Today Honda announced a pair of bionic legs to assist in walking for rehabilitation and the elderly. It’s a pretty neat extension of their work with ASIMO (and makes me think Kamen should be in Japan), but what really got me is one of the last quotes in the article:
“Then we will look at welfare as another target.”
I realized I’ve been living in the US a little too long when I read it as “Then we will look into warfare as another target.”
Today I received my “Economic Stimulus Rebate Check” in the mail.
Being Canadian, I enjoy how the check was dated July 4, and I’m going to be spending it in the UK. It is all rather ironic and symbolic. I need the check to offset the drop in the US dollar that is making our trip drastically more expensive that originally planned.
A lemeur in a white suit with a nasal infection opened for Ben Folds, well, right now. According to students surroundig me currently, he is “less than entertaining.” I considered altering his wikipedia page as part of my Internet civic duty to include this fact.
I had intended on writing several entries regarding the end of the semester (it was busy and we submitted our CCS but not AsiaCrypt paper), my drive back to Buffalo (I hate Ohio), my drive to White Plains (New York is a lot more attractive than Indiana or Ohio), and my start at IBM (it’s corporate, but fun). Then I realized that no one reads this who I don’t have regular contact with, so what’s the point? After going over two weeks without Internet access, the posts didn’t seem very relevant, so this is all you get.
After twelve hours traveling, I finally made it into Trinidad, and I’m exhausted. So far, there isn’t too much to mention about my trip. From Indianapolis I flew to Miami with a plan full of senior citizens. I chatted with a few of them, and they were all part of this senior’s cruse in the Caribbean. One thing to note about the group was one couple with a surnamed Thorn sat on either side of a woman named Rose. You can imagine the senior humor that resulted. To top it off, several of them were discussing the many names they have had over the years. (How many times were some of these women married? How many times can a woman become a widow?)
Flying into Miami was pretty much as to be expected: the opening sequence to CSI:Miami. The Miami airport has an O’Hare-like star shape to it, with the annoying exception that you enter in the center, and to move between any two gates, you must pass through security again. The end of my gate (the rest of which is long and thin) erupted into a large, open hub. The individual gates were dense and the employees were scarce. After making a big deal about the boarding time when I got my ticket, the plane started boarding over 25 minutes late. During the flight, there was little to no turbulence, sweet and spicy chicken dinner, and a movie. The man I sat next to was en route back home to Guyana after visiting Miami with his unsuccessful attempt to have doctors diagnose his trick knee. All in all, the flights were good.
During the flight, however, a bottle broke in someone else’s bad, spilling god knows what all over my suitcase. It smells like a cross between some alcohol and suntan lotion. Annoying, but it’s not going to kill me.
My hotel in Trinidad on the other hand, that might kill me. I snapped a few pictures of the room which will serve its purpose of providing me a place to stay overnight for my flight to Tobago tomorrow, but not much beyond that. When I booked my tickets originally, I wanted to make sure I got to see both Trinidad and Tobago, so I opted for a late flight the next day. I figured I could spend the morning doing some touristy things; shopping, eating vendor roti, etc. but I hadn’t realized that my hotel is against the airport, near the military air base, and appears to be quite a distance from anything reasonable. I’m over 20km / US$20 / 30-60 minutes from anything reasonable in Port of Spain. I really wanted to walk around Port of Spain before my flight, but I would have had to have checked out of my hotel, and stowed my bags somewhere. When I mentioned these were my thoughts when checking into the hotel I got a “We don’t do that here,” from the guy behind the desk. This hotel is set up exclusively for people to sleep prior to flights; early flights, since the constant sounds of the airport make long, deep sleep impossible.
Alicia’s simply going to say I screwed this one up, and should have read my tour book more before going. That’s probably a fair assessment. The better thing to do would have been to fly to Tobago early, and arranged things with the Hilton. They’re more set up for that. Here’s to me being an idiot.
The front of the store was destroyed (drunk driver + car?) well before Christmas, and they still haven’t fixed it. “I assure you we’re open”
My sister, brother-in-law, aunt and uncle bought my mother a creme-brulee kit for Christmas. It didn’t work as planned. For those who can play 3GPP video, check this out.
I don’t think purdue has their mime settings set correctly, so you’ll have to download the video and view it manually. (Quicktime plays 3GPP videos, or send them to any (decent) cell phone).
Kids, don’t try this at home.
When I sold off my ‘86 RX-7, I pulled the stereo equipment I added. There wasn’t much: a CD Player that was later put into the Neon, and now sits on my pantry shelf since the Sable has the ridiculous Ford Oval, a subwoofer I got from my sister which is probably rotting in my parent’s basement, and a pair of 4″ and 6 1/2″ Infinity speakers.
After seeing these speakers on Gizmodo I decided to eventually try to build my own. It’s next to impossible to find 6″ PVC pipe anywhere, so I couldn’t make a 4″ tweeter and 6 1/2″ woofer version of Flow like I wanted, but was able to make a ”Back to Basics” pair using only my 4″ speakers. I didn’t really need to use both, since they’re not component speakers, and have a little silk tweeter in the center, but the point was more to look cool than anything else.\
They don’t sound good enough to replace my Paradigm fronts (still haven’t completed the set), but they’ll be good enough for an office or kitchen set.
At the moment they’re stuffed with dirty socks (they provide more acoustic dampening than clean socks) and I’m still experimenting on the height. The longer tube provides more base and is a good mix for my Orbital and Massive Attack, but lighter music, like Iron & Wine it muddies. And I’m not the only DIY PVC Speaker builder out there. When searching online for help designing these I ran across this guy in Canada.
Recently the cats, and by “the cats” I mean Luna, have discovered our hanging basket in the kitchen. During the summer it’s filled with Farmer’s Market goods, but recently it’s ben mostly empty with the exception of some garlic. I can only guess they like either the smell of the garlic, or the sound the dried husk makes when you bat it around, because we keep finding Luna jumping on the basket. A few times we was hanging upside down on the very bottom, and I don’t have any pictures to post online since our digital camera is too shitty. I was able to capture this video though.
Content © Perpetual Motion Fuel. Proudly powered by WordPress. Stats: 27 queries, 4.904 seconds.
"Black Hat" theme by Nicki Faulk. For best results, please view with Firefox. [ Log in ]
