Wednesday March 11, 2009

Asus 1000HE

I recently purchased a Asus 1000HE 10" netbook. My initial impression is that I really like it. The keyboard is a little cramped but compared to playing around with various 9" netbooks this is very usable. I've gotten OpenSolaris installed and almost working on it. When I get the last kinks worked out I'll blog the details. ( Mar 11 2009, 08:04:18 AM PDT ) Permalink

My iPhone Applications

I promised a friend new to the iPhone that I'd post a list of the applications I'd used, tried, found useful, or found useless. That was a long time ago. The list keeps getting longer and it is really hard to keep up with the list of applications (mostly free) that I've downloaded and deleted.

Wins:

• TWC (The Weather Channel); I live in an area with volatile weather and I travel a fair bit.
• Facebook; I only became interested in social networking when good mobile clients became available. Now the clients are useful. They make the stop on the trail or the grocery line easier to deal with.
• Fitness; this diary application is a good chunk of the reason I'm 40lbs lighter after 1/2 a year or so.
• LinkedIn; Probably unnecessary given the frequency that I interact with LinkedIn but it is a reasonable client.
• Twitterific; Do I like microblogging? Not sure, but this was my favorite of the twitter clients that I tried.
• Google; I use mostly reader, docs, notebook, and news. I think web based applications are at least somewhat painful to use. But for reading blogs syncing with desktop reading is necessary and for the other things standalone applications that I've tried havn't come close.
• Flixster; I'm not a huge movie goer but the ability to look at times, see reviews, and see a trailer wherever is starting to change that.
• MySpace
• HanDBase; I've only used the iPhone software but this seems to be a really good personal database manager. I plan on getting the PC software. I used some free software on my treo to maintain poker and other databases and was bummed when such things didn't initially exist on the iPhone.
• Pandora; Streaming audio based upon my suggestions: what a killer idea. This program is hurt by being made to be a second class citizen by Apple's silly rules against backgrounding.
• Stanza
• Kindle; wrt ebook readers for the iPhone see http://blogs.sun.com/mph/entry/kindle_2. Right now it is second rate but I see no reason why it shouldn't equal or surpass the other readers. When I got this I dumped some of the standalone readers I had for specific documents (e.g. US constitution).
• eReader

Purgatory:

• HoldEm; gets boring fast
• GraphCalc; wish I had this when I was in school
• DarkRoom; the camera on the iPhone just isn't good enough to usually care
• Night Stand; mostly amusing because of the icon
• WiFiFoFum; scopes are cool but useful?
• Frotz; bring back memories
• Ping Lite
• Lighter
• iMapMyRun; none of the run/hike mapping software was useful to me maybe 'cuz most of my runs and hikes are in areas with fairly poor GPS reception
• RunKeeper
• Everytrail
• Amazon.com; not a bad application but I'm going to do most of my buying on something with a keyboard and a useful screen so this is just really about tracking packages
• Backgrounds; I think these were initially a lot cooler. I suspect copyright issues got in their way.
• Lifestream; of the low authentication social applications this is one of the most amusing.
• Zippo Lighter; the kids like playing on my phone.
• Jelly Car; My niece's favorite game.
• Enigmo; My favorite game!
• Tap Tap Revenge
• Gigotron; this database for the SF Bay Area really isn't very complete
• MoodTouch
• Woopie; a little bathroom humor is good for anybody.
• Fart For Free
• Sound Box
• USA TODAY; gotten little use as I've used google news more and more.
• iHandyLevel; trendy but probably not very useful.
• Cradle; mesmerizing
• EccoNote; I thought I mgiht use this more but I havn't.
• Trailguru
• Google Earth
• DigiLite
• Shazam
• TouchTerm
• LivePoker
• AroundMe; searching on the maps program is good enough that this gets little use.
• midomi; I would have though this and shazam would have been more fun for me but they rarely get used.
• VNC; a gimic?
• SportsTap; occasionally useful to those around me.
• Wikipanion
• Labyrinth LE
• Loopt
• Yelp
• YPMobile
• GoodGuide
• iPickupLines; way funny
• FreeWi-Fi; this has been useful a few times
• UPL; stupider then iPickupLines but it still has its moments
• TV.com; I don't watch enough TV to make any of the TV viewers/guides very useful
• What's On?

