This is part thought experiment, part we’re-almost-there, and part holy-wow-you-could-actually-do-this-today.  For a long time I’ve been frustrated at how wireless providers have wanted to charge us separately for voice, text, and data, and recently even more for tethering, when in fact it’s all just data.  Well, we’ve now reached an interesting point in the dicing up of such plans, the evolution of portable devices, and IP/telephony bridge services that interesting possibilities are now available, albeit with some caveats.

Here’s the basic idea, though the tech-savvy amongst you will have figured it out from the picture already: you carry a WiFi-enabled device as your handset – it could be an iPod touch, a Kindle Fire, or ideally an unlocked/off-contract smartphone with its cellular radio turned off.  You also carry a tiny “MiFi” or similar device which is meant for tethering users, which talks 3G to the cell tower and allows 3-5 WiFi connections from devices/computers.  You make and receive your calls with Skype and receive text messages via Google Voice. 

The Hardware

As a nominal setup, let’s consider the iPod Touch 4G 8GB ($188 at Amazon) as a handset.  With a front-facing camera and built-in speaker and microphone, it’s the most powerful phone form-factor for the price.  Of course an unlocked smartphone (iPhone, Windows Phone, Android) would work even better, but unless you already have one from a previous contract they can be expensive to buy off-contract.

You’ll also need an AT&T MiFi Router (on AT&T you now have to go with the Elevate 4G, $70 on a 2-year contract and $270 without); the only plan available is $50/month for 5 Gigabytes, which should be more than enough for all the phone calls and smartphone-like surfing you can do in a month.  The device is tiny (4x2x.7 inches, 3.6 ounces) and acts as a portable WiFi hotspot – you just connect your device (or laptop) to the hotspot and you’re on the internet.  It’s supposed to last for 5 hours of active use, but you’d only be using it a small fraction of the time – however, to receive calls it would always have to be on.  It’s not clear whether it will last all day if it’s idling most of the time.

There is a cheaper option – if you get a 3G ipad, you can get the $30/month 3 Gigabyte plan, but that’s an awfully big cellphone to be carrying around.

Placing/Receiving Voice Calls

While outbound IP telephony, i.e., the ability to call physical phones over the internet, has been available to consumers for some time now via services like Skype, a relatively recent development is inbound calls.  Skype now allows you to get a “Skypein” phone number in the area code of your choice which maps to your Skype account – when someone calls that number, all your devices/computers will ring.  If you have the Skype app on the iPod touch with background notifies turned on, the device will ring even if it’s in standby mode.  It’s not free, though – I recently procured such a number, and it’s $60/year ($5/month).  For another $3/month you get unlimited US/Canada calling; if you subscribe for a year you get a discount on the Skypein number too so the whole deal is around $6/month (thus the total price of $56/month in the title).

This won’t be the phone number you’ll give people, though; read the section below to see why.

Text Messages

While Skype lets you send outgoing text messages, you can’t receive incoming texts.  Fortunately, Google Voice has this among its many handy features.  The way Google Voice works is that you get a universal phone number (again, in the area code of your choice), which you can map to any phone number you wish; you can’t actually make calls through Google Voice itself, but you can receive/send text messages for free.  If you install the Google Voice app on your device, you can route phone calls to your Skype number but receive/send text messages in the app.  You can also set up Skype so the Caller ID will show the Google Voice number.  As with the Skype app, when you receive a text message in the Google Voice app you’ll get a notify that will “wake up” your device and play a notification tone, even if it’s in standby.

The Google Voice number, then, is the phone number you’ll give people and the number you’ll text from.  That way, if they call or text you, you’ll receive it with a notify from either the Skype or Google Voice app respectively.

Upsides and Downsides

There are some obvious pluses and minuses with this scheme.  Let’s start with the minuses, as they’re pretty significant:

1. There’s the extra bulk of carrying both the handset (iPod Touch) and the MiFi hotspot – this is likely the dealbreaker for most people.
2. There’s no 911 service; you’d have to call police/fire/etc. directly and they’d have no way of figuring out your location without your telling them.
3. It’s unclear whether the battery for the hotspot would last all day under sparse usage – you may have to carry a second battery, adding further to the bulk.

