But I let both subscriptions lapse. The problem is, there is more information in each issue than I have time to read. I have wide interests, and I have am omnivorous in my ability to soak up information on a wide variety of topics. Since I have been reluctant to discard issues until I have had time to read them cover to cover, I usually let them stack up until I find a Sunday to devote to a marathon reading session in which I attempt to catch up. Those Sundays have been rarer lately, and I finally conceded that I can’t keep trying to drink from the fire hose of new scientific data.

There is one problem with my plan. Although my subscriptions expired two months ago, both Nature and Science are still sending me issues, trying to tempt me back. And it might work; I almost resubscribed to both this week.

PHP 5 is supposed to provide much better support for object orientation. Exploring the books that are now available for learning PHP, I see many touting PHP 6, although PHP 6 seems to be vapor since it still hasn’t been released. (Apparently, incorporating complete Unicode support into PHP has turned out to be too difficult.)

Anyway, I’m going to learn enough about PHP 5 to be able to create classes and objects. The first book I’ve chosen to work with is PHP in Action: Objects, Design, Agility, by Dagfinn Reiersol, Marcus Baker, and Chris Shiflett. It looks like this book will teach my how to use modern object-oriented techniques for Perl 5.

From the first chapter, I note the following topics that I plan to follow up on as I continue reading the book:

• Agile methodologies
• Object orientation combined with simplicity
• Decoupling
• Design patterns
• Test-driven development (using PHPUnit and SimpleTest)

The authors mention two other books I plan to read when I find the time, Refactoring, by Fowler, and Test-Driven Development by Example, by Kent Beck.

The Valencia is the first modern bike I’ve owned. (I also own a 1984 Raleigh Marathon, and I owned some road bikes in the 1970s when I commuted by bicycle and toured the Oregon Coast several times.) I’m really enjoying the new technology. I love the shifters, the straight handlebars, and especially the disk brakes. The tires and frame soak up the bumps from our winter-worn streets.

I ridden the bike only 190 miles since I purchased it. I ride one or two days a week because most other days I run for exercise. I live close enough to work that I don’t need a bike to commute on the weekdays, but I ride to work when I need to go in on the occasional Saturday or Sunday. I’m trying to gradually build up my rides past 25 miles so I can do some light touring this summer, maybe to Cape Cod.

The Planet 700c hybrid fenders I bought are very light, but the front one clicks a lot, which is a little annoying. I need to figure out how to prevent that. The Blackburn EX-1 rear rack is strong and stable. I use it to carry my laptop, books, and papers in the Jandd Commuter pannier I bought; it’s really great not to have to wear a knapsack or messenger bag.

My rear derailleur began squealing after only a week, but a little WD-40 cured that. I need to buy some chain lube because the chain is already beginning to rust a little. Eventually, I want to replace the seat and pedals, which are serviceable but cheap. I think the gearing is probably not quite right for touring; the lowest gear is probably inadequate for a fully loaded bike going up a hill.

The following points are salient:

1. One can use Pearson’s Chi-squared test to determine if the results are non-random. In Weir’s analysis, the probability that the results were random (the probability that the null hypothesis was true) was p < 2.2e–16, given 10,000 repetitions of the algorithm.
2. Random shuffle algorithms are so commonly used that this is often an interview question for a programmer.
3. The Fisher-Yates shuffle is an excellent random shuffle algorithm of time complexity O(n).
4. The programmer who implemented the Microsoft shuffle did not understand how a sorting algorithm works.

As usual with discussions on slashdot, there were quite a few posters who didn’t understand the problem and why it required an accurate solution.

The closest I’ve been to serious riding since those days was 2006, while I was taking a needed rest from working, when I signed up and began training for an Adventure Cycling tour from Puget Sound to Maine. Employment found me before the trip started, and I had to cancel, putting my life-long dream of a cross-country trip on hold.

I own a used 1980′s model Raleigh road bike that I still ride occasionally, but there are many things about it that dissatisfy me. I don’t like the touring handlebars for riding in the city because I need to keep my head up to watch for cars and other bicyclists. The gearing is not well suited for climbing hills. And the shifters are on the crossbar, not on the handlebars. I have had it in mind for a few years now to buy a modern bicycle.

