Cell phone waiting area

So, I noticed yesterday when coming back from the San Jose airport that it now has a "cell phone waiting area". Rather than having people circle the airport over and over again since they don't want to pay for parking, this allows them to simply wait in the designated lot for up to half an hour for free. They just wait for a phone call from whoever they are picking up before leaving the lot. So far, it seems to be unknown enough that there's no problem finding a space.

Simple, yet brilliant. I can't wait to use this the next time I have to do a pickup at the airport.

Hybrids in the carpool lane

As of last Wednesday, it is now possible in California for hybrid owners to apply to use the carpool lane with single occupancy. It requires an EPA rating of 45 MPG or higher which currently is only met by the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, and Honda Civic Hybrid.

This is pretty cool, but unfortunately it seems that the various SF bay area bridges currently allow compressed natural gas and electric vehicles to cross for free during carpool hours, but there was some concern about lost revenue if this was allowed for the more than 57,000 hybrids registered in California. So they came up with the clever idea of requiring bay area residents to also sign up for FasTrak (an additional $40 for the transponder plus whatever money you put in your account) on top of the $8 fee for the special sticker you have to have to take advantage of this law.

The dumb thing about this is that many people that would like to take advantage of the carpool lane rarely use the bridges (like me), and some that do use the bridges live outside of the bay area counties that are affected.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12355793.htm

Primer

I saw a movie called Primer last night, and I have to say it was pretty awesome. It's a sci-fi movie but was done on a $7000 budget and revolves around the story of some friends working on a project in a garage and what happens when they discover and explore an unintended side effect of their invention.

It was quite confusing after about the 3/4 mark when some significant plot twists occurred, but after reading some of the material online about it I think I mostly understand what happened. Probably will have to do at least one more viewing to fully absorb it. I think this is the first movie I've seen since Memento that really had a quite original and challenging to understand story.

In the interest of not spoiling it for anyone I'll avoid giving you any more detail other than that.

New car musing and blog title pronunciation

One thing I've noticed in the four months since I've had the new Prius is that I'm much more often the driver for group activities... previously I had a 1990 Honda Accord and it was much more rare to have more than one passenger.

This is a good thing in some ways. I'm getting around 45-46 MPG on average, so the environmental impact is lower to take my car. It just wasn't a change that I ever expected when I was shopping for a new car.

On a completely unrelated note, I wanted to clarify how to pronounce my blog title. It's "coop-town" even though it's spelled like the u is short. This is the same as the first syllable of Cupertino, since "cup-town" is an affectionate nickname for Cupertino. Hope that clears things up.

Prius Invasion

I was leaving from the Stanford pool yesterday and saw a couple other silver Priuses so I had to move my car into position for a picture. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out which one of the three is mine.

Upcoming TV show conflicts

It seems like every season I invariably have at least one or two conflicts between shows I want to watch. Fall 2005 is going to be no different even though some of my shows were cancelled or ended their run in 2004-2005. It seems that the networks have conspired to move shows into conflict anyway.

Here's how the current lineup looks (in ranked order of show preference):

1) Monday 9pm-10pm: 24 (Jan 2006)
2) Wednesday 9pm-10pm: Lost
3) Wednesday 9pm-10pm: Veronica Mars
4) Friday 10pm-11pm: Battlestar Galactica
5) Thursday 9pm-10pm: Everwood
6) Thursday 8pm-9pm: Alias
7) Thursday 8pm-9pm: Smallville
8) Wednesday 8pm-9pm: One Tree Hill
9) Sunday 10pm-11pm: Grey's Anatomy
10) Thursday 10pm-11pm: ER
11) Friday 8pm-8:30pm: What I Like About You
12) Thursday 8pm-8:30pm: Joey

Out of these, notice how the evil networks managed to create a conflict between Lost and Veronica Mars (my number 2 and number 3 shows) as well as a conflict between Alias and Smallville (my number 6 and 7 shows). The unfortunate thing about this is I came up with the ranking before I had seen the schedule grid, so it really is a toss up on both of those conflicts.

Hopefully I'll have a second TiVo set up by the time the season starts. If not I suppose the VCR will be placed back into service.

I guess I shouldn't complain too much.. last season I had conflicts between 24 and Everwood, One Tree Hill and Veronica Mars, Lost and Smallville, Enterprise and What I Like About You, and life as we know it and Tru Calling. Based on what I've seen about the new shows coming out this season, there's not much that I'm interested in picking up in my schedule. Also, even among the returning shows above, from number 8 on I'm not 100% convinced that I want to keep the show for this coming season.

