Statistical evidence on some personality / psychological measures in each U.S. State. New York is tops when it comes to being neurotic, while Georgia is tops in agreeableness, extroversion, and conscientiousness (and in the 2nd quintile for openness). This matches up very well with my experiences in both states.

In the run-up to this year’s U.S. elections, I’m announcing my candidacy! I am now one step closer to my Ph.D., having successfully proposed my thesis yesterday. Go me. I have some clean up work to do, mostly regarding how I’ll be analyzing my data from the evaluations, and then it’s on to my list of system additions and the big system deployments I have planned.

Upcoming Travel for me…

August 18-25 : Apple’s Cocoa Camp
August 29 - Sept 1 : Labor Day on Cape Cod MA (sweet!)
Sept 9 - 14 : Ubicomp 2008, Seoul, South Korea
November 8 - 12 : CSCW 2008, San Diego CA

At the summer camp I went to as a kid, we celebrated (commemorated? desecrated?) Bastille day via a bastardization of the term Bastille. The oldest kids in camp would rouse everyone from their cabins very late at night by beating on pots and pans from the kitchen. Bash Steel, get it? I guess this parade/mob also mirrors aspects of the holiday where a mob accomplishes a meaningless victory with violence. Way to go mobs. So I’m banging on my all-clad today in solidarity with all those love liberty. And by liberty I mean cooking implements.

The entirety of Ben Fry’s acknowledgments page for his master’s thesis. A picture is worth a thousand thanks. Post script—he didn’t get to do this for his PhD thesis (it’s just a normal “thanks mom and dad!” page).

We’re in Jamaica this weekend. It’s fantastic.Full breakdown of all the fantastic-daytime-tipsy-swimming-eating-redstripe-adventures to come.

Moved 1,000 miles away from my home. Still 3 blocks from a Moe’s. It’s official — Moe’s is a fungus. Die fungus, die.

Man I hope the rumors are true… I want the Apple "Safari Pad" more than anything. Ok, not more than proverbial peace in the middle east.

Here’s the story of an economics student and one of his favorite professors. Who always told a lie.

link to some links I’m scribbling down this weekend: http://cj.crowdvine.com/posts/show/553908

oreo "cakesters" are pretty much the best things ever. so horrible, but also so good.

saturday school.

mark hansen just gave a great talk. He’s in statistics, design, and just built the new text art at the NYT building… Hawt.

Man, do I ever wish I was going to Pervasive this year. First of all, it’s in Sydney Australia. I so so want to get down there. Second, there are some really good workshops that will take place the weekend before the conference. I’m helping to review submissions for the Pervasive Expression workshop, organized by Andrew Vande Moere (of infosthetics fame and fortune. okay, probably not fortune). So I’m looking forward to getting a stack of submissions to review. And then I’ve submitted a paper to the Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability workshop, which has so many buzzwords related to my current project, Imprint (more on this soon), that I felt like I had to submit. Even if it looks like I won’t get to go to, I’m hopeful that I’ll get some good feedback on my system design work that’s still ongoing.

installing 10.5.2. Plus, I got my super seekrit printhost working today.