March 2008


Ups and downs of the week.

  Baseball Season – Here at last. Well, almost. The Red Sox have played two games in Japan, but now have to wait until the official opening day on Tuesday.

  Friday classes – Last one tonight. It’s good to finish up a course with only 6 meetings, but spending Friday night and all day Saturday in class is no fun.

   Open access spectrum – Finally the government does something right. Of course it remains to be seen if it really happens.

  Construction noise – It’s going to be a noisy summer as they dig up the street in front of my office. I’ve been listening to idling dump trucks and backup beepers all day.

  Earth Hour – The idea is for everyone to turn off their lights at 8PM on Saturday for one hour. What happens when the entire population of a timezone turns the lights on right at 9PM? I bet the power grid folks just love this idea. Luckily the promotion of the idea is practically non-existent, so it shouldn’t be a big deal in any respect.

Update: Now Google has picked up the Earth Hour flag and is running with it. It’ll be interesting to see how widespread the effort becomes in the U.S.

These days there are enough surveillance cameras around to scare George Orwell. In some places, like London, you can’t sneeze without someone on the other end of a camera seeing it. But webcams can be used for recreational purposes as well. A few weeks ago I posted about a Google search which yielded some cool webcams around Europe. One of them, of the ferry between Hailuoto Island in Finland and the Finnish mainland, has fascinated me for some odd reason.

 Ferry Route

You can see live images, updated every few seconds, from both the east and west ends of the ferry as it makes its way across the bay. There is also a camera at Marjeniementie on the western end of the island. Note the abundance of power generating windmills. The Finns are obviously way ahead of us in the wind power field. These cameras should be fun to watch this summer when the long Arctic summer gives them daylight for most of each day.  At this time, you’ll need to be watching during the morning hours in the U.S. in order to see anything.

Ups and downs of the week.

  Spring Break – Nice being on campus when no one’s around.

  Illinois Cornflake – Dumbest story of the year.

  Lack of material – Not much to write about this week.

Ups and downs of the week.

 Bermuda – Beautiful island. 

  Air travel – Still sucks.

  Formula One – Start of a new season. No traction control should make for some interesting racing this year.

  Head colds – Probably caught this one on the flight down to Bermuda. Airplanes are just giant Petri dishes anyway.

 Springtime – Here at last. I hope it stays mild for a bit before getting into the really hot weather.

Ups and downs of the week.

 European Webcams – Most of these webcams are in Europe, such as this one in Italy and this one on some ferry.

  File and Settings Transfer Wizard - This is supposed to save time?

  Vacation – Off to Bermuda tomorrow.

  Chicago traffic - Nuff said.

 Spring Break – I need it. And I get two in a row. This coming week for EIU, so no school for me, and the following week at UIUC, so all the students are gone.