So, it kind of sucks that with 18 different hour long timeslots for each network that my top 7 shows yielded two conflicts.

Farewell to Summerland

Today was the last episode of Summerland, a short lived show on the WB set in a Southern California beachside community called Playa Linda (which is "beautiful beach" in Spanish). Anyway, I haven't yet watched the finale but it's waiting for me on the TiVo. I'm definitely going to miss the cute theme song... here's the lyrics in case you've never seen it:

Summerland theme

when i see you smile
i know everything's ok
when i hear you laugh
it's always a brighter day
gonna do my best
forget the rest
as long as you're with me we'll be alright

it's a beautiful day
yeah yeah
it's a beautiful day
yeah yeah
it's a beautiful day
yeah yeah
such a beautiful day

Ukraine Matters

My old roommate from my first year at Stanford has started his own podcast on Ukraine called "Ukraine Matters". Check it out.

It's also available on iTunes.

RSS feed: http://profiles.blipmedia.org/Serhiy_Kudelia/podcast.xml

Apple Third Quarter Results

I think the numbers speak for themselves. $320 million profit on $3.52 billion in revenue. Oh, and $345 million in software revenue. Yowza.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jul/13results.html

Tips for phone number porting

Here is a small addendum on the new cell phone experience. When switching cell phone providers you need to take a bill from your current provider when signing up for the new service. This is necessary so you have the old account number available.

Also, if you are switching from Sprint, make sure to change to paper billing if you are on electronic, because you will not be able to log into the Sprint PCS website after your number is ported. This is because the phone number is used to log in and you can't log in to check your bill once the phone number is deactivated in the Sprint system.

My new bling-bling

I finally made the jump from Sprint and my Samsung i500 Palm phone. I'm now on Cingular with a Motorola V620. This phone is not officially available in the US but there are a few places in New York that import it and either Cingular or T-Mobile can set you up with a SIM card to use it on their service.

After having the phone for nearly a week, here's the rundown of what I've noticed:

Pluses of the new phone:
- works with the built in Bluetooth headset support in my Toyota Prius
- snazzy metal case
- external caller ID
- situational lighting
- easy to upload backgrounds, movies, or sounds
- can sync with iSync over Bluetooth
- can store addresses as well as phone numbers and emails (although this info is not syncable at the moment)
- camera and video capabilities (this is not a big deal to me really)

To expand on my points above, the Prius integration was my primary motivation to switch to a new phone. I've given up that either Samsung or Sprint will get on the ball anytime soon on this issue. Being able to receive a call by simply pressing a button on the steering wheel is amazing, and the sound quality seems pretty decent as well.

I was sorely in need of external caller ID on my old phone, to the point that I set it up to not answer when I opened the flip so I could see who was calling. Having an external display is a huge improvement there.

The situational lighting consists of some concentric circles around the Motorola logo on the outside of the phone, which can light up in different colors. For example, when charging it is white, and when Bluetooth is active it is blue. I've set up categories so I can get different colors when the phone rings depending on which category of contact is calling me.

Transferring files to the phone is as easy as opening up Bluetooth File Exchange and sending a JPEG, MP3, or 3GP video file over. Apparently the best resolution to use is 176 x 220 for a background, or 176 x 144 for a movie or photo you want to have available for browsing. MP3 ringtones can be 22KHz mono 32 Kbps.

I'm hopeful that at some point I will be able to sync addresses, since that was one of the reasons I picked this phone over the V551. For now, I can enter them on the phone when needed.

So far I haven't really used the camera/video features much, but I'm sure there will be some case where it comes in handy. Occasionally I see something interesting and wish I had my digital camera to take a picture, so maybe the camera phone will suffice the next time that happens.

All that being said, the move has not been without its problems.

Drawbacks:
- does not scale as well with a large phonebook as the i500
- required programming to check voicemail
- voicemail notifications show up as text messages from _@
- no dashes are shown in phone numbers
- less custom software available

The phonebook UI is a step backward from my i500. I had to prune down my address book to get it manageable on the V620, while I was syncing over 400 contacts to my i500. The main problems are that it is only possible to scroll using the first letter of the name (which is the first name, not the last name like I'm used to), and there's no way to scroll a page at a time. On the i500 the volume up and down buttons scrolled a page at a time.