At the same time, there are some unique advantages as well:

1. Cost – $55/month is a pretty good deal, considering that  voice 450/data/text/tethering would cost you $40+$30+$20+$20 or $110/month.
2. Tethering for you and your friends – since you’re carrying a hotspot in your pocket, you can connect your laptop or allow your friends to do the same.
3. Limited tracking/eavesdropping – since you’ll be having all your communications over secure channels, there is less opportunity for AT&T to track/eavesdrop.  Not that this is a particularly big concern.

The Better (Future) Solution

Clearly, one would want the handset and the MiFi hotspot combined into one compact device.  It turns out this magical device already does exist – it’s called a smartphone!  Unfortunately, since AT&T (and the other providers) will not treat such a beast as a data-only device, i.e., it’s not possible for you to buy a data-only plan without voice, the cost becomes at least $90/month, and $110 if you want tethering as well.  Other providers like Virgin do offer cheaper plans (oddly enough, at the magic $55 pricepoint I came up with for this scheme), but it seems from online reports that their coverage/data rates are pretty spotty compared to AT&T.

The real consumer-friendly solution, then, would be for all wireless companies to sell data-only plans for their phones, or follow Virgin’s lead and offer a single low price for all of it.  That’s not bloody likely, though – surely they will keep charging people extra for voice minutes as long as they possibly can.  In the interim, while the solution outlined above is admittedly hacky, it would actually work today, so it is an option. At the least, it’s something to think about.

The four snowmen of 2012’s Seattle Snowpocalypse are almost upon us, and after a long day of working at home I thought it was time to make my famous Ground Turkey Shepherd’s Pie.  Well, I was scrounging around for ingredients when I found this helpful and adorable fellow!  I’m sad (but proud) to say that Ginger Bear sacrificed himself for the greater good, and will soon be part of a most delicious dish…

In an attempt to address this issue, I’ve heard many calls from friends to “buy local,” appealing to shoppers’ morality, but I fear such a strategy can only have limited effectiveness.  Especially now, when consumers are so squeezed for money due to record unemployment rates and low wages relative to inflation, folks who are cash-strapped are going to look for the best deals they can find for themselves and their families.  It may not be nice, but it’s the reality.

I think the mode of attack local retailers like Elliot Bay Bookstore fear the most is the smartphone – a consumer comes in, checks out a physical book, reads a few pages, likes it, then scans the barcode on her smartphone, sees the cheaper price on amazon and buys it from there right then or later at home; in either case the bookstore loses out on the sale, and the customer is benefiting without the store profiting from it in any sense.  A related scenario is when the customer is only interested in the e-book version, which the bookstore couldn’t sell even if it wanted to; after checking out the physical book they go home and buy.  I started thinking about how one might change this scenario so that both the bookstore and the customer could profit more than they are right now.

The Core Idea

Here’s the core idea: Amazon has long had a program called Amazon Associates which allows anyone to make money off Amazon sales if they can get consumers to buy items through their Associate-tagged links – they have a handy dandy tool to make a custom link out of any product they have for sale.   Amazon wants its associates to direct business its way, so the rewards are good – once you get beyond a hundred or so items sold per month, you get 7% of the retail price, and if you get beyond three thousand items, you get up to 8.5%.  For the purposes of discussion, consider getting 650 or so items per month sold this way through Amazon, which would get you 8% of the retail price for each item.

Let’s think about what this means.  Let’s say Elliot Bay has a book for sale for $15.  I don’t know what the retail margin on the book is, but it’s likely less a couple of dollars at best, once you take in the cost of renting the space, paying employees, shrinkage (theft and other random forces), etc.  Let’s say Amazon has that same book for $12.  If Elliot Bay could somehow get a customer to buy the book through their link, they would get $.96 (let’s call it $1 to keep things simple).  Also, that purchase would take zero time of any cashiers/etc., no labor to replace the book on the shelf, etc., so knock a few cents off the couple dollars they would have made from the physical book sale, and it’s not such a bad deal for the bookstore.  Furthermore, if a customer were interested in the kindle e-book, which the bookstore doesn’t carry, Elliot Bay would still make the $1.

Putting it into Practice

Now the question: how do we get the customer to click on the Elliot Bay Associate’s link instead of just scanning the barcode and getting it from Amazon?  There are two problems to solve here: first, how is the customer going to find the right Associate’s link to click on, and second, how will the bookstore convince the customer to deal with the bother and not just buy it directly from Amazon.

