Purple Pointr

Organic Lollipop

This arrived as a present packed in a box with with nutritional supplements, minerals and vitamins I had ordered. No joy.

It is more than 99% sugar, organic as it may be. Why someone would offer this as a present to a foodie with a known ordering history is beyond me.

Is organic lollipop a meatball sundae?

Currently, very few would expect a supplier to check their customer's blogs - so this one is excused for not seeing I am trying to not eat refined sugar at all. But maybe checking up on customers is worth it if they were to embrace lifetime value. It would be a hallmark of awesomeness. (skip ad on top right)

Lollipops expose teeth to sugar for a long time, as if invented to keep dentists busy. I did not mention this, yet, no one in the family cared for a lollipop either, organic or not. So in the trash it went.

And up on the blog so I can point my supplier to this episode.

Change topic

Typepad by e-mail fail

Typepad offers a secret e-mail address to post, and I used it for the first time on this post. Thing is: they fail to say (or I did not see, same result)  this is text-only. The images and links were stripped, yet the post went public immediately. Sans the twitter post, gratefully.

Disappointing for a blog charging professional rates, especially if compared with free posterous where mailing in works in full. Even from an iPhone.

Coffee Fog and the Morning After

Now I need a coffee!  Where does this thought come from? Do you want a coffee or does your body need it?  

Image: Roger Karlsson, © free-photo-gallery.org

Welcome to the wacky world of slightly addictive drugs. Think this is too harsh? Coffee not addictive?  How do you know?  Find out for yourself: stop reading, quit for 4 days and see what happens.

Still with me? Good. You probably want to know what qualifies me to point and pontificate.

Popular programmer's drink

OK, let me spill the beans.  Prompted by a painful shoulder affliction earlier this year, I had gone off coffee completely. And back on after I found it was rather not a causative factor. Surprisingly, sugar was. Not white sugar in brown coffee, as I prefer my caffeine hit straight black and unsweetened. This since the time I roasted my own and enjoyed euphorines said to be emanating from a brew just made from the fresh roast. 

In the office my changing coffee habit got a few colleagues remark they  never drink coffee. To me this was motivation to stay off for a while only to get back on after a too short night or while jetlagged.  On and off multiple times brought clarity as to what really are  "coffeeeffects" on my body. 

Coming clean takes three days or so

Withdrawal feels surprisingly close to too short a night or being jetlagged. The body needs more sleep, yet gets not fully out of the fog until three nights after, even with my regular exercise and lots of water. On day three or four the morning was again bright and felt full of beans. 

A single cup after a caffeine-free week

on a Friday afternoon led to a very pronounced fogginess the next morning, as if sleep deprived - and I was not. It took a 30 km vigorous bicyce ride to clear out the fog and lose the need for a coffee.

A single cup a day may be harmless

Depending on which study you you trust, coffee may be anything from beneficial in moderation to an addictive  drug. I am not here to argue with scientific findings, especially as disclosing conflict of interest from accepting payment is not the broad norm it should be in biochemical and pharmaceutical research. What I can say is that even with the best of intentions a single cup a day leads me to 2, 3, 4 on the following days - right back into addiction. I admit being a social coffee drinker. Harmless as it may be it is annoying to be at the call of habit without having a workable antidote. 

What do you do to undo caffeine addiction and avoid the fog?

Sprezzatura - sounds like an elegant solution, @matthewemay

Matthew asked me via Twitter DM, "Happen to know if there's a Japanese equivalent of Italian sprezzatura: art of making difficult things look easy?"

The only hit I found in Japanese Wikipedia reads the same: "sprezzatura" in katakana syllables. They give it as (muzukashii koto wo kantan ni miseru koto). Making a difficult thing look easy.

Tweetie 2 screen on iPhone

Thankfully, my wife confirmed there is no straight equivalent, but two expressions come close: sarigenai and nanigenai. Matthew asked to see the characters- so here goes, courtesy of Jim Breen's generous dictionary and the free Kotoba! app.

Kotoba! screen on iPhone

Like what you see? Find Kotoba! in the App Store (Japan). Thank you, Pierre-Phi di Constanzo. 

Did that look easy?  Yes, until you know  you can copy the links to the apps but not the author's name to give proper credit easily. Gah! I had to re-type the name off the screen. That feels like "DOS for Windows", using a PC in the late '80 before we knew the clipboard.

Apple's app store is elegant in many ways, but with too much lock-in fails to be sprezzatura.  There goes some life-time value.

Homeless vs. hopeless (photos and Becky Blanton's TED talk)

Homeless, but not hopeless

Homeless and hopeless

Why?

Hint: It's about marketing.

Yes, even at this level, the basics of marketing still work.

What is your impression of the first guy? The second guy?

What is the second guys message?

A bit hard to see, but it' s not the angle. He holds up a blank piece of cardboard.

See?

P.S. These photos prepared in anticipation of  Becky's TED Talk.  Her  Video just went live.

Toyota: bring on the kill switch

While it deeply saddens me when I learn technology advances bring harm to people (and environment), this is a price we agree to pay as a society for our curiosity, experimentation, and progress. Looking over the fence may reveal workable solutions.

Toyota and others: bring on the engine kill switch

Motorcycles have had this for decades. Waterbikes and snowmobiles have a wrist strap that pulls a pin to cut the engine ignition and slow down the vehicle immediately.

On cars that have no ignition key and need a 3-second press of the start button to stop the engine, an instant kill switch should be mandatory.

Foreseeable Harm

@externalaw tweeted about his summary in this law student forum. Thanks, I find it very clear and readable.

May none of the tragic accidents be taken as a silent acceptance (shift happens), but as a wake-up call. We can fail faster,  find more and better alternatives earlier, true to the time-tested adage of necessity being the mother of invention. Now I use the emotional impact (our family drives this Toyota) to join the discussion and hope to foster innovative thinking. 

What would I do?

Were I in the situation of the accelerator getting stuck - anyway more likely now with the electronic gas pedals - I would simply turn the ignition switch (my Toyota still has one), careful not to engage the steering lock. Actually the key mechanism prevents locking the steering accidentally.

Second, I could also step on the brake, fast and hard. Brake power is more than double the engine power, but not for long when the car is moving fast - the brakes would soon overheat.

Flipping the automatic gear to neutral or pressing the clutch of a manual is the third safety option, but then you need to shut down the engine real quick to prevent mechanical damage or after a few minutes, fire hazard. 

Not in driving school, but in books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycling, they teach you to always be watchful for an emergency exit from the road, just in case you need to save your life by hopping off the lane, because someone in oncoming traffic has not seen you and is overtaking. So, option four - still much better than risking a a crash with running traffic or running over innocent bystanders - would be to run your unruly car into the dirt, or at sharp angle against a guard rail or a solid wall. Scrap the metal and save lives.

The root cause seems to lie deeper. Three seconds to stop an engine! Reminds me of the Ctrl-Alt-Del keypress to start Windows. Hence I ask for the kill switch if there is no ignition key with an "OFF" position.

How far away is your emergency? What would you do? What would you propose?

Image credit: Yoppy on flickr