Downloaded but havn't tried or don't remember:

• Strat Assault
• Sudoku
• PuzzleFree
• FourFree
• TypePad
• PAC-MAN
• iTick
• SnapTell
• Easy Wi-Fi
• Joost
• Tangram Pro
• S.deadbeef
• CraigSearch
• Hotelsnearme
• Bookmarks
• Reign Free
• EyeTricks
• DoneDrinkn
• Checkers
• Mancala FSS
• FallingBalls
• DDR S Lite
• Fastlane Lite
• Bounce Lite
• Public Radio
• LightBike
• vlingo
• Hotels
• Hotel Sites
• HotelRadar
• Geotags
• GRAMMYs
• iJiggles
• iBurn
• Watchmen
• MadSheels
• Whiteboard
• MobileFiles
• MarbleMash
• Brain Tuner
• PocketGuitar
• Translator
• Cube
• LiveJournal
• YouNote
• iDoodle2lite
• Shanghai

Kindle 2

I recently purchased a Kindle 2. I've read electronic books in the past including on a laptop (I just got an Asus 1000HE netbook; I could see using it where good PDF reading or a backlight was necessary), a RocketBook (how fast does history disappear?), my old Palm based Treo, and my iPhone. I liked the RocketBook if content wasn't so hard to get or to put on the device. The week or so I've spent with my Kindle 2 has made it clear that it is miles ahead of those options. The iPhone Kindle Reader is a strong play in combination with the Kindle 2 but not on its own. This review from CNET gets the various iPhone options right in my experience. The biggest missing part to me from the iPhone Kindle reader isn't that the buying experience is way more painful then it needs to be but that you can't read subscriptions. The most common thing for me to read on the run is a periodical. My biggest current gripes with the Kindle 2 are the inability to organize my documents (hierarchy would be nice, tagging with multiple views would be even better) and the lame PDF reading/conversion (caveat I've only used free.kindle.com).

I believe the original Kindle shipped with a protective case. The Kindle 2 didn't. I purchased a Belkin Neoprene Sleeve. It seems like something that should have come with the Kindle 2. I feel better putting the Kindle 2 into my backpack with something between it and the rest of the random set of stuff I carry around. ( Mar 11 2009, 06:23:56 AM PDT ) Permalink

Oddity Faire

I recently saw Les Claypools's Oddity Fair at Mont Bleu in Stateline, NV. The lineup was Saul Williams, The Yard Dogs Road Show, and the Oddity Fair.

Before the show I found some videos on youtube which got my attention:

• Oddity Fair

• Yard Dogs Road Show

• Saul Williams

I was almost out of luck when I showed up without a ticket and the show was sold out. Fortunately there were some tickets released late and I was able to enjoy the show. It was a nice surprise to see a show like this sell out in Tahoe. Maybe Mont Bleu will go back to having more interesting events?

I missed Saul Williams. That set must have been really short.

The Yard Dogs were like a carny side show with good music and a burlesque sub theme. Sword swallowing style carny acts, weird sub themes some making fun of other music genres, a pretty cool 50s style burlesque show (cool feathers, pasties, nice bodies, good choreography, classy), and some pretty good music including various voices, guitar, bass, drums, and horns. The video about doesn't do it justice.

Oddity Faire was a percussionist (xylophone and other like instruments), trap set, cellist, and bassist (Les). On the surface that is 2.5 rhythmic instruments and one 1.5 melodic instruments (splitting the percussionist) but in reality Les pretty much plays lead and some barely bass like instruments (the single string variable tuned hammered bass for instance). I like their stuff but it can be repetitive, spacey, and dark. A pretty intense crowd down front but nothing I couldn't keep up with. Les likes to mess with peoples heads and tease songs of his that are popular. He teased Sea of Cheese and others. I like that kind of stuff and as a Claypool fan I have a hard time imagining how you couldn't at least learn to deal with it but it still seems to get his fans going. His band wore some weird masks at times but in general they were pretty vanilla. At least for what it could have been or what the Yard Dogs just had thrown at us. Les vanilla, heh, maybe not. ( Mar 11 2009, 05:58:06 AM PDT ) Permalink

