This is not your practice blog

More about what's happening here

Hello. In yesterday's post I described what I was doing and tried to establish a fair, level tone, and I'd like to thank most commenters for noticing that and following suit. As I said then, I'm recording observations about what happens as I try out a Nexus One instead of my usual iPhone 3GS for 3 months, a nice solid block of time. I'm not declaring one phone to be better than the other. I think they're both amazing, and I'm having fun playing with a great new technology toy. And I'm not trying to evaluate phone features for anybody but me. This is all about my own experiences and preferences.

Yes, I work for Google, although not on Android. No, Google didn't ask me to do this -- I thought it up myself. In fact, I really should say that everything I write her represents my own opinion, not Google's. No, I haven't already decided what I'm going to do after the 3 months are up. If I had to decide today ... well, I'm glad I don't have to decide today.

Thanks for reading. I'll have more tips & stuff tomorrow.

Nexus One info for iPhone users

I've been a happy iPhone user since the day the first one went on sale. About 4 weeks ago, I got a Nexus One from my employer (UPDATE: to be clear, I work for Google), and it seemed pretty cool, so I decided to try it out as my actual, one-and-only cell phone. To make this a fair test, I decided to stop using my beloved iPhone for 3 months and use only the Nexus One.

If you're an iPhone user trying out a Nexus One, here are some tips to get you started.

• You can simply move the SIM from iPhone to the N1. However, you won't get 3G on AT&T, only Edge. This hasn't been a big deal for me. And my iPhone data plan seems to work fine for the N1. 
• I miss the iPhone's silence/ring switch, but you can silence the phone by swiping the volume control on the lock screen. If the phone is already on, hold down the Volume Down button to (silently) silence.
• If you use Gmail or Google Calendar, you'll love the native apps for those products. Finally, they get out of browser jail.
• Voice input is not just a toy: it really works and I rely on it. By speaking clearly (but not necessarily slowly), I usually get 100% accuracy, even if there's background noise, which I think is the noise-canceling mic at work.
• The Android Market (where you buy apps) has a 24-hour money back policy. So you can try any app for a day, then return it if you don't want to keep it.
• You can double-tap to enlarge in the browser, but you can't pinch or spread. There's another browser (imagine that) in the Market called Dolphin that implements gestures, including pinch and spread. I just started trying it out.
• There's a built-in app that tells you how much of the battery is being used by which apps and features. This is invaluable. 
• Quickest and most flattering comparison vs. iPhone: put an iPhone and an N1 side by side and compare the screens. The N1 just pops.
• You can't scroll to the top by touching the top of the screen, but as a reasonable workaround, a flick or two usually scrolls all the way up; there's less friction in scrolling than on the iPhone.
• Instead of AT&T's visual voicemail, sign up for Google Voice and configure it to handle your voicemail. You'll get visual voicemail plus text transcripts that are remarkably good. And you can even send voicemails to your email or listen to them via a web UI.
• You'll re-learn to type, just as you did when you got the iPhone. Best N1 keyboard feature is the list of several autocomplete choices. I now type faster than I do on the iPhone (which is pretty fast).
• You can't use the web while you're on a phone call, but you can run apps in the background. This makes chat apps like Google Talk actually usable and is good for music apps like Pandora.

I'll have more to write as this experiment continues.

New terminal at San Jose International Airport

The SF Bay Area has three major airports: San Francisco (SFO), Oakland (OAK), and San Jose (SJC), also known as Dinky Airport. I learned more than 20 years ago that SJC is the one for me. It's the smallest, most efficient, and most convenient to where I live. At that time, SJC consisted of one concourse with about a dozen gates. To board your plane, you walked right out on the tarmac and climbed up stairs. In the 1990s, SJC added another concourse, but the original concourse remains to this day, and you still walk out on the tarmac.

In the late 1990s I used to fly to Seattle from SJC once a month. It was the most convenient commercial flying commute possible. I would get in my car at home about 20 minutes before my flight, drive to the airport in about 10 minutes, park, walk about 100 feet from the parking lot to security and on to my gate.

New Terminal B at SJC. Bulbous, shiny, windowy, futury. (Animated GIF stolen from SJC site).

Yesterday was the beginning of the end for the old terminal. SJC opened the first gates in its shiny new Terminal B. When Terminal B opens fully next year, they're going to tear down the old terminal (now called Terminal C). I usually like the shiny and the new, but I'm not fond of this one. I'll miss the convenience and the quaint retro time-warpy feel of the old place. On the other hand: Sunglass Hut!

