Posts from — July 2005

For those who are interested, we started the Runstoppable Blog which will track development and other aspects of Runstoppable. There’s a meandering overview of the project up there now, hopefully it’ll give you some idea of what we have in mind. Subscribe! (here’s how to do that in Thunderbird)

Lots of progress in the last two days, things are looking good.

Email from my Mom:
Hi Matt
We had a terrible accident here today. I was on Rt. 44 going toward Hartford to go swimming this morning. I was almost to the mountain when I can see about 6 cars ahead of me – a vehicle crossed across the road. The next instant there are huge flames and a bunch of cars are engulfed in flames. It turned out that a dump truck was coming toward Avon on the mountain and its brakes failed. The driver could not stop and he crossed into the other lanes of traffic. It led to a chain reaction of accidents. There were 18 cars, a bus and a truck in the accident.

It was very terrifying to be so close. It reminded me of those scenes in movies where car bombs go off. There were some explosion sounds too and the flames would get bigger. There were huge clouds of smoke coming out of these flames. I got out to help but there was no way to get to people in these burning cars. I found out later that some people from AOF hotel got there sooner and did manage to pull some people out.

I am very grateful to be alive. 5 seconds later and I would have been in the accident. I had spent an extra minute at home reading the headlines on the newspaper before I left so I was a little later getting started.
——
There’s a pretty good article on CNN. I think the bus involved was the one I took to work for two years when I worked in Hartford. The accident was 2 miles from my house, 3 by road.

Aren’t signs saying “No Trespassing” redundant? If trespassing were allowed, it would create a semantic paradox. I’m not quite sure what a more accurate thing to put on a sign would be, but what they want to convey is that entering the given area unauthorized constitutes trespassing. Maybe it should just be “no passing”. Trespassing is inherently disallowed by the authorities.

I don’t typically post song lyrics here, but I thought it was rather funny that the following song came on my mp3 player (on random play) while I was driving home last week:

Radiohead – Killer Cars

Too hard on the brakes again
What if these brakes just give in?
What if they don’t get out of the way?
What if there’s someone overtaking?
I’m going out for a little drive
And it could be the last time you see me alive
There could be an idiot on the road
The only kick in life is pumping his steel

Wrap me up in the back of the trunk
Packed with foam and blind drunk
They won’t ever take me alive
‘Cause they all drive…

Don’t die on the motorway
The moon would freeze, the plants would die
I couldn’t cope if you crashed today
All the things I forgot to say
I’m going out for a little drive
And it could be the last time you see me alive
What if the car loses control?
What if there’s someone overtaking?
[...]

Anyway… I’m in Avon for a couple of days, then going to Cape Cod until Wednesday or something.

Based upon some of the stuff I had worked on for the ill-fated next version of Magicspatula running, Tim and I will be working on a new, ridiculously-legal site that builds upon that idea with running logs and group features. We’ll be looking for beta testers later (about a month) and eventually publicity. Many more details to come, later.

Before I go back to work for a bit, some hints for the puzzle I posted before.

* The system to which the sign refers has to do with public safety.
* Siamese Head Active is a good thing.
* The “Siamese Head” is a name for something you probably see on a regular basis… there are certainly some here at Lehigh. I saw one today.

More hints every night until someone gets it. Ponder away!

Robert Scoble pointed out a cool feature from MSN Search: if you type in the name of a baseball player, it displays a stats box and picture of them. Example. Holy crap, I just linked to MSN.

Now that I said something good about MSN, I must add that the results page is still too busy and visually overwhelming. It’s not really clear where my eye should be focused.

One of the more obnoxious things about MSN search is that if I search for the word “speling” (intentionally spelled wrong), it says:

WHY WOULD YOU NOT PUT A QUESTION MARK AFTER A QUESTION ON A PROFESSIONAL WEB PAGE USED BY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS (millions?) OF PEOPLE???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I HAVE MORE QUESTION MARKS IF YOU NEED THEM!!!!!!!

?????????????????????????????
???????????????????????????????????????????????
????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????

??

?

First person to correctly guess what this is wins.. something.
There is a correct answer, don’t cheat and don’t post if you already knew it. Begin pondering!

A few hints:
The sign serves an actual purpose and doesn’t have any typos of importance.
The sign was not written for comedic purposes.
The picture was taken in New York City.

Maybe more hints later…

I’ve had the 30 GB Creative Zen Xtra mp3 player for a week now.
“WHAT?? YOU DIDN’T GET AN IPOD??”
No, I didn’t. Since there seems to be some sort of burden of proof for me not to buy an iPod, I’ll explain my reasoning here. I have nothing against Apple, I believe the iPod to be a fine product, but they just couldn’t compete with my required features in my price range. I estimated that I had 8GB of music that I wanted to have on an mp3 player right now, a number that is bound to increase. For $200, I could get a 6GB iPod mini or a 30GB Zen. 6GB isn’t quite enough for me… all that time I’d save with that easy interface I’d be wasting by trimming the music that’s on there to fit new stuff (I have 8.5GB on my mp3 player now).

Speaking of interfaces, my experience with the Zen Xtra was rather interesting. At first, I thought the interface was terrible. The buttons are on the sides, the playback and menu navigation buttons aren’t grouped too much, and it’s hard to tell by touch what a button does. For the first ~20 minutes of use, I was really bad at it, I kept looking at the sides and pressing wrong buttons. After this awkward period, however, I learned to hold the player the right way, and everything suddenly made sense. It was amazing how quickly I went from clumsy to adept. It’s somewhat like vi. The onscreen interface is actually quite good, and allows for people to play music in different ways (playlists, playing by album immediately, queuing, etc). Sound quality is excellent. The earbuds included are a bit large, but of impressive quality.

I bought the player so that I could listen to my own music in the car (it lacks a CD player). On the trip to and from CT last weekend, it made things so much more enjoyable. No more listening to New Jersey’s Top 40 Hits.

–

Many thanks for all the book recommendations. I got a few from the library today, and they will take me a while to read since I read so slowly. Keep going… sound it out…

I need suggestions for books to buy. This means it shouldn’t be something I’ll read once and then put down, it should be something I’ll want to have on my bookshelf. This is generally computer books, though I sometimes get cookbooks and coffee-table books as well. Any ideas? The Camel Book should be coming in this week for me (free from work!), so that’ll be a nice addition to my collection.

My reading list still has plenty on it. I might finish The Zen of CSS Design, or I might save it for later (when I need inspiration). I’m still intending on reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (name similarity a coincidence) then perhaps some political books that have been on my list for a while (Manufacturing Consent is still on my list, Kym!).

Enough posting blitz for now.