Run To Win

Saturday, June 06, 2009

At the pool by the beach

At the pool by the beach,
originally uploaded by charlesjrichardson.

Macy, Molly, Isabelle & Ashton.

Jeff
601.214.1317

Friday, May 29, 2009

Pirate's Cove Putt-Putt

Pirate's Cove Putt-Putt,
originally uploaded by charlesjrichardson.

Jeff
601.214.1317

Saturday, May 23, 2009

On vacation

On vacation,
originally uploaded by charlesjrichardson.

At the beach.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Are we in control of our own decisions?

Richard Beck over at experimentaltheology first solidified the idea of
weak volitionalism in my mind at least with regard to morality and
theology.

Here, Dan Ariely extends the idea of limited free will - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TEDTalks_video/~3/SWJMM661kCE/548
.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

I saw Angels & Demons over the weekend and actually found myself giggling a couple of times at the tin-ear dialogue (George Lucas, anyone?) and the ridiculous plot line and shoe-horned moralizing (common threads in the Dan Brown canon). I am not surprised when films like The Fast and the Furious gross tens of millions of dollars - they fill a prevalent adolescent gap in entertainment. But this kind of lazy-minded, id-oriented entertainment is usually promulgated as such and by "B-movie" producers/actors. With Ron Howard and Tom Hanks (who've enjoyed a fair share of near-B-movie quality products, by the way) producing this kind of mindless tripe, however, there is the temptation for readers and viewers of such to walk away with the temptation to feel they are now better informed or somehow have an "inside story" on the subject matter of the films. This would be like a teenager believing he or she has a better understanding of sexuality and relationships after viewing Porky's. This Ross Douthat article, along these lines, is on point.

See this excerpt:

These are Dan Brown's kind of readers. Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who's a thoroughly modern sort of messiah — sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.

But the success of this message — which also shows up in the work of Brown's many thriller-writing imitators — can't be separated from its dishonesty. The "secret" history of Christendom that unspools in "The Da Vinci Code" is false from start to finish. The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling — they're far, far weirder than that — nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — jealous, demanding, apocalyptic — may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he's the only historically-plausible Jesus there is.

There's a Message in What We Buy, but Nobody’s Listening

I love this stuff! I'm sure there's a road map between the pathway hinted at by Dr. Miller between the practicality of our shared evolutionary history and our moral aspirations that is filled by faith and biblical theology - since morality, beauty, truth, purpose, meaning and love have no purchase or traction in a naturalistic landscape. (And, yes, of course I'm familiar with evolutionary psychology memes on the naturalistic purposes of religion and love, but these theories, understood, only make my point).

An excerpt:

To get over your consuming obsessions, Dr. Miller suggests exercises like comparing the relative costs and pleasures of the stuff you've bought. (You can try the exercise at nytimes.com/tierneylab.) It may seem odd that we need these exercises — why would natural selection leave us with such unproductive fetishes? — but Dr. Miller says it's not surprising.

"Evolution is good at getting us to avoid death, desperation and celibacy, but it's not that good at getting us to feel happy," he says, calling our desire to impress strangers a quirky evolutionary byproduct of a smaller social world.

In other words, evolution has real value up and until the point of sentient thought. After that, not so much. Could be an interesting study for believers...

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Touring...impression.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Crossing into Arkansas!

Crossing into Arkansas!,
originally uploaded by charlesjrichardson.

At Greenville. God's country!

Monday, May 04, 2009

Re: What's In Your (Gadget) Bag?

Updated, "What's in my bag?"

Dell Latitude E6400 notebook - This new notebook PC - with a 5 hour battery life, like it's predecessor, still remains the least-used component in the bag; I often leave it at the office; with the iPhone and Acer Aspire One netbook and Kindle2, there's not a lot I can't do without the laptop
Acer Aspire One netbook - This has become my "go everywhere" computer and is really my central hub for my data
Apple iPhone - with 16GB of storage, loaded up with hours of music; 6 full-length audio books (at the moment, ; 3 hours of podcasts)
Amazon Kindle2 - Awesome!
Canon SD630 ELPH digital camera
Jabra Jawbone Bluetooth headset
AC and car adapters for iPhone/Kindle2 USB cable/power
A couple of Pilot G2 gel pens and a spiral notebook (I have a couple of Moleskines, but as a left-hander, have never enjoyed hard-bound writing pads/journals)

On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 9:48 AM, Jeff Richardson <cjr1967@gmail.com> wrote:

