Year: 2005

Portable WiFi Detector Comparison

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I take my PowerBook when traveling and it’s often handy to be mooch some WiFi while waiting at an airport gate or cafe. Of course, it’s not so convenient to have to lug out the laptop just to check if there’s WiFi in the area. Fortunately, there're various hand-held WiFi detectors that can tell you if there's WiFi in the area. And, Handtops has a comparison of five of them.

As opposed to some first-generation WiFi detectors — some of which didn’t even work — this lot fairs much better. All of them include 802.11b & 802.11g support and one even detects Bluetooth. The one that caught my eye, though, was the Digital Hotspotter from Canary Wireless:

The Digital Hotspotter (HS10) is the only device on the market that not only detects a connection and its strength, but can also tell you whether it is encrypted, what channel it is on and the name of the network. You simply press the button and the device starts scanning and then stops once it finds a network. […]

WiFi detectors are useful in theory, but not good for much when they obediently report on the nearby full-signal network… that’s encrypted. With a digital screen which can display the nearby networks’ SSID information, there’re shouldn’t be as much of the doh-it’s-encrypted problem. (Then again, it wouldn’t be able to differentiate from open networks and “open” networks with a for-pay gateway.)

All the same, even though the Digital Hotspotter was the only device with a digital screen and the device with the longest detection range, Handtops wasn’t conclusive in declaring a winner. Apparently, the Digital Hotspotter occasionally had trouble detecting some networks; according to the manufacturer, it could have trouble with some devices that “broadcast their beacon frames at a higher than acceptable data rate”. Still, I don’t see anyone else offering a digital screen and a range of up to 600 ft ;). I may just have to get one of these sometime.

So That’s What “Minimal” Means…

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

After some browsing through Answers.com, I stumbled upon “minimal”. I discovered that it doesn’t quite mean what I thought it meant.

Minimal and minimize come from the Latin adjective minimus, “least, smallest,” and people therefore use minimal to refer to the smallest possible amount, as in “The amplifier reduces distortion to the minimal level that can be obtained with present technologies.”

In recent years, however, people have begun to use minimal more loosely to refer to a small amount, as in “If you would just put in a minimal amount of time on your homework, I am sure your grades would improve. Language critics have objected to this usage, but it is fairly common.”

In an earlier survey, the Usage Panel was asked what minimal meant in the sentence Alcohol has a particularly unpleasant effect on me when I have a minimal amount of food in my stomach. Under the strict interpretation of minimal, this sentence should mean only “Alcohol has an unpleasant effect when I have eaten nothing.” […]

Aha, so I had fallen into the trap of common usage, the meaning that minimal meant merely a small amount; I didn’t know that it meant the smallest possible amount. Well, with that out of the way, perhaps I can put this newfound knowledge to work. I could say that I “make minimal use of tables for layout” or that I eat “a minimal amount of trans fat in my diet”. Whee! I think I like this “new word” already.

Hell’s Kitchen is Awful

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

I like cooking shows as much as the next guy (well, ok, maybe a little more than the next guy) and I have a soft spot for some reality shows as well. So, I've been having a great time watching Cooking Under Fire — a cooking/reality show airing, of all places, on PBS. In this show, there’re three judges, Ming Tsai, Todd English and Michael Ruhlman. Tsai is the host of several cooking shows, English owns multiple restaurants in New York and Ruhlman is a successful food author.

There’re twelve contestants and they each cook dishes for the judges; a contestant is eliminated after each round and the winner will be awarded a job at one of Todd English’s restaurants in New York. In some ways, this is my favorite variety of reality show — sure, it’s rooted in reality, but each of the contests is merit-based rather than just luck. So, simply the best cook wins; it's not just a matter of seeing who can balance on a log the longest or something equally obtuse.

Cooking Under Fire is an excellent show and I look forward to it every week. Then, I heard about another cooking-based reality show, Hell’s Kitchen which airs on Fox. This too features a set of aspiring cooks that want to win a job in the host’s restaurant (in this case, there is just a single judge/host, chef Gordon Ramsay). The difference this time around is that Ramsay is an asshole.

