spacer
{Arrest This Man, He Talks In Maths } spacer

Blog : Archives : Homepage

With your feet in the air, and your head on the ground . . .

spacer
spacer

{Friday, December 19, 2003}

 
I came down with a cold on Tuesday, and (as usual) went down for the count. I've always subscribed to the theory that it's best to just shut down and let my body devote all its energy to the immune system. I suppose this is a good idea, but I don't seem to get well more quickly than others; in fact I think I generally stay sick for longer. I've begun to think maybe I should just drug myself up on contac & nyquil and try to stay functional.

Anyway. Enough bitchin'.

I had a wonderful evening out with Jess last night to celebrate the one year anniversary of the day we first met. Last year on December 18th we had lunch at Algiers, in Harvard Sq., after getting briefly acquainted on-line; this year we had dinner at The Blue Room, after a year of getting more intimately acquainted. It was a good year. :-)

posted by Miles 11:25 AM

  (0) comments

{Friday, December 12, 2003}

 
On Saturday, in the blizzard, I took my cross-country skis out and went all the way to Arlington via the bike path. It was a lot of fun; wicked cold, and painfully so when the wind was in my face, but it was beautiful to be out in, and I felt all "hardcore" for doing it, and going so far.

That was all well and good, but unfortunately by the time I got back, I had developed a nasty blister on the back of one foot. Six days later, it's infected, and nasty, and too painful to the touch for me to wear shoes & walk . . . so I'm going around in Boston winter with one boot & one flip-flop.

I guess there's some lesson there about trying to be hardcore, but only infrequently. Argh.

posted by Miles 2:22 PM

  (0) comments

{Friday, December 05, 2003}

 
I think this is an interesting page, with lots of interesting links:

iTunes Music Store: Facelift for a Corrupt Industry

posted by Miles 3:52 PM
  (0) comments
 
So I was thinking about how I wish my iPod had a simple radio tuner in it. Right? I mean, how simple and obvious is that? I don't know, maybe it would give "the wrong image", or maybe there would be some interference or power issue . . . but I don't think so.

Anyway, aside from this, it occured to me that it seems like overkill for all the different cellular networks to have their own servers, and use phone bandwidth, to deliver the same simple data set to everyone with the limited "web" service that's just scores, weather, news headlines, and that kind of thing. It seems to me that a broadcast radio service could deliver the same information more cost-effectively; I mean, it does, in the form of news radio stations, but there's no reason that information can't be transmitted in a form such that it can be displayed as text on cell phone, PDA, or iPod screens.

Ah, I have so many million dollar ideas, and so little interest in putting any effort into them.

Another (maybe $100,000) idea is bluetooth-enabled vent-covers. Dumb idea, right? Well, my room never gets warm enough if the living room vent is open, because the thermostat's in the living room, and gets the best flow. Now, it's hard to rework the whole heating system in a building to ensure even flow to every vent, and totally impractical & inefficient to have independent heaters for each room. But it's now (relatively) cheap to put little chips in things, and temperature sensors are cheap, and motors strong enough to (essentially) turn some flaps are cheap, it seems like making a smart network to manage your heating system should be pretty doable.

Meanwhile, I have a second-year project proposal (that will make me $0, and hopefully ensure an additional three years of grad school & poverty wages) to write. Back to work!

posted by Miles 10:08 AM
  (0) comments
 
I love it when Google hacks itself . . .

'miserable failure'

(get it while it lasts)


{Edit, following a little additional meta-googling research.}

Or, maybe google does not work the way I think it does, and this has been effectively engineered by 'outsiders'. As in, there's a 'web project' to write HTML tags with the label "miserable failure" that list to the official presidential biography, and that's what's making the google search work the way it does. This sort of does (and sort of doesn't) fit with my conception of how 'reference ranking' based search engines like google work.

Jim, do you know enough about how google works to clarify this? Anyone else?

posted by Miles 9:17 AM

  (0) comments
spacer