Minor league baseball in Reno

Minor league baseball returned to Reno this year in the form of the Reno Aces of the Pacific Coast League. Reno built a brand-new ballpark for the Aces. Barbara and I love ballparks, minor league baseball, and road trips, so we drove to Reno last Saturday to watch the Las Vegas 51s play the Aces. The ballpark is gorgeous, and the Aces are very popular: an hour before game time, when the ballpark gates opened, thousands of people were already lined up to get in on a blustery night. The ballpark is downtown, near Harrah's, wedged nicely between the train tracks and the Truckee River. There is no parking at the park: fans park at downtown casinos and office buildings, then walk over. There's a big retail development under construction next to the ballpark, and a riverwalk is also being built. It's a great scene and I hope it will be even nicer in a year or two when the surrounding area is built up.

The most unique and bizarre ballpark feature shows up during the 7th inning stretch. A giant inflated talking baseball rises up over the hitter's eye in center field, holding on with giant inflated hands, and proceeds to talk to the crowd -- as his mouth moves -- and lead the fans in the traditional singing of Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

This is just as bizarre and wonderful as it looks.

The huge outfield led to numerous fly ball doubles.

Outfield berm seating. Lights are drag race theme, with flags of other Pacific Coast League teams. When the Aces score, the lights flash and strobe.

Me and Hugo (awards)

The Hugo Awards have been given annually since 1955 for the best science fiction or fantasy works, including best novel. I love science fiction and I recently thought of reading all the Hugo Award-winning novels that I hadn't read. So I checked out the list of Hugo Award-winning novels and was surprised to find that I had read 9 of them -- surprised, because I always feel like I read less than a lot of my friends.

My list:

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

How many have you read?

Carrie Fisher at the Berkeley Rep

Carrie Fisher is back at the Berkeley Rep performing her solo show, Wishful Drinking. I saw this show last year, and it's hilarious and brilliant. During the first act, she deconstructs her rather tangled family relationships -- her mother is Debbie Reynolds (3 marriages) and her father is Eddie Fisher (5 marriages)-- in a segment entitled Hollywood Inbreeding 101. I'm not that into Hollywood gossip, but this part of the show had me cracking up.

The second act focuses on Carrie's Star Wars years, with lots of snarky love for George Lucas, Princess Leia's infamous cinnamon bun hair, and over-enthusiastic Star Wars fans. As a geek, I loved this part of the show too. 

Carrie has performed Wishful Drinking around the country for the last couple of years, and according to her blog, the show is headed for New York City (and maybe Broadway) soon. If you're in the SF Bay Area I highly recommend checking it out. The show is playing the Berkeley Rep from July 9 - 23.

(You can find a few clips from the show on YouTube, but I couldn't find any with decent audio, so I didn't include them here. This is a promotional clip from a previous run.)

Paleontologists visit Creation Museum

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky takes the Old Testament literally and throws out evolution. The museum supports beliefs that the universe was created in 6 days and is only 6,000 years old, and rejects and ridicules science that says the universe is much older. Recently, a group of paleontologists meeting in Cincinnati made the short trip to the museum. Here's what happened.

Michael Jackson tribute flash mobs

Flash mobs are performing the Thriller dance and Michael Jackson songs around the world. You're not surprised, are you?

South Winchester News

My friend John Vink loves to create interesting random projects. His latest effort is South Winchester News, a hyperlocal web site dedicated to a 4.5-mile stretch of Winchester Boulevard, a wonderfully kitchy and useful commercial street that runs near his house (and mine) through San Jose, Campbell, and Los Gatos, California. Winchester Boulevard, named for the family that founded the Winchester weapons company and home of the infamous Winchester Mystery House, is a patchwork of buildings spanning more than 100 years of development and housing hundreds of businesses that include a Russian deli, several sushi places, Mexican restaurants and carnicerias, an Ethiopian market, a couple of thrift stores, numerous fast food joints, Chinese restaurants, an ultra-chic faux-downtown shopping district, and a derelict Burger King, which closed more than 10 years ago but still keeps the light on over its salad bar (waiting for Sarah Winchester, perhaps?).

Please enjoy South Winchester News, and check out this Google map of the South Winchester Boulevard territory it covers:

View Larger Map

The Sonic Blog at 5

Earlier this month, the 5th anniversary of the Sonic Blog passed with little fanfare. The Sonic Blog is a bit of surreality that happened in the comments when I wrote a most innocent blog post about visiting a Sonic Drive-In in Ripon, California. A few days ago my friend Stacie Tamaki wrote a wonderful post on her award-winning The Flirty Guide blog that explains a bit about the history of the Sonic blog.