I was bored yesterday, and it was kind of nice out, so I found some reasons to go out and I took a walk around town. All in all it was quite successful at making me feel productive. Anyways, here’s the Google map of it. This walk differs from my first post in that it includes repeated vertices, other than the start and end point.
Archive for the ‘Maps’ Category
Closed Directed Walk
Sunday, February 10th, 2008Family North Carolina Trip
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008I feel like I haven’t updated the blog in a while. I don’t know, I’m thinking maybe a change in formats/coverage is in the works, but I’m not really sure. Anyways, I was checking out our winter vacation spot in North Carolina on google maps when I found something really surprising. Our cabin was only about 3,400 feet away from the Smokey Mountains National Park.
I wish I’d know that when I was there, it would have been cool to drive all the way up the road to the ridge. The trip was otherwise fun. I won 2/4 poker tournaments, none of which were played for money, much to my dismay, but that was really surprising given the crowd, although I’m sure had money been on the line I would have done worse, cause it changes everyones play style. Lets see, what else, I spent at least half a day playing with my cousins who are finally old enough that I feel like I can relate and play fun games with. We played sardines and sharks and minnows and some other stuff. Oh, we also played the Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader board game, I was on a team with my cousins and we as a collective (total grade level totaling ~30 between the 4 of us) were indeed smarter than a fifth grader.
Oh I got connecting to the internet on my laptop via a usb cable to my cell phone working in about an hour in preparation for the trip. I used it a little bit as it was the only connection available, but I tired not to use it too much because I’m unclear as to what the billing repercussions of doing so are. Although from what I can tell, since only the verizion 1x network was available I didn’t violate my terms of service. You only violate the terms of service when you “tether” to the EvDo network (the faster one)without signing up for overly expensive data plan, which I didn’t do, anyways we’ll see in a few days when I get my bill.
The above image is a badly reconstructed panorama from the front porch of the cabin. It was raining then as it was most of the trip, which was no problem, we just played games inside the whole time. It did clear up enough for a night of casual stargazing and a fire complete with smores, yum.
This cabin was not too far from our previous family reunion type thing in the mountains of NC about 12 years ago or something. It is also close to the Nantahala river where I’ve gone white water paddling many times. And of course, I perennially take my summer vacation on the other side of the state, clearly North Carolina is getting more than its fair share of my tourist dollars.
OSU to the National Championship Game!
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
Previous Map
But what about me? I’m thinking probably not, as much fun as last year was, it would have to cost a lot less than it did last year before I would go. Although I should have a free plane ticket by then, and I do enjoy New Orleans.
Well, I am definitely not going since we have to play LSU. Clearly the BCS is totally flawed, but I mean really, the only reason they jumped that much is because someone doesn’t want to see a clearly better team that didn’t get the chance to play for their conference championship (namely Georgia, but also Kansas) in the title game. They vote in someone who gives the game some kind of legitmacy (LSU) so they can say that the BCS works, when in fact it does not work and they just picked two teams with good reputations to play each other. Not that I don’t think the BCS favors teams like OSU, it does, but it would favor them even more if they just lived within the system and were content with the awful match ups that would fall out of it without undue manipulation of the human component.
Entertaining Tourists: October ’07
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007My parents and my best friend Paul’s parents came to Boston for a long weekend, and what a long weekend it was, what with the world series and all. We managed to do a whole lot (Map now with pictures), much more than when my parents came up last spring. Its taken me a few days to recover and find time to make up the map. It was fun, and good to have people to go out to dinner with, more than just on Wednesday night. And of course, it was great to see my parents, whom I love (they are the principle readers of this thing anyways it seems).
A Win Win Situation
Friday, October 26th, 2007
Well I could mean the Red Sox, up 2-0 games in the world series, but in this case I mean Chipotle. A week ago a new Chipotle opened in Boston, and this one is even closer to my place, a 0.6 mile ~10 min walk from my place instead of a ~10 min drive. The win win situation is that now I can work off some of my burrito walking to get it and back, saving me gas (therefore money) and calories. The location is quaint on the outside and small and busy on the inside, see pictures. It is definitely not a good place for groups larger than 4 unless you Intend to carry out, or eat outside. Its a damn shame they don’t deliver, because the iLab guys at my place essentially don’t eat at places that don’t deliver.
