About Nathaniel Irons

Recent posts

• Follow Following 1

  Where does my cheese come from?

  0 0 DeLaurenti, in the market, or Calf and Kid on Melrose in Capitol Hill, can tell you a lot about how they source their cheeses, which gets you at least halfway to finding out how they're produced. Nathaniel Irons answered in Food & Drink about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 3 more answers »

• Comment on Kip Waddle's answer…

  0 0 I'm not sure they have to prove you were there for two hours. The ticketing officer's assertion that the chalk mark was still present would suffice, because it would indicate you didn't move very far. Along the same lines, my understanding is that the paid meter machines won't allow you to buy more than the set number of hours of parking on the same block, at least not on the same credit card, even in multiple transactions. Nathaniel Irons commented about 1 year ago

• Follow Following 1

  Where would you take out of town guests to eat?

  0 0 I recently made it to Salumi for the first time, which is a huge upside to jury duty, as long as you're not stuck going to Kent. Pioneer Square has some of the most concentrated poverty in the city, but the mole+mozzarella sandwich is incredible. Now I've got half a pound of guanciale daring me to make carbonara for dinner for the rest of the week. Nathaniel Irons answered in Food & Drink about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 13 more answers »

• Comment on bellen's answer…

  0 0 If that's the logic, wouldn't it be best to try to try to fill out a clown car? What if one child wants to work for a nonprofit? In a post-agrarian economy the ethics of having children as a retirement investment strike me as problematic. Also, their ROI can be dreadful. Put the expenses up through college in an index fund instead. Nathaniel Irons commented about 1 year ago

• Comment on Nathaniel Irons's answer…

  1 0 If you still have the defunct SIM from your 3GS, try cutting a hole with an x-acto knife to accommodate the iPhone 4's micro-SIM. How-to guides dot the internet on that topic. It'd be interesting to see if you got materially different reception from the 3GS and the iPhone 4, in the same location at the same time, ideally with the same firmware so the signal strength meters are consistent. If the iPhone 4 is significantly worse, that'd point to a hardware problem. Would also be interesting to test with another iPhone 4 side by side, and just for science, to use it with a rubber glove. Nathaniel Irons commented about 1 year ago

• Follow Following 1

  Are you going to return your iPhone4?

  1 0 Aside from 520 westbound, the only place in Washington where I ever had more than brief signal trouble with my 3GS was a friend's place in Kirkland. I just spent a few days there dogsitting, and the iPhone 4 never dropped a call, which was pretty good compared to the 3GS. It also fits Anandtech's findings that the new antenna design is significantly better than predecessors at holding onto calls in areas of low signal. Does your new iPhone hold signal worse than the 3GS, even when both are lying on a table, and you're using either the speakerphone or the headphone mic? If so, that would indicate you've got other issues than the antenna bugaboo. Maybe it's lemon hardware — if you've already swapped it out once, it's not inconceivable that the replacement also had problems that went uncaught in the refurb process. I've seen that happen a time or two with Mac hardware, and Apple's typical response when it's still under warranty is to give up after the second or third failed repair attempt and hand you a new one of the current model. Could be tricky under current iPhone demand, though. Sorry to hear you're having trouble. I love mine. Nathaniel Irons answered in Geek Week about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 5 more answers »

• Comment on Brandon Humphries's answer…

  0 0 And yet, Seagate's overall failure rate is in line with the competition's. People who buy a lot of drives will perceive patterns in the failures. But all drives die given enough time, and our sample sizes are infinitesimal, so our results are statistical noise. Glad to hear you've got a good backup strategy; you're ahead of the game. I'm writing this with a failed Seagate drive on my desk, by the way. Nathaniel Irons commented about 1 year ago

• Comment on Brandon Humphries's answer…

  0 0 Everybody has their own failure history, but specific firmware glitches and hardware faults aside, it's not practical to stay away from any one drive manufacturer. Far better to rely on comprehensive, zero-maintenance backups than to place your trust in Hitachi over Western Digital over Seagate (my personal failure ranking). Nathaniel Irons commented about 1 year ago

• Follow Following 1

  which new smartphone should i get?

  3 1 The blessing and the curse of Android product development is that there's always something nifty over the horizon. You can't let that dictate your actions. Eventually you have to buy a phone, and switching to something else will be expensive. I didn't buy an iPhone until the 3GS, which I still prefer to every Android phone I've touched. The iPhone 4 is a substantial improvement on the 3GS. Android is packed with desirable features (turn by turn directions, Google Voice, sideloadable apps unless you're on AT&T), but the gestalt feels painfully unpolished to me. It's like buying a kit motorcycle. I thought this essay did a fair job of capturing the divergent mindsets: http://www.marco.org/769340032 I'm with him. I think the great Android devices will be special-purpose, in the sense that the TiVo is a great Linux device. Incidentally, AT&T announced at the iPhone 4 launch that contracts expiring in 2010 had early eligibility for a subsidized iPhone 4. You don't have to wait unless you're holding out for an Android over the horizon. Nathaniel Irons answered in Geek Week about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 4 more answers »

• Follow Following 1

  Does the density of WiFi networks on Capitol Hill reduce the quality of *my* WiFi network?

  5 0 If you can see 20 networks, crowding could be a real factor. iStumbler is a Mac app which does a good job of displaying the networks in your vicinity, their relative signal strength, and the channels on which they operate. It also builds a histogram of your connected signal strength, useful for testing as you walk around, duck behind walls, turn on the microwave, etc. 2.4 GHz wifi, the most common flavor, is split up into 11 channels, though all but 1, 6, and 11 overlap to some extent. If there's a nearby network on an adjacent channel, it'll conflict more with your network than one several channels away. Most access points are set to automatic channel selection, so they'll hop around trying to find an open chunk of bandwidth, which with enough networks quickly becomes fruitless. The Time Capsule can optionally broadcast using 5 GHz 802.11n, which is both higher performance and less crowded. If your computers are fairly recent, they can join a 5 GHz network, probably at much greater distances than a 2.4 GHz network. Unfortunately, very few phones and gadgets support 5 GHz wifi, and no iPhones/iPods do. (The iPhone 4 now supports 802.11n, but only in the 2.4 GHz range — very annoying. The iPad does support 5GHz.) So even if you can use 5 GHz for your laptop, it's not a complete solution. If your Time Capsule is newish, it's capable of dual-band operation, meaning it can pump out a 5GHz network for compatible computers, and a 2.4 GHz network for devices that can't. Unfortunately if you had one of these, and a compatible laptop, you'd probably be using 5GHz already, without knowing it. I used to have an older, single-band Time Capsule, which I set to 5 GHz-only, and an older wifi base station which I connected to the Time Capsule and ran at 2.4 GHz, giving me the best of both worlds. I didn't have as many networks to contend with as you do, though. If you're on good terms with your neighbors, maybe you could get together and split a Speakeasy ADSL2 account, consolidating multiple access points and clearing the air. In the old days at least, Speakeasy had an enlightened attitude about sharing connectivity. Nathaniel Irons answered in Geek Week about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 2 more answers »

• See all of my 2 Questions , 33 Answers and 14 Comments