Man, I sure do love my favorite second-floor japanese ramen house. The only problem is *noodle slurping*. And today it was bad. Ach, those *noodle slurping noodle slurpers* How can they stand it? How can *anyone* stand it? Noodle slurping almost ruined my day today! Am I going to have to find a new lunch place? Help!

I’ve been using diggdot.us for a while, but there’s a lot of junk in there, and it doesn’t include other stuff I like to read about (i.e. Mac voyeur sites), so I went looking for something else… and found it: Original Signal rocks!

I’ve had a new Keihin FCR 41mm carb sitting on my desk for a couple of months, waiting for me to get around to putting it in the Duke. I finally got around to doing the swap a week or so ago, and then Friday got a new rear tire (Metzler Sportec to match the front – they seem to work plenty well) and fresh oil. The carb went in incredibly easily, and really makes a noticeable difference. Lots more power, and a cool little hisssss from the accelerator pump. Henry and I went for a ride on Saturday up over Tam, up to Olema (my favorite stretch, the banked uphill curves on the way from Bolinas to Dogtown), and then out thru Pt Reyes to Marshall, in to Petaluma, and then back over the mountain to Novato via “D” Street. Great ride, in part because the weather was just bad enough to keep the weekenders off the roads. I’ve had a fair number of bikes, and the Duke just keeps impressing me – what a great bike.

I went back to my favorite little Castro barber shop the other day for the first time in a few months. As I drove up, I saw that Jane was using Wes’ chair, and I thought – what happened, did Wes leave the shop? It turns out Wes – a healthy, happy, 54 who looked 20 years younger – died of a heart attack back in late September, not long after the last time I had been in. Wes and I shared a taste for Old Potrero rye, and he never failed to complement me on my figure as I climbed off my motorcycle. Wes, I hardly knew you, but I’ll sure miss you.

I’m sure I’m not the first to say this, but it seems certain that the forthcoming launch of Microsoft’s latest non-release will drive folks looking for a *real* upgrade to Max OS X and the Apple platform. It just seems so pathetic! Another lame reskinning with no real features, and the same old bass-ackwards take on usability. If these are the “11 reasons to give Vista a chance“, MS should be embarrassed. In fact, it seems like they’re already scrambling to get out a follow-up release – although I don’t see how this could really be much more promising.

I bashed up my old phone down in Baja, and so I had to replace it with something new. My friend Des showed me his BlackJack and said it was the best phone he’d ever had, so I got one once I got back up here to SF. After using the BJ for a week or two, I took it back and swapped for a Blackberry Pearl. Why? The BlackJack is impressive, it’s thin, light, does a lot, and the Windows Smartphone OS works fairly well… …but, there was no pleasure in using it, and, well, I also had one other major gripe – see below:

• The menus and dialogs are very inconsistent – sometimes you need to use “More”, sometimes “Menu”, sometimes something like “Applications”, and then “File Manager” or whatever. Typical Windows bullshit, really. Poor UI design overall.
• Impossible to set different ringtones per profile
• Cannot filter the task list to exclude already completed tasks, without a third-party app. Why would I want to see tasks I’ve already completed??!? Idiots.
• Very slow to load some applications, even ones that are built-in. The Picsel Viewer used to view, ahem, photos from the camera phone is especially disappointing. Weak!
• Sending an SMS takes 7-9 steps. Feh.
• No built-in way to copy & paste text. Jeez, guys.
• Proprietary connector: sucks. Just use mini-USB.
• The controls are only just fair. The scroll wheel is a nice idea (and I can see where they got it from) and sometimes useful, but would need to be better integrated into the OS to be really helpful. The trackpad is tiny and too close to the other buttons on the face of the device.
• And, worst of all — the RF performance SUCKS. I can roughly 50% of my calls dropped – 50%!!! Also had no reception over New Years in a location where two other friends on Cingular (two different devices) both had coverage. The Cingular store swapped out the SIM card (it was already a new one), and that seemed to improve the RF, but it still wasn’t up to snuff.

So, the BlackJack went back, for a Pearl:

I’ve never had a BlackBerry device before, and I have to say, well done!

• Great, consistent, intuitive UI. Most of the time, the options are what I expect them to be, and the one I want is pre-selected.
• Great RF.
• Good built-in PIM applications.
• Keyboard shortcuts!!! wow. love it.
• Tiny (quite a bit smaller and lighter than the BlackJack).
• Mini-USB!! I can use the same cable to connect the Pearl to my PC that I use for my Canon digicam. Amazing!!
• I can’t really find anything wrong with it – the screen could be brighter and more colorful, but, well, I’ll wait for the iPhone for that.

Sayonara, “SmartPhone”!

PS – did I mention that Cingular gave me a $150 *refund* when I swapped for the Pearl? A final bonus is that the battery life seems excellent.

Yes, I watched the MacWorld keynote yesterday, despite the fact that I still don’t own a Mac. While I’m still waiting for an ultralight Apple notebook, the iPhone looks amazing, and I’ll certainly buy one as soon as it’s available. Like many others I wanted to see exactly how big the device is, and found Jason Kottke’s mockup photos really useful… …and I couldn’t resist doing the same thing to compare the forthcoming iPhone to the last couple of phones that I’ve had:

The use of the heavy umlaut in pop culture — as in Mötley Crüe — is an old story, but what about the recent rise of spellings like coördination?

I had seen this a few times and sort of let it slide, thinking it some sort of pomo PC spelling of coordination (or co-ordination, which is it?)… and then just now ran across this: preëmployment, reading John McPhee’s Uncommon Carriers. Dear god, prëemployment, in a story about truckers? I mean, I suppose I can appreciate the linguistic irony here, but are what’s next, metaäproximate, antiïntegrate, and quinquüpdate?

Wiktionary suggests that “the dieresis is becoming increasingly rare in US English typography, so the spelling coordinate predominates,” but my anecdotal evidence is to the contrary. Are the editors on high (e.g. FSG, NYT, etc.) really suggesting that we add a letter to the alphabet? Do any civilians really know how to produce diæresis(es? and don’t even get me started on this one) without resorting to?

A quick search turns up this (rather dated) reference:

dieresis or diæresis A diacritical mark (¨) optionally used in English, oftentimes replaced by a hyphen. In English, the dieresis is used on a second identical vowel to indicate a change in pronunciation of that vowel or indicate it is pronounced in a separate syllable. It is sometimes referred to as an « umlaut » when used with a single character or in a « diphthong. » Examples: reëlecting, reëncoding, coöperation, coördination.

On the other hand, it has always seemed that plain old coordination lacks something to signify the pause between co and ordination, and co-ordination sure looks awkward, so why the heck not? English is already a total mess, and umlauts are über cool.