Journal entries for August, 2005

My car has incredible handling, but that comes at a cost. Part of that grip comes from stiff, well-tuned suspension, but one of the biggest factors that contribute to a car's handling are its tires; they are your entire interface with the road. The Evo comes with very soft tires; the treadwear rating is 160. A numerically lower treadwear rating equates to a softer and usually grippier tire — race slicks have ratings of 60-80. Compare that to the tires on your Camry; they're probably rated 400 or more.

The downside of that, of course, is that stock Evo tires only last around 10,000 miles. Roughly three months ago I started noticing a marked decrease in my tires' grippiness, and realized with sadness that it would soon be time to replace them. However, cheap bastard that I am, I figured I could probably stretch them a little longer if I just drove carefully. They've lasted me this long; I just hit 12k miles last week.

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A few weeks ago I was talking with Henry and he brought up the interesting fact that we'd seen each other once every calendar year since we met. I was surprised, because it feels like we see each other so infrequently, but he listed each visit and he was right. I agreed that the streak could not be broken, and Henry and I made plans for him to come down to PR to visit. Once he had his plane ticket and I mentioned to my parents that he was coming, they reminded me of the fact that the house would be somewhat disassembled at the time. I said "Oops," but Henry said, "That's OK, it will be like camping."

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Scientists in Singapore have developed a battery that derives its electrical energy from urine. It's used in small urine tests such as for diabetes. That's genius; it is powered by the substance it's testing, so it needs no external power source.

Now if they can just develop a version that is powered by poop, I'll never have to buy gasoline for my car again.

This morning I left early for work so I could stop at the panadería and get breakfast. However, when I got close to the San Juan area I ran into a huge traffic jam. Since I knew that traffic equaled no food, I darted off onto a side street to try and find a way around the it.

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I've never been very good at following that rule. Often, when I run out of things to read, I will walk into a bookstore and pick up a book that has an interesting cover and take it home. Surprisingly, it hasn't failed me yet.

Well, until now, that is.

For a few months now I've had one of these random purchases laying around. It's called Signals, by Kevin D. Randle. I finally gave it a try today, and man is it bad. The plot itself is kind of interesting, if somewhat cliché: SETI detects signals from some object fifty light years away and headed towards Earth, and the world rushes to figure out how to deal with the possibility of alien visitors.

But the writing. Oh, the writing. It sounds like the work of a ninth grader. I didn't get more than two pages into the book before deciding to write this entry.

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For the last month or two I've been toying with Ruby On Rails, a web application framework based on the Ruby programming language. It seems like a very cool way to build web applications; coding is much easier and actually fun, and maintenance should be simpler. It's cool enough that I'm actually considering rewriting the blog and photo gallery in Rails.

Originally I figured I'd just reimplement the existing setup so that, aside from some possible URL changes, most visitors wouldn't even notice the difference. But as long as I'm rewriting things from scratch, I'm considering rethinking the photo gallery's layout.

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While doing an unrelated Google search, I came across this article about the way McDonald's is paying hip-hop artists to mention the Big Mac in their songs. The article mentions that the strategy was used earlier by Seagram's Gin, who got Petey Pablo to mention it in their song, "Freek-a-leek" (I am impressed with the thoughtful and poetic way they managed to work it into the song: "Now I got to give a shout out to Seagram's Gin/Cause I'm drinkin' it and they payin' me for it"). How can any artist retain their credibility with such overt marketing in their songs? I realize modern hip-hop tends to focus on commercial success, but in the world of rock, the artists live with the constant spectre of being branded a "sellout" looming over their heads. Changing their musical style slightly can often be enough to release the hounds. The hip-hop scene must be an alien world indeed if rappers can be as overtly commercial as that without losing their fanbase (Freek-a-leek reached #2 on the Billboard hip-hop chart, which I would not consider a scathing rejection).

I've always liked Red Chair Software, the company who makes Notmad Explorer, the software I use to transfer files to my MP3 player. Their software is way more intuitive than Creative's own software, plus they have fast service and are very helpful. This weekend I was reminded of all these things.

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I can't tell what the guy's name is, but there's some really cool photography on this website. In particular, his high speed photography section is really interesting (be sure to check out the Water Figures). Some of the pages haven't been translated from German, but even on those pages you can appreciate the pictures. I like that on most pages he talks about the setup he uses to obtain his results.

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I saw a Taco Bell commercial today that said they've got Cheesy Gordita Crunches back. If ever my vegetarianism was at risk, it is now. I must resist...

Speaking of Cheesy Gordita Crunches, I've always wondered whether the 'Cheesy' thing is actually part of the name or just a marketing adjective. I've always referred to them as "Cheesy Gordita Crunches" when ordering them, and I'd hate to think that all this time I've sounded as stupid as someone ordering a taco and asking them to add guacamole and Zesty Pepperjack Sauce™.

A new bit of AI has been developed which can teach itself new languages. You feed it some text, and it analyzes its structure looking for patterns, and thus learns the language's grammar. Once it has learned it, it can produce new, meaningful sentences in that language. That's a very cool use of two of my big interests—artificial intelligence and linguistics. I couldn't find any more information about this project aside from the single webpage linked above, but I'll have to see if more turns up, because I'm very interested in learning more about how it works. In particular, I wonder how it addresses the issue of vocabulary.

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I love how NASA tends to release full-resolution versions of all of their images. I guess when the government is paying for your bandwidth, you can afford to do that kind of thing. Here's a particularly cool shot from the current shuttle mission. The link goes to the full-res, 3mb image on NASA's servers. In case the URL changes or the image is taken down, I saved a smaller version on my own server here (470kb).

As I walked to the panadería this morning for breakfast, I passed a One Hour Photo place that was apparently going out of business, and there were a bunch of FujiLab photo processing machines sitting on the curb. They looked to be in rough shape, but wheels began to turn. If only I had access to a pickup truck...