I travel several times a month and find myself working from odd locations even when in my home town - at basketball practice, the parking lot of Wal-Mart, etc. So here's what's in my bag:

Dell Latitude D650 notebook - interestingly, this is probably the least-used component in the bag; I often leave it at the office; with the 8125 and accessories, there's not a lot I can't do without the laptop
Cingular 8125 PDA Phone - loaded up with a 2GB card filled with 4 hours of music; 4 full-length audio books (at the moment, John Grisham's The Innocent Man, Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, Idlewild by Nick Sagan, and Life of Pi by Yann Martel; 3 hours of podcasts; and the first 4 episodes of Sports Night
Canon SD630 ELPH digital camera
Motorola HT820 Bluetooth stereo headphones

ThinkOutside Bluetooth wireless keyboard

USB cable
AC and car adapters for USB cable/power
Copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston - which is my book club topic this quarter
My trusty copy of Magnificat for the current month
Seagate 40GB USB-powered external, portable hard drive - with all my home PC files backed up and available
USB miniSD card reader w/1GB miniSD card - for use as a flash drive (and for transfer with the 8125)
A couple of Pilot G2 gel pens and a spiral notebook (I have a couple of Moleskines, but as a left-hander, have never enjoyed hard-bound writing pads/journals)

What's in your bag?

Friday, May 01, 2009

Reflecting on the iPhone after a week of use.

I'm such a nerd that I think I burn through issues on gadgets faster than the average user. That said, prepared to offer a few reflections in my first week of iPhone use from the perspective of a former Window Mobile user.

First I'm really enjoying the iPhone and think it's going to stick with me, so I should start with that.

Second, the biggest noticeable issue with the phone is the battery life. To be honest, battery life was the biggest issue I had with my WinMo phone and I'd hoped to make an improvement moving to the iPhone. No such luck. In fact, the iPhone - even with Wifi disabled - runs only about 60% of the life of my Tilt with about the same usage.

I purchased the Morphie Juice Air with the integrated extra battery. This just gets me through a full day (6am to 10pm). This is a tough pill to swallow.

The third point is the keyboard and editing challenges. I've been using touchscreen keyboards for years and am pretty proficient with them - several folks have already commented on my iPhone keyboard speed. That said, the three biggest deficiencies I've noticed are the lack of "in word" editing, lack of cursor controls and, of course, lack of cut-and-paste.

The first two are obviously an artifact of the lack of precision of the capacitive touchscreen v. the resistive touchscreen technology found on essentially all WimMo devices. The trade off for precision is ease of touch and the non-recessed screen found on iPhones and other capacitive screens. The latter is another of Apple's compromises that should be fixed in OS 3.0. Nonetheless, I am constantly reminded of these deficiencies when doing email or taking notes.

Fourth, Also notably missing is the ability to reorient the keyboard to landscape. This is truly an oversight on Apple's part in the user interface - this is the kind of intuitive feature they are normally way out on front on. It must be some frustration for the Apple designers to be bested by literally all their competition on.

Fifth is the actual function as a phone. In most ways in this regard, the iPhone is fine. But I am experiencing a noticeable drop in coverage and connectivity over my Tilt -which is an AT&T device, too. Many blame the iPhone's deficiencies in this regard on AT&T's network, but my experience seems to indicate it has more to do with the iPhone design itself rather than with the network.

All these quibbles aside, the iPhone remains am intuitive, elegant, smooth and speedy device.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

More of the Funk Monster...

More of the Funk Monster...,
originally uploaded by charlesjrichardson.

These guys are awesome!!

Dr. Zarr's Amazing Funk Monster

Dr. Saw's Amazing Funk Monster,
originally uploaded by charlesjrichardson.

Great sound, good music, amazing pants!!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

the iPhone

Well, I've finally succumbed to the mania! I received my iPhone on Monday of this week and had it set up and running before I left the office that day.

No big deal, right? Millions of others have been devoted iPhone users for some time now. But I've been a Windows Mobile user for over 10 years - yes, that's right, ten years! I began back when it was Windows CE and used a little handheld PDA from Casio - monochrome touchscreen and all.

Now, I'm no Apply fanboi. There is no doubt that Microsoft and its Windows Mobile software pioneered the way of handheld PDAs and smartphones. In short, the iPhone wouldn't exist without Windows Mobile. That being said, you have to give Apple its due - they have taken the user interface and use-experience to an entirely new level.

