An Illustrated Guide from the 1950s for Using Telephones

This is pretty fantastic!

"When using the telephone, hold the receiver close to your ear. The receiver is the end without the cord." pic.twitter.com/zvciBAZdg7

— Scott Kerr (@scott_kerr) February 9, 2019

Minimizing Windows to See a Desktop.

A sign that I am very tired: I didn't remember if my hotel room has a phone on the desk with my computer and I wanted to check if I can reach over and use that when the expected call comes, so in order to check to see what's behind my field of view (my laptop screen), I tried minimizing my browser window.

Augmented reality for the win? I did see one of my desktops as a result...

PacMap Fever

PacMap, a live-action, smartphone implementation of Pac-Man, sounds so cool (simply because it appeals to my inner geek)!

Hopefully they have the 'exits' (what would that correspond to in real life?), and they damned well better have preserved the trick of being able to go through the ghosts without dying when they ever-so-briefly turn their eyes away from you. (Not that I am a snob when it comes to features of the Pac-Man games...)

(Tip of the cap to The Physics Arxiv Blog.)

Update: I just noticed that the article in Technology Review and the arXiv paper both spell "Pac-Man" incorrectly.

I am a Selective Luddite

As some of you know, I am a luddite when it comes to cell phones. I don't want one, and I do my best not to have one. I had one for the first half of 2003 when I lived in Berkeley because it was the only chance of having a private phone number. I was living in the room of somebody else's house, and my landlady's 98-year-old mother apparently was quite a fan of answering the phone and talking to people. The mother was a nice lady --- she once asked me if my family went back to "The War", by which she meant the civil war --- but she wasn't particularly coherent and I figured there would be massive communication problems if I didn't get a phone.

Now here I am 10 years later spending 4 months in Palo Alto for my sabbatical. I again don't have access to a landline and I plan to hang out a lot with my friends --- that is why I chose to spend my sabbatical in Palo Alto, after all --- so I've gotten a phone to use for the next 4 months.

And just to prove I am a selective luddite, once 4 months have passed, I am going to drop my new phone off of the top of a very tall building. I might as well make it literal.

Right Track, Wrong Train

Cyndi Lauper certainly got it right when she sang "Right Track, Wrong Train". Because, you know, I did that today. And I only had a choice between North and South. Oops.

Note to self: Train networks are directed.

P.S. There were both very unkind and kind people on the train when I needed to borrow someone's cell phone to let my friends know that I would be an hour or so late. (To the bitch who didn't let me use your phone: You could have just said 'No' instead of lying that your phone was out of batteries and then starting to use it 2 minutes later and thereby rub things in.)