Sara surprised me on Valentine’s day with tickets to the Minneapolis stop of the Hotel Cafe Tour (to happen later, Monday March 31st). The concert was downtown at the Fine Line Music Cafe. Since it was general admission, we arrived when doors opened and secured a spot about 10 feet in front of the stage. We were most excited for Ingrid Michaelson (recent album: Boys and Girls) and Dan Wilson (recent album: Free Life), but were pleasantly surprised by the rest of the lineup as well: Cary Brothers, Joshua Radin, and Meiko. The concert was “untraditional” in that each performer would sing a few songs, then leave the stage, to be replaced by another performer in the lineup. Each artist would cycle through a couple times, and mix it up by backing each other up (for example Ingrid would sing backup for Dan). There was an emcee that announced each performer, and even played (with 2 others as well) as a support musician. The emcee had a great personality and lots of enthusiasm. The music was excellent, and all the artists were personable and friendly. Some of my favorite moments were Ingrid’s cover of Creep by Radiohead, and Dan Wilson’s performance of Closing Time from his previous band Semisonic. My pictures from the show are here.
For my birthday, Sara took me to dinner at Cafe Ena in Minneapolis. Dinner was excellent and we recommend the restaurant.
The following topics were presented at the January 2008 Ruby Users of Minnesota meeting:
- Justin Grammens from Localtone Radio presented on integrating Voice Over IP (VoIP) with Ruby on Rails. He demonstrated the Telegraph Rails plugin with a local installation of the open-source PBX software Asterisk. He also demonstrated Adhearsion. Justin set up demo Rails applications that took text data in, and read text back via text-to-speech functionality, examples were done live with regular mobile phones calling his PBX.
- Luke Francl from Slantwise Design led a panel discussion of working on a team that does Rails development. One challenge they discussed was developers contending for numbers when creating migrations. Rails team sizes and project durations also tend to be small, aspects that affect available jobs differently, compared with enterprise Java or .NET applications, for example.
- Slava Pestov introduced the Factor programming language, a “general purpose, dynamically typed, stack-based programming language.” He also demonstrated the Factor IDE, many Factor language concepts and terms, and a couple sample applications.
Overheard (topics to research): Hudson continuous integration tool, written in Java. FasterCSV, a replacement library for Ruby’s standard CSV library. The computing concept of Continuations and how they are implemented in various languages.
Assuming one can afford to buy a newer vehicle, why pay to maintain an old one? For the maintenance records I kept over the last 2 years of my ownership (2005-2007), when maintenance costs were highest on my 15-year-old 1993 Chevrolet Lumina, I spent over $2800 (including regular oil changes, a new air filter and one windshield replacement) to keep it running. That includes trying to get the best deals on parts and labor, by going to national repair shops that claimed to offer the best prices for one type of repair (brakes, glass, etc.). Here’s what I got for $2800:
- New rear brake pads, resurfaced rear rotors, new front rotors, cleaned and lubed calipers, new battery, remanufactured alternator (third one in my ownership), new serpentine belt, new rear struts, alignment, transmission fluid flush, power steering hose replacement, new heater bypass hose for engine coolant leaking problem, electrical systems diagnosis (when it wouldn’t start), which led to the purchase of a new starter.
That worked out to a car payment of around $120 a month, or even less when I spread it out over more years. With only the legal minimum auto insurance covering the car (from a discount insurance provider of course), holding on to my old beater made economic sense. Ultimately however, the myriad minor issues (some with workarounds), combined with the stress of relatively expensive and unpredictable repairs, and the inconvenience of getting those repairs done, diminished the value of the money I was saving. Goodwill has a vehicle donation program offering free pick-up and a reasonable tax deduction for the donor. I took advantage of that and now will get a small tax credit on the sale of the vehicle.
Via the official blog, my favorite internet music recommendation service Pandora, now supports Classical music, a sorely-missed genre for lyric-free listening at work and home. I just added a Mozart station and it sounds great. I don’t normally blog incremental updates, but this is something I’ve always missed from Pandora, and am very excited to see. Perhaps Apple can partner with Pandora and develop a native client for iPhone, that would be great. Now when Flickr adds video support, rumored to roll out soon, two of the web products I use most often will be even more useful for me. Flickr Places did roll out in the last few days, here is the Places page for Minneapolis.
