I’m glad she wasn’t after Nikes, because we all know the history of Nike’s exploitation of workers in the third world, and I would hate to think my sister was supporting that sort of thing. Thankfully I am completely ignorant of who exactly New Balance is exploiting and how, so I didn’t have to worry about it.

She was puzzled by the price difference between two models which otherwise seemed quite similar, except for the colour of the trim. One was $75, the other around a hundred. It’s an interesting question, given that these things only cost a couple of bucks to make, if that. Why does one thing which costs a couple of bucks to produce cost $25 more than another thing which costs a couple of bucks to produce? (Neither resembled another model which had fancy pink pillar heel supports, and cost $109.00 For a conspicuous gimmick, of course, you would expect to pay extra.)

I would like to believe that anyone with a brain knows these things are a rip-off, a colossal consumer con-job. Unfortunately for this conjecture, my sister has a brain, and, as mentioned, swears by New Balance running shoes. And I must confess, I didn’t myself realize the full extent to which these things are a con-job. I was of the opinion that a decent pair of running shoes, though grossly over priced, would still be better than, say, a generic pair of canvas high tops. Sure, generic high tops are a great way to say screw you to footwear corporations, but do they provide adequate shock absorption, and support, and all that stuff that I’ve been programmed to regard as essential for the well-being of my feet? They’re just canvas after all.

As it turns out, cheaper may be better. The Daily Mail website recently published an interesting article titled The painful truth about trainers: Are running shoes a waste of money?, in which they make some astonishing claims.

For example, did you know that injuries increase relative to the price of running shoes? I will have to call my sister’s attention to this fact since, sadly, she opted for the more expensive of the shoes, blithely unaware of the risk. The Mail‘s article cites a 1989 study in which participants in a 15 km race filled out a survey on their experience for the previous year. Turns out 45% of them had suffered an injury, with the likelihood of injury directly related to cost of running shoe: “Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40.”

Now, you might be leery of taking anything published in the Daily Mail as gospel. You may also be familiar with the old adage that correlation does not prove causation, that is, a third factor could be involved. Perhaps those who are most passionate about running are also the ones who spend the most on their foot gear and the most likely to push themselves unreasonably. And it may be that going barefoot is the best solution of all. This more “sciency” take on the subject at sportsci.org concludes that, no matter what the brand or cost or conspicuous gimmicks, running shoes in general contribute to sprains, plantar fasciitis, and “other chronic injuries of the lower limb.”

The gist of all this is that the human foot is more than adequately evolved for long distance running. In fact, it is so well adapted to the task that just about anything you try to do to improve upon it is actually going to impair its performance.

Fortunately, this fact isn’t being lost on the footwear companies either. Nike has produced yet another model of running shoe, this one called the Nike Free. It looks to me like just another running shoe, but the advertising makes explicit reference to evolution and how wonderful our feet are. So even though you’d just be buying another $100 pair of running shoes by a company with a history of gross exploitation of workers, at least the image (and for these folk, image is everything) is on the right track.

If you don’t care about image, you might want to check out the Vibram Five Fingers foot . . . thing. It’s like a cross between a minimalist piece of footwear and a five-toed sock. Looking at ebay, it appears they’re in the trendy footwear hundred dollar zone. (Once again, I claim no knowledge of their third world practices. Hey, for all we know, they’re a fair trade company, right?)

Or if you’re not just interested in liberation of the feet but also liberation from corporations, or perhaps preservation of your wallet, you can get a DIY Minimalist Huarache Running Sandals kit from Barefoot Ted’s Adventures. Heck, even if you order them fully made they’re still less expensive than Vibram or Nike.

Or as spring turns into summer and the weather gets milder, here’s an idea: Why not just shuck your footwear altogether and run free?

(Note, neither the author nor the management are encouraging you to go barefoot. Any injury you suffer from going barefoot including, but not limited to, injury from glass, nails, sharp rocks, discarded needles, bee stings, or infection of said injuries from stepping in feces, are strictly your responsibility.)

Still no sexbots. Perhaps they’ll be one of those techs like videophones — featured in scifi, but, once the technology is actually available, not really generating the interest scifi authors anticipated. Or perhaps it’s economic. Maybe there are some amazing million dollar sexbot prototypes even now hidden away in labs in Japan or somewhere, just waiting for the cost of their components to decline, or for cheaper methods of manufacture.

