Monthly Archives: July 2009

Why I Buy $100 Fans (Review: Vornado)

Uncategorized

Like anyone else, I try to find the best deal on things. Sometimes the best deal isn’t the thing that’s cheapest up front. I work for a company that makes some of the world’s best lawn mowers, for instance, but they aren’t the cheapest.

Anyhow: after a series of cheap $20-$50 Walmart fans failing in various ways (buttons falling off, motors starting to take a minute to get up to half speed, etc.), I bought my first Vornado fan back in 2007. They’re expensive, but I think worth it in the long run.

Circulators

Vornado would like to call it a circulator instead of a fan. I maintain that it’s a fan that can be used as a circulator. Anyhow: the point of most of the Vornado fans is that they don’t just shove air out in front in a sort of random pattern. Rather, they emit a concentrated column of air that travels a long distance at a high velocity (think like a laser). The usual way to use a Vornado fan is to set it at the floor on one end of your room, and aim it at the edge between the wall and the ceiling at the opposite end of the room. This will create constant air movement throughout the entire room. You’re cool wherever you go. Vornado fans don’t have an oscillation feature because they don’t need it. Vornado calls this vortex action.

Another common use is to put one in the middle of a room and aim it straight up.

I find that they mostly live up to the promise. When you’ve got it correctly aimed, it does create a pleasant breeze throughout the entire room. It’s calm, and reaches everywhere. It does take some skill and occasional ingenuity to get that breeze working right. Sometimes if it’s really hot, you can also set one on the floor and aim it straight ahead along sofas and chairs. The air will just brush everyone, but at a high speed.

Most of their fans range in price from $50 to $100, though a few are outside that range. All of their regular fans come with at least a 5-year full warranty; some have a 10-year one.

I think we’ve got these fans in the house: one 750, two 735s, one 630, one 615, and at least four Zippis. Some of them I got at vornado.com, some on sale there, and some from woot. At full price, that would be over $500 of fans. So I better like them, eh?

The Zippi

The Zippi isn’t a circulator. It’s a personal-sized fan, but with a twist. It has no grill because its blades are made out of cloth, with a weight sewn into the tips. Turn it on, and centripetal force keeps the blades extended and working. It’s safe to touch and gives a mild sting if you put your hands into the blades.

It doesn’t move a lot of air, but it does work as advertised: it’s quiet (especially on low speed) and is a good personal fan. Occasionally after a bike ride to work, I’d prefer a bigger one, but overall it does very well. It uses very little space and folds down nicely if you want to travel with it. (It is AC-powered, not battery-powered).

Quality and Service

Overall, I’ve been happy with the quality of our Vornado fans. Recently we’ve had three problems: our 615’s power knob broke (I blame Jacob for that one), our 750 developed a loud rattle and whine, and the Zippi we keep on the nightstand also developed a rattle. I emailed customer service about it, and this is the part that really impressed me.

A human replied, and quickly. The put a new power knob in the mail immediately. They got the serial numbers from the other two. They replaced the Zippi and repaired the 750. They sent me a free UPS return label for the 750, so I didn’t even pay for shipping TO THEM.

The replacement power knob broke again within a week (it appears to be the only flimsy piece on the fan, and it’s within reach of a toddler…) They put another one in the mail.

The 750 arrived today with the rattle fixed, but a whine there. (It probably had the whine before, but I didn’t notice it due to the rattle, and therefore hadn’t mentioned it before.) I almost didn’t even ask them about it after all the expense they’ve gone to recently, but will go ahead and do so. I won’t be bothered if they said they won’t fix it, since they so zealously fixed everything else… but I suspect they will.

Oh: and included with the repaired 750 was a letter explaining what they found wrong, and what they did about it. It was personally signed by the consumer service manager (and her name was prominently listed). And because of the inconvenience of a malfunctioning fan (!), they included a card good for 20% off any of their fans. For the rest of my life.

