Getting Things Done

I bought a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen last year.

I haven't read it yet.

New Baby Smell

New car smell can kill you, but new baby smell just might make your heart grow two sizes.

I went over to CM's yesterday to drop off a Longhorn baby hat I had found at Book People while waiting for the Neil Gaiman signing. CM was at the computer with Baby Thor sprawled out in her lap taking a nap. I had only meant to be there for a few minutes, drop off the hat, say "Hi", and move on with the rest of my errands for the day. But you know, once you're holding him, you really just don't want to let him go. He's such a sweetie pie.

He's also a wiggle worm. Despite the fact that CM was trying to keep him wrapped up like a burrito, he doesn't seem to like it too much. (Then again, he really doesn't like to be cold, either.) You wouldn't think him to be so strong, but no matter how tightly you get him in his blanket, he's got both arms and legs wriggled out in no time. Feeding him with the bottle was fun. CM said that I was the only one he didn't projectile vomit on yesterday, so maybe I did something right.

Anyway, I kept thinking that with so much to take care of with Thor, that CM would be busy, busy, busy, and that company might just get in the way. I think, instead, that she really enjoyed the grown-up conversation, and the chance to take care of a few personal things without worrying about the baby. I'll try to stop by again sometime soon. CM said they have family coming in town this week, so that will hopefully give them a chance to sleep through the night, and maybe even get out of the house for a few minutes at a time.

For Me?

Chaz and I went to Book People last night where Neil Gaiman held a book signing for his new novel, Anansi Boys. It was a nice event. Gaiman was charming and funny, and genuinely seemed to enjoy the audience questions. (One girl even asked a question about the Dolphin Hotel in a Haruki Murikami novel, which seemed to surprise and delight him.) He signed books from 8pm until nearly midnight. (We got ours signed about 11:15, and there were still about 50 people in line.) We found AEBL there, and so we spent some waiting time catching up on the goings-on in her household.

I had forgotten my camera in my other bag, so we don't have any photos of the author himself, but I thought I'd share a photo of the signature (- not that you can actually see anything in it.) He signed the dedication page, which reads (in part): "You know how it is. You pick up a book, flip to the dedication , and find that, once again, the author has dedicated a book to someone else and not to you. Not this time.... This one's for you. With you know what, and you probably know why."

He even added a nice personal note in the copy he signed for Chaz's friend, who is an aspiring writer. I enjoy these little personal touches. I still smile when I think of how Douglas Coupland signed my copy of microserfs when he heard I was interning at Microsoft, "This is your life. Live well."

Don't Make Me Get a Restraining Order

The hurricane passed us by, but now we're wilting under record high temperatures. Yesterday's high was a whopping 108 degrees, and today it cools down to a relatively arctic 105. Summer is acting like a psycho ex-girlfriend who just won't take the hint and keeps following you around making you miserable. It's over, baby. Get lost.

Out of the Frying Pan and into the Barbecue

Over the past 48 hours, the projected path for Hurricane Rita has moved farther and farther east. Austin is now pretty much completely out of the path of the storm. That didn't stop people yesterday from hording essentials like Y2K. Either people in Austin don't know how to give a measured response to crisis (which is possible if you remember how they behaved during that big ice storm a few years ago) or I have completely underestimated how the images of the destruction from Katrina have scarred the national psyche. There were long lines for gasoline, and various people told me of grocery stores completely sold out of bottled water and canned food.

Strangely, the response was not completely universal. One half block away from a gas station where 30 or so cars waited to refuel, I found another station where I had my pick of 7 immediately available pumps. The only other customer, a woman refueling her station wagon, said that other stations in the area were completely sold out certain octanes. I opted not to go to the grocery store, because I suspected that the lines and selection would be more favorable on the weekend.

Even though I feel a lot better about my personal safety, the eastward push puts a few of my family members at some risk. My immediate family will probably get a good heavy rain and some Tropical Depression-class wind. But what concerns me is that I have grandparents who live near the area where the storm is supposed to stall out for several days after passing quickly through east Texas. Though the storm will be weakened, power outages or slow response by emergency responders could be a problem.

