I miss you when you're not around...

Ha, let's see if this is still working. I had a blog, starting in 2000 (I think before they had a word for it). I stopped in 2005 when Mr. Fish died. Poor Mr. Fish, he sure was entertaining. Anyhow, this is supposed to link to my FB. Let's see if it works.

Best of ACCP SEEK on Mac OS X

If you're having problems using this CD-ROM on a Mac with OS X, it works just fine if you copy the "data" folder from the CD and open "TOC.pdf" using the latest version of Adobe Reader. The CD-ROM seems to look for Acrobat Reader 5 and that's a pretty old program so it will just sit there forever and not work.

Mr. Fish Dies

Wow, it's been a while, I guess. Mr. Fish died last month. It was really depressing and I don't think that I've quite gotten over the loss of my goldfish. But, I've been so busy preparing for the boards that I haven't paid much attention to anything else these days. And, in usual Neema fashion, it's boards time and that means relapsing back to some good old Def Leppard. Now, I know it's not politically correct to admit to liking this band but up until Hysteria, they were an incredible band. "High and Dry" and "Pyromania" are two of the greatest metal albums from the 80s. I don't know how they could become so pathetic and unmasculine and I will not vouch for anything that they've released post-Hysteria. Anyhow, listening to some classic tracks off of "High and Dry" makes taking hundreds of board prep questions much easier to handle.

Pain And Suffering In Various Tempos

A Brief Review of Depeche Mode's new album: Playing the Angel

You have to understand that I still consider myself a DM snob. I think that they hit their peak with Black Celebration, Music for the Masses and Violator. Songs of Faith and Devotion was interesting but a let down after Violator. Ultra was interesting but still along the same lines of SoFaD. Exciter was a huge disappointment. Frankly, when Alan Wilder left the band, it was a huge loss for them as the music is not as layered or complex as before. Lyrically, however, the band is still in form and in fact, gotten better.

After the last Cure album, I was prepared for a major disappointment. I am pleasantly surprised. There are some really good tunes on this CD but sadly, it fails to achieve the greatness achieved by Violator. In fact, this is the first album since Violator that in my mind features as many foot stomping songs as Violator. The band heads straight into the album with a foot stomping "A Pain that I'm Used to" that is sure to be popular at concerts. "John the Revelator" and "Precious" are the closest the band comes to the raucous atmosphere created by "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy the Silence" that fans have become accustomed to on the band's tours. Pleasant surprises come in the form of Dave Gahan's contributions. "Suffer Well," "I want it all" and "Nothing's impossible" are the tracks penned by Dave and are much better than his solo effort from 2003. He's learned well and the tracks do not stand out as being strange (which could not be said of contributions by Alan Wilder on the much older Construction Time Again.

If you are like me and were totally obsessed by Depeche Mode about 10-15 years ago, then I think you will be pleasantly surprised by this album. We might be much older now but there's still plenty to enjoy by this band. It will be released on October 19 here in the US and a tour starts shortly thereafter.

Flight Status Widget in Tiger

This is simply too cool - I can find out exactly where my brother's plane is and it updates me on his altitude and speed. Technology like this is just cool.

My Newton Still Works

Seven years after I stopped using it, I inserted batteries in the thing to see if it still works... not only does it work but it retained all the information stored in it after all of these years. That's simply amazing! I don't think that I've ever owned a piece of technology that has been so neglected yet working perfectly well. In case you're interested, it's available for sale. I believe that I even have all the original manuals. It won't be on eBay but you can get a hold of me for it.

Mr. Fish Gets a New Home

As part of Eid Noruz (Persian New Year), we place goldfish on the Haft Seen and this year was our first year together. Mr. Fish came to us with a friend but his friend, like most goldfish, left us rather quickly. Mr. Fish, on the other hand, is a survivor. We did not expect for him to stay for us this long (coming close to nine months now) and so, this weekend I decided that enough was enough and 1 liter wasn't enough. Mr. Fish now lives in his own 5 liter ranch with more water plants and bubbling oxygen than he could ever imagine!

