Check the temperatures! Something is starting to freeze!

My opinion of Apple is softening.

I still don’t like them, and believe they are a bad company, but I have to admit that reality is starting to return to the view of most people.

Some of the recent good moves that Apple has made:

1. Dividends. Apple has done a tremendous job of separating people from their money, jacking up a stock price to astronomical levels, arguable becoming the most valuable company in the world. To what end? Well, at last, there is an end.

2. Charitable donations: This also falls under the category of giving back, but bears notable mention here. A few years ago Apple famously refused to donate to any causes, but is now offering to match donations its employees make to some causes.

3. Apologies: Remember the terrible antenna in the iPhone 4? Remember how it came out that it always had terrible antennas, and that the software was reporting stronger signal than it actually had? Remember the independent studies showing that it was not the network, but in fact the design architecture of the iPhones that resulted in so many dropped calls on the AT&T network? Remember the press conference with the non-apology, accusing the press of picking on Apple? But recently they did apologize for forcing maps, which so many have complained about.

It used to be that when Apple did something bad, it was okay because they were Apple, and I always hated that. Now, they don’t have a free pass anymore. Now they are under the same scrutiny as all of the other techs, more so than many now, and are no longer the perfect company that they never were.

They still do things I don’t like, such as denying customers features that they can roll out, but choose not to in order to improve the attractiveness of the next version. The original iPhone shipped with a 2G antenna, even thought many phones were already 3G. Their slow speeds were blamed on the network, but Apple really needed a good selling point for the next year.

One thing that I must credit them is creating a platform with a very accessible interface that has generated a vast swath of apps to help those with autism.

Which is why, on Black, er, Thursday, I will be standing in line at Target to get my son an iPad. Don’t tell him, it’s his Christmas present.

Hindsight is not 20/20

Memories are an imperfect thing. Eye witnesses to crimes are not reliable testimony. It is not hard to implant a false memory. A bad outcome does not always mean you made the wrong choice. Conversely, a good outcome does not always mean you made the right choice.

Memories are tainted with the context of where we are, right now. There have been experiments with mice showing that when they remember something, they are actually recreating the synapses of that memory. The irony is that the purest memory possible is a forgotten one, lost in an amnesiac’s brain. That’s assuming it’s not overwritten by newer memories.

If we take this to be true in people’s brains, which some people are starting to believe, that means that thinking back on an event, your impressions are clouded by the ultimate outcome. All of the telltale signs you can’t believe you didn’t see? Maybe they were never there. The risk is that by dwelling on a particular memory, continuously re-contextualizing it based on your perception of the outcome actually leeches out lessons that may not actually be relevant, and deaden the lessons one should take away.

Ultimately, one truly does not know what would have happened if they made a different choice, simply because they did not make that choice. Aggregate the experience, learn from it, and make better choices in the future.

On the importance of food

I don’t enjoy thinking about food.

It feels like a confession, to say that. Coworkers sometimes show off their elaborate lunches, or describe some fantastic meal they enjoyed at a wedding celebration or high end restaurant, and while those things are nice, I honestly do not care.

There is nothing on the Food Network that I want to watch. I’ve never taken a picture of a meal that I am going to eat.

This is not to say that I don’t enjoy eating food. My wife is a fabulous chef and has made some amazing stuff. She is the polar opposite of me in this regard. She plans around meals, and a lot of strategizing is spent figuring out how to prepare a given meal. One of the more unpleasant things to happen in her day is for something to come up that prevents her from making the dinner she’d planned to make. This is not too uncommon right now, what with two young children at home right now.

This is a problem, largely because food apathy inhibits food creativity. My wife can open the fridge, take stock of what’s in there, and plan out a meal. I can open the fridge, take stock of what’s in there, and go and make a PB&J. They’re simple, tasty, and fill be up, at least at first. Human systems thrive on variety, it seems. The first day, a PB&J will last until lunch. The next day, it lasts until 10. The day after, until 8. By then end of the week, I’ll finish the PB&J and still be starving. The same experience has happened with eggs, and any number of breakfast items. I could mix things up a bit, but that takes a lot of planning and effort, as well as prep time, and I’d much rather use that time for sleeping.

I learned in college that when choosing between eating and sleeping, sleeping wins. I also learned that after using the technique of drinking lots of water to stave off hunger for two straight days, it never works again.

I’m hungry.

Mobile App update

The level of feedback is about what I expected. Still, I turned on Google analytics before making the site publicly known, so folks contributed simply by visiting.

The results are interesting. Out of 17 visits, and about 15 unique visitors, not many people made it past the first page. Most only ventured about two or three steps into the story. The exception is one visitor who appears to have gone through every single option meticulously. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, “Thanks mom!”

