Archive for March, 2006
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28 Mar 2006
I had the chance, possibly for the first time ever, to sit on a corner in downtown New York (specifically Whitehall St and Pearl St), eat my lunch, and just do some people watching. It didn't take too long for me to realize how much public behavior — even in a stereotypically surly city — is governed by simple respect for our fellow people.
There's the guy in the over-crowded and entirely enclosed news stand who can hardly get his arms out the little peephole to take your money, but is apparently unafraid of anyone stealing his wares. And the couple selling produce next to him even walked away for several minutes and no one touched a thing. Everyone seemed to know exactly where the polite little line at the hotdog vendor was supposed to be. (And as an aside, why is it always right next to the server, not across from him?) And there was a startling lack of honking car horns.
I was somewhat taken aback. I wonder how much of it has to do with downtown-Manhattanite post-9/11 bonding, and how much of it was always there.
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27 Mar 2006
The domain GoMetric.org is expiring on April 24. Should I renew it? Does anyone use it? It averages fewer than 20 hits a day, and it's unclear how many of those hits are anything besides robots.
Update 5 Apr - Fine, sheesh! I didn't realize people actually still used it. Gometric is now renewed for another two years, and I have some ideas for some updates and whatnot.
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23 Mar 2006
The GDC keynote (that supposedly might reveal the final name of the Nintendo Revolution) doesn't start for more than two hours, but that's not preventing the rumors from flying. Might it be the double-entendre Nintendo Go? (The Japanese word "go" means five, and this is the big N's fifth console.) I'm not sure how I feel about the name, but I'm loving the classic-meets-modern cubed-D-pad logo.
Update 11:49: In this interview done last night, Iwata says that he's going to hold back a lot of Revolution information until E3 in May. Whether this means we won't even get a name today is left to be seen.
Update 14:44: News: You'll be able to download and play Sega Genesis and TurboGrafix 16 games on the Revolution, in addition to the previously-known NES, SNES, and N64 games. But it looks like there was no name change today. Set your clocks for the E3 keynotes!
Update 15:56: Here are detailed notes on Iwata's entire keynote.
Update 27 Mar: It's not a name, but the head of Nintendo's PR, Beth Llewelyn, verified in no uncertain terms that Revolution's name will change. She also claims to not know what the name is.
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21 Mar 2006
Are you reading Achewood, the best webcomic there is? Have you been following the Great Outdoor Fight, the current epic storyline? No? Start at the beginning and find out what you're missing. When you're done, and not quite sure what to make of it, read what Websnark thinks of it.
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18 Mar 2006
In response to something Chris said last night, I'd like to try an experiment. I'd like everyone to tell me what the last three albums you've purchased or downloaded have been. I'll do the same. I don't know what the goal of this is, but I intend to listen to some of the stuff mentioned, and I hope you'll do the same. I'll start.
- Mogwai - Mr. Beast
- Madonna - Music (Yes, really.)
- Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis - Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke
Your turn.
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16 Mar 2006
M will be doing her Residency at Boston Medical Center in Boston, MA.
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14 Mar 2006
Pi Day is a sham. So-called Pi Approximation Day (July 22, or 22/7 in European date style) is closer to the true value of π.
22/7 = 3.142857142...
abs( 22/7 - π ) = 0.001264489...
abs( 3.14 - π ) = 0.001592653...What a shame.
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10 Mar 2006
MetaFilter — or more accurately AskMetaFilter — is a thing of beauty. Last week, after about a month of noticable deterioration, my DSL stopped functioning almost entirely. I spent three hours on the phone with five different AT&T helpdesk people until they finally decided to send out an engineer. He showed up, plugged something into the wall, mumbled "your modem is broken" and left. They wanted $100 to replace it, which I considered (information super-)highway robbery.
EBay has hundreds of DSL modems listed for a lot less, and I decided I'd get one there. But I didn't know what to look for. There are a lot of acronyms and whatnot, and I wasn't really interested in doing hard research and studying for a twenty-dollar piece of equipment that I only need for a few months. So I asked MetaFilter. I got better answers than I expected. Two people offered me free modems. One lived in New Haven and I met him last night.
It works like a charm. The Internet is a wonderful place. Thank you, horsemuth.
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6 Mar 2006
My pinhole photos came on Saturday. Several of them came out pretty well, and I was surprised that my camera had virtually zero light leaks. M's mom is scanning them at work and emailing them to me today,
hopefully they'll be up later. (They're up, as of 12:30.) I'm planning a second 110 pinhole camera, but I thought I'd share what I've learned from my first attempt:- Make the pinhole
smallermuch bigger! Even the ones that are good came out pretty fuzzy. - Make sure the pinhole is centered and parallel to the film plane. The photos were all more up-and-to-the-right from where I thought they were.
- Compensate for reciprocity failure.
- For that matter, I just need to get better at judging light conditions.
- Make the pinhole