Monday December 29, 2008

not a free market on information The free market as a control mechanism has been taking a beating lately but you would have thought that it wasn't so unpopular that this study would surprise anybody. Restricting information and reducing transparency leading to non-optimal behavior shouldn't surprise anybody. ( Dec 29 2008, 02:58:31 PM PST ) Permalink

Wednesday December 24, 2008

Obama with a wedding ring? These pictures seem to be getting press because he is smoking. I'm more interested in the wedding ring almost a decade before his wife. ( Dec 24 2008, 11:26:07 PM PST ) Permalink

Thursday December 18, 2008

statistical language

From NYT concerning the list of people who have donated to Clinton's foundation:

The foundation said that its median gift since its inception came to $45 and that nearly 90 percent of its gifts were $250 or smaller.

Isn't this kind of heavy tailed distribution of contributions leading to a small number of influences exactly what middle America shouldn't want to see? Given the focus on "median" instead of "mean" and then the use of language which seems to indicate a large number of small donations I'd guess the hope is that most people reading think "mean" and don't envision a really rightward skewed distribution with a few people out on the tail having Bill's ear. ( Dec 18 2008, 10:18:40 AM PST ) Permalink

Thursday November 27, 2008

Sour Cream Potatoes

I get nostalgic this time of year. I know, sickening, eh?

My Grandmother grew up in Mountain Home, Arkansas. Her family left Arkansas by buggy to Oklahoma and then ultimately by Model T to California where they scratched out a living during her high school years in the central California world Steinbeck was to immortalize. She ultimately married my Grandfather becoming part of a large farming family.

Last night my wife was sorting through a stack of recipes and came across one of my Grandmother's holiday delicacies. It started out "10# potatoes/1 cup butter melted/...". I remember when she first got this and started to follow it. 10 pounds she asked me?!? In my Grandmother's world either she was making large amounts because of the large numbers of people she was cooking for or she was freezing it for another day. She always saved every bit she could. Living on canal banks, doing piece farm labor, walking over the Grape Vine behind the car that couldn't carry them all, and like adventures had conditioned her to always be ready for a life of hardships that most people of my world couldn't come close to contemplating.

I was looking at the socio-economic conditions in the world the other day wondering if they could get any worse. I went sledding today thinking about eating sour cream potatoes, got and sent cheery text messages to friends and family, and realized life was good.

Sour Cream Potatoes
10# potatoes - peeled, cooked, cooled, and grated
1 cup butter melted
1 can cream mushroom soup
1 pint sour cream
1/3 cup chopped white onions
1 1/2 cup or more sharp cheddar cheese
bake 45 min at 350 degrees
( Nov 27 2008, 12:51:29 PM PST ) Permalink

Monday November 24, 2008

don't stray outside the box

This might be the right legal decision. I'm not qualified to comment on that part.

The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit holds for the first time that government agents may obtain admissible evidence against United States citizens through warrantless searches abroad. ^NYT

But I think it is the kind of freedom crushing decision which the rest of this country should be quick to see reversed. Sadly it is riding on the back of our current devil so I'm sure it will be quietly accepted in the large. An article on a legal decision leading with a sentence about the defendants in the original trial is a sad statement about bias in our media. ( Nov 24 2008, 05:16:05 PM PST ) Permalink

Tuesday August 26, 2008

Outside Lands

I attended Outside Lands over the weekend. Overall I thought the event showed some cracks in the organization. For two of the headliners there were serious sound issues. The sounds boards on almost all of the stages were setup to block the stage from a good part of the fields. The overall bathroom situation seemed to run out of steam each night as the number of reasonable clean bathrooms approached 0 before the headliners were done. The drink options were limited and overpriced. Other things seemed to work well. Bands seemed to get on and off the stage on time and the sound besides the headliners was good. Their was a wide range of reasonable priced food options for such an event.

Friday evening:

• Beck - This was a mob scene. I came in the entrance right next to Beck and not being enough of a Beck fan kept on going. The bathrooms in the walkway between Lindley Meadow where Beck was playing and the Polo Fields was jam packed and a fence by the bathrooms had been knocked down just before I got there. It doesn't seem to me like this was well planned.

• Manu Chao - A little too mellow for me.

• The Black Keys - I like these guys. Maybe almost too unstructured for me? Is that possible? Seemed like everything started out as jam-noise and progressed from there.

