30 Jun 07 Apple iPhone Release in Rosedale Mall Minnesota

I sent a letter to the owners of the Rosedale mall to ask for permission to shoot the crowds waiting for the iPhone. I only got a reply the next day, after already getting tons of photos, but he was more interested in my opinion of what he describes as Apples ‘unconventional methods’

Here’s a link to the VP and General Manager of the company that owns Rosedale Mall:
http://www.myrosedale.com/go/services.cfm?type=cu

Here is his reply

“Riaz, if you have the time to do it and wouldn’t mind, I would love to hear some of your impressions of the day. The whole approach Apple had to their launch was on many levels unconventional, and the thoughts of one who had been there would be interesting, to say the least.” ~ Rollin Hunsicker

and my impressions of the day:

“It was expertly handled i thought. Apple had a large countdown clock
in the window to keep everyone informed. They handed out tickets that
looked like iPhones to guarantee the people in line that they would
receive one, preventing anyone from waiting in line for nothing. The
lines were quiet and didn’t seem to bother anyone else.

A few other vendors, with some entrepreneurial spirit left in them,
capitalized on the crowd with hand out pamphlets, but no one except
caribou coffee free water had any thing to offer the crowds.

When the countdown reached 1 minute the crowds were getting ready to
be excited for the opening when preemptively, before everyone got all
hyped up, they opened the doors and allowed a counted number in at a
time, thus diffusing any wildness from waiting till the end of
countdown. I was expecting a audible countdown but they opened the
doors a minute early before any got over excited, very clever.

I saw a few people being told not to use cameras, but critical mass
won over because there were hundreds of people with cameras. So i
would say that the guards were a little too anxious, which is not good
for a crowd, the Apple employees were very well prepared for the crowd
dynamics. So it went of without a hitch. The other neighboring vendors
got free extended exposure from the people sitting there and interest
generated from them.

I got my iPhone after waiting in the line for about 20min after the
opening and have it now listed for sale on eBay where they have been
selling for around 20-30% higher.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120137543966
“

And the Photos:

04 Jun 07 Shrute Buck

“The Baha’i Faith is one of the most disorganized religions on the planet! NOT.”

Dwight from The Office did an interview on the US Baha’i Site, I didn’t see who the interviewer was, but they did a great job. I really like the responses Wilson gave to what role the Faith plays in his life, especially the reference to digging latrines in Honduras. Having a socialy responsible mindset can easily encourage thoughts of doing thankless menial labour, but Wilson proves that you would be doing it at the cost of contributing to society with your unique talents. If your not sure what those talents are, then menial labor can be invaluable at drawing them out.

“My favorite quote from the Baha’i Faith is from Abdu’l-Baha: “If religion be the cause of disunity, then irreligion is surely to be preferred.” For the disenfranchised to know that Abdu’l-Baha is a proponent of having no religion if there’s disunity… And for those who say they don’t like “organized religion,” don’t worry: The Baha’i Faith is one of the most disorganized religions on the planet! NOT.”

Enjoy it Rainn Wilson: Hollywood’s funny guy talks straight about being a Baha’i via Bahai.us

Wiki Entry

17 May 07 It’s been Too Long:

Whats Happened?

Pictures taken: Took some more night shots after rainy day, will post soon!
Went to peoples graduation parties: Go Amir and Everett!
Crime: Speeding and Late Tabs Ticket
Material: 18-200mm Lens gets here today. Got new Express jeans.
People Visited Us: Bahiyyih came over for a week – it was super great!
Cars Test Drove: Altima, Santa Fe, Golf Gti, Passat Sedan, Passat Wagon, Mazda5, Ford Freestyle.
Stuff for sale: 24mm prime, 18-135mm zoom (nikon)
Politics: who cares.
Internet: Did the facebook friends competition, my wife beat me.
Sports: Played some tennis, need practice.
Looking For: A bike.
Thinking of: Making my own soy milk.
Espresso shots consumed today: 1 (homemade latte with soy)
Monetized: http://www.truthfulness.net

23 Aug 06 Picture and Picture

Around 10pm ,after a long day of work, parenting, errands, cleaning, cooking, and thinking, my wife sit on the couch and i watch ‘the tonight show’ and ‘stephen colbert’ with one eye and our laptops with the other eye. I have the feeling that as we are not alone. Colbert regularly(almost every show) has websites mentioned and when ever i try to browse to those sites the servers are usually overloaded. Yhis is some seriously fast marketing dynamics. When i see a commercial of a new cola i might try it in a few days, probably weeks, not seconds.

I’m pretty sure that we are not even remotely alone in our beloved cronically attention deficit media consuming american nation who now prefer picture and picture to picture in picture. Do you multi monitor?

18 Apr 06 silent server – Quiet your PC case From scrap Wood

If you’ve ever looked inside a dell power edge server you will quickly realize why the large panels of its case resonate so loudly, five fans and 4 drives all solidly coupled to the sheet metal case. Good for thermal transfer, bad for sound pollution. Then again most servers run in racks that are cooled by even louder air-con’ systems.

