Is it Time To Fire The Outsourcerer’s Apprentice?

I suspect that someone who is standing in a hotel lobby screaming “I’m gonna lose my sh*t” into his mobile phone is probably not going to see his sh*t again anytime soon. Yet there he was lighting up the lobby of the Fairmont in Montreal so, naturally, I had to swing in for a closer look.

Alas, the man whose sh”t had sailed, figured out that he was attracting the attention of the security people and stopped yelling. “Sorry”, he said apologetically, “I’ve been on the phone with Tibet or someplace for three hours trying to get my VPN to work.” Poor bugger.

Speaking of work, I know a risk management consultant who waited three months to be paid by a previously reliable client. The reason? Contractor management had been outsourced to a local daycare centre (I’m making that last bit up) and managers who once simply authorized an invoice were now required to wrestle for hours with a hostile web application just to set up their consultants and then take a free monthly trip back to Hell to approve the timesheets. Naturally, this system required a senior manager or higher to do the administration previously handled by clerks and assistants. Smells like P-Cubers to me.

A personal favourite of mine was a long-ago employer who Outsourcerered their Lotus Notes administration and development to a consultant who would work only on projects which allowed him to bill at least 20 hours. Need a field added? Drop down menu not dropping? You’d better hope there’s a point release coming.

So here we have three examples of Outsourcery. That is, taking costs from a responsible, specialized functional area and, just like magic, making them disappear. Now we all know the costs, like the bunny and the dove, end up someplace. And the someplace is your budget, your time and your productivity.  Bunny and dove probably end up in some trousers.

Meanwhile, back in IT, an exultant Geek Lord is collecting a big fat bonus for reducing support costs by 30%, while the P-Cube pretends not to notice that the cost of supporting some poor road warrior with his VPN has simply moved from IT to sales in the form of lost productivity, lower revenue and someone’s sh*t going missing.

The millions of dollars that HR director is crowing about saving has simply shifted from her line to multiple others as senior managers, directors and vice presidents shout at slow applications and outsourced help desks. HR, which is strategic now, in case you missed the memo, will explain that they made it clear that suppliers were not to increase their fees to cover the management tax exacted by the consulting-consultants-to-consult-on-managing-the-consultants. Doesn’t every supplier want to pay an involuntary tax of five or ten percent of billings just so some other supplier can make contract negotiation and payment even slower? Well of course they do.

Bank On Louisville celebrates first birthday today

Bank On Louisville turns one year old today, and everyone is invited to the party! Over 35 vendors will gather on

Tuesday, August 30th between 2-6 pm to provide financial education, employment and career opportunities, asset-building

resources and entertainment for all ages. The free event will take place at the Kentucky Center for African American

Heritage at 1701 West Muhammad Ali Boulevard.

Highlights include participation by several Bank On Louisville bank and credit union partners that will be on hand to

offer free or low-cost bank account openings, as well as information about a variety of banking services. Participants

include 5/3, Republic, BB&T, First Capital Bank of Kentucky, PNC, Chase, Your Community Bank, Old National, Class Act,

Park Community and L&N credit unions.

Numerous financial education providers will be there to offer information on how to apply for the Start Fresh! program

that guides participants through the banking process, and numerous other resources brought by the Louisville Urban

League, Down Payment and Weatherization Assistance, Louisville Asset Building Coalition, Neighborhood Place, Metro United

Way and SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) benefits.

For the kids, many free activities will be offered including the TUMBLEBUS, children’s financial education, inflatables

and on-line video gaming provided by the Louisville Free Public Library. Magic 101.3 will provide music, the BB&T Bus

will offer free credit reports, and the PNC Money Cube will certainly attract the attention of everyone. Snacks and

refreshments will be served.

UPS, the Camber Corporation and Home Instead Senior Care will bring employment opportunities and many other types of

employment assistance will be offered by Community Action Partnership, the Office of Employment & Training, and Jewish

Family Career Services.

Free, financial education workshops for all ages will run throughout the event on topics such as credit scores,

budgeting, job readiness, resume’ writing, micro-enterprise, foreclosure, and tenants rights. Presenters include the

Consumer Credit Counseling Services, Women 4 Women, the FES Network, YouthBuild Louisville, Home Instead Senior Care and

Kentuckiana Works.

Bank On Louisville has enjoyed unprecedented success since it began in Louisville in July 2010. Over 90 public, private

and non-profit partners work together to serve the unbanked and underbanked in our community and to provide financial

education activities. Mayor Greg Fischer, along with Bank On Louisville representatives, will be holding a press

conference this morning at 10am in the Metro Hall Gallery at 527 West Jefferson Street to celebrate the first year’s

successes and announce the goals for the coming year.

Shows of the week: Sade, Deadmau5, Def Leppard

These rockers from Mexico City have won three Latin Grammys for a sound that mixes elements of early punk with politics, tongue-in-cheek humor and rap-rock that's closer in spirit to fellow political firebrands Rage Against the Machine than, say, Limp Bizkit. Their latest release, 2007's "Eternamiente," was pieced together from four solo EPs by each member, earning them their latest Latin Grammy.

Joel Thomas Zimmerman, an electro-house sensation known for rocking the stage in his signature mouse helmet, is that rare breed of artist who's not afraid to bring a sense of showmanship to the often anonymous world of electronica. He's like Canada's answer to Daft Punk. Or, as he told Rolling Stone, "the Gene Simmons of electronic music," working his magic from inside a flashing, strobing LED cube while his fans show up in matching headgear.

These Minneapolis punks are firmly rooted in the "punk as reckless rock and roll" tradition of Social Distortion, with Ryan Young urgently leading the charge with a rasp in his voice and his heart on his sleeve. "In Desolation," their first album since signing to Epitaph, kicks off with the chugging Ramones-style guitars of the anthemic "Drive" and only lets up long enough to take the listener by surprise with a disarmingly romantic unplugged ballad reminiscent of another great Minneapolis punk act, the Replacements.

