Yes, it’s true: we love the Sirius radio that came with our new Mazda3. (Photo essay forthcoming.) The Wikipedia page for Sirius offers some geeky details (for those into that sort of thing); for example, there are terrestrial repeaters in major cities to improve reception for receivers that cannot hear any of Radiosat 1, 2, or 3. Other places to poke around: SIRIUS Backstage, SIRIUS Fan Network, DogstarRadio’s satellite orbit and terrestrial repeater map, more info on the SIRIUS constellation from Spaceflight Now.
Archive for August, 2006
A famous computer scientist weighs in on Dan’s research idea.
[8:25] <Chris> I was just trolling through my usual sites, and saw a mention of something I thought you’d really like. So I was all ready to copy and paste the link, but then I realized that I was copying from your delicious feed.
While I was in Vancouver, I got into the habit of finishing my day by taking my laptop down to the conference floor (where there was free wireless, courtesy USENIX). On Wednesday night, at around 10pm, the floor suddenly came alive with the sound of the grand piano in the foyer. It was clearly not someone hired by the hotel (the official pianist could be heard distantly in the bar, accompanying a dreadful braying version of “Too Damn Hot”); the unknown pianist was noodling around, pounding out some seriously grandiose chords.
After a while, I realized the barrage of harmonious key-mashing was the “chorus” from Ben Folds’ “Trusted”. Ever more curious, I picked up my PowerBook and wandered down the hall, where I found Ping, iPod earbuds trailing from the sides of his head, picking out the song!
No mean feat.
It was a shame, then, when the night manager came by and kicked us out.
Lesser-known hazards of the churrascaria.
Whoa!
Pressing the space bar in a read-only rich-text or HTML view (e.g. Mail.app, Safari) advances the scroll position by a page (satisfying habits of Eudora or more users). This is old news. But I just now discovered that holding down Shift will reverse the scroll direction.
Brilliant.
[Yes, yes, I’ll write a little about Vancouver and USENIX Security in the next day or two. I’m still recovering; it was a long week.]
