The NY Times article Converters Signal a New Era for TVs reminds us all that in less than two years analog television signals are scheduled to cease.

I receive digital TV over the air so I totally appreciate the improved quality. I think they have given plenty of time to make the switch and vouchers for converters are a nice touch. Many digital TVs sold over the last few years don’t have digital tuners so it would be nice if you could apply the voucher to a digital tuner rather than a converter.

I like digital TV but it is missing something that analog TV has – robustness. With over the air broadcasts weather can affect the signal quality. I don’t live that far from Boston and have a decent “digital ready” attic antenna but I don’t always get a good signal.

With digital TV when the signal is strong the picture and sound are great but when it is weak first the sound drops out and then the picture freezes or goes black. Digital is basically all or nothing. Great sound and picture or none at all.

In contrast an analog TV signal is still useful even when weak. If the signal disruptions are transient (such as during a storm) it is still reasonable to watch a show. In many cases the sound is more important than the picture and you can follow along even if the audio has static. If the picture is a little snowy no big deal (except perhaps that DVDs and cable have raised our expectations of quality).

Many times while trying to watch a digital broadcast I’ll experience a disruption and the sound will drop out and then I will have no idea what is going on in the show. I like having the option of watching the analog channel when it is stormy and the digital one when the weather is nice.

From an end user experience analog TV is more robust than digital. The same can be said of Voice over IP (a kind of digital phone service).

If you have ever watched a toddler play with an empty box you know how simple and satisfying a box can be. Put something in and it stays there. Move the box and the thing inside goes with it. Some things fit some things don’t. Toddlers are delighted to put something in and take it out over and over again. That is until they learn it’s more fun to pull CDs off the shelf.

I want my music player to be as simple as a box. A special box that when you put music in it you will hear the music. A CD player is pretty close. You push a button and a tray opens. Put a CD in it, push the tray closed and it plays. A car CD player is even better just stick a CD in the slot and it plays. Push a button to get it out.

But these days CDs are old news and CD players are single purpose (don’t put a Pop Tart brand toaster pastry in your CD player). MP3s are where its at. I want my MP3 player to work like a box. This box doesn’t hold physical things from the real world but virtual things, digital information in the form of music or anything else. In the digital world the closest thing to a box is a file system. They are ubiquitous. Every general purpose computer has one. Everyone that uses a computer has some mental model of how it works as evidenced by verbal exchanges such as “Where did you put that file? Look in the Budget folder”. They can hold any kind of information as long as it fits. When the file system is on removable media the contents can be moved around just like a thing in a box. Currently the best digital box is the USB flash drive (a.k.a thumb drive). They are small, durable, there are no cables to fumble with or misplace and every modern computer has a USB port.

Wouldn’t it be great if when you put music files (in the MP3 format for example) on a flash drive you could listen to them. At first glance the iPod brand Shuffle MP3 player would seem to fit my needs. It plugs directly into a SB port like a flash drive and can hold music as well as other files. But the Shuffle requires iTunes to put music on the device. That isn’t very box like. Imagine the toddler faced with a box that required a separate machine to put things in or get them out. Even worse the machine wouldn’t allow putting the same thing in more than five specific boxes. The child might just smash them both and move on.

I recently purchased a Creative Labs MuVo v100 MP3 player. It is just the box I was looking for. It works like a flash drive. It comes with but doesn’t require additional software. Just plug it into any computer with a USB port and copy MP3 files to it. The user interface is very easy to use. There is a play/pause/on/off button – hold for on/off. There are volume up and volume down buttons and a jog/push button for next/previous/fast forward/fast rewind and menu navigation. The screen is small but very readable. Now the instructions that came with the thing did say to install the software first before plugging in the MuVo. I ignored these instructions because I had high hopes for my new box and it didn’t disappoint. I still haven’t installed the software but I may just to see what it is like or read the manuals. So far I have had no problem figuring out the menus. I takes regular AAA batteries which is nice and has a cool way of snapping into the battery compartment. The only defect in the MuVo is that it plays WMA files with DRM (to play a file with DRM you must use the supplied software). But this is easy to work around by simply not buying music with DRM in it.

