It’s all a Blur

First, some Fun Geekery
Before the ‘official’ start of this post, here’s a neat picture of what this blog looks like if you bring it up in the iPhone’s Safari browser:

Thanks to John Biehler for this screenshot from his iPhone. I got the plugin for WordPress that formats the postings properly for the device, and I have to say it looks like it works really well. Lets hope that I’ll be looking at a similar view soon (more about my imminent iPhone in Canada as it gets closer to a reality).

Recent Past and Near Future
The days really do seem to be going by with increasing speed, with Pam’s departure for the ‘Great White South’ coming sooner with each passing day. She leaves for Seattle, flies to Los Angeles, Santiago and Ushuaia (Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina) and then boards the ship with the Antarctic Peninsula as it’s destination the second week of February. Tomorrow, being the first day of February, really does feel a whole lot closer to the start of that journey for both of us (and she had a big grin on her face this morning as she went through many of her clothes and other equipment that she’ll be taking with her, as well as counting Chilean and Argentinean Pesos for her brief stops in those countries).

I’m also busy with many activities besides work. In fact, the past 2 weeks have had me out in the evenings several times, including attending the Launch Party 3 at the Lamplighter for Strutta, Sun, Techvibes, and Layer7 the first Blogger Meetup of the new Year (See Jan Karlsbjerg’s excellent write-up), as well as some dinners out with Pam at some restaurants that we’re trying out because of Dine Out Vancouver, including ( Aqua Riva by the Coal Harbour Waterfront, Bistro Pastis in Kitsilano, and tomorrow night, the Goldfish Pacific Kitchen in Yaletown) which goes on for a few more days). In addition, the holiday gift that Pam had gotten me, an XO OLPC (One Laptop Per Child Laptop) arrived, and I’ve been playing with this toy a bit as well - indeed the photo with me in the Blogger Meetup shows it off. I hope to be able to use it when the weather gets a bit better, as a way to connect to our Internet router from the park nearby our building to surf the net and post to this blog in the open air, a sort of hi-tech+nature goal I’ve had for some time. I’ll try and post the pictures from the unboxing of this charming piece of technology soon.

Before Pam leaves, it looks like I’ll be doing another one of those working weekends at IBM. Well, at least this time it won’t be during a bad snowstorm. Or it shouldn’t, despite the fact that we’ve been getting an awful lot of snow lately for this area (including enough to force many to work remotely earlier this week). While she’s gone, I’ll be attending my third Northern Voice, which will keep me busy enough while she’s exploring the Antarctic ice floes…

Post MacWorld Reckoning

Now that we’re back, unpacked, and somewhat caught up on email, laundry, grocery shopping, and all of those other chores that await when you return home, I can write a little about the past week.

Macworld is still fun, but its even more fun when Pam comes along, because it really just turns into a mini-vacation for both of us with Mac nerd activities thrown in. We got there on Monday night, only a little late. Our hotel was the whimsical and friendly Triton Hotel, a boutique inn on Grant Street, right by the gate to Chinatown. Besides the decidedly off-the-wall decor, they had a free wine and beer happy hour every day, and the young and hip staff frequently hit the switch to open the front doors for us so we often felt like we were making grand entrances (and exits). While the room was small, it was certainly usable, and the free wi fi Internet in every room wasn’t too shabby either.

Rather than get up at 3:00 AM to get in line for the Keynote (like some people I know) we arose at a decent hour and spent most of Tuesday at the two show floors, seeing new products and occasionally bumping into old friends. We had a great dinner at the nearby organic foodie restaurant ‘Roots’ (no relation to the Canadian clothing chain), including a Duck confit salad and an exceptionally delicious ‘Dungeness Crab/Mac & Cheese’ dish that I think should become a classic.

On Wednesday, I managed to make it to several Conference sessions. The one on using the new Finder in OSX Leopard turned out to be far too basic for me, so I left early and dropped into a nearby session on using the iWork applications (and got some very good tips on Numbers, the spreadsheet package in iWork). I also went to a session on iLife which was heavily weighted toward using iPhoto, although I did get a better feel for how to edit in the new version of iMovie. I guess you could say that it was a highly ‘i-centric’ day. In the evening Pam and I decided to go out for some lighter fare, and ended up in a small Thai restaurant that oddly enough was the very same site (a 1938 diner that has seen countless restaurants) where I had first discovered fusion cuisine in Barbara Tropp’s now long-gone China Moon Café of the mid 1990’s. It was sad to think that restaurants, like the people who run them, are all too mortal.

On Thursday I caught a few more sessions, but I really wanted to spend a bit more time at some key booths (Parallels, Microsoft, Filemaker, and El Gato were all on my list), as well as make a short trip to the Apple Store to get…(drum roll, please) an iPhone. Now, with the swiftly shifting sands of the jailbreaking of Firmware update 1.1.2, the new 1.1.3 Firmware update that adds new functionality, and the soon-to-be released Developer SDK next month, I’m frankly a bit torn as to how to Unlock this phone. While hardware solutions might be the the most effective, I really would like to be able to update the phone like everybody else, especially to add the whole new raft of 3rd party applications due to hit in the coming months. So, I’m going to have to go slowly and carefully, with the goal of getting my iPhone working in the least invasive and destructive way (hopefully without sawing off pieces of my SIM, or doing some other destruction). It would have helped if Rogers would finally offer the iPhone, but if Telus rolls out GSM and offers it first, I’ll switch carriers before you can say “Ring”. Hear that Rogers? You’ve kept me (and thousands like me) waiting long enough, so I’ve got zero loyalty to you.

