may-21

... And hopefully a similarly large number of days ahead.

On a related note, I desided to give Wolfram|Alpha a go at figuring out how many days since I was born.  So, I plugged in "may 21, 1969" to see what it would come up with.  Besides the "no known notable events" notice -- thanks, you're lifting my spirits -- it also told me my date of birth was both 39 years, 11 months and 31 days ago as well as 40 years ago.

Perhaps it's rounding off?  At least it got the number of days right.

I haven't had time to more than twiddle a few buttons but I sure was hyping it earlier, so I hope it lives up to expectations.  I did try a few queries, such as "Drupal", an open-source content management framework I've been doing a ton of work with recently.  Instead I got information about "Rukai," I dialect spoken in Taiwan by 10,543 people.  Very precise yet exactly wrong.

In late March, Kodak Gallery (neé Ofoto) changed its terms of service, now requiring a minimum annual purchase to keep your photos safely stored on their servers.  That got me thinking: how much does it cost to host all of Kodak Gallery's photos?  What if I were to build a Kodak Gallery site and host it myself?  I got out my calculator and sharp pencil to find out.

Let's start with some basics:

I'm suffering through the twice-a-year, week-long torture of public radio listeners better known as "Pledge Week."  I donate once a year to my local NPR station.  Each year I want a secret code that would allow me to tune into the real news rather than suffer through days of on-air solicitations.  I already paid!  Gimme my radio back!

It occurs to me that an online newspaper would be able to do exactly that.

Stephan Wolfram recent announced his latest endeavor: Wolfram|Alpha.  Where Google will search the Internet to answer your queries, Wolfram|Alpha will calculate the answer.  Where Google gives you 287,000 results for "what is the longest straight road in America," Wolfram|Alpha will give you one: the answer.

At least, that's the plan.  We won't really know until May.

The UW student newspaper, The Daily, posted an article today about an overdue library book.  Ralph Day Major checked out Antigone by Sophocles; it was due back to the Suzzallo Library on 5 March, 1909.  Overdue by exactly 100 years, it was returned to the library yesterday by Ralph's great-niece, Katie Dale.

The library waived the $18,000 late fee. 

While working on the code for the photo galleries for this Web site, noticed that my photos didn't always look right in Internet Explorer.  Given all the headaches that Internet Explorer has caused me over the years, I figured it was just IE performing poorly.  Little did I know that IE had the ability to look just as good as Firefox, Safari or Chrome but that some designer back at Microsoft had saddled it with an Idiotic Default Setting.

Anyone who has traveled with even the smallest pile of tech-gadgets has realized that you must haul a much larger pile of charging accessories to keep that tech operational.  While the gadgets may get smaller, rarely do the chargers budge in size.  That may be about to change as the GSMA recently announced a standard universal charger for cell phones.

Alleluia!  The future is here!  Or... will be here in 2012 when the standard is supposed to be widely adopted.

My apologies for not having written in so long.  My friend, Amanda Castleman, roped me into TA'ing an online Blogging class she was teaching -- "I need a techie's perspective!" -- and that has taken up all my free time recently.  Seems she ran off to Palau on an assignment for Sport Diver Magazine -- diving tropical reefs, kayaking unknown atolls and hanging in 4-star accommodations with seemingly little internet access.  Ahh, the life of the travel writer.  At least I know who'll be buying the beer when she gets back to town!

Anyhow, back to our regularly scheduled Web site, already in progress...

There are a lot of awesome photos of Obama's recent Inauguration, but this one is amazing.  It's a 1.5 giga-pixel panorama shot.  Yes, that's giga-pixel!