My server has to run in the lions den of critical requirements, my wifes living room. It has to be quiet, wireless, invisible, and it has to work. I planned on having 3 HDD and 1 DVD drive and 3 fans (CPU, PSU, Case) This much equipment generates about a lot of noise and vibration, heat, and lacks elements of style to match our living room. Its a PIII 850Mhz 512mb Ram ATI radeon somthin’ or other, it’l play DVD’s and DIVX and run a Web server, print server, and media server (using VideoLan’s VLC media player with HTTP interface so that i can browse the playlist on my pocketPC).

My initial concern with was with the CPU, i upgraded the thermal compound (which made ZERO impact on the temperature of the CPU), cleaned the heatsink from cobwebs (which made a drastic improvement on temperature). It turns out however that 3 HDD generate far more heat than an old PIII and I had to later rearrange the layout of the box to place the drive and PSU nearer the air vents.

To attack noise i applied ensured that all of the elements of the computer were mechanically decoupled from the case by using foam mounts. The drive bay was the most difficult to implement with this approach, because of their weight. Finally the vent ducts were folded to act as mufflers.

The case was easily hidden by making it fit inside my media center cabinet. It runs WinXP and plays sound though an external Creative Labs Sound Blaster Extigy which has remote control interface and surround decoders (to remove the burden from the CPU).

Assembly was pretty simple and i followed up with noise analysis to prove its acoustic success. And i have watched several movies on it to prove its media success. And i have listened to its music while at work though a Hamachi.cc VPN. And I am able to browse the play list and control the VLC media player from any browser with access to the network wirelessly or though the VPN. I like having a server.

31 Mar 06 Terminal Diversificaton

I was walking into my local Barns and Nobles franchise and i noticed the large lettering on the buildings facade which read (in the order that I assume was intended) “Barns and Nobles booksellers, cafe, music” and i though what a load of services.
I understand that a business needs to reinvent itself to remain competitive to inevitable market entrants after their inflated profit margin, So it is understandable that a presumably stoic business owner would have had to make many adjustments to her business to remain in the market.

What struck me though was the extensiveness of the plethora of services available in a barns and nobles (all replaceable by the Internet, save the ambiance), I wont go into the full list, as i am currently not getting any kickbacks from BN, but suffice to say that every facet of the store contains more to offer than simply selling books.

All of this subtle marketing refinement is not unappreciated, as evidenced by the steady stream of customers drawn to one of BN services. However after searching through their specialized children’s section for my daughter, without any help from the many helpful assistants, who thankfully don’t chase you down to offer their services, I was soon to be made aware of just how extensive the “marketing diversification” had gone. I ordered my starbucks (another one of the reasons that i went to BN instead of amazon.com) and had to wait for a long time because the starbucks cafe mock up in a BN is not really a starbucks but just a cafe that uses ther coffee and logos but unfortunately not their training and service philosophy. I sat down and ate my choc brownie and noticed an ad’ on the table which pointed out that my brownie was made with Godiva™ chocolate by the Cheesecake Factory™ served by a starbucks in a barns and nobles. Now that is a synergistic marketing orgy if ever saw one. It’s like the Internet without pop-up blockers or spam_canners, it’s like television (which according to Daft-Punk “rules the nation”, according to Manson “contains god”, and according to countless other bands is the source of all evil).

I feel kinda like i would have been better of making my own coffee, browsing amazon, and watching TV, too bad because i enjoy going out and that brownie was great (Lua thought so too) One day every franchise will just be a super target that knows your name and favorite color.

22 Mar 06 1095 Days

= 26280 Hours
= 1576800 Minutes
= 94608000 Seconds

and 1096 days is, tomorrow, how long i will have been married to the love of my life an exquisitely beautiful, highly intelligent, bold woman with more wonderful and inspiring talents than i had ever expected. She has shown me facets of human nature that I had never known of, she is so patient, calm, moderate, and kind, genuinely loving without reservation. I am truly blessed to be the benefactor of her sentiments and a witness to the outcomes of her strong character that she displays in her recent addition to being an incredible wife, being a mother.

I always wanted to be married to someone who loved me regardless of any passing fads or phases i was in, and she does. I cant wait to find out what i will learn from you this year. Happy Naw-ruz and happy anniversary love. Thank you for all of your support and friendship. Here’s to 95million reasons we made the right decision.

11 Mar 06 Polyphasic sleep(less) day 1

My new approach (as of last nights failure) is to start the Uberman shedule during the day, forcing myself to take naps rather than depriving my self from sleep. Its a subtle change to the first day, but i think that it made it easier to stay awake with nothing to do till my 3am nap. My 3am nap was unsuccessful becasue i couldn’t fall asleep which left me in a groggy state where i was suddenly overcome with sleep for 60min, i don’t know how i woke up from it, since i hadn’t set an alarm for the unscheduled 60min nap, but i’m glad it wasn’t longer or i would have had to write it off as another failed start. When i woke up i was incredibly gripped by the urged to sleep, i am quite astonished at the force of it. I did, barely, escape its clutches by walking around and making some tea. I definatly need to find an activity that will keep me awake.

