Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Sometimes I just have to tell my legs, "Keep on walking."
 
Thms Atl: i interviewed chris klein today. seems like a nice guy but not the brightest lightbulb in the world
 
Things I Learned in College
 
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Speaking of Space...

-----Original Message-----
From: Shader, Josh
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 6:18 PM
To: Nick Gray
Subject: RE:

We just brought in our first project - and have 3 more on deck...

From Variety:

Herz tunes in to pic for Terra Firm Films
Shingle hatches space station thriller
By MICHAEL FLEMING

After getting Universal to the altar with an overall deal following "American Wedding," Adam Herz has made his first project purchase. Dave Callaham has been set to write an untitled thriller for Herz, who has named his U-based company Terra Firma Films.

Pic is described only as a thriller that revolves around the international space station, and Terra Firma co-presidents Greg Lessans and Josh Shader will shepherd the pic and produce with Herz. Herz, who is also writing a comedy that he plans to direct for the shingle, said the new project fits with the company philosophy of hatching projects internally and then matching them with hot writers.

"I'm expecting people to wonder what the hell we're doing developing a thriller set in Earth's orbit," he said. "Part of that answer is that thrillers operate much like comedies do. In a comedy, you grab people by their funny bone and keep tickling. In thrillers, you grab them somewhere else and keep squeezing."

Callaham's first spec, "Horesemen," was bought by Focus for Radar and Platinum Dunes to produce. He's scripting "Doom" at Warner Bros. for producers John Wells and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and has a blind script deal at WB to follow. U's Mary Parent and Damien Saccani will supervise the space-station thriller.

Related Links: My American Pie 3 Fan Site
 
Testimony of Elon Musk before the House Science Committee's Subcommittee on Space and AeronauticsIt is common knowledge that the US space launch industry is fundamentally uncompetitive. An appropriate comparison one could draw is the US auto industry of the 1970's, prior to entry of the Japanese.
 
My Blogthis button is broken, so Chris, here is the article we talked about.
 
Government interaction with the arts in America is tentative, wrought with controversy and half-hearted.
 
80's song: I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me
 
FYI, I've spent the last week reading The Mark Cuban Weblog almost every day.
 

Andrew Estel was the first person that I met at WFU

 
Note to self - Rent the movie N Is A Number, a documentary about math genius Paul Erdos.
 

Yesterday (today- it's 1:22AM) was a great day. Here's a scan of the USA Today article on BuddyGopher. Skipped class and ate well to reward.

Here are some server graphs (Ryan MySQL w00t). The first shows the number of screen names on our array (top line) against the number of users currently signed on (bottom line). This graph has about two weeks history. The second graph shows the number of away messages collected since we started. You'll see us reaching new highs today- 276,263 unique away messages per day at last count. (You can check the bottom of our home page for a live number.)

buddygopher stats buddygopher stats

Special thanks to the Wake Forest News Service for all of their help. I'm very pleased with how the article turned out. Now I've just got to pass my classes and graduate.

 
Monday, March 29, 2004
She is the AIM Today today window *** secre{t
we're both in cars
roomie is right- She's worth it not to flatline.
 
Sunday, March 28, 2004
USATODAY.com - Students have 'away' with words yay
 
A state of mine
 
Reason - It's All Bad NewsChaos in liberated Iraq, per blogdex
'It was not the wrong guy,' said the units commander defensively, shifting blame elsewhere. 'We raided the house we were supposed to and arrested the man we were told to.' Meanwhile Army intelligence was still confounded by the meaning of the intercepted conversations until somebody realized it was not a terrorist intent on obtaining weapons. It was a kid playing video games and talking about them with his friend on the phone.
 
down two doors is Omar Qari's L.O.G.G.
At 9 AM this morning, I woke up to take a phone interview with a bank in the United Arab Emirates. If nothing else, it was quite a life experience. Aside from the Arabic and the foreign banking terminology, it seemed to go well. I haven't written about any of my other interviews, but this one was just an eye opener in terms of realizing how business inside the US is really nothing like business on the outside. I think leaving here to work abroad, outside of a US multi-national, would undermine everything my parents came to this country for. I should reevaluate what I need to be doing after graduation.
 
for internal use only
 

my rides through chernobyl area per slashdot

My name is Elena, I run this site and I don't sell anything in here and to tell the true, I don't have anything to sell. What I do have is my bike and this absolute freedom to ride it wherever curiosity and speed demon take me to.
 