I believe Zooomr has smart sets out of the box, but I wouldn’t know because I’m still a happy Flickr customer. I’ve been loving the full-screen plus title/description, “on black” slideshows since they were introduced last summer. One feature that Flickr doesn’t support [yet] is the ability to define rules for a Set and have it auto-generated based on some predefined interval. iTunes and other software has popularized the concept of adding some intelligence to a collection of things, in an attempt to automate the decision making process involved with building a collection.
A Flickr community member and programmer has taken it upon himself, to create a simple user interface that lets Flickr users create and administer some smart sets, after authenticating his application with your Flickr account (a quick process). He’s titled the application Flickr Set Manager.
The “random” smart set is fun for me, because it jogs my memory of pictures that tell stories I’ve forgotten or have become less clear over time. The “least interesting” pictures give me insight into what “doesn’t sell,” in other words, what people don’t click on, which can as interesting as seeing what people do click on. Finally, my “most interesting” smart set is set to auto-generate each day (I’ve setup each to regenerate daily), but mostly stays the same day to day, since I’m getting enough new visitors daily to influence the statistics. The value with this set however, is that it exposes the “most popular” statistics to users other than me, since currently the most popular photo data is available only to the owner under the “Popular” menu option when logged-in.
Viewing the “random” smart set slideshow is a nice trip down memory lane, and a gift that “keeps on giving” every day. I highly recommend the Flickr Set Manager, though if want official support, I think Flickr will add this in the not-so-distant future. Besides smart sets, I’m excited to have read they’re working on video support on Flickr as well, which seems like a more logical place to share my 30-second video clips than today’s general purpose video sharing sites.
August seemed to go by very quickly, due in part to more rainy weather than usual, which meant less time outdoors enjoying summer. Sara completed two summer medical school programs in CA and PA, and returned the first weekend of the month. I had a housewarming party on the first weekend and that turned out well. The next weekend a neighbor had a party in the building on a Saturday evening as well, where I met a few more neighbors. During the day on that Saturday, Sara and I attended part of the 2007 Pizza Luce block party at their Uptown location, where Heatbox and other local artists performed.
The third weekend brought family visits: cousins from WI and Washington D.C. respectively. The second day was rainy when my family was visiting, so we went to the Walker Art Museum for the traveling Picasso art exhibit, then to the Midtown Global Market to check it out. During the week that followed this visit, Sara and I prepared for our road trip down to Alpine Valley to see the unification of Rage Against the Machine for an amazing outdoor concert. In the final week of August, I had some more family visiting from St. Louis this time, on their way to WI, so Sara and I gave them a brief Minneapolis driving tour and had lunch with them. The final days of summer spent at the State Fair, where the highlight was meeting and getting an autograph from local weatherman Paul Douglas, who for some reason has always charmed Sara. More quickie highlights: 12-13 foot tall plastic dancing and singing robot, turkey pita, footlong hot dog, sweet corn and Sweet Martha’s. Next was helping Sara move to a new neighborhood and apartment in St. Paul. We spent Labor Day weekend (perfect weather) hiking at Minnehaha park, grilling hot dogs/pork chops/corn on the cob for a couple lunches, and soaking up a little sun on the North beach at Lake Calhoun.
I test-drove a 2000 BMW 328i 4-door sedan this week, equipped with the sport package, bigger wheels, tighter suspension, and more. The 193HP 328i was retired in 2001 when the 325 and 330 were introduced with different inline 6-cylinder engines (the 330 getting more HP and torque). On paper the 328i sits between the 325 and 330s of the early 2000s (the E46). Exterior and interior styling was essentially the same compared with a friend’s 2005 325i. The car still has the throaty 6-cylinder growl and the great steering/cornering as a result of the nearly 50/50 weight distribution and RWD. The 3-series still manages (pre-2008 EPA estimate) 21/29 MPG, better than some four cylinder cars.
