Matt’s Blog

This weekend, I went up to see my little sister’s graduation.  I think I never gave her enough credit, she graduated high school with a near 4.0, and I chalked it up to easier classes.  But at USU, she actually graduated with two degrees instead of the more socially acceptable one.  Pretty impressive.  It was also freezing up in Logan, but I loved it.  I still feel at home there.

I’ve also started using a new browser.  It’s got a feature which I think is completely awesome.  It’s almost better than tabbed browsing (which it has as well of course).  You can go to any page where you can do a search, right click on the text box you type into, and save it off as a search.  That will allow you to see it in the drop down just to the right of the url location bar, just like other browsers.  But even better, you can assign a hotkey to it.  So in the location bar, you can just type that letter, and then the search terms, and it will bring up the search results automatically.  It comes with ‘g’ setup for google automatically, but it’s so stinking easy to add new ones.  I can’t believe I’m leaving Firefox behind, but for that I just have to.  There are plenty of disadvantages, (no easy IE Tab plugin as far as I can see) but I just can’t live without that quick search feature now that I’ve used it.

NPR’s Science Friday this week was about a subject I’ve heard far too little of, energy efficiency.  All the current administration seems to care about is finding other sources of energy besides oil (usually ones that pollute just as much, notably ethanol)  But the crew at Science Friday finally brought out the subject of conversancy and efficiency.

They were talking to some people from Cambridge MA, which is making a bid to become the most green city in the world.  Mostly they talked about efficient buildings, which have clever uses of technology to promote more use of natural sunlight, use cheaper solar panels and other various things to not only make the building super efficient, but make it seem like you’re outside when you’re in the building.  That I found interesting, but the most exciting thing I heard was just a small blurb about a new kind of carpooling which uses the internet make it more effective.  They gave a website, goloco.com, which doesn’t appear to have anything on it, though I could have it wrong.  Anyways, it’s an idea I tossed around for a while, albeit in a slightly different form, which I referred to as, the Minibus.  I’m certainly excited to hear about someone actually capable of implementing such a thing, and I hope it succeeds there and spreads around the country.

It’s late because I just got back from Orem, but I can’t go to bed without a quick word about this event.   I went down with a friend because I wanted to see Ralph Nader, whom I’ve been a fan of since I saw the documentary about him, An Unreasonable Man.  I’ve always thought that he’s a great voice of reason.  He stayed afterward and signed his books, so I got to meet him and shake his hand, and that was quite a treat for me.

The whole alternate commencement idea turned out to be really awesome too.  It’s a great example of what people can do when they get together.  There were about 50 graduates, and maybe two or three thousand people in the audience.  There were only about 25 students planning the thing, and they only had ten days to do it.  I think it’s fantastic that there’s people out there that feel so much passion for something, that they can get together and make it happen.  That’s what makes this country great.

Mr. Nader’s speech was incredible too.  He’s very outspoken against the injustices in today’s society.  He spoke out against the uneven distribution of wealth in the country, against the barriers that exist that keep people from voting, the two party political system, and especially our unwilligness to conserve.  I can only hope great people like him will continue to run in elections, even if they never win.

This appeared in the News Quirks section of the City Weekly. Some of my friends have been doing it for years, only we use the Idaho border, and no one shoots at us, thankfully. Though we do occasionally have mishaps of our own.

After today’s incident in Virginia, I can’t help but rant again.  I know that’s what my last post was, and I already feel lame about it.  So don’t bother saying anything, unless you really want to.

I’m continually surprised at the public’s outrage when these types of incidents happen.  I mean, we should be used to them by now.  I think it’s quite clear that gun control doesn’t work.  I’m betting that we do in fact keep guns out of the hands of many who shouldn’t have them, but the problem with guns is that they’re so dangerous.  If just a few slip into the wrong hands, there’s serious problems.  And it happens, time and time again.  Here’s a thought from me, stop making them.  I know it’s tough, and many of us choose to ridicule our leaders rather than follow them, making them reluctant to actually pass any laws that we might not want to follow, but how many times do we have to learn our lesson?  If you make a device that’s intended for one purpose only, it will be used for that purpose, for good or bad.

And I’m not talking about rifles, or shotguns, or any gun that is legitimately used for hunting, so I don’t want any NRA hunter types having a cow (because I know there are  a lot of you out there reading my blog)  Those aren’t the kind of guns that cause problems.  It’s handguns.  They’re made to be concealed, and they’re made to kill people.  How stupid can we be to continue mass manufacturing these things?

There was a shooting in my neighborhood not a month ago, and since then, applications for concealed weapons have gone through the roof.  We don’t need more people walking around with guns in their pockets, we need less.  Stop making guns, and people will stop getting killed (by guns at least).