Here is the House

My parents and sibs are "going back home" to Iran for a month. I'm staying here, of course, working like I always do. But going back "home" is different this time. For the first time that I am aware of, they'll be going to someplace other than my grandmother's home. She passed away a few months after I visited Iran in 2000. They spent the first night with my uncle. Somehow, it has sunk in a different and more profound way.

What Happened to All the Posts?

If you're a regular here, which is unlikely, or you stumbled here by way of random Google search, then you might notice that... well, things are missing. That's because I recently trimmed quite a few posts from this page. Perhaps with older age I feel OK about selling out... maybe it's just wiser to keep some thoughts to myself. Regardless, it's just not going to be as exciting. Then again, I don't think anyone is really ever reading anything I fume about.

The Ever Increasingly Irrelevant Microsoft

It's really neat to watch a behemoth stumbling after being beset by a flurry of tiny little bee-stings. The very same Microsoft that was thought to be immune to pesty competition and would ferociously attack and crush all feeble attempts is dying from within itself. In previous postings, I'd written that I thought that Microsoft had simply become to large for its own good... the truth is that apart from being too big, they're mismanaged.

Robert Scoble, loyal Microsoft defensive shield and "unofficial" mouthpiece of the company, is a hilarious read. With each passing week, he becomes more and more defensive as people keeping pestering him with inconvenient questions... such as "where in the world is Longhorn (now Vista)?!?" His responses to Apple comparisons are hilarious. Um, so, a smartwatch is a good comeback to an ever delayed OS release that Bill Gates himself said that the future of the company would rely upon?

So, this week, they announced that the next release of Windows was to be "Vista" (as in what you see outside a window. Perhaps they're trying to sell a car or even a dishwasher. Do they think that the average person is going to understand that Vista is an upgrade to the OS? What will the update to Vista be called? Vista Mejor to be followed by Vista más Mejor?

The problem is that they got to this point all on their own. The hegemony they sought was realized and instead of seizing the leadership opportunity, they foisted more irrelevant upgrades down our throat until Mozilla, Linux and finally Apple woke up and started delivering stuff we wanted... things that we'd never heard or conceived of like reliability, less crashes, less virus attacks and spyware and get this... easy to use music software and hardware.

As I told Scoble, it's too bad that the people have tired of the "I can do that too" game that seems to be the only game Microsoft can play... want the latest example, try VirtualEarth... does it look familiar?

What Windows Vista Means to You

VISTA" as an acronym for "the top five Windows problems: virses, infections, spyware, trojans and adware

V - irus problems
I - nfections
S - pyware
T - rojans
A - dware

Depeche Mode Precious

Things get damaged, things get broken...
I thought we'd manage but words left unspoken
Left us so brittle... there was so little left to give.

Not since Black Celebration has a Depeche Mode song left me so deeply affected. It has left me feeling like I'm back in high school. Then, I was filled with uncertainties that seemed like I would be drowned out of existence. Words cannot express how many different ways the lyrics to this song touched me in so many different ways.

Not since the release of Violator have I looked so forward to a new album by this band. If the rest of the songs on this album are half as good as this song, it's going to be a very special album for longtime fans. Thank you, guys.

UPDATE: Rejoice, seekers of "Precious" fortune. The band has brought forth the single to the masses. Go download it on iTunes now!

A New Conversation with Microsoft

Scoble wants us to tell Microsoft what we want from them... heheh. You asked and I'll tell you:


Microsoft is only a good when they are reacting to a threat. Absent a real threat, Microsoft focuses only on consolidating their tight grip around the consumer's throat.

I want Microsoft that leads! I want Microsoft to blow us away with a rewrite of Office that makes all those before it look pathetic. I want Microsoft to care about the home consumer without forcing me to use business tools. You brought up the Office suite - does the average home user need this much power?

Take a look at Apple, seriously! They created a wordprocessor for the consumer. Pages is a great application. It comes with fantastic templates. It doesn't pretend to compete with Word. It's a different class of application. It's aimed a set of users that Microsoft willfully ignores.

Microsoft has been the top dog in the computing industry since 1995. In that time, has Microsoft done anything with it's lead?

