Book Review: Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I like this book for its comprehensive historical coverage and convincing explanation on how the United States has become what it is today (writing this in December 2018).

In the 20th century, the USA had been a beacon (or as Mike Pence puts it, a "lodestar") for humankind. It led in industry, science, arts (particularly books and movies), freedom of speech etc. It was generous to others, helping war-torn countries rebuild themselves, helping lift up the poor from poverty, helping the weak to stand up against bullies.

So it was really strange that with all the things going for it, the country started becoming more and more "stupider". It was simply bewildering that the USA voted in a huckster such as Donald Trump, who together with his Republican supporters, start dismantling all that is good about the USA, and install in its stead all that is bad as the law of the land.

It is very possible that it is the constitution of the USA that allows these shenanigans to propagate and perpetuate, leading into developments such as Fox News (the true definition of fake news), NRA, climate deniers, science deniers (particularly evolution deniers), hypocritical religiosity, the 1%, political correctness gone berserk, an apathetic public that don't vote, irrationality, racist bigotry, etc.

In a democracy, voters must choose between alternatives. We expect voters to use rationality to base their decisions. However, there must be an agreed common ground of facts to determine the truth of a matter. In Fantasyland, this common ground does not exist. While the Democrats can use reality to determine the facts, the Republicans are using lies and claiming them as facts. And the population is complicit with allowing the Republicans, and supporting them, to run the entire country on this bodyhood of lies.

Actions have consequences, but if the populace do not punish evil doers for their actions, then no improvements can be made. When society prioritises an individual's rights over that of the society's, we get weird situations where gun-owners have more rights than gun-victims, unborn fetuses have more rights than mothers, the ultra-rich minority get a disproportionate share of the country's wealth than the majority non-rich, fairy tales are taught as science while real-science (evolution) is stricken off the syllabus.

Obviously, many tomes have already been said and written about the demise of American civil society, particularly after Trump was elected by the voters (okay, the electoral college) system. Kurt Andersen's book is just another one on that list. Unfortunately, in today's America, the book will only appeal to the Democrats and the left, and not to the Republicans and the right as they have their own "truths" based on a foundation of fairy tales and lies.


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The Xiaomi Amazfit BIP

I was showing my friend my Amazfit BIP tracker watch which I had received back in March this year (2018). My friend commented that I did not write about it on my blog. I told him that I had not been blogging about my stuff for the past 2 years because it just isn't necessary. Performing a simple Google search on the Amazfit BIP will lead to hundreds of posts and YouTube videos about the Amazfit BIP covering the device in more detail than I possibly can.

However, I have decided that I will do a post about this in case someone find my experience with it useful.

Why the Amazfit BIP?

I had been wearing the Mi Band 2 tracker since October 2016. Prior to that, I used an Omron pedometer that I bought back in 2008:

The Mi Band 2 tracker was cheap (I bought it for S$40 from Lazada Singapore), and was so much better than the Omron pedometer. The Omron pedometer measured only the steps taken. The Mi Band 2 measured that and also the pulse rate, which was used to provide a simple sleep monitor. What's more, the Mi Band 2 can be paired via Bluetooth to my Xiaomi Note 4 smartphone, and will vibrate on my wrist when I received SMS messages or incoming calls. This vibration alert was very useful because the Xiaomi Note 4 vibration is very weak. I sometimes cannot feel the phone vibrating even though the phone is in my front pants pocket (the phone is too big to be put in the rear pants pocket), and have missed calls because of this. With the Mi Band 2 paired to my phone, I can always feel the Mi Band 2 vibrating on my wrist, and I did not have missed calls problems after that.

Of course, I could have bought a more expensive smartwatch (there was a lot of Android smartwatches introduce in 2016) that offers the same tracker features and smartphone pairing as the Mi Band 2. However, almost all the other products in the market required charging on a daily (or every 2 or 3 days) basis. The Mi Band 2 had an astounding battery life of 20 days between charges! I feel that smartwatches should not need to be charged as frequently as smartphones, so the 20 day battery charge life was a winning factor. Although Android smartwatches have really gorgeous displays and superior features (you can run apps on smartwatches - the Mi Band 2 cannot), those were secondary to the main step tracker feature that I was buying the device for. So that was how I ended up with the Mi Band 2 that effectively replaced my Omron pedometer and my Casio digital watch once it arrived.

However, one year after I started wearing it, I started encountering charging problems with the Mi Band 2. Despite the fact that the tracker is securely fitted into its proprietary charging cable that is connected in to a power supply, the tracker would sometimes refuse to charge. I would have to  unplug/re-plug the tracker into its charging cable multiple times until something clicks and the tracker starts charging, and then pray that the charging session will not end abruptly short of the 2 hours required to fully charge the tracker to 100%. If the tracker stops charging before 100%, I will have to repeat the unplugging/re-plugging exercise all over again. This was extremely frustrating. 

