Overheard In Providence

The scores of people who read this blog no doubt noticed that I’ve now gone well over two whole weeks without a post. Truly a tragedy. Now that the semester is (almost) over, I won’t let it happen again (I’m going to shoot for a post every other day, so stay alert google).

As I mentioned last month, one reason for my dearth of posts was that I was busy teaching a class on computational complexity. I was also rushing to submit a paper to a workshop (but then the deadline got extended), and to submit a finalized version of this paper. Despite my absence from the Providence blogging community, however, I’ve remained fully entrenched in the blogging lifestyle.

First off, despite my dire predictions, Passive-Aggressive Notes did end up winning a Webby. It turns out that there was both a “People’s Voice Winner”, and a “Webby Award Winner”, which I assume was awarded by a select panel of internet experts (along with David Bowie). It’s no surprise that Passive-Aggressive Notes is the clear preference among educated elite, where as the web surfing masses mostly enjoy crudely captioned pictures of confused cats. (Speaking of which, I saw faildogs.com for the first time yesterday, frickin’ awesome!)

Now I know what you’re thinking, with Passive-Aggressive Notes already having won both a Webby and the SXSWi Best Blog Award, how am I going to continue to fill this blog with posts devoted to the winning of web awards (or “award winning posts” as I like to call them). That was my primary concern as well, which is why I shrewdly decide to support a second found-content blog. Last Thursday was the official debut of the EERac-supported version of Postcards From Yo Momma.

Postcards From Yo Momma is a collection of motherly emails and instant messages. The site’s creators were previously hosting it on tumblr, which is a bit sparse for my taste (particularly for a site that’s already landed a book deal). Since we were able to get the new version of the site up in time for Mother’s Day (Hi Mom!), its launch happened to coincide with it being featured on newsweek.com and npr.

Now that the madness of getting the site up in time has subsided, I’d love to hear suggestions for making the site better. In fact, several of my friends were already kind enough to explain to me why my initial design totally sucked. A few of the sites few commenters have also echoed their concerns, but the internet does tend to lend itself to that sort of thing. At the very least, I’m confident that if we switched back to the old, ultra-minimal design, there’d be a lot more complaints (except no one would hear them because the old site didn’t even allow for comments).

So there you have it, a new award and a new site. Plus two weeks ago I went to a book-release party for prominent political blogger (also my childhood friend), Matthew Yglesias. Viva la blogosphere!

Yesterday I discovered (and subsequently announced) that Google Transit had finally come to Rhode Island. For those not familiar, Google Transit allows any public transportation system to integrate their route information with the “get directions” feature on google maps. Brilliantly, the service is completely free, so all a city needs to do to take advantage is to supply Google with properly formatted route data that they, no doubt, already have. Naturally enough, this simple process takes most public bus/subway systems years to implement.

Expanding existing public transportation infrastructure (particularly trains and subways) is often very expensive. Thanks to global warming and rising gas prices, these expenditures are increasingly worth while, but you can get even more bang for you buck when you simultaneously consider how relatively cheap technology can make existing public transportation work much better. Google Transit is just one example.

My favorite example is using GPS to track the locations of buses. This allows travelers to check bus/train locations, as well as expected arrival times, on the web or their phone. It also would allow transit systems to display the expected weight times at stops. Taking a bus or subway late at night, or in bad weather, is a lot more pleasant when you can time your departure so you don’t have to wait at a stop for 15 minutes.
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My girlfriend recently informed me that my post on malformed tomatoes was part of larger phenomena: the unusually-shaped vegetable (USV). The wikipedia entry contained some links eye-opening links, and after a comprehensive survey of USVs worldwide, I have determined that their most prominent public representative is the cubic watermelon.

These box-shaped melons were first cultivated by farmers in Zentsuji, Japan to facilitate packing, and might I say, mission accomplished! Still, if Japan is so pressed for space, they should probably get to work scaling down their quadruple-decker hamburgers.

Since the beginning of last week, I’ve been busy teaching my advisor’s class on computational complexity. Complexity theory isn’t really my area of research, but it’s definitely one of the reasons I became a computer science major. When the class is over I plan on blogging about some of the topics. People seem to have the mistaken impression that computer science is all about computers, and I’d like to do more to help dispel that myth.

I took a bunch of programming classes in high school, but when I got to Brown, I decided to avoid computer science. I had liked learning about algorithms, the fastest ways to solve problems, how computers worked, but I hadn’t always liked the personality of my fellow students. Basically, a lot of them were big nerds, and I could never get behind their enthusiasm for mastering Linux commands.

As a freshman at Brown, I took a logic class where I learned that certain easy to state problems are uncomputable, meaning no systematic set of instructions can be used to solve them. More importantly, I learned that many people study the science of computation without actually writing programmings. The next year I decided to give computer science another shot, and one of my TAs (my buddy Kevin) invited me to join his group independent study project on computational complexity. After that, I was sold.

After this post and this post, it seems excessive to mention that passive-aggressive notes is up for a Webby Award in the “weird” category. Then again, maybe a little excess is what this blog needs. Plus, I’d hate to snub David Bowie).