Gone, but not forgotten: how Steve will remain on the job

Apple's newly-minted CEO has assured his troops that he will be able to keep the magic alive in the post-Steve Jobs era, as some pundits argue that Jobs will still be pulling the strings in the background as long as he's able.

Hours after Jobs resigned as chief executive and was voted in as Apple's new chairman, his replacement Tim Cook sent an email to staff to praise Jobs and reassure them of the company's future.

He described Apple as the "most innovative company in the world" and said joining Apple was the best decision he ever made. Jobs had been an "incredible leader and mentor" and Cook looked forward to his "ongoing guidance and inspiration as our Chairman".

"I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple's unique principles and values," said Cook, who described Apple as a "magical place".

"Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that - it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do."

Apple's shares recovered when the market opened the morning after the Jobs announcement, dropping about 1 per cent - the same decrease experienced by the entire market. This indicates that Jobs's resignation had long been factored into Apple's share price by investors and it was not a huge shock.

Veteran tech columnist Robert X. Cringely believes Jobs stepping down from the coal face coupled with the decision to bring the release of Walter Isaacson's authorised biography forward from March next year to November this year indicated the tech icon's health had taken a turn for the worse and he was now thinking about his legacy.

But the fact that Jobs took an executive chairman position - which will see him on the job every day - instead of bowing out from the company completely indicates he'll still be calling the shots as long as he's able.

"This looks to me like Cook continuing to function in his chief operating officer role," wrote Cringely.

"Oh he'll get a big raise and an even bigger bonus, but my sense is that next week the guy really in charge will still be Steve Jobs."

Cook has filled in for Jobs three times while he has been on medical leave and is regarded as a supply chain genius who significantly increased Apple's profit margins. But he has yet to show the grand vision or charisma of Jobs.

Jobs himself is listed as the principal inventor or one inventor among several on 313 Apple patents. Most are design patents that cover the look and feel of the product and include everything from the white plastic power adapters in newer-model Macs to the striking glass staircases in many Apple stores.

"The quintessential differentiator between Steve Jobs and everyone else is the sheer tenacity and commitment to perfection - the willingness to move mountains to get the right thing," Gadi Amit, founder of industrial design firm NewDealDesign, told Bloomberg.

Gone, but not forgotten: how Steve will remain on the job

Apple's newly-minted CEO has assured his troops that he will be able to keep the magic alive in the post-Steve Jobs era, as some pundits argue that Jobs will still be pulling the strings in the background as long as he's able.

Hours after Jobs resigned as chief executive and was voted in as Apple's new chairman, his replacement Tim Cook sent an email to staff to praise Jobs and reassure them of the company's future.

He described Apple as the "most innovative company in the world" and said joining Apple was the best decision he ever made. Jobs had been an "incredible leader and mentor" and Cook looked forward to his "ongoing guidance and inspiration as our Chairman".

"I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple's unique principles and values," said Cook, who described Apple as a "magical place".

"Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that - it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do."

Apple's shares recovered when the market opened the morning after the Jobs announcement, dropping about 1 per cent - the same decrease experienced by the entire market. This indicates that Jobs's resignation had long been factored into Apple's share price by investors and it was not a huge shock.

Veteran tech columnist Robert X. Cringely believes Jobs stepping down from the coal face coupled with the decision to bring the release of Walter Isaacson's authorised biography forward from March next year to November this year indicated the tech icon's health had taken a turn for the worse and he was now thinking about his legacy.

But the fact that Jobs took an executive chairman position - which will see him on the job every day - instead of bowing out from the company completely indicates he'll still be calling the shots as long as he's able.

Off to the carnival at this year's Fringe

Take a walk through the wild side of carnival life in one of this year's Vancouver International Fringe Festival productions.

Burnaby resident Brian Anderson -a 20-year veteran of Vancouver Theatresports League and director of last year's Fringe hit Gutenberg! The Musical! -takes the title role in his creation Arnie the Carnie's House of Fun.

From nailing hammers up his nose to laying on a bed of nails, and offering up card tricks, the show is a glimpse into the sideshow stunts made famous over the years.

"In a world of YouTube and CGI, it's rare for people to experience wonders in real life," said Anderson in a press release. "We'll be performing some classic stunts of the carnival in front of a live audience and tracing the history of the legendary carnies who created them."

North Vancouver piano player Matt Grinke -who is also currently appearing as lead keyboardist at Theatre Under the Stars' Bye Bye Birdie -provides musical accompaniment and a few stunts of his own.

"When I realized that Matt's talents went beyond the keyboard, we wanted to find a way to showcase his amazing mathematical skills," said Anderson.

During the show, Grinke will unscramble a Rubik's Cube in under a minute, and try to create a magic cube square -where every row and column adds up to a specific number. In this case, the number will be decided by the audience. Allen Morrison, also of Vancouver TheatreSports, is directing the production.

We are what we drink

James Bond had his shaken-not-stirred martinis; The Dude had his White Russians and Carrie Bradshaw had her Cosmopolitans. In this day when our Facebook profiles precede us, it’s nice to have a signature that captures our three-dimensional selves. Hairstyles, clothes and scents help to define our styles, but I say drink orders are the window to the soul. Bartenders glean a lot from a person’s drink order: how well he’ll tip, if he’s likely to get a second date and if he ordered a Manhattan but really wanted a strawberry daiquiri. What you choose from the bar reveals a lot to the company you’re with too—think twice before you order a Sex on the Beach at your office happy hour.

