At the Gnome Summit

October 7, 2004 by Steven Garrity

I’m at the Gnome Summit at the Frank Gehry designed MIT Stata Center in Boston until tuesday. Check out the floorplan.

The Internet Is Amazing

October 6, 2004 by Steven Garrity

Since many of us use it every day, it is easy to lose sight of just how remarkable the internet can be. This morning, I had a quick chat with my friend Peter, who is usually downstairs in the building our companies share. Today, though, he is in Croatia.

Need a place to stay in Boston this weekend (got one!)

October 5, 2004 by Steven Garrity

I’m driving down to Boston for the Gnome Boston Summit this weekend. I’m looking for a place to stay near the MIT campus in Cambridge on the nights of Friday (Oct 8) to Monday (Oct 11) – leaving on Tuesday morning.

Hotels are booked or foolishly expensive (short notice, I guess). Anyone have any hints, pointers, or places to stay?

Update: I’ve got a spot now. Thanks.

If you have Norton Personal Firewall installed, help me out

October 4, 2004 by Steven Garrity

I’m looking for some help with an issue I’m having with the Mozilla.org website and the Norton Personal Firewall product.

If you have the Norton Personal Firewall installed and a bit of knowledge about web-browsers (knowing what a web browser is should suffice), and are willing to help me test a fix, please contact me. It should only take a few minutes and a few emails back and forth.

Thanks.

October 3, 2004 by Steven Garrity

A lot of people are downloading Firefox

A Math/Physics Word Problem

October 3, 2004 by Steven Garrity

If you are walking from point A to point B in the rain, do you get more or less wet depending on how fast you walk?

Sounds stupidly simple, doesn’t it. Not so (for me, at least). Here are some things we can assume for the sake of the problem:

let’s assume you are rectangular – let’s say, 1 meter, 0.5 meters wide, and 0.5 meters deep
forget about dripping rain – any drop that hits you counts as one drop
the rain is evenly distributed and falls at a constant and consistent speed

The qestion is, over a given distance, does the rate at which you move (in a straight line, you can assume) affect how many drops of rain you come in contact with?

If you run fast, you’ll “run through” more drops, right? However, you’ll also be in the rain for less overall time (remember, we’re going a set distance).

It might help to think through the problem in two dimensions.

Highlights from a Modern Workplace

October 3, 2004 by Steven Garrity

I have spent much of the last five years working with a fine team of like-minded people. Fools and geniuses, we have managed to accomplish quite a bit. It has been, and continues to be, an interesting ride. Here are some random highlights:

There was a time when our CEO IM’ed in late to work several times citing a “laundry emergency”.
We spare no expense of corporate shwag (we now even have business cards that can stand up to the punishment of being in my wallet – not that I ever show them to anyone).
We play The Final Countdown by Europe really loud when launching significant websites. We really do.
In the heady dot-com days, we narrowly dodged two acquisition bullets, both of which were exciting at the time, but would have seen us living in a big city working as dish-washers by now.
We go out for a fine curry lunch every Friday (a tradition that started with Fajitas, before our local faux-tex/mex motif restaurant was replaced with a faux-east-side-NY motif and we were forced to seek more authentic lunchables).
We punctuate special occasions with low-quality cakes from local grocery stores (e.g. Exhibit A, Exhibit B).
We spend a weekend each December playing video games, eating fine food, and planning the next year out in Cavendish.
We don’t do all-nighters anymore, unless there is a hurricane or something (well, most of us don’t).
We take pleasure in smashing obsolete electronics (example photo).
We have met Jakob Nielsen. Some of us have shaken his hand. (I didn’t make this trip)
Our current vice is Madden NFL 2004 for the XBOX on a large LCD projector. Previous (and possibly future) vices include Counter-Strike and Mario Cart for the GameCube.

Acts of Volition Radio: Session 15

September 29, 2004 by Steven Garrity

I had already accumulated a great list of songs to share, so session 15 of Acts of Volition Radio comes out hot of the heels of theprevious session. No musical theme this time, but all great songs.

Acts of Volition Radio: Session Fifteen (42MB MP3)

More good music. Recorded Wednesday, September 29, 2004 by Steven Garrity. Run time: 42min.

Session Fifteen Playlist:

Gordie Sampson – Sunburn
Gandharvas – First Day of Spring
Green Day – Holiday
Smashing Pumpkins – 1979
U2 – Vertigo
Aunt Bettys – Jesus
Fleming & John – Love Songs

For more, see the previous Acts of Volition Radio sessions.

Acts of Volition Radio

Acts of Volition Radio: Session 15

00:00 /

Acts of Volition Radio: Session 14

September 28, 2004 by Steven Garrity

The fourteenth session of Acts of Volition Radio searches the barren wasteland of “adult contemporary” radio music and comes back with a few worthwhile songs by artists that deserve a second listen. The speech recording is a little weak on this one, so I boosted the signal between songs – the songs sound fine, but the speech is a bit rough. It’ll be better next time.