Once again, my thanks for those that were able to take some time and try out some of the story options. Hopefully you were at least a little entertained.

At the moment I’m trying to figure out how to preserve the state so that the program remembers where you left off and starts you back there again. I have templates for doing just that, but none of them work even in their template state, so that requires a bit more experimentation.

For those interested, here is the decision tree for the story, indicating possible endings and paths you can take:

From Windows Live Writer

Choose your own adventure?

Mobile app update. I’ve finished the first draft of the content. It’s a story written in the style of a choose your own adventure. I have fond memories of reading these when I was younger, and thought that smart phones would do well to see more of these things become available. For those that are interested, and would like to critique, I’ve posted the entire thing here:

https://sites.google.com/site/dmxcyoacaveexplroer/

From a writing perspective, it’s an interesting challenge to write a branching storyline. It’s the first time I ever really used a branching flow chart to lay out all the different plots, identify choices, and decide how different things will turn out. Sometimes different paths lead to the same point in the story, which means you have to take into consideration what previous experiences might not have happened for the reader, and avoid referencing them.

Because it’s written in the second person, you can’t really characterize the protagonist. It’s not my place to tell you who you are, simply present you with choices and notify you of the consequences. It’s also a mistake to write a single story path from start to finish. You’ll unintentionally make it the preferred path, the one where you put most of your energy, and the rest become more filler and the experience less enjoyable for the reader.

So, I’ve got the framework, I’ve got the content, now it’s time to work on the features. There are a couple of extras I’d like to put into the apps to make the experience more enjoyable, and will spend some time fleshing those out.

In the meantime, feedback is, as always greatly appreciated. I’ve done my best to have a good mix of good, bad and neutral endings, as well as consequences that follow a certain logic.

At the same time, you’ll be dealing with giant lizards, so this is not something to be taken too seriously.

Regardless, please take a look, let me know what you do and do not like. I have a problem with drifting between present and past tense, so kudos to anyone who can flag those that I have missed.

Economies of Scale

Why do smart phones cost so much?

Seriously, why do they cost so much?

They have tiny displays, low power processors, batteries that often prove to be inadequate. My netbook has a more powerful processor, a bigger screen, more of pretty much everything, and yet it cost $300 new, whereas your average unlocked smart phone runs about $600. A few years ago, a device like the HTC Tilt would cost you over $800 unlocked, if memory serves.

It’s easy to nitpick that the processor style for a cellphone vs. a netbook is very different. The software is very different. The smart phone has a touch screen. So let’s take an example that’s a bit harder to argue.

iPhone 4S vs. the “new” iPad.

iPhone 4S 16GB unlocked price? $649.

new iPad 16GB wth 4G? $629.

They’ve got the same processor, same screen pixel density, the same internal storage. The iPad has a faster cellular modem than the 4S. The screen is immensely bigger, as is the battery to power it. The iPad intrinsically costs more to build than an iPhone from a materials standpoint. So what is the justification for the cost of the iPhone? The camera? Siri? (hah!)

This is not a hate on Apple post (picking on Siri notwithstanding), I’m pretty certain every other cell phone maker does the same thing. Apple’s iPad affords a cleaner comparison than is usually available. The question is, why are they able to get away with it? If there is such a massive profit to be had making cellphones, why aren’t more companies doing it, driving down the prices?

Designing for consequences

I don’t design cars. By the time you’re done reading this, you’ll be glad I don’t design cars. At the moment, I’m of the opinion that cars should take out seatbelts, airbags, stability control, anti-lock brakes, crumple zones, and all of those safety features they’ve added over the last fifty years.

Instead, they should put a big spike on the steering wheel where the horn is.

Do this for all cars, and suddenly people will become much more cautious and courteous drivers.

I sometimes wonder if the push and drive to increase driver safety comes at a cost. Specifically, it insulates people from the consequences of their actions.

A drunk driver plows into a crowd of pedestrians. Thanks to all of the great safety equipment inside of the car, the driver is fine, and can walk away, but the people he hit were not so well protected. Sure, he might go to prison, but prison hardly heals the injured.

There is an obvious market incentive to increase the level of protection for the buyer. After all, someone who walks away from a wreck that could’ve killed them goes a long way to brand loyalty. But, there’s no incentive to protect things not in the vehicle. The design of cars is largely to absorb as much energy as possible, and transmit the rest away from the passengers.

There is also no market incentive to punish obviously bad drivers. At best, consequences are realized through tickets and a rise in insurance premiums, but it seems that the brain has a hard time internalizing the cause and effect due to time delays between getting caught in your insurance going up, or the the number of times you get away with something vs. the number of times you are caught.