Spreadsheet? Lotus. Word processing? WordPerfect. Web? Netscape. E-mail? Eudora. IM? AOL. Portals? Yahoo. Search? Google. Music? P2Ps and Apple. Gaming? Nintendo and Sony. Blogs? Blogger & Google. Portable Documents? Adobe.

Has Microsoft ever been at the vanguard of anything? ever? even once?

Sadly, it will never happen. Why? Because Microsoft is too big. The best thing for Microsoft would be to break it up! Let the smaller parts outmaneuver the competition ... not waste time worrying about propping up another division's 2nd rate product.

I want Microsoft to lead... Be bold! Take risks! Stop reacting!

The Email Purge

After we got back from Mexico, my mailboxes were flooded with e-mail. Sure, you would think that it was junk mail but Mac OS X kindly filters out 95% of my junk automatically. No, these were e-mails that I had agreed to during the course of political action meetings, product demonstrations and other nonsense. So, even though I was remotely interested in what the messages offered, there was simply too many of them and not enough time to participate in any of them.

And so I began the purge. I am now clicking "Unsubscribe" to all of these messages. I simply can't handle the flood any longer. Sorry, California Dems, National Dems, MoveOn, John Kerry and everyone else who has bombarded me with "Call to Action" e-mails... I can't do it any longer. I'm waving goodbye to you... hopefully for now but maybe I'll reconsider some of you in the near future.

A Shyness that is Criminally Vulgur

i declare today to be independence from technology day. yes, it might seem just a tad bit odd that Neema, of all people, would wish for independence from technology. i think that it's gotten a bit overboard that a person can be reached at nearly any point on the planet. there's something to be said for "alone time" and i think that we've well exceeded the real world need for availability. i find it infuriating that people expect everything to be done immediately when there's no good reason for it.

let me give you an example. i am currently on the night shift. i work from 7am to 7pm. i come home and try to sleep during the day. it's hard enough as it is with this obnoxious celestial object that incessantly beams light into my eyes while i'm trying to rest. then you have to deal with the environmental noise that constantly invades my thoughts. then you have ones internal thought processes and worries that preoccupies your thoughts the moment externalities are removed. so, it's hard enough to rest when you need to do so. and when the office calls you to harrass you about medical records, WHEN THEY KNOW YOU ARE SLEEPING BECAUSE YOU WORK NIGHTS, it's excessive. this is a perfect example of something that can be appropriately dealt with e-mail.

so, i urge you to fight for your independence and freedom from the shackles of technology. it's perfectly acceptable and reasonable to not want to be available at all times. do not give your cell phone out to anyone other than friends and family. let them know that you will turn it off on occasion and that it's OK and you will get back to them in a timely manner.

Apple and Intel

This rumor had been around for a very long time and finally, it happened. Essentially, it was the unthinkable for any Mac-o-phile because of the animosity that has existed for nearly two decades between the opposing camps.

In case you didn't watch the keynote address at WWDC, Steve didn't look happy about this movement towards Intel. In fact, if you read between the lines, it was far from what he would have liked. He liked ridiculing Wintel performance... it put the onus of performance squarely on Apples shoulders. From now on, comparisons between Photoshop on the two platforms fall onto the OS! Intels CEO looked positively joyous... It was like the dork that finally gets a date with the hot girl (because the hot girl got dumped by her boyfriend for another girl) ... which, incidentally, is exactly what happened.

Microsoft dumped Intel for IBM.
IBM dumped Apple...
and Apple & Intel wound up together.

I want to believe... or how I hope Lucas will redeem this story

I am Neema Aghamohammadi and I'm a recovering Star Wars addict.

I was a true believer. My childhood memories are filled with Star Wars memorabilia. I eagerly awaited the rerelease of the original trilogy in '97 and could barely wait for Episode I. I saw it the first day... and came away disappointed. Yet, I still believed... and even saw Episode II on opening day. It wasn't such a bad movie but it wasn't what I had imagined. Having read the books from the original trilogy, there were many tantalizing hints.