It reminds me of the stories we hear about Japanese companies being personally embarrassed that one of their products wasn’t perfect. (GM: you could learn a thing or two here)

Conclusion

I’d say that few (5%?) of our Walmart fans are still operational after 5 years of heavy use. I’m sure that 100% of our Vornado fans will still be, and that’s saying something. The quality isn’t perfect (flimsy power switch on the 615) but is very good, and they do a good job of fixing problems when they arise. (Yes, imagine that: fixing a device when it breaks instead of throwing it out.) So even though they are more expensive than the Walmart fans, they’ll probably be cheaper in the long run.

I also like the circulator concept, though we do still use a box fan occasionally (to put it in the window and bring in cool air from outside).

Overall, we haven’t bought a non-Vornado fan since 2007.

And I never expected I’d post a review of fans of all things on my blog.

Update July 17: I bought my first Vornado fan in 2007, not 1997. Oops.

Another Freenode Annoyance

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I regularly keep XChat windows open to both Freenode and OFTC. I prefer OFTC for a variety of reasons, but still participate in several channels on Freenode.

Recently I discovered that somebody else was using my nick. No problem, I think; just use nickserv and claim it back. Only nickserv claims I never registered the nick.

But that can’t be, I thought. I registered it at least 10 YEARS ago. Probably longer, but my logs don’t go back farther than that. I’m on with it almost every day. And I identify to nickserv when I have to — maybe every few months.

And therein lies the problem. Apparently Freenode added a policy at some point of deleting registered nicks that haven’t identified in the last 60 days. Only they never notified people of the new policy (other than perhaps sticking it on an obscure website at some point). And they don’t care if you’re ONLINE, only if you identify to nickserv.

I tried to find staff to ask on Freenode as per the instructions on their website for contacting people for help, but each time I tried, no staff was online.

So I asked in #freenode for help. I was essentially told to leave them alone, and also not to ask the person using the nick for it back. So I’m SOL, and got the distinct impression that they don’t care at all about users with this sort of problem.

OFTC doesn’t ever delete nickserv registrations.

Sigh to Freenode.

The Cynic’s Guide to American Presidents

Politics

Sometimes I’m just annoyed at politicians. Yesterday, after receiving a letter from Sen. Brownback and reading coverage of Sarah Palin, I was annoyed at them.

So, in keeping with my theme of being annoyed at politicians, here’s my cynic’s guide to American presidents. Yes, it’s biased, under-represents successes, but that’s the point.

I’ll start with FDR, because I feel like it.

FDR – 1933-1945 (D)

Took office during the worst economic crisis of the 20th century. Tried lots of things to fix it; a few of them actually worked, and the best produced social improvements that lasted decades.

Finally solved the depression by getting us into a war, but died before he could get us back out of it. In a stunning display of racial and ethnic discrimination, rounded up and jailed legal Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and their children just because they were Japanese, German, or Italian. Presided over the firebombing of Dresden, which killed roughly 25,000 civilians in what would be called a terrorist war crime today. Formed an alliance with Stalin that indirectly led to the Cold War.

When asked if he wanted the German people to starve, he replied, “Why not?”

Had an affair with his wife’s secretary that must have inspired Gov. Sanford. FDR, however, kept it secret from his wife for 4 years and the public for 48 years.

Harry S. Truman – 1945-1953 (D)

Became vice president, but when FDR died 82 days later, didn’t want to be president. Victory in Europe was achieved shortly after he became president, but not due to anything he did. Ended World War II, started the Korean War, the Cold War, and the nuclear arms race. Saved the lives of countless Berliners, ended the lives of even more Japanese, though Stalin knew about the bomb years before Truman did.

Desegregated the US military in an early civil rights victory, but committed some of the worst mass murders in history using that same military.

Famously embarrassed the Chicago Tribune by winning re-election over Dewey.

Had the lowest approval rating for any American president until George W. Bush came along.

Dwight D. Eisenhower – 1953-1961 (R)

Before becoming president, was supreme commander of NATO during World War II, and thus also was implicated in the Dresden bombing. Reclassified German POWs, depriving them of Geneva Convention protections. Played on fear to justify building the interstate highway system, one of the largest long-term contributors to environmental and energy problems. Refused to defend people from McCarthy, despite privately criticizing McCarthy.

Integrated Washington, DC public schools. Took over the Arkansas National Guard to integrate Arkansas schools. Failed to get us involved in wars in Lebanon and Vietnam, despite his best efforts. Picked Nixon as his vice president, a decision nobody will forgive him for.