I’ve left a wake of sugary, salty, hungover destruction in my search for a signature cocktail. My drinks during “The Wonder Years”—not counting the vouvray at a chateau in France which, clearly, was an outlier that set me up with nowhere to go but down—were all sickeningly sweet. Wine coolers, vodka mixed with strawberry-kiwi Snapple and shots of Southern Comfort with lime juice were all in my rotation. In college, I had a fling with Amaretto Sours and even learned how to tie the cherry stem into a knot with my tongue. So classy.

In New York, I loved dirty martinis until one bartender asked me, on a scale of one to 10, just how dirty I liked it. Vodka gimlets were soon to follow, but because I liked them with freshly squeezed lime juice instead of Rose’s Lime Cordial, I felt too high maintenance ordering them (and could drink far too many of them). I flirted with beer, but felt unladylike slugging from a bottle. Around then, flavored vodkas hit the scene big time, and I had a long relationship with Absolut Mandarin with soda and a lime. It was clear, unoffensive and completely pointless. Was that what I had become?

When I asked some friends about their signature drinks, it seemed that the men now drink the drinks that their fathers did, while the women choose more self-consciously, considering a drink’s calories, image and whether a spill would stain their white jeans. Shouldn’t drinking be more carefree than that? Some people focused on the sensual side—the clinking sound of a single ice cube in a low-ball glass—while others used their order as a gauge for the talent of the bartender (“If he doesn’t know what a French 75 is, I know to stick with beer”).

I’ve always dreamed of sidling up to the bar and saying, “Scotch on the rocks” the same way I’ve always dreamed of jumping into a cab and shouting, “Grand Central Station and step on it!” Unfortunately, I think that Scotch tastes like Band-Aids and I’ve never been in that big of a rush to get to Grand Central. Perhaps we switch drinks to switch identities. Champagne? You’re effortlessly chic and make magic cube from monotony. Beer? You’re easy-going. Long Island Iced Tea? You’re out to get trashed. Bloody Mary? You’re looking for sympathy. Bourbon? You’re going to drink several and then brood in the corner. Gin? You’re going to get angry.

When I used to travel, I loved to dress up and head to the fanciest hotel in the city for a drink at the bar. In London, I ordered a Pimm’s Cup at the Claridge’s. In Paris, it was Kir Royale at the Ritz. And in Rome, I had a Negroni at the St. Regis. From time to time, I’ll order one of these drinks to reminisce on my formerly jaunty lifestyle, but that says nothing of who I am now.

Area Businesses Provide Plenty of Options for Family Fun

What does a mermaid, spaceship, Rubik’s Cube and the Perrine Bridge have in common?

They’re all part of Laser Mania, a new family fun center that opens soon in Twin Falls.

The business is just one of a handful of places in the valley that, with a variety of games and other activities, cater to young people and families.

“There’s not much for (youth) to do here in Twin Falls except go to the show and roller skate,” said co-owner Rodney Waite. ”And the shows are getting expensive.”

With the opening of Laser Mania, Waite and the other owners — his wife, Edith, and their son and daughter-in-law Jarret and Jenna Waite — hope to offer more options for area families.

Here are some of the valley’s current options of arcades, bounce houses, go-karts, miniature golf and other games:

Jarrett Waite owns a similar family center in St. George, Utah, which he bought from his in-laws about three years ago. It’s done very well in southern Utah — Jarret was nominated Operator of the Year by the International Laser Tag Association —and, with his parents in TwinFalls, he wanted to bring the same attraction to southern Idaho.

The city was supportive when the owners approached about licensing and zoning.

“They said ‘This is something TwinFalls needs and we want you here,’” Jarrett said. Afterward, members of the planning department challenged city council members to a game of laser tag once the center opens.

The laser room is out of this world with its theme of comets and spaceships. And unlike some centers, parents can watch their kids play thanks to windows that look into the room from a nearby hallway.

Besides laser tag, the new center, located in the Lynwood Shopping Center next to Dollar Tree, has an arcade, party room, and miniature golf course that includes five-themed rooms with colorful three-dimensional wall paintings that include pictures of the Perrine Bridge and other area attractions, ocean themes, and a large Rubik’s Cube. “We have the largest Rubik’s Cube in the valley,” Rodney said.

If you like arcade games, you’ll love Tilt.

Located inside the Magic Valley Mall near Shopko, Tilt attracts those who like to test their skills against computer-generated foes. Some are geared to children, others to teens.

“There’s a lot of games here,” said 12-year-old Cody Barnes.

“I like Wheel of Fortune best,” said his 9-year-old sister, Ally.

The kids, along with their sister Lindsey, 11, come often to the arcade with their grandmother, Sharlene Tranmer.

“I think it’s a good place for kids,” Tranmer said. “It’s entertaining and they feel like they get something for their efforts.”

She was referring to the thousand or so tickets her grandchildren had earned from the games last week. They turn in the tickets for prizes.

5 Shortest Lived Tech Products

Companies in Silicon Valley are fond of saying that they like to “fail fast.” They mean that it’s virtuous to try lots of new things, but to give up quickly when something’s not working. But sometimes they fail fast in a manner that’s nothing to brag about. They invest millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars in a new product and hype it to the Heavens -- and then kill it after only a few months, if they ever release it at all.

From this day henceforth, Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad may be the poster child for bizarrely short-lived tech products. But it has lots of company -- famously infamous flops such as Google Wave, the G4 Cube, and the Kin. Let’s honor them, shall we?


For this list, I considered only products that were on the market for less than a year, or which never quite made it to consumers, period. Every item that made it was from a large company that should have known better. And while they all share the indignity of a short, embarrassing life, they represent multiple types of failure. (Some of them should never have left the drawing boards in the first place; others could have been great if they’d been given more time to succeed.)

Taking a Disruptive Approach to Exascale

Early in August the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) held a workshop called “Exascale and Beyond: Gaps in Research, Gaps in our Thinking” that brought together luminaries from the world of high performance computing to discuss research and practical challenges at exascale.

