Back in Boston

One of the things I love about student tickets is that you can buy your ticket and fly on the same day -- without penalty! I actually bought my ticket to Toronto, on the cab on the way to the airport!

Semi Formal in Toronto

Another Semi-Formal Shot. 

Emerson and Eli 

The 3 divas 

More semi-formal pics. 

Kurosh, my sis, and I. 

Pics of the Rack

Some of my friends kept asking me why I flew to canada 3 times in a single month and what the heck was taking so much of my time. I was working on setting up a 140-port network for my parent's office. The thing in this picture is called a rack. Every single network connection and telephone port in the office ends up here. A rack is simply two metal beams to which you can mount equipment in a space-efficient manner. You could for example stack 48 computers on top of each other in the space shown on the rack. Instead we've chosen to use the rack to host a new experimental phone system that transmits telephone signals over internet wires. Why would you want to do that? Well you computer and phone systems can communicate with each other. So when the phone rings, you can, for example, make your computer pop up a window telling you who's calling and what you last talked about, before you pick up the phone. The computer at the bottom of the rack is the web server for
Veristage.

Another pic of the rack. Yellow wires carry voice traffic; black (not visible in this pic) carries data. 

This is what the rack looks like from behind. 

My bro justin, affectionately known as "justy."

Aerial Photography using a Kite! And a Self-Updating Picture Frame

 

Target is selling kites for $10 ... This Kite Aerial Photography project lets you take pictures using a kite and a cheap kodak disposable camera.


An electronic, self-updating picture frame

In the .COM days, there was a picture frame that (in theory) you could give to you mom. It would connect to the internet (wirelessly of course) and presenting whatever picture you as the dutious child decided to show her. But the frame was too expensive -- the company wanted $10 a month for the service and the picture frame cost over $100.

Now this guy has found a way to convert a Mattel Juicebox ($11 at walmart) into an LCD picture frame!!

Transparent Screens

People are putting up photos of their laptops with desktops that make the laptop screen seem transparent. From a decorating perspective, the effect seems to create more space.



Some examples:

Gallery 1
Gallery 2

And here's a how-to. If you have one of those Sony laptops with a built-in web cam, you should in theory be able to set your background to update automatically.

Archive.org and OurMedia.com

You probably heard of the WayBackMachine at Archive.org -- it's a funky web site that been around for years that will let you see what a web site looked like in the past. You could for example, see what cnn.com looked like on September 11th, or any other day for that matter -- and strangely they index almost all of the web.

Well the same people that brought you Archive.org just released OurMedia -- a web site that will host photos, blogs AND videos for free. It's only been up for 4 days ... but a lot of people are signing up and they are getting big fast. They need volunteers to keep it up ... moderators, programmers, the whole deal ...

Victim no more! A guy catches identity thieves in 2 hours

This happened today: a guy had his credit card number stolen. But unlike most stories this guy caught the thieves and got the last laugh. For anyone who has ever had their credit card number stolen, it's satisfying to see the thieves caught; in two hours no less!

Some funky art ...

The Zoom Quilt.

Slides for Computers And God

Are available in Powerpoint or HTML and Flash

Have fun figuring out what this does

 

This is a funky image search, with a twist!

http://www.c6.org/toogle/

Fasting

So for the next 19 days, I got to wake up around 5am and not eat from sunrise to sunset. Why would I subject myself to this brutality? Ask me later! But I will say this. There is no better time for ending bad habits, and returning to a more spiritual state. I seem to have much better discipline during the fast.

Want to know a secret? In addition to eating well, The key to an easy fast is wearing warm clothes. Why? If you wear warm clothes, your body nees to burn fewer calories to keep warm. And while we're on the subject, did you know that ice water has negative calories? Why? Because that cold water has to be heated to body temperature.