would only want to change the hour. Note: The English portion of the user guide is wrong. It says "The hours and minutes cannot be modified, they correspond to local time". The Japanese portion of the user guide seems correct.
This is a minor issue -- there is no back lighting, so it is not possible to read the time in absolute darkness. However, the large face and the reflective hands are quite readable even in minimal light.
This is what I do:
All the adjustments are done with the crown, typically pulled and turn with few exceptions:
To set you watch accurately, try the official US Time Site
Bill Stumpf perhaps is known as the designer of the Aeron chair for Herman Miller. In this book he addresses the decline of civility in the States and propose ways to restore them. The book is subtitled "restoring civility and other lost virtues to everyday life".
Stumpf separate his analysis of civility into three parts:
The book is structured into three sections with short chapters explaining his concepts and thinking.
In the first chapter, Stumpf redesign the trusty 747 as an example. Our technology allows us to sanitized natural experiences. Air conditioning. Heating. Flying through the air in a metal box with enough fuse to cause a major explosion. We are safe when flying. But there is the emotion and enjoyment of flying? He reminds us that we should reunite the (positive) emotion with the experience. Bring back the pleasure of flying.
Interesting enough, he proposed giving the passenger more feedback by showing flight plans and outside views on the video monitors. Most new 747 does this now. He also propose bigger windows and seating that give better views. Star gazing. Boeing's new 7E7 has some of these ideas implemented, including much larger and taller windows. Perhaps their designers read this book.
In this chapter Stumpf reminds us that we should not completely isolate the dirty part of living. Cocooning in the suburbs. Hiding the inner working of society, factories, manufacturing plants. Ignorance is bad. We should be able to see and tour these necessary part of living.
This chapter is confusing to me. Stumpf's writing is reasonable simple in most cases but in some chapters he seems to be combining a few too many thoughts. The main theme I found in this chapter is the importance of small graces. He used the lowly brown paper shopping bag with handles as an example. Compare to the alternative of the plastic shopping bag. The brown bag, especially after adding the handles, is a wonder in design that enrich our lives. It is strong. Easy to carry. Hide the content. It will stand up when place down on the counter so content won't spill out. It is reusable.
Stumpf equates Grace with Civility, which I agree completely.
Technological progress is good, but there is no reason to throw out the old completely. Good design should combine the old with the new. Retain the civil spirit with new technological sophistication. Stumpf compares the London cab (taxi). It is comfortable and roomy. Passenger sit facing each other so that one can have a conversation. Big doors make entrance and exit easy. It has character. It brings pleasure to the ride. If NYC ever were to redesign their taxi, Stumpf sketched out a new design that marry the civility of the London Cab with the new transportation technology.
This is the chapter that gave the book its name. It describes the 1992 St. Paul Winter Carnival. The city commissioned a grand ice palace design and built by volunteers. At the end the ice palace melted away of course. But the people senses that they are a part of something bigger -- a community of civilized human beings.
This chapter is about the importance of play. Rationality sometimes removes play from work. Play is important. Work for the love of it is important.
Stumpf talks about making things that last. We are increasing obsessed with the next new thing, chasing fads, upgrades. Making things last is not only environmentally sound, but it let us focus on living instead of just consuming.
While I agree with point most of the time, when it comes to computers, do we have a choice but to upgrade every or every other year?
This is another chapter that I find confusing. I think it is a criticism of our mass media. The new connected global village bring us too close to everything. Sometimes one can see more clearly by seeing from a distance. We need to improve the quality, not the quantity of the media.
Stumpf remind us of Carl Jung's notion of progress: Only through the pursuit of wisdom and understanding, and not merely the betterment of conditions, can we arrive at a civilized view of life.
This ends the first section of the book, talking about things of civility.
Stumpf uses the Harlem Prep Street Academy as an example (he helped design the school in the 60's) to show that art and design contributes to the quality of life. He laments the lack of focus in art and design in America. There are few public museum dedicated to design. We equate design with high end products only.
Instead, one should try to surround oneself with art and good design. The important of beauty.
Stumpf moves on to the discussion of public civility. Using a new defunct public health service, the Red Door in Minnesota as an example, he noted that compassion is a source for public civility. Personal Anonymity for clients to the health clinic is an act of public civility.
Using the lack of public bathroom as an example, Stumpf lightlights the fact that in the States we do not offer the public simple support for a basic human need. He said in Switzerland, the dogs have better toilet accommodations than humans in Houston. Highway rest area without toilets is another example. We have advance technology for bathrooms -- the height adjustable toilet for the disable or elderly, Japanese bidet-toilet combination that provide a paperless and odorless hygiene system exists. We need public civility.
Another chapter on public civility, and the importance of small gestures. European often have free public access to clean fresh drinking water in public places.