Given the scope of the short event’s series of discussions, we wanted to highlight a few noteworthy presentations to lend a view into how researchers perceive the coming challenges of exascale computing. While all of the speakers addressed known challenges of exascale computing, most brought their own research and practical experiences from large HPC centers to bear.

For instance, MIT professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the university’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Anant Agarwal asked attendees if the current approach to exascale computing is radical enough.

Agarwal focused on the targets set by the Ubiquitous High Performance Computing (UHPC) set forth by DARPA, claiming that the debates have centered on increasing performance while reducing energy but that the challenges are far greater than mere energy. Agarwal argues that the other great hurdles lie in programmability and resiliency—and that to arrive at solutions for these problems, “disruptive research” is required. This kind of research will focus on the fact that getting two out the three big problems (performance, efficiency and programmability) will be relatively “easy” getting all three right presents significant challenges.

NVIDIA’s Bill Dally echoed some of Agarwal’s assertions in his presentation, “Power and Programmability: The Challenges of Exascale Computing” in which he proclaimed the end to historic levels of scaling, citing challenges related to power and code.

In his presentation, Dally claimed that it’s not about the FLOPs any longer, it’s about data movement. And further, it’s not simply a matter of power efficiency as we traditionally think about, it’s about locality.

Dally argues that “algorithms should be designed to perform more work per unit data movement” and that “programming systems should further optimize this data movement.” He went to cite the fact that architectures need to facilitate data movement by providing an exposed hierarchy and efficient communication.

In some ways, Dally’s presentation offered some of the “disruptive” ideas Agarwal cited that can radicalize ways of thinking about exascale limitations. Dally’s focus on locality (optimizing data movement versus focusing on the FLOPs; optimizing subdivision and fetching paradigms; offering an exposed storage hierarchy with more efficient communication and bulk transfer) is a break from the norm in terms of offering solutions for exascale challenges—and one that generated rich fodder for the presentation, which you can find in detail here.

Locality was a hot-button issue at this workshop, drawing a detailed, solution-rich presentation from Allan Snavely, associate director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and adjunct professor in UCSD’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

In his presentation, “Whose Job is it to Find Locality?” Snavely dug deeper into some of the initial concepts Dally put forth. Snavely recognized that people seem to be waiting on “magic” compilers and programming languages to come along, for application programmers to suddenly be rendered flawless, or for machines to simply let users choose how to burn up resources.

He claims that the attitude of “LINPACK has lots of locality, so what’s the problem” is the root of a problem as everyone waits for answers to locality problems to fall out of the sky. In his presentation, Snavely proposes a few solutions, including a new approach to the software stack found here.

In addition to moving the conversation out of the theoretical and into the realm of actual solutions, Snavely discussed how his UCSD team is currently developing tools and methodologies that can identify location in applications to reduce the processor frequency for effective power savings and further, working on tools that can automate the process of inserting “frequency throttling calls” into large-scale applications.

Five Ways Thieves Steal Credit Card Data

Gone are the days of the good old-fashioned purse snatcher. With little brute and more skill, thieves only need a minute, sometimes a second, to pilfer your credit card data.

"Back in the beginning, they got the imprint of credit cards from the carbon copies they dug out of the trash," says William Noonan, assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service's criminal investigative division. "Technology has changed things."

The number of compromised records has been on the decline the last two years, according to the Secret Service, after reaching a record high of 361 million records in 2008. The trend might reverse this year, however, after a recent string of mishaps.

This spring criminals hacked, phished or skimmed their way into the systems of Michaels Stores, Sony, marketing firm Epsilon, Citibank and even security expert RSA, among others. In some cases, they only obtained names and emails. In the worst cases, they got credit card numbers.

The schemes are simpler than you think. Bankrate presents the most common ways thieves pilfer your credit card information.

Suspect: The Waitress at The Diner

Modus operandi: The waitress whisks away your credit card and swipes it through the restaurant's register. Then, she pulls out a small device, about the size of an ice magic cube, from her apron and swipes it through that, says Sergeant David Schultz of the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office in Texas. While you're scraping the last of the chocolate frosting from your plate, your credit card information has been stored in the device, known as a skimmer. The waitress returns your card and performs the same magic trick on dozens of credit cards in a week.

Known whereabouts: The data-stealing waitress has been known to moonlight as a bartender, sales clerk or at any place where she can take your credit card out of sight.

Suspect: The Toy Store Trio

Modus operandi: Sally, Simon and Bud walk into a toy store. Sally and Simon roam the aisles, while Bud waits in line to check out. When Bud is at the register, Simon comes running up to the clerk, screaming that his wife has fainted. As Sally and Simon distract the sales clerk, Bud switches the credit card reader at the register with a modified one of his own, says FICO's Fraud Chief Mike Urban. For the next week, the sales clerk unwittingly collects credit card data on the modified reader until the trio returns, takes back the modified reader and restores the original terminal.

Known whereabouts: The trio will hit other retailers and restaurants, but sometimes the threesome will instead be a duo or a solo criminal.

Suspect: The Gas Lass

Modus operandi: The Gas Lass parks her car in front of a gasoline station off the turnpike. It's late. There's no one around except a sleepy attendant at the register inside. The Gas Lass attaches a skimmer over the credit card reader at the pump. It's a special skimmer: It emits a Bluetooth signal to a laptop close by, says Noonan. The Gas Lass pays, heads off to the motel next door and sets up her laptop to receive the data from the compromised pump over the next several days.

Known whereabouts: The Gas Lass installs skimmers over ATMs, parking meters, vending machines and any other places with unmanned credit card readers.

Cool apps for hot weather

Then again, anything or anybody who steps out into these relentless cook-a-five-course-meal-on-the-sidewalk temperatures is going to warm up a bit. Still, it makes sense that today's hottest technology could help us handle this record-setting summer swelter.