Saturday, March 27, 2004

with the exception of the first photograph, all of these pictures were taken on my Canon G3 within the past five days

 
Badia rocks Christian old schol rap. "You can pick her CD up at Master's Love here in Winston. The girl used to live here, but now she's in Philly."
 
Friday, March 26, 2004
Baby You Look Hot in That Phone YES YES YES
 
Will there ever be domain portability, like phone numbers?
 
The Visual Thesaurus, a Dictionary of the English Language per Maigh
 

Microsoft Corp., 1978

 
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Today 3/25/04, I am excited about VOIP development for the digital delivery of voicemail to my mobile handset.
 
PiXiE Belle033: [AWAY] "Be who you are, say what you feel, because the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss
 

We're not going to abandon CDMA or GSM for mobile POTS, duh! Consider GPRS the heart of nearby value-added services.... (maybe? what is Sprint et al. doing for MMS?)

Today's voicemail experience is frustrating. I'm not going to talk at all....

(BARK!) Play messages. Erase. Erase. Done.
 
RE: VOIP for GPRS (or other), I think it is most iportant for voicemail.
 
Something to fall back on.
 
User Experience
 
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Alan English, last year's yearbook editor, is a Grade A cheating son of a bitch.
 
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
C.S.A. = Cocky Senior Attitude
 
Monday, March 22, 2004
Catering!
 

from the News & Record, Saturday March 20th page B2

 
It looks like BuddyGopher was mentioned on the Channel 2 news here - WFMY News2 - On-air Links
 
Sake-Drenched Postcards - Tokyo Hostess Interview Series (Part I)
 
Peter Payne Homepage: You've been in Japan too long when... (page 2)
 
The Hindsight Project
 
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Taming. It feels like a wild horse again!
 
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Can we grow pearls in space? A perfect sphere, every time.
 
A taser on your phone
Delivers a light shock
One prong by the ear
"Warn me" cell-u-liar!
 
I've got a dealer in Tokyo. I've got a rep in Paris.The album's mid-point, "Art Star," is a ferocious look at these hipsters oh-so-tragic lives -- indie-snob.diaryland.com
 


vidblog 10

This felt really, really good to make because I haven't done one in a while. I ran out of footage (and patience!) before completing the idea that this vidblog starts with, but that's the beauty here: zero accountability. I hope you enjoy the music and may my images entertain you. For previous vidblogs, see the open directory.

Maybe it will encourage my roommates Chris (his vidblog archive) and Zach (special Streets music vidblog) to post again? What about you, Megan? Windows Movie Maker is all that you need. And finally, don't get me started, Tiffany! her Paris vidblog

 
Did you know.... that you can press CTRL + A to see what time my entries here were posted?
 
Focus groups are everywhere! Thanks to a new BuddyGopherAway Messages are blogging for the college masses personal pledge sponsor. Grrrls that talk about cell phones and Japan = hotttt. You showed me your ringtones, and somehow they fucked up a classical polyphonic tune. We talked about a lot of fun things tonight and agreed that the AOL Buddy List needs to be an operating system for cellular telephones. Let's chat about the value of presence next time!
 
"They look like Arabs, I know they're not.... but right after 9/11 I began wondering, and I hate that whole thought process."

"When someone would ask about the diversity on campus, we were supposed to say that 47 states were represented."
 
Friday, March 19, 2004
Nick is buying me wine. He doesn't know I'm playing with DANGER. Listening to sweet hiphop alphabet A--Meg
 
from Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp
It's funny to realize that after all this, I spent over 6 years working for Nullsoft, Inc. (or its acquiror) -- this is nearly a quarter of my life so far, and a much higher percentage of my adult(ish) life -- and here I am, starting over.
 
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Nicholas Todd Gray
Free Agent
 
It's all about the group dinners.
 

browserhelper2.dll is a new piece of malware that modifies the 2nd through 5th results on your Google searches to direct towards their sponsored websites.

Props to HijackThis, a piece of software that was able to help track down the culprit. Hijack This is more like regedit; novice users should stick with Ad-aware to remove your spyware.

 
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Is litter marketing?
 
