Ernest and Celestine by Daniel Pennac

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When I can I try to read the books that are proposed to my son.

A two weeks trip to the USA was a good opportunity to do so.
Ernest et Celestine is a good reading for an age between 8 and 10 years: the subject may appear light at a first glimpse (the story of a mouse and a bear) but the message about against using prejudices as the guiding criteria of relations is very strong and clear.

While the construction of the phrases is simple a few words will likely be missing in the vocabulary of a kid: be prepared to answer questions or have a dictionary for kids readily available.

Recommended.

Bernard’O restaurant in San Diego

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Yesterday evening a colleague pushed me to go to Bernard’O for dinner.
The dishes in the menu appeared overly rich in the list of ingredients for my general preference when I took a glimpse before entering but looks like it is a fairly common practice in this area making the choice hard for someone looking for simple food.

I was not very hungry so I went for something small and that should fit well with the fact that the cook is french: a french onion soup.

While waiting we were offered bread and butter:
the bread was hot but fairly undercooked (at least for the italian standards) and the butter was absolutely sub par: almost perfectly tasteless.
If I decide to hit my health I want it to be worth and I think this should be a general guidance for everyone.
Skip the butter altogether at Bernard’O.

Then the onion soup arrived.
The first thing that I noticed as soon as I raised the first spoon is that the broth was heavy on taste enhancers.
I wonder if it actually ever had the opportunity to see some actual meat.
The taste was very heavy on pepper while the onion test was almost completely missing: ridiculous for an onion soup.
It’s a classical french dish: it’s not acceptable to have it made like this in a french restaurant.

The restaurant site claims that they won the “best french restaurant in San Diego” in 2008.
Either they changed cook in the meanwhile or I don’t want to try any other french restaurant in the area.

Save yourself the money (the place is not cheap) and the time and avoid it as long as you can.

The figth against noise on long flights: ultimate ears 700

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A few weeks ago I posted about my experiments dealing with in-flight noise and anticipated a new test.
Today I’m reporting what I found when using the Ultimate Ears 700 from Logitech that I recently purchased.

It is an in-ear solution that is noise blocking or, if you prefer, is doing passive noise canceling.
It comes with the option of using either silicone plugs or foam plugs (“Comply” tips): the former solution is comparable with the standard tips coming with most of the in-ear solutions while the foam tip is less common and makes a difference.
I’ve tried both and picked up the Comply as the best solution for me: better noise blocking, more comfortable, lower cable noise.
Pay attention when fitting the foam tips as it’s a bit harder than fitting correctly the silicone ones and you don’t want to remove the earphones leaving the tip inside your ear.

How good they are?
unbelievably good.
Two weeks ago I was in our London office working on a presentation and needed to focus so I used the earphones to avoid the distraction of the conversations in the open space.
At one point I noticed the colleague on my right jumping on the chair: it turned out that someone slammed hard a door but I did not notice at all.

I thought that I might be too focused to notice but it turned out to be really the good performance of the Ultimate Ears that made the difference.

Last week I used them again, this time for the purpose I originally purchased them: dealing with the in-flight noise.
When the music was turned on, even at low volume the humming of the 737 was totally removed and the only noise was coming from the seat and through my spine.
With the music off the noise coming in is similar to what gets through when I use the 3M plugs mentioned in the earlier post.

It’s all perfect? Almost.
I have relatively small ear canal so there it is a bit of fatigue after a while. It may happen to other people too.
To ear the cabin crew you have to remove the earphones.
I discourage using them in places that are not totally under control because anything can happen with you not noticing; you really don’t want to do jogging while using them.

And the musical fidelity?
It is there too.
At least as far as an in-ear solution can go: I like the physical impact provided by a loudspeaker and no earphone can provide that.
They are in a totally different league compared to the Creative and Philips solutions I tried earlier.

When working at my desk I always prefer my pair of indiana line 5.04 with the support of the DTA-100a amplifier over the earphones when neighbours complains are not a risk.

I’m very happy with my ultimate ears 700 and I recommend them.

Channel 4 on demand

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In the past I’ve really appreciated the first series of Black Mirror that was briefly available on youtube.

As I was recently in the UK I decided to give a try to the second series as the streaming is not available in Italy.
The experience was far from stellar.

Channel 4 asked for a registration (a couple of minutes as email confirmation is needed) and then I got access to over two minutes of boring advertising (not something like the Superbowl ads) that I could not skip.
Fair enough as I was not paying.

Finally the show.
Actually the first 10 minutes, then again over two minutes of advertising.
The rate of advertising to content is really excessive: I’m never going to use the service again.

Thistle City Barbican in London: just a bit better than sleeping under a bridge

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This week I had to be in London for the second time in one month and my experience was to some extent even worse than the previous one.
Apparently the city was packed and room availability scarce so I had to deal with a hotel that I would normally not pick up on the basis of the reviews: Thistle City Barbican.