Here in Austin, however, it looks like it will be a normal weekend, so our plans to hang out with the Doctor and her other half (back from Cali) are pretty firm. I'm looking forward to this because I haven't seen them in a while. Although hanging out with friends is more important, I have to say that dining on ribs and brisket from the Salt Lick also has its charms. I'll have be working on a 24 hour fast by the time I get there, so watch out!

"It's Paid through the End of the Month"

I know Stacy may be less than impressed since I wasn't using the pool, but our favorite Tex-Pats have saved me again. I was able to drive over to their old apartment, park there, and catch the bus to campus. It has been a pretty easy compromise to a strange situation. So mad props to the Tex-Pats and paying the rent through the end of September.

When It Rains, It Pours

Today's already a funky day, and it's only just 7:30.

The public transit service which operates the buses I used to get to school ia on a one day strike. I now have a bicycle I could use to get to an alternate bus on the reduced service route. Unfortunately, the back brakes are ineffective, and I really haven't ridden it in anything like a traffic situation. Though I don't have class, I had agreed to several meetings today that I cannot miss, or risk missing paper deadlines. And, as Dave says, today is "Car-Free Day". So will I finally have to drive to campus and pay for garage parking? Or do I hop on my rickety death-trap and cross the union lines?

In addition, I am preparing for Hurricane Rita. I'm expecting to just ride it out here, though the latest projections show the storm bringing 50+ MPH winds here on Saturday. I could drive to visit family, I supposed, but I think things are fine here, and I'd have to go east through Houston to get there, and if the storm is bad, I might not be able to get back through coming east.

Today, though, I should gas up my car (so much for Car-Free Day) and go to the grocery store to by emergency rations and bottled water, just in case. I'm not expecting things to be too bad here, but we could easily lose power and phone service on an intermittent or extended basis. And since my television programming comes by satellite, the cloud cover might shut that down. For those outside the path of the storm, email and instant messenger might be more effective means to contact those of us in the central Texas area.

I don't know what Nutmeg is doing for the storm, but she's on the eastern fringes of the storm, so I'm hoping that she doesn't get anything too serious. I'd like to think they don't have her babysitting monkeys at work all weekend.

I am a little concerned that Friday, we had plans to go out to the Salt Lick for BBQ with some friends who are back in town after an extended absence. If we're getting torrential rain and 30+ MPH winds Friday night, that may have to be canceled. And the Austin City Limits Festival (an outdoor music event) is also this weekend. I think we are very lucky in order to be able to think about such trivial things.

Who I really feel sorry for are the disposessed New Orleans residents who are now living in Houston. The storm will be bad there, but hopefully not catastrophic. Some computer models show Galveston and some parts of the outlying Houston metro area under water, but any flooding should be able to run off naturally (unlike New Orleans.) People are taking this one seriously, though, so hopefully this storm will be the one we can say that this is where we started getting the planning and response right after Katrina.

Where Did All These People Come From?

In the last few days, the bus route I use to get to and from campus has been overrun by...people! Time was, I'd be the only person on the bus, or maybe I'd have to share the bus with maybe two other passengers. There used to be absolutely no reason to sit any closer than about eight feet from another human being on any given ride. Almost overnight, however, the bus has been terribly crowded. The 7am run (which these days is nearly pre-dawn) was at capacity, with someone in nearly every seat. We were almost at standing room only.

Though some might say underutilization makes the bus less environmentally friendly, I say, poppycock. I want private public transportation. I want the city to pay to shuttle me around in secluded paradise. And for crying out loud, where were these people when gasoline was nearly 3 bucks a gallon? Now that the prices have dropped, everybody starts riding?

One side effect is that I have become more self-conscious about watching movies on my PDA, especially if I'm watching some wacky cartoon, or that other show.　A friend was kind enough to offer to let me to rip Harold and Kumar and watch that, but I was afraid it had some nudity. I don't know if it's illegal in Texas, but I can't afford to be blacklisted by the city bus system.

As a consequence, I wound up playing Jawbreaker and listening to MP3s this morning.

After the Storm

I had meant to post this last week, but for those of you I didn't get this to, here are some startling photos of the flooding in New Orleans.

The US Deptartment of Agriculture's Southern region is headquartered out of its New Orleans research center. The timestamped photos on the linked page were taken by a contractor who rode out the storm in the relative safety offered by the building. Although we have all seen photos and video footage from New Orleans, these photos strike me as a little more intimate. The press coverage has shown very little footage of how calm the city was after the storm had passed on the 29th. The way in which the flood engulfed the city, literally overnight, is captured in these sequence of photos.

