Hung Truong: The Blog!

Windows 7 RC Impressions (on a PC!)

I made the switch from PC to Mac a pretty long time ago. It’s been about two years since I started using my first Macbook and a few months since I went exclusively to using OS X (when my PC crapped out). I recently got bored and decided to fix up my PC and put Win 7 RC on it (I think the thing flipped out when I got a new hard drive and it somehow got two Win XPs into the boot registry thing).

I already tried installing Win 7 Beta on my Macbook Pro a few times via Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion. They were both pretty bad solutions. It’s just too much to try and virtualize a modern operating system, and the Boot Camp drivers are just kinda crappy. My main thing was that Win 7 kept crashing in Boot Camp, losing wireless connections and having a really laggy touchpad interface.

You may recall that my opinions of Vista were not the most positive. About a year and a half (and an operating system) later, I think the thing is finally pretty good.

The user experience is nice. I like the fact that I can hit the window key, then type whatever I want and get a list of programs, etc. It’s really useful because the control panel is so insanely organized that it’s impossible to find anything in a hierarchical manner. I guess that’s a mixed complement/critique. I like the desktop backgrounds, and all the apps I’ve installed so far work pretty well. I didn’t have to scavenge for a single driver, which was really nice. When I managed to buy Windows 7 UK and installed it on my mom’s laptop, however, it was quite a task getting the video card to work (it was an old Dell 300m).

The only real complaint I have is that file sharing is still really confusing. I found out how to access my shared folders from OS X, but I haven’t figured out how to access my Mac from Win 7. Overall, though, Win 7 is actually looking pretty good. If I actually had a need for this desktop, I might actually use it more often (besides for playing games). For now I’ll stick with my trusty Macbook Pro. I’m thinking the upcoming Snow Leopard upgrade will keep OS X interesting.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Book Report!

I just finished reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. While it took some time for me to read through all 411 pages, it was a really enjoyable experience. From my library account page, I can see I renewed the book 5 times!

The Omnivore’s Dilemma basically states that there is something really wrong with the way that America is eating. This is probably already very apparent by the amount of obesity, diabetes and eating disorders that we all hear about on the news. But besides the insane portion sizes and amounts of sugar, there’s also something horribly strange about the way our food is produced. Pollan takes a journalistic approach to get to the bottom of the issue, following the trail of corn to his McDonald’s meal, the life of his CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) steer, a meal cooked on a “sustainable” farm and his own “perfect meal” that was created solely by himself via foraging and hunting.

As a vegetarian, I’ve always been pretty picky about my food. After living on my own and making my own decisions on grocery shopping, I tried to further educate myself on what to eat and what not to eat. Typically, I follow some general rules (sugar is better than corn syrup, organic is better than non-organic) but I couldn’t say I knew the reasoning behind them. That’s the way, Pollan argues, that most of America regards food. He finds it funny that people care more about the person fixing their car than the person producing their food. While an automobile’s upkeep is pretty important, isn’t our health just as important?

The book is pretty huge, and there’s really no point in me going through it, writing about the whole thing. There are a few things that I really appreciated about it. For one, it confirms my decision not to eat meat. CAFOs are pretty horrible in terms of causing suffering for animals. They’re also really bad for the environment. I also think it’s healthier to abstain from eating hormone-laced animals. From a great number of viewpoints, it makes sense to not eat mass-produced meat. I simply take it a step further and rule out all meat. Pollan argues that animals evolved with humans to be eaten by them. After all, many animals in nature are carnivorous. While I agree with that, I think that on a personal level, I’d rather not have that blood on my hands if I can help it. In that regard, I think I’m lucky to be living in a society where it’s possible to choose to not eat meat and still be healthy.

Another interesting idea is that in order to produce the huge amounts of corn needed to make all kinds of food items, farmers need to use synthetic fertilizers. These fertilizers are created using fossil fuels. So in order to grow corn, we’re using oil. It makes me wonder how efficient the ethanol from corn that fuels cars really is. So not only is the corn that we put into our food not necessarily natural and healthy, it’s also depleting our fossil fuels and polluting the environment. It seems so ironic, but I guess that’s what the government wants to spend money subsidizing.

I think I’ve already written a lot about this book. Really, it’s a good read and everyone who eats should take a look at it. But you don’t have to take my word for it! [audio:rr.mp3]

Did Library School Change Me?

Looking back on my old posts from before I went to school at a hybrid Information/Library Science school, my opinions of librarians seemed fueled by a bit of prejudice. For example, in my visiting days post I wrote:

I sat down at a table whose occupants were librarians. Pretty much everyone there was an LIS (library and information services) specialist. This wasn’t really a great first impression, since I applied under the HCI (human-computer interaction) specialization, and to be honest, libraries aren’t really my thing.

What, exactly, did I have against librarians and libraries? I think I mostly felt that, from the school’s website (or the parts of the website that I studied), the program was more for people who were generally interested in information from a more technology-oriented viewpoint. So I was hoping to see more technological-minded folks at my table.

I still, however, decided to enroll. And I’m glad I did. Slowly, I think I started to understand what libraries are all about. I started using the local library. A lot. It probably also helped that I worked at a library my entire time at the school. I wasn’t studying to be a librarian, but I was exposed to the culture. Computer nerds and librarians make a good team.