The first night I was in the Thistle Kensington Park: my room was facing the HVAC cooling section that produced a continuous hum during the night and the bed was fairly uncomfortable: for 226£ expectations were higher.2013-05-22-095[1]

The very bad experience was the second night with the City Barbican: the room needs a major renovation for at least 10 years now.
In the bathroom a tile was missing from the floor and the chrome of the tap (two separate ones) was just a distant past.

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Wood panels and water don’t play nicely together and it is was clearly a bad decision to heavily use them in a bathroom.

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Tapestry on the wall was bulging, the desk finish was of low quality wood-like hard plastic and some large patches were missing altogether.

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No need to say that the carpet has made his time and the rest of the furniture was not in great shape either.

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I was lucky to be very tired and able to fall asleep without thinking of the cleaning.

226£ for a room that would be just ok for a free emergency shelter is absolutely a shame even if the personnel was very kind: in the end it’s 20 minutes dealing with them and 8 hours dealing with the room.

Stay away from the Barbican.

Leap Motion should learn to better manage customers

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Leap Motion has presented a very intriguing device and made a great marketing of it.

I’ve tried in the past a number of relatively unusual pointing devices (the white and blue original Logitech trackman, the trackman wheel, a Wacom Bamboo, a 3DConnexion serial 3D mouse and a serial SpaceBall 3003) and so far I settled with the trackman as the device that serves me the better way.
But Leap Motion device really looks great so I decide to preorder it.
$97.68 on January 10, 2013

Then I’ve sent it in the back of brain where things get forgotten.
On March 5th I get a remainder of the fact that I have this preorder ongoing and that it will begin shipping on May 13th: some fuel to restart the excitement.

The excitement goes down big time a month and a half later, April 25th: shipping target date is delayed by over 3 months.
From May 13th to July 22nd.
Leap Motion’s email states “We’ve manufactured over six hundred thousand devices and delivered twelve thousand to amazing developers”
“The reality is we very likely could have hit the original ship date. But it wouldn’t have left time for comprehensive testing”
“We will also invite some people who are not developers to join the beta test”

But there it is hope.
I’m told that I can write to them.
Even better: to Michael Buckwald directly.
“If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact our support team at support@leapmotion.com or my personal email (buckwald@leapmotion.com).”

So I went that route a couple of day later: after two weeks no answer, but a new generic email of update sent to all the people.
I should have read better the email and Leap Motion should have written it more carefully because the expectation generated is that someone will actually answer the email that was elicited.
This is a bad way of managing the customer relation.

At the end of the day what I read is that they are sitting on a pile of over half a million devices that supposedly work fine and that they are not giving to the people who preordered.
In the meanwhile they are getting “great apps coming to Airspace”.

Looks like sometime in the future instead of simply a great new pointing device I’ll get a software ecosystem to get me entangled.
Not what I wanted.
Maybe I’m better canceling the preorder and get a proven device like the Spacenavigator?

Mariage homosexuel, homoparentalité ed adoption. Essay by Gilles Bernheim

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This booklet was recently translated in italian and was recommended to me by a friend.

The purpose of the book was to put together a strong argument against the law on the subject that was being discussed at the time of publishing by the French Parliament.
The law was recently approved hence the book was not able to steer the vote away from the promised outcome of the election campaign.
Even if the political target was not reached still the book was a contribution to the ample discussion that happened in France after the general election and before the vote of the law.

It’s a very easy reading as anyone would hope for if a book has to make an impact on a wide audience and is without religious references.
The strongest arguments, in my opinion, are the ones that are centered about whether or not a baby can be considered an object (of someone’s right) instead of a subject (with his own rights).

This same caveat about object/subject can be applied (either implicitly or explicitly) in relation of abortion.
In a number of legislations there it is a limit to the time when an abortion is legal: at some point in time the fetus is considered a person (hence a subject) and before is considered only an object.
I think that either a foetus is a person from time 0 of no one is ever a person: putting an arbitrary term for the switch is subject to a strong attack with the logical paradox called sorite.
This problem is somewhat limited in practical application in the case of abortion: after the fact there it is no more evolution of the foetus from an object to a subject.

For an adoption and assisted procreation this is different.
Even assuming that at the time of the decision the baby is an object this will not remain true as the time moves on: at some point in time the baby will become a subject with rights and the law should really deal with this fact from day 1.

For this argument to be effective it’s clearly necessary to have an agreement on whether or not a person has the right to have a mother and a father and this is only slightly easier to agree upon than the other one: quite a few people disagrees with the idea that “natural for a human being” and “right” do match.
How could we get away from this problem?
In my opinion by taking into account the wider and more general question: a human being can be an object (or a mean to someone else’s end)? (1)
Here the number of persons that would say yes goes down: as it’s often the case it’s easier to be conservative when we have a direct interest.

The implication of (1) applies clearly not only to the specific scenario of the book but to the parenthood in general.

I was overbooked :-(

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It’s widely common knowledge that airlines sell more seats than available in the airplane.
Maybe it’s because sometimes in the airport you hear the request for volunteers that are available to take a later flight (happened to me last year in Copenhagen) or because it’s frequent enough that it happened to a lot of people.