The good news is that according to the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) website, all New Orleans and Poplarville employees have been accounted for. As of last week, there were still a couple of technicians that the ARS had not been able to contact.

On a less important note, computer systems have been recovered, and it seems as though vital services are now up and running. The email I sent my father several days ago finally got through this morning. I wonder, though, if anybody ever really thinks about how important it is to store at least a copy of the backups at a different facility from where the main servers are operating.

Weekend Recap

Fun stuffs from around the web this week.

• Aides Kept Extent of Katrina Damage from Bush (from Newsweek)
  
  "Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him....When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth."
  


• "A Fatal Incuriosity" by Maureen Dowd (from New York Times)
  
  "How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?"
  


• Bill Maher on Why Bush Should Quit (reposted by LawGeek)
  
  "Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time."
  
  I don't normally agree with Bill Maher's flippant libertarianism, but this is a great idea. I'm reminded of Will Farrell's whining impersonation of Gee-Dub on Saturday Night Live. "Presidenting is hard!"
  


• David Letterman's Top Ten Questions for the FEMA Director Application (from Crooks and Liars)
  


• Lucky Ducky (from Tom, the Dancing Bug)
  
  Ruben Bolling's Lucky Ducky is an effective satire of the Wall Street Journal's assertion that the poor in America are "lucky duckies", and a memorable character in his own right. This week, Lucky Ducky reaps the benefits of the federal response to Katrina, including some condescending pratter from the former first-lady.
  


• Count Your Sheep's entry to the Webcomic Telethon
  
  On any given day, Adrian Ramos' strip is one of the most entertaining things on the web, and his submission to the Hurricane Katrina Webcomic Telethon is brilliant.
  


• Overturning the Gospels by Melinda Henneberger (from Newsweek)
  
  Bill McKibben's article in Harpers is also required reading. Three out of four Americans think "God helps those who help themselves" is scriptural.
  


• A History of the Stinking Bishop (from The Independent)
  
  How the new Wallace and Grommit movie has a cheese manufacturer worred. I'm so looking forward to this movie.
  

Insecurity?

A couple of situations this week convinced me that security is mostly a state of mind.

Earlier this week, I substitute taught a class. In order to use the AV equipment in the classroom, you need an access code for the projector switch and a key to the equipment cabinet. I was able to get the access code from the professor, but I had to do a little bit of legwork to find the key. When I found where the keys are handed out, the student at the desk asked me if I knew the access code, which he promptly said out loud in front of everyone, and then handed me a key without checking my ID. I asked when I had to return it and was told that it doesn't have to be returned.

Now I suppose that the access codes and keys are changed every year, though given that the codes and keys access every computer across campus, I don't expect that to be the case.

Also, when I moved into my new office, I found that the desk I was assigned to use was locked, and nobody had a key. I did not know this at the time, but the lock is on the utility drawer, and a lever in the back secures the file drawers. When the utility drawer is pushed in and locked, all three drawers are secure. Since I really needed to start putting things away, I unscrewed one bolt to loosen the utility drawer. It slid down enough to release the lever, and a second bolt loosened the utility drawer itself enough to slide out.

So one standard quarter-inch hex driver and about 60 seconds and I had completely defeated the locks on my desk. And to think I was thinking of hiding my laptop in there when I was out of the office.

This Special Moment Was Brought to You by "Durrr"

Since I had a ton of reading to do the other day - not to mention laundry - I decided to head home early. I caught bus #1 from campus to the transfer center. Since I was on the shady side of the bus (from the sun, not the law) and I was watching a movie on my PDA, I took off my sunglasses.

Those of you who know me know that it is my tradition to only be able to keep a pair of sunglasses for about a week before I lose or break them. My current pair, are the exception. Having laid down about $200 for them, I've tried to be careful with them, especially since they are replacements for an identical pair I stepped on while playing disc golf.

When I got off the bus to transfer, the sun immediately blinded me, so I reached into my bag to get my sunglasses, but they weren't there. I checked all the pockets and secret compartments of my bag. I reached inside and all around the stuff I had in there. I checked all the pockets on my clothes, but the glasses were just gone. I jumped back on the bus I had just left and explained to the driver that I wanted to look for my sunglasses. I went to my old seat and looked around, but they weren't there. I asked a couple of passengers if they had seen my sunglasses, but no luck.

