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Epsilon Exploits & Familial Foibles
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30 June 2010
| This past weekend Alora, Brittan & I took a short trip up to Canada. Unlike last time, we brought all the necessary paperwork. It's less than a day's drive up to the border from Nebraska, and we brought our camping stuph and cooler of snacks and sandwich supplies. Little did we know that most of the food and drink would go unconsumed. I knew we were in trouble when we stopped at a 7-Eleven in Winnipeg and Alora opted to hunt for a restroom rather than get a slurpee. By the time we'd got across town to Kildonan Park to see the aptly named Red River up close as it flows north through Winnipeg, Alora was feeling very bad. I thought a short walk around in the cool park would help, but the puke was coming no matter what. Figuring it would just be a matter of time before Brittan and I would be coming down with it, we decided to turn home and just hit the southeast corner of Saskatchewan on the way. At least we'd be able to cross off two Canadian provinces even if we didn't see much. We had to stop alot for poor Alora, so we only made it back down to South Dakota for the night. The hotel we stayed at (puking + thunderstorm = no camping) had this odd little water park for kids with squirtguns, lilypads, slide, etc in a 3 foot pool which the girls were just a bit too old to really enjoy the next morning. Back on the road, we decided to spend our extra time visiting the childhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder somewhat off the beaten path in De Smet. When we arrived Brittan headed for the bathroom and our worst fears were soon confirmed. Ergo we skipped the tour and just took a picture in front of the famed house which looks little different from thousands of others in the midwest. Needless to say, we got home early after many more stops. |
27 June 2010
Ingalls' House, De Smet, SD
26 June 2010
Red River, Kildonan Park, Winnipeg, MB
19 June 2010
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What has he written lately? would be a fair question indeed for one such as myself who is wont to bleed so profusely from the
pen. Well, my hand has been hurt this week so there! I have spent much of these past months ingesting English history, from
chronicles to biographies to histories of navies and courtiers. It is a worthwhile pursuit to occupy my mind in what would otherwise
be a time of idleness. Oh how I do loathe idleness; to waste such precious, limited hours which can never be regained. Jobhunting is
like a dance. Not a pleasant ball dance with some gowned lady or a gyrating club dance, but instead the dance of a bird trying to
attract a mate. If I go through the motions really well down here, maybe one of the ladybirds will come down an observe me going
through the rigors of an even more complicated and difficult dance. Maybe not. Maybe despite these droppings I see on the ground there
are no ladybirds in the trees- no jobs available to someone with my rather unusual skillset. I cannot escape the impression when no
ladybirds come down that the act of dancing itself is akin to idleness.
Today the girls (on bikes) and I (on rollerblades) took a journey across the city of Lincoln who knows how many miles. We learned that my rollerblades have much nicer bearings than their bikes. Nevertheless, it was a journey enjoyed by all and one which left us heartily tired tonight. It also gave me an opportunity to test the limits of Foursquare, an app for the iPhone which attempts to augment reality with the trappings of a game. It has seen success much like facebook apps (e.g. FarmVille, Mafia Wars, etc.) which allow the user to map their existing social network onto a game. Foursquare allows players to "check-in" at various community defined locations in meatspace to earn prizes in gamespace. Somewhere I hear my dad saying And they make money how? Starbucks, for example, is currently offering a promotion on Foursquare that allows the person who visits a location most (becoming "mayor" in the game) to receive discounts on coffee. Wave of the future, or idea that will never pan out? Foursquare has some serious user experience issues which they need to solve before their application can go mainstream. Firstoff, the iPhone app is buggy. For example, it crashes everytime you try to add a new location. Developers may put up with this, but most people will get turned off very quickly by a program that doesn't have the core functionality it claims to. Secondly, the app discourages more than 15 check-ins in a day by making them nearly impossible to get. Whereas the first few check-ins can be over a kilometer away from the location's exact pin, after 15 check-ins being within 100 meters isn't good enough. If you are visiting a reasonably sized park it becomes an exercise in geocaching to find the correct GPS coordinates of the location! Repeated failures really detract from the user experience and one has to wonder why they didn't just institute a hard limit of 15 check-ins per day. It'll be interesting to see if they've solved these user experience issues a year from now, or if they've gone the way of Orkut and Bebo. |
18 June 2010 - Music Camp Concert
16 June 2010 - Alora's first catch
12 June 2010
6 June 2010
| This weekend we finally went camping along the Platte River west of Omaha. You can check out the pictures here. |
2 June 2010 - A new low for Nebraska...
