The hotel has both Ethernet and Wifi connections, but they cost $13 a day. So we are finally making some use of our Sprint mobile hotspot card. It gets only a 3G connection here, but the speed is passable for light internet use.
Yesterday was a long travel day. US Airways had a plane that could not come to Philadelphia from Florida due to weather; it would have been the one for us. They decided to assign another plane to our flight and this delayed departure. When we finally pushed off from the gate at about 6 pm EDT (the scheduled time was 3:45 pm EDT), we had to wait our turn for the runway, so we finally were airborne at 6:30 EDT. We did manage to land in San Diego at 9PDT. By the time we were at the hotel, we were pretty exhausted so I took one photo (to be posted here later) and then hit the pillow.
The day looks very promising today, weather wise. After a hearty breakfast, we are ready for some sightseeing, once M is back from the convention center, where she is registering for her conference.
OK, so I occasionally play around with the blog’s appearance. I just discovered this rather spectacular theme by visiting Amanda French’s website for a graduate course called Creating Digital History. I am gearing up mentally for some more frequent updates here, especially from our upcoming trip to San Diego/La Jolla (tomorrow to August 19). Yes, I know, I’ve promised frequent updates before. 🙂
There is a major solar storm that sent a plume Earth’s way. It will probably disrupt our electronics some time today.
It used to be that the ScribeFire extension was available only on Firefox. Well, here it is on Chrome. Hurray! (Conditional on this post appearing correctly, of course.)
Mathematical formula predicts clear favorite for the FIFA World Cup. OK, it’s a little hard to believe that people have been collecting this level of detailed ball-passing data, but I guess so much money is involved with soccer that it all makes sense.
Update: The prediction was correct. (I thought the final itself was a horrible match.)
I found this on Kottke.org. Link to the full article at end. It has good advice for web designers and web app designers for mobile applications, and it may well be good to think about for my own purposes as the Lyric Fest redesign work continues.
“Understanding users, anywhere, anytimeRechis said that Google breaks down mobile users into three behavior groups:
A. “Repetitive now”
B. “Bored now”
C. “Urgent now”The “repetitive now” user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.
The “bored now” are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don’t offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.
The “urgent now” is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries.”
via Google Lays Out Its Mobile User Experience Strategy – Mobile Blog – InformationWeek.
Few Are Coming to See Greeces Modern Olympic Ruins – WSJ.com. So now we have the ancient ruins and the folly of 2004 ruins. Nice.
As of today, version 3.0 of WordPress is released. I upgraded the blog and shifted it to the new default Theme, which I find very appealing.
This infographic gives a nice perspective on the ongoing disaster in the Gulf. HT to Mona Nomura, on whose posterous blog I first saw it.