- Freed looks like an interesting system for creating multiple views of a collection of digital objects (Mendels et al)
![[original tweet]](http://jameslin.name/images/twitter_icon.gif)
- Odom et al: great discussion on the relationship of physical and virtual possessions, including metadata and perceived value
CHI 2011 Tweets: May 9
- Enjoyed talk by Leah Findlater on non-parametric factorial analysis techniques. Just the right depth for a CHI talk.
- Didn’t go to many talks today at CHI 2011, a lot of schmoozing instead. Also, I must be getting old, greasy food getting to me.
CHI 2011 Tweets: May 8
Here are my Twitter posts on the first day of my trip to CHI 2011, which was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
- At SFO Terminal 3. Longest security line I’ve seen in years. I better make my flight, which leaves in 1 hour.
- @tsatracker SFO Terminal 3 economy security: 24 minute wait
- At YVR curbside, waiting for my cousin to pick me up. The smokers are ignoring the designated smoking area, yuck.
- Eating lunch at a Taiwanese restaurant with my cousin in Richmond. Traffic here is horrible. SkyTrain would have been faster.
- Visited Granville Island, a great public space filled with art studios, shops, and a food market. Couldn’t resist buying maple caramels.
- Had more Taiwanese food for dinner to go along with lunch. Pork hock: sounds so odd, tastes so good.
- CHI 2011 iPhone app requires iOS 4.2. No way I’m using 4.2 on my iPhone 3G. Should have brought my Nexus One.
Twitter highlights: May 1–7, 2011
- James Landay: “Nice profile of Scott Klemmer’s work in Technology Review: Tools for Better Web Design”
- Watch President Obama announce the death of Osama bin Laden: MSNBC
- [May 1] Osama’s death have prompted huge crowds to gather at World Trade Ctr. (Wall Street Journal) Hard to believe I was there <36 hrs ago.
- Sadat Shami: “Interactive map of emotional reactions and the perceived significance on the war on terror after Bin Laden’s death” (New York Times)
- Overrrated Outcast: “We still haven’t seen Sarah Palin’s high school diploma.”
- Keir Clarke: “Washington Post Map of the American Civil War. I can’t believe how much work has gone into this animated time-line map.”
- New York Times: Intel Increases Transistor Speed by Building Upward. James Landay adds: “This will be more important than people say.”
- “Henry Kissinger”: “I asked Palin for her thoughts on secularism in Turkey. She said she only eats poultry from ‘God-fearing farmers’. #GiveMeStrength”
- Overthinking It: The economics of Death Star planet destruction (via Daring Fireball)
- Why is c the symbol for the speed of light? (Physics FAQ)
- Google at CHI 2011 (via Ed Chi )
- Another sweet stop-motion video: 2000 photos of Paris
- A reminder to all Americans going to CHI 2011: Canada is a foreign country. Don’t forget your passport.
Twitter highlights of my trip to New York: April 23–30, 2011
Saturday, April 23
- When setting your alarm for a morning flight, make sure it’s set for AM, not PM. Parked in short term and just made it.
- Don’t remember so many NYC subway service notices, but managed to get to the hotel anyway. Late night pizza nearby for dinner.
Sunday, April 24
- For brunch, meeting up with Sabrina, old HCI/IBM friend, and her husband Steven, who turns out to work for Google! Small world.
- Awesome brunch at Balthazar in SoHo. Eggs Norwegian with smoked salmon and hollandaise. We got lucky: no wait!
- Visited the Morgan Library, as in JP Morgan. Amazing collection and buildings. They have 3 Gutenberg bibles!
- Surprised the ice skating rink is still up at Rockefeller Center
- It was beautiful earlier today, but now it’s a downpour. Luckily we have umbrellas. Yay NYC weather.
- For dinner, had the best pastrami at Katz’s Deli. I always make a trip there when I go to NY.
Tuesday, April 26
- I keep forgetting how much humidity affects how warm it feels. 70º in NY easily feels 5–10º warmer than in SF.
- I also don’t feel the need to wear sunglasses in NY like I do in SF. The sunlight is much more diffuse (humidity? pollution?).
Wednesday, April 27
- New cafe in Google NYC opens today! Gorged on fried calamari.
- The theme of the new Google NYC cafe is street food. There’s an actual food truck in the cafe, serving dessert.
Thursday, April 28
- At a colleague’s apartment west of Midtown. Great views from the roof, and great Turkish food delivered for dinner!
Friday, April 29
- Tried to go to Ippudo for ramen, but the wait was literally 2 hrs. Went to Rai Rai Ken instead, which was solid.
- Vince was still craving pizza, so we went to John’s Pizzeria & got half cheese half sausage. Excellent, highly recommended!
Saturday, April 30
- Amazing hot fresh bagels at Brooklyn Bagel. Didn’t realize they could be so good!
- Visited World Trade Center. Unbelievable number of tourists. Didn’t realize so much of 1 WTC is already built.
- Awesome gelato at L’Art del Gelato in Chelsea Market. This trip has been a home run foodwise.
- LIRR to JFK is a bit more than the subway but 20-30 mins faster. And both are MUCH cheaper than a taxi.