Since I've had those glasses for about 5 years now, I figured they've had a good run, and it was time to move on. I got all the way back to my apartment on the second bus, and when I got off that bus, I instinctively reached up to my collar, where I had hooked the arm of glasses when I had taken them off earlier. I had stood there like an idiot blinking and squinting in the sun with sunglasses at hand. I had gotten on the bus, with glasses hanging right under my face, asking "Have you seen my sunglasses?" Durrr...

The Grassy Knoll

In no way can I top the bus breakdown story, but I got a bit of a surprise when I showed up to catch the bus this morning.

The grounds crew at my apartment starts work at 7 AM on Monday mornings, which means usually somebody's standing right outside my bedroom window with a leaf blower 30 minutes before my alarm is set to go off.

This morning, we had a light rain overnight, but that didn't stop the crew from mowing anyway, leaving behind this grassy mess all over the bus stop. This stuff is caked on thick. Every surface of the bench was covered a think layer of sticky, caked-on grass. To make matters worse, two groundskeepers were cutting donuts on their riding mowers in the parking lot.

Where are the leaf blowers when you need them?

Who Dat?

The Saints pulled out a gutsy win over their tough divisional rivals, the Carolina Panthers. Their opening drive was a 9-minute grinder, ending with a Deuce McAllister touchdown - their first opening drive score since the 2003 season! The rest of the game was hard-fought, and more than a bit sloppy. One play saw a Carolina interception called as a fumble, immediately upon which, the Saints player who recovered the ball lateralled to a teammate who in turn mishandled the toss and fumbled it back to the Panthers. Carolina got two rare "illegal touching" calls on back-to-back plays (the first was declined in favor of a more serious penalty), both of which were touchdowns that had to be called back.

Even the commentators were out of synch. On one play, the call on the field had been a Saints fumble and turnover, which the Saints challenged on the basis that the player was already down. The call was reversed and no timeout assessed against New Orleans. The commentators seemed to think the referees had initially ruled the player down and kept insisting that there was not enough evidence to overturn the call and give the ball to Carolina. It was a strange moment.

By far the worst moment of the game came near the end. With 19 seconds left to play in regulation, the score tied, and the Saints with the ball near midfield, KTBC Fox 7, our local affiliate, went to commercial break and switched over to the Dallas Cowboys / San Diego Chargers game, four and a half minutes before the kickoff of that game. Local viewers were not allowed to see the 47 yard field goal that won the game for the Saints, except in replay.

If you believe that watching Local Sports Team can ameliorate tragedy or bring hope (I do not), switching away from the game had to be a slight to the thousands of displaced Gulf Coast residents staying in the Austin Convention Center, and the uncounted others staying with friends and families here. From a business perspective, it seems as though the Saints, already headquartered in San Antonio, will be playing at least four "home" games at the Alamodome. Say what you will about the Cowboys, for now, the Saints are the local team. Promoting the team on television makes good business sense. Besides, the sports media has been selling the Saints as America's Sweetheart Team for a few days now, and at that moment in time, those 19 seconds were the most compelling thing on television.

If you wish to contact KTBC Fox 7 to complain about their programming decision, they can be reached at:

KTBC FOX 7
119 E. 10th Street
Austin, TX 78701

Main phone number: (512) 476-7777
Main fax number: (512) 495-7001

Weekend Recap

Here are some links to stuff I found on the web this week that's worth a few seconds of your time.

• The "City" of Louisiana (from Bloggermann)
  
  The video of Keith Olbermann delivering this rant on Countdown has become an Internet phenomenon, but the arguments are the same in this post to his MSNBC-hosted blog


• Why Do People in New Orleans Talk That Way? (from Slate)
  
  I've always found the New Orleans accents fascinating. Remember, New Orleans is more Creole than Cajun.


• A Discussion on the History and Future of the Louisiana Superdome (from Flak Magazine)


• Why New Orleans Cell Phones Aren't Working (from Slate)


• The Republican War on Weather (from This Modern World)
  
  Any doubts the Republicans will spin Katrina as a victory for the administration during the 2008 GOP convention?


• "Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA" (from Salt Lake Tribune)


• Restaurant Management Sim Available for Japanese Mobile Phones (from Kotaku)


• The Prairie Home Companion (from PublicRadio.org)
  
  Okay, this isn't new, but it's got streaming audio of years worth of shows, so it deserves a shout-out.
  

When the Saints Go Marching

I have debated whether or not to write anything of the tragedy of New Orleans. Out loud, I have no end of words to describe my grief, outrage, hopes, fears, and rationalizations about what has happened. But when I think of how to commit them to words on a screen or page, I find I don't know what to say.

I think part of it is because I am not from New Orleans. I am not of New Orleans. I have never lived in New Orleans. New Orleans is not my home, and for once, I am fortunate to have been an outsider.

New Orleans has always a bit of an enigma to me. Perhaps the last truly unique city in America, it was always a little bit out of step with the rest of the country. I remember when my family first moved to south Louisiana, noticing that all the usual brand names were different. The rest of the nation had the same brands of fast-food, grocery stores, big box department stores. New Orleans had its own brands and identities. Have you ever seen a Schwegmann's? A D.H. Holmes? How about K&B drug stores? Maison Blanche? That Stanley?

Modern New Orleans was, in many ways, a second-class U.S. city. It was never as big as its reputation. It was always a little bit poorer, a little bit grimier, a little bit more corrupt than it should be to thrive. In an age that prided efficiency and modernity, New Orleans remained steadfastly inefficient. As a consequence, despite the historical splendor of the city, its contributions to art and architecture and culture, it is reduced in the eyes of most Americans to drunken reveling and burned food labeled as "blackened" on the menus of soulless ersatz Cajun restaurants.


In so many ways, the New Orleans Saints were the perfect team for that city. They were classic underachievers, who were often beloved exactly because they were such losers. Though they weren't untalented or unprofessional (New Orleans boasts some great players of yore) they've never vaulted into the next level of achievement in the NFL. Consider that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, added to the NFL 9 years after the Saints, and with a historical reputation as the worst team in the NFL, has already won a Super Bowl. The Saints have won exactly one playoff game.

I suppose it was inevitable that I would grow to love them. When I moved to the region, I was a Dallas Cowboys fan, I suppose. Nearly simultaneous to my moving there, the Saints changed ownership and brought in new coaches and players who transformed the team from the Aints to a kind of consistent respectability, which, while not always good enough for the playoffs, made them enjoyable to watch. There was always a sense that the team was teetering on the edge of complete collapse, but somehow they managed regular playoff appearances, and even stole a division title from the 49ers while I was in high school.

After I left for college, Saints games were hard to find on television. Seeing a game on television became a precious event, and I slowly transformed from a local follower to a dedicated fan. The Mike Ditka / Ricky Williams era was a lot of fun, because even though they went right back to being losers, they were so outrageous you just had to love them. The current Saints line-up is a little harder to recognize, but they're still lovable in that underachieving way. They can beat the defending champions one week, then lose by 30 to a doormat the next. They can dazzle you, then break your heart. And yet, over the last four years, they have a perfectly even win-loss record.

The longer I'm away from New Orleans, the more I think I love the Saints. Not because I like, or even recognize, the players. But because they are New Orleans' team.

This year, they'll be on the road a lot, with the city in shambles, their fans scattered to the four winds, and teammates without homes, much less home stadiums. It could be a very grim year if the players decide that football is a game not worth playing. Or it could be a magnificent year - the kind sports historians write about for decades. It will be worth watching, and I will be watching. The Shoal Creek Saloon is the home to the Austin New Orleans Saints fan club. They show all the games, which is great, because around here, you get nothing but Cowboys and Texan games on Sunday. You can kick back, enjoy an oyster po-boy, and watch the Saints on a big screen TV.

Nobody is quite certain where the Saints will play this year. They're operating out of San Antonio, and could possibly play some games in the Alamodome. I'd like to go down and see them if I can. Some people think that the Saints will play at LSU's Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge. The idea is that Baton Rouge is more accessible to New Orleans area Saints fans. This is a great idea, but is probably only convenient for regional fans outside of New Orleans who were unaffected by the storm. Then again, season ticket holders are probably not sleeping in cots on the floor of the Astrodome or searching through rubble in Gulfport for missing family members. The poor, dislocated citizens of New Orleans probably do not have access to televisions, so any talk of the Saints bringing hope to them stinks of bread and circuses.