I got the MuVo mostly to play in the car. I just got a new car that has an Aux jack to plug into. The Aux jack in a car stereo is another great idea. No more cassette adapter or FM transmitter. The jog button is very easy to use in the car. I can change songs without taking my eyes off the road.

Note: It seems it is possible to get around the iTunes requirement. I have not tried this and it still requires another program. Perhaps someone has figured out how to replace the iPod firmware so another program isn’t needed. I may try this hack because my kids received iPods as gifts and the only computer I was willing to install iTunes on is old and now has power supply problems. Why my aversion to iTunes? There are a few reasons. One is that installing it on a Windows 2000 machine nearly destroyed the system permanently. The computer would not boot – not in safe mode not no how. I finally figured out what file needed to be deleted and removed it by booting from CD. Seems that it was trying to install some kind of file system filter driver. I don’t know what about my particular system configuration was causing the problem but I don’t see why a music program needs to muck with the file system. After this I no longer trusted iTunes.

Last night at dinner I learned from my kids that eating cauliflower brings bad luck. They also believe that the more you say it the truer it gets. From what I could gather they did not develop this theory on their own – some other children believe it as well. It seems that they already get truthiness

Later that night Stephen Colbert, in a very funny segment, again pointed out that on wikipedia if enough people agree with something then it becomes the truth (“wikiality”). This was in the context of reports of Microsoft paying bloggers to edit wikipedia. I incorrectly read a lot into this news. They made it sound like it was something that happened a lot and was an open invitation to anyone who would write positive things about Microsoft. Also I somehow got confused and thought it was about Vista. Perhaps my mind was being reactive because the programming on Comedy Central last night seemed like one big Microsoft Vista commercial. I was surprised to find that it was a specific person, Rick Jelliffe, who I know of because I’m a big fan of Schematron. After reading Rick’s post I don’t think its that big a deal. Although I wouldn’t want to see it become a common practice.

Stephen offered to pay $5 to anyone who replaced the wikipedia entry on Reality with “Reality has become a commodity”. If one were to believe that wikipedia is always true then reality was a commodity for about one minute. I’m OK with wikipedia being out of sync with reality for one minute now and then.

Actually the truth is subjective and reality is a commodity that corporate marketing and government propaganda are paying to influence every day. The advice about reality went from “don’t believe everything you read” to “don’t believe everything you see on TV” to “don’t believe everything you see on the Internet”. On the Internet there are so many facts and they spread so quickly that it is hard to keep up with your fact checking. I only bother for things that are important to me. On the plus side I have such a bad memory for facts that I will likely forget most of the misinformation I read.

Now I’m off to check my facts on cauliflower…

The redesign is complete. Let me know if you find anything broken. Constructive comments welcome. Thanks.

So the background picture is now gone. Someday I may create a page for photos

I’m planning a redesign of this blog soon. I got some feedback on the overall layout and style. A few people commented that the picture on the left was out of place given the technical content of the blog. I tend to agree. One reason for the picture and the effect of the header text sliding over it was simply to play around and get more practice with CSS. The other thing I got comments on was the color scheme. I plan go with something much more plain and simple. Hopefully it will be ready in a few days.

I really like how customizable the presentation of WordPress is.

I sometimes find myself defending Wikipedia to people. Usually their concern is about random people being able to add incorrect information. Although this is possible it is usually corrected quickly. My experience in using Wikipedia is that it is generally of very high quality and, if nothing else, gives me some good links to check out.

I usually begin my investigation of a new subject with Wikipedia. Sometimes even before Google. Depending on how important it is that I’m getting complete and accurate information for a given subject I will check out the references and possibly the discussion page.

The other day I was looking up Favicon on Wikipedia and was impressed to find that the W3C article “How to Add a Favicon to your Site” links to Wikipedia. What this means to me is that the Wikipedia Favicon article is of high enough quality that the W3C (the people that write the specs) links to it as an authoritative source of background and supporting information.