This year I think I’ll play it conservatively with regard to predictions. 2009 will look pretty much like 2008. Perhaps processors will be a little faster, maybe more cores available in more affordable chips. The one striking thing, which isn’t exactly new but which we should expect to see more of, is an emphasis on energy efficiency, at both the consumer and pro levels. Energy efficiency could mean longer battery life for consumers in their various electronic gizmos, while for business it translates to lower energy costs for server rooms — less power, less heat, less air conditioning, less cost. The PR benefit to “going green” is incidental; there are real bottom line cost benefits to energy efficiency.

Some prognosticators might be tempted to declare 2009 the year of some iPhone killer, but that would be nonsense. Apple makes lovely bits of hardware that have always been able to hold their own within their sector of the market, namely design-conscious people who don’t mind being milked on price. Apple will lose a bit of market share as other players enter the touch screen phone market, but one has to remember that if the market had been established by another company’s product and then Apple came out with the iPhone, Apple fans would still have lined up to get one. Steve Jobs has a captive audience that would buy his excrement if it was nicely packaged and called iShit.

That said, Nokia is poised to challenge Apple in the touch screen phone market with its N97.

And while it’s traditional to predict that the coming year will be the year of Linux on the desktop, this year let’s be more modest and predict that 2009 will be the year of Linux on the netbook. Netbooks, if you haven’t heard, are very small and affordable laptops. Arguably the machine which lit a fire under this product category was the OLPC XO, followed by the eee pc, and others like the Asus Aspire One.

While the emergence of netbooks caught Microsoft off guard, the company is now competing aggressively and pushing Windows on netbooks any way they can. Obviously, netbooks having more limited processor power and memory, Vista is not an option, so Microsoft has extended the end of life of XP Home until June 30th, 2010.

You’d think Linux could eat Microsoft’s lunch, given that the netbook market is one of limited hardware resources and retail price. The regular cost of Windows XP is almost as much as a cheap netbook itself. But herein we see one of Linux’s weaknesses, namely the lack of a well financed, central head office that can do battle in a swift and organized way. When Microsoft’s interests are threatened, Lord Balmer sends forth the nine riders on their black horses who visit every corner of Middle Earth doing whatever it takes to keep Windows dominant, practically giving it away where necessary. If Linux has a chance to dominate here, and I think it does, it’s not only because it’s the superior choice for a low-cost, stripped-down machine, but also because companies like Asus and Acer offer it as an option. Seriously, simple as that.

A great many people still have no idea that Linux exists as an option on the PC — like the school teacher who discovered students playing with it and became concerned that they were up to no good. She emailed the Helios project leader saying “At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows.” Yikes.

Perhaps we Linux zealots should downgrade our expectations even further and simply predict that the upcoming year will be the one when people discover Linux exists and that they have a choice. Hard to see how it can take over the desktop if people don’t know about it.

Happy holidays and best wishes for the new year.

As it turns out, however, there’s nothing wrong with “the hundred dollar laptop” that a couple of hundred dollars worth of peripherals can’t fix. I have tamed the beast. But be forewarned, what follows will astound you. Ladies may wish to leave the room. Behold, I present to you: Locutus of XO!

Fortunately OLPC has made it very easy for grownups who received an XO through the “give one get one” program to get a key (actually a bit of code), copy it to the flash memory or onto a usb stick, and go to town. This particular stick is a fast 4GB capacity one with a cool red light that blinks when there’s activity. If you’re doing this at home, avoid usb sticks that have a small, undeletable partition to hold their free Windows software.

With Ubuntu and XFCE I have a completely normal environment to work in which is faster than Sugar, and where it’s easy to use multiple applications at once, including the blessed Firefox web browser. The file management is normal and easily explorable — as opposed to Sugar’s cryptic hidden data store with the hexadecimally named files.

A.ii : the swap partition. Swap allows the OS to use storage as virtual memory, so if you run out of memory (and the XO only has 256 MB) it can swap out less used contents from RAM to free up more. It’s usually a hard drive partition under Linux, and there is something similar for Windows as well.

The XO doesn’t have a hard drive, and so uses the flash memory instead. But that’s problematic; flash memory (like that used in SD cards and usb memory sticks) is good for a large but limited number of writes, and using it for swap may seriously reduce its life. So I’m using this cheap 1GB usb stick instead. If it dies, it’s easy enough to replace and no data lost.

This stick has an orange light which blinks on activity, so I have an actual visual indicator of when the system is swapping.