They did this by making a series of real, serious and deliberate compromises. And this is the difference between the Apple approach and the Microsoft approach. Microsoft makes software that has to run on over 80% of the world's computers - computers made by literally hundreds of different manufacturers with literally tens of thousands of applications, accessories, attachments and devices in every single area of human endeavor - from the arts to rocket science. Compare this to the radically meager market share that Apple-based devices enjoy and you'll see why Microsoft, at least in the area of mobile phones for this point in time, is a victim of its own success.

That is, Windows Mobile is by far a more powerful and flexible handheld operating system. This seems indisputable to me based on the sheer range of its hardware application and diverse user base. The iPhone OS, however, is really good at running on one piece of hardware for a specific range of functionality. WinMo's great power and flexibility result in the common user complaint: it's too hard and too complex and too sluggish. And relative to the iPhone, this is true.

But let me reflect for a moment on the features I've been using literally for almost 10 years on WinMo devices that the latest and greatest iPhone still can't do: listen to my music with my wireless Bluetooth headphones; edit a Word document, edit an Excel document; easily (drag-and-drop) carry photos, music, video, Office files, PDF files - any kind of file on my handheld and view them and edit (most of) them on the fly; tether my laptop to my cellphone for 3G internet access when I'm not near a WiFi signal (at no extra charge and while making voice calls on the same device); multitask (talk on the phone, edit a document, and use SMS simultaneously); enter text in any of a number of ways - hard-typing, soft-typing (with a dozen different keyboard alternatives available to me), handwriting recognition; and a variety of other things the iPhone can't do.

But even as a self-described power user who actually does a number of the things above on a regular, if infrequent basis, do these added features and capabilities overcome the key advantages of the iPhone for the vast majority of the time you're using your handheld device? The iPhone's key advantages to me (v. my series of WinMo phones) are

(1) that beautiful screen - I'd used a PDA (WinMo, of course) for years with at least a 4" screen - my biggest disappointment in moving to a WinMo phone from a pure PDA was the massive drop in screen size from 4" to 2.8"; the iPhone's screen is what a smart phone screen should look like;

(2) the media capability - sure, I used my WinMo phone all the time for playing music and audio books - done it for years and it worked acceptably well, but after waiting minutes for the WinMo Audible app to launch, the instant-on, slick interface of the iPhone media manager wins out; further, I have a Kindle2 and the Kindle app for the iPhone is a treat to use; and, finally, after trying literally a half-dozen solutions and countless visits to xda-developers.com, I still have yet to find a remotely satisfactory video playback solution for the WinMo platform - the iPhone's is literally stunning - right out of the box;

(3) the price of apps - sure a WinMo phone does more coming out of the box than an iPhone will have a number of visits to the AppStore, but a single app on WinMo (Core Player, for example), will cost me more than all the apps I've already downloaded for my iPhone;

(4) the user interface - this is where, as I said before, the iPhone shines - Apple, by being selective and deliberate, has made the iPhone a general consumer's usefulness dream by anticipating the way 80% of people will use the device (for practically every function in the device) and designed the interface to make that method of use seamless, refreshingly crisp and reliable. Now, I'm definitely a 20% user - I need cut-and-paste, I need multi-tasking - or do I? I use these features all the time on my WinMo phone - and I will miss them on the iPhone (OS 3.0, anyone?), but I'm finding that while I do miss them (on my 2nd day of iPhone use), it's not debilitating - and the upsides so far outweigh the downsides.

Microsoft is going to remain a dominant player in the mobile market and, like their johnny-come-lately reaction to the web, they are playing catch-up. But they will continue to adapt and improve. Had the Samsung Omnia or the HTC Touch HD been available on AT&T for $199, I might have gone that way - but alas, the best WinMo devices are still unavailable to the US cellular population - at least with subsidized pricing. And I can't see paying $500+ for a phone.

How will I get along with my now-impoverished feature set? I picked up a netbook a couple of months ago that may fill the gap. OS 3.0 may give me cut-and-paste - and Documents To Go may come to my rescue in the Word/Excel editing department. To be honest, I didn't use the BT headphones that often and I will only occasionally miss the ability to tether (but perhaps desperately at those moments). The biggest immediate deficit I've noticed is the file management capability (the iPhone SDK compartmentalization making this problematic on the iPhone and made even worse by the requirement to use iTunes). But I'm looking at some cloud-based alternatives that may provide a workable solution.

I'm not giving up on WinMo (and, no, I won't be switching to a Mac anytime soon), but I will wait for the next year or so to see how Android develops and if WinMo can find the sweet-spot between power/flexibility and user-experience.