What the Saints can offer to New Orleans is the one thing it probably will never offer again, the elite status of being a host city to an NFL franchise. Tom Benson, the owner of the Saints has been vocal in recent years about moving the Saints out of New Orleans. The Saints will be an itenerant team for the 2005 season, and quite possibly the 2006 season as well, especially if the Superdome is more seriously damaged than previously reported. Benson will have a financial responsibility to position the team for long-term stability.

The hard cold fact is that New Orleans will not have the infrastructure to support a team for a very long while. San Antonio is a logical place to host the Saints for the near term. However, San Antonio, though larger in population than New Orleans, has failed in bids for an NFL team in the past, and simply does not seem like a viable candidate for a permanent relocation. More likely is Los Angeles, which is a desirable market for the NFL, even though that great city has lost every single professional football team it has ever hosted.

Even without knowing where the Saints will wind up, it seems clear that the NFL must make the decision on the basis of economics. The only reason not to move the Saints is the fear of the potential backlash caused by perceived opportunism. The Saints will occupy the same historical infamy as the Colts, who snuck out of Baltimore in unmarked trucks in the middle of the night.

What I do know is that I will support the New Orleans Saints in San Antonio. I will support the New Orleans Saints in Baton Rouge. I will even support the New Orleans Saints playing home games in Meadowlands, NJ or Orchard Park, NY. You can take the Saints out of New Orleans while you reclaim, restore and rebuild the city. But if you take the New Orleans out of the Saints, they're just another inconsistent regional team without any identity. They won't be my team any more. Perhaps I'll become a Texans fan.

As I wrap this up, I wonder, is it too long before someone suggests the gruesome idea of the New Orleans Saints of Anaheim?

So Wonderful

So I found a copy of Bonnie Pink's new single, "So Wonderful", this week. It contains three songs from her upcoming release Golden Tears, due out later this month. To say I am excited is an understatement.

The new song is another glammed-up pop gem, much like 2003's "Tonight, the Night", and I love it. It's one of those things that just makes me happy all over to listen to it. I've definitely got high hopes for the new album. A backup track, "Robotomy", gets an angular, electronic remixing, and sounds like something off of a Daft Punk concept album. I'm curious how the album version of the track will sound.

What I found really amusing is the new single is the closing theme song for the new Guyver, the Bioboosted Armor TV series. For those who don't know, Guyver has previously existed as a mediocre animated series, which was one of the early (i.e., cheap) Japanese series to be brought to the U.S. in the early 1990s. It was also the source for a a couple of really awful live action movies, famous mostly for being one of the few acting jobs Mark Hamill could get after Star Wars. Maybe the new series will be good. Probably not. But either way, the song is great, and the increased exposure to Bonnie Pink's music can only be a good thing.

In other Bonnie Pink news, her new DVD is due to come out the same day as the new album. The DVD chronicles her recent North American tour, including her stop at this year's SXSW Music Festival, a show I was privileged to attend. I don't know if I can afford the DVD right now, but it's reasonably priced at around $25.

With all this great new stuff coming out, and her fine covers album Reminiscence earlier this year, this is a great time to be a Bonnie Pink fan. Or to become one.

In Exile

So, one of the biggest changes for the new semester is that we are being kicked out of our nice lab space in the computational sciences building. We formerly had a good office, with plenty of space for working, meetings, library, etc. Due to politics (as usual) we're forced back into the old electrical engineering building. The departmental cabal been threatening to make us move over here since last year, but they couldn't find anything even remotely appropriate until now. We finally moved in yesterday.

Here is a picture of the lab as a whole. That's my seat, in the back corner. Note the lack of anything like a regular ceiling. With cinder block walls and no carpet, even the sounds of a keyboard can echo around the entire room like gunfire. Even though it's mostly empty now, all of the desks have been claimed by student researchers for the fall; some are even double-booked.

This is a close up of my working space. I should be fine, although the space between the two desks is little wider than my chair. I can basically sit down in the chair and spin it between the writing desk and the computer desk, but there's no real room to slide the chair back.

And finally, just so you know what kind of building this is, here's a shot of the opposite corner from mine. Yes, that little yellow label reads "ACID".