What is less common knowledge is that it might happen with hotels too.

I was in London 3 days ago and after a long day of traveling and business meetings I reached my booked hotel (Holiday Inn Express Park Royal) at 11pm.
I was warmly greeted and told the news about my missing room; I was then offered something to drink and invited to wait for the taxi that would bring me to a hotel with an available room with the reassurance that the complimentary taxi would be made available to me also the following morning to bring me where I needed to go.

The taxi arrived and after about 15 minutes I reached my new hotel (Holiday Inn Express Brentford Lock).
The clerk told me that the next morning there was no issue for transportation in the morning as a bus stop was near the hotel and would make me able to reach a tube station: no reference to the complimentary taxi.
I was very tired and simply went to my room to get some rest without arguing.

In the morning a different clerk mentioned the taxi (good move) but also told me that it would take 15 minutes for the taxi to arrive at the hotel and that using the bus would have worked fine and without additional cost for me as I have an Oyster card.
Unfortunately the part about the additional cost was not true (bad move): it costed me extra £ on top of the tube ticket. And clearly the hotel change costed me extra time (more train stops as I moved from zone 2 to zone 3 and a dozen bus stops not needed in the booked one) and discomfort.

No discount or complimentary benefit (WiFi, drink from the minibar) was offered to me.
I’ll think twice before booking again with Holiday Inn and I suggest that you do the same.

The figth against noise on long flights

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I do spend quite a bit of time on airplanes (2012 is a good example) and there are mainly 2 things that are very fatiguing once in the air: sub-optimal seat ergonomics and background noise.

The first one is hard to overcome without a recurring increase in expenses (using business class or premium economy class) while the second one is a bit easier and I’ve made a few experiments in this area.

7 years ago I bought Creative Labs’ HN-700 noise canceling headphones for about 50€ new on sale. On an airplane sound quality is acceptable (way better than what is offered by the ones offered in economy by the airline) and noise reduction (both active and passive) is there to a degree.
Active noise canceling with this headphone is not an option in a normal home/office environment due to the high level of white noise that is generated even in a silent environment.
Sleeping while wearing them is really not an option due to the size.
Also long use is not comfortable due to the weight and to the fact that the ear is completely inside: sweat builds up.
The bulky construction is a bit of an annoyance too.

The last 3 reasons led me to the purchase of an in-ear alternative, again with active noise canceling.

About 9 months ago I picked up Philips’ SHN4600. On sale I paid 49.90€
They are light, sweat-free, occupy a small volume, and again the sound quality is better than the one from the airline: potentially perfect on the paper.
Unfortunately the reality is different: there it is a very noticeable cable noise and repeated insertions and removal of the tip bruises a bit the ear canal with the remaining of the moulding process on the silicone; compensation of pressure while climbing and descending is a bit difficult
The passive noise isolation is in a different frequency range compared to the NH 700 and the same is true for active canceling. They can be kept on while sleeping.
The “talk mode” button works but it’s not really as good as simply removing the earphones.
Production and quality control can be improved: the left ear bud has problems of major distortion as soon as the volume moves up and bass tones are played and this was from day 1.
Overall I’d not buy this model again even at an even lower sale price.

When sleeping the best option so far has been to use earing preserving devices commonly used in the construction business and made by 3M.
I usually pickup either the orange ones or the yellow ones
Fitting is very good as is the noise dampening: it’s necessary to remove them to have a conversation with the cabin crew.
In some cases I’ve used the earplugs in combination with the HN 700 (with the volume way up) to get rid of as much as possible of the external noise while listening to music or watching movies during a flight.

The HN 700 recently broke (I made it somewhat useable again by securing the left can in a fixed position with the help of a fair amount of electric insulating tape) and the SHR4600 is not a satisfactory either.
Sooner or later I’ll have to go shopping again for a noise canceling solution.

I’ve tried the latest generation of Bose and the difference in performance is impressive, but I’m not sure that’s worth 300€.
If anyone has a suggestion based on personal experience please comment.
Thanks in advance!

Synology DS411slim: getting slower with time?

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I’ve written in the past a few posts about this small nice NAS: here, here, here and here.

Yesterday I did another test after updating the complete local copy of my gmail messages on Thunderbird.
It took 4 hours 33 minutes to compress 11,548,610,909 bytes (578 Files, 61 Folders) to a single 7zip file of 7,108,652,903 bytes: it is a lot of time.
16.380 seconds of runtime means an average read/write speed of 1.139.027 bytes per second.

Both the NAS and the computer I used are connected with 1Gbit copper ethernet to the same switch: during the process the usage stats on the windows 7 (64 bit) machine indicated almost no load and the same was true for the NAS according to the web interface.

The DS411slim is running version 4.2-3202 with 3 HDDs in a single disk group using SHR (Synology Hibrid RAID)

This is really puzzling. And a bit upsetting.
Any suggestion to recover from this bad performance is welcome.