I’m just trying to be honest with what this is.  You can stop reading if you want.  In fact I’d prefer you did.  But, since part of my reason for starting this blog was so that I could use it for mostly emotional arguments instead of my friends.  Anyways,  I heard a segment on NPR about cell phones which I loved, and I meant to write about it that day but I neglected to do it.  I wish I had a link, but I didn’t see anything online.   And if that’s true, then what kind of an exploitive business is it that they can just throw so much money into their phones when it’s only a selling point, not something that people will actually use?

It’s just like the camera on the phone.  Now every phone has one, but do people really use it?  The pictures are terrible quality.  The only justification I could find is that you might want to take a picture and send it to someone.  Are users actually doing that?  All I see people do with cell phones is send text messages.

We’re just gadget crazed.  I wonder if it goes back to tv shows like James Bond, or Inspector Gadget.  I doubt it though, that’s just how we are.  Anyways, I’m through.  I really hope I can make it without getting a cell phone, because if I ever do, I’ll have a hearty meal of words to choke down.

After much anticipation on my part, I’ve finally gotten to see the first few episodes of Stargate Atlantis. I have to wait of the dvd’s since I’m unwilling to fork out outrageous amounts of money just so I can watch one channel (sci-fi of course). I’ve been slightly dissapointed with some of the story so far, but frankly, with sci-fi (at least on television) you have to learn to like what you get, since there isn’t much of it.

On another note, I’m constantly amazed at how stupid computers are. For all our lauding of their amazing capabilities, it’s still a nightmare when congress decides to make such a simple change as moving daylight saving(s?) time. If it saves energy, I’m all for it, I just hope they leave it there.

I stuck with Stephen Baxter and read one of his earlier books. It was the earliest I could find in the bookstore. I was sort of hoping it would be part of the Xeelee universe, but I don’t think it really is. It was pretty fantastic. I don’t think I liked it quite as much as the other one I read, Exultant. I can definitely see that he has matured as an author. His characters were much more developed in his later novels.

This one didn’t disappoint though, it was very exciting. He even took such absurd ideas as a squid astronaut walking (?) around the surface of an asteroid in a bubble of water and made it seem completely logical. After all, it isn’t much different from our experience, and even more after all, space is a lot more like the ocean than it is like the land.

I’m yet again amazed at his ability to transmit the vastness of space (and time as well in this novel) to a reader merely with words. Of course, the science was thick, just as I like it.

Next I’m back to Larry Niven, for a small break from Baxter.

There’s a lot of bad press about Vista.  Mostly consumers frustrated with inability to find support for drivers, problems with their upgrade, and some wondering what the benefit for upgrading is.  I wish I could believe that it’s a harbinger Microsoft’s future, but I doubt it.  Microsoft is to monolithic to be unseated.  What we lack is something better.  There is Apple, which is certainly capable of taking Bill’s place, but it’s really the same thing, same philosophy of computing.  Linux is kind of a step in the right direction, because it supports a standard for operating systems, letting users at least pick from different distributions, while still being able to run the software they need.  But the problem there is that it’s free.  I know that seems weird to complain about something being free, but I don’t think it will work with the philosophy that we run with our country in the long run.  I think Microsoft’s existence is the only reason it has experienced any success.  I’m certainly not saying that Microsoft helped develop Linux, it certainly didn’t, but it’s the fact that windows existed that gave people the desire to do something different.  It’s fueled the passion to bring Linux into the mainstream. If Microsoft vanished tomorrow, I would push for a commercialization of Linux distributions.  Honestly, corporations aren’t going to take anything seriously that doesn’t cost money.  It just doesn’t compute in the corporate persona.

Anyways, knowing that will definitely never happen, we need some sort of mind blowing change in the very fundamentals of computing, that makes the whole world all different, and then we need to make sure Microsoft doesn’t get a hold of it.

After moving down to Salt Lake City from Logan (Utah) a few years ago, my friends asked me if I thought it was warmer down here. I really don’t think it is, but almost everyone I know claims it can be as much as ten degrees warmer in Salt Lake than in Logan. I think it happens because Logan tends to have snow on the ground all year and occasionally will have extremely cold days. But my contention was that on average, the temperatures were pretty much equivalent. The last time I fought about it I promised I’d look for some data and post it here:

Temperature Comparison

It’s a bit hard to tell from the graph (if I had been right I might’ve been motivated enough to overlay the graphs), but Logan does look generally 5-10 degrees colder. I guess I’m eating my words again, not the first time, could someone pass the salt?