June 2007 Archives

So, the "revolutionary" Apple iPhone is hitting the market this week. I took some time to download the guided tour video Apple has available. I have to say I'm very, very impressed with what they've done with the iPhone.

That being said, I don't think I'll be getting one anytime soon. Here's why:

• No Ogg Vorbis or FLAC support. I know I'm in a very small minority of people who care about this, but most of my musical library is not in MP3 format and this is the biggest reason I've never cared much for the iPod to begin with. I wonder if the video realm is the same way. Does the iPhone only support Quicktime videos?
• Third-party applications? I didn't see anything in the guided tour video about third party applications. My Treo 700p has served me really well because I can throw lots of different PalmOS applications on it for lots of different things. For example, I track mileage on our cars and it reminds me of service that needs to be done.
• Will it dock with Linux? Can I use the iPhone from a Linux desktop? Last I heard, iTunes was not available for Linux.
• Only AT&T? I'm sure AT&T (A.K.A. Cingular) paid a pretty penny for the exclusive rights to sell the service in the U.S. for the iPhone when it was first released. I'm a Sprint customer. I might consider switching back to Verizon, but there's really no way I'd ever switch to AT&T/Cingular. They've got a terrible track record for signal coverage and customer service, in my area anyway.
• Third party applications!! I have to mention this twice because I use my Treo 700p a lot to establish SSH connections to servers when I'm not near a computer. The Treo doesn't offer this capability natively, but I can do it by installing one of several open source applications.

That being said, I am very impressed with the web browser demo and the tricks the iPhone can do with its built-in accelerometer. If nothing else, iPhone -- like the iPod before it -- will be the kid to beat for the next few years, resulting in good news for everyone.

Yesterday, our 8 year-old daughter Maya broke her arm playing on monkey bars... again.

See, she broke the same arm, but it wasn't really all that serious. She thought she had merely sprained it (which she had done before... again, from playing on monkey bars), but it kept hurting. When we took her to the doctor after two weeks of not getting better, he X-rayed it and determined she had a hairline fracture. At that point, the healing had already begun and he said a cast was optional. Considering how active she is, we opted for the cast to be on the safe side.

Well, yesterday she was playing on monkey bars and fell. We're guessing she landed with her hand outstretched. The force of the fall broke her upper-arm bone just above the elbow. The medical term is "type-3 supracondylar humerus fracture." It is apparently a common fracture in kids.

Here's a site I found that explains a lot about it: <http://www.dynomed.com/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/pediatric_orthopedics/Supracondylar_Fracture_of_the_Humerus.html>

Maya went in for surgery around 8. Christine called me right around 9 and the doctor told her the surgery went well, but that Maya's break was pretty bad. He indicated there was a splintering of the bone which they had to use an extra pin to compensate for.

The fracture is a type-3 because it is the worst classification of displacement. If the fracture were only type-1 or possibly type-2, she would not have needed surgery at all.

Before the surgery, the doctors did some tests to make sure Maya's nerves were not affected by the fracture. They did things like touch her fingers while she had her eyes closed to see if she could identify which finger they were touching. They asked her to do different motor actions with each of her fingers as well. She did well on everything except lifting her fingers up from a clenched state. The doctors said this probably means there was a stretching injury to her radial nerve, but that there was a small possibility of some nerve damage due to the fracture. Only time will tell.

You can read about radial nerve dysfunction here: <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000790.htm>.

Finally, over the next 4 days or so, we need to watch closely for swelling in her arm. If it swells too much, a syndrome may develop in which the swelling compresses nerves and/or blood vessels, thereby causing complications.

Maya stayed at the hospital last night for observation. She came home this morning and is feeling pretty good. The doctors said her motion had improved as well.

Maya will not be going back to school on Monday. Next week is her last week of school (year round school) and there's a possibility she will be absent for all of it. If she does go, she will need to keep her arm elevated-- perhaps using a pillow at her desk--and she won't be able to go to recess.

[From the episode blurb on solitaryworld.net].

This is the very first Solitary World episode. Many weeks went into creating this and it's not the greatest piece of work, but it's not the worst either.

Originally, I was going to do a piece dispelling common misconceptions about the First Ammendment's Establishment Clause and I was going to call the segment "A Moment Of Truth." In the end, I decided this was too broad of a subject with way too many facets for the time we had. It really surprised me how ambitious such a seemingly simple topic could be to cover.

This episode starts with an introductory preview of what is to come. I hope this will remain a staple of the program.

Next is the production support section. Production would not be possible without the support of the dryer and people like you.

Finally, we reach the beginning titles. These are a wee long. I think we'll trim them and make it tighter for future episodes.

The first actual segment of the episode: a segment we call Mandatory Media. This features a review of Porcupine Tree's latest CD. This obviously took up most of the time spent to produce. Consult-o-bot Thom was a tremendous help in writing and recording this piece. Maybe someday I'll post some outtakes. They'd be a riot.

After the Mandatory Media segment, I threw in the Amaze-O-Cut parody. This is nearly 10 years old now, but is still funny. The star is the lovely and talented Marie... Well, it was Marie Barry at the time, but she's going by a different last name now.

Finally, we end with me talking about the vague and nebulous nature of this project.

 Finally! It's done!

 You can watch it on YouTube or on the Solitary World website.