• Lyrics Born - I like this guy. One of the better underground Hip-Hop/Rap types. He can turn a phrase nicely and the band he had rocked.

• Radiohead - I don't get these guys. I listened through their whole set. I guess they rocked. They dealt with the sound dropping out twice pretty well.

Saturday:

• Sparrow Quartet - I went to go see this band because of Bela Fleck but I think they all rocked. I think I would classify it as folk or old-time music although there are some bluegrass elements and they seemed to have been strongly influenced by Chinese folk music.

• Everest - eh? I don't get it. According to their bio 80's indie with some jam/prog influences. Seemed pretty generic to me.

• Galactic's Crescent City Soul Krewe - I like Galactic. This ended up being Galactic with part of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band part of the time and one of the Neville brothers the rest of the time. They are funky. They are good. They are fun. That fun aspect to live music is one thing I think some of the young bands miss.

• Steve Winwood - Nice set although he still comes off as too produced to me.

• Regina Spektor - I had my 16 year old niece pick out a few bands she would go see that I didn't know. Most of what she thought was cool were bands I'd seen and would probably pass on. But I like Regina Spektor. I couldn't get close enough to see her perform but I liked what I heard. Lost of tempo and crazy lyric changes with a lot of energy. I would have liked to see the show as it seemed like she was probably pretty entertaining. A conversation the next day on the bus confirmed that was true.

• Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals - I almost didn't go see this. I'd heard them before but not seen them. This was another one of my niece's recommendations. I still am not entirely hot on Ben's music but he is a good showman. I'm glad I went to go see them.

• Primus - I've seen Primus before and really like them. Les Claypool always seems to do things I like. But this time I thought they fell flat. OTOH I was pretty tire by this time and wasn't really into it.

• Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers - Pretty standard set running through more tunes then I thought I knew of Tom Petty's. But I knew them all. Nothing over the top here. The sound dropped out twice during this set and they had to take a 5 minute break to work on the PA but it seemed like the band dealt with it well. I ended up leaving before the last few songs but the walk out was long enough that I heard the end of the set.

• The Mighty Underdogs featuring Gift of Gab, Lateef and Headnodic - I meant to start the day off with ALO but got the schedule confused. I listened to a few songs an then left. Unlike Lyrics Born this is too "rappy" for me.

• ALO - These guys hit a nice groove. They didn't blow me away but I enjoyed the part of the set I heard.

• Culver City Dub Collective - A little too ambient for me. I needed energy at this point and these guys were not providing it.

• Stars - Also too mellow for me. I did get a nice nap near the end of their set.

• Andrew Bird - This guy is cool. Very talented. I would have never guessed what a "whistler" really was until I hear him. Nice to hear the violin mixed in as he did.

• Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings - Old school fairly high energy blues was a good thing at this point. It had been a mellow morning and I needed a pick-me-up. Nice instrumentals, nice voice, nice showmanship on Sharon Jones part.

• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - I'd hear these guys open up for Mule at the Fillmore earlier this year. I thought this set was more mellow and didn't quite meet my expectations. But they still sounded good. I didn't make much of this set as I'd heard them before.

• Widespread Panic - I first saw WSP in May '91 in LA. I've been an addict ever since. They had a 90 minute spot but they ran over by 20 minutes or so. The set is high energy from the beginning. In the middle of Henry Parson's Died is a great Green Onion's jam (Sorry to whomever I tried to convince afterwards that was a Ventures song and not Booker T. an the MGs). The later third of the set they had Ann Marie Calhoun on Violin. I thought there was some really nice interplay between Jimmy Herring an Ann Marie during several jams. WSP was the band that made me really want to come to Outside Lands and they delivered. Too bad they could only play 1/2 a show.

• Mike Gordon - Mike Gordon played a set with a keyboardist, drummer, and a guitar player. The set seemed tentative to me. But I was a little burned out from Panic an I think WSP going over might have shorted Gordon's spot (they were on opposite ends of Lindley Meadow).

• Jack Johnson - I was burned out by this point an Jack is just too mellow for me. I listened to about 1/2 of his set an then wondered on home.