So, how to bring the consequences of your actions into a more real time, present form?

I realize there are a lot of practical issues with the spike, but once something goes from harmless to potentially deadly, it does make one redefine their priorities, as you suddenly face the same potential consequences as those around you.

This American Life–Retraction

I’ve become something of a podcast junkie. I don’t listen to music much while at work. I prefer the telling of stories to music when I’m doing CAD modeling. I makes it a lot easier to pause right in the middle and I’m less likely to hum along, which is distracting to the people around me.

One of the podcasts I enjoy, like a lot of people, is This American Life. They’ve been fairly popular in the news lately due to a show they produced recently about Apple and Chinese manufacturing. This week was their first ever retraction, and they dedicated the entire show to it. In that sense, it’s the best retraction I’ve ever seen or heard. Retractions are often simple apologies or corrections run at the bottom of an online article, or published the next day at the back of the newspaper that you have to track down, which few people will see or care.

One of the ironies is that I’ve been working my way through the archives of This American Life and had just finished up an episode in 2000 out people who convince themselves of their own lies before listening to the retraction episode, where the man telling about his experiences in China made up things that did not really happen to enhance his story.

That being said, I have a couple of issues of my own.

First of all, contrary to what the reporter from marketplace or the translator said, there are factories guarded by men with guns. It’s true that only military men are allowed to carry weapons, but sometimes these men are hired to guard factories. They are displayed very prominently at the entrances and are scary as hell. I only visited one factory where this was the case, and I remember wondering why they needed to have military guards at the entrance, as they predominantly make toys, but nonetheless they do exist.

The other big emphasis on the narrator’s character teardown was that he reported things that did not actually happen to him, but have actually happened. They talk in detail about N-Hexane and the damage it does to people. While I do not condone his lying about the experience, I understand his desire to increase people’s awareness of bad things that are happening.

At the same time, I’d like to share a couple of stories and observations. When working with a factory in China, I witnessed several instances of the management taking steps to ensure employee morale and safety. They have festivals to clear away bad spirits that are effectively one giant party. There was an instance where my company wanted to use a UV curing process on some electronics and the factory agreed with a contingency that we purchase sufficiently rated eye protection equipment. It was an instance where we should have thought of it, but did not, and the management stepped in to protect its workers.

One of the greatest dangers to workers is their lack of knowledge about how some things might be harmful to them. There is another operation involving ultrasonic welding that is occasionally performed. It involves pushing to pieces of plastic together with a thin rib between them. A horn comes down and shakes the top pieces at an ultrasonic frequency that melts the rib of plastic and bonds the two together. The problem is that the horn has to ramp up from no noise to an ultrasonic frequency, which passes through the audible range, including those that can be bad for the ear at close range. As such, we hand out earplugs to all of the workers nearby. The catch? They don’t wear them. They don’t like them. The person using the tool will wear them, but the person right next to the tool doesn’t see the need. You explain it to them, they put in the earplugs, then pull them out again as you walk away.

The last observation I want to make is that of wages and living expenses. My last trip to China was around 2006 or 2007, so things may have changed, but I had a conversation regarding cost of living with some of the factory managers. They explained that workers at the particular factory I was at paid 800 RMB a month for people working a 40 hour work week. That’s about $100 a month in US wages. Not much, but at the same time their cost for room and board is 100 RMB per month. Their living expenses are 1/8th of their earnings.

Assume that the average person in Boston makes $60K. It’s actually less than that, but that’s what a toll taker makes. That’s a lot more than 800 RMB a month. It’s 40000 RMB a month, or $5000. Of course, there are taxes and insurance that comes out of your paycheck, possibly union dues. That stuff account for about 25% of gross pay give or take, leaving you with a check for $3750. Assume rent for an average Boston apartment is about $1200 per month. That does not include utilities like heat, water and electricity. Take off another $250 or so for that. There are also grocery bills, which with current food prices can easily run to $100 per week, or $400 per month. Take that stuff out and you’re left with $1900. A fair chunk of change, but .38 of your original take home salary. Our living expenses are 3/5 of our earnings. In a lot of situations, the expenses are higher and the wages are less, pushing that disparity further.

I once believed that we enjoy a higher standard of living because of the higher wages and availability of cash. That’s a part of it, but given that things are so much less expensive in China, a lot of that advantage is in the noise. Our higher standard of living comes from the amount of money we have to put into it, and I worry about its sustainability.