The Mi Band 2 charging cable contains 2 pogo pins that touches 2 electrical contact pads on the Mi Band 2 device. I read from the internet that our body sweat damages the Mi Band 2 contact pads, making them unable to conduct the charge from the pogo pins. I am not sure if that is the reason, but it does sound plausible. Anyway, there are many complaints on the internet about charging problems on the Mi Band 2. 

Because of the perennial charging problems that I am always having with my Mi Band 2, in February of this year (2018), I decided to get a new tracker device to replace it. I was worried that the "contact pads corroded by sweat" rumours about the charging problem of the Mi Band 2 is true, and is a design/manufacturing flaw of the Mi Band series in general, so getting another Mi Band product was out of the question. Fortunately, I read about the Amazfit BIP that had been launched by Xiaomi in August 2017. 

The Amazfit BIP had all the step tracking, pulse rate and sleep monitoring, SMS/incoming call alert features as the Mi Band 2. And then it had this other amazing features:

1. 45 day battery charge life - this was widely touted in all the advertisements for the Amazfit BIP. This was almost double the 20 day battery charge life that I was getting from my Mi Band 2. And I can vouch that this is absolutely true. If I do not activate GPS features, but just use the basic step tracking, pulse rate and sleep assistant monitor, I can easily get 45 days between charges.

(If I activate any GPS feature on the Amazfit BIP, each hour of GPS use results in a 10% drop in battery charge).

2. Always on display - the BIP uses a transflective LCD display that consumes very little power. This allows the BIP to always display the time on the screen, and not require the display to be turned off to conserve power.  With an always-on display, the BIP feels more like a watch as compared to the Mi Band 2 whose OLED display is always off (to conserve power) until you press the button (or lift your wrist)  to display the time on the screen for a few seconds before the screen shuts off again.

One interesting thing about the transflective LCD screen is that the display is actually easier to read under the bright sun. On my Xiaomi Note 4 phone, I have to max out the backlight brightness level whenever I am under the sun or I will never to be able to read the display. It's the other way round on the BIP where the brighter the sun, the easier it is to read its display. 

  

It is easier to view the Amazfit BIP under direct sunlight (top) than in the shade (bottom). In the shade, the backlight can be activated temporarily if the display is not vivid enough.

3. GPS - the BIP has a built in GPS sensor, and this is activated when a Workout is initiated from the BIP. This allows the workout to map my walk path which can then be displayed against a Google Maps map in the Mi Fit app.

   

4. Watchfaces  - the BIP offers a multitude of watch faces unlike the Mi Band 2 which has just ONE  watch face. 

 Although the Amazfit BIP was S$80 on Lazada Singapore, which was double the price I paid for the Mi Band 2,  I was already won over by these other features that are not on the Mi Band 2. Lazada delivered my BIP in March.

3rd Party Apps

The same Mi Fit app that I had already installed for synchronizing to my Mi Band 2 is also used for the Amazfit BIP. Interestingly, the Mi Fit app cannot be used to sync to both my Mi Band 2 and Amazfit BIP concurrently on my Xiaomi Note 4 phone. The app only integrates with one tracker at a time.

However, there are some limitations with the Mi Fit app that can luckily be overcome with 3rd party apps.

Watchfaces

When I paired the Mi Fit app to the Amazfit BIP, the app provided 10 additional watch faces that can be downloaded to the BIP (the BIP comes with 10 built in watch faces). However, I discovered that the BIP has only 1 free memory slot for the downloaded watchface from the Mi Fit app. When I activated another watchface from the Mi Fit app, the new watchface overwrites the previous watchface that I downloaded earlier. When I scrolled through the list of watchfaces on the BIP, I can only see the built-in watchfaces and the newly downloaded watchface. The watchface that I downloaded earlier can no longer be selected.

Luckily, there are apps from the Google Play Store that provides hundreds of watchfaces for the Amazfit BIP.  The one that I am using is called:

Amazfit Bip & Cor WatchFaces

I am currently using this particular watchface:

I like this particular watchface because it shows all the important attributes I care about in large and clear fonts: 

24 hour time ("16:48"), 

steps ("9000"), 

kilometres ("6.30"), 

% battery level remaining ("20"), 

day/month/date ("SUN 09/23"),

current weather (not accurate - sun is shown at night to represent clear skies)

current Celsius temperature ("38°"),

max/min Celsius temperature ("1/8°"), 

pulse rate ("78"). 

Sleep Monitor

There is a problem with the Mi Fit sleep monitoring app that I had noticed when I first obtained the Mi Band 2 back in 2016.