Famously warned of the military-industrial complex, a prediction that the profit motive of defense companies would lead politicians to support war for jobs. One of his most accurate predictions, ironically about a situation he created.

JFK – 1961-1963 (D)

Defeated Nixon to win the presidency, mainly because JFK looked better on black and white TV. Famously said “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” But the country did several things for him, including providing security when he had secret meetings with his mistress. (Gov. Sanford, you have a lot to learn.)

Tried Eisenhower’s plan to overthrow Castro. Almost got us a war with Russia, and Castro captured 1189 people. Also almost succeeded in starting the world’s first atomic war, also over Cuba, which was created partly because his earlier Bay of Pigs invasion. Despite putting 16,300 soldiers in Vietnam, it would take Johnson to finally turn that one into a war.

LBJ – 1963-1969 (D)

Supported the largest expansion of civil rights in the 20th century, and also the largest chemical weapons poisoning of a people in American history. Destroyed 6 million acres of land, intentionally destroying Vietnamese food crops, and poisoned 4 million Vietnamese and countless American soldiers. Vietnam war led to the death of 2 million Vietnamese civilians and tens of thousands of American deaths.

An early supporter of the war on poverty, voting rights, and the war on crime, he nonetheless stirred up some of the biggest riots in the 20th century because of Vietnam.

Managed to win re-election in 1964, though probably only because the Republicans had nominated Barry Goldwater, who made LBJ’s war policies look mild and sane.

Didn’t bother to seek re-election in 1968, knowing he was so unpopular. Though still remained more popular than Truman and Bush, which is saying something (though not a lot).

Richard Nixon – 1969-1974 (R)

Known as “tricky Dick”, managed to live up to the nickname. Announced he was leaving politics after losing to JFK in 1960 and a governor’s race in 1962, then won the presidential election in 1968.

Secretly expanded the Vietnam war to include Cambodia and Laos, while simultaneously calling himself a peacemaker. Greatly expanded Social Security and Medicare, supported the Equal Rights Amendment, Title IX, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

Went on a famous trip to the Soviet Union, where he mocked Brezhnev for not having color TV. Went on a famous trip to China, where he opened up the possibility of numerous ping-pong tournaments between the two countries.

Despite being heavily favored to win re-election in 1972, his paranoid campaign organization, called “creep” (CRP), broke into Democratic headquarters. The resulting coverup had him ordering illegal actions by the FBI, and unleashed G. Gordon Liddy on the country, which we’ll never forgive him for. His arch-nemesis — print journalists everywhere — achieved new respect due to the Watergate scandal, immortalizing an otherwise obscure porn movie by naming a secret FBI informant after it. Perhaps Nixon’s most lasting achievement.

Famously lied when he told people “I am not a crook.”

Gerald Ford – 1974-1977 (R)

Became president, and lost to Carter, because of Richard Nixon. Wikipedia wrote 2 paragraphs about his presidency, which seems about average for him. Supported women’s liberation, opposed swine flu. Both supported and opposed LSD. Best thing to ever happen to Chevy Chase’s career on SNL.

Jimmy Carter – 1977-1981 (D)

A Georgia farmer, he defeated Chevy Chase to win the presidency in 1976. Got us involved with Iran, failed to rescue the American hostages.

Dealt with an energy crisis by talking honestly about it with American people and making solid plans to deal with it. That ended so poorly that it would be 20 years before another president attempted the “honesty and planning” approach. Could have saved us trillions of dollars if he had been less honest about saving energy.

Famously built homes for the people that Reagan made homeless.

Ronald Reagan – 1981 – 1989 (R)

Despite presiding over the largest expansion of the federal debt in history, he is still well-liked by fiscal conservatives. Unlike Carter’s “tell it like it is” approach, told everybody that things were fine and getting better, and got us into $3 trillion of debt as a result.

Famously fired all the nation’s air traffic controllers, leading to ongoing problems with ATC today. Started a war in Grenada, another in Libya, and escalated the Cold War, though gave the whole country Alzheimer’s about all these actions. Famously called Nazi SS soldiers victims, but ordered generals to lay a wreath on their grave after it became too controversial for him to do it himself.

