How a Geek Takes a Roadtrip!

We recently took my sister Kathy to college across the country and were on the road for nine days. I'm happily gadget-dependent, so I took all my different devices (well, I guess I didn't take the Kindle this time). Let's take a look at how a geek travels... All devices except for 'O' and 'P' were used at least once.

Here's the final photo of all the devices/cables I took.  They had a separate bag and everything, which was usually within arm's reach.  (Except for the laptop - that took a backpack!) You should be able to click it to enlarge so you can refer to the letters.

Relevant details:
1) We took two cars out, and one car back.
2) I rode in my sister's car, ahead of my parents.
3) Her car does not have a working speaker system or cigarette lighter.
4) Radio in the south was, Kathy noted, all country.  We don't like country.
5) Kathy was semi-joking that she'd fall asleep without listening to something in the car.
6) Long travel days meant short amounts of time awake at a motel.
7) We needed to arrange last minute travel details with family and friends along the way, usually with Facebook
8) Mom and Dad's car has two cigarette lighters which both work.  One usually went to the GPS, and I used the other.

(A) iPod-connected alarm clock. Used to wake up to music most mornings. Also charges the iPod, (Q), and is therefore tremendously useful!
(B) Two USB extension cables. (J) enabled USB charging in the car, but it's a pain to have your parents in the front seat constantly changing cables and holding devices in the front. Plug in extension cables instead and I can do all the work from the back seat!
(C) My GPS, with a microSD memory card large enough to hold maps for the entire country. Mostly unable to charge in the car, which was a bit of a problem being the lead car.
(D) Dad's GPS, without a microSD memory card, so this one only had the SE part of the country (which remarkably reaches as far west as Texas). We suffered a little in Missouri where my GPS was the only one working.
(E) Power/charging for Dad's GPS (or mine, but this is his) via the car's cigarette lighter. This meant I couldn't charge mine. (Which you may recall was the only one that had the maps that worked in Missouri.) Worked great in the other car though, so they never had problems.
(F) USB charging cable for the GPS. Allowed me to charge using either (B) and (J) in the good car, or (K) or (U) at a motel (which is usually what happened)... or briefly with (H) if I had to.
(G) A friction mount for the GPS, as the legality of mounting it directly on the windshield is questionable depending on the state. Only have one.
(H) A battery-powered (AAA) USB adapter. Mostly used for speakers (S) and occasionally short emergency charging of ipods (Q, Z) or phones (Y, AA)
(I) USB charging cable for my phone. Not sure if it's a micro USB or mini USB or what the conventions are, but it goes to my phone, (Y).
(J) Cigarette lighter USB adapters, for charging anything via USB in the car. Unless you're in Kathy's car with a broken cigarette lighter :(
(K) USB adapter for a real outlet. Used heavily in motels. In retrospect I should have brought another one or two (we have several) as USB is how most devices are charged. Ended up having to use outlets on my laptop (U) a couple nights since I didn't have enough. I also used (Z) and (BB) once each I think, but they had dedicated devices going to them most of the time and weren't really available.
(L) Earbuds, for listening to music by yourself.  I didn't actually use them all that much, but I did have to drown out the audiobook my parents were listening to.  (Audiobooks from Cracker Barrel are a painful unique roadtrip experience.)  Sometimes they were for music, sometimes TV shows (U), and sometimes the music was really to allow me to take a nap.
(M) Portable WiFi. It's called "Internet on the Go" and came from Walmart (.com?). I pay for GB refills every now and then and it's considerably cheaper than using data on the smartphone. Of course it goes into roaming sometimes too... I used it frequently in the car and otherwise to get to important (seriously, some were) Facebook messages or general web browsing, especially on the way home when I relaxed more not having to copilot/keep the driver awake.
(N) Charging cable for (M). It really should be able to charge via (I), but I haven't had consistent success with anything but this adapter that it came with. Probably something to do with the amount of power, current, or voltage not being right.
(O) An ethernet cord. I took it in case Kathy would need it at college. But we set her computer up with the wireless adapter she used at home and that seemed to be mostly good enough, so didn't use it. I could've at a motel for faster internet a couple times though.
(P) Another ethernet cord I found on a table as we were leaving home and threw in just in case. On second thought it might be a phone cord; they look so similar. In any event, I didn't use it for the same reason as (O).
(Q) My iPod touch. Best device ever, except maybe for the phone. Supplied some of the music on the way out and most of it on the way home. (Kathy thinks the music on her iPod (Z) on the way out was better, but she's gravely mistaken.) It also has an amazing app for keeping track of which license plate *varieties* you see on a trip. (Colorado has about 120 different styles. Maryland almost a thousand.) The final count was 145 distinct styles from 40 different states. And a few aren't in the program.
(R) Charging cable for the iPod (Q). Used mostly in the car on the way home a couple times. Overnight charging was usually enough using (A).
(S) The portable speakers we used to play iPod music ((Q) or (Z)) in the car. Both ways. Mom and Dad's car didn't have a way to play the iPod in the car's sound system either. Powered by USB - in Kathy's car using (H) and (X), and in Mom and Dad's using (B) and (J).
(T) A USB powered flashlight. I read with this a little at the end of the trip by plugging it in to (B).
(U) My laptop! I used it a fair amount on the way home, mostly web browsing using (M). I also ripped a few TV episodes to it before leaving and had a lovely time watching a few, mostly on the way home. Texas is boring. 'Nuff said.
(V) A mouse for the laptop, (U). I hate the touchpad.
(W) Charging cable for the laptop (U). Usually went to the wall, but went to (EE) a couple times when I'd watched TV too long in the car.
(X) AAA batteries for (H). We only had 4 at home, and (H) took three at a time. Had to buy a couple more at an overpriced rate along the way, although we ended up not needing them. So three left in the bag shown.