1. If I take an afternoon nap, the nap is never registered by the Mi Fit app.

2. I sometimes work through the night, and then go to bed only after 6 am. When I wake up in the afternoon, I realise the Mi Fit app does not register the 8 hours of sleep I had taken between 6 am and 2 pm.  After a while, I realise that if I fall asleep after 6 am, the Mi Fit app will never register the sleep period.  However, if I fall asleep before 5:59 am, the Mi Fit app will show the sleep period.

This 2nd point is very critical because if I am working a permanent 3rd shift (11 pm to 7 am), the Mi Fit app will never be able to show any sleep data for me. I find this very funny because it seems like the programmers for the Mi Fit app  do not cater for measuring the sleep for 3rd shift workers.

Sleep data was never important to me, so I never bothered to look into this when I was still using the Mi Band 2. However, after I bought the Amazfit BIP and had to download an app for  watchfaces,  I found that there were 3rd party apps that can supplement, and even replace, the Mi Fit app.

One of these app is the:

Amazfit Master

which I use as a supplement to the Mi Fit app. The Amazfit Master app is able to show sleep data for the 2 situations that I indicated above, and is therefore a more accurate sleep monitor than the one in the Mi Fit app.

However, the Amazfit Master app does not show the Workouts, and particularly the walk path on a Google Maps map that I find very useful.  As such, I have to use the Amazfit Master app together with the Mi Fit app, and cannot just solely use the Amazfit Master app (there is an impact to the battery on my Xiaomi Note 4 phone as I need to keep these 2 apps running in the background).

SMS/Incoming Call Notification Problem

I did not have this problem with the Amazfit BIP when I first obtained it back in March. SMS and incoming calls on my Xiaomi Note 4 phone are automatically sent to my Amazfit BIP watch, causing it to vibrate and thus alert me about the SMS or incoming call.

However, in November, I received a firmware update for my Xiaomi Note 4 phone, which upgraded my phone firmware from MIUI 9 to MIUI 10. 

After my phone was upgraded to MIUI 10,  the BIP can no longer alert me on incoming SMS/calls that are received on the phone. 

I tried a lot of configuration changes, but none of them work. The SMS/incoming call notification alert feature is now completely kaput.  I am not sure if this is because MIUI 10 requires Android 8.0 and higher to work properly with the BIP notification alert.  Unfortunately, although Xiaomi is very diligent with providing firmware updates,  the updates are always for MIUI, but never for the underlying Android OS.  Hence, my Xiaomi Note 4 is still on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) despite the fact that Xiaomi has updated the launcher from MIUI 8 (when I got the phone back in August 2016) to MIUI 9 (last year 2017) and to MIUI 10 in November 2018. 

Conclusion

Despite the problem with the SMS/incoming call alert that I now have with the BIP, I believe that is related to software conflicts in the latest MIUI 10 with Android 6.0,  and not specific to the BIP itself. 

To me, the BIP is still a fantastic tracker watch simply because of its "45 day" battery life and its always-on display. At just S$80, it is great value for money , as compared to smartwatches that are usually double or triple the S$80 price.  It is also better than simpler trackers like the Mi Band 2 because aesthetically, it looks more like a watch. 

And so far, there are no charging problems similar to the ones that had plagued my Mi Band 2. 

Book Review: The Innovators

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the first book by Walter Isaacson that I am reading. I did not read Isaacson's more famous biography of Steve Jobs because I am not really a fan of Steve Jobs. I won't invest my time to read book length biographies of arrogant bullies, no matter how brilliant they may be.

The book title is a bit misleading. Innovation can come from many fields of expertise. For example, Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the movable type in printing is an innovation. Henry Ford's idea of the assembly line is an innovation on how to produce things. The invention of the sea container for transporting goods is an innovation in the area of logistics. But this book isn't about these innovators from all fields of industry. Instead, it is laser focused on only innovators in the digital computing industry.

Despite my gripe with the title, this book is still an excellent history book on important personalities in the field of computing. In fact, it is the only book that I have read that fleshes out the story of Ada Lovelace in great detail. I would highly recommend this book on just the story of Ada Lovelace alone.

Also, this is the first book that I have read that describes and emphasize about the significant contributions and importance of women in the field of software programming. Many other history books cover the history of computing machines like ENIAC or Turing's ENGIMA. Also, these other books emphasized on the hardware creators, which tends to be guys. But the machines need to be programmed, and the creators of the programming languages were usually given short shrift. Isaacson's book fills the narrative gap created by these male-bias omissions, and showed how critical women were to the development of software.

Isaacson's book also covers controversial areas such as the stories of people who lost in the courts of law. History is filled with such examples, such as Thomas Edison being credited as the guy who gave the world electricity, when more credit should have been given to Nikola Tesla. There were many people who independently came up with ideas for making the computer or the integrated circuit, but history will always assign credit to a sole person. Isaacson's book also tells the stories of the other inventors who helped contribute to the field, but are forgotten today as they are not credited at all in the current history books.

