Working reader
Here’s LRN3 at work this past Memorial Day. Looks pretty tough. I can’t understand why he likes that job. Photo courtesy of LRN3 hisownself.
Another great day. Busy as a bee at work, and way more than plenty to do at home. I’m still struggling to make good use of my time on the train. I have some new tools, but it still comes down to productivity and having the right tools at the right time. I’ve been disappointed to learn that much of the trip is outside of AT&T’s pathetic data coverage, so there’s that to be worked around. Email works okay, since it gets queued up until the signal comes back. Web access – not so good. There just are no towers covering a whole lot of train tracks.
On the other hand, I could be more productive, even without web access. In one positive development, I’m spending a little less time watching unproductive videos on my iPod. Only productive ones. Mostly.
Anyway. MARV is at a bit of a standstill today, accelerometer-wise. LRN1 has some queries out to the accelerometer’s maker, having gone to the forums without much luck. If we haven’t broken the logjam by the weekend, we’ll hold a peer review and try to get to the bottom of things. We need to figure it out and get the project moving forward again.
More search engine stuff today: Topsy. It’s fascinating; the search is done via Tweets – Twitter posts. I tried a few queries out, and it looks to me like it might actually do something better than Google: news. Google’s information is days old, at the very least. Since Topsy uses Tweets, its information is presumably fresher. Check it out. You don’t need a Twitter account to play.
And then there’s this: A call to action. I find the idea of an open-source search engine fascinating. Would the openness of the search algorithm tend to encourage or discourage gaming? It sure seems like the latter, but read the article and see why Cory Doctorow thinks otherwise.
Today’s food violence update: When ranch dressing is outlawed, only outlaws will have ranch dressing.
See you tomorrow.