My Windows' Explorer crashes with some regularity.  (Get all of your childish Mac and Linux comments out of the way now - I'm unlikely to ditch Windows anytime soon.)  When it comes back to life, which it does automatically, some programs in the notification tray (that thing with all the icons near the clock) don't come back with it.

It's not that those applications aren't still running, but that they were - for some reason - never told to restore their icons into the task bar.

Well, after a bit of research and some fiddling with an open source Pascal compiler, I'm happy to present TrayRestore, a command-line utility that will do its best to restore all of your application icons to the tray after a crash, without having to restart all of those applications explicitly.

And the source for TrayRestore is MIT-licensed, too, so feel free to submit pull requests to update the code, if you have any good suggestions.

I was driving Riley home from karate when he asked me, "What if the Earth was 150 degrees all the time?"

There are two answers to this question, and one isn't very interesting.  I went with the second, more interesting one, "If it was 150 degrees all of the time, then when life evolved on this planet, it would have evolved to survive in 150-degree weather.  ...  It probably would have looked a lot different from what you see around here today, too."

I return to this conversation a lot because this answer challenges the pre-supposed notion that the present is - and will always be - the status quo.

Some online articles have expounded on the privacy concerns around Google Glass.  I suggest that we instead consider that the epoch of default privacy is comping to a close, and a new era of always-on personal surveillance is emerging upon us.

We grew up in a world where certain kinds of privacy existed, a default position of privacy.  If we had not been born into this state, we wouldn't know any better.  It would be as if the Earth evolved at at 150-degree temperature -- things would just be as they are.  Since we knew privacy, we expect it, and so we complain when we think we are being deprived of something we were born into.  I think the evolution of technology and the perception of privacy requires a new mindset, since future generations will have a steadily declining surety to privacy.

I used to think that there might be a market for private data, wherein you could sell your private details like your soul to the highest bidding demon. But people aren't prescient enough to assign appropriate value to that which they themselves take for granted, and the tools that might allow this to happen are too clumsy or outright don't exist.  In the end, everyone will have frittered their privacy away before anyone can be convinced to protect it.

It is useful to worry about privacy.  The information gathered by Glass will not (mostly) be used for good, I am certain.  I expect some of it to be used for evil and much of it to be used questionably.  But I think things are out of our hands now.  The avalanche has begun.  I can only hope that the dissolution of privacy is spread equally, while simultaneously empowering us in other different, but important ways.

It seems pointless to stare back up at the oncoming snow, yelling that we should have done something, rather than looking out for hazards while speeding downhill away from it.

Last year I pledged to the Kickstarter campaign for the Pebble watch, almost without thinking.  You see, I'd written on the topic of watch computing before, and how I think it's an almost natural progression for the interface to portable personal storage and computing power.  I was pretty excited to see someone start down the path of that integration innovation, so I "threw my money at them".  Last week my watch arrived, and now that I've had a chance to play with it, I wanted to write up this simple review and first impression.

The watch build feels pretty crappy.  I've gotten more satisfaction from old-style calculator watches from the 80's.  I used to own (probably in a drawer somewhere) a watch that could control my TV with IR, and it had a more solid-feeling build than the Pebble.  (Ah, the dorm days of changing the lobby TV from ESPN to MTV while the jocks were all huddled around a game...)  It's not really that the Pebble feels fragile, but its plastic body and rubber watch band have more the feeling of a dime store timepiece than something that you'd spend money on for its technological features.

Could the watch be improved with a better band?   Sure.  I could strap a $45 gunmetal band onto the watch and it'd feel a ton improved.  But the watch body itself is still black plastic, and the size of the face and depth of the display behind the protective covering make it feel unavoidably like something that came out of a gumball machine.  The buttons sometimes squeak when pressed, rock over a central pivot point instead of feeling machined-in, and simply don't add any satisfaction to this device.

So what of the innards?