There are about a million burrito places in Boston, and it seems like all of them have a store within walking distance of Davis Square, where the new Chipotle is located. So they will be facing some stiff competition, especially from the closest one Anna’s Taqueria, which offers smaller burritos for roughly 2/3 the cost, but half the quality. Chipotle, being new, has had a lot of draw this past week from what I can tell. Two of my room mates went and tired it independently of me. The question is, will college students here go for the quality burritos at Chipotle or the cheap ones at entrenched local favorite Anna’s. People here swear by Anna’s, but now that they don’t have to drive to Medford to get something better hopefully they will see what they have been missing.
Of Mashups, Podcasts, and Cat Macros
Thursday, October 4th, 2007Check out this great Google maps mashup I found: Zip code mashup. I found it because a packaged arrived yesterday and the delivery confirmation claimed it was sent to my address in zip code 02143, which I thought wrong. So I wanted to check and make sure that I’m actually in 02144 and not 02143, because I could easily have memorized the wrong zip code. Turns out 02144 is correct, like I thought, but I was surprised to learn that Somerville has 3 whole zip codes to itself. That seems like a lot to me, but then, it is the northeast. Oh, apparently, we’re calling these things special google maps overlays “mashups” now. A “mashup” really is just the result of open access to information; people put together information from different sources. Thats just an awful name for something so common. Its also kind of misleading like the term Podcast.
A podcast, is just an audio file (often in MP3 format). It is nothing else. Podcasts are often delivered via RSS, which is nothing more than an attempt to turn the “user pulls the content” nature of the world wide web on its head. That would be, into a “users have content pushed to them” medium, such as television. RSS does this by wasting a ton of resources polling for updates. Any well seasoned programmer will tell you the polling is an awful idea unless you have no other way, and if you have to do it, maybe you should rethink why you need to do it in the first place. I tend to think that making the internet more like TV is also an awful idea, so that even this friggen blog automatically offers an RSS feed irks me. Right, so a podcast is an audio file that is pushed to the user, its simple, the only software you need is an audio playing program and a web browser. The web browser will display the XML that implements the RSS feed, and you can easily find the link to the audio file, download it and play it. But the name podcast makes people think that there is something special about this audio file, and that they need to have special software like iTunes which combines and audio player and an RSS reader, when in fact, neither are needed. I know it sounds cool, but nomenclature should make things as simple as they are, not more complex.
On the subject of names for things I don’t like: “lolcats” for pictures of cats with words on them. Well I don’t like pictures of cats with words on them much in general because most of them aren’t very creative and the shorthand English doesn’t make them funnier. Now, really creative ones I’ve got nothing against, but I would prefer to call them Cat Macros, which is an accepted alternative term. The worst part about lolcats is that I’ve heard (not heard of) people use the term when talking about images in the same style but without actual cats in them. If you add a humorous caption to an image of a turtle it should be a Turtle Macro, not an lolcat.
xkcd Meetup – Dream Girl 2007
Monday, September 24th, 2007This Sunday was Spetember 23, 2007, so naturally I was here:
View Larger Map
And so were hundred of other loyal xkcd fans from all over the world. There was a guy from Russia, and from The United Kingdom. My friend and board gaming buddy, Post, hosted a group of his friends from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and even my college and robotics buddy Josh drove up from Jersey to attend. Oh, and collect on one of his two free meals because the Red Sox came up short against the Yankees. At least the Sox have locked a playoff spot. Ok back on topic.
Post, and his crew arrived shortly after Josh and I did. They planned a head and brought stuff, including two of the best costumes there. They also brought a conversation topics list, and a poster for people to sign. They eventually
gave the poster to Randall (that’s the poster back there to the left getting signed.), who promised to scan it in in high res.
Other Impressions
There is just so much to talk about, I’ll be telling stories from this weekend for a while, but I want to hit on some big things I can think of now:
- There were a lot of hot girls[1, 2] [3, 4, 5] [6] there, hot nerdy, possibly lesbian girls. Well the last part is wishful, but I did read on the comment white boards that “The Dream Girl went home with a Wellesley Woman.” I mean, maybe not a lot compared to the general population, but compared to the expected audience, wow. Also of interest is how little photographic evidence of this there is, its like there was something more exciting that hot girls there ;-).
- I didn’t get anything signed, I didn’t bring anything to get signed, and random bits of signed paper, well those seem lame, but I did stand in mob (thats kind of like line) to get Cory Doctorow’s blog signed.
- Afterwards Josh, Post, his friends, me, and some random other people, including the guy from the UK went and had dinner downtown at Quincy Market. This was my first time eating there. I got some New England Clam Chowder, which was not as good as it should have been in the touristy part of town. The guy from the UK, Alex, was interviewed, and had his musings included in this article on the event. I was also interviewed, the reporter girl was riding in the subway car with us down to dinner, at least as far as Harvard Square. My contribution was a musing on “where are we going to do this next year!”