The last point I want to make is that it’s wrong to assume that people working in these factories are planning to work there doing these dull and dangerous jobs for the next forty to fifty years. Again, from my experience, the workers are predominantly women, they come to the industrialized areas for two to three years, earn enough for a dowry, then go back home and get married. When designing assembly lines, you have to have stations that you can pluck someone off the street and sit them down and have them doing work within minutes. This is a problem right after Chinese New Year, as a lot of the workers go home, and just don’t come back. There’s no such thing at two week’s notice. Because these jobs are not enjoyable, it’s understandable that workers want to put this part of their life behind them as quickly as possible. The more hours you work, the sooner its over. In that sense, it’s sort of like college. You work incredibly hard for several years doing work that isn’t always enjoyable, but helps ensure a prosperous future.

I have a great deal of respect for the workers in China, and would not want to trade places with them at all. At the same time, I wonder what I could give up to move my own earnings to expenses ratio closer to theirs.

The A-word

For those of you who do not know, I might as well make it official. Our son was diagnosed with autism in December.
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Here’s the quick summary of autism for folks whose knowledge on the subject are largely limited to Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Rain Man. Autism is a neurological disorder that limits the brain’s natural development. Research has shown that people with autism tend to have an overgrowth of white brain cells, specifically excess synapses often localized in the logic centers of the brain. That might sound like a good thing, but the running theory is that it crowds out development of the social center of the brain. What’s more, if left unchecked, this premature overgrowth can cause the brain to stop developing early, severely limiting a child’s ability to learn new skills over time. It is, on the grand scheme of things, a relatively new disorder that is still be researched and analyzed. As a result, it goes under a variety of different names, like PDD-NOS, though there are efforts to unify all of the different cases under the general name of Autism Spectrum disorder. Emphasis on the word spectrum. Autism means a whole host of possible things, of which Mr. Hoffman only covered a few. In our case, Alex has had trouble with eye contact, expressing his needs and desires, obsession with things that spin, and not interacting with other kids socially.
Other things in the spectrum that Alex has been blessed to not manifest thus far include seizures, problems with digestion and being unable to express joy.
Reading about autism suggests that it is something of a Rosetta of disorders. There are implications that unlocking the nature of autism stands to reveal a lot of knowledge about other problems people face, including asthma and Alzheimer's. I don’t know why the two examples I can think of both start with A.
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In the short term, what this means is that Alex now qualifies for 20 hours of early intervention services a week instead of the previous 5. This is good news. We’ve only been working with the counselors for a  few months, and he has already made tremendous strides. He can now ask for things very reliably when prompted, and has even begun to ask for things without prompting. He’s become much better at self regulating, and no longer needs to spend long periods spinning a top, playing with a light switch, or growling to calm himself down.
We do not know where he is on the spectrum. Only time will reveal that answer. We do not know what caused the autism to trigger. It is a combination of genetics and environment. I provided the genetics, but we don’t know about the environment part. No one does.
Treating autism is like treating the common cold. The common cold is actually a multitude of different viruses that all manifest similar symptoms, but require different antibodies to fight as they are effectively different viruses. There are a lot of common symptoms, but what works great for one kid may not work at all for another. As such, we’ll probably try most anything once, but with the understanding that our mileage may vary from other people’s anecdotes. For example, one child given a Vitamin E supplement very quickly caught up on their language delay, but that does not mean Vitamin E is a cure for autism, or that it will even help another child who has been diagnosed.
Julie has been reading all of the books by Temple Grandin, a woman with autism born in the late 40’s who was fortunate to have parents who decided to see if treatments could be created rather than simply have their daughter institutionalized. She’s a hero for parents who believe that their child can have a healthy, productive life. That’s the other bit of good news.
Research into treatments has been going on long enough and enough results have been produced that it’s expected to have results, rather than nothing you try ever working. This can definitely be said of Alex. He’s working hard to understand what we’re trying to communicate, and he’s working hard to communicate himself. He’s got the attitude, he’s got a lot of people working hard to help him break down those barriers. I remain confident that he will continue to be successful, and make an excellent big brother.

Mobile App update: It’s not dead!

The last few months have been busy. The time when I’m sitting on the bus is the time I have to work on personal projects. Unfortunately, a project for the church has occupied that time for the last few months. I have been reading profiles of pastors, and lots of them.

Interesting stuff. There are a lot of different pastors out there, all of them very different and quite interesting. It’s made choosing who and who not to interview very challenging. That being said, 80+ profiles each with an average of 30 pages that have to be read like I’m reviewing thesis tends to be rather time intensive, and I’ve been fully preoccupied with that, when not doing work for my job.

I’ve not played videogames in over a month.

The good news? The reading of profiles has tapered off and I’m getting my bus time back to work on personal projects. I’m continuing to develop content for the mobile app, and hope to have something for people to play around with in the next few months.