Last Post as a Beaver Student

This is my last post as a student of Beaver Country Day School, my school for the past 7 years. We graduate tomorrow. Since I've never before posted here except as a BCDS student, I thought it an appropriate time to quickly attempt to answer the question: why?

This blog has been utterly pointless since the beginning. Every so often I may post something interesting, but the vast majority of the time it's pointless. I've cut down on the pointlessness since the early days, but the question remains: why bother?

1. It's largely a resource for me to keep track of my line of thought. It's interesting for me to look back at what I was thinking in 2003, regardless of whether anyone else cares. A blog is a pretty convenient format for that.

2. I don't have a #2.

So there you have it. Farewell. :)

Email, pt. 2

I have received 3395 emails to my Hotmail account since July 2004, and sent 349 since June 2006, when Hotmail stopped automatically deleting sent messages. By contrast, I have sent and received 4218 emails at my school account in the past 365 days alone.

Overheard @ Bowen Elementary School Biography Presentations

One kid was dressed up as Bill Gates with a ThinkPad and a boxed copy of office:mac on his desk. I asked him what he thought their most important product was. "Probably, um, Office [holds up the box]... I think, um, a lot of people are using Word these days..."

And then I asked him what their biggest new product moving forward would be. "I think more people could, um, really start using Excel a lot..."

Hm, this Excel thing sounds pretty nifty. He could be on to something here!

Mesh: A little glorious piece of the future, right here in 2008

I just got invited to the Live Mesh beta. And it's incredible. Impressively fast. Super easy. And remarkably, well, wonderful.

This feels like a taste of a future where it doesn't matter what device you're using, where all you need is a user name and password. (Maybe just a fingerprint.)

And, as much as any of Microsoft's "Live" products, this truly embodies "live."

I wish new mail was pushed to Hotmail. I wish new news was pushed to Live Search News. I wish new sites rising through the ranks were pushed to the top of Live Search results as you watched. I wish additions to the GeoWeb were pushed to Live Maps as you explored. I wish Live was more Live.

For one thing, it'd simplify branding. "What does Live mean? Oh, it means you see the news stories come up as they happen."

But anyway, back to Mesh. I'm just in my first hour or so of using it, and so far I've been timid. I really ought to just mesh my whole Documents folder, instead of selected folders here and there. Well, baby steps.

Really, this feel like it's the dawn of a new era. Maybe this--software plus services, as Microsoft might say; connectedness intertwined into the very fabric of even traditionally "offline" computing--will be Web 3.0.

P.S. Lost in half an hour. :)

Villips: Dedicated Tangible/Wireless Communication Links

In Star Wars, there is a species called the Yuuzhan Vong. The Vong abhor traditional technology, opting instead for elaborate bioengineered creations. One such device is the head-shaped, head-sized villip.

The gist of it is that two Vong would have a pair of villips, one each. When stroked, one villip contacts the other telepathically, and thus opens a dedicated communications link. The villips can shape themselves into likenesses of their master's heads. Thus, it's a lot like a one-on-one video chat.

Microsoft has a, um, table called the Surface that you may also have heard of. There is also good intel that a spherical version exists.

Once you read up on the villip and the Surface, you may have an idea where this is going.

I envision a head-sized spherical Surface used as a dedicated communication link between two people. As with a villip, simply stroking the orb would "call" the other person. Alternately, depending on the level of trust, you could leave the link open and step into the field of view when you wanted to make contact.

It'd be reprogrammable, of course, to "bond" to someone else. But I like the idea of it being a dedicated link. As simple as simple can get. Tech so elegant it disappears.

But wait, there's more. This real-world villip could make use of the Surface's object recognition tech, too. So to send a batch of pictures to your pal, just stick your camera next to the villip and it'll dump it all over. (There are details to work out, of course, but I'm just talking about general ideas.)

I'm drawn to the villip example in part due to the Star Wars connection, but you could just as easily have a "magic window" that acted like an always-on portal to another place. (It could have shades for privacy.) OK, to a large extent that's already out there, but I think a lot more could be done with it. I imagine this would be great for collaboration between offices (already happening), or for families spread out across the globe (not so much).