So stop playing Angry Birds for a few minutes and check out these free and inexpensive programs from Apple's iTunes App Store and Google's Android Market. Some of them offer practical heat-beating advice, and others might just make you feel a little bit cooler.

Oasis Places (Apple iOS; free): If you absolutely have to be outside, you'll want to stay hydrated. This app, from Thermos, can help. It reveals public drinking fountains near your location and rates each on a scale of one to five drops according to coldness, flavor, location and cleanliness. You can add your own ratings, photos and comments, and the listings provide directions to the fountains, complete with a map. I found 24 public drinking water sources within three miles of the American-Statesman offices. The highest-rated were at Book People, the University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library and UT's Red McCombs School of Business, with four drops each. A fountain on the Lady Bird Lake trail (behind the Milago condominiums on the north shore of the lake) fared worse, rating only one drop each for coldness and flavor. Comments can be practical: One user wrote that a fountain at Festival Beach was "one of the dirtiest tasting water fountains I have tasted," and another user noted that the tallest fountain at REI on Lamar Bouelvard "shoots cold, refreshing water super high, watch out!"

Waterlogged (iOS; free, with premium features for purchase): So you know where to score some H2O, but how much is enough? Discover your recommended daily water intake and track it with this app. Premium features (which cost extra via in-app purchase) include reminders and social media connectivity.

Meter Reading (Android; $1.15): This app will let you track your home's electricity consumption. Cue that wah-wah trombone music they play for losers on game shows.

Heat Temperature Converter (iOS; free); Temperature Converter (Android, free): Key in the current 100-plus Fahrenheit temp and enjoy its much cooler-seeming Celsius equivalent.

Coppertone MyUVAlert (iOS; free): This app shows the current UV Index for your location (Austin was at 11 when I checked — extreme UV radiation; Chicago, for comparison, topped out at 6 — high) and recommends necessary sun protection steps for that rating. Those steps might include sunscreen, UV-blocking sunglasses, a hat and other protective clothing, midday shade and avoidance of the sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. You can create sun care profiles for members of your family (based primarily on age) and get product recommendations for them — Coppertone, of course — based upon specific sunny-day activities. The app also lets you add a reminder that will alert you when sunscreen should be reapplied, and includes sun-care tips and coupons.

NBA – Miami Heat Theme (Android; $1.99): Skin your phone with this NBA-licensed red, yellow and black theme. If somebody asks why you're supporting the Heat instead of the Spurs, just tell them, "It's not the Heat; it's the humidity!"

iFan — The Virtual Heat Chaser (iOS; free): There's no real fan here, just an animation of one on your screen. When you get bored with it (and the novelty wears off quickly), find a shady spot and log into the iTunes App Store. You'll feel much cooler than those downloaders who have left comments complaining that the program doesn't actually produce a breeze.

Heat Index and Relative Humidity Calculator (iOS; 99 cents); Heat Index (Android, free): Really, who cares how hot it is? You want to know how hot it feels. These apps measure perceived temperature and relative humidity (not that there's really much difference between "inferno" and "surface of the sun").

Ice Cube (iOS; free): Push a virtual button to fill your device's screen with kind of real-looking ice cubes; then shake your device and listen to them clatter as they move around.

Waterslide Extreme (iOS; free): Too hot for Schlitterbahn? Careen your way down a twisty, virtual waterslide in this free game.

Sunblocker (Android; free): This app obtains the UV forecast and, based on your skin type, warns you when you're about to burn. It reminds you when it's time to hydrate and when sunblock should be reapplied. If it repeatedly asked "Hot enough for ya?" it would be the perfect nag.

Mature puzzle gamers will love 'Catherine'

"Catherine" is a breath of fresh air in a summer filled with video game sequels and bland shooters. This is a puzzle game and part dating simulator where every decision is the wrong choice. Add in a supernatural story where your nightmares can kill, and you get the strangest and most compelling story of the year.

You begin "Catherine" as the protagonist Vincent who is having a "When are we going to take our relationship to the next level?" conversation with his long-term girlfriend Katherine. As a programmer who feels trapped by the talk, Vincent's long night at the bar ends in a chance encounter with a girl named Catherine. She is flirty and provocative and Vincent not-so innocently talks with her about his problems.

It is easy to guess what happens next as life gets very difficult for Vincent as he juggles two very different girls. Katherine is the love of his life, but Catherine is fun and exciting and doesn't talk about responsibility nor commitment. As this drama unfolds, Vincent starts to have nightmares where he believes that he has the horns of a sheep and he needs to climb block-like structures to survive. To make matters worse, the local news shows are reporting that men are dying in their sleep for unexplainable reasons.

The game in "Catherine" revolves around Vincent's nightmares as he tries to survive each dream. Each level begins with Vincent standing at the base of a long stair-like structure. By moving blocks side to side or front to back, you try to create stairs that will help you ascend to the top. The way that each cube connects to the other magic cube edges makes this a unique three-dimensional puzzle game. There is no other mainstream game like it. Learning all of the tricks to manipulate the environment will take much longer than the dozen hours needed to finish the single player adventure.

Mark my words, "Catherine" is a brutally challenging puzzle game. There's no worry about letting a minor play this game for the racy story - they probably wouldn't have the tenacity or patience to work though the puzzles to see the next cut scene. I highly recommend "easy" difficulty at first. Restarting the game on a harder setting is easy since you can skip scenes you saw already. There is a secret "very easy" difficulty level too if you get stuck, but you will have to look it up on the Internet to unlock it.

The story of "Catherine" was my main draw. This game intelligently tackles the age-old story about when a person in a relationship has to grow up and accept responsibility for his actions and feelings. The mythology surrounding the nightmares offers a clever way to thread the story into a life-or-death situation. There is a lot more going on than a simple romance.