The space is workable, I suppose, though depending on how loud it gets once everybody is in here, and how depressing the fluorescent lights get when winter sets in, I may decide to work from home or in the library as much as possible this semester. Given that the whole purpose of the new computational sciences building was to foster a community of researchers, the fact that now we're in exile among the biomedical department, circuit designers, and undergraduate ankle biters doesn't give me a lot of reason to work from here.

You Can Take It With You

Due to the need to put less wear on my car, rising gasoline prices, and the lack of a campus parking permit, I've been riding the bus more frequently. (I know that environmental issues should be on the list, but honestly, I'd still be driving if I had dollar-fifty a gallon gasoline and a parking permit.)

I've always scoffed at those who install DVD players into their Cadillac Escalades and drive around talking on their cell-phones. Basically, I think people are trying to recreate their living rooms in their cars, and since I love driving for driving's sake, the thought of detaching myself from the pleasure of it leaves me perplexed.

On the bus, however, keeping occupied can be a problem. You can bring something to read, though the noise and vibration prevents you from getting any serious work done. Certainly it is impossible to use a notebook computer, the way you might on, say, commuter rail. In the past, I've brought magazines or novels or similar light reading with me. I bought a Rio MP3 player a few years back, and that does fine, too. But lately I have discovered a new commuting passion - watching movies on my PDA.

I was inspired by the new Sony PSP, for which commercially available movies are available and selling well. My PDA performs brilliantly as an eBook and RSS reader, considerably less so as an MP3 player, and my early experiments with video using the built-in Microsoft Media Player were disappointing at best. Consider my surprise when I found that encoding and viewing full-length video is a snap.

I have a Dell Axim X5, which was a processing powerhouse at the time I bought it. I have subsequently upgraded it to Windows Mobile 2003. It has a 400MHz XScale Processor (usually running at 200MHz), a 320x240 display, and 64MB of user RAM. Today, you can do better than that in all categories. I wasn't sure if my Axim could handle the video. I was afraid I'd have to tweak settings and fool around with arcane tools. Instead, I found a simple, and effective, means of encoding and viewing just about any video.

Encoding

PocketDivxEncoder At maximum settings (video: 360 kbps; audio: 128 kbps) you get a nice, viewable picture and satisfying sound. A 25-minute television episode fits in about 85-95 MB and a 48 minute episode fits in about 140-150 MB. I bought a 1 GB SD card for cheap, so I have lots of room for videos, MP3s, eBooks, etc. If you're space limited, I'd suggest skimping on video bitrate, and not going any lower than 96 kbps on the audio. I use two-pass filtering and do NOT use XviD, which seems to cause the encoder to crash in combination with the codecs I have installed.

One note: when encoding widescreen (16x9) video, you probably want to rethink the aspect ratio. With the device turned to landscape mode for full-screen viewing, the Pocket PCs visible aspect ratio is not 4x3 the way you might think given the native resolution. I'd suggest encoding 16x9 source material to 320x196, which gains some additional vertical detail and gives the final result a more correct aspect ratio on the Pocket PC's display.

Codecs (for your PC)

I like the K-Lite pack, which seems to be kept up-to-date, and has all the stuff you need to encode and watch anything and everything on your PC. (The Mega Pack includes Real Player and Quicktime support.)

Viewing

The Core Pocket Media Player is a great lightweight player that handles large, compressed video files well even when the PDA is on power-save mode. I wish it were intially a little more user friendly, but with some key remapping, you can get it to do most things you want.

Well, good luck. And happy viewing!

Let's Get It Started!

Call it a new start for a new semester. After a wacky summer that didn't have much structure, I'm looking forward to settling into something like a daily and weekly rhythm. This is going to be a busy semester, but hopefully a very profitable one in terms of my short- and long-range goals.

One of those goals is, of course, to keep up with a blog, both for myself and for my friends around the country and even around the world. Besides, so many of my friends locally are running their own blogs that I need to get this up in order to tell my side of the story.

In typical fashion, however, I set absurdly high expectations for this thing, including a fancy custom template and some kind of regular organization. I kept saying, I'll get to it, and, I should have this done over the weekend, and, I'll officially start things off on the first day of the new semester, and so on. But you know, it's probably best to just get things started and let the evolution happen over time.

So here we are. Let's get it started!