A.iii : tunes! 4 GB worth of song files.

The final thing plugged into the hub is the keyboard.

B: Speakers. No built-in laptop speakers are going to offer an audiophilic listening experience, but the XO’s make other laptop speakers seem symphonic by comparison. For listening to music, external speakers or headphones are a must.

C: DVD/CD player/writer. This one is just for show, as it refuses to play DVDs under Linux — not just an XO problem. It’s plugged into one of the usb ports on the other side of the monitor from the hub.

D: Keyboard. The XO built-in keyboard is definitely for kid-sized hands, and not well-suited for an adult touch typist.

E: Wee wireless mouse, because all track pads suck, and the XO’s is no exception. Its receiver is plugged into the other of the usb ports on the other side of the monitor from the hub. It also has a light, green, which blinks on activity. With all these blinking coloured lights, this is clearly the future. Or Christmas.

F: 8 GB SD card. Don’t bother squinting; the SD slot is hidden on the bottom right of the monitor, so you can’t see it. I use the card largely for data storage. With 8 GB on SD, 4 GB on the first usb stick, and 4 GB of tunes, not to mention a GB of swap, I have considerably more space than the 1 GB the XO comes with.

So there you have it. When a friend suggested that I just get a MacBook instead, with its superior processor, memory, built in dvd drive, better speakers, and so on and so on, I just snorted. Anyone with enough money can get a MacBook, but forcing an educational appliance designed for use by kids in the developing world to function as a regular computer, that’s an accomplishment, even if it does take 20 minutes to set up and get booted into!

Hm, maybe I could trim a few minutes off that if I replaced the usb memory sticks with a single, small, 1.8″, usb external hard drive with partition for OS and tunes, and a regular swap partition . . . But only if I can find a hard drive enclosure that has at least one blinking, coloured light.

(chopstick rails prevent interference with XO’s keyboard and trackpad)

I got the wee wireless mouse from the same source, Brando, usb.brando.com.hk. Prices are good on many items, and they charge a flat $3.00 to ship anywhere. From the stamps, it looks like my order cost over $10 US to ship, so they’re folding some of the shipping cost into their pricing.

I have another order in for an even smaller keyboard, and for a slim dvd burner.

Thanks to the Seattle XO User Group for putting me on to Brando. Brando has lots of neat little usb things that will be of interest to people with this emerging class of wee laptops, or for crazy MacBook Air owners. For them, Brando also has a variety of usb hubs to make the most of that one usb port.

There was room for improvement, though, especially in the area of ginger prep. As Barley Legal’s proprietor Saul points out in the article, sliced ginger (as opposed to shredded) is used in order to end up with a product that has as little physical ginger matter in it as possible — just pure ginger flavour. However, the process of peeling is a bit like shredding, and it would be wise after peeling and slicing to add the step of carefully rinsing the ginger to remove as much fine particle as possible. Why? Check out this vid I made of the final product…

I did three takes with different bottles, and while that wasn’t the best, it was the most dramatic, so in the interests of both education and entertainment, there it is. It ends abruptly because my little digital camera doesn’t believe any shot should last longer than three minutes.

Saul also mentions in his article that the product would be better if a proper champagne or brewer’s yeast were used instead of plain old baking yeast. He only features baker’s yeast in his article to make the point of how simple this is, achievable with gear and ingredients common in many kitchens.

It may be that if I had used a more appropriate yeast my ginger ale would smell less sulphurous. I tested bottles throughout the fermenting/chilling period, and the scent was most noticeable on day three. As was the volcanic effect: when I opened a bottle that hadn’t been refrigerated, the foam-over problem was about 10 times worse than in the above vid.

The sulphurous smell diminished with time. I would recommend two days minimum refrigeration for a better smelling and better behaving ginger ale, though even after a week in the fridge, if you’ve got a lot of particles in the sediment, you still risk foam-over, as the video demonstrates. There’s no avoiding sediment (pour carefully), but best if it doesn’t have wee bits and pieces in it.

Finally, I should add that Saul makes a major point in his article of warning people not to use glass bottles. The amount of pressure in the bottle from carbonation is very high. With a plastic bottle, if it’s too much, the cap will hiss or the bottle might even split, but with glass . . . Well, natural carbonation is only fun until someone puts out an eye.

Next attempt I will also add an apple and a stick or two of cinnamon, just for kicks. What can I say, I’m a wild man.