Violated US and international law by selling weapons to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Also sold weapons to Iraq to use to fight Iran. Single-handedly saved an American jelly bean company. Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1994, but suspected of having it during his presidency, if his answers to the Iran-Contra investigation are any guideline.

George H. W. Bush – 1989-1993 (R)

Started a war in Panama and another in Iraq, but it wasn’t until 10 years later that his son could announce “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. Pardoned many of the Iran-Contra conspirators. Launched the careers of Dana Carvey and Bill Clinton.

He refused to take charge when Reagan was shot, throwing the federal government into turmoil during a crisis. Barely took charge even after being elected.

Bill Clinton – 1993-2001 (D)

Taught the world how to deal with allegations of affairs with mistresses. Future SC Gov. Sanford voted to impeach him for it, arguing that he broke a promise to his wife more important than the one to his country. Launched the careers of Ken Star and Monica Lewinsky, in rather different ways.

Brokered historic Arab-Israeli peace at Camp David in 2000. Despite shooting down plenty of Iraqi planes in no-fly zones, never managed to cure Republicans in Congress of their constant criticism that we should just re-invade and finish what H. W. Bush didn’t (it would take Dubya to finally cure the Republicans of THAT wish).

Had more “gates” named after him than any president (Whitewatergate, Travelgate, Troopergate). Tried to both encourage and stifle the Internet (clipper chip). Greatly helped the career of David Letterman.

George W. Bush – 2001-2009 (R)

Took office and promptly went on vacation. Responding to the worst attacks on American soil, started two wars, one of which actually managed to fight the people that were tangentially related to the ones that attacked us. Nominated an Arabian Horse judge to head FEMA, then famously praised him after his mismanagement led to thousands of deaths after Hurricane Katrina.

Finally invaded Iraq after his dad refused to go deeply into that country, and announced “Mission Accomplished” before the real fighting ever began. Never seemed to doubt it, either. Actively repressed science in government and supported archaic religious fundamental positions, ironically doing more harm to Christianity in the eyes of the world than any president in recent memory.

Ran for president as a “uniter, not a divider”, then proceeded to act as a divider. Criticized Clinton for nation-building, then tried to build up Iraq. Defeated the husband of a ketchup magnate for re-election in 2004. Launched the career of Jon Stewart.

Supported massive tax breaks for the wealthy, ran up the federal debt more than anyone since Reagan, supported massive deregulation. Not to be outdone by the worst response to a natural disaster in recent times, his policies also implemented the worst response to an economic calamity since Woodrow Wilson. Finished office with the worst popularity ratings in history and tried to reignite the Cold War after staring into Putin’s soul and finding it just as divine as Brownie’s.

Barack Obama – 2009-? (D)

Defeated Tina Fey and the ghost of Barry Goldwater to win the presidency. He’s trying Carter’s “honesty and long-range planning” approach to not just energy, but health care, education, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as well. Good luck with that.

I’ll get the hammer and nails.

An Update on the Music Player Quest

Music

I’ve written a few times (parts 1, 2, 3) about my annoyance at music players. I’d come down to two finalists to consider: Rhythmbox and Banshee. I’ve used both for awhile now, and as of today, am also trying Songbird (after finally managing to make it run; see part 3 above).

In addition to my previous observations, then, I’ll add:

Rhythmbox

Two problems exist in the current version. The first is that playlists aren’t sortable, which is annoying for those of us that use them as an organization tool. I put a patch in bug 327042, but the authors say they won’t apply it, and there has been no recent activity from anyone working to do something better. Highly annoying, but I’m running my own patched copy anyhow.

More annoying is that it doesn’t let you modify metadata of tracks on the iPod. Perhaps worse, its GUI lets you remove tracks from iPod playlists, but this change is not saved back to the iPod (bug 586964). Confusingly, adding tracks to playlists does get saved. There has been no action on that bug in the 1.5 weeks since I’ve reported it.

I was able to supply the Rhythmbox developers with the needed information to resolve the issue of moving files to .Trash-1000 instead of deleting them on the iPod (586649). However, they refuse to fix the larger problem of leaving these directories on the filesystem; a great annoyance for people using KDE or no desktop environment at all.