Not pictured:
(Y) My smartphone - taking the picture. Also invaluable for Facebook access. It went through a heck of a lot of power and was the hardest thing to keep charged, especially in Kathy's car with no way to do it on my own. We had to stop and have the other car charge it (and probably an iPod) a couple times.

Also factoring in:
(Z) Kathy's iPod + cable + USB wall adapter
(AA) Kathy's phone + wall cable
(BB) Dad's phone + cable + USB wall adapter
(CC) Mom's phone + cable + non-USB wall adapter, useless to me
(DD) Mom's camera + a rechargeable battery that plugs into an adapter into the wall
(EE) Outlet adapter for car cigarette lighter - just like a wall outlet. It's a bit of a large monster and I could usually go without resorting to it (see (B) for charging most things), but I had to a couple times for my laptop. Mom used it to recharge her camera batteries.

And, yeah, I even chose not to take the Kindle this time. I took some physical books and did a little reading on the way home. But I must say I preferred the TV and internet time in some ways!

In the Beginning was Information

In the Beginning was Information

by Werner Gitt

Note: This review is a bit technical.  Sorry.

I was looking forward to this book for a couple of reasons.  First, the mysterious concept of "information" has been showing up in some of the physics books I've been reading.  For example, The Black Hole War was largely concerned with whether information is conserved when something falls into a black hole.  I got the feeling that "information" is some new, fundamental concept in the universe, right up there with matter or momentum.  Second, some of the more reasoned critiques of evolution question whether random selections and mutation can really generate "information" for more complex life.  That appears to be a profound claim, but I needed some background on information in order to evaluate it.  This particular book was recommended by Answers in Genesis, and I'd hoped that it would give some good background as to what this mysterious information concept circulating both physics and biology is, and then apply it to evolution.

I was sorely disappointed.

The book is written in an excessively methodical manner, where one statement after the next is written in almost an outline for a formal proof.  This is great if you're trying to make a formal proof, and perhaps Werner Gitt is, but it makes for terribly dry reading.  It also provides the appearance of correctness, as most of us are scared of this kind of writing.  Only really smart people do it, so he must be smart, right?

Gitt then wastes over thirty pages before getting to information.  There's some groundwork on physical laws, but really it's nothing useful unless you're new to science, in which case this is the wrong book for you!

