Google Maps

Over at the McLaughlin's blog, there is a post about one of the steps involved when traveling to Ireland following directions from Google Maps. See the short post and link here. While, step 22 is rather interesting, I really like the "Slight Right" you take after your 3,462 mile swim across the great Atlantic. Another interesting feature is the continued use of miles once the directions start up in France instead of kilometers. That was something that was a little weird when Julia and I drove into Canada a few weeks ago. Using the inner numbers (for km/hr) was a little challenging.

Surprise Snow!

It was raining on the bus ride into campus this morning. Freezing rain fell like needles on my way to my 8:40am class. Class ended at 10am, and I walked outside to find about an inch of snow on the ground. I captured the image below from here at 10:30am.


Last night, as Julia and I were walking back from Ithaca Coffee Company at 7pm, and she said, "I hope its like this tomorrow." She rarely follows the weather forecasts. I disappointedly replied that rain was in the forecast for Thursday and Friday with the possibility of snow this weekend. This morning the weather forecast still claimed rain mixed with freezing rain for today and tomorrow. Now, they predict a ~60% chance of snow. Why not just say 100% chance of snow? I mean, it is snowing right now, and this forecast is for today. If you're going to change gears and "predict" snow after it starts, where does the 60% part enter the picture? Who decides this stuff?

Clearly, there are open problems available in the field of meteorology. In addition, you are a bonafide idiot if you believe you should pay money for weather.com Gold.

Niagara Falls

Julia and I went to Canada this weekend to see Niagara Falls. I had never been, and tons had changed since the last time Julia visited.

The first day was a little bit of a bust. It was really foggy, so you could barely see the Canadian side from the American side. We had to walk on ice paths, because they did not bother clearing the walkways yet. I suppose the mist from the falls contributes a lot of that ice.

The Giant Vegetable Growers International Convention took place at our hotel. We heard mostly about people growing pumpkins that weight half a ton! Even better, people were selling their pumpkin seeds for up to $800 a seed! Weird. Pumpkin Jim's wife was having martinis while he attended the convention. She and another pumpkin grower's wife gave us the dirt on growing large pumpkins while they sipped on martinis. Quite an interesting and expensive hobby, eh?

Sunday, Julia and I walked up the edge of the falls on the Canadian side, taking lots of pictures along the way. It was pretty amazing to see the Horseshoe Falls in person. Maybe we'll make it back this summer to do the Maid of the Mist boat tour and the Journey Behind the Falls. For now, check out the pictures below.

Filling the Holes

I was looking for any live videos of The Faint this morning. Apparently, they performed on Jimmy Kimmel's show to promote their album Wet from Birth. If you've never seen them live, watch the video on YouTube. They are an interesting band, especially the lead guitarist--he has a cool dance when he's not playing.

The video below is also from Jimmy Kimmel's show. It's pretty funny.

Pieces from Digg

If you do not read digg.com, you probably should check it out occasionally. For instance, how can you overlook an article with the title:

"Accused Knicker Nicker Says He Was in Bad Elf"

But, I'm not sure what is better, the title or the picture caption in the article--"What a female elf
may look like."

Wind Chill -22 F and I am 26

What is the deal with Cornell? First of all, it's my birthday, so I should have a holiday every March 6th. Second, it is so damn cold outside. Right now it's zero, with a wind chill of -22 F. On top of all of that, Ithaca City Schools have closed, as have most of the schools in the Upstate area. Last time, Ithaca City Schools closed, the snow plows took a break, because there was no need to clean the roads. Now, this time we do not seem to have much snow, but come on!

Well, I had better get ready for the cold. The bus shows up at 7:30. I hope I get there right when it does, so I don't freeze!

Year Zero = 2022 = 2007 + 15

Nine Inch Nails front man, Trent Reznor, is becoming very political. MTV banned a performance by the band on their music awards show when the last album came out, because Reznor wanted to have a huge back drop with President Bush's picture on the stage.

The tour for the previous album, With Teeth, continues in Europe while fans scramble to understand "the meaning" behind his upcoming album Year Zero. To give you a sense of how elaborate the flurry has been, visit the Wiki site for NIN here. The excitement began when fans noticed certain letters/number standing out on their tour shirts. People read off the "highlighted" letters to find websites, numbers corresponded to phone numbers. Calling the phone numbers supposedly allows you to hear a conversation taking place in this dystopia, but it is only 15 years away.

In addition to these supplements to the album, concert goers have discovered small USB drives at four concerts. The drives contained a track from the album and sometimes an image which revealed a new website. Currently, four tracks have been officially "leaked" and one track was played on KROQ, so it has made it's way around the internet, too.

Year Zero is a 16 track album, and five tracks have been leaked. If you remember The Downward Sprial, you probably remember that as the best by Reznor. Sure, The Fragile was a good album, especially since it contained several instrumental tracks. With Teeth is not a great album. The lyrics are cheesy and very predictable. For instance, complete the following lyric "about to reap what ..." Did you finish it naturally with "you sow"? That's right! Many of the lyrics from With Teeth and Year Zero have this quality, and it is very annoying.

One of the things I have noticed about Reznor is how he tends to use very simple rhyming patterns and, as a result, very simple language. There are problems with this combination. Mainly, it's really boring--he's written better lyrics in the past. If you are going to rely on this basic lyric structure, at least make the lyrics less predictable. Throw in a few clever words, so we can feel like you had something worth saying. Instead, Reznor gives us very unclear ideas that often sound like an inarticulate, depressed high school student who seems to always find a place for the word "strife" when writing poems for school.

Suppose we give Reznor the benefit of the doubt and assume that his word choice is deliberate. What then? His words are very colloquial. Maybe he is trying to write from the people's perspective rather than his own, which seems to have started with The Fragile, where he sounded less selfish and more interest in someone else. He's claimed that Year Zero is supposed to be about the perspectives of many people in this future reality. Perhaps so, but I doubt it. The last song, "Zero-Sum," better be really impressive to remind listeners that he can write good lyrics. This could be like reading the Dilsey section of Faulkner's book The Sound and the Fury. After reading tons of writing that's purposefully bad for artistic reasons, Faulkner writes the last section with all the stops pulled out. It's an incredible conclusion for the book, and it vindicates Faulkner's writing abilities if you ever had doubts. Anyway, Year Zero has the potential, because the song preceding it, "In This Twilight," is, lyrically speaking, "better" (just not in a Faulkner sense) than the others that have leaked.

The song "Survivialism" has a cadence that reminds me of Marilyn Manson's (Brian Warner) lyrics. In fact, the phrase "I got my violence/in hi-def ultra-realism" sounds a like a line from Manson. Honestly, an interesting album would be Reznor primarily doing the music with Warner's lyrics. A taste of that occurred in the past with Manson's album Antichrist Superstar, triggered more parents around the world to scorn Manson for obvious, but probably superficial, reasons. That's a topic for another day, and I'll probably never attempt it.

In short, the music on Year Zero sounds a little new, but there is a lot of what Reznor has already written that remains. It isn't very new, but there are some catchy tracks, so far. We'll have to wait to hear the whole thing in April.