Banshee

On the surface, its iPod support looks even better than Rhythmbox. Yet it silently ignores some (not all) metadata changes. You can modify a rating, a compilation artist, etc. and it will look like it changed. But close Banshee and open it up again and you see it wasn’t. (Bugs 580632, 389550) They’ve done some troubleshooting with me, but there hasn’t been activity there since June 30.

Songbird

Aside from my story today griping that it doesn’t even start by default on Linux, I haven’t written about this one before. Its philosophy is somewhat similar to Thunderbird: ship with a very minimalistic set of features, and support multiple addons.

I found that its iPod support works the best of any of these I’ve mentioned, at least for manually-managed iPods. It has a feature to sync your iPod, but has no documentation whatsoever on what that does. It also doesn’t document what it will do with the FLACs I’ve downloaded from Magnatune when it puts them on the iPod. The only references I’ve seen to transcoding state that it will be present in 1.2.0 (which I have), and that it won’t be present until August. Not very helpful.

With a few addons, it makes a quite nice player, with quite good iPod support. The interface, however, has a few quirks. First off, it’s really sluggish, even on very fast hardware. Secondly, if you flip from playlist to playlist, or even breathe on it the wrong way, it will move you back to the top of the playlist you’re on, leaving you to manually find the track that’s playing again. It has no “jump to currently-playing track” feature like other players do. Its tray icon (which you must get an addon for) has a basic menu of play, pause, next, but no ability to set ratings from there. Also, sometimes setting ratings don’t appear to work from the UI, but might have actually been saved anyhow.

Overall, though, Songbird looks like my best bet for the moment. I’ll keep using it and see what I think.

The other option is gtkpod+audacious. I’d miss the integration of player with browser, and gtkpod’s extremely sluggish interface makes even Songbird look like a Formula 1 car in comparison. But its iPod support works well (though its attempts to sync with the filesystem are undocumented and cause issues more than once).

Songbird: How To Make Great Software Unpopular

Music

As part of my ongoing quest for working media players, I’ve more than once tried Songbird. But it never wanted to work in Linux, always crashing before it even fired up the GUI with errors like this:

(songbird-bin:17595): libgnomevfs-WARNING **: Cannot load module `/usr/lib/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/libmapping.so' (/usr/lib/gnome-vfs-2.0/modules/libmapping.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
././songbird-bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gst-0.10/gst/_gst.so: undefined symbol: gst_xml_get_type
Could not initialize GStreamer: Error re-scanning registry , child terminated by signal

Googling reveals dozens of threads about this among Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora… well, ALL Linux users. Some people reported success removing bits of GStreamer from their systems, but that didn’t work for me.

I noticed that the Linux binary distribution of Songbird contains a lib/ directory, which has, among other things, full copies of many GStreamer libraries, libvorbis, libFLAC, libogg, libtheoradec/enc, and more. On a lark, I ran rm lib/libgst*. And that fixed Songbird.

Now, that gets me to the point of why Songbird isn’t popular on Linux, a fact which appears to mystify the Songbird developers from the posts I’ve read.

And the reason is: Songbird doesn’t work on Linux out of the box. More to the point, Songbird tries to distribute itself on Linux as if the user is running on Windows.

You do not install a local gstreamer with each app on Linux; you use the system’s. You don’t try to use a local copy of everything; you use the systems. Even songbird plugins package their own .so of files I already have installed system-wide. The Linux shared library system can handle it, I promise.

And even worse, the fact that they are trying to use local copies of things instead of system ones are making it very difficult for distributions to package up Songbird. Distributions — the ones that care about quality, anyhow — want to do things The Right Way, which means only one copy of GStreamer on the system. Songbird doesn’t want to get along well with this. None of Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora have Songbird packages in their repositories, though third-party packages of greatly varying quality exist for each. Read their respective bug tracking systems and you’ll see that it has to do with Songbird wanting local versions of system-wide libraries.

So, Songbird folks: If you want to make a cross-platform app, please stop treating Linux as if its library system is as broken as Windows. It wasn’t until you got here.

Aside from that, it looks like the best music player I’ve tried yet, despite its sluggish interface.

Update: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Songbird was a Mozilla project.