CiteULike

Useful for those who need to keep track of all the papers they read or will read.

Gmail Tips

A few obvious tips, and some very not not-so-obvious ideas.

Look at Gmail Tip #38: Google Gmail Minibrowser. Makes gmail almost as easy to access as using your POP/IMAP mail.

Weather Report

From Whistler's weather page: "Sunny sunshine with sunny periods."

I guess it's better than "Rainy rain with showers."

Spring

Spring is arriving. Not only are the snowdrops and crocuses out, but buds are showing on trees, the grass is growing again, and some how the parsley and begonias survived the unusually cold winter and are now making a comeback. The grass has started to grow again too.

I still have a pass for Whistler and some passes to use up at Cypress, which is looking pretty dismal.

[Notice that every single year, the local news features a story on Canadian Tire selling out of snow shovels when it snows in this city, or Home Depot running out of fans when the temperature soars? This is my version.]

Blogs + Wiki = Drupal

Ahhh, Drupal, how long we have waited for you...You will help us manage our personal lives, professional lives and social lives.

OK, maybe that is an exageration, but from someone who attempts to manage her entire life via email, a better tool is needed. Come on, who doesn't store some, if not all their contact information, todo's, and projects files and status in emails or email attachments? I've tried using blogs to store info also, but I just found web-based email the best. Then I started working in teams, so we tried Wiki, which is a great tool, but really it is works best for static pages. Drupal seems to be promising, and our CSCW class is using it, partly as an experiment in collaborative work).

...still waiting for your standard internet provider to allow you to run PHP.
...still looking for the next killer app.

The Wagon

After 23 years, it's finally time to say goodbye. The insurance on my family's 1982 Buick Regal Estate Wagon expires on Monday, and it is going to the scrap heap.

It still runs great, but it just failed AirCare. I'm very sad. It was a beautiful blue-green silver -- Jadestone Green, on the invoice. 5.0L V-8 engine. Loaded with features - A/C, 8-way power seats, power locks and windows, power steering, intermittent wipers (real intermittent wipers, not the ones with 2 settings), automatic headlights, auto-off defrost, and an _FM_ radio. Yep. No tape deck though. That would have been extra.

It needed very little work. Just replaced the starter once, and some electrical components. I still love driving it. It's just so smooth at highway speeds. You get used to the shaking when it starts up, not being able to use the driver side mirror, and not having the defogger work.

I have memories of going on trips with my cousins, sitting in the back playing "Star Wars" or "Battlestar Galactica", pretending the cars behind us were enemy TIE fighters. In those days, no one thought you were a bad parent for loading your car with six kids and no seat belts. My fondest memory must be when five of my closest highschool friends took the wagon camping at Long Beach. Six people, 6 backpacks, 3 tents, 2 coolers and a stove in and on the car, driving on the ferry, and over the island highway.

Since then, that car has taken my bikes, skis and snowboards on various adventures, and helped me and my friends move many times - I think the record in one trip was 4 chairs, a dresser, an endtable, a lamp, a coatrack and a queensize mattress and boxspring.

A great car. They don't make them like that any more.

Better Building Blocks for Software?

Why are we still creating software by coding? You don't have to saw your own lumber or make your own bricks to build a house, so why are we still writing code? OK, so we have libraries, etc, but I'm thinking of something even more advanced than that. Say you want to add Bayesian filtering to your email program. Why can't I just take an off-the-shelf module, configure it and plug it in?

I don't know much about aspect-oriented programming, but it seems to address a few similar problems.


Adding Bayesian filtering to email seems natural. It is so good at removing spam, now how about applying it to sort our cluttered inboxes? After creating a few folders to store messages, the filter can be be trained to sort your mail for you, and you should have the option of automatic sorting, or having the messages remain in your inbox, with buttons to move the message to the most likely folders.

One of my pet peeves is Google's Gmail 'search, don't sort' paradigm. We categorize things to help us understand, store, browse and find. On the other hand, they do provide a labelling feature, which is nicer than folders as emails often belong to more than one category.