Twitter highlights: April 24–30, 2011
- Thou Shalt Not Be Colloquial: why the King James Bible endures (New York Times)
- Sadat Shami: “Awesome overview of the New York Times’ R&D Lab’s Project Cascade – a tool to explore the life stories in social spaces” (Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard)
- @StartupJesus: “Googling ‘Torture + Friday’ used to return hits about Good Friday, my day of torture on the cross. Now you just get hits for Rebecca Black.”
- My heart goes out to the victims of the tornadoes in the South. What a horrible disaster. redcross.org
Twitter highlights: April 17–23, 2011
- Sadat Shami: “Giving up tenure… and getting happiness in return? Reflections from someone who did” (The Scientist via Nick Diakopoulos)
- I think I’ll get a standing desk (New York Times)
- Jeffrey Bigham: “How languages may have diffused from Africa, modeling phonemes” (New York Times)
- Boris Smus: “Allow me to explain sorting algorithms through interpretive dance” (YouTube via Pamela Fox)
- This collaboration of cellist Yo-Yo Ma and street dancer Lil Buck is amazing (YouTube)
- Looks like the folks at Red Hat are creating their own JVM language called Ceylon (Ars Technica)
- Sandra Kogan: “Walmart’s $1.85 billion mistake. They relied on what customers said in a survey versus what they actually do.” (Phil Terry)
- Dilbert creator Scott Adams: Forget art history and calculus. Most students need to learn how to run a business. (Wall Street Journal)
- Mugizi Rwebangira: “How to fool yourself into working harder” (Dextronet)
- Impressed by Ovi Maps 3D. Besides buildings, trees and overpasses in suburban Silicon Valley are also 3D.
- Republicans paying $575 an hour to defend Defense of Marriage Act (San Francisco Chronicle)
- Sadat Shami: “Google Map Maker allows you to add your local knowledge to a map [currently for the United States only]”
- Kayur Patel: “1998 Onion article on streaming video. It’s more interesting than funny in today’s Netflix age.”
- Frog Design and design innovation in China (Forbes via James Landay)
- Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice? (St. Petersburg Times via Lynn Wu)
- John Regehr: “‘Facts have no meaning on the Internet.’ —Thomas Jefferson”
- Boyce Avenue not only covered Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” they subtly changed some of the lyrics: YouTube video
- Intrigued by Hyde, a static website generator in Python and Django by Lakshmi Vyas. Boris Smus switched his blog to it.
- xkcd: Seismic Waves
- Mike Lee: “So busy bitching about iPhone location logs I forgot to check in on Foursquare”
- The joy of mapping a 2D image on to a 3D terrain model (The Map Room)
- Cities build airport cities — ‘aerotropolises’ — for growth (USA Today via Sara Galligan)
- Sadat Shami: “BO.LT is a web-based tool that enables people to quickly, without code, remix the content presented on a website” (Huffington Post)
- Madhu Prabaker: “Interesting new approach to metered parking in San Francisco. sfpark.org”
- Sadat Shami: “Recommendation service Hunch revisits the Mac vs. PC debate with this infographic based on their users”
- The Onion: ‘The Economist’ To Halt Production For Month To Let Readers Catch Up
Twitter highlights: April 10-16, 2011
- Backbone.js is a model-view-controller JavaScript library in just 4KB (via Boris Smus )
- SparkFun intros IOIO, which allows Android phones to control DIY electronics. (Engadget)
- Everyone in Google Doodle for Charlie Chaplin’s birthday are part of Doodle team, and like many of Chaplin’s films, it was filmed in the Niles District of Fremont, California. More from CNN.
- IBM launches Maqetta, an HTML 5 tool as an open-source answer to Flash and Silverlight. (eWeek via Jeff Pierce )
- The White House launches a personalized tax receipt (Macon Phillips of the White House, via Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post )
- I’ve often had this very same thought: Tim Pawlenty wants members of Congress to do their own taxes without help. New York Times article
- Mister Rogers defends PBS in front of the US Senate in 1969. (via @Noetic_Hatter )
- The Story of Linux: a 4-minute video commemorating 20 years of the Linux operating system (via Mario Fusco )
- Jen Mankoff, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor with Lyme disease, tries to make sense of Lyme info online (via James Landay )
- Barack Obama: “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending $1 trillion on tax cuts for millionaires & billionaires.”
More news theme geeking
When I moved to the Bay Area from New England, I noticed that KGO 7, the ABC station in San Francisco, used the same theme song and logo as WABC 7 in New York. Here’s a KGO “open” from 1989:
To my surprise, the theme song is from the movie Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman. It’s amazing how a 10-second clip became the basis for newscasts around the world.
Most TV stations now use themes only reminiscent of the original, after the composer of the soundtrack, Lalo Schifrin, demanded higher royalties. (Schifrin also composed the theme song to Mission: Impossible.)
News theme geeking
Through some random web surfing, I came across the opening credits for the newscast of WTNH 8, the ABC affililate in Connecticut, in 1985, which brought back a lot of memories:
The theme song, used by TV stations across the country, is called Move Closer to Your World, and it’s still used by WPVI 6, the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia: