Archive for July, 2009

I was excited to hear that Google maps had finally added Boston’s public transit system.  Now you can get directions around Boston for driving, walking, and public transit.  Of course, the MBTA website has been providing a trip planning service for some time.  So I figured I would compare the two services recommendations.  Too lazy to do anything particularly scientific, I asked both to tell me how to get from limeduck world headquarters (a secure undisclosed location in Central Square) to Modern Pastry in the North End at 8:30pm tomorrow.  The variance is shocking.

The defending champ, the MBTA Trip planner coughed up two suggestions:

• Red line to Orange line to Haymarket in 23 minutes
• Red line to Green line to Haymarket in 28 minutes

This pretty conclusively reinforced my preference for the Orange line to the Green, even if it means an extra stop on the Red.

The contender, Google Maps, brought four different routes, although two of them are essentially identical.

• Red line to Green line to Haymarket in 19 minutes
• Red line to Downtown Crossing, then walk the rest of the way in 22 minutes (duplicated with different Red line departures)
• Red line to Green E line (at Symphony) to Haymarket in 37 minutes

Both sets of times include the walking time on each end.  I don’t know which of these plans is more accurate.  I have to believe that the MBTA should know the schedule better, but I also believe that Google might be reporting more realistic data.  Both systems agree that the Red line departing Central at 8:33 will arrive at Park Street at 8:39, but it all goes haywire after that, with a whopping nine minute difference in estimating the same trip, with Google saying it’s quicker to hoof it than to take either of MBTA’s Green or Orange legs.

I checked, the Orange line does show up in some Google routes at different times, but it looks like it doesn’t arrive very often, which might skew things.  Google’s last suggestion is so off the wall that it makes me doubt the whole system – take the #1 bus down Mass ave past the B C & D Green line station at Hynes and the Orange line station at Mass Ave to get on the E branch of the Green line at Symphony??  Feh.

Poor Google, has Boston’s beany maze bested your mapping mojo?

I had been tipped off to the opening of a new deli in the North End, and despite being rather skeptical of a new business that calls itself “famous,” I checked out Nick Varano’s Famous Deli at lunch today.  I ordered pastrami.  Hot, on rye, no funny business. The place was staking a pretty good claim on oldness, but it was the cleanest, newest old restaurant I’ve seen in a while.  The walls were papered with shiny new old posters and the television was playing one of the greatest movies ever made, The Godfather, Part II – the scene with the gold phone.  And the sandwich?

Unlike a classic New York deli sandwich, this one was of an edible size.  Unfortunately the meat seemed to have been selected by a cardiologist – way too lean and lacking the characteristic blackened pastrami edges, too.  Not sure what’s up with that.  The taste was pretty much right on though, and the bread was the usual unimpressive deli stuff.   Not even a pickle spear accompanied the sandwich, which was probably a start-up oversight, but at $10, one might feel a bit let down.  Not bad for Boston if you can’t get over to Rubin’s in Brookline, where things are actually kosher and they probably won’t be screening The Godfather, Part II.

You know how when you’re trying to work, every little distraction can be maddening?  There were some fruit flies buzzing around my desk, so I lashed out, Obama-like, with the only weapon at hand.

The vorpal index card went splat splat splat.  Further evidence of how great index cards are.  Third splat not pictured for compositional reasons.

I feel bad for whoever it was in the Amazon organization who first realized that they were about to remove 1984 from peoples’ kindles.  “Why couldn’t it have been The Bridges of Madison County or something?” they must have wondered.  They took back Animal Farm too, but that’s not as good a story.  Note to Alanis: this is ironic.

As you probably know by now, lots of people are hopping mad, some blame DRM, others say it’s obnoxious but perfectly legal, Amazon’s Bezos has apologized much better than most CEOs ever do, and adventurous spelunkers have decoded the Kindle license agreement.  I even found somebody taking the unpopular view that removing the ebook was a right and just thing to do.

I tend to side with intellectual property holders in these matters, even though I believe that they would be better off being less controlling, I have to support their right to a certain degree of control over their works.  Taking this view, I see the Kindle copies of 1984 as stolen property that should be forfeited or destroyed, because Amazon did not have the proper right to distribute them.  This still leaves some annoying wrinkles on the no-warning digital seizure of the “goods:”

It’s not really Amazon’s job or right to seize the stolen property, at least not according to the discussion in the comments on the Altantic blog that uses the (suspect) analogy of actual stolen physical goods.

Kindle users also lost any notes or annotations they had made on their copies of the works. I’m not really sure what these notes might look like without the underlying work but I’m troubled that they were lost along with the ebook itself.    It would make one heck of an excuse to turn in a late term paper, though.

Even if the action is just and right, it seems a lousy way to execute it. When a merchant makes an error that affects customers, it’s good practice to do better than replacement.  In my favorite example, when Starbucks messes up an order, they often redo it *and* give you a coupon for a free drink on top of that.  Amazon could have done more to patch things up, such as offering paper versions of the books at no extra cost, or providing a link to some other legitimate ebook source for those titles.

Leaving this example behind, I think both sides here are guilty of some wishful assuming.  Consumers happily ignore the license agreements and are shocked, shocked to discover that they don’t own their iTunes music or Kindle ebooks the same way they own their CDs and paper editions.  It’s not a totally unreasonable assumption, but lectors and emptors could cave a little more, don’t you think?  Merchants are taking advantage of technology to deliver some amazing benefits to consumers, but they’re also using those same technologies to maximize their profits thinking that nobody will notice or care.  Are we still shocked, shocked?  Ever-alert Cory Doctorow (an author, mind you) very sensibly asks Amazon to come clean on what the Kindle can and can’t (or will and won’t) do. Transparency FTW, but you have to take the time to read what they write, don’t you?

One last unpopular idea before I go: maybe renting isn’t all that bad.  This country puts a premium on owning private property, and I’m all for it, but sometimes other arrangements are good too.  People who own homes look down on those who rent them, but some economists think it’s just as good or even better in some economies.  Landlords and rental tenants have rights and responsibilities – and remedies and penalties – spelled out by the law.

Some people are happy to use public libraries or netflix to borrow or rent their media.  As long as the rules are clear, consumers can make an informed decision if they want to buy, lease, rent, or borrow their media through various channels and devices.  Maybe a future set of laws around the rental of intellectual property will provide a framework that works for consumers, vendors and authors alike.

I wasn’t thinking about dessert.  No, I wasn’t unconscious, I had just eaten a large meal of pasta.  But as we passed Petsi’s cafe on Putnam Avenue just five minutes before closing, there seemed nothing to lose popping in.  There’s not often much left at the end of the day at a good bakery, but one piece was all it took.  I snapped up a chunk of Petsi’s bourbon chocolate pecan pie.  One could truly eat this and pie happy.  Unless one had a nut allergy, of course, but if you’ve got a nut tooth, this is one pie you can believe in.

There’s been a lot of hoohah about cupcakes in recent years – two-bite cupcakes, kick-ass cupcakes, premium cupcakes, cupcakes that look like breasts, cupcakes for dogs, cupcakes that look like they’re frosted with dog poop, red velvet cupcakes, blue velvet cupcakes, the works.  And I readily and wholeheartedly participated in that hoohah, but I can tell you for certain, it is now finished.

It’s pie time that cupcakes moved on.  What this country needs is a change of dessert attitude.  Where cupcakes were individualized, pie is communal; where cupcakes were neat, pie is sloppy, where cupcakes were precious, pie is luscious; where cupcakes were frosted, pie is filled; where cupcakes were a business model, pie is a lifestyle.   Cupcakes are over.  Pie is now.