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 3^rd 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 9^th (‘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.