Singing the mid-tri blues (6)

(Sixth in the series, “Becoming a Father“)

I had been updating this column every two weeks until this entry, which took a month.

I was suffering writer’s block. It was not entirely my fault because the only positive change around here has been the size of my wife’s stomach, and I had gained no new earth-shattering insights or breakthrough viewpoints on becoming a father.

The problem, I believe, is depression caused by boredom while waiting for my baby to come out. And when I try to kill time by watching cable TV, channels such as Animal Planet and National Geo. often go out of their way to remind me of frogs that take three seconds to mate and three seconds more for the fertilized eggs to turn into tadpoles.

Maybe I am exaggerating a bit. But why does it take so long for humans? It’s been five months already so we have just passed the halfway mark. Yet I want to kick a soccer ball with my baby, like, four months ago!

I must not be the only expectant father to feel these mid-trimester blues. Perhaps I will go into the hospital tomorrow to talk to an OB-GYN doctor regarding possible treatment.

Meanwhile, my wife is having the ball of her life. Her belly is now very noticeable, and by golly, pregnant women are pampered by everyone everywhere. Strangers are giving up their seats on the train for my wife; at the office, she is showered by snacks every hour - if it’s not green mango then it’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. Thanks to all of you who spoil her, just a few days ago wife remarked, “I wish I could stay pregnant forever.”

Note to wife: get the first one out, and you can stay pregnant as long as you want for the next one.

Registered Traveler

TSA, the transportation security arm of the Homeland Security, is starting a “registered traveler” program and asking for volunteers. The marketing ploy of this program is: give TSA your iris-scan and biometric data, and you might have less hassle going through the airport.

As the National Consumer Coalition explains here, how much hassle is reduced by this program is unclear but one is giving up a lot for it.

The last time I went through the airport to take an international flight, I spent 50 minutes waiting in line for my bags to be X-rayed by TSA, 15 minutes to check in, another 15 minutes to go through security. The bulk of the time was waiting in line like everyone else to get my bags tortured by that horrible X-ray machine. (Yes I really mean tortured because the machine literally kicks the bag out after scanning.) And will being a TSA ‘registered traveler’ reduce the time in line for bag scanning? I doubt it: for safety, how can they avoid scanning any traveler’s bags?

Lessig’s Free Culture book

Prof. Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture book is out. I haven’t read the book yet, but supposedly it looks into how these days, big corporations are stifling innovation by influencing govt. to rewrite copyright laws in the internet age, limiting the flow of ideas into the public domain. In a world where we have been building new ideas upon old ones for thousands of years, this could spell trouble.

True to its title, it is free for download under the Creative Commons License here. Or you can buy it from your favorite book store.

FBI moving into net wiretapping?

Will FBI Decide Internet Configuration? [Dan Gillmor's journal]

The Justice Dept. wants to expand FBI’s wiretapping ability on the internet: the ability to snoop your mail, what you surf, your VOIP calls, etc. Of course, we can be smart and add encryption to protect our privacy on the net but as Gillmor argues if govt. also passes laws to take our encryption keys then we are losing a huge chunk of our freedom.

Do you feel bad about your poor memory?

Well, here is an article to make you feel even worse. Wired News.

But the article includes tips from Scott Hagwood, memory champion of the U.S. (I made the term up, but there is indeed such a championship) on how to improve your memory:

… Hagwood, who gives seminars on how to improve memory skills, advises people to use their non-dominant hand in daily chores, do crosswords and puzzles, play chess, take a different route on your daily commute, learn to tango, play an instrument and speak another language.

But one thing is true: I have met a lot of successful people (let me define that to be people who make a good living doing what they love best) and almost every one of them has an excellent memory.

Winding down…

» remote entry created using mobileMT.

Whew, long day today at school. Looking forward to a nice Japanese dinner with wife and mom.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

It took me a while - three months to be exact - to finish this book. But “finish” is an inadequate word in the sense my understanding of the book is close to nil when the author talks about the ancient Greek philosophers in the latter half of the book.

Nonetheless, I was drawn to the book because there were a lot of radical, yet seemingly original philosophy offered by the author, Robert Pirsig, and when he put in the context of motorcycle maintenance, it was actually not too difficult to understand.

The book made me think hard. Perhaps that is why it took me so long to read it. I would read a few pages, put it down and ponder a few days about what it said and then repeat the cycle.

If there is one thing that I learned from the book, it is the concept of “Quality” and to achieve that one must show not only classical but romantic understanding on a subject in which “Quality” is desired.

What is moblogging?

Moblogging = mobile + blogging, which means using your mobile phone to write blogs, anytime, anywhere.

When you think about it, moblogging is publishing to the web from anywhere that has a signal for your mobile phone. I can think of a lot of useful applications: reporters can blog to a newspaper’s blog on a breaking story as it unfolds; a backpacker can blog his travelogue in a foreign land without lugging a laptop (with the global GSM standard pervasive in Europe, most of Asia and some of US cities it is quite feasible to travel with one phone by swapping SIM cards.)

Of course, one wouldn’t want to write a book using a mobile phone keypad or touchscreen, but a lot of blog entries are short enough to be written using those interfaces. And with bluetooth wireless standard supported on many mobiles, companies such as Think Outside have annouced they will be coming out with portable but highly usuable bluetooth keyboards this year. A lot of people would prefer to just carry a small phone and portable keyboard than a heavier and bigger 12-inch laptop since they really don’t need all the functionality.

Granted, moblogging has just started to take off a year ago, so not all phones or blog software support it. At this stage one must choose its tools wisely, and I recommend the following:
1) a GSM mobile phone that supports the WAP 1.1 standard, GPRS-enabled, and preferably with Bluetooth built-in. (Or a CDMA equivalent.)
2) Movable Type blog software and mobileMT software that renders MT into WAP. Of course you need a web server or a hosting provider that supports the requirements for those packages.

It is going to get even better.