The first part has many possible solutions.  One that would be minimal coding/dev effort up front but more marginal manual labor is to just create a 2D barcode or tag for every book with the Associate’s links for the physical book and e-book, then put those on a (per-book) sticker and stick them to every physical book.  This would be labor intensive, but pretty easy to implement.  A more labor-efficient approach in the long term would be to create an Elliot Bay app for the popular smartphone platforms in which you could scan the book’s barcode and it would take you to the Associate’s link (physical or e-book).  This would cost more upfront in that someone would have to develop the app, but after that it would just be a matter of updating the server side’s database with the appropriate links.  In the long term, an app shop could even specialize in making a turnkey app for this purpose which they could rebrand and resell to many retailers, thus reducing the cost of the app development to any particular retailer.

But why would a consumer deal with the separate app or scan the special barcode instead of just going for the book’s original barcode?  That’s the second question, and I think to crack that one it’s necessary to share the gains with the customer.  Consider that instead of Elliot Bay taking the full $1 and keeping it, they return $.50 to the customer as 50 “Elliot Bay Points.”  The bookstore can decide how they want to make those points redeemable – they could be just like cash and be used towards any physical purchases (the best option for the customer); they could be redeemed for an occasional free book from the bestsellers list or something of that ilk; they could be restricted to a particular set of items like t-shirts (much worse for the customer).  The first option, I think, is the simplest and the best.

The Potential Result

If the bookstore were to implement that first option, and essentially give the customer 4% of their Amazon purchase price in “points” with every purchase, not only would customers gladly take the extra trouble to use the special barcode and/or app to make their purchase (allowing the store to monetize the scenario they are most worried about now), they’d also use it to buy e-books (something the store can’t make any revenue from right now); I would argue some consumers would even walk to the bookstore to make their e-book purchase, since they know they’d be getting points for every purchase as well as having an excuse to saunter through an awesome store (I know I would!).

Of course the bookstore might argue they’d still rather have the consumer buy the physical book (and thus keep $1-2) and not buy the e-book or pull out their smartphone and comparison shop, but this approach would let them aggressively start monetizing opportunities that they’re currently losing entirely – by this scheme they’d at least make $.50 (and give $.50 to the customer in points) rather than making $0.

If you asked me what the most important thing was for a college application, a graduate school application, a job application, or success in life, I’d say the same thing: passion.  If you asked me to give a little more detail for college applications, I’d say the following:

1. Excellent performance in school, i.e., great grades (in challenging classes) and test scores
2. An outstanding, memorable application
3. Extracurricular activities and community engagement
4. Spark

The first one is pretty obvious; there are so many fantastic graduates you will be competing with, it helps to start off with great grades/test scores as a starting point.  Your grades certainly don’t need to be perfect, but better grades are always to one’s benefit.  The most important thing is what you learn, but for better or for worse, the outside world will tend to assess that (when looking at your applications) mostly through your grades.  It’s also important that these grades are for challenging courses too; of course it’s easy to get high grades if one takes only easy courses.  Take honors courses, AP courses, whatever is available.  Challenge yourself!  Also keep in mind that it is possible to study for the standardized tests; I spent many hours studying vocabulary lists to improve my verbal SAT scores.  I’m not really sure that was worthwhile in terms of admissions, but I certainly learned a lot of useful words that way   The one thing from the studying I did that I feel *is* worth doing is taking some practice SAT’s (or whatever other standardized test you need to take) – being familiar with the format and time constraints of the test will help a lot, both in terms of reducing your anxieties, and in best showing your skills.

The second is also important, but that is still several years away for you.  In order to best prepare yourself for that time, make the absolute most of your English classes to hone your essay-writing skills.  There are so many terrible writers out there, especially at the high school level, that a well-written essay will really stand out.  More important than the quality of writing, though, is the substance of the essay, and this part will come only from introspection. What makes you special, what do you want to do, what motivates you?   There will be thousands of essay from kids who want to “change the world” or “make the world a better place” in some abstract way; if you say something concrete like you want to develop new technologies for desalination to cheaply provide clean drinking water to areas that need it (and then provide some cool schematics on how you might do it), your essay will be remembered.  If you have an art portfolio or an album of your music online, throw in a URL.  Show them you’re more than the application form.

The third and fourth ones are subtle.  Many good students view the dreaded extra-curriculars as an extra “check mark” they need in order to get into a great school; I certainly started off thinking that way.  As time went on, though, I really got into the activities I was drawn towards – mock trial, model united nations, etc.  There were also ones that seemed like obvious resume fodder that I dropped out of, though, like academic decathalon (I couldn’t stand the people or the material).   You’ll have to figure out what works for you, since these activities take a lot of time, and you should do the ones you love because you want to, not because you think they’ll look good on your application. 