A couple days later I drove a 2001 Lexus IS300, automatic with the manual shifting via buttons on the steering wheel. Apparently a manual transmission was available in the US starting with the 2002 model. I’ve always liked the looks of the IS, and “people say” that the engine will “run forever” (200-300k miles) while being less expensive to maintain (compared with cars in the segment). The IS felt a bit cramped on the inside to me though, feeling considerably smaller than a 3-series (which is a smallish car by US standards), and somewhat uncomfortable in terms of places to rest my arms while driving. Lexus cars are pretty expensive, even in the used market, with lower depreciation than competitors. This particular IS (from a private seller) was a very nicely-maintained black on black model, that even had a couple more years of extended warranty covering it. In general I wasn’t very impressed with power output from the IS300. Performance felt more refined to me, comparable to a Acura TSX for example, but not really as a competitor to a BMW 328 or 330 (though priced similarly). I personally didn’t care for the suede interior mixed with black leather, just because I prefer a single style versus mixing upholstery types. Manual shifting seemed dated as well compared with modern alternatives, like DSG on a Volkswagen/Audi, or paddle shifting on a Saturn Aura (to be fair, it is a 2001 vehicle). While I think the IS300 is an attractive car and a reasonable performer, I prefer the 3-series for the price.
Sara invited me to a special screening of “Canvas,” an independent film being released in October that portrays the hardships of a person with a mental illness and how it impacts the family and community. The film is the first for writer and director Joe Greco, and deeply personal as the script was largely based on his youth. The University of Minnesota Medical school Psychiatry interest group was able to fly Joe in from California to be at a reception before the movie (on campus), then appear at the Oak Street Cinema for Q&A following the film.
The audience was mostly medical students by intent, but the general public was welcome, and attended, along with members that support the Oak Street Cinema. Several medical doctors spoke along with Joe, sharing their experiences in treating and researching mental illness, specifically schizophrenia. Joe shared more information on his background and the background of the movie. He said the movie cost just $1 million, compared with a related movie “A Beautiful Mind” that cost $100 million (and had many millions more available for advertising), but was all raised by himself over a period of 10 years! The film was shot in just three weeks in Joe’s hometown of Hollywood, Florida.
The film is essentially a must-see because it is produced and written well, the acting is done well, but primarily because it sheds light on a topic that is still stigmatized (mental illness), and gives viewers insight as to what coping with mental illness is like for the victim and the family. Hopefully viewers are left with thoughts on how important it is to help people that suffer from mental disorders, and treat them the same as physical disorders.
Joe was a very personable guy, and we were even able to talk with him before the movie about unrelated stuff, such as his recently purchased iPhone, and how he is a huge Mac fan (geek points!). I’m a fan of Joe Pantoliano’s work, and in this movie he delivered another great performance, as did Marcia Gay Harden and Devon Gearhart. Go see Canvas when it is released this fall, then tell your friends about it.
I called in for insurance quotes on some cars I’m considering purchasing. Quotes are for Minnesota with Geico, 6 month premiums, full glass, comprehensive coverage, with a $500 deductible, for my zip code (in the city) and age (over 25).
- 1993 Chevrolet Lumina: $360 (what is this doing here? I’m driving this now.)
- 2005 Infiniti G35 sedan: $666
- 2008 Volkswagen GTI (2.0T): $706
- 2004 Volkswagen R32: $737
- 2007 Mazdaspeed3: $737
Saving $77 for a 6 month renewal over 5 years is $385 (around 2% of the purchase price) savings for the G35 sedan over one of the hot hatches. However the savings is lost when fuel is considered. Here is my math, feel free to double check it: If I drive 10,000 miles per year with the G35 and I assume it gets 23 MPG in mixed driving (city/highway), that works out to 434 gallons of fuel per year. At $3/gallon, that is $1302 for 10,000 miles.
For one of the hatchback, assuming 28 MPG mixed driving, that is 357 gallons for 10,000 miles, at $3/gallon, works out to $1071 in fuel.
Annual fuel savings for 28 MPG over 23 MPG is $231. Savings over 5 years is $1155. When fuel and insurance are considered, the better deal is one of the hatchbacks, with a 5 year savings of $686 (again, just 3-5% of the purchase price, rather negligible). The gist with these cars: fuel savings is more significant than insurance savings.