Highway "zippers" helping traffic

Interesting... Tom Limoncelli mentions on his blog about a machine he's seen that moves the barrier between the eastbound and westbound sides of the Tappan Zee bridge depending on prevailing traffic. This lets there be more lanes for westbound traffic in the morning and then allows more eastbound traffic in the evening as needed.

Pretty cool, and interesting to watch in action (Tom put a picture up on his blog, linked below).

Everything Sysadmin: The Zipper Machine

A little '80s movie nostalgia...

So, this guy (apparently his name is James) went to the mall they used when shooting the first time travel scene in Back to the Future. He shot some pictures and put them up next to screen grabs from the movie so you can see him in some of the exact same places as the actors were.

Great Scott!

Twin Pines Mall | Cinemassacre.com

Sudden realization

Oh yeah, I have a blog, huh?

So…

First of all, I realize that this will be the third time I’ve had a blog post with this title, which might make this one a bit more ironic.

In any case, last night I was thinking about the American tendency to end sentences by trailing off into the conversational ether. For example, when people start a story or thought and then finish with “so…” without really coming to a full stop. I know I'm guilty of this myself at times, and I can’t really point fingers, so…

I’ve decided that the reason for this is mostly laziness. It’s basically saying, “I’ll lay down the tracks for this train of thought, but hopefully you can see where it leads and I won't actually have to articulate the whole thing.” Of course this is mostly done between people who know each other well enough to finish each others’ sentences anyway, but that still doesn’t excuse the ennui that leads to deliberately unfinished thoughts.

After all, when I used to be an editor (the links at the beginning of this post are quite old; that’s no longer my job) I would never let an author end a phrase with an ellipsis. Granted, I mostly dealt with sheet music, but I also edited the accompanying text and I'm passionate about the written word as well.

The “…” punctuation literally stands for an undefined, and possibly unuttered, group of words. For instance, if you wish to quote someone and leave out a portion, you'd use it in the place of what you blanked out: “Mary had a […] lamb.” When it's used deliberately (by that, I mean “not editorially”) at the end of a phrase or sentence, it leaves the intention of the writer completely up to the interpretation of the reader. And since my number-one priority as an editor and a writer is clarity, using an ellipsis in such a way is completely anathema to my preferred style.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its uses. In casual conversation (i.e. the spoken word, personal email), I suppose it can be tolerated quite a bit. And, in the hands of a skilled writer, it can be an interesting rhetorical device. However, when the intent is to convey information clearly, three dots in succession just don't belong anywhere.

My thoughts on this matter were perfectly punctuated this morning by the new Wondermark (link below). I don’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity or cry over the reference to modern lack of expression. I’ll probably do both.

Wondermark by David Malki ! - 420: In which One Thing sparks Another, and So On

Shiny New Toy

Recently the Netflix DVD-rentals-by-mail service introduced a new product, a set-top box that lets you stream movies from the Internet directly to your television.

They've had the "Instant View" capability for quite a while now, but you needed to watch the movies on a Windows PC. Now, though, they've teamed up with media-device company Roku to produce the Netflix Player to put those movies from the Internet onto your TV screen.

When I first heard about the Player, it seemed interesting, but I doubted that it would be worth it in my home. First of all, my wife and I cancelled our Netflix subscription back in 2005 after only about three months with the service. While it's a great service, we found ourselves feeling that we had to watch the DVDs as soon as possible and send them back for new ones so that we were getting our money's worth. Those red envelopes consumed nearly all of the free time we had (especially since we were on the plan that let us have three movies at a time).

However, I read a blog post by a fellow member of the local Linux Users' Group that changed my mind. He wrote about opening and setting up the machine, and I was really intrigued; especially by the mention of the television shows that were available for viewing with this method.

I looked around on the Netflix site to see how the pricing works, and it turns out that even the $9/month plan allows for unlimited Instant Viewing on the device (the plan includes one DVD in your home at a time). Well, that's barely more than the price of two Blockbuster rentals. Regardless of whether we went through the physical DVDs quickly, we could definitely get a good bang for our subscription buck with the Netflix Player. Granted, the device itslef costs $100, but we hadn't put any of our tax rebate into the US economy yet...

So I restarted our Netflix subscription a couple of weeks ago and ordered the Player. It was delivered by FedEx last Friday, and I've been really impressed by it. The only difficult part was entering the 64-character randomly-generated strong password for our wireless network on the little 9-button remote control. However, the onscreen keyboard was versatile enough to provide all the characters I needed, and the box downloaded my Instant Queue list immediately and was ready to start playing movies.

You have to choose the movies for your Instant Queue list by visiting the Netflix website on a computer, and then your only options on the Player itself are to change a few settings or play one of the movies you've pre-selected online. Most of the titles available are fairly old, though there are some newer movies. In a really cool twist, some recently-aired NBC shows (Heroes, 30 Rock, The Office) are already available for Instant Viewing. If more television gets added to the list in such a timely manner, we might even be able to cancel cable.

All in all, this is a great device that I recommend to anyone with a decently-fast Internet connection. Check it out!

xkcd in NYT

Randall Munroe, creator of the oft-linked-here online comic xkcd, was interviewed by Noam Cohen of the New York Times. The resulting article appeared online today (link below).

Link By Link - This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix - NYTimes.com

The rise and (please, come quicky) fall of Microsoft

It's obvious that Microsoft won't be a big technology market force forever, and here's a great piece from the New York Times detailing their inevitable (and, in some senses, current) state of decline.

The Computer Industry Comes With Built-In Term Limits - New York Times

Another comic link

I know I've linked to a lot of Webcomics of late, but when there's a talking musical instrument I'm just compelled to share it...

Wondermark by David Malki ! - 406: In which there's a Problem in the Orchestra

Malki does it again

Today's Wondermark is great... especially, of course, the mouse-over text.

Wondermark by David Malki ! - 402: In which Martin could rethink his Pastimes

Andy Ihnatko's Pearls of... Something

Andy noticed something new in his grocery store, and (wouldn't you know it) he just had to write something witty about it.

Nature's Most Perfect Food on Flickr - Photo Sharing!