The actual content begins in chapter three and continues in its propositional format.  It quickly becomes clear that Gitt views information as intricately tied to intelligence, not just a property of the matter involved, calling it a "mental quantity".  He may, at first, just mean that it's non-material, but by "Theorem 2" (see, it reminds you of a math class!) we're told that "Information only arises through an intentional, volitional act."  By the next chapter information requires a sender and a recipient and "every piece of information leads to a mental source, the mind of the sender."  We're also treated to a section on syntax and semantics of a code, and it felt eerily similar to the Theory of Computation course I took last year (and not at all pleasant considering my experience!).

At this point it became clear that whatever this book is talking about is not the same "information" as science, certainly the physics, is talking about.  (That might be something mentioned briefly called "Shannon's information", but I need to do more research still.)  Black holes couldn't care less whether the falling object has a code to it or not, and certainly no willful messages are being exchanged.  And yet the conservation of that information is critically important to physicists.  Clearly we're talking about two different things.

On the evolution front, this book is equally worthless.  The simplified argument I've heard is that genes have information content, random mutations won't form information, therefore evolution can't happen and you need a designer.  But Gitt's book kills evolution without a hearing by assuming the very thing he is trying to prove: that information requires a designer.  So of course evolution's absurd when you decree, as an unproven proposition, that all information requires a mind.  This is the "begging the question" fallacy, and committing it throws all credibility out the window.

I also note that a quick Google search (*after* reading the book, while writing this review) yields similar criticism on this and his other work:
Errors in Werner Gitt's work with Information Theory
Information Theory and Creationism: Werner Gitt
("If we use a semantic definition for information, we cannot assume that data found in nature is information. We cannot know a priori that it had an intelligent source. We cannot make the data have semantic meaning or intelligent purpose by simply defining it so.")

After a few pages of this, I gave up.  The argument is fundamentally flawed, and I'm not sure there's anything left to salvage from this book.  Future chapters were going to apply his knowledge against evolution (trivial given how he defined his terms) and show that there is information being sent from God to man in the Bible, which is also trivial considering, at the very least, there were human minds involved in writing it...

And being so incredibly boring and reminiscent of the more frustrating parts of math/computer science courses... I can find something way better to read.  (I'm getting hints from other books that God's Undertaker, by John Lennox, might in part discuss information.  Added to my pile.  And I'll probably add a secular, physics-y book on the topic too.)  So after about seventy pages, I put this one down.

It appears the entire book is readable online over here on Answers in Genesis's site.

1/5 stars, for masquerading as technical and damning when it's really just a fallacy
Review also posted to LibraryThing

An Actual Garden Gnome Attack!

Just a quick follow up from research done after reading How To Survive A Garden Gnome Attack.  The author's blog had a link to some live footage of an attack on some police man.  Go ahead and skip to about 0:40.  And you thought it was a joke, didn't you?

The Checklist Manifesto

I checked out The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande, as part of an attempt to get my life more organized and better prioritized.  (Let's just say I overcommitted a bit last spring.)  I also have a tendency to write down too many items on my todo lists, and they can lose their usefulness quickly.  I was hoping this would help me to use checklists more effectively.

I was wrong.  Well, mostly.  It turned out to be an argument for *doctors* to use checklists much more regularly in their operations, largely surgeries, in order to avoid forgetting to do obvious things.  As it turns out, there is a need:
"In 2001, [a previous checklist study was performed].  Doctors are supposed to (1) wash their hands with soap, (2) clean the patient's skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic, (3) put sterile drapes over the entire patient, (4) wear a mask, hat, sterile gown, and gloves, and (5) put a sterile dressing over the insertion site once the line is in.  Check, check, check, check, check.  These steps are no-brainers; they have been known and taught for years.  So it seemed silly to make a checklist for something so obvious.  Still, Pronovost asked the nurses in his ICU to observe the doctors for a month as they put lines into patients and record how often they carried out each step.  In more than a third of patients, they skipped at least one."
(pages 37-38, emphasis mine)

Yikes.

All very basic stuff huh?  As a patient, I just kind of assume that these things are happening behind the scenes and that they'd never make a mistake as simple as forgetting to wash their hands.  Evidently not.