What drew me (and likely many others) to Star Wars and the mythology of the movie was not the lightsaber duels or the battles. It wasn't the corny lines or the bad acting, either. Unfortunately, what drew me in was the story of how an entire civilization be co-opted and destroyed. How could evil triumph over good? How did the Emperor corrupt Anakin's soul?

Unfortunately, the lure of money and greed corrupted George Lucas. He created a universe and a myth far larger than anything he could imagine in his own mind. Rather than bring in others to help him with the creation of this universe, he relied on technology and CGI to do the real work. Episodes I & II lack the beauty of the original trilogy.

I can only hope that somewhere, deep inside Lucas beats the heart of the original trilogy. I don't want to be disappointed. I have look forward to this story for far too long.

I want to believe.

Diet Coke versus Diet Coke with Splenda versus Diet Pesis versus Pepsi One

Sepi & I took the taste test today and apparently, I'm a brand name whore. Blinded, I like them in this order:

Pepsi One
Diet Pepsi
Diet Coke with Splenda
Diet Coke

In a shocking turn of events, when I could see what I was drinking, I liked them in this order:

Pepsi One
Diet Coke
Diet Coke with Splenda
Diet Pepsi

In the blind test, I actually spit out the Diet Coke! It was repulsive and I couldn't bear the taste in my mouth. But out of the bottle, I preferred it to everything except Pepsi One.

Unfortunately for both companies, we're trying to wean ourselves off of junk soda completely. We prefer the refreshing taste of water... water is the least likely to lead to health problems.

More Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt from Bill Gates

So, what do you do when your competitor beat you to market and has established a daunting dominance in the field you covet? Well, after you try to compete with your previous model (generic computers and Windows to rule them), you start spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about your competitor.

Gates is right. Apple shouldn't get comfortable in this position. But, do you want to know how Apple can kill MS in the MP3 player market? Just keep doing what they are doing... make Microsoft increasingly irrelevant.

Yes, when it comes to the music market, Microsoft is irrelevant and a niche player.

The Difference Between Apple & Microsoft - The Blog Effect

Blogs can be interesting and fun. As I learned, they are also very distracting and I think that one big difference between MS and Apple these days is the approach to blogging. There simply aren't many blogs coming out of Apple. In fact, I don't know of any other than that by Dave Hyatt (of Mozilla and Safari fame).

Blogging is so popular at Microsoft that they have essentially resurrected the role played by Guy Kawasaki in the person of Robert Scoble. His blog is very interesting because it offers an "unsanitized" look inside a big corporation. I don't think Scoble is evil (far from it, most likely) but I can't help but feel that MS will start approaching blogs like another arm of their PR campaign. They know people are doing research online so having MS employees saying good things about MS products in their blogs increases the likelihood that someone will stumble across a positive page...

In 1999 I read some in depth article of how Longhorn will radically change the landscape of computing. At the time, Apple was still trying to pull OS X together. The two companies were at parity (in my opinion) between Windows 98 and Mac OS 9. Fast forward six years and OS X is at it's 5th major release and we're still waiting for Longhorn.

I think that's the big difference in 2005. Apple used to talk about how great their vision of the future was but produced nothing compelling for most of the '90s. Now we find Microsoft talking about how great technology will be with Longhorn, etc. Instead of producing, they're talking. Instead of shipping, they spew forth with blogs.

Can Someone at Apple Stop Messing the GUI?

It is a shame that Apple now views each release of OSX as an experiment in GUI design. Whereas Aqua does need refinement and it would be foolish to insist that it cannot get better, Apple shouldn't change the GUI for the worse. The changes made to Mail are an abomination!

Longhorn at WinHEC - More setbacks and More Features Removed

Longhorn Summarized:

no advanced file system
no advanced communications
no advanced security/DRM framework

but instead, it will have:

IE7 with RSS
better graphics
better search

Exactly why am I supposed to get excited about Longhorn?