Of course, the same data transfer ideas could still apply. You could send photos "through the window" just by waving your digital camera in front of it or something.

It's about telepresence. And on that note, there are a few final links I'd like to pass on:

TouchLight - Wiki and video

Microsoft Research video: Surface chess (fast forward to 3:44; I know there's a better version out there, but I don't know where)

OK, here's a better one, but I'll leave that one 'cause it's cool in other ways. (fast forward to 1:00)

Sort of overlaps, but lots of in-depth cool stuff in these two:

PlayAnywhere

PlayTogether

...and now I must finish my homework. :)

Microsoft, Mesh, etc.

Mesh is cool. And it supports my belief that there's no reason the web should be constrained to the browser.

"Asked whether Microsoft could make a bid for Google, Ballmer said in part that he did not think Google would be interested and that such a bid would raise regulatory issues. Yahoo and Microsoft rank second and third in Web search, respectively. Google is No. 1." Forbes

Had anyone ever seriously considered that as a possibility? Hey, while they're at it they could merge with Apple, Facebook, Wal-Mart, General Motors and Exxon-Mobil.

Email

Over the past several years, I think my use of email may actually have declined. At least, email's share of my personal communications pie shrank. This is thanks mainly to Facebook, which serves as a nice middle ground between instant messaging and email.

This year, though, my email use has ballooned. I don't entirely understand why. But it has happened. Maybe I just have more to say, and the growth happens to be happening mainly in the email area of the chatter spectrum.

An extreme case of this: on April 8th, I sent and received more than 520 emails. A year ago, I think I usually topped out around a few per day.

Just something to think about. :)

Superhero Idea

A superhero who, instead of getting his power from the sun like Superman, got his power from killing people. And with his power he could save people. The ratio would be something like 100 people saved for every 1 person killed. Can you imagine the moral dilemmas?!? (Note: having him kill "bad guys" is a cop-out. There are essentially no villains in this.)

RIP Arthur C. Clarke

Renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke passed away either today or yesterday, depending on your point of view. (Yesterday I'd have said "today or tomorrow," which would have been even stranger.) He is well-known for his work on "2001: A Space Odyssey," as well as for conceiving of geostationary satellites.

These are the quotations listed on his Wikipedia page:

Clarke's three laws

1. "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
   
2. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
   
3. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
   

"Life is just one big banana. Science fiction allows us all to peel open the reality and discover the yellow truth inside."

"The truth, as always, will be far stranger."

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean."

Of UFOs: "They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth."

"Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what's over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you'd go crazy."

"We should always be prepared for future technologies, because otherwise they will come along and clobber us."

Of his epitaph: "I've often quoted it: 'He never grew up; but he never stopped growing.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

Nighttime Shuttle Launch

The nice thing about staying up late to do homework is getting to see things like the nighttime launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. "2 minutes until the release of the hold." I don't even know what that means.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html?param=public

Earth

I noticed a little while ago that the #1 result on Google for Earth is... Google Earth. It's not even Google bias--Live Search and Yahoo agree. What does that say about us?

P.S. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/224

StarWars.com: 10 Star Wars Superweapons

I just finished Fury, so I've been reading up on some stuff that would've been too spoilery to read first. Take, for instance, this:

Star Wars: Expanded Universe | Checklist: 10 Star Wars Superweapons

There's just one spoiler, but it's pretty big. But if you don't care, it's a hilarious read.

Also: The Force Unleashed looks awesome. Too bad DMM can't be applied to *EVERYTHING*... yet. I love the glass shattering and sucking guys out into the vacuum. Sounds like a great gameplay mechanic for Battlefront III. ;)

MSNBC: What to do with tax rebate?

This is sort of interesting...

10 Tips: What to do with tax rebate? - 10 Tips- msnbc.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble gobble. :)

GO RED SOX!!!

WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!