A year ago, when I was in Florida, I rented a Marin Kentfield for a day to ride on the bicycle path. The frame was too small, but I really enjoyed the shifters, which were mounted near the handle grips, and the range of gears seemed adequate for climbing hills. The Kentfield had straight handlebars and an upright sitting position, and it felt much more nimble and maneuverable than my Raleigh.

I spent the last year reading about the new bicycles, with the thought in mind that I wanted a commuter bike that I could also use for light touring. After dithering for a year, I went to Ace Wheelworks in Somerville yesterday to buy a new bicycle. I had in mind to try four or five models, but I was focused on the Trek Valencia as the model that had the features I desired. I was very interested in the Valencia because of a series of reviews by Bike Geek.

The salesperson at Wheelworks was helpful and patient, and he helped guide me to a decision. At first, his recommendations were cautious, and the first model he had me try was a Specialized Globe Vienna Deluxe 1. This model comes stock with fenders, rack, and light, and it was easy to ride. This model is designed for commuting up to five miles, and I could tell that it would become increasing uncomfortable on longer rides.

The second model was a Trek Soho, which has a Shimano 8-speed internally geared rear hub and belt drive. This is an ideal commuter bike because it doesn’t require the maintenance that derailleurs and a chain require. However, I didn’t think the range of gears, especially the lowest gear, would be suitable for light touring.

The third model I tried was a Trek Soho 3.0. This is a hybrid bike with a frame that was probably too small for me, but it felt zippy and nimble, with excellent brakes. I was very tempted by this model, but I would have wanted to try a larger frame size.

Finally, I tried the Trek Valencia. I like this model because it comes with disc brakes, which would be ideal for light touring, and it has fender and rack mounts. The Valencia is almost identical to the Soho 3, sharing most of the same parts, except for the disc brakes. The only model they had on the floor was the 20″ frame, which the salesperson thought would be too big for me, but that turned out to be a good size. Shifting was very smooth, and the disc brakes were very effective.

In the end, I purchased the Trek Valencia, which cost $680. I knew ahead of time that I was going to spend a couple hundred dollars on accessories. I added Planet 700c hybrid fenders, a Blackburn EX-1 rear rack, Blackburn Voyager 3.3/Mars 1.0 LED headlight and taillight combo, water bottle cage, Topeak Peak Master DX pump, and a Jandd Commuter Pannier, for a total cost of $906.73 plus sales tax.

I pick up the new bike this afternoon. Watch for reviews.

The iPad is a computer for content consumers, not content creators. It is ideal for casual web browsing, watching television and movies, reading digital books, and playing games. The touted battery life of 10 hours, although undoubtedly exaggerated, is still long enough for a coast-to-coast flight. (It is not so ideal for listening to music, because I don’t have a pair of pants with pockets wide enough to hold it, unlike an iPod.)

For content creators, Apple has created new versions of its iWork suite for the creation of text-based documents (Pages), spreadsheets (Numbers), and slide presentations (Keynote). I am interested in learning how well this actually works without a keyboard and mouse.

The iPad has several shortcomings. Surprisingly, it has no camera. Other commentators have wondered whether Steve Jobs couldn’t decide where the camera should be located. The iPad really needs two cameras, one facing toward the user, for video conferencing, and one on the back for taking stills and videos.

The iPad operating system, which seems to be a variant of the iPhone OS, doesn’t allow multitasking. This is an annoyance, but I think we can anticipate that a future version of the OS will overcome this limitation.

Like the iPhone and the iPod touch, the iPad doesn’t support Adobe Flash. This means there is some material on the web that we won’t be able to view on an iPad. I’m not a big fan of Flash, because I hate how processor-intensive Flash is. If I want to bog down my old PowerBook G4, I just need to open two or three web pages with Flash animations.

I plan to buy one for use at home and to take with me when I travel. I already use my iPod touch as much as or more than my MacBook Pro when I’m at home. Other than listening to music and podcasts, I use it to check the weather, Facebook, Twitter, and email, watch movies, and read books. Movie watching and book reading will be more pleasant on the iPad. One thing I’m eager to test is whether I can read PDFs of scientific papers on an iPad.

