posted by on June 19, 2009 at 04:42 PM
filed under:
Photography
As you
may recall from last year, when I go on vacation I like to take a lot of pictures. And then when I get back, I am usually a bit overwhelmed by all the pictures I’ve taken and it takes me a while to go through them all. So in the meantime I make and post a big giant index print so as to give people a sense of what I’m up against.
This year I went to a wedding in Fredericksburg, TX, which also gave my lady and I some time to hang out in Austin, which is a cool town. Then we caught Amtrak’s Texas Eagle to Chicago (a 26 hour train), then we caught the Empire Builder to Portland (a 48-hour train), then we caught the Cascades to Seattle and eventually flew home. We spent about a day in each city, and more than 75 hours on trains. It was awesome.
I took 1,777 pictures, and made some hefty modifications to the RMagick script that processes them into what you see below. It still needs some more optimization for memory usage, plus I need to account for my camera’s choice 3 different aspect ratios – right now the script just squeezes pics that aren’t 16:9.
Naturally, the highlights from the above are coming soon to
my Flickr page.
Coming in at 7am to upgrade firewalls makes me punchy.
His strips are pretty much always brilliant, especially
this recent one about the swine flu media pandemic. Click through the teaser panel below for the full strip, and do check out his other comics if you haven’t already.
posted by on March 12, 2009 at 01:06 PM
filed under:
The Internet
Another reason why I love the Internet:
At about 12:30 this afternoon mentioned that the International Space Station was in danger of being struck by some debris from the recent satellite collision, and that the astronauts inside had evacuated to a small spacecraft attached to the station. A quick Google News search turned up only a few short articles which noted that the potential impact was estimated to happen at 12:39pm.
Filled with morbid curiosity, I opened up
NASA’s
live feed from the space station, which was nothing but dead air at the time, and left it open in a background tab. A few minutes later I noticed some chatter in my headphones. Here’s what I heard:
ISS: “We understand we cleared, plese tell us how to progress back to the USOS”
Houston: “We’re all very happy that the TCA has passed with no impact, that’s great news. The steps you’ll need to perform is step 4.1 and 4.2 of the same procedure, 2.815.”
ISS: “Hey Kathy, you’ll never guess what, we don’t have the [manual] handy with us. Since you’ve trained us yourself, why don’t you tell us what those steps say and we’ll start to execute them until we can get inside.”
The important lesson here, of course, is that when you evacuate your spacecraft, you should remember to keep a copy of the instructions handy. Also, don’t forget your towel.
posted by on March 02, 2009 at 04:59 PM
filed under:
New York
I don’t post about it much, but most Barbarians know me as a transit nerd, and anyone who follows the news in New York probably knows that the MTA is facing a $2 billion budget shortfall that can only be resolved through state legislation. Many months ago a commission was formed to figure out what to do, and their recommendations—which include tolling all bridges on the East and Harlem rivers—are now being mulled over bickered about by the legislature. On Monday, the state senate launched a website inviting the public to comment on what they think should be done. Below are my comments.
First: The MTA’s budget gap was caused as much—if not moreso—by the dropoff in real estate sales as what this site’s introduction refers to as “mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibility”. What would be truly irresponsible is to deny the MTA the stable funding stream they need in order to continue to safely operate and improve the system.
Second: Outer-borough politicians need to stop making up facts about “low income families” being harmed by the bridge tolling proposals. Lower income families don’t drive! They ride the subways and buses, and letting the MTA falter will harm them far more than tolling the bridges. Studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of outer-borough residents who commute into Manhattan use public transit, and that those who do drive earn almost twice as much on average than those who use other means. But please don’t take my word for it—take the time to research the real facts when evaluating alternatives, and avoid believing the self-serving fabrications that are being dressed up and passed around as facts.
Third: This city owes no favors to automobiles. Our capital improvement projects have favored cars over transit for the last 50 years and our quality of life has only suffered as a result. Toll the bridges! Make the tolls twice that of the subway fares, use the money to build a better transit system, and you’ll give people double the incentive to use it.
We absolutely need an MTA that is well-managed and fiscally responsible, but first we need an MTA that is properly funded. Let’s focus on keeping it running before we start talking about how to make it better.
I’m disappointed in myself. Not because I got a waffle breakfast sandwich from Dunkin’ Donuts this morning, but because
their subway ads worked and made me want one.
When I was living in Boston I used to eat a sausage egg and cheese on a bagel almost every day, so it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to go waffle. My only hesitation was having to go up to the counter and ask for “the waffle sandwich”. Thankfully, the Dunkin’ on Lafayette Street in Chinatown has a value menu, so I was able to avoid that embarrassing situation and order by number.
It was actually pretty good. The waffle has just a hint of syrupyness to it, not unlike the
McGriddle, but a bit more subtle, so it didn’t leave my hands sticky. It was a bit smaller than I expected, but when it comes to unhealthy foods smaller is not always better, so I was okay with that.
Would I get it again? Yeah, probably. I think the thing I liked the least about it was the bacon, which DD never does a very good job with, so I’d like to see if I could custom-order one with ham, or even go all out and get it with the sausage patty. Oh man that would be decadent. Maybe I’ll get one for lunch.
So Google updated their Mobile Maps application last week and added a feature called
Latitude, which lets you share your current location with your friends. It’s gotten mixed reviews so far, and while I agree with many of the gripes, I’m still pretty excited about it. Mostly.
Not surprisingly, much of the negative reaction to Latitude came from
Dodgeball users, who are rightfully upset over that service’s demise at the hands of Google. I certainly sympathize with their situation, but I was never a Dodgeball user myself (and honestly, I never saw much of a point in it) so I’m not really interested in drawing comparisons between the two services. I already have ways of connecting with my friends; what I’m more interested in is the data that my phone sends to Latitude, and what I can do with it.
That is, if Google will let me do anything with it. Sadly, there is currently no
API for Latitude, nor is there any useful web-based interface to the service (an iGoogle widget is currently the only way you can view your location data on your computer). But I know Google tends to be pretty smart about these things, and I’m sure they’ve got much bigger plans for this service down the line. In the meantime, it seems my only hope is to watch their
product ideas page and vote up the features that would be most useful to me.
The top three suggestions on my wishlist are:
- An API for adding and pulling data
- A history of locations which would be saved indefinitely
- Integration with Picasa for automatic geotagging of personal photos based on timestamps
I encourage you to go there and vote for your favorite ideas as well.
And yes, that Windows Mobile screenshot is my own phone. I’m actually the only Windows Mobile user in the company, but that’s a post for another day.
posted by on February 03, 2009 at 12:07 PM
filed under:
New York