Also remember that extracurriculars don’t have to be at school – maybe you have a band with some friends, maybe you do amazing paintings with coffee grounds, maybe you make amateur documentaries about environmental issues in your hometown, maybe you tutor other kids in math and science, maybe you do campaigning for a local politician, etc.  This is what brings us to number four, “spark.”  Admissions committees are looking for unique, brilliant people that will succeed wonderfully and also make the campus a better place for everyone.  They want to invest in the brightest stars; they will see the test scores and grades as a filter, but the people they choose will be the ones whose passion burns right through their application and interview.  They want to admit the people who 20 years later show up in Science or the New York Times for doing something amazing, in which it will of course be mentioned they went to college at Such-and-Such U.  It doesn’t matter if you write short stories or paint pictures or do mock trial or build robotic teddy bears; go deep in whatever you do and let your talents and passion shine.  If you make paintings, have an art show, even if it’s in a local cafe.  If you love writing programs, make something that others can use and release it to the world.  If you write songs, play an open mic in town, and if there isn’t one, set one up with some friends. Do what you love, and make sure your passion and drive are evident in what you do and your application. It’s important that *you* pick what *you* love, though – if you just pick something that you think they’ll be impressed by, it will be obvious – the passion just won’t be there. The hardest part of this, of course, is finding where your real passions are, and that’s not an easy thing; for most of us, it’s something we spend our whole lives doing.  Note that I said “passions” (plural) and not passion – it’s easy to think that there’s only one thing we care about, but that’s rare; we are complex beings and tend to have multifaceted interests.  As a highschool student, I was passionate about writing and music as well as computers and electronics: you don’t have to choose while you’re still in highschool, and it’s better if you don’t.  Take the opportunity of highschool and college  (and the rest of your life) to expand all of your interests and find all the things that you love (also don’t worry too much about whether you’re good at them, that will come with time.  Recent studies show that expertise in anything takes about 10,000 hours of serious practice – if you’re still no good after that, perhaps consider something else .  My suggestion would be to try lots of different things – instruments, art forms, sciences, tinkering, drama, sports, inventing – build, play, create, think, absorb, and you will find the thing that drives you, and certainly have a lot of fun figuring it out.   When I had my interview for MIT, I got there a few minutes late, as I’d just been putting the finishing touches on a song I was working on.  When I mentioned this, the interviewer wanted to hear all about it, and we spent the entire hour talking about my music (and little else); this involved everything from what inspired the song (a recent breakup) to how I recorded it (I had built a crazy sustain pedal out of tinkertoys and aluminum foil, and used telephone wire to hook two cassette recorders together so I could get more than one track .   I doubt my music alone got me in, but I think the interviewer appreciated the passion I had for what I was doing and the fact that I was more than just a bunch of grades/test scores.

One thought about choosing a school – it’s not clear to me how important it is to go to an expensive private school like MIT or Harvard, especially if you plan to pursue graduate studies.  I did both my undergraduate work and my PhD at MIT; when I started graduate school there were students from all over the country (including a few folks from my hometown school, Iowa State University). They did no better or worse than the MIT folks, and by the time we had our PhD’s, nobody really cared where we went to undergrad.  Even if you don’t go to graduate school, it’s not clear how much it matters whether you go to MIT vs. the University of Michigan or some other high-quality state school.  If you care about such things, there is a slight income differential for those coming out of college at the top schools, but that differential is quickly absorbed by how one performs in the real world.  A star performer and leader who goes to U of M will quickly rise beyond a number-crunching drone from a fancy school in all senses – income, position, influence, opportunities, etc.  That said, one of the great things about going to one of the brand name schools is that they tend to be full of passionate and brilliant people like you, and that makes for a very interesting four years.   Even then, you will find those types of folks in the honors programs of any university: the driven folks always find other driven folks, I’ve seen that my whole life, from high school to where I am now.   Go to a school where you feel you will be able to learn the most, i.e., the environment that seems the most conducive to learning for *you.*  Visit schools if you can, stay with students over a weekend (most schools have programs like this); you’ll find you love the communities in some schools and hate the way people act in others.  I didn’t visit places and got lucky (I loved both the people and the city surrounding MIT); if I had ended up at Princeton (where I was fortunately rejected) I would have been a pretty sad monkey.