I used Boot Camp Assistant to create a 32-GB partition and reboot my MacBook Pro from the Vista installation DVD. I installed Vista Business from the DVD and then began applying software updates. I should have counted these, but I estimate there were six separate operating system updates that I estimate required six hours to apply. The first update applied 93 individual patches to my system, and I let this run while I slept. If I remember correctly, it reported that it took 90 minutes to complete the update. Later updates updated Vista to SP1 (Service Pack 1) and SP2 (Service Pack 2). (I discovered that I couldn’t get the SP2 and later updates until I remembered to activate Vista.) One of the updates installed Internet Explorer 8; that one took a long time because I didn’t realize that it had displayed a dialog window for accepting the EULA. The problem was that the dialog was hidden under the main update window, where I couldn’t see it.

My question at this point is, why can’t Microsoft combine all these updates into a single update? Why do I have to install SP1 before I can install SP2? Why can’t SP2 contain all the changes already in SP1?

After installing Vista, I installed Office 2007 Professional, after which at least two more updates were required to bring it up to date, taking another two hours.

I want to contrast that experience to what happened last fall when I wiped clean my old PowerBook G4 and performed a fresh install of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). My install disk installed OS X 10.5 (which you would think would be called version 10.5.0, but Apple doesn’t begin adding the third numeric field until the first revision is released). When I ran software update, there was a single (massive) update that rolled all changes from 10.5 to 10.5.7 into a single update.

So the Microsoft Experience was six hours of time spent reinstalling Vista, and the Apple Experience was two hours of time spent reinstalling OS X 10.5. If I were doing this for a living, I would bill $75 per hour for my time — $450 for reinstalling Vista, $150 for reinstalling Leopard. The Microsoft Experience cost me an extra four hours of my time or $300 equivalent. This is the primary reason I prefer OS X over Vista — it is less expensive to install and maintain.

Note: What I really wanted to do was install Windows 7, but Apple has been slow in releasing the drivers necessary for full support. Having originally promised the new drivers by the end of 2009, Apple now provides a much more vague estimate of when the drivers will be available.

As published in the novel, the Perl script is gibberish, impossible to read and understand. Fortunately, the “verbose version” of the script is available on Bruce Schneier’s web site at www.schneier.com/code/sol.pl. Bruce Schneier provides an explanation of the Solitaire Encryption System at www.schneier.com/solitaire.html. And Neal Stephenson himself discusses the novel and the Perl script at web.mac.com/nealstephenson/Neal_Stephensons_Site/cypherFAQ.html.

Cryptonomicon is a brilliant novel, and it reminds me in many ways of Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, one of my favorite books. It is a book I know I’ll have to read more than once, because I’m certain I’m missing important clues and subtexts in the story that will become apparent only on a rereading.

A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience had proved that the system could not reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment was plagued by racial disparities; was enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers were underpaid and some were incompetent; risked executing innocent people; and was undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.

The death penalty is never just, and it’s time to eliminate it.

Six weeks later, I dropped the iPod touch from waist height onto brick pavement and broke it; the impact created a dent in the metal back and apparently crushed some of the electronic components inside. (These things are surprisingly delicate.) I took it to the Apple store on Boylston Street in Boston and asked if they could fix it. The answer was no, but they offered me a refurbished unit in exchange for the broken unit and a little under $130. I have been using the refurbished iPod for over a year now.

Since I live in an urban area, I usually have wifi connectivity. (For example, when I’m waiting for the bus in Kendall Square, I get a good connection to MIT Guest wifi.) This means I don’t need to buy a smart phone such as the iPhone; I get nearly iPhone-equivalent functionality from two devices, my minimal cell phone ($40 a month with Verizon) and my iPod touch, saving me roughly $40 per month that I can spend on books or music.

I was slow to take advantage of all of the iPod touch’s capabilities, using it initially for listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks. I usually commute to work by walking, a 45-minute trip each way. I can listen to two audiobooks per month plus quite a few podcasts during my commuting time.

The first apps I added were news-, information-, and book-related: New York Times, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, WeatherBug Elite, Stanza, and Shakespeare Pro. I find that the iPod touch makes for a great electronic book reader (although I still haven’t found a good app for reading PDFs of research papers).

Lately I’ve been taking advantage of the iPod touch’s abilities to act as a small pocket computer. I purchased the American Heritage Deluxe dictionary app ($35), and I feel like I’ve already gotten my money’s worth for that app alone because now I have an unabridged dictionary in my pocket and I use it all the time. I also installed the Facebook, LinkedIn, TweetDeck, and WordPress apps for managing my Web 2.0 presence. And recently I set up two new email addresses that I use primarily from the iPod touch with the Mail app.

