fighting the lack of good ideas
As I was walking to get my turkey pot pie today that was cooking in the microwave in our break room, I looked at the parking lot below and realized that parking lots are approximately perfect hash functions. Think about it: cars come in in some semi-random order; spaces are available in semi-random fashion; cars…
Carpool lanes do not alleviate traffic. They encourage folks to either a) ignore the ‘carpool-only’ signs, or b) get pissed-off at other drivers ignoring the signs. I’ve been in California for a few days on a working vacation, and the carpool-only lanes are stupid. Because I’ve been driving by myself to work, I do not…
Search is broken. Google, Yahoo, Ask, Alta-Vista, and on, and on the list goes. Hundreds of companies, thousands of individuals. I know why search is broken, and I know what needs to be fixed. Now to figure out the how of fixing. When you’re looking for information, you search on keywords. Google’s been nice enough…
I no longer drive a Mazda Protege. It bought the farm – as John so eloquently pointed out – Wednesday on my way to work. So, I was in need a quick replacement. Enter CarMax, stage left. I went after work Thursday, they had something I wanted at a price I was willing to pay….
Public transit is an interesting concept, and as I’ve written about before, is not a panacea. However, I’m wondering if it might be reasonable to apply the concept to flying. Bear with me a minute here. Let’s say you fly – maybe a lot, maybe not a lot, but when you do, you pretty much…
Apple recently introduced a convergent device that is a media player (iPod), cell phone, wifi device, and widget player (mini OS X) – I’m going to call it the iCon (since the current name is under trademark dispute). There’s one whole walloping button. Everything else is done via hand motions. Want to zoom in on…
To quote “Science in the News Weekly”, Issue: 3 Volume: 5 – “Federal Budget Freeze Straps American Science The incoming 110th U.S. Congress has decided to keep most federal agencies operating under their current budgets until the fall, calling for an unexpected belt-tightening that could mean potentially grievous effects for American science, federal and private…