Though I couldn't wait to finish each level, this game is not for everyone. Download the demo or rent it to see if the puzzle mechanics are your cup of tea. For me, if "Catherine" was released in the theater, I would be first in line to buy a ticket.

My Corner of the Canyon: ­­­Despite Reality, Hope Springs Eternal

The exotic sits on the table. It is surrounded by decidedly un-exotic things: a parking ticket, a brochure from Gelson’s, the remote control and a stuffed, carnival-prize banana with a cartoon smiling face (Okay, that’s somewhat exotic).

I have never had an orchid plant before. This one was a gift as a thank-you for my work with a local Topanga home-school group. I had been invited to share creation stories and Greek myths with the students and direct them in acting out the tales. We all had a pretty good time, as young teens tempted by a serpent and the pursuit of knowledge were banished from the garden and moved on east of Eden.

In later classes they transformed into Gods and Goddesses rising from the mortal world to the rare heights of Mt. Olympus, decreeing who will live and who will die while draped in shiny fabric sheets, heads adorned with wreaths and plastic crowns.

I named the plant Pandora, which means gift of the Gods. Unfortunately I, as with the original Pandora, had no practical knowledge of how to care for my gift. It seemed easy at first, the plant just sat there looking pretty and elegant on those tapering, tropical stems, and sometimes I was even inspired to clear the cluttered debris from the dining table as a tribute to her delicate beauty. I was advised to water her with an ice cube about once a week, which somehow always made me covet a martini. Then one day a flower fell.

In an attempt at horticulture, I have gone on line to research my charge and discovered I have in my care a Phalaenopsis. To be exact I have a Phalaenopsis Aphrodite or Moon Orchid. It has petals of cloud white, soft, looking like powder with a pale yellow center and etched, deep within, rather spidery looking pink streaks. As I looked closely, some of the stems from which the flowers bloom are turning brown and I fear soon all will fall, silently and softly, dropping like Pandora’s tears for having unleashed all those sorrows on our world.

A book I found at the library, The Orchid Thief, written by Susan Orlean, contains more facts and history about orchids than one would reasonably want to know and it became a national bestseller. Evidently, there is quite an orchid cult and there is danger of the unsuspecting or weak of mind to become enthralled with the plant to the point of obsession. Some plants sell for thousands of dollars and from time to time greenhouses are pillaged and accusations fly. Murders have been committed. Devotees dream of orchids, scheme to create new hybrids and long to one day see the elusive and mythical black orchid.

Not everyone likes orchids. Tennessee Williams, as a young man, compared his glimpse of a prostitute’s genitalia to that of a dying orchid, the shock of which he claimed to have never gotten over and hence remained rather frightened of the flower throughout his life. I don’t know how he got himself into such a situation, where he had no business being in the first place, for we know that Mr. Williams was not predisposed to vaginal admiration, but I like to think he must have been in an especially dark poet’s mood that day or came at it from the wrong angle. However, I see his point. Vividly.

I myself am not much of a delicate exotic. I’m more of a pumpkin, sort of round, jolly and bright. I attempt from year to year to grow the fruit in my own hardscrabble, fallen garden. Planting in the spring yielded nothing. Not one pumpkin seedling sprouted and I suspected gophers had enjoyed my efforts, as I noted little piles of dirt all over the place. Not much on persistence, I let it go. Then something came over me about two weeks ago, an obsession of sorts. Some inner voice sounded and through all the clatter and strum of daily life, I heard it clearly, “Plant pumpkins, plant pumpkins now!”

I made a special trip to find seeds. One pack left. I did the germination math and figured it would take 110 days. If I planted, right now, this very day, I could have a pumpkin for Halloween. Surveying the yard, I planned to spread out, plant everywhere; if gophers ate the seeds in one part of the yard perhaps they would leave the other part alone, (just a theory). In the fading sun, on a Topanga afternoon with tropical clouds turning color, I planted. Five sections were sown with seed. Five possible pumpkin patches. I was hopeful; I saw the future. And indeed, in just a few days little sprouts burst through that dry earth, some inner power telling them to raise their green leaves toward the sun and grow.

There are three possible culprits: gopher, snail and rabbit. Suddenly the sprouts were gone like bad magic, disappeared back into the ground, called down by the God of the Underworld to grace his halls, not mine. I guess he, Hades, makes a fourth suspect and formidable, but to a large part I think it is snails. I saw some of the leaves chewed and noticed those phosphorescent silver trails around the ravaged plant. In an imaginative attempt at preservation, I took to covering the remaining plants with plastic cups at night. I had cut out the bottom and placed them over the sprout to allow for light and growth and for a while it seemed to work until I saw the cups tipped over and the plant, eaten or gone. Perhaps all my garden pests were working in tandem and sharing the spoils; bunny knocking over cup and nibbling, snail slithering in and slurping, gopher munching from below, Dark God laughing.

how in-ear monitors are made, from impressions to impressing

You probably don't think "top-tier audio" when you ponder the wonders of Colorado Springs, but sure enough, one of music's best kept secrets is headquartered there, camped out slyly in quite the nondescript building. A few months back, we were granted unprecedented access to Westone's lair (just a year and change after visiting Klipsch's HQ), and they even let a film crew in for good measure. The goal? To show you, the budding audiophile, exactly how a set of custom in-ear monitors are crafted, and what kind of work goes into creating one of the planet's most diminutive speaker arrangements. We've whipped up the entire experience there in the video above, but if you're looking for a more textual perspective, head on past the break.

Westone's certainly not the only headphone company that'll concoct a set specifically for your ears -- in fact, it doesn't even offer average consumers the option of strolling into its headquarters to get the process started unless you're a reputable artist. So, how does a simpleton go about getting a set of custom ES5s, or decide if it's even worth the coin? Glad you asked.


The vast majority of folks simply roll down to their local audiologist and get a set of impressions made. Easier said than done, but really, it's not nearly as bad as it probably sounds. Most docs charge between $50 and $100 to get it done, and it rarely takes over a half-hour from start to finish. As we found out, it's actually a fairly weird sensation -- prospective customers have a wad of silicon squeezed down their ear canal (after a stopper is situated at the far end, of course), and are then forced to remain motionless for two to three minutes

If all goes well, what'll emerge is a semi-hardened impression of your ear canal, with every nook and crannie perfectly replicated. From there, you'd have your doctor ship 'em off to your headphone company of choice. We'd recommend putting in an order ahead of time, of course, so they can immediately match up your ears to a to-be-built set of 'buds. That's where things get really interesting...

Building the monitors

It's hard to say if every single custom audio maker goes through the same painstaking process as Westone, but the sheer quantity of manual labor that goes into making a single set of ES5s -- as we found out -- is staggering. Once your molds hit the lab, a tedious workflow begins. They're shaved down, tossed into a cube of wax (that's where the negatives are created) and then preserved -- you know, in case you need a second pair after leaving 'em backstage in Reno. The negatives are then passed through a top secret lab, and after a fair bit of magic (read: we couldn't pry the specifics out of 'em), a couple of earbuds materialize. You're able to pick the color and cabling, and somewhere along the way, a number of drivers (five for the ES5) are popped into each monitor and wired up for action.


After you've got a workable product, round two begins. We witnessed no fewer than three folks take our monitors under the magnifying glass and shave off bits and pieces until the edges were perfectly smooth, and the fit was left perfect. Once the craftsman in charge deems 'em fit to move on, your gear is hooked up to a frequency analyzer in order to prove that it passes muster from an internals standpoint. We actually asked what happens to IEMs that fail this particular test, and we got a pretty straightforward answer: "they're ripped apart, rewired, and subjected to the entire assembly process once more."

After the hard work's complete, your cables of choice are strapped on, your serial numbers are etched in and a carrying case finds a new set of friends to hold. Oh, and then it's dropped off to FedEx, where you're encouraged to pray for safe travels.

10 Award-Winning Scientific Simulation Videos

Thanks to increasingly cheap, fast and efficient computing power, scientific simulations are now a crucial tool for researchers who want to ask once impractical scientific questions or generate data that laboratory experiments can’t.

But there's more to harnessing an army of computers than testing a hypothesis or extrapolating real-world observations. Simulations contextualize and clarify mountains of data into striking graphics that play to human strengths.

"The human eye can pick out patterns in simulations that are are otherwise hard to describe, and they can do it better than any computer," said visualization scientist Joseph Insley of Argonne National Laboratory. "Plus, with the incredible amount of data gathered these days, it's difficult to analyze it any other way."

Making a useful scientific simulation isn't light work. If field researchers want to do it themselves, they must learn to code instructions for computer processing and control advanced 3-D animation software. Because of these hurdles, and the increasing sophistication of modeling methods, most team up with computer and visualization scientists to get the job done.

Ready-to-run simulation instructions can demand incredible computing resources. To churn out timely and useful data, it's not unusual to consume millions of processor hours. (Thirty minutes of nonstop number-crunching on a personal computer's dual-core processor, for example, is equivalent to one processor hour).

To reward the past year's most impressive scientific simulation efforts with bragging rights — and a shiny, Oscar-like statue — Insley and others coordinated the fourth "Visualization Night" competition. The U.S. Department of Energy hosted the event in July 2011 during its annual program called SciDAC, or Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing.

Twenty-three hopefuls entered, but only 10 earned a "people's choice" award from their scientific peers. Two won awards from a three-person panel of experts.

We review the researchers' favorite animated submissions in this gallery.

The Island's Olympic contenders

One year from today in the land of stiff upper lips, dreary skies and stout ales, more than 40 Island athletes will be among the Canadian team competing in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games from July 27 to Aug. 12 in London.

Top Island athletes are preparing to fulfil a lifetime of dreams.

The Island's contribution to the Canadian Summer Olympics team has historically, on a per-capita basis, been extraordinary. That's largely because the opportunity to train year-round in a mild climate has attracted elite athletes and made this a hub for national team training centres.

As a result, impressive numbers of home-grown Island athletes have in turn been inspired by what they see going on around them and have aspired to the Games themselves, with hundreds of Islanders making it over the years.

Support facilities, such as the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence on the Camosun College Interurban campus, have sprung up as a result of all this top-level sporting activity in the region.

Qualification is on-going and the Canadian team is far from set, but one year-out, here are the Top-20 Island story-lines to look for on the road to the 2012 London Summer Games.

1 RYAN COCHRANE SWIMMING

After the bronze medal as a 19year-old in the 1,500-metre freestyle at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, followed by gold at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and silvers at the 2009 and 2011 world championships, expectations will be high on this Victorian's sinewy shoulders.

But standing in the way of a golden ending to the tale is world-record holder Sun Yang of China. The Yang-Cochrane duel will be among the most compelling in London.

2 DAVID CALDER, SCOTT FRANDSEN ROWING

This Victoria pair, silver medallists at Beijing in 2008, will also be under considerable pressure to take the next step to the top of the podium. They aren't shying from the challenge and have labelled their quest: "Turning Olympic silver to gold."

A confident pair, but hardly cocky, theirs will be a pursuit worth watching.

"It's a special situation and we're working and putting in the sweat hard every day to close that gap in London," said Calder, the father of two who has made a personal financial sacrifice by taking a two-year leave of absence from his job with the B.C. government to follow his dreams to London.

"We know we can go so much faster and are looking ahead to a great year of training."

The London Olympic trials for rowing are later this month in Bled, Slovenia.

