Poor technical writing and machine interfaces

I've had a Nikon CoolPix 8700 digital camera for some time. I am now trying to experiment with its short movie recording capability. Having these short movies with audio on my web site is fun. Well, it was not all that easy to decypher the poor technical writing of the Nikon's user manual. The step-by-step procedural explanations are quite unclear (example: the description to set the camera into movie mode did not explain how to 'enter' the options selected; meaning that the manual assumes the reader would know to press the 'Quick' button to select the options!??). 

 The interfacing displays are not so well-designed: one has to select many steps to get to 'User Mode 1' or '2' before setting the movie mode. Sure, there is a short cut to use the 'Func' button but one has to set it up using multiple steps first!

My Toolset

I have used computer and electronic tools for as long as I can remember. Back in the 1970's I bought a very first personal computer which really was a single board computer running Motorola 6800 microprocessor with several 7-segment LED's and a couple of toggle switches. It could not do much; a simple binary program turned the LED's on/off. I graduated to an Altair 8080 running an Intel 8080 microprocessor. I had to borrow a lot of money for it. 

The years went by fast and things changed so much along the way. Nowadays one does not talk much about what kind of hardware one owns. Software makes the tools. I use X1 Technologies, Inc. (which recently sold to Yahoo, I believe) for local Windows machine searches. It is a superior tool compared to Google Desktop which can not search inside many file types including PDF. The Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard is another tool that I absolutely need. It allows me to convert and shrink large scanned images of magazine, newspaper articles which cannot be readily found/downloaded into PDF [which is universally readable on many platforms]. 

Norton SystemWorks allows me to keep Windows happy; it scans the registry, checks for lost links, shortcuts, scans and repairs disks, ... Norton Internet Security is the tool to keep the bad buys from my local machines. Quicken Premier and Home system keeps my business and personal finance straight. Roxio Easy Media Creator is another software program that I can not do without. It is a bit cumbersome but has so many utilities to organize, create CD's and DVD's. I also use Microsoft Office Suite including Outlook and PowerPoint every day. 

I also use my Google gmail account and its other tools daily. The MKS Unix commands and tool set package for Windows machines is also one of my daily favorite tools. I use 'tar' instead of 'WinZip' to consolidate files to be 'ftp'ed to various machines including to the Linux boxes. Of course the Treo650 with built-in Palm organizer software is my constant companion. I put it on the night stand before going to bed every night and carry it with me as soon as I wake up. At my office I have the D-Link Wireless router setup and it helps to connect all my computers and printers wirelessly. 

The 2-Gigabyte Mini Cruzer thumb drive has a nice little built-in encrypter protecting my critical data from casual hackers. I have a couple of digital cameras: a Nikon with 8 Mega pixels and a physically much smaller Olympus with 6 Mega pixels. They both are very nice cameras with movie capability. I run several web sites using a local Linux server. NetworkSolutions registers all my domain and supports URL forwarding. I recently purchased an Apple's Mac machine. 

Its 'Spotlight' search engine is quite amazing. These tools have made my work a bit easier, more organized and my life richer with better information, wider contacts and reach. The tools allow me to explore, search and learn things which I could never be able to do without them and to realize one of my assertions at my PhD interview that data at a sufficient quantity can yield intrinsic qualitative information.

All good things must end

We had a quiet Christmas. We decided not to buy anything for ourselves this Christmas. We spent time hiking to the park with our little Sheba and catching up on movies we had not seen. "Mulholland Drive" is dark and sad. "Magnolia" can be confusing. "Empire of the Sun" is also sad. We enjoyed the light-hearted "A Room with a View".

We had Russian King Crab legs for Christmas Eve Dinner. Costco brought these luscious creatures to the local market recently and they are a great buy. We also made the Italian Cioppino for Christmas day and after. It is also delicious.

Will be going for a hike again today. It has been quite warm here this week. Forecast to be raining and snowy tomorrow.

Rants and Raves

We look up health information, notably on ovarian cancer on the web quite often [because we know someone who has elevated risks of the disease] and use them as another set of data points to make informed decisions. Unfortunately there are many anecdotal tales (e.g. ovarian cancer symptoms, ...) of heart breaks but the lack of quantitative information details (how often, every 6 hours, 10 days cycles, ...? the IBS-like symptoms or pains/symptoms occur?, ...) makes these stories much less useful. 

The obscene millions of dollars that CU Boulder football coach got when fired for poor performance are noted in a letter to the Denver Post by Anne Culver on December 17, 2005, "... What happened to the concept of sports as a contribution to health, character and the spirit of teamwork? In a world where ball catchers, throwers and other 'entertainers' make millions, and social workers, school teachers and nurses make a pittance [What's wrong with this picture?], it's high time somebody laid it on the line: Sports [especially, collegiate ones] should comprise a contribution to the quality of our lives [and secondary to the goal of a university to educate all students], not a hot commodity for buying and selling." 

Frank Petkovich of San Francisco wrote in the Dec 26, 2005 Businessweek that "... in my eight years with three venture capitalist-funded startups, I have found that many of these VCs are simply lucky imbeciles hiring other lucky imbeciles to run most of the Valley companies." He wrote to comment about the fair play that Google is requesting VCs to complete information spreadsheets before meeting with them.

Stem cells researches & 'Cinderella Man' movie

We watched in awe a PBS Innovation segment about stem cell researches and experiments to re-grow human organ cells. Both embryonic and adult stem cells - from nose, bone marrow - were employed with good results to repair damaged heart muscles, the immune system and spinal cord injuries. [The horrific stories of spinal cord injuries/accidents were also so sad]. I am sure that more researches, studies will have to be carried out before this modality of therapy can be used more widely. And if this therapy works, hopefully it will be a tremendous medical breakthrough. 

We also enjoyed 'Cinderella Man'. Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger's performance was terrific. The story of Jimmy Braddock, the Depression-period common-man hero boxer is beautifully told. The little scene of Braddock telling his hungry son not to steal was touching. This uplifting story of family, love, poverty, integrity and courage is worth seeing.

'March of the Penguins' & 'Spring, Summer, ...' movies

We saw 'March of the Penguins' and enjoyed it so much. What a quality movie! The cinema photography was gorgeous and the story is compelling. Last week we re-rented 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring', a Korean movie. It was also a very quality movie. Highly recommended.