Thursday August 21, 2008

iPhone 3G

I dumped my Treo 650 the other day for an iPhone 3G. The Treo was way long in the tooth and the 3G and the GPS receiver on the iPhone 3G made it irresistible to me. A few years after I graduated from college I worked for Pactel (later Airtouch) Teletrac and the concept of location tagging data has since been of interest to me.

A few things (none of them surprising) which are big hits are:

• App Store - Great idea. What a PITA it was to get applications onto the Treo.

• Use of Location - I'm somewhat surprised at how well some of the base applications use location.

• Physical properties - This phone is the perfect size for me.

• Number of free applications - Given the restrictive environment there are a lot of free applications which are more then toys. The Movies application by Jeff Grossman is a wonderful example of a fairly simple but really well done application which just rocks my world and uses location in a very natural way. The MarbleMash game by Jirbo is a neat game which uses the accelerometer nicely.

• Quality of non-free applications - With most of the prices being below $10 I was surprised there was much of a difference between the free and non-free applications. I really like Absolute Fitness by Aqua Eagle. What a nice application which dovetails with the kinds of things I want to do with my mobile platform.

• Keyboard - I'm very surprised at how well this works. I thought the lack of tactile feedback would make it really painful instead of just a learning curve.

And there are some things which are not big hits:

• Battery life - I feel like I've taken a 1/2 decade step back. I have to worry about having a charger with me on day long trips. Turning off 3G isn't really an answer in my book. First off it doesn't seem to save me much. And if I didn't want 3G then I wouldn't have bought the phone.

• Camera - A toy at best. At least as the software works at the moment it is primarily for associating pictures with contacts.

• Multitasking - The platform appears to be underpowered for some of what it attempts to do. Having the App Store exit when you start a download is an interesting way of keeping you from continuing to try to use the Internet but that is pretty much a bandaid. Let the stuff I'm focused on get the machines resources and queue up the download to happen as possible. I vaguely remember Jobs commenting on their multitasking model as being superior during the launch of this product. That is just spin.

• Visibility into failures - I just upgraded the system software to 2.0.2 (5C1) and the system seems more stable so this has taken a back seat. But before that I regularly would start an application and it would just exit. I would have no clue why. At one point I only had a few GB of storage left so I deleted a movie and one application started working again. If it was really just running out of storage somehow then it would have been nice to have been told that.

• Keyboard - yea, it works better then I thought it would but you still don't get tactile feedback. I'll get use to it.

• Lack of free applications - Above I was surprised at how many there were but there are still a lot missing. It was easy to find a free database application on the Treo. iDB Datamaster by Evince Technologies seems to me to be the closest but the list of data types supported is limited. They seem to have a bunch of complex types but not some of the simple ones I need (e.g. lists of strings). The killer to even trying to application was that when I sent them email they didn't answer.

• Ability to Demo non-free applications - I understand this is an Apple limitations. Seems like a natural feature for a closed environment like this. It would have meant I tried iDB Datamaster and if it sufficed I would have bought it.

• Programming environment - I want to write one off applications for my phone. Give me some basic scripting ability ala {Basic,Python,TCL}/TK or the like. I'll write my own specific database. I'll prototype things which I might then write natively for the platform. I'm going to San Francisco's Outside Lands this weekend and the Crowdfire concept looks neat. The capabilities of the iPhone 3G could play to trying to prototype an application around Crowdfire. But the startup cost of developing on this platform makes that impossible for me.

for those that can't last untethered

So American Airlines announced Internet for those that can't work offline while flying. Well, okay, they announce some form of expensive cripplenet:

Aircell’s Gogo will be available to customers as a fee-based service in all cabins. Aircell will charge $12.95 on flights more than three hours, which include American’s Boeing 767-200 flights. Each paid Gogo session includes full Internet access. Cell phone and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services are not available.

"full Internet" 'cept for those services we might wish to charge extra for later. Not sure what "Cell phone" has to do with that but being able to use VOIP is well withing the definition of "full Internet". Sadly I doubt most will realize the duplicity in AA's statement.