These few chapters seems to deal with the importance of community. The Lake Harriet district has a creed. It calls for each individual to take responsibility of living there, to build and maintain a civilized communities. (Minnesota nice is real). "The Beer and Bacon Sandwiches at 5:30am" chapter highlight the need for urban food markets. The "Staying Put" chapter talks about the importance of home, building roots, and hence communities. The "Min og Bo" chapter describes simple a head stone and a well design church cemetery in Copenhagen. The fact that design can help preserve civilization -- there can be civility in death.
These end the section on places of civility. The discussion is certainly shorter, most of them reflect on the need of community and public civility.
This chapter is the beginning of the last section of the book. These chapters talk about paths of civility. In this chapter Stumpf recalls his experience in a London pub. The English pub has an etiquette that when a customer leaves his seat, it is assume that he will be back and his seat is saved, unless the customer explicitly say that he is leaving. The kindness of strangers is the path of civility. The kindness of strangers helps maintain people's self esteem.
This is another confusing chapter. I think it addresses the need for awareness of public safety and community awareness. The path of walking to school is a metaphor.
Stumpf references two different characters in this chapter. D.J. is D.J. DePree, one of the founder of Herman Miller. Dursu is a fictional character in a Kurosawa film, Dursu Usala. DePress apparently have a habit of cleaning up any restroom after he used them. Dursu cleans up campsite as he travels. Both characters leave things better than they found them.
This is about care-taking. One should care about, and take care of not only things that one own, but things that one share. That is another path to civility.
Stumpf using a police station in Europe as an example, to ponder about whether it is better to not isolate and hide the bad from the good. This echoes his earlier chapter on hiding the dirty part of living, the factories and the manufacturing plants. Is it possible to make jail and police station a part of the community. Public civility by meditate the extremes without destroying the extremes.
Stumpf points out that retirement is not the end of living. It is possible to plan and to grow old gracefully. Retirement is an artificial marker in the path of living.
The last chapter of the book takes up the redesign of the Red telephone booth in Britain as an example. We should not throw out the past because it is obsolete. He propose to retain the past grace and civil spirit when building the new for the present. This is similar to the discussion of London taxi cabs in the early chapter. The path of civility is time again? I find this chapter ends the book rather abruptly.
So what is Civility and how do we restore it? Stumpf gave the reader many examples of what is civil and what destroys it. Grace is often mentioned. When one searches for comfort, one is really searching for civility. He uses Willian Gass's definition of comfort, which is "a lack of awareness". If you are wearing a good pair of running shoes, you will not feel the shoes. It becomes part of the background.
Stumpf actually provides a nice definition of civility in the introduction of the book:
Civility is comfort, hidden goodness, social lubricant, personal worth, helping others, play -- civility is the joy we take in our human achievements and the compassion we show towards our all-too-human faults. Civility can be extended by technology and can be obliterated by it. Civility is toleration, understanding. It is the integration of differences, not the heightening of them. Civility can be found anywhere -- in the great faux city of Las Vegas and the backwaters of the Midwest.
Bruce Sterling structured this book using the Shakespeare's All the world's a stagepassage. He matches each stage with a technology innovation and attempts to describe how it will develope and affect society in the next fifty years. He asks two quetsions: What does it mean, and how does it feel.
This book started as an easy read. I agree with most of his thoughts. He uses a lot of compares and contrasts in each chapter. Drawing on history to explain the future. From the middle chapters, the writing starts to drag on a bit. The book ends on the topic/stage of death, which is appropriate as it ends without much commentary.
I enjoy this book in the sense that it is a meta book. It contains a lot of pointers to reference materials that sound very interesting. From the Kevin Kelly book, to Emerson's American Scholar, to "things that think", etc. I will add those to my reading stack.
This writeup here is less of a review, more of my reading notes I took from the keypoints in the book for myself. You really need to read the entire book to what this is all about and judge for yourself.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snale
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on sides;
His outhful hose, well sav'ed, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voices,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whilstles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is scecond childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
As You Like It, 2.7.147-174)
These are the first few chapters/stages and their associated technologies:
Stering argues against the fear of big genetic engineering -- making superbabies, the perfect human. Obsolecence is built in to the process. The superbabies of today will be sub par by the time he or she grows up. Technolgy advances. There is simply no benefits to make superbabies.
He predicts that all the action is at the single cell level. Use bacteria to make drugs. Use micro organism to grow and control the garden.Sterility is a bad word. Living bateria is your friend. He uses mitochondria as an example for useful microbes that lives inside you.
Single cell level genetics are the 21st century version of farming and healing:
Farming andn healing are two lines of human work that are prehistoric, planted at the very basis of civilization. During the whole course of history, healing and farming have been in continuous, roiling development, full of excitement and crises and massive, terrible failures, with nothing less at state than our life and our death. Genetics cannot make either of these ancient arts more stable. It will drive htem both into stampede.
Learning is not the center of school life. Today's young stedents are being civilized for an older civilization than our own.
Stering makes many references to Kvein Kelly's New Rules for the New Economy. The new academia is moving too fast. There is a "canon panic". A permanent dis-equilibrium. He compares the future state to Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous speech in 1837. "The American Scholar". Emerson's canon for the American scholar is "Transcendentalism". The future is better described by Kevin Kelly.