I'm going to the parade tomorrow. Ought to be fun. :)

Harry Potter VII

I just finished the final Harry Potter book. Pretty good. I won't say more than that. :)

Happy 4th of July, 787, etc.

I'm out of school now. Haven't been updating much recently. Oh well. :)

Happy late 4th of July!

Boeing 787

The Boeing 787 is pretty cool. Check it out:

http://www.newairplane.com/

They're officially launching it on 07/08/07. How appropriate. :)

So, on the eve of its launch, it's fun to look back on the launch of the 707.

http://www.aviationexplorer.com/707_roll_video.htm

Pretty cool! :)

Fun Days

Friday was May 4th.
May the Fourth be with you!

Saturday was 05/05.
Cinco de Mayo!

Sunday was 05/06/07.
How come nobody pointed this out? At 08:09:10 it would have been especially exciting. And I missed it! :(
...but Sunday was only 05/06/07 if you're going MM/DD/YY. I generally go DD/MM/YY, so I suppose I'll wait until 05/06/07 -- that is, June 5.

New Computer Update: Nice Vista Touches

As I use Vista more, I notice more and more nice little touches. Long Zheng has blogged about a couple nice ones, and here are a few more. (Note that some have been mentioned in the comments over there. Hey, I can't be completely original...)

Calendar Zooming

Click once on the clock, and it brings up a calendar. No, not the date settings, but a real calendar. Mr. Zheng mentioned that, but what he didn't mention was that if you click on the month, it zooms out to show the whole year. If you click the year, it zooms out to show the decade. Click once more, and it'll show the whole century. All with nice animation.

Also: multiple time zones; clock that doesn't look like Windows 95
What could be improved: link to open in Windows Calendar; show next appointment from Windows Calendar

Gigantic Icons

Hold Ctrl and scroll when you're at the desktop to make your icons tiny or huge... really huge. Depending on what you have on there, there are some really nice-looking icons. Allows for a pretty slick looking, uncluttered desktop. And it encourages me to keep my desktop clean. :)

WinKey + Number

Shortcut for Quick Launch shortcuts. WinKey + 1 for the first shortcut, WinKey + 2 for the second, etc. Not sure if this is new in Vista, but it sure is handy.

Per-Application Volume Mixer

For when I want to leave my music at the volume it is, but turn down AIM and IE.

Also: sound icon changes depending on volume
What could be improved: bug where blank app controls show up en masse; fixed just by closing and re-opening mixer

Auto Scroll in Folder Tree

No horizontal scroll bar needed. Vista scrolls to the right or left automatically as you navigate.

Breadcrumb Folder Navigation

I mentioned this earlier, but really, it's great. Y'know, with the little drop-down arrows between each folder name.

Previous Versions

Right-click a file, click Properties, and then Previous Versions. Great if you save over something you need by accident.

Also: delete a file by accident? Previous Versions still has it archived

Copy File Animation

It's really cool. And glowy. Try it. I actually started at it for a full minute or more, admiring its beauty.

Flip 3D

Especially in Flip 3D. That particular feature may not worth the hype, but it's not as useless as I initially thought. When I have a ton of stuff open at once, as I tend to, it's nice for finding a particular document or folder window because I immediately recognize it visually.

Also: just plain looks cool, especially with video; live thumbnails in Alt+Tab and upon hovering on a taskbar item

Reliability and Performance Manager

Keep track of errors and application failures, as well as your system performance as a whole. Nice.

InkBall

Fun game, though I still miss Pinball.

I'll add more as I remember them...

200th Post: Random Links

I hereby celebrate my 200th post on this blog with a few random links that've caught my eye.

1) Live Search: I was about to go to the CIA World Factbook, but on a whim I tried "population density of india" and it worked.
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=what+is+the+population+density+of+india%3F&form=QBRE

2) Colbert's Google Bombing successful: Colbert declared "greatest living american"
http://www.google.com/search?q=greatest+living+american&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7DKUS

3) Wal-Mart to put their weight behind HD-DVD?
http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback184.html

And finally....

4) iPod Killer
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070420.html