A big problem with a history book about computing is that new things are happening every day in the world of Information Technology. Thanks to the rapid pace of innovation in IT, we are living and breathing history, and new advances cannot be covered adequately in books such as this one. Every day, new products that were practically the stuff of science fiction years ago are now becoming reality. Cashless payments, driverless vehicles, personal robots with powerful artificial intelligence; these will likely transform human society in years to come. And then, this book will need to be updated to include the pioneers of these nascent technologies today that may become commonplace products in the next few years.


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Book Review: The Atheist Muslim

The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason by Ali A. Rizvi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is always interesting to read the narratives of ex-Muslims because of the dangers they put themselves in by openly declaring their leaving Islam. In a religion where the punishment for apostasy is death, people who no longer believe must remain silent to stay alive.

Ali Rizvi book shares the light that despite the danger, enlightenment philosophy is also pervasive in Islamic countries. As in "Christian" countries where the number of non-believers are growing, the same too is happening in Islamic ones.

The extremely violent and barbaric practices of ISIS and al-Qaeda should have turn the stomach of good moral people everywhere. However, Islamic apologists and masters of sophistry have somehow made moderate Muslims accept the "less" extreme forms of Islamic beliefs, which includes:

- women are inferior to men
- non-heterosexuals are inferior to heterosexuals
- non-Muslims are inferior to Muslims
- all other religions are inferior to Islam

Unfortunately, when these "less" extreme ideas are bought in by the moderates, it takes only a tiny push for these moderates to take one more step to extremism, which basically is:

- Islam require "true" Muslims to enforce their beliefs on everyone else for the sake of Islam

Atheism books written by ex-Muslims can better counter the pro-Islam arguments offered by the imams, the clerics, and the apologists. When Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens writes about Islam, the clerics can often use the excuse that outsiders do not understand Islam and are in no position to debate them. The clerics cannot offer the same flimsy excuse when debating ex-Muslims. Ali Rizvi's book provides the critical counter-points from one who is well versed with the core texts of the Islamic tradition.

It is very important that more moderate Muslims be encouraged to "tame" the bigotry and violent teachings of Islam. In Western societies, governments no longer follow the extreme teachings of the Old Testament, thanks to the Age of Enlightenment. Islam sorely needs a similar awakening in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, Ali Rizvi's book can probably be only published and sold in non-Islamic societies. His book will probably be banned in Muslim countries, and can only be distributed clandestinely.

Recently, even the governments of moderate countries like Malaysia and Indonesia appear to be swaying dangerously towards Islamic extremism. Because the Muslim voters are taught to believe in the superiority of Islam over everything, politicians need to bolster their Islamic credentials to win the Muslim voter ("whoever is more Islamic is the superior person"). This is very bad state of affairs because many Islamic practices are more harsh, more brutal, and more barbaric, and cannot be in any sense superior to non-Islamic practices. However, without the appropriate counter points, many of these moderate Muslims are not learning to be more critical of the dubious arguments offered by the clerics. Hopefully, more alternative voices will come out and make a stand, and slow and halt the perpetuation of bad ideas under the name of Islam.


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Book Review: The Fairchild Singapore Plant

The Fairchild Singapore Plant by Liu Fook Thim
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very well written narrative of the Fairchild Singapore story. It is a unique Singaporean book, as there are almost zero books published in Singapore that goes into such amazing detail about the company's history, the factory, the products, and the people of this multinational corporation in the electronics industry.

The original raison d'etre for the book was to compile a collection of stories and anecdotes told to Liu by past Fairchild Singapore employees. However, over the 4 years that the book has been in gestation, Liu shaped and sharpened the text of the book to evolve it into an engrossing work that covers overlapping categories such as a history book, a management book, a coming-of-age biography, and most importantly, a Singapore book. In this last category, there is absolutely no other Singapore book like Liu's work at the moment.

Liu's writing style is extremely readable, and he has structured the book in a very elegant way to allow him to ingeniously weave the employee's stories into the various chapters of the book. One criticism I would levy is that the book lacks a timeline chart that puts all the key historical events in an easy to read visual. Although Liu is an engineer by training, the presentation in this book is very text based, and lacks almost any tables or charts that are practically the metier of engineering writing. But despite their absence (or perhaps because of their absence), this book makes for a very engaging read.

At first, I thought that the book would only be of interest to ex-Fairchild Singapore employees. However, after completing it, I can state emphatically that this is absolutely not so. The story that is told will be intriguing to anyone who is interested about the electronics industry, or working in a large corporation, or human stories about Singaporeans, or Singapore-history buffs. Ex-Fairchild employees will obviously get more of a bump, seeing that it is their story that is being told. But if you are a reader who falls into any of the 4 categories I mentioned, you will not be disappointed by this book. It is interesting, informational, and surprisingly, touching.

(Disclaimer: I am an ex-Fairchild Singapore employee).


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