Setup was pretty easy.  The watch turned on and easily paired with my iPhone, onto which I had already installed the Pebble app in preparation for the watch's arrival.  There was an extra step in iOS 6.1's bluetooth UI to enable a "Show Notifications" toggle.  This apparently enables the phone to display app notifications on the Pebble, like the ones that appear on the lock screen.

Once connected, text messages started to display on my watch.  Easy. Some other apps were able to send notifications to the watch as well, but they did not always work.  For example, Tweetbot successfully sent notifications to the Pebble a couple of times before that inexplicably stopped working.  I hear that a few other apps are able to do this based on the "Show Notifications" toggle being set, like Google Maps. But there are issues in keeping that link connected, and the "dance" you need to go through to reset it is a bit cumbersome.  Hopefully, they'll be able to fix that.  Personally, this feels like a crappy iOS implementation issue, and Pebble probably has a snowball's chance in hell of getting this addressed the way they want.  But as if that wasn't enough...

I've been having a problem with frequent de-pairing of my Pebble from my phone.  I've been told that it's probably a result of my Pebble app being force-quit, such that it's not running in the background of my phone to maintain the connection to the watch.  But I've always been under the impression that iOS purposefully reduces the capabilities of background apps, and if an app is in the background long enough, it'll just end that app's processing.  So it's really not surprising that this happens so frequently.  In any case, the symptoms are this:  I turn on my phone and use it for a minute or two, then my phone tells me that my Pebble wants to connect.  I press "Allow", and context switches to the phone's Pebble app from whatever I was in the middle of.  I am not sure what happens to the Pebble if I tap "Ignore", other than the phone leaving me alone to continue whatever I was doing.  In any case, this shouldn't happen.  And if it's the result of a de-pairing, that shouldn't happen either.

Does the Pebble tell time?  Yes.  The clock itself is one of the better bits.  I particularly like the text clock which is the default.  There are other watch faces, which you can access via the menu.  And there are watches you can download in the Pebble App on the phone which it will transfer to the watch.  It's neat that it can do it, but the extra watch faces are all kind of bland, and really demonstrate how not-e-ink the Pebble watch face is.  Yes, I was somehow convinced that this display would not be the same old crappy LCD that they've always put in digital watches, and instead be a nice Kindle-like e-ink display.  Not so.  As a result, the analog watch faces look particularly grainy, and so I avoid them.

The text reception capabilities of the watch work reasonably well.  When my phone gets a text, the watch vibrates and the screen displays the message.  Same with Caller ID for regular calls.  These are probably the two most important features of the Pebble, and they work well. If the message is too large to fit on the screen, you can use the buttons to scroll.  You can also use the buttons to move forward through messages if there are multiple messages.  You cannot move backwards or review old messages.  No idea why.

You can use the watch to control the audio player in the phone.  I've been doing this with my car radio for a while, and it works pretty well.  The nice difference with the Pebble watch is that it displays the title and author of the track, which my car does not.  I think I just need to update the firmware of my car's radio to get this capability.  Still, it's cool that the watch can do it.

The Pebble has a backlight that activates when you press any button.  It also activates when you shake the watch, presumably due to using the accelerometer sensors within the watch.  The light is fairly bright in the dark, almost projecting a beam, not like Indiglo's soft background alien green.

Are there apps?  No, there are no apps.  This is kind of disappointing at launch.  Not only are there no apps (other than different watch faces), but there seems to be no SDK available for developers of apps to play with, nor any place for the apps to live to be deployed to the watch.  I'm anxious to see integrations like what they show on the Kickstarter page, with running/biking apps, and mapping apps.

As to battery life, it's another bummer.  The Pebble's battery life is better than watches with similar purpose -- there's no need to recharge it every day.  Also, since it's waterproof they've come up with a crazy magnetic charging plug, kind of like Apple notebooks use, to connect to the Pebble to charge it, so that you don't need to plug it in.  This is cool, but they should have aligned the magnets so that the cord goes out the top of the watch body, so that you could charge it easily while you're wearing it.  I sit at a desk with my hands on a keyboard all day, so this would be easy, other than the cord being weird.  Also, there's no charge indicator.  Is it done?  Does it need charged?  Dunno.  There was no alert when the battery got low; none that I noticed, anyway.