So did library school actually change me? Or was I somehow intrinsically drawn to the program where computer nerds and book nerds collide? Maybe a little of both. I’ve always had a secret love for organizing and archiving things.

For example, pretty much no one in my family seems to care much about backing up files. I, on the hand, am a bit obsessed about it. I still have files from middle school preserved in their original file formats and directory structure in place. Who knows, some day I might want to look back on that stuff. I’m also kind of a nut when it comes to properly organizing and applying metadata (and preserving said metadata) from photos. Oh, and also backing everything up, both on-site and off-site (using multiple online services).

I also get really irritated when I go to the library and see something like this:

Is that a Drama and Horror blu-ray disc I see mixed in with the Action ones!? Usually I will take the offending discs and put them in the right place. There was also that one time I saw Harry Potter in Comedy when it should have gone in Fantasy. The worst is when a DVD gets mixed in with blu-ray. That’s like the same as a book being in the CD section! Oh man, now I’m rambling.

The point is, I think I already had some Librarian/Archivist in me before coming to library school. Hanging out with like-minded people probably reinforced the behavior mentioned above. And probably for the better. If you’re a computer nerd, I suggest you check out libraries (and librarians!). If you’re a library nerd, I suggest you check out computer nerd stuff (and computer nerds!). Together, we can make the world a more information-y place.

Vitamin Water Sync: Free MP3s and Economics

I’ve become kind of a Vitamin Water fan. Not because I think it’s actually healthy or anything (the second most common “vitamin” (ingredient) is sugar), but because I like the taste. I’ve actually been drinking the stuff for like a year now. Anyway, I recently noticed (like a month ago) that there was a new flavor available called “Sync.” The cool thing about this flavor is that it includes a code on the cap that you can redeem at AmazonMP3 (for some reason it says the music comes from MySpace) for a free song. By “a free song,” they really mean $1.29 of credit, since some songs cost that much, but others actually cost less.

Because of this added value of this flavor (the other ones don’t have free songs), I’ve been kind of loading up on Sync. This also leads me to a semi-interesting economics problem. If I regularly bought MP3s from Amazon.com, I’d be doing myself a favor by getting $1.29 worth of “music” for ~$1, along with a free sugary, sorta-vitamin-y drink. This price difference was even greater when I went to Kroger and got 10 Vitamins-Water for $5!

To Google Voice or Not To Google Voice?

I recently got a new iPhone 3GS (32GB!) and with it a new phone number. I’ve had a Google Voice number from way back when it was called GrandCentral. I never used it because I found the integration a bit lacking. As I now must inform people of my new number, I was thinking about giving them the Google Voice one instead of the “real” one. This is also as Google Voice is getting considerable buzz since it’s finally giving away invites after closing off the service quite some time ago.

Here are some pros and cons to either choice.

Pros:

• I don’t have to ever tell people I’m changing my phone number again in the future.
• Neat voicemail transcripting.
• Routing calls from phone to phone (I might want it to go to my work phone at certain times, mobile at other times)
• Googliness?

Cons:

• The voicemail system won’t be integrated into my iPhone
• There isn’t an official iPhone app for Google Voice yet.
• SMS doesn’t work with short codes (40404 for Twitter)
• Calls made through voice won’t count as “mobile-to-mobile.”
• Other integration issues.
• Possible dependency issues.

For me, Google Voice is pretty cool, but not cool enough to rely on because of its crappy integration. By crappy integration, I mean that Google Voice just simply cannot expect to integrate itself well into other companies’ phone systems. There are a number of examples of this. One is that if I want to send a text to someone, I need to use Google Voice to do it instead of my phone. This adds a layer of obfuscation to the process. Here’s what the help doc on Google Voice says:

Call, Voicemail and SMS Issues: Receiving SMS on phone from 406 numbers

When you send an SMS through Google Voice, the SMS appears to be sent from your Google number. When someone sends an SMS to your Google number, and it’s forwarded to your mobile phone, it won’t appear as from the sender’s actual number (e.g., the SMS may appear from 1-406-xxx-xxxx). This is so that when you reply to the 1-406-xxx-xxxx number from your phone, the SMS you send appears to be sent from your Google number and will be saved in your Google Voice inbox.

Holy crap, that’s just confusing! Another example of Google Voice not playing well with existing companies’ systems would be mobile-to-mobile calls. If I call my sister using Google Voice, the call probably won’t count as “free” since it’s going to Google instead of directly to her phone number. Though apparently if you add the Google Voice number to T-Mobile’s “Faves” you could get some pretty interesting free call results…

Another peeve I have about Google Voice is that they’ve decided to make the mobile apps for Blackberry and Android thus far. I wonder if this is because the iPhone is a competitor to their own Android platform or if they just decided it would be easier, or for any other reason. It kind of shows a “Microsoft Moment” for lack of better term for Google; writing software to serve their own ends versus writing software to reach their customers on the platform they use. I don’t have any numbers to back this up though (are there more Android+Blackberry users than iPhone?), so at this point I’m just complaining because I have an iPhone and it doesn’t have an app.

For now I will ditch Google Voice (or just not use it) until it can be integrated effortlessly into my own mobile phone’s system. The whole point of using Google Voice is to simplify things. I can see it’ll be a really complicated road ahead for Google to actually implement this, but I hope they do. It almost surely means they’ll need to work with phone companies directly. This will probably take time and lots of money. I’ll just stick with my own phone’s capabilities until then.