I had to program in the number to call to retrieve voicemail. Had to ask Cingular tech support twice before I got the right number. On the plus side, this allowed me to work around the annoying voicemail password requirement. I just added a pause and the password and a pound sign to the end of the number and now I have the "one touch" voicemail checking I've been used to for the past five years on Sprint.

The next two issues are specific to getting a European phone I believe, and from what I read on the internet it is possible to customize the phone to avoid these problems using some Windows software to edit "seem" files using the USB cable. I'm still debating what to do about those... there's also the moto4lin project which may be able to do the seem uploading and downloading but I have no idea how hard it would be to port to Mac OS X.

On the Palm I could get any application imaginable and I had quite the software library built up. On the new phone, there's some basic PIM functionality built in but the only expansion available is Java games. Maybe I can find some games that won't nag me to send in $15 like some of the Palm games did.

Spurs Win Championship!

Well, it didn't happen as quickly as I expected, but the Spurs pulled off an amazing performance to close out the second half, showing the kind of defensive intensity they had been missing since games 1 and 2 in this series. And once the defense was clicking like it usually does, the offense worked itself out.

Way to go Spurs!

Spurs win pivotal Game 5

What a game it was tonight... it came down to Robert Horry making some clutch threes down the stretch and the Spurs defense stepping up at the end to win by one point in overtime.

This game reminded me somewhat of one from the 1999 playoffs when Sean Elliot hit a miracle three while falling out of bounds at the buzzer to win... at that point you could see that the Spurs were destined to win the title that year. At this point I think it's pretty clear that the Spurs have what it takes to win a close one with the Pistons, and I expect Game 6 on Tuesday to be another battle.

Go Spurs Go!

Dateline Stanford: Moving Out

So, after nearly two years in Blackwelder, I've graduated and for some reason Stanford wants to kick me out. Anyway, I'm moving to Santa Clara on the weekend of August 12-13. Here's my new contact info, effective August 12:

XXX Saratoga Ave. Apt. XXXX
Santa Clara, CA XXXXX
(XXX) XXX-XXXX
(XXX) XXX-XXXX cell (active now)

Keep in touch!

Dateline Stanford: Graduation!

So, Sunday was the Stanford Commencement 2000 and I have now completed my Master's degree in Computer Science. I will be working at Apple starting June 26.

I am staying at Stanford through mid August... here's the contact info for now:

XXX Blackwelder Ct., Apt. XX
Escondido Village
Stanford, CA XXXXX-XXXX
(XXX) XXX-XXXX

Please note that my primary address for personal email is now
my mac.com address. Please update your address books.

Dateline Stanford: Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving break is over... and there's lots of news. Some of it is old...

So what am I thankful for this year?

Improving health:

For any of you who haven't heard, I broke my left collarbone about a month ago biking in the foothills. I was going down a steep bumpy hill, lost control and flipped sideways and landed on my shoulder. Anyway, I've been gradually regaining range of motion and function in my left arm and doing much better. I haven't been wearing any support or taking any pain medication for the past couple weeks.

Stanford football:

I must admit that after we lost our the opening game of the football season to UT by a score or 69-17, I really wasn't expecting much. But here we are, capping off an 8-3 season, winning the PAC-10 championship for the first time ever, and going to the Rose Bowl. Unbelievable. Oh yeah, we're also ranked #22.

I went to the Big Game last week which was a cool experience. We won of course (31-13), for the fifth year in a row. Berkeley students are starting to forget what the Stanford Axe even looks like. :)

Halfway through the third quarter about 100 police officers paraded in with billy clubs in hand and stood in front of the student sections for both sides. The announcer mentioned that there would be "zero tolerance" of anyone trying to rush the field after the game. Twenty Berkeley students were arrested for throwing bottles, rocks, and eggs at the officers, and no
one managed to rush the field. (I heard that two or three years ago some Berkeley students beat up the Tree and/or the band after Big Game, but it still felt a little totalitarian.)

Saturday, we beat Notre Dame on national TV, with a field goal on the last play. 40-37 isn't a pretty win, but we were on the other side of quite a few of those last year and it was great for us to pull it out.