In the next year the nurses were encouraged to correct the doctors when they witnessed steps being skipped.  "The results were so dramatic that they weren't sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line-infection rate went from 11 percent to zero." (page 38)  An estimated eight lives saved in one hospital, from making sure medical professionals remembered to sterilize everything!

Gawande then goes on to describe how checklists are used successfully in other fields, and this was surprisingly interesting as well.  For example, construction of large buildings/skyscrapers is evidently done by breaking the design into multiple subsystems, and each team effectively has a giant checklist they're working through.  And to make sure the different teams work nicely with each other, some of the tasks are communication-oriented, e.g. have a cross-team meeting to discuss potential issues after the water lines are put in.  Gawande is advocating a similar approach in medicine; instead of having one exalted physician or surgeon, maybe we should entrust our health to multiple experts and attempt to do a better job communicating amongst themselves.

Aviation was presented as the gold standard in checklists.  Evidently pilots have manuals which consist of hundreds of checklists on the plane every time they fly.  Most are never used, but they'll describe every possible disaster scenario and the really obvious first steps that must be performed.  One objection readers may have here and elsewhere is that in a crisis scenario the expert should be free to perform by intuition and not be restricted by red tape.  Gawande would disagree, to a point.  "The [airline] checklists have proved their worth--they work.  However much pilots are taught to trust their procedures more than their instincts, that doesn't mean they will do so blindly.  Aviation checklists are by no means perfect ... You want to keep the list short by focusing on what he called 'the killer items'--the steps that are most dangerous to skip and sometimes overlooked nonetheless." (pages 121, 123)  And they must be short, in the 5-10 item, ~30 second range.  At this point, the argument goes, you've removed the costliest, most frequent mistakes and it's time to let the experts act on their own and amaze us.

Gawande also believes that this line of reasoning could be extended to just about anything.  Like investing - did you actually read Company X's cashflow statement before buying its stock?  But I was a bit disappointed it wasn't more practical on a personal level.  There are things that fit into this approach, like remembering to pay the credit card bill, but my life is less ... procedural ... than things in this book.

But it was still a fascinating book.  Sometimes I amaze myself at the variety of things I can make myself interested in.  To be fair, this wasn't the first medical book I've read and enjoyed, but it probably was the first analysis of construction that's been written interestingly enough to hold my attention!  And in case you were wondering, Gawande did ultimately come up with a three-part, nineteen item checklist for use in surgeries that has performed well in testing so far.  It's also been winning many converts from skeptical doctors who usually think a bit too highly of themselves and see it as a waste of time, until the checklist saves someone from a (literally) deadly mistake!  Here's a sample of the current checklist:
"Before anesthesia, there are seven checks.  The team members confirm that the patient (or the patient's proxy) has personally verified his or her identity and also given consent for the procedure.  They make sure that the surgical site is marked and that the pulse oximeter--which monitors oxygen levels--is on the patient and working.  They check the patient's medication allergies.  They review the risk of airway problems--the most dangerous aspect of general anesthesia--and that appropriate equipment and assistance for them are available.  And lastly, if there is a possibility of losing more than half a liter of blood (or the equivalent for a child), they verify that necessary intravenous lines, blood, and fluids are ready." (page 140)

Maybe our next visits will be just a little bit safer :)

4.5/5 - I might actually purchase this one someday
Review also posted to LibraryThing

I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar

This looked at first glance to be amusing, and I "read" through it (i.e. looked at pictures to find the mistake and read the author's sentence complaint) in about 30 minutes.  But in reality it was rather boring.  It felt like every picture the author was complaining about a misplaced or absent apostrophe.  Granted, it's not *that* hard to get apostrophes right, but it's a somewhat standard error, and there's only so many times you can see another sign that mistakes 'its' for 'it's' before it loses its hilarity.

There were some amusing bloopers - such as 'YEILD' written in official large lettering on a road, a 'DONT'T DRINK AND DRIVE' road sign, or a typo on an immigration form, but overall it just wasn't as exciting as it could've been with some more variety.

2.5/5 stars
Review also posted on LibraryThing