On Thursday evening we, we met with an old friend of mine for dinner (at a nearby bistro - Steak with Bordelaise sauce, Frites and Leeks Vinaigrette - Oh yeah!), and then took a taxi to Davies Hall, where we heard the San Francisco Philharmonic. They gave a concert of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 (with the flute soloist being Timothy Day, an old friend of my parents who even performed a piece of mine years ago), Xenakis’s surprisingly beautiful and affecting L’Ile de Gorée for harpsichord and large ensemble, and Schubert’s 9th (’The Great’) Symphony in C Major. I hadn’t heard Michael Tilson Thomas conduct since I briefly met him many years ago in London, so it was great to see how he had matured as a conductor. The orchestra was first-rate and played everything beautifully, and I had to admit that I was probably grinning for nearly all of the Schubert —it’s a fun piece, full of good ideas, great tunes and rich colours, but I also know it really well. I could have almost sung along for the whole performance (but I didn’t, thank goodness for Pam and all the rest of the people sitting around me).

Friday morning, after a light breakfast (incredibly buttery croissants from the Café de la Presse next door), we headed on to the airport, and caught the Qantus 747 home. By 3:30, we were back, which takes me to the chores I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Now it’s late Sunday night, and having gone through my mail for work, I see that I have a busy week ahead of me. Oh well. The iVacation is definitely over.

In the Blogger’s Lounge

After a grueling morning that included waiting in a 3 block line to get our preregistered (hah!) badges, as well as a chaotic set of directions that sent Pam from one line to another once we got inside, we are finally taking a breather at 4:50 pm. It’s almost five?!! Wow, day 1 went by fast.

MacWorld is bigger and more crowded than I remember, for this decade, and I’ve been here nearly every year since 1987. It reminds of the shows I used to attend in the late 80’s and early 90’s, when Apple was on its second wave of success (if you count the Apple II as the first wave). There are 2 halls: the first one we made our way through was the ’small hall’. It turns out that this one was more of an appetizer, and this hall is about twice as big, both area and height.

We’ve run into a few old friends, and the theme of this year’s expo, at least according to what Pam tells me is: I’m getting old. Even my friends have grey hair.

As I sit in this relatively quiet lounge of white upholstered chairs, modern lamps and bowls of M&M packets (with extra printing of the icons of each of the Microsoft Office products on them), Pam is sitting next to me and also taking a break. Nevertheless, she can’t help but edit me as I write this, so it may read a little better than my usual posting.

OK. This took enough time, and despite the relative trendiness of uploading a photo of us as I do this, I think I’ve spent enough time while the multitudes of vendors and products await. I may be getting old, but this Expo hasn’t beat me yet!

PreBoarding

I’m enjoying some unusual luxuries (at least in the airports I’d been in during my last trip): free public Wi-fi and an electric outlet, right by a clean table in one of the food courts at the Vancouver Airport. Despite that horrible story about the tase-ing of a polish fellow some months ago, I have to say I really like this airport. My flight will be boarding in about 20 minutes, but unfortunately, Pam’s flight is delayed, and she’ll be an hour behind me instead of the original 15 minutes. This means that we’ll probably reach our hotel in San Francisco at around midnight instead of 11pm. I suspect that also means that I won’t be seeing the keynote in person tomorrow, as I find that getting up at 5 or 6 am after getting to sleep at 1 am is a sure way to ruin my day. In any case, I’ve seen Stevenotes before, and I suspect that I’ll be able to catch them in the future. Serves me right for cutting it so close.

I’ll try and blog while we’re in San Francisco, about the show, the city, the old friends I hope to see, and the little holiday that Pam and I are going to try to have before she gets into full pre-Antarctica mode. So, here’s signing off in Vancouver, and see you in the City by the Bay.

The IKEA Code

I always wondered how they came up with the names for products at IKEA. I found out today that apparently they had ‘cracked the code’ , or at least found the pattern(s) for the names. So the next time you see a JERKER or JONKOPING named product, check your cheat sheet with the naming standards, now in Wikipedia:

IKEA products are identified by single word names. Most of the names are either Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Norwegian in origin. Although there are some notable exceptions, most product names are based on a special naming system developed by IKEA.^[2]

• Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames (for example: Klippan)
• Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names
• Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names
• Bookcase ranges: Occupations
• Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays
• Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names
• Chairs, desks: men’s names
• Materials, curtains: women’s names
• Garden furniture: Swedish islands
• Carpets: Danish place names
• Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms
• Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones; words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling
• Children’s items: mammals, birds, adjectives
• Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms
• Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions
• Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish placenames

For example, DUKTIG (meaning: good, well-behaved) is a line of children’s toys, OSLO is a name of a bed, JERKER (a Swedish masculine name) is a popular desk, DINERA (meaning: dine) for tableware, KASSETT (meaning: cassette) for media storage. One range of office furniture is named EFFEKTIV (meaning: efficient), SKÄRPT (meaning: sharp or clever) is a line of kitchen knives.

A notable exception is the IVAR shelving system, which dates back to the early 1970s. This item is named after the item’s designer.

Because IKEA is a world-wide company working in several countries with several different languages, sometimes the Nordic naming leads to problems where the word means something completely different to the product. A well known example was the bed frame GUTVIK. As the word can be pronounced Gootfick it invites German-speaking people to understand it like gut fick which is somewhat close to “good fuck” in German.

Company founder Ingvar Kamprad, who is dyslexic, found that naming the furniture with proper names and words, rather than a product code, made the names easier to remember

How about that! Well, now I can go to an IKEA without scratching my head so much.