In the end, the most important thing of all this is finding your passions and developing them.  You can force yourself to do something you’re not passionate about, but you won’t be happy.  That said, you should be strategic as well:  if you think your passion is in painting and painting alone, you may not be casting your net broadly enough: see if there is a related craft (like graphic design) or perhaps something quite unrelated like programming which might inspire you as well.  Think of yourself as a superhero whose powers are as of yet unknown; only with patience, introspection, and experience will find out what you can really do.  Once you do begin to figure out what drives you, you can spend the rest of your life developing the talents you have and growing skills in the areas you don’t to maximize your potential impact and let you do all the amazing things you are capable of. 

Finally, if all this talk of figuring out your passions before you’ve even entered college is stressing you out, let me tell you what a wise man once told me when I wanted  desperately to find the “right path” for myself.  “Finding the right path takes a lifetime,” he said.  “Relax and enjoy the journey.”

We (Janelle and I) are very proud to announce that our first children’s book, “Sadie Meets a Bee,” is now out at Tweepea Press and available from amazon.  We want it to be accessible to everyone, so it’s also available to read online (for free). People have been telling me for ages that my drawings would be very appropriate for a children’s book, but I’ve never really had a story in mind.  Last fall, Janelle came up with this lovely story, I made some initial sketches, and we were off!  Well, of course it wasn’t quite that simple; otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken us nine months to produce the book.

So far, we’ve learned an incredible amount about publishing, book layout, formats, variations in color reproduction, and more just getting the book to press, and I plan to blog in much more detail (as well as create an ignite talk) about this process.  However, in some ways, the story of this book has only just begun – having the book on Amazon means that anyone could buy it, but there’s no reason they ever would because they’ve never heard of it.  Thus far, nearly every parent who has seen the book has wanted to get a copy for his or her little ones, so we’re trying our best to spread the word far and wide via local book release parties, social networks, online advertising, and much more.  This is a tricky road to navigate: if we can make good progress on our grassroots promotion efforts, we’ll definitely do some documentation of what we tried and what worked/didn’t.

Also, now that we’ve learned the process, the second and subsequent books should be far easier, and we’re already brimming with a multitude of ideas for what might come next.  Stay tuned, and in the meantime, please check out our book online!

So here it is.  One of my favorite acts, the Glitch Mob, will be playing at the Showbox Downtown on June 5 (event details).  Hooray!  J and I were very excited, and I volunteered to get the tickets.  Since I live in Capitol Hill and the I take home from work stops within a few blocks of the venue, I went down to the box office to get my tickets: $21.00 a piece, with a $2.00 ticket fee; a total of $23 per ticket or $46 for the both of us.  Not bad at all for a great show.  The $21.00 is split between the band, the concert promoters, and the venue (not TicketMaster, according to the wikipedia article); the $2 is a mystery fee which is likely going to TM, but it’s pretty small.  As a bonus, I walked by beautiful Pike Place, saw a guy standing on his amp belting out wacky blues music, and strolled about the city that I love on a typically damp April day.

Then, for my entertainment, I decided to look up what the price would have been had I bought the tickets online.  In a process most of you are familiar with, you can’t just click on the link for the concert and get the price – first you select your tickets, then you wait a while, and then you see $21.00.  Yay!  But that’s just the base price for the ticket.  And then you see the $8.65 convenience charge per ticket, and then the additional $0.44 in additional tickets due to the convenience charge.  So now instead of $23 a ticket, it’s $30.09, so a total of $60.18 per ticket.  Then it looks like you’re done, and you just have to enter your email/password to go further.  But we’re not done, no no no!  Once you enter your info, there’s an additional order processing fee of $5.94, a TicketFast Delivery charge of $2.50 (this is the cheapest option – you’re paying $2.50 for the privilege of printing the ticket at home), and some more taxes of $0.13.  So now we’re at $34.38 per ticket or 68.75 for two tickets.  Had you bought only one ticket, it would have been even worse, since all the final fees would apply – i.e., $38.66 per ticket (ok, maybe a few cents less in tax, but literally only a few cents).  Folks, that’s an 84% markup from the original ticket price.

