Events

So I'm watching the opening moments of Lost, and my immediate thought is: That little 737-400 can't fly the way from Hawaii to Guam, it's only certified for ETOPS 120! And even if it were, it's only got a range of about 3500 miles at zero weight, and Hurley's on board.... Then my small intestine reaches up to strangle me, and I come to my senses, and think: Ooh, Eve Lilly.... All this proves that once a nerd, always a nerd, in so many ways.

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 3-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page two years ago, so I thought it's time for a quick review. Here are the main topics on the Daily Parker: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-leftie by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States. Software. I own a micro-sized software company in Chicago, Illinois, and I have some experience writing software. I see a...

I still haven't committed to buying a Kindle, and Mark Morford echoes of the reasons: [M]any creators loathe the beige slab because of how ruthlessly Amazon owns every aspect of the experience. Authors and publishers have little control. Readers -- that is, you -- have even less. Want to share a book you finished with someone else? Too bad. Want to upload and circulate your own text without using Amazon's system? Screw you. Want to, well, do anything at all that's not 100 percent within the company's...

All right, this is cool. Instead of worrying about how to get home from the airport, why not just take your car with you? The Terrafugia Transition, the "roadable aircraft" that's attracted considerable attention at aviation shows in the last year, flew for the first time on March 5, and its makers say they've changed aviation as a result. "This breakthrough changes the world of personal mobility. Travel now becomes a hassle-free integrated land-air experience. It's what aviation enthusiasts have been...

Spring officially begins Friday at 6:44 CDT, but today we're getting a little hint of it. Right now it's 19°C in Chicago; if it can squeak up to 22°C it will be the warmest day since October 12th. Another trivial tidbit: because the earth's atmosphere bends the sun's rays a little, today, and not the official equinox Friday, is the day when we have 12 hours of daylight. From tomorrow until September 25th, days are longer than nights just about everywhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic...

The FAA has pulled a San Diego commercial pilot's certificate for the third time because of what we may charitably call "willful passenger interference:" The video shows David Keith Martz, a professional pilot with a history of FAA violations, at the controls of his chopper over San Diego while fondling a porn actress, who then performs a sex act on him while he's flying. The video, shot in 2007, first appeared Feb. 3 on the entertainment website TMZ.com and has gone viral since. Along with the video...

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen takes a look at Kindle 2 usability in his column today: [T]he device is best for reading long linear material, such as novels and some non-fiction. Kindle's best user interface feature is turning the page; the reading experience you design should require no other interactions. Writing linear books simply requires a skill that all good authors already possess: the ability to keep readers immersed in the plot. Kindle also works well for the long, narrative articles common in...

Not to libel ostriches, or suggest mass killings of the birds, I think McDonald's and other fast-food restaurants prefer customers who stick their heads in the sand. This may result from McDonald's execs sticking their own heads—never mind. Apparently the laws in New York, Philadelphia, and California requiring calorie and nutrition information be on fast-food restaurant menus are causing customers to buy salads instead of triple-bacon-lardburgers-with-extra-goo, so McDonald's wants a Federal law...

I had a conversation with Joe over at Urban Outsitters this morning when I picked Parker up. It seems he's had run-ins with Yelp as well. He mentioned a ratings service that, he thinks, actually works: Angie's List. The difference? Angie's List members have a reputational risk of their own when posting. The members may be anonymous to the vendors they're rating, but they're authenticated, and can be held accountable for their content. Also, the List, being member-financed rather than...

Having already admitted to frequent flying, and looking at an enormous amount more in 2009 and 2010, I've started thinking about getting a Kindle. So, I'm blegging for opinions. I'm almost entirely sold because you can email PDF files and Word documents to a Kindle, to go along with the up to 1,500 books it can store in its 290-gram innards. Given the volume of reading I'll have in the week before each Fuqua residency, and given that much of it will be electronic anyway, it's starting to make more...