alex chiang: web 6.0

October 30, 2007

the communications-commitment continuum

Filed under: dreck — alex @ 3:08 pm

From most committing to least:

  • face to face conversation
  • phone call
  • online chat
  • email
  • facebook message
  • text message
  • getting “poked”

And from an IM:

(04:04:03 PM) dana: haha, i love it
(04:04:11 PM) chizanger: so a poke is like, a really low commitment thingy that says, “remember me?”

October 10, 2007

going to mel8ourne

Filed under: dreck — alex @ 1:29 pm

w00t!

Now I’ve got something to do this February: LCA 08.

American Flight # 1055
Departs: Denver Intl Arpt (DEN) on Thu 01/24/2008 at 7:25 AM
Arrives: Los Angeles Intl (LAX), Terminal: 4, on Thu 01/24/2008 at 9:00 AM

American Flight # 7308 (Operated by: Qantas Airways)
Departs: Los Angeles Intl (LAX) on Thu 01/24/2008 at 12:50 PM
Arrives: Sydney Kingsford Smith Arpt (SYD), on Fri 01/25/2008 at 10:20 PM

American Flight # 7363 (Operated by: Qantas Airways)
Departs: Sydney Kingsford Smith Arpt (SYD) on Fri 02/22/2008 at 3:20 PM
Arrives: Los Angeles Intl (LAX) on Fri 02/22/2008 at 9:50 AM

American Flight # 1458
Departs: Los Angeles Intl (LAX) on Fri 02/22/2008 at 1:40 PM
Arrives: Denver Intl Arpt (DEN) on Fri 02/22/2008 at 5:00 PM

Open call for friends to line up the same trip. I’ll be “working” from 28 Jan until 02 Feb, but after that, I’m wide open.

Come hang out with me down under.

October 9, 2007

i’m the only guy on the fucking show without a superpower

Filed under: dreck — alex @ 7:34 am

One of the few perks of being a professional computer nerd is that you get to be … well, nerdy … and no one is surprised. Usually, people are pleasantly surprised when you talk like a normal person during conversation, rather than acting like Nick Burns, the computer guy. A nice case of occupational under-promising and over-delivering.

So yeah, Heroes is a sci-fi-ish tv series that resembles a comic book, but what can I say, I love it. On the other hand, plenty of regular people like it too, so maybe I’m not so nerdy after all.

In any case, today’s quote of the day comes from Sendhil Ramamurthy’s Onion interview:

When I first started the show, it was pitched as a show about superpowers, and I was like, “This sucks. I’m the only guy on the fucking show who doesn’t have a superpower. This totally blows.”

October 8, 2007

a peek behind the curtains

Filed under: dreck, geek — alex @ 11:12 am

People often think that computers are scary and hard to use, and whoever works on them must be geniuses. Much as I’d like to be thought of as a genius, sadly, it’s not true.

In the spirit of showing my dear readers and non-technical friends that I empathize with you when computers are sucky and hard to use, I present to you the following snippet of conversation I had with a colleague today while trying to figure something out:

(11:37:58 AM) np: hmmm
(11:40:32 AM) np: I dunno what I'm doing
(11:40:41 AM) np: I feel like a monkey trying to write shakespeare
(11:40:42 AM) ac: me either. i feel like i'm watching a magic show

long tail of friends

Filed under: geek — alex @ 8:19 am

friendpix-long-tail.png

Another nerd-alert. (Hm, two in a row, this isn’t boding well for general consumption –ed. (hey waitaminute, who is this –ed. guy and how did he start commenting in-line on my blog? –alex) ah, the joys of being the author and editor –ed.)

Ok, that little tourette’s episode aside, what you are looking at is a graph representing people in the pictures I’ve taken from 2000 through 2007. There are about 3100 pictures, and each bar represents the number of times someone appears in a photo. As you can see, it forms a long tail distribution quite nicely, although it doesn’t die out quite that fast.

One thing to note is that the top three occurrences have been artificially clipped to limit the count to 200, to make the graph easier to read. Had I not done that, the graph would have truly resembled a long tail distribution, as the top three people really skew the picture.

Enjoy.

October 2, 2007

hooking up mutt and gmail

Filed under: geek — alex @ 11:14 am

Beware — nerd-alert today.

A good mail reader is an extension of your brain. You don’t have to fight with it or wonder why it’s doing something weird. For me, the user interface also has to be fast and be able to process hundreds of messages quickly, which is one reason why I’ll never use web-based email as a primary interface.

That being said, gmail is pretty swell since it can hold 2.5 GB, and you get the bennys of google-powered search. w00t, as it were.

With that backdrop, I present to you another little tool to support hooking up mutt (as a front-end) to gmail (as a back-end):

Happy emailing.