Sterling suggest two new virtues for a twenty-first century scholar: flexibility and patiences. Flexibility because there is a permanent dis-equlibrium in the new world. Note that permanent dis-equalibrium is not something bad, terrible, and dangerous. Walking, he notes, is permanent dis-equilibrium.
Patiences, because we as human will outlast the machines and all the changes in the world.
In the old world, we have John Ruskin's 19th century concept of Pathetic Fallacy : Human projects our human feelings onto symbolic externalities. The pathetic fallacy is a confusion between the powerful way we fell inside and the indifferent way that the world actually works.
In the new world, look at MIT Professor Gershefeld's "things that Think" research.
This book by Jim Collins is an easy read. I picked it up just before a trip and couldn't put it down. So I took it on the plane and read through 1/3 of it by the time the 7 hours flight is over.
This book struck a chord with me as I am living through the lifecycle of a maturing start-up company. I can recall examples of each point that Collins made in his book from my experience. Things that we done right, and mistakes that we made. At the end of his book, he actually bring this book, which is about going from good to great for a matured company, together with his first book, build to last, which is about new companies. He said that the principles apply nevertheless. And my own personal experience would agree.
With this type of book one can always argue that the author is just writing up common sense ideas. Of course, but common sense is hard to find sometimes. What Collins did is to study companies that made a dramatic transition. Looking at companies commulative stock returns, compare with the market and direct comparison companies, Collins identify companies that, at some transition point, resulted in great performances compare with all others. Specifically, at least three times the market performance over fifteen years.
What I have here are some notes from the keypoints in the book for myself. You really need to read the entire book to understand what this is all about !
You can real more about Jim Collins at his website. Check out his reading list -- He has set a personal goal to read 100 books a year.
These are the five progressive levels of leadership:
Level 5: Level 5 Executive
Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will
Level 4: Effective Leader
Catalyzes commitment to and vigours pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards
Level 3: Competent Manager
Organizes people and resources towards the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives
Level 2: Contributing Team Member
Contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and worked effectively with others in a group settings
Level 1: Highly Capable Individual
Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge skills, and good work habits.
To achive level 5 leadership skills, one must combine personal humility and professional will:
Prefessional Will
Creates superb results, a clear catalyst in the transition from good to great.
Personal Humility
Demonstrates a compelling modesty, shunning public adulation; never boastful.
Demonstrates an unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to produce the best long-term results, no matter how difficult.
Acts with quiet, calm determination; relies principally on inspired standards, not inspiring charisma, to motivate.
Sets the standard of building an enduring great company; will settle for nothing less.
Channels ambition into the company, not the self; sets up successors for even greater success in the next generation.
Looks into the mirror, not out the window, to apportion responsibility for poor results, never blaming other people, external factors, or bad luck.
Looks out the window, not in the mirror, to apportion credit for the success of the company - to other people, external factors, and good luck.
Collins' point is:
"...not just about assembling the right team - that's nothing new. The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order to take a company from good to great."
The purpose of compensation is not to keep "motivating" the right behaviors from the wrong people, but to get and keep the right people in the first place.
great vision without great people is irrelevent
I live by this one: When in doubt, don't hire - keep looking. (Corollary: A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.)
When you know you need to make a people change, act. (Corollary: First be sure you don't simply have someone in the wrong seat.)
Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. (Corollary: If you sell off your problems, don't sell off your best people.)
Retrain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.
and at the same time
Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Lead with questions, not answers
Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
Conduct autopsies, without blame.
Build red flag mechanisms that turn information into information that cannot be ignored.
The triumph of understanding over bravado -- requires a deep understanding of three intersecting circles translated into a simple, crystalline concept -- the hedgehog concept.
The three circles are:
What you can be the best in the world at
What drives your economic engine
What you are deeply passionate about
A hedgehog concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.
If you could pick one and only one ratio - profit per x (or in the social sector, cash flow per x) - to systematically increase over time, what x would have the greatest and most sustainable impact on your economic engine?
Build a culture full of self-disciplined people who take disciplined action, fanatically consistent with the three circles, the hedgehog concept.
Freedom and responsibility within a framework -- build a consistent system with clear constraints, but give people freedom and responsibility within the framework of that system. Hire self-disciplined people who don't need to be managed, and manage the system, not the people.
Bureaucratic culture arises to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which arise from having the wrong people on the bug in the first place.
Discipline means fanatical adherence to the Hedgehog Concept and the willingness to shun opportunities that fall outside the three circles.
Technology is an accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it.
Sustainable transformations follow a predictable pattern of buildup and breakthrough. Like pushing on a giant, heavy flywheel, it takes a lot of effort to get the thing moving at all, but with persistent pushing in a consistent direction over a long period of time, the flywheel builds momentum, eventually hitting a point of breakthrough.
