Rogers iPhone Voice/Data Plans released

Rogers released their iPhone Voice/Data plans … and I must say I feel a little like this guy.

The iPhone dilemma

Reasons for me not to buy the new iPhone continue to mount.

Still waiting for the Rogers plans. That will make or break the deal for me.

To Trex or not to Trex

Looking at installing a deck this year.

We have a walkout basement, so this would be a second story deck from the kitchen with stairs down to our backyard. Originally only wanted to go out 12′ and across 2/3 the back of the house, to leave a large window in the basement exposed to light. But now we’re considering going across the entire back of the house.

I’ve been getting some quotes for various materials: pressure treated, cedar, and Trex. I really like the way it looks. It also requires hardly any maintenance. And on top of that it is considered to be “Green” since it is made of recycled wood and plastic.

Few concerns though:

• Apparently the color fades, though they claim less than 10% over an extended period of time with direct sun
• Not barefoot friendly. Retains heat from direct sunlight.. so I’ll need to wear my Crocks when the Sun is out. Though our house faces west so we only get the Sun in the back until 2pm
• Mold. Yes… mold. This is where the maintenance kicks in. I would need to clean the deck with their cleanser and hard brush if mold is detected.
• Recent class action lawsuit: although it was settled out of court, the court found no fault with the product.

As for $$… I’ve been getting some dramatically different quotes, especially for Trex. Apparently the manufacturer’s costs have recently changed due to a rise in competitive products. The cheapest estimate I found was $29/sqft for Trex, $25/sqft for Cedar, and $20/sqft for PT. Though I have yet to confirm that with a formal quote. But if they hold… I think I would go for the Trex.

The Trex site has a cool Deck Designer app built into their site. Here is rendering of the deck I would like to have:

Chunking

Just returned form completing the Ride for Heart (50K) here in TorontoMy wife had an excuse to go to a bridal shower so I did it solo this year. It’s become sort of a tradition with me to go participate in this event. out of the last 13 years, I believe I only missed one year.

Since I was on my own, I decided to bring my iPod along. Gave me a chance to get back to an audio book I had set aside. The 2.5 hour ride gave me exactly the time I needed to finish This is Your Brain on Music.

Learned an interesting fact about cognitive memory management. There are two types of memory: long term and short term or “working memory“.

Apparently working memory is limited and can normally only sustain 9 items at one time. So our brain uses “chunking” to retain more complex memory structures in working memory, thanks to knowledge retained from the past.

For example, when memorizing a phone number we “chunk” the area code as one item rather than the 3 individual digits, since we know what an area code is for say Toronto.

Napoleon is dead, long live… The Borg?

Been doing a lot of traveling for work these days which gave me a lot of airplane time to listen to my audiobooks.

Currently in the middle of the book, The Starfish and the Spider, by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

The book relates the hierarchical style of an organizations vs. a flat or community style. Lot’s of storytelling here including how the advanced hierarchical Aztec society was taken down easily by the Spanish by walking into each city and the killing their king. However, when they encountered the Apache Indians who were a distributed community society, it wasn’t so easy.

It then relates this to today with what’s happening thanks to the internet and entities like eMule and Skype.

… and the disruption they’ve caused in the music and telecommunication industries. The music industry successfully sued Napster out of the free P2P market, but only to be replaced by others who were lawyer proof.

Chop a spider’s head off and it dies… cut a starfish in half and you end up with 2 starfish. The benefits of a distributed neural network.

iPhone Finally Coming to Canada!

After a long wait, Rogers announced they have an agreement with Apple to start selling the iPhone in Canada later this year. As you can tell, I’m eager to get my hands on one.

Only problem is according to rumours, sounds like the price of the phone itself and the plan will be ridiculously expensive. Making it still worth the trip to Buffalo (or other neighbouring US city) to buy and then simply unlock.

Wondering if the plan is to wait until the next generation iPhone is out before the Rogers release. Makes (business) sense. Apple also wouldn’t want to screw with their customers and release it in Canada, shortly before releasing the next gen iPhone and upsetting a bunch of new Canadian iPhoners. Well, us Canadians don’t get that upset. We’ll just limit our iTunes spending to 85% normal and won’t join the iPhone Facebook fan club. That’ll teach you Apple! Almost as affective as our protest to get a better Toronto Maple Leafs team by buying up all the season tickets for the next 8 years.

Music: It’s all about connections

Reading the book called, “This Is Your Brain On Music” by Daniel J. Levitin.

The book dives into cognitive science to determine the effects of Music on the human brain, and why we are so obsessed with the art. It’s a wonderful read if you are a musician or a music lover. In the end its all about connections, both emotional and cognitive. Which turn out to be one in the same.

Music is pleasurable to us partly because of its predictability: e.g. rhythm. And our brain takes satisfaction in matching the assumed beat with the real one. But it also takes delights when the composer violates the pattern in an interesting way. “A sort of musical joke we’re all in on.”

Emotion is interestingly described as Motivation to Act + Memory.

“We see a body of water after wondering for hours and we feel elated. We drink and it fills us with a sense of well-being and contentment: emotions that cause us to remember where that body of water is for next time.”

So people enjoy certain songs because it reminds them of similar characteristics of other songs that stir up emotions from previous memories stored deep inside our brain. So our taste in music evolves, sometimes starting with songs like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

Similarity in song is sometimes obvious to us. I recognized the similarities between aspects of “Creep” by Radiohead and “The Air That I Breathe” by the Hollies almost instantly.

Rihanna’s latest award winning album, “Good Girl Gone Bad” had at least a couple of hits based on remixes of previous hit songs by Michael Jackson and New Order. I’ll let you guess which ones.

But sometimes it’s not. I remember the first time being pleasantly surprised when I heard Hewey Lewis was suing Ray Parker Jr. because the song “Ghostbusters” sounded too much like “I Want a New Drug”. The songs were almost identical! But for some reason it didn’t click until that moment.

Some are skilled at recognizing these similarities (like VJ Brewskii, video below). So much so that a new art form called “Mashups” was created, where two or more songs that sound alike are mashed together. BTW, yes this is where the term Mashup originated.

Here’s another example that caught me by surprise… wonder if the similarity played a part in Snow Patrol’s big hit.

5 Myths about Drinking Water

Told you so mom!

1. You need to drink 8 glasses a day
2. Drinking lots of water helps clear out toxins
3. Drinking lots of water leads to healthier looking skin
4. Drinking water suppresses appetite
5. It’s easy to get dehydrated during a workout

Earth Hour 2008

www.earthhour.org 

SOA and Web 2.0

I’ve always liked this diagram and how it relates SOA to Web 2.0.

The plane between SOA and Web 2.0 defines what was or was not determined to be a necessary Human Task. Within the defined Business Process Model (BPM) all human tasks require a user interface, while all non-human tasks are essentially automated IT services (internal services, B2B, etc). Hence why Process sits between Rich User Experience and Services.

There are two methods to achieve SOA: Top-Down and Bottom-Up

Top-down SOA is usually initiated at the business level, and involves the CIO and his crew of analysts to define the process and then put requirements for services against IT.

Bottom-up SOA on the other hand is normally initiated by IT componentizing its existing legacy apps and EIS systems and turning them into reusable services.

Bottom-up gives you quick ROI, however long-term efforts without governance and business level scope is futile. But for some clients that don’t have the resources to start a business level SOA movement, Bottom-up (hopefully with appropriate governance in place) is a good start which would eventually lead to a top-down investment.

Overall, a mix of the two methods to achieving SOA is commonly recommended.