A full charge lasts 3 days.  Their 7 days per charge claim is way overhyped.  Worse, the charge on my phone has significantly diminished since pairing the Pebble.  It's weirdly sporadic, too. It'll be fine for a while, then BAM, I'm suddenly down to 60% from 98%.  I'm willing to do some more testing to see if this is iOS 6.1's fault, but I really think it's the Pebble.

So is the Pebble worth it?  Right now... No.  Don't bother.  The tech is a toy.  I was hoping that this would be the first of a line that took the task seriously.  The Pebble is nothing more than a classed-up calculator watch.  When more interactive apps come out, when Pebble starts releasing aluminum watch bodies, when the screen is true e-ink, when the integration between devices is more solid...  then we'll have something good.  I'm enthusiastic for all of these things to improve, but realistically, it's not going to be "a Pebble" that does it - perhaps a subsequent model or different manufacturer.

This is something I mentioned to Berta last night in the midst of a different topic:  I don't panic.  There are obviously different ways people deal with adversity, and some people are prone to paralytic panic, the kind that cripples their ability to think clearly.  Some people in those adverse situations cope with the rising panic, push it down, and are able to continue in spite of that.  The thing is, I'm neither of those.  I just don't panic.

I am not touting this as a virtue, although it is often handy to be able to remain calm when everything is off the rails.  Rather, I believe I am mis-wired to simply not be panicky.  When things occur that would obviously cause panic in anyone else, I tend to completely detach.  I don't feel the panic.  I don't push it back or even recognize that it's there.  I simply don't experience it.  There is no fear, no anxiety.

It seems like this is a gift, but this feature of my personality often bleeds into areas that it should not.  For example, I tend not to experience that feeling that I need to move immediately to get out of the way of oncoming trains.  Another big problem is that I tend not to experience deadlines like other people do.  I shrug a lot.  To compensate, I often have to do the opposite of panic, whatever that is -- give more priority to a thing that any other person would naturally be anxious or concerned about, but in a rational, deliberate way.

And yet, this is completely unrelated to the panic attacks, which I'm not diagnosed for, but have no other explanation for the symptoms of.

I find it amusing to analyze my psyche this way.  I feel like I'm such an odd person.  Maybe there are other people out there like me.  Maybe there's a psychological condition that I have that is documented.  Sadly, the web is obsessed with telling people, "Don't Panic!"  Makes it hard to search.

I've been considering lately what I'm all about -- what makes me unique among humans in general, and peers in specific.  I've established a sort of test in my head for what would qualify.

I would like it to be possible to succinctly define me (even if obviously an incomplete definition) using 3-5 activities I am known to participate in that make me relatively unique among peers.

If someone who knows me was asked to list all of the people that they knew who participated in an activity that I qualify for, then my name should appear in the list.  An activity I am known for should be something that brings me to mind for people who know me.

Likewise, an activity or thing I am known for should not be something that I do but am not known or recognized for.

An example of one of these characteristics would be "someone who writes computer software, a coder".  Sadly, this alone is not enough to distinguish me in the minds of my peers, many of whom are coders themselves.  Likewise, "brewer of beer" is unlikely to distinguish me, since many of those coders that know me also brew beer.

The problem also becomes more difficult because beyond the couple of obvious things, I don't do much else.  At least, I'm not widely known for doing those things.

What worries me is that I don't have enough of these things, or that the things I do have are not well-known enough, to properly narrow down myself as a unique person among the billions that litter the planet.  Or worse, unique among my small peer group.

I need to either find out what my defining activities are, or need to discover and participate in more things that can uniquely define me.  Any Thoughts?