meadmaker

I took a trip to Hampi (/'h&mp - E/, or "humpee") yesterday. I've posted the photos here. I haven't written it up yet; I'll do that later.

Yesterday I took a chartered bus trip around Mysore, Karnataka, India. ( Hey look, a monkey! )

So, that was my day trip to Mysore. The photos are at Flickr. It's now 2:30, and I'm going to see if I can take in Bangalore's Lal Bagh gardens.

Today is a wonderful spring morning in the Boston area. I woke up this morning to 55 degrees Fahrenheit, with a forecast high of 65. (Yesterday's high was technically 51, but that happened at night; during the day it was mostly in the 30's.) Tonight, there's even a chance of thunderstorms - I loved thunderstorms when I lived in Missouri.

This has put me in such a good mood that I've even brightened up at least one person's morning so far. So I'm wishing anyone who reads this a good morning as well!

Onions are now officially on the FAA no fly list. This amuses me to no end.

I want to give a sincere thank you to vapidblackrose, and badseed1980 and pierceheart, who visited me last Friday and Saturday nights, respectively. After two weeks of being alone with just myself and the little guy, it was great to have some adult company.

Thank you very much.

Dang, this is cool. This site will perform a search on amazon.com for keywords you enter, then graph the results of that search on a grid with two axes: average rating, and the number of ratings. The idea is, of course, that the average rating will be more accurate with more ratings in the average. This effectively plots consumer satisfaction versus rating accuracy.

Once you perform the keyword search, you can begin narrowing the results. There's a slider to set the price range. There's a tree structure to narrow the categories - so that you get, say, digital cameras and not books about digital cameras.

This is an incredible example of an application that takes existing data - the Amazon ratings - and turns it into information - something that humans can understand. Kudos to DeJarnet Consulting!

I just wrote this up for my sister, so I thought I'd share it with anyone else who cares.

EDIT:This is written for a basic consumer. Your needs may vary! Here's my original note describing ( what different terms mean, and what to care about )

Now, on to the ( Black Friday laptop deals! )

Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church - the "God Hates Fags" people who protest at such venues as the funerals of babies who have died of AIDS related complications, military funerals, etc. - have just been held liable in a civil lawsuit for $2,900,000 in compensatory damanges plus $8,000,000 in punative damages. This more than bankrupts the organization - the compensatory damages alone would do that.

On one hand, I'm quite happy that the assholes have received a smackdown. I vehemently disagree not only with their message, but with their delivery.

On the other hand, the legal implications bother me a little. The idea of freedom of speech means that you're allowed to say something entirely unpopular yet be legally supported in doing so. This says that if your unpopular idea can be emotionally distressing, your speech might not be guarded.

Of course, from what I know of the WBC people, the likelihood is that they went far beyond polite picketing. These people likely went in for up-in-your-face verbal assaults, trespassing, invasion of privacy, and other forms of uncultured behavior. I don't have any details beyond that article, but I'd not be surprised if it turns out that they stepped over the line from "saying something unpopular" toward the classic "yelling fire in a crowded theater" public nuisance, or toward personal attacks and abuse. They don't seem to have a lot of respect, nor taste.

I didn't quite cry, but this article definitely makes you think about it. The overall sad part of the article is about the Chinese government attempting to control the Buddhist religion; the first line made me laugh out loud.

Thanks to skitten for the link.