Cool!

Mythbusters did a "cpu vs gpu" demo at NVISION this week.

I want a paint gun like this!

www.youtube.com/watch
(Look at the related videos to see the whole demonstration)

I really want their job too.

Social networking

So once upon a time there was friendster. I remember almost nothing about friendster except that once I decided to leave it, it became more like the ex boyfriend that wouldn't leave me alone. It kept e-mailing me begging me to come back and see some improvements. I think there was orkut in this time frame too but I only remember the name.

Then came live journal which I still adore as a great way to keep in touch with friends from college. Many of us have moved all over california, a few to penn, seattle, and another to florida, so lj is an easy way for me to keep up with them. I might have signed up for myspace around this time too only because some of the stormriders convinced me that it was really cool... or maybe I ignored them and waited awhile before I signed up. And while myspace is great for random amusing messages from guys i've never met and never will, I've never found much use in myspace.

Then was grad school and facebook opened up to a few schools, Stanford being one of them. It was incredibly useful. You could see what schedules people had, rate professors, and find other students in your class. While I was reluctant to sign up for yet another social networking site, I came to really like this one until I graduated.

My interest in facebook faded when I entered the real world and same with my social networking except for lj. Fast forward a couple years, and I start partying in LA again and I find tribe. I really really really like the layout of tribe. This is one social networking site that not only seems useful but has a large number of great features and does them all well. Ok, well, until it keeps breaking. Damn you tribe! You had/have potential. And while it picked up greatly in the burner/party/belly dancing scenes, I haven't seen many other people talk about it which surprises me.

So there is in an interest in facebook again to make up for tribe. I sign back in to find facebook completely transformed. There are a large number of dumb applications that you can add that really just waste time and clutter everything. It went from a pretty useful social networking site to a pretty useless one. And there have been others lately, tribe refugees, plaxo to organize them all, linkedIn to connect all of the people that you used to work with so that if you ever look for another job, you have a huge list of contacts, going.com for the party scene etc, etc, etc. But the thing that amazes me is the interest in facebook. When I started going back to grad school (again), I find the Stanford cs profs pushing facebook as a place to discuss class lectures. Web 2.0 seminars are using facebook as the example of social networking becoming the norm. According to a friend from Berkeley, Randy Katz gives Dave Patterson (of Hennessy and Patterson) endless amounts of shit for not being on facebook. (Ok, sorry, big geek points if you know those names or you can wikipedia them). Coworkers that I wouldn't expect to be into social networking are there. My spinning coach posts the music from each workout on her facebook page. I'm not sure what exactly they did right, but it completely amazes me that everywhere I go in silicon valley these days, I see more and more references to facebook which I think has gone from a pretty useful site to an incredibly annoying one.

I guess this is just a really really long post to mention the fact that I really seem to have no clue what aspects will draw people to a networking site. It's fun to watch society as it ebbs and flows through them though.

tmi

One of the amusing things about working with a bunch of male engineers is that any time I wear a skirt or dress or really anything other than jeans and a t-shirt, I get guys asking me all day what the special occasion is. Usually it is nothing and I'm just amused that they still ask me.

However, I re-injured my right shoulder this weekend hiking half dome. It's nothing serious and it is already starting to feel a lot better but yesterday the doctor put me in a sling and I realized just how difficult it is to zip up my jeans with only my left hand while trying not to move my right arm. Why do all jeans open to the right?! Today I learned my lesson and put on a skirt and again I am bombarded with questions. While it is probably not really work appropriate to tell them that it is hard to zipper up jeans without help right now, I'm finding it really difficult to resist the urge to say it.

Fire! Fire! Fire!

One of the perks of living up here is having the crucible so close. I went to the Fire Arts Festival last night and saw so much fire. Of course the Fire Vortex was there as the flaming scuptures that were around the oil derricks from last year's burn and the steampunk tree house and a bunch of other bm art.

But there were fire dancers and firewhips and fire everywhere and huge tesla coils. Also a flamenco group and a rock band that were ok. And trapeeze artists. I think I just want to run away and be a carney :-p. Also I fell in love (again) with the UNMATA belly dance group. I've seen them before but I'd forgotten how much I really liked them.

Here's part of their show:
www.youtube.com/watch
www.youtube.com/watch

It makes me want to pick up belly dancing again (though I doubt I'll ever be at their level).

I definately had the wide eyed kid in the candy store look last night.

I want to dance with Matt

This makes me smile:

Where the hell is Matt 2008.
www.vimeo.com/1211060

And I just climbed that pyramid in Teotihuacan, Mexico 3 weeks ago.

:-D

I think that xkcd has been drinking from the same water bottle as me lately. You can partially blame the discovery channel: www.youtube.com/watch

Life is good. Happy Friday! I can't wait until I get to see some of you at Caladan this weekend.