Patrick

The Washington Post decides to find out what happens when a world famous violinist (Joshua Bell) plays anonymously in the L'Enfant Plaza metro station.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

The only problem I see is that they did it during the AM rush hour. I think they would have had a much better response in the evening when people had more time to stop. I remember when I commuted to DC by metro and bus, a few minute delay could result in a domino effect of missed connections that would add an hour to my trip. I'd be much more likely to be late getting home then risk being late to work.

Happy New Year everyone!

A new dinosour has been named Dracorex hogwartsia, or The Dragon King of Hogwarts:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060522/hogwartsdino_din.html?source=rss

My How Stuff Works news feed just made a rather amusing error:

I suspect the text was intended to go with the next item on the list: How Holiday Shopping works.

(If you want to know how Geisha work, the link is http://people.howstuffworks.com/geisha.htm)

Got home from Manchester Saturday. I spent a week training our UK office and some staff from our Netherlands office on new software. The training went very well, and I had a great time on the trip.  Pictures are up at http://www.nalyd.com/photos/v/Manchester .A few highlights:

1. Manchester is not what I thought of when thinking of England.  Usually the ideas in my head are either of London or of a picturesque English Countryside.  Manchester was much more of an industrial, blue collar town.  In many ways it reminded me of Baltimore, except Baltimore does not have 800 year old Mansions.
2. One of the best parts of the trip was wandering through Ordsall Hall, a manor house that dates back to the early 1200s.  More information, and a Ghost Cam, are available at http://www.salford.gov.uk/leisure/museums/ordsallhall.htm .
3. I saw Harry Potter on Friday afternoon before I Came home.  I didn't make it to the 12:00 AM showing, but still saw it opening day.  The movie theater offered a choice between Salty or sweat popcorn.  I don't kow if it was just that theater or if it was common to the country, but I'd love for US theaters to do the same.
4. They was a lot of building going on, including a major expansion to the Manchester United Stadium.  They needed to expand the stadium after a law was passed requiring that there be seats available for ecery spectator who was admitted to the stadium.  This law apparently cut the number of fans they could accommodate by 30-50 percent.
5. I got tired of fried meat very quickly.
6. Coffee in most restraunts and the Hotel was very weak.  In many cases you could see the bottom of the full cup, making it look like you were drinking tea.  It was rather amusing to watch one coworker from Italy try the espresso.
7. The special characters that are supposed to make your password stronger can be very challenging to type on non keyboards with a different layout then what you are used to.
   

New York Underground. A look at the underground structures and infrastructure that lies beneath NYC.

Thinking Machine 4:

Chess program that maps out all the moves the computer is considering while it is thinking.

Time Magazine just put out a list of "The top 100 novels of all time". "All time" being 1923 to present...

The Complete List | TIME Magazine - ALL-TIME 100 Novels

I suspected Lord of the Rings and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, would be on the list, but was pleasantly surprised to see both Snow Crash and Nuromancer listed as well.

Finally uploaded my pictures from my trip to Kuala Lumpua. They are at http://nalyd.com/photos/v/kl-trip

Wow! One of the tortoises that Darwin collected from the Galapagos Islands is still alive at 175 years old.