So let’s think about this.  There’s nothing on the ticket that prevents you from reselling it (in fact, they only take cash, so they can’t track your ticket) – some individual states have limitations on ticket resale (ironically, in PA, you can only resell a ticket for $5 or 25% more than the face value).  So, an enterprising and trustworthy person in the community could buy up tickets at the box office and then sell them for, say, $30 a ticket, still make $7 a ticket, but undercut the TicketMaster price by $8.66 (and use the money for something more useful, presumably, like paying their rent).  I’m not the one who’s going to do this, but I definitely see an opportunity for some enterprising person to take this on.  Is TicketMaster trying to prevent this?  Of course!  Remember that $2.50 print-it-yourself cheapest delivery option? The awesome thing about that is that it ties the ticket to your name/ID, and they require you to show ID at the door that matches the ticket – i.e., no resales of that tickets. 

So why did I say “terrible yet amazing” in my title?  They’re amazing because they can pull this shit off.  They are charging you – me – us – an 84% markup, and we’re accepting it (for the most part), and with good reason.  They control access to nearly every worthwhile venue. What’s even more brilliant is that they have us thinking they’re entirely to blame.  “Oh Ticketmaster, I hate them!!” is a much sanitized version of a commonly uttered epithet amongst concert goers.  Well – have you ever wondered why so many of your favorite venues use Ticketmaster?  Because the venues get huge kickbacks from Ticketmaster (you can read more about this on the wikipedia article, as well as this much more frothing-at-the-mouth assessment of their business practices).  Ticketmaster even tells the venue (perhaps not in so many words), “you can tell them to hate us, that your hands are tied, it’s that evil Ticketmaster, etc.”   Is it evil? Yes.  Is it price-gouging? Yes.  Is it also brilliant? Yes. 

Is there anything you can do about it?  No.  Congresscritters have tried, British parliament has tried, Canadian parliament has tried, not to much avail. Well, that’s not quite true – there is something you can do.  You can take a rainy afternoon and have a nice trip down to the Showbox, or Neumo’s, or wherever, and get your tickets in person -  a big shout out to those venues for letting us do that.  Who knows – if you’re lucky, you might hear some awesome, wacky blues music on your way in.  And if you’re really lucky, like I was when I went to get tickets for Bassnectar last summer, you might even hear that night’s band (in my case, the Shins), practicing for their evening show

1. Fructose is mostly bad for you (note fructose and High Fructose Corn Syrup are not the same, see #5 below); it is entirely metabolized by the liver, and turns mostly into fat and triglycerides; its metabolized in the body in a manner very similar to alcohol. The small amount that occurs naturally in fruits comes with a great deal of fiber and helpful enzymes; fruit juices (even 100% fruit juices) are much worse, as they are delivering only the fructose without the fiber. Fructose also does not trigger a glycemic response, which is your body’s signal to stop eating more, thus your body doesn’t get satiated and you keep having more of it. This article tells more about the problems with metabolizing fructose (the talk below goes into much more scientific detail, but this article is a good summary). Glucose, on the other hand, is the "fuel of life," and can be used by every cell in your body; a relatively small fraction of it turns to fat; most of it is stored as glycogen in the liver.  Recent, peer-reviewed work has showed that fructose has a much greater impact on obesity. The one advantage of fructose is that it can be turned more rapidly to ATP in the bloodstream; so if you are in glycogen depletion (i.e., running a marathon and totally out of your glucose reserves), fructose can be effective at giving you instant energy. See the talk "Sugar: the Bitter Truth", by Dr. Robert Lustig, a research physician at UCSF for lots more information on this – it’s 90 minutes long, but after the first 10 minutes you’ll likely be as hooked as I was.

2. Most common sugars/syrups are a combination of fructose and glucose, see this chart of common sweeteners and their ratios. In some sense, the lower the fructose content, the better (unless you’re diabetic), given the problems with fructose above; however, an excess of glucose in the blood will be converted to fatty acids and triglycerides in the blood, it will also provoke an insulin response (sugar crash).  It’s likely not practical to sweeten with just glucose, though, since (a) glucose is less sweet than ordinary sugar (sucrose), about 70%; fructose is more sweet, and (b)  a tablespoon of glucose powder has twice the glycemic index of a tablespoon of table sugar, since sucrose is only 50% glucose.

3. A corollary to #2 is that eating too much is really bad for you, especially if you’re trying to lose weight or lower your cholesterol, since the excess glucose will all become fatty acids/cholesterol/etc.  This is why nutritionists are always recommending eating many small meals instead of one big one.

