jbm blog

No TV - impossible according to Nielsen

We received a Nielsen TV survey a few days ago. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to discover how hard it is to get media surveyors to understand that we simply don’t have TV. The questions are worded in such a way that you really cannot submit this as an answer.

The questions asked what we think of TV, and honestly I don’t know much about it, because I watch zero hours per week. Every time I peek at TV it’s worse than when I last looked, so I don’t spend any time considering it.

Of course, we should not be surprised that Nielsen shy away from telling the paymasters that the entire medium is turning people off, DVR or no DVR.

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Lisa and I are competing in a triathlon in May. It’s a significant challenge for both us - much harder than the century ride we completed in 2007. We hope you’ll support our fund raising for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and make a donation here.

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Decisions About Data

A fascinating article just published at TechCrunch outlines consumer spending using data from mint.com

I’m experimenting with Mint and I have extensive experience using Quicken, and am impressed with how much better mint seems compared to the equivalent Intuit effort (Quicken Beam)

It’s useful to note how Mint has achieved an end run around an incumbent. Intuit is too dependent on sales of their packaged software and have a hard time launching free online apps that cannibalize their sales.

Anyway, the interesting question is the choice Mint made to publish (sell?) their anonymized data. I can imagine sitting in the CEO chair and facing the choice of whether to publish this, risking the ire of the user base, or keep it private. At ClickTracks when faced with a similar choice we decided to keep the data private. We made it a feature that the customers data belongs to them. That looks like the wrong choice with something like Mint, even though the data is more sensitive.

The world has changed a lot in the past 5 years, and it looks like users are perfectly OK with their anonymous, aggregated data being published.

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Bad experiences with James Moore & Associates

A few days ago I received some spam advertising contract iPhone developers from James Moore. Obviously I get a lot of spam, and unusually this one slipped past the filters. It was pretty clear from the format and tone that the recruiter (yes, it was from one of them) had harvested addresses indiscriminately and was either doing at Outlook bcc blast, or using some other primitive email tool.

I am not morally opposed to spam; it’s become a reality of modern life that just won’t go away. Like most people, I’ve learned to live with it. While some may argue that it harms a companies’ reputation, I find it’s largely background noise. I do, however, want a way to get off the list. My spam filters do a good job with the enhancement offers but they’re less good at dealing with rare topics like contract iPhone developers in Elbonia.

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The Heigth Virus

Spend any amount of time discussing the physical dimensions of objects and sooner or later you’re going to hear someone say ‘heigth’ when of course they mean ‘height’. It looks so obviously wrong in print that I’m having a hard time typing it, but I must otherwise I cannot make my point.

In my experience, the error is prevalent among people who measure things frequently, such as contractors or furniture makers. I suppose they say ‘length, width, depth and breadth’ and assume that all dimension names end in ‘th’.

The surprising thing is the way the error has taken off over the past decade, spreading like a virus. I estimate that a minority of people still say it correctly. They must have corrected their pronunciation to match that they were hearing frequently. Thus the mistake is passed from person to person and quickly looks like an epidemic.

I fear that within a decade dictionaries will be forced to adopt the error as it’s use will be too common to ignore.

At least it will go on record that I fougth it.

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Make Your Own MP3 Player

Sam and I spent a delightful few hours building the Daisy MP3 player kit on Sunday. Sam did most of the work, the only thing I really did was deal with the surface mount chip, which was easier than I feared it would be. The whole thing worked first time. Thrilling, and made me feel 13 years old.

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SCCC ride from Pacific Grove to Carmel

Delightful ride, easy pace, great company.

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Fast At Tahoe Century

On Sunday Lisa and I rode ‘America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride’. Lisa went around Lake Tahoe, completing 72 miles while I added the Truckee extension making it a century.

We started out at the same time, and finished within a few minutes of each other I was very happy with my final time of 5 hours 40 minutes. I had a good day, pacing with some fast guys and I only dropped at the final 2 mile climb to Spooner.

The weather was perfect - slightly cool but sunny and with lots of snow still visible on the peaks.

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Strawberry Fields Forever

On Sunday I rode one of the local Santa Cruz century rides. It starts in Watsonville and winds up to Summit, back down to Soquel and then around Aromas, back to Watsonville.

I saw several people riding the 100 mile version on unicycles:

Apologies for the poor image quality. It was taken with my iphone while I was riding.

The ride stops were well organized with great food. Italian goodies at the Calfee factory, and they showed off their bamboo bikes. Crepes and pies at Gizditch Ranch.

My overall time was a disaster. I was very slow at the start, didn’t ride in a group much, took way too long at the rest stops chatting with people and 10 miles from the end I witnessed a crash and stopped to administer first aid.

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Amazing looking house

Rode from home to San Jose today, meeting Lisa at our friends house. Lisa had ridden the Cinderella metric century earlier the same day.

It was the first time I’d ridden over the hill, and I babied my strained knee. I took Mountain Charley Road, knowing it’s one of the hills I’ll cover in the Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge, assuming I feel strong enough to tackle it. Reaching the upper sections of the road I was amazed by this structure

It turns out it’s a residence. Some careful Googling uncovered a fascinating story about this Santa Cruz mountains landmark

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