Unfortunately, we’re up against such blogging heavy weights as icanhasceezburger, so despite our recent triumph over the library of congress(’s blog), I’m not sure we can compete with a site that gets 1.6 million page views a day. Our only hope is that cuteoverload (another nominee) splits their core demographic, while at the same time snarky enthusiasts of strained interpersonal communications prove surprisingly eager to vote for something called “a webby”. It’s a long shot, but please vote nonetheless, particularly if U HATE WEN PEOPLZ RITE LIKE DIS!!!

Daniel Drezner considers the power of 25 word reviews. I’m reminded of Wired’s Collection of very short stories.

Hemingway’s:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Via Techcrunch, the UK’s Society of Authors is expressing concern that internet-based book piracy may prevent more and more authors from writing. Before I try to quell their concerns, I’d like to congratulate them on being a cut above the music industry. Instead of simply whining about the potential drops in CD book sales, they are actually considering the internet’s impact on the quantity and quality of work being produced. Their concern, of course, is that free digitally distributed content will prevent talented authors from making a living writing, so they’ll stop… and we’ll be at a loss for words.

As any record exec will tell you, the dawn of the 21st century is, more or less, a post apocalyptic wasteland for the music industry. These nobel executives surely saw it coming. In October of 1999 Wired magazine observed that “mp3″ had overtaken “sex” as the internet’s most popular search term (no doubt to the relief of pornography executives), and since then music industry revenues have steadily declined. Now our bleak future existence is destined to be professional musician free. Or not.

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I’ve been back from Belize for a bit more than a week now, but the prospect of condensing a country into a blog post proved daunting. Ideally I would have written a series of posts about Belize while actually in Belize, but I was too busy writing a belated blog post about SXSW Interactive. Also, the internet was a kind of slow at first, even though having wifi in the jungle totally rocks my world.

This particular Latin American adventure was in honor of my mother’s 60th Birthday, a happy occasion indeed since it resulted in Jessica and I getting a free trip to Belize. It’d been a solid decade since my parents and I went on a bona fide family vacation. Hopefully we’ll do it again before 2018 rolls around. I really enjoy traveling with my parents, but after so many only-childhood trips, it’s quite nice having a girlfriend along.

We spent the first half of our trip at the Mopan River Resort, a lovely little jungle getaway conveniently located two hours east of the Belize airport on the western bank of the Mopan River (and accessed by boat). The resort was a lot of fun, kind of like a luxury/tropical version of summer camp. Each of the 12 rooms is a private thatched cabin, meals are eaten as a group at two long tables, and each day activities are planned involving caves, rivers, wildlife, and plenty of Mayan ruins. Interestingly, the couple that runs the place took over just this year. As they explained when we arrived, their longtime dream had been to flee the wintery Canadian lifestyle and opening a tropical ecotourism resort. When they saw Mopan for sale on the internet, they decided to go for it, and fortunately it’s going extremely well.

For the second half of our trip we headed south, where we stayed in a beachside condo at Larubeya Resort and Villas. (If you’re geographically inclined, here’s a map, our first hotel was near San Ignacio, the second outside Placencia.) I haven’t been to many Caribbean beaches, but this one more than fits the stereo type. It was very blue and very relaxing. I think my family tends to prefer forests over beaches, but we were happy to get in some snorkeling (apparently we almost saw a shark) and walk around the town (after Mopan, it was nice to be out on our own). I’m told that Belize is also a great place to go scuba diving, but no one in my party was eager to pursue the required training.

The highlight of the whole trip was certainly Tikal, which is actually Guatemala. That’s right, if you only have one day to spend in Belize, spend it in Guatemala (as well as the small border crossing zone between Belize and Guatemala). The great thing about Tikal is that you get to experience Mayan ruins, the layout of a Mayan city, and, since it’s in a rainforest, lots of wildlife. I think the monkey’s were everyone’s favorite, but I didn’t get very good pictures. Instead, I’ve included a picture of the central ruins, followed by one of me holding a giant spider. As you can tell, I’m in mortal danger.

And there you have it, I went to Belize, it was excellent. Maybe you should go to. I wish I had more to say about the actual nation of Belize and its remarkably diverse population, but that would require a different kind of trip. For now I remain an ignorant tourist.

The long anticipated New York City frozen yogurt showdown is in full force. Last friday Jessica and I found ourselves on 14th street and 6th. She decided to go Red Mango, but I chose Pinkberry. Somehow we still make it work.

The best thing about SXSW Interactive is getting to hang out with other conference goers at well-funded parties throughout Austin. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

Austin is home to an impressive number of spacious bars and music venues, and since it’s warm, many of these feature large outdoor spaces. Club de Ville, which hosted the blogger.com party, is a prime example, as is The Mohawk, which hosted frrvrr.com’s launch party concert. I showed up late to that concert, so I still don’t know what frrvrr.com actually does (perhaps after I post this, I’ll click I’ve provided and find out).

At Club de Ville, I was excited to run into two fellow brown alumni who are hard at work on fluther.com, an alternative to yahoo answers. Fluther was recently featured as a “staff pick” on apple.com, so it sounds like things are going well. I’m hoping their success inspires my housemate and I to finally get our act together and start upgrading dearinter.net.

Besides parties, cocktails, and not getting enough sleep, SXSW also featured a variety of interesting speakers and panels. (It also featured the largest concentration of iPhone users outside of one infinity loop.) I attended only a tiny fraction of these talks. Here are a few on which I feel qualified to comment.
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