Lately, I’ve begun buying movies and TV shows from the iTunes store. The TV shows are, in my opinion, an incredible bargain. I bought the first season (twelve episodes, 10 hours) of HBO’s Rome for only $20. Recently, I taught myself how to use Handbreak and VLC to copy my DVDs to mpeg files formatted for the iPod touch.

The result is that my little 8-GB iPod touch is feeling cramped for space. First of all, the 8-GB iPod touch actually has 7.66 GB of storage capacity. (Is the remaining 0.34 GB used for the operating system and included apps?) Second, I have almost 2 GB of apps installed, the dictionary being the largest. Third, I like to carry one or two TV shows or a movie with me, and each of these is roughly 0.6 GB in size. Fourth and finally, I like to carry plenty of music and audiobooks.

Consequently, I’m ready to buy a new iPod touch. The bigger models have 32 GB and 64 GB of storage and list for $300 and $400, respectively. However, rumor has it that the next model of the iPod touch will include a camera for stills and video, and I would find a camera quite useful. And rumor has it that Apple is about to announce its new tablet computer, allegedly named the iSlate. So I’ve decided to bide my time to see what Apple might announce in the next few months.

The Hunt for Gollum covers Aragorn’s search for Gollum, which, in the book, Aragorn recounts in brief at the Council of Elrond. This movie is a slavish imitation of the Jackson movies, with similar graphics, music, costumes, special effects, and scenery. Unfortunately, the actors are less convincing in their roles, and in my opinion, there is nothing new or original in this movie.

Born of Hope, the better of the two movies, is also imitative of the Jackson movies, but it captured my interest because it covers a gap in history between the main stories in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It tells the early story of Aragorn, beginning with how his parents, Arathorn and Gilraen, meet. (This is based on material presented in the Appendices to the Lord of the Rings.)

Peter Jackson is producing two movies based on The Hobbit. Early rumors suggested that the movies will cover the story line of The Hobbit as well as additional background story, such as the history of Aragorn before he encountered Frodo Baggins and friends in Bree. (The germ of this background story is also contained in the Appendices.)

So we might have been in the curious position of being able to watch a Tolkien fan film, Born of Hope, that has a plot line that anticipates the plot line of the movies yet to be made by the producer/director being imitated. If the imitation is too good, Jackson’s new movies might not seem original because “they’re like that fan film, Born of Hope.”

More recent rumors available at derhobbit-film.de suggest that Jackson has now abandoned this approach, and the films will now be expanded (or padded, depending on your point of view) to include the expulsion of Sauron from Dol Guldur, Sauron’s stronghold in Southern Mirkwood, by Gandalf the Grey and the other members of the White Council.

I needed to clean up the cruft that had accumulated in my system, and I needed to repartition my internal hard drive to remove a Windows partition and expand the partition devoted to OS X to the entire drive. Because repartitioning my internal drive was going to wipe out all data, I wanted to be very careful in having a complete copy of my old system before performing the upgrade.

I followed the upgrade instructions provided in Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard, written by Joe Kissell. This e-book is well worth the $10 because it provides detailed advice on every step of upgrading to Snow Leopard.

In brief, I performed the following steps:

1. I cleaned up my directories and files.
2. I removed software that I no longer use.
3. I made a record on my backup computer of all license keys in case something went wrong and I needed to completely reinstall my applications.
4. I made a complete bootable backup of my entire internal drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, and I tested the backup by booting from it.
5. I booted my MacBook Pro from the install DVD and used Disk Utility from the DVD to remove the old partitions and create a partition spanning the entire internal drive.
6. I installed Snow Leopard.
7. I used the installer’s Migration Assistant to transfer my old applications and files from the backup drive.
8. I ran Software Update to update the system to OS X 10.6.2.
9. I created a fresh backup from Snow Leopard using Time Machine, preserving my Leopard backup for the time being on a separate partition of my external drive.

The result was an upgrade to Snow Leopard that is, so far, working with zero problems.

My biggest difficulty was in getting a complete backup of my internal drive onto my external drive. I have a Western Digital My Passport Studio 320 GB external drive, and during the weeks I have owned the drive, I have experienced many failures in the backup process where the computer loses its connection with the external drive. Yesterday, I experienced this problem using either the FireWire 800 or the FireWire 400 cable that came with the drive. I decided to try the USB 2.0 cable, and that has worked well so far, with no noticeable loss in speed writing to the disk. In case the problem was caused by bad sectors on the external drive, I erased the 120-GB partition I had created on the drive by writing zeros once using Disk Utility. If I remember correctly, this step will identify bad sectors on the drive and cause the drive to mark them not to be used.

Carbon Copy Cloner was so useful that I made a $25 contribution.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to create a complete backup of my MacBook Pro to the external drive. Unlike Apple’s Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner creates a bootable backup. I checked that I could boot my Mac from the external drive by restarting while holding down the option key. However, my external drive did not appear in the list of bootable drives. Perplexed, I performed a google search to see if other people had experienced this problem, and I found this solution at macosxhints.com.

The solution is to shut down my MacBook Pro and unplug the external drive, then boot while holding down the option key. Once the Mac presents the list of available boot drives, I plug in my external drive, whereupon the Mac adds the external drive to the list of boot drives. I use the arrow keys to select the drive and press the return key to boot from that drive.

After booting, I verified that my external drive had been used as the boot drive by checking that special icons were used for my System, Applications, and other folders. (Generic folder icons are used for these folders when they are present on a drive that was not the boot drive.)

One way to make blogging easier for me is to begin writing posts from my iPod touch. During a recent trip to Oregon, I found it necessary to set up email and Facebook access via my iPod touch so I could stay in touch conveniently with a friend I was hoping to meet for breakfast. Unfortunately, we couldn’t schedule the meeting, but I reached a new level for me in making use of social media.

While setting up my other social media accounts, I discovered the WordPress app for the iPhone and iPod touch. This is my first trial post, composed entirely on my iPod touch.

I have been contemplating purchasing a smart phone. The iPhone seems like the logical choice for me since I’m an Apple fanboy who has been using Macs since 1987 and iPods since 2004. But I have no interest in doing business again with AT&T, a company with whom I’ve had problems in the past. So if I were to buy a smart phone, I would get the Droid phone with Verizon, my current wireless carrier.

However, I can’t justify the additional expense of a data plan when I have a cell phone plan for a base rate of $40 per month on which I use at most 100 minutes per month. I have excellent Internet connectivity at both work and at home, so it’s only when I travel that I need a wireless connection. But these days it’s almost always possible to find a coffee shop that provides wireless for free or for a nominal price (e.g., Starbucks).

In fact, on my last trip to Oregon, my mother and I attended a Christmas concert at my brother Laird’s church. We arrived 45 minutes early to get good seats. To entertain ourselves, I used the church’s excellent wifi signal to show Mom what I could do with my iPod touch. We ended up on Facebook, where I found my brother’s wife’s photo album, and suddenly I was showing several people photos of my brother’s son. No wallet photos needed, just a connection to the Internet!

So I’m continuing to experiment with seeing how far I can go using just an iPod touch for email, Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress. As a consequence, I’ll probably be spending a little more time in coffee shops, and maybe I’ll be able to make a few recommendations soon.

Dictionary Evangelist

2008-11-16: I just watched a TED presentation on the dictionary by Erin McKean — http://dictionaryevangelist.com/ — I love reading the dictionary.

I have the American Heritage Dictionary With Thesaurus, Fourth Edition, installed on my laptop, along with the New Oxford American Dictionary, which comes with Mac OS X. I spend a lot of time browing these dictionaries.

Resuscitating a PowerBook G4 (2)

2008-11-16: I removed Debian 4.0r5 from my PowerBook G4 and installed Mac OS X 10.5. I’m very pleased with how fast the computer still is.

Yesterday, I installed Debian 4.0r5 for PowerPC on my 1.5-GHz PowerBook G4. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t connect to my Airport Extreme base station, and I didn’t have the patience to twiddle with the configuration files. I read the documentation for Mac OS X 10.5 and discovered I could install it on the PowerBook, so that’s what I did, and it runs great.

Working on the Weekend

2008-11-17: @pyyhkala My observation is that working four hours on the weekend is equivalent to eight hours on a weekday. There’s a problem here.

I usually work several hours every weekend in order to keep up with the demands of my job. I often put off until the weekend those tasks where I need several hours to concentrate.

Pandemonium Bookstore

2008-11-17: I went to Pandemonium in Central Square (Cambridge) tonight to buy a book for vacation. I bought A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge.

Pandemonium is a book store in Cambridge that specializes in gaming, science fiction, and fantasy. Their selection of science fiction is very good because they have a lot of used books.

Not a Smartphone

2008-11-18: My new cell phone will be delivered today. It’s so not a smartphone that it doesn’t even have a camera. It’s just a phone, nothing more.

I thought about buying a smartphone, and I looked into it carefully. But I’m on the Internet all day long at work, and then I’m on the Internet when I’m at home, so I don’t really need a smartphone. So I ordered a Samsung Knack (see the CNET review), which is a no-frills cell phone and nothing more.

If Verizon had the iPhone, I would buy one. But after billing problems I had with AT&T several years ago, I vowed never to do business with them again.

Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge

2008-11-18: @agbiotec Stross is on my list of authors to read. Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky is the best science fiction book I’ve read this year.

@agbiotec is the second person to recommend books by Charles Stross. I’ll get to Stross soon.

Testing PowerBook Batteries

2008-11-18: I’m testing three old batteries in my PowerBook G4 to see how long they last after charging. One battery has a cycle count of 753!

These batteries have seen hard use. None of the batteries lasts longer than one hour forty minutes. I need to buy a new battery.

Missouri No Longer a Bellwether State

2008-11-19: McCain is finally declared the winner in Missouri. We lived in Missouri for seven years; we’re much happier in Massachusetts.

Missouri is blue in St. Louis and Kansas City, red otherwise. My wife and I are very liberal, and we sometimes felt uncomfortable in the conservative Missouri culture. Obama did a great job challenging McCain in Missouri, and he almost pulled it off. This breaks Missouri’s string of casting its electoral votes for the winner of the presidential election.

Vacation Reading

2008-11-19: I’m on vacation, so I’ve been reading today: Hallelujah Junction, by John Adams; Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual, by David Pogue.

I’m reading David Pogue’s book using my Safari Books subscription, which has saved me a lot of money so far. I bought John Adams’s autobiography at Porter Square Books, one of my favorite local bookstores.

Trading in an iPod mini for an iPod touch

2008-11-20: I erased my three-and-a-half year old iPod mini this morning. I’m going to trade it in today for the 10% discount on a new iPod nano.

2008-11-20: I went to the Apple store on Boylston today to buy an iPod nano, but I came home with an iPod touch. I got 10% off for my old iPod mini.

Oh, did I mention that you can trade in an old iPod at the Apple store and get 10% off on a new iPod? I wasn’t sure I believed it, but it’s true. I had to fill in a form with my name, address, email address, and the serial number of the old iPod.

My initial plan was to buy an iPod nano, but the 8-GB iPod touch is only $80 more, and I wanted the larger screen to watch TED videos on, so I splurged.

The Long Now and Anathem

2008-11-21: The Long Now, a project to build a clock that will last 10,000 years, provided inspiration for Stephenson’s Anathem.

I learned about the Long Now project from a TED presentation by Steward Brand. Neal Stephenson’s connection to the Long Now project is described in this post. Anathem is a book that has remained in my head after I finished it; I will probably reread it in December.

iPod Touch 2.2

2008-11-21: iPod touch 2.2 update is 277.7 MB in size. I updated iTunes to 8.0.2 first, but I don’t know if that is a requirement. Downloading now….

2008-11-21: iPod touch 2.2 update was problem-free. I’m still in novelty mode in the App Store. Complete works of Shakespeare for free is awesome.

The 2.2 update for the iPhone provided Street View for Google Maps, but not on the iPod touch; no one really knows why.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the App Store seeing what’s available. My choices so far:

• Google Earth
• Shakespeare
• Stanza

Unfortunately, there’s a real paucity of scientific applications.

Boston Drum Center

2008-11-22: I took my brother, who is visiting from Oregon, out to the Boston Drum Center in Acton, where he tried all the cymbals. Great store!

Harvard Square Book Shopping

2008-11-22: @02138now My brother and I bought presents for his kids at Curious George and the Coop. Both stores were packed with people who love books.

@02138now retweets Harvard Square activities; 02138 is the zip code that contains Harvard Square.

Touch Screens

2008-11-22: This afternoon, the touch screen of my cell phone wouldn’t respond. Then I remembered, it doesn’t have a touch screen.

This is iPod touch disease. I use my iPod touch so much more than my cell phone that I forget that I have to use the buttons on my cell phone.