4. Table sugar, sucrose, is a disaccharide, with one fructose and one glucose for every molecule linked together with a weak chemical bond; as such it’s 50% fructose and 50% glucose. This bond is broken down in the small intestine by the enzyme sucrase.

5. High Fructose Corn Syrup, or HFCS, is not nearly as bad as pure fructose: common HFCS (HFCS-55) is 55% fructose, 42% glucose, or (HFCS-42) 42% fructose and 53% glucose; HFCS-90 is rarely used in foods. In other words, the proportion of fructose and glucose are about the same as in table sugar (sucrose), the only difference is that they are in solution as monosaccharides and as such sucrase doesn’t come into the picture. As such, other than the invocation of sucrase, HFCS is basically equivalent to sugar in terms of the fructose/glucose content delivered to your body.

6.  A cup of "100% pure" fruit juice is much worse for you than a cup of soda, at least in terms of fat impact/obesity, as it will typically contain more sugar, and since the sugars in the pure fruit juice are entirely fructose.  Furthermore, the juice is typically entirely devoid of fiber (I’m not sure how much orange juice "with pulp" alleviates this).  This study, referenced in WebMD, showed how individuals consuming fructose showed more weight gain/obesity than those consuming the same amount of sucrose.  Note, however, that there are other benefits to fruit juice, such as providing essential vitamins, amino acids, etc., which soda does not have.

7. Pure corn syrup is almost 100% glucose, however, it’s hard to find on the market. Karo, for instance, sold as corn syrup, has a substantial portion of fructose. It is sometimes sold as "Dextrose," “corn sugar,” or "Brewer’s Sugar" and is common in bodybuilder products.

8. Most natural "high-carb" starchy foods, such as rice, potatoes, etc., are all glucose, but come with a good deal of fiber. This means it will take a little more time for the body to absorb the sugar, as opposed to the instant high/crash of a soft drink, fruit juice, or spoonfuls of table sugar.  Depending on how much effort it takes for the body to break it down, though, it may not take much more time; how much of an insulin response it produces compared to pure glucose determines its glycemic index.  White bread, for instance, which is very low in fiber, seems to produce 70% of the insulin response of pure glucose.

9. Maple syrup has a surprisingly good glucose to fructose ratio: about 4:1.  As a result, it has a high glycemic index, but will result in less of the fat/poisions one gets from metabolizing fructose.

Artificial Sweeteners

Caveat: the following points are much more controversial; there’s not a lot of conclusive evidence about the long-term effects of any artificial sweeteners.  That said, you may still find the following points interesting, as I certainly did!

10. Sucralose (splenda), while superficially similar to a sugar molecule, has more in common with insecticides; don’t be fooled by its -lose suffix. In fact, sucralose was discovered by scientists trying to come up with a new insecticide. It contains a Chlorine atom, which is very stable in salt (NaCl), but not nearly so much in its covalent bond with carbon.

11. Aspartame (Nutrasweet), when metabolized by the body, produces (amongst other things) formaldehyde. This is an extremely toxic substance, and does not occur naturally in the body. I found it curious that the wikipedia page for aspartame says that it does occur in the body, and the page for formaldehyde says it doesn’t.   Proponents of aspartame argue that it does occur naturally in some food, such as tomatoes.  However, this article does a good job of reasoning about the actual amount of formaldehyde that ends up in your body after having 1 Liter of diet soda (600 mg ingested, 40 mg absorbed is the most conservative estimate); this is enough to cause gradual damage according to the article, and much more than ordinary foods have (tomatoes, for instance, have 10mg/kg or 4.5mg/lb ingested, so likely around 0.3mg/lb absorbed, i.e. one Liter of soda results in more than 100 times the amount of formaldehyde in your body than a pound of tomatoes) – see this document for a list of formaldehyde content in common foods. 

12.  Artificial sweeteners may actually make you fat:  this fascinating study shows that diet sodas are highly predictive of later obesity across a wide variety of factors.

After a few months of doing paper sketches and putting them up to share on facebook, flickr, etc., I realized what a valuable and motivating experience it was.  Valuable in that with every new sketch, I was learning new things, developing my technique, etc.; motivating in that I could get it out to the world (and occasionally get feedback) instantly.  Even people who wouldn’t make comments on the sites would comment on them when they saw me in person; as time went on, it felt more and more like I was drawing for an audience (which added a bit of pressure, but it was still fun).