I guess that is it for now, nothing is sparking any stories. I did take some video’s while I was there, which went a long way towards filling up my 1GB SD card. The best of them are up on you tube now, and embedded below:
Randall Munroe Enters and the Dream Girl Countdown
Sorry, this one is a bit sloppy with the camera work.
Xkcd Meetup Conversation Game
Randall Munroe on being a Roboticist
This one follows the previous one by maybe 10 seconds.
Randall Munroe on Early Advertising for Xkcd
Later on, the crowd has gone down a lot so now you can hear him talk about interesting stuff
Hog Island 2007
Saturday, August 25th, 2007Hog Island is a small island in Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. One of my room mates, Brian’s, extended family owns about half of the island. Its a very unique place with no roads or power running to the island. There used to be a daily ferry out, but that has since stopped. So one can only get there by personal boat. Brian hosted a party there a week ago, which was a blast. Although, I was embarrassingly sore from a ~6 inning whiffle ball game that ended tied 7-7. Below is a map of some of the pictures I took to try out the new camera. Click on the pictures for a bigger view (you’kll want to use the larger map for that), but note that they have been compressed to save on bandwidth, you’re welcome Chris.
Fires and Bar Trivia
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007Yesterday marked my one year anniversary in Boston, so now that that is done with, I can finally get around to seeing Emily. Emily is the one person I knew in Boston before I moved here. She’s a college friend of a high school friend of friend from back home. She’s also his x, I told her not to date him (some friend of friend I turned out to be), but I was right, we bonded. We’ve been trying to meet up for a year now, and well, since I couldn’t make a concert Saturday night due to being in Rhode Island (post coming), Bar Trivia it was. Our team, comprised of Emily, her BF, and some other guys won! I contributed two things:
- Whole Foods is the grocery store under SEC investigation.
- Sao Paulo is most definitely in the Southern Hemisphere.
Which means they all knew their stuff. It was a fun time, and on the way back I drove right past a house fire in progress. Well the first cop pulled up a few car lengths behind me while I was stopped at a light. I had pulled well over to let him pass and he stopped, and then I heard more sirens (upon closer inspection fire truck sirens) so I started looking around and low and behold the back side of the house nearest the corner was in flames. I wasn’t there long enough to grab a picture so you’ll have to settle for a map (its the one the arrow is pointing at).
It looked like everyone was out of the house, and well The rest of the drive home I was seeing trucks headed that way, so hopefully it will all turn out alright. I was just really surprised to turn my head around and see a fire not 25 meters away. One of the things I never considered about actually living in a city is the increased frequency of emergency vehicle sightings, but I guess it makes sense, more people, more stuff to go wrong. Also, I live 2 blocks from a fire station and a hospital, so that may be inflating the numbers a bit.
Perseids 2007
Monday, August 13th, 2007Sunday night, for the peak of the Persied metor shower two of my room mates and I drove out to Nahant, MA to watch. Nahant is this little outcropping of rock connected to the north shore by a causeway. It had a good, dark, northeasterly view, and it was close. It was amazing how many more stars were visible even just an hour out of the city. Of course being on the beach helped much. Unfortunately the Northeastern research center out there has some bright lights that were hard to avoid.
We first tried to avoid the lights by heading down a forested path, it abruptly ended with a huge, imposing door built into the hillside. We turned back, and headed up a trail that went up to the top of the hill. We were almost at the top when I came within a foot of running into a perfectly constructed spider web spanning the path. It had about a 1in square spider chilling in the middle of it. It seemed as though it’d worked pretty hard on the web so we turned back.
We took all our gear, blanket, flashlight, water, and binoculars up the road a bit to the next beach down the road, again on the northeast facing side of the island. There was a guy with a laptop out on the closed trunk of his car. He told us he’d seen a bunch while he was on the beach, some 25 feet below the road. On his suggestion we ignored the barricaded stairs and went down. We saw maybe 15 meteors total during the hour plus we laid down there. Two or there of which were very bright, and left some impressive streaks. Eventually some little critters found us and we broke camp.
When we got to the top of the stairs the laptop toting stargazer had been replaced by a somewhat inebriated “on vacation” girl from down the street, who claimed to be a lawyer in Boston. She had her sister and a cute dog with her, and we chatted for a bit, mostly about how we didn’t have any drugs. While we were chatting possibly the best meteor of the night crossed my eye. I pointed and spoke and we all caught a fading glimpse. All and all one of the most successful meteor shower watchings I’ve had in recent memory.