Tozai Todd

An idea whose time has come, the Boston Transit Authority is likely to ban its operators from even carrying cellphones on board. This, after a close call with an accident on Friday.

''When it comes to public safety and operating public transportation vehicles, a line has to be drawn,'' he said.

State Transportation Secretary James Aloisi Jr., chairman of the MBTA Board of Directors, said accidents like Friday's have become too common, citing a train accident last year in California in which 25 people were killed. A conductor involved in that crash was found to have sent and received 43 text messages and made four cell phone calls.

Aloisi said he doesn't know of any policy nationwide as tough as what the MBTA is planning.[1]

It's too bad that this looks to be the first of ban of its kind in the U.S. This quote from general manager Daniel Grabauskas sums up the need:

''I want to remove any temptation by one or two people stupid enough to think a moment of convenience is worth the lives of the people they're transporting,'' he said. ''I'm not going to wait for someone to die to institute a policy whose time I think has come.'' [1]

Last year, in a Japan Times feature talking about the gestures the JR train operators make when a train approaches and leaves a station, there was this interesting tidbit:

Before I made tracks, I asked Satoh about cell phones. Just that morning, news had come out that the driver in the Sept. 12 Los Angeles train accident that killed 26 people had been sending text messages just before the crash. Much to my relief, Satoh said that JR East has a strict rule that employees may not even carry personal cell phones, let alone use them, when working on trains. A driver or conductor found to have used a personal cell phone on the job, he assured me, would be fired. [2]

The Boston transit authority is doing the right thing, including firing the offending operator. If there's one thing the Japanese know, it's how to run an efficient train system. Cities would be wise to follow Japan Railway's and, presumably, now Boston's example.

[1]: After Boston Crash, Cellphone Ban May Loom, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/09/us/AP-US-Trolley-Crash.html?_r=1&hp

[2]: Japan Gestures, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20081021wh.html

Kottke:
 
"The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, is available for pre-order on Amazon and will be released in September. The Da Vinci Code, which spent 24,498 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list, was both awesome and horrible at once."
 
http://www.kottke.org/09/04/new-dan-brown-the-lost-symbol

JohnLopez:
 
Has it occurred to anyone else that perhaps the gaping social lacuna of a perfect Obama Impersonation is simply the awaiting the day when Dave Chapelle emerges red-eyed and munchy-mouthed from his $50 million marijuana nursery / personalty-cult compound in Ohio to unleash the O-bomb on You Tube? Seriously, all Chappelle has to do is take a camcorder, scream, "I'm Barack Obama, bitch!" and upload that to Funny or Die.com and Comedy Central will sign him to Season 4 of the Chappelle Show for $100M.
 
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/why-arent-there-any-great-obama-impressions-yet.html

I applaud Asylum for their thoroughness. They could have just done a top 5 of the usual well-knowns, but no, they did it right and now you can find out what King Kong Bundy and Dusty Rhodes are up to.
 
http://www.asylum.com/2009/04/03/80s-wrestlers-where-are-they-now/

I had an odd problem with my Flex datagrid seemingly caching data in its rows. I say, "seemingly," because the Datagrid's dataprovider was accurate, up-to-date, filled with the correct data, but when I removed items from the dataprovider, then added new ones, the datagrid would initially show a row with some data from a previously deleted item.

The Fix

The field that always had the "cached" data was using a custom itemRenderer. My problem stemmed from the fact that I was setting a variable for the renderer in a creationComplete handler:

private function init():void
{
data = value;
notes = (data.hasOwnProperty("notes")) ? data.notes : data.initialInspection.notes;
}

After reading this post at Nabble

    http://www.nabble.com/Datagrid-duplicate-row-td21321826.html

I did what I should have done to begin with, which was override the data setter function for the renderer:

override public function set data(value:Object):void
{   
    if (value != null)
    {
        super.data = value;
        notes = (data.hasOwnProperty("notes")) ? data.notes : data.initialInspection.notes;            }
}

Problem solved. Because creationComplete only gets called once, and I'm guessing because of the Datagrid/List optimizations, the data in the renderer was being retained.

I couldn't tell you where exactly I've watched episodes of this before; my first guess would be mornings in Baton Rouge watching "The Buckskin Bill Show," but this is instantly familiar, and within the first two minutes of this episode, where Peter Park accidentally puts his car in a tree while dodging a boulder, then webslings his way to a 3-point landing, then accidentally bumps another rock that reveals "mysterious lights," it's safe to say that "awesome" is not nearly strong enough to describe it.

(Their embedded video was messing with my code, man, so here's a link to it: 1967 Spiderman Cartoon )

According to NPR, Marvel will be streaming all episodes eventually.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2009/04/why_a_42yearold_superhero_cart.html

I changed it yesterday. I typed it in *twice*. I had it written down on a piece of paper in my pocket, just in case. After I changed it and my screensaver kicked in and I awoke my iMac to use it again, though, I couldn't log in. I'm still not sure what happened, because it just seems so unlikely I would type a different password than the one written down twice. At any rate, for anyone who may find this, here's how everything played out.
 
In these situations, you're supposed to boot from your install disc and use their password reset utility. I'm at work and didn't have a 10.5 install disc handy, so I googled how to reset a password without a disc and came up with a post at hackaddict:
 
http://hackaddict.blogspot.com/2007/07/reset-os-x-password-without-os-x-cd.html
 
You delete an invisible file that tells OS X you've run the initial setup, so the next time you boot, the setup runs again, you create a new admin account and then you can login, reset your old password, and you're done. Simple instructions, and I had recent backup, so I dove in. No problems until I rebooted.
 
The setup started again, but my keyboard would not type. I could hit the volume keys, though, and the mac would respond. I couldn't get around this. Trying a new keyboard didn't work.
 
I ended up getting an install disc from home, ran the reset utility. Great. I still had this problem of the iMac wanting to run its setup, though. For that, booted the iMac in Firewire target disk mode (hold down T after the start-up chime), connect it to my personal Macbook, and use the Terminal to copy the .AppleSetupDone from it to the iMac. Reboot the iMac and we were good to go.
 
There was another problem with my keychain file still using my borked password, but I had a relatively recent backup that I copied over, then reset its password.

Is going to be a film, maybe?
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270842/
 
See also: http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Blog?blog=41935&oid=859728
 
First read about it here, in an interesting write-up of Murakami:
 
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/japans-21st-century-cultural-ambassador-haruki-murakami/
 
I have a terrible habit of not remembering much of anything I read. I read NW probably back in 2002, 2003. I remember empathizing a lot with the main male character, but couldn't tell you why now. But I think I can say that about most of Murakami's books that I've read, which is probably why I enjoy them so much.
 
...
 
While looking up some more Murakami stuff, came across this, a link to a pdf of his second novel, _Pinball, 1973_, now out of print.
 
http://www.themillions.com/2007/05/rare-treat-for-murakami-fans-pinball.html

I'd love to see the rest of this collection. Judging from these, it's a shame Watanabe didn't get more recognition.

In Focus | Watanabe Katsumi:
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/in-focus-watanabe-katsumi/