Stanford athletics in general:

At halftime of the Notre Dame game, we were presented with the Sears Director's Cup for the fifth consecutive year. This award is presented to the NCAA Division I school with the best overall athletic program. Although we only got two national championships last year (compared to a record six in 1996-97), we had 6 teams finish second in the nation, and many more in the top 10. After the presentation of the award, the Temptations showed up in a double decker bus and sang a few songs, including "Rose Bowl" to the tune of "My Girl". And there were fireworks of course...

Friday night I caught the tail end of the women's basketball game vs. Tennessee. We had a two or three point lead with under four minutes to go, but Tennessee started a full court press and we couldn't get the ball past halfcourt. It was a close game, but Tennessee prevailed 79-73. Even so, I thought we gave the defending national champions a pretty big scare... and Maples Pavilion was totally full. People were standing in the aisles. I've never seen that for a women's basketball game before. Very cool.

Friends and Family:

(This means you...) Thanks for being there... don't be a stranger.

Quarter is almost over:

I managed to stay fairly busy with my TAing and keeping up with classes and the occasional fun. Less than two weeks to go until the break...

Dateline Stanford: Women's World Cup & Pictures

In case you missed it, yesterday the US Women's soccer team won the 1999 Women's World Cup down in Pasadena. It took overtime and a PK shootout, but the US won 5-4 with good PK shooting and a save by the goalie. (Too bad the goalie didn't get any more recognition for the save.)

The really funny thing was that I watched the game in the Blackwelder TV lounge, and the Chinese fans outnumbered US fans two to one.

Anyway, I went to the semifinal game where the US played Brazil last weekend... we had 73,123 in attendance, which is about twice the crowd we get for Stanford football games. So it was a packed house and a very exciting atmosphere. Everyone was chanting U-S-A and doing the wave, etc. The US won 2-0 and Briana Scurry (the goalie) had 6 saves and got the most valuable player award for the game. Natalie was in town and came to the game also.

I have expanded my old school pictures section on my web page. It is now sorted into three groups chronologically. Check it out.

http://www.stanford.edu/~jat/photos/oldschool/

Dateline Stanford: Summer!

Well, summer has arrived for me here at Stanford since I finished up my projects on Monday this week. If you want to see the slides from the junk email project, go to:

http://homepage.mac.com/townsend/lin239b/

Thanks for all the extra junk mail everyone sent! It was a great help. You can stop now. :)

I've also put up some more cool pictures on the web page. Thanks to Natalie, I now have a page of "old school" pictures. I also have some pictures from the top of the Hoover Tower of various parts of campus.

http://www.stanford.edu/~jat/photos/oldschool/

http://www.stanford.edu/~jat/photos/hoovertower/

In other news, we have our first public release of ESCOT Runner, which I have been working on part time since January. This will be used for three Problems of the Week on the Math Forum website this summer. If you have a relatively speedy
machine (at least PowerPC or Pentium based, faster is better) and at least 32MB of RAM (64MB is preferred) you can try it out. Also, please pass this info on to any middle school students you think might be interested.

I recommend downloading the installer with VM... most computers do not have recent enough Java support.

http://forum.swarthmore.edu/midpow/

http://cricket.ctl.sri.com/escot/dist/mathforum.2/Escot_EA2_Installers/install.htm

For more information on the project, go to this URL:

http://www.escot.org

Dateline Stanford: Star Wars, etc.

I saw _Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace_ this week. The cool thing about that is that I went to the 12:30 AM showing on Wednesday (Thursday morning technically) and only bought tickets an hour and a half beforehand over the phone. To think that some people camped out for over a month to go only 24 hours earlier than that seems sort of insane.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, and am looking forward to a second viewing in the next few weeks. I'll avoid spoiling any of the plot details for those who haven't seen it.

In other news, the Spurs defeated the Lakers 103-91 today to take a 3-0 series lead. Can you say "championship"? I knew you could.

Oh, and I also found out today that I got lucky in the housing lottery and will be able to stay on campus next year, possibly even keeping the room I already have.

Dateline Stanford: Junk mail

Greetings once again from sunny Stanford, California! Spring is upon us here and I am wearing shorts once again.

My project for one of my classes this quarter is to write a program to automatically identify spam (also known as junk mail). So please forward any unsolicited commercial email you receive to me. Really. I'm serious. The more training data I have the better.

Here's a cool picture from a while back that I scanned in for my web page:


Oh, and if you haven't seen _The Matrix_ yet, it is awesome. If you see only one movie before Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, this should be it. The super slo-mo "bullet time" effects are incredible.