The writing is on the wall. At WinHEC, MS previewed Longhorn and there's more that's been removed but hey, they're still shooting for late '06 release. It makes me wonder what all those gee-whiz engineers are doing in Redmond that they can't get this product to ship. With the exception of Aero, all the fundamentally radical new features promised in Longhorn have been stripped. It only seems like yesterday (actually late '99) when Fortune wrote a long article with Bill Gates discussing how amazing Longhorn would be... but really, even Dvorak is calling it Windows XP SP3!

MS needs to do what Apple did with Mac OS X - scrap it all and start from scratch! As far as I'm concerned, when MS dumped city codenames for animals (um, didn't Apple do the same thing with OS X), they veered hard off the road.

Longhorn is Copland!

Browser Update - 3/21/05 : Beleauguered Microsoft Continues Downward Spiral

Disclaimer upfront: The steady incoming stream of visitors looking up "napster and iPod" on Google has increased flow to the site and may have skewed results a bit this month.

The last month has been ugly for Microsoft. Despite the announcement regarding IE7, the users are speaking with their choices. IE continues to lose share to what I will call "OpenSource United." IE is down to 56% share and Mozilla (Firefox and allies) are up to 29%. Shockingly, Safari continues to make a strong showing at 15%.



And the OS breakdown confirms what others have predicted: iPod sales will lift Mac interest and sales. Mac OS X share has increased to an all time high of 20%.



Of course, the same caveats apply as before (see Jan, Feb updates). I have more Mac content than other sites so the results are expected to be skewed. But to the extent that my site used to get 5-7% Mac/Safari hits and 7-10% Mozilla/Firefox hits, these numbers represent a significant and sustained increase in the shares of the respective platforms. Longhorn and IE7 might just come too late for MS.

Project Lazarus - Restore Battery Life on Your iPod

Um, so we noticed recently that our iPods were losing their battery charges much more rapidly. Well, I actually noticed it on Sepi's iPod (iPod G1/2 to you wannabe hipsters out there) a long time ago but the battery replacement situation had not sorted itself out at that time... so I waited. I did my usual "research" (aka, geeked out on the boards) and finally found what seemed to be the most reliable source (and with the best directions) -> NewerTech. Seems that they kept coming out with higher capacity battery replacements for the iPods.

Here's the basic info you need to know:

1. The iPods (except the Shuffle) are hard-drive based and subject to fragmentation. That means as you add and remove files, they're not stored contiguously and so the drive has to search for the bits of your files. When it happens on your computer, it slows things down. On the iPod, you lose battery life. So, as part of finding out why your iPod has lost life, it might due to severe fragmentation. But this shouldn't be too much of a problem.
2. Batteries die - all of them. So eventually, they say about 1.5 years after usual use, they must be replaced. You can either pay Apple or you can try to do it yourself. I obviously chose to do it myself. OtherWorldComputing has lots of batteries for you to chose from.
3. The iPod G1/2 came with a battery rated at 1300 mAh and you can buy a replacement that has either 1800 or 2100 mAh. That translates to significantly longer battery life than even when your iPod was new. If you want really long battery lie, go with the 2100.
4. Don't look for screws and don't do it yourself if you're not mechanically inclined. It's not hard but it sure isn't eas and you MUST read the directions before starting.
5. Final lesson - don't charge the iPod until it's fully drained. It's something about the recharge cycles that these new fangled batteries have and each time you charge it, even if it's a partial charge, it takes away "one life."

Of Mice and Men

As part of my time in fellowship, we have to do some sort of research
(clinical or bench) ... I was daring and decided to step into the lab.
It's been very interesting as I first learned how to properly sedate
the little animals, then to intubate them (it can be hard intubating
people at times ... now imagine it if they're very small) and in this
time, I'm simply amazed how useful Google and the Internet has been. I
cannot imagine doing work like this before the Internet. Even though
UCLA taught us how to use Index Medicus, I actually
never used it. We had this wonderful Melvyl catalog available to us
using ancient terminals... and my last year in college, I was able to
dial-in and did the bulk of my searches without leaving the comfort of
my dorm room. If you're a student now, you must be laughing at this
because you now take it for granted... well, about 10 years ago, even
at a place like UCLA, most people didn't have e-mail or Internet
access in the dorms... that's right, 1994!