Given that I’m often reluctant to sit down and work on songs because it can seem so onerous and ponderous (what if I screw it up?) to do on my own, I thought I’d try applying the same philosophy to playing with music.  The result is a set of what I call “song sketches,” of which I’ve made nine so far (in the grid above), roughly one a day.  So far, it’s been great – I haven’t gotten as much feedback as with the sketches, but I find myself motivated to work on some music when I come home.  I think this is for several reasons – first, because these are sketches, it’s pretty low pressure – I’m not worried about making something that sounds produced and perfect.  Second, because they’re short, I know I can finish and post the new piece every night.  Third, it gives me a chance to play with different instruments and types of music than I usually do, since I’m not making complete songs.   Finally, it’s actually quite a nice way to document song ideas – there’s already a few that I want to make into more complete songs.

Hopefully I’ll keep doing this for a while – my initial goal was 30, but who knows where I’ll end up: maybe 10, maybe 100.  Stay tuned   You can can see the playlist of all the songsketches here.

As many of you know, I’ve been doing a lot more sketching recently, and now that I finally got a decent scanner, I’ve been getting higher quality scans of them to put up on Flickr, Facebook, etc.  For now, I’m enjoying the sharing and commenting on Facebook, but of course the photo management (multiple resolutions, view count, etc.) is much better on Flickr.

You can see the current batch of sketches on Flickr here.  Most of them are just drawn with a fine-point Sharpie in a Moleskine sketchbook (they’re the only ones with thick enough paper such that the Sharpie doesn’t bleed through).  The sketch above is from a recent Facebook project where I offered to draw sentences submitted by my friends.  The sentence for this one was from Andy, who said, "I don’t want to dodge this rain cloud."  Heh.

1. Jack Conte: multitalented musical genius like noone else you’ve ever heard. It’s true. Start with "Yeah Yeah Yeah" and then move on to his "VideoSongs" on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzr32OqGlOA

2. Andie Francoeur: Tori Amos and Fiona Apple had a secret love child: Andie! Listen to Cloud Number 9 and be thankful I told you about her; her voice is simply unbelievable; she’s also an awesome person. She’s in Singapore right now but will be back in the PNW and touring in a few months. http://www.myspace.com/andiefrancoeur

3. Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s: you’ll hear their songs and be like, "uh, so why haven’t I heard this before?" Yup. It’s like that. Start with "Quiet as a Mouse" – the video is pretty spectacular as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na7xJ7wQ-iw

4. Red Sparowes: basically the Cure without vocals; surprisingly compelling. I learned about this one from a personals ad (go figure!). Another cool fact – their first album’s track titles, when stitched together, form a poem – that’s why they’re so long. Start with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LuvSLRYEec

5. FighterX (FighterXtreme): the crunchiest 8-bit techno you can possibly dream of played at 10x the speed and 100x the awesome. HEADRUSH!!! When playing live, one of his instruments is a Nintendo DS. You will fall in love instantly… rock on: http://www.myspace.com/fighterxtreme

6. Copy: if robots wrote each other love songs, this is what they’d sound like: computerish melodies in a warm electronic stew. He’s also an awesome guy; I met his parents for his first CD release party (he’s out of PDX). Mobius Beard is my favorite of his albums, though Hair Guitar is fun too. Start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb0BXpojJlQ but then move on to his myspace page (you know how to find it).

7. The Books: Crazy bits of sampled reality configured in ultra-sparse-mode and lovingly arranged with contemplative goodness. Start with "Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again." Listen to it in stereo with someone you love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cx10MrMYB4&feature=related

8. Kate Isenberg: the kind of warm folk music that will make you curl up with happiness on your favorite couch, close your eyes, and smile and cry yourself to sleep. Her album is like a lullaby, a soundtrack for falling in and out of love. As you might expect, she’s a wonderful, genuine person in real life as well. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=73273271

9. Kent: Radiohead, but from Sweden. If you liked Ok Computer, you’ll love Isola as well. They do all their songs in Swedish (Svenska) and English; the Swedish version of my favorite song (Celsius) is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCBxNjqpT3o .Their myspace page has some English songs – I’d recommend "747": http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=6733769

10. Panther: this guy must be taking so many drugs he’s on a whole other plane. I saw him live, freaking out all over the place with a 1980′s casio keyboard – blew my mind. Put on a good hat and listen to this crazy dude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUu5gO4RUxo