I wonder how many people really need to be connected for the flight time? I guess if it kept me from buying expensive drinks it might be worth the $12.95 an hour. Barely. I suspect it will be slow enough it might actually increase my tab. ( Aug 21 2008, 03:05:03 PM PDT ) Permalink

Wednesday May 07, 2008

Ferrite Male Build bitchin' battle armor and leave the seat warmer out? R would have never made this mistake. And there would have been plenty of cup holders to boot. ( May 07 2008, 12:49:07 AM PDT ) Permalink

Tuesday January 08, 2008

Stiletto 2

I listen to a lot of music. When I was younger I would listen to music while working but over the last decade or so I've found that difficult. Attention wonders with words, thoughts, rhyme, and rhythm. Recently I've found I'm able to work to house, trance, and symphonic music. Until I discovered that my mechanisms for listening to music have been focused on either going to shows or listening to music in the car. I don't tend to listen to music when hiking as I like listening to nature. With my newly rediscovered interest in listening to music while working I was stuck with an old 20 GB Zen stuffed with music from another era in my life, a Zune I picked up sometime ago that I never really liked, and a 80 GB IPod I inherited from a relative which I'm slowly putting interesting music on. Over the past few years I have gotten really use to having Sirius satellite radio in my car. Those drives along 50, 88, 95, or 395 contain a lot of dead spots for conventional radio. Just in time along comes the Stiletto 2 Sirius portable satellite receiver. So far due to a wee bit of snow I've spent the last few days mostly inside. But one of the cool thing about the Stiletto is that it has a wifi interface that allows for easy access to the Sirius Internet feeds. Now I can work, wonder around the house, run on the treadmill, and, after changing my wireless router, shovel and snowblow to the end of my driveway while listening to whatever makes me happy at the moment.

Now that I've made it sound perfect I should mention that I havn't really used it receiving from a satellite yet. I tried at one point while snow blowing at a relatives house but the trees, cloud and show cover appeared to be too much. I really don't like the power indicator. Its a simple bar style indicator. What I really want to know is how much more time I can listen. The Stiletto will recharge via its USB connection but thats slower then slow. Even if its powered off that can still take a significant portion of the day. It recharges quickly via a power plug but usb cables are so much easier to carry around. I think it also uses a fair bit of energy while on standby (paused). Maybe thats the wifi? If you look at the list of stations when receiving from the satellite you will see the current song or program. But when receiving over the Internet you don't. Thats lame. Even lamer although expected in our current RIAA slavery you can't time shift off of the Internet stream. ( Jan 08 2008, 09:20:52 PM PST ) Permalink

Sunday January 06, 2008

memories AND adventure

There are many reasons to like music. I often see it as fleeting. As soon as a note is played it is over. A Phil Lesh quote would suggest that he and Jerry Garcia would have agreed:

Jerry put it the best, as he frequently did: ‘Let ‘em have it. When we play it, we’re done with it.’

The other day I was walking out of a Van Morrison concert at the Grand Sierra Resort talking with a friend about the show. It was the first time that either of us had see Van Morrison and while we had both enjoyed the show we were amused at the "curtness" of the show. The set started and songs came fast and furious and then Van walked off the stage with no encore. As we stood outside of the venue (inside the GSR) waiting for some friends we started chatting with another concert attendee. She was really disturbed with the show. Van hadn't played much that she had known and she had listened to all his recordings. My friend and I commiserated with her for a few moments and then moved on. At first I had been a little startled by our acquaintances reaction but then I realized that she saw live music as a way to retrieve memories where as I saw it as adventure. I have a pretty extensive collection of live and studio recordings. I see about 25 live shows a year. I don't want to hear what I can hear at home. I want/hope/expect that the band paints a sonic landscape that is another step beyond that which I've already heard.

I got a Stiletto 2 recently. That has reopened my interest in listening to varying types of music. My current presets include: 17 (Jam_ON), 19 (Classic Hard Rock), 20 (Pure Hard Rock), 27 (Heavy Metal), 28 (Faction; Punk, Hip-Hop, Hard Rock), 29 (Punk), 32 (Grateful Dead), 33 (Trance), 63 (Outlaw Country), 65 (Bluegrass), and 80 (Symphony). When I first started listening to Sirius in my car I had a limited number of presets and felt that the music silos were limiting. One of the things I liked about radio as a kid is that you were exposed to music you didn't know. Looking through this list I can see a lot of memories (I just shoveled my upper deck to 19 listening to nothing less then a decade old) but I hope I don't ever end up in my friend aboves state of never looking for the adventure in music. ( Jan 06 2008, 07:05:12 PM PST ) Permalink