I had my TiVo record the premiere episode last night and I eagerly sat down to watch it later that evening. The show opened with the obligatory meet-and-greet where the contestants were in their finest attire in some ballroom drinking sparkling wine as they tried to get to know one another. A little while into the evening, two of Ramsay’s sous chefs were introduced and they addressed the group. They informed the group that the contest won’t be easy and that chef Ramsay demands perfection… blah blah blah.

At this point, they revealed to the contestants that the contest was starting right now and that they had to prepare their “signature dish” for chef Ramsay using the adjacent kitchen. As if riding the cliché wagon for all its worth, the sous chef with the shaved head then yelled to the group, “What are you waiting for?! Go!”. So, the group rushed off to the kitchen to prepare their dishes (still in their fine clothes, of course).

Now, it would have been one thing to have each of the contestant’s kitchen attire (“chef’s cloak”?) on hand, but that wasn’t the case. More importantly, though, the contestants didn’t have access to their own knives; rather, they had to scrounge around to find some knives to use within the kitchen. To you and I, knives are probably pretty similar from one to the next. But, through watching countless cooking shows — all in the name of research, natch — I’ve learned that chefs consider their own set of knives a unique personal asset.

Or, put another way, foisting an unfamiliar set of knives upon a chef would be like requiring a developer to use an foreign editor. Say you like to use Crimson Editor or maybe HTML Kit but then your boss forced you to use Emacs all day? Well, how do you like them apples?! Not so much fun, eh? (And, before the Emacs guys jump on me, I only used your beloved editor as a hypothetical example; feel free to substitute Vi there if you would feel better.)

To show such disrespect for these aspiring chefs astounded me. But, it didn't end there. After everyone’s dishes were ready, Ramsay began tasting them. He walked over to a pasta dish and started by asking who prepared it; a guy in his mid-20s stepped forward and stated that it was “Andrew’s Awesome Penne” (though I have a hunch about the fellow’s name, I’m not certain I remembered it correctly). In any case, Ramsay tasted the food and then spat it out into his hand.

Granted, this guy is probably used to “the best of the best” but that gesture was simply unnecessary. Of course, Ramsay began berating the guy at this point for what he considered a lousy dish and I just (beep-boop-boop) deleted the show and its Season Pass from my TiVo. I’m all for reality shows with civility and especially reality cooking shows; but where does this acridity come from? Maybe I should’t have expected such high standards from Fox.

I Wonder If I’ve Forgotten Something…

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

Merriam-Webster has a collection of their readers’ favorite words that aren’t in the dictionary. Slashdot covered the article in the context of item #3, “woot” or, as I prefer to spell it, “w00t” (with zeros in the middle). Of course, that would be an interjection meaning “an exclamation of joy or excitement”.

Wootiness aside, my favorite is actually #5, “cognitive displaysia”:

cognitive displaysia
(n): the feeling you have before you even leave the house that you are going to forget something and not remember it until you’re on the highway

I don’t know about you, but that one happens to me all the time and especially as I’m heading off for a long trip. I mean, I’ve done silly things like packing my cell phone on a week-long trip but not its charger (d’oh). Or, just as boggling would be to forget one’s socks on a trip (which I haven’t done but I’ve run into someone who’s done that). These days, I mostly resort to making myself a list of things to pack the night before. That way, I can calmly compose the list and, when it comes time to pack, I just follow the list and I don’t have to worry about forgetting something.

A Substitute for Both “Yes” and “No”

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I was surfing through Answers.com and I came across an entry which I’ll get to in a moment. But first, Jeopardy-style, here’s an abbreviated version of the word’s definition (the answer) followed by the word itself (the question).

A: This word can be substituted for both Yes and No.

Q: What is “meh”?

I got a kick out that one. I mean, it's not often that one runs across a word which has two meanings — each opposite of the other. Jeopardy-ness aside, here’s the rest of the definition for meh:

“Internet and general slang or spoken, ‘meh’ usually signifies apathy or indifference. It is used to signify unwillingness to answer a question, or admitted laziness. Can be substituted for: Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t care. Whatever. Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?”

The part I struggle with — if I were to attempt to make use of the word — is that I’m not sure of its connotations. If the connotation skewed towards “lacking a preference”, that would be, erm, preferable; but, if its meaning was more along the lines of outright “disinterest”, that might lessen the general usefulness of the word.

PS Note to semantic enthusiasts: Rest assured, I used a definition list above and, yes, I coded the <dd> before the <dt> :).