I already love the extra free time it has been really great to get to work on stuff without having to scrifice any family time. It is a little hard to stay awake without distractions. I have tried to adopt uberman schedule by starting the naps since this morning (or yesterday morning), I guess the tearm is going to lose relevance. I am astonished at the sheer force of the urge to sleep, the worst is when i woke up groggy from a nap that went 30min too long leaving me mentaly unarmed against the urge to sleep which is like mentaly forcing out an injection of milk of amnesia. Most of the night i have felt cold and uncomfortable, urging me furthar towards my bed. I am currently having a swinging level of the urge to sleep, which i must distinguish from a sleepyness, becasue i don’t fell drowsy, just more like their are weight attached to my elelids(preventing me from seeing my spelling errors Well it six am so i’m going to call it day one. I’m sure that i’m going to be very tired today, i hope it goes smoothly, i have study circle at 11:30 which is right after my 11o’clock nao, so hopefully i’ll be alright.

10 Mar 06 Polyphasic, Polystarting

So, thursday night i tried to start, i decided that times will be 11, 3, 7, 11… so i went to sleep at 11pm but failed to wake up till 1:30am, at which point i decided to start tommorrow, which i have by taking naps every 4 hours, i’m hoping that i can keep this up tonight and over the weekend. I think that starting during the day is a better idea than trying to not sleep during the night. Most people seem to try strating out sleep deprived.

I was going to get a kitchen alarm clock, but since i don’t have the spare time (yet!) to go to the store, i created a 30min mp3 of brown noise that i shaped witha parametric filter to take out some of the harsher sounds. Ithen applied an amplitude envelope so that it gets a little quieter after a few minutes then getting loud at the end before a tone repeats. I’m hoping that this will do the trick. Using my mp3 player also has the added bonus of plugging up my ears to block out external sound.

I’ve been met with the ususal raised eyebrows and occcasional quriosity when i tell people about this sleeping pattern. The most common response is “Man! i like to sleep!”, whereby i respond in my head “dude! Sleep when your dead!”

Effects:
So far all i have done is take two naps today and convinced my mind that this is a feasable project and that i will be able to handle the adjustments, physically and socially. However despite taking two naps and getting a good night sleep last night i feel pretty drowsy, this could also be becasue i’m fasting during the day. Wish me luck!

08 Mar 06 Changes

I have finally returned to this blog. I have been so busy at work because i have been learning so much. I’ve been given great opportunities to learn in the form of tough projects and helpful coworkers, but he itch to blog has returned (mainly becasue I’ve finally started allowing my self to surf the web during my lunch breaks rather than work through them). I cant wait to use some of my new skills on my existing sites, but a simple post will have to do for now.

I’m continually amazed by the sheer wealth of information on the internet and how bleeding edge it is. I could spend years riffling through dusty books of antiquated ideas or outdated science, but one google search can get me straight to the latest and greatest. My first reaction to anything that i am unsure about is to see what the internet thinks about it, most likely it’s already been blogged about for years and the answer will be already tried and trusted. At work i use it every day to find out better ways of solving programming problems, at school I use it as a reffrence, at home it helps me cook, and anywhere I can rely on it for news, entertainment, finacial convenience, you name it.

My usual break time at work consists of scanning the headlines at tomshardware and lifehacker i even found my job on craigslist. I love to learn new things and today I found something I’v been waiting for ever since I learnt how to sleep though the night: polyphasic sleeping patterns. it seems to be a far more natural apprach to sleeping, whenever your tired, but on a rough schedule of 6 times a day for 20min. Do the math and this resuts in a huge surplus of conscious time for the average joe. From reading about it, it seems that it requires almost total abstinence from caffine and preferably an herbivorial diet, to match the diet of creatures who also have polyphasic sleep patterns, as opposed to our monophasic 8hour stretch of unconsciousness.

It is acheived by depriving ones self of normal sleep patterns until the body gets used to entering REM sleep immediately. The result is a sustained level of high alertness all waking hours of the day, like having that freshness of the morning all day long. Well naturally i don’t think that I’ll be able to resist the idea, I dreamed of being able to use my brain more hours of the day ever since i got married, and even more since I’ve had children. We always whish there were more hours in the day, but we barely use so many of them. I think that my life is prime for this adaptation in many ways, firstly I have learn’t how to make changes to my habits, as long as I am able to identify them, this includes quitting nicotine, caffine and making jokes about fat people. I think that I will learn quickly how to slip into dream mode quickly because i already have a somewhat narcoleptic tendancy when i am even slightly sleep deprived. Finnaly I am very adapted to waking up on a regular schedule to an alarm clock (even more so during the Baha’i fasting period). The only concern i have is that my diet will be a hinderance. I like meat with every dinner, it will be difficult to minimize my meat diet or become veagan altogether because of habit but mostly (as my wife pointed out)becasue of the impact on my family, including my daughter who needs red meat to stay out of anemia. None the less i should be able to limit my consumption of meat or at least isolate it from other foods to minimize the burden on my digetive system.

I cant wait to try it, I’m trying to thing of a good time to start, some vacation would be great. I’m excited at the possibility of having free time to devote to projects that have been on the burner for too long, like my websites, speakers, and recording expreiments, as well as learning some new web technologies like .NET or AJAX.