3 LINDSAY JENNE RICH ROWING

Canada has notoriously had a bad rate of converting world championship gold to Summer Olympic gold. But this Claremont grad, who barely missed making the team for Beijing, is now defending world champion in lightweight and looks great for London.

4 SIMON WHITFIELD TRIATHLON

Can he possibly come through for a third Olympic medal at age 37? He was previously underestimated at both Sydney 2000 and Beijing 2008. There is something about the glaring spotlight of the Olympics that brings out the best in this legendary Victorian.

Is there anything left to draw from in that seemingly magic well? That question will be answered in London.

5 GEOFF KABUSH MAX PLAXTON MOUNTAIN BIKING

Not yet a golden oldie like Whitfield, the veteran and steady Kabush, a UVic mechanical engineering graduate from Courtenay, is looking to go out a medallist in his third Olympics.

Magic Cube Virtual Laser Computer Keyboard von TheSnugg: Möge das Tippen immer mit dir sein!

How did the universe come to be? We don’t know yet, of course, but we know enough about cosmology, gravitation, and quantum mechanics to put together models that standing a fighting chance of capturing some of the truth.

Stephen Hawking‘s favorite idea is that the universe came out of “nothing” — it arose (although that’s not really the right word) as a quantum fluctuation with literally no pre-existing state. No space, no time, no anything. But there’s another idea that’s at least as plausible: that the universe arose out of something, but that “something” was simply “chaos,” whatever that means in the context of quantum gravity. Space, time, and energy, yes; but no order, no particular arrangement.

It’s an old idea, going back at least to Lucretius, and contemplated by David Hume as well as by Ludwig Boltzmann. None of those guys, of course, knew very much of our modern understanding of cosmology, gravitation, and quantum mechanics. So what would the modern version look like?

That’s the question that Anthony Aguirre, Matt Johnson and I tackled in a paper that just appeared on arxiv. (Both of my collaborators have also been guest-bloggers here at CV.)

    Out of equilibrium: understanding cosmological evolution to lower-entropy states
    Anthony Aguirre, Sean M. Carroll, Matthew C. Johnson

    Despite the importance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is not absolute. Statistical mechanics implies that, given sufficient time, systems near equilibrium will spontaneously fluctuate into lower-entropy states, locally reversing the thermodynamic arrow of time. We study the time development of such fluctuations, especially the very large fluctuations relevant to cosmology. Under fairly general assumptions, the most likely history of a fluctuation out of equilibrium is simply the CPT conjugate of the most likely way a system relaxes back to equilibrium. We use this idea to elucidate the spacetime structure of various fluctuations in (stable and metastable) de Sitter space and thermal anti-de Sitter space.

It was Boltzmann who long ago realized that the Second Law, which says that the entropy of a closed system never decreases, isn’t quite an absolute “law.” It’s just a statement of overwhelming probability: there are so many more ways to be high-entropy (chaotic, disorderly) than to be low-entropy (arranged, orderly) that almost anything a system might do will move it toward higher entropy. But not absolutely anything; we can imagine very, very unlikely events in which entropy actually goes down.

In fact we can do better than just imagine: this has been observed in the lab. The likelihood that entropy will increase rather than decrease goes up as you consider larger and larger systems. So if you want to do an experiment that is likely to observe such a thing, you want to work with just a handful of particles, which is what experimenters succeeded in doing in 2002. But Boltzmann teaches us than any system, no matter how large, will eventually fluctuate into a lower-entropy state if we wait long enough. So what if we wait forever?

It’s possible that we can’t wait forever, of course; maybe the universe spends only a finite time in a lively condition like we see around us, before settling down to a truly stable equilibrium that never fluctuates. But as far as we currently know, it’s equally reasonable to imagine that it does last forever, and that it is always fluctuating. This is a long story, but a universe dominated by a positive cosmological constant (dark energy that never fades away) behaves a lot like a box of gas at a fixed temperature. Our universe seems to be headed in that direction; if it stays there, we will have fluctuations for all eternity.

Which means that empty space will eventually fluctuate into — well, anything at all, really. Including an entire universe.

This basic story has been known for some time. What Anthony and Matt and I have tried to add is a relatively detailed story of how such a fluctuation actually proceeds — what happens along the way from complete chaos (empty space with vacuum energy) to something organized like a universe. Our answer is simple: the most likely way to go from high-entropy chaos to low-entropy order is exactly like the usual way that systems evolve from low entropy to high-, just played backward in time.

Marvel Studios moving forward towards the mystical with 'Dr. Strange'

I know everyone's predicting the death of the comic book superhero adaptation, but don't tell Marvel Studios.  According to Twitch Film, the Disney subsidiary is moving ahead with development on "Dr. Strange."  Reportedly, scribes Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer have turned in a draft and the studio is now looking for a director to oversee continued development.

When the duo were hired last year, they had just done drafts of "Cowboys & Aliens" and the "Conan the Barbarian" reboot.  "Cowboys" did not have the opening weekend the powers-that-be had hoped for, but nonetheless, Donnelly and Oppenheimer were hot off the hot list at the time they were signed.  In other words, Marvel was serious about bringing their supernatural superhero to the big screen.

Created in 1963, the "Dr. Strange" comic tells the story of a surgeon who,injured in a car accident, goes on to become the Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel universe and uses magical powers to protects the world from otherworldy menaces.

Although Thor is a god, the movie sidestepped the supernatural aspects to a large degree.  Thor himself says he's from a place where science and magic are the same thing.  The Cosmic Cube is showing itself now, but that's not quite the same as the world of Dr. Strange.  To fans of Marvel mysticism, nothing else will do.

Word is the Donnelly/Oppenheimer script is now being shopped to a short list of potential directors.  Sounds like Marvel is still serious and it is possible that "Dr. Strange" could reach multiplexes by summer of 2013.