Fast Company - What the Heck Is Social Networking?
"A lot of people want to create a viral service. Friendster goes beyond this viral marketing that people talk about. It's something I call viral nagging. People get peer pressure from their friends to sign up, improve their profile, and change their photo. That's more powerful than anything I could do. Instead of a site like Match.com where you build a site and hope your friends find you, you build your site with them."
 
 
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
was he South Korea's Howard Dean?
 

Connected Ventures LLC | Big Shocker in Playboy

Congrats to the CV guys! This clip is from page 28 of this month's magazine.

 
I'm glad that Guinness is the authority on technology breakthroughs CNN.com - Guinness record for world's smallest disk drive - Mar 16, 2004 per Blake
 
Ember - Embedded Wireless Networking per Derek of Gambit Design
 
Monday, March 15, 2004

my first DRM experience

I've been waiting for this day! I've been waiting for, like, soooo long. Well, at least since we gushed about it at C.E.S. Blake told me about the big deal and I blushed. Remember when all those other people already had their experience, and I was sooo jealous? I knew it would happen when the time was right. Patience is what I was always taught, and finally, today I had my first DRM experience.

 
Zach, please read - Popular Science | Display Your Digital Wonderland per Slashdot
 
The death of data warehousing by Michael M Carter
 
Sunday, March 14, 2004
zach(ary) klein | Sailing Accident in The AbacosMisadventures make for good stories. I hope.
 

Onesixty, per smartmobs

 
Via smartmobs, I found this inspiring article - Asia Times Online - Little Smart 'cell' phone very, very smart in ChinaChina Telecom was quick to recognize that this quasi-mobile phone service offered a back door into the booming mobile market. It gave it a brand - Xiaolingtong or "Little Smart" - and priced it low enough to bring mobility to the masses.
 

Thomas Chau took Megan and I out to a NYC club (Lotus) and showed me a pizza place on Times Square. Here's a panoramic shot that he stitched from the top of the Empire State Building.

from the empire state building, by thomas chau

 
Saturday, March 13, 2004

All this talk of a new, spam-free email system gets me excited. While we're planning these fundamental changes, here's a flag I'd like to vote for: auto expiration and/or sender pull-back.

Group projects for class tend to contribute up to half of my day's incoming message count, as emails with active recipients invite team conversations. But when the Reply To All's turn from conversation (many-to-many) to broadcast (one-to-many), reader relevance rates begin to decline. I'll refer to messages from trusted sources whose relevant content is zero as friendly spam.

Friendly spam reaches me in two primary contexts: specific questions seeking a definite answer, and time-sensitive announcements. While the message is anticipated as urgent at the time of execution, once the question is answered or the time has passed, there is a sharp decrease in relevance and a general "I-Don't-Give-a-Fuck"ness prevails.

Soooo..... what?

 
Friday, March 12, 2004

a Gehry building under construction on the MIT campus - their new computer science center

 

laptop to projector is mecca work

 

Misconception: Evolution is like a climb up a ladder of progress; organisms are always getting better

"Evolution works on a good enough principle," heard in Robert Full's TED 2004 talk.

 

Housing, for every $200,000 = $40,000 down + $1,000/month per Casey, Financial Advisor

ricksterbot: but how many months???

shimmer303: thats a normal 30 year note in normal interest rates
shimmer303: about 5-6% now

 
I sat in on a Medical Computing class this morning. Intelligence replaces opulence in my new-experience travel reactions. Some call this campus the Silicon Valley of Biotech. Headquarters for the top companies are all around us; "We're cutting through the lobby of the Human Genome Project."
 

ricksterbot: bro
ricksterbot: this summer
ricksterbot: the color to watch is kelly green

 
I had a dream about the elements last night.
 
Thursday, March 11, 2004
BuddyGopher was mentioned in the March 5th edition of anil's daily links!! I had no idea until I checked Feedster. Yay BuddyGopher! FYI, Anil Dash is BizDev chief at Moveable Type
 
Casey works at Draper Labs, where Top-Secret government security means that I have to wait in the office lobby while he goes inside to check e-mail.
 
McNurlen rolls out the quotes today....
Academia is a feudal society. The undergrads are the serfs, grad students like me are the knights, professors are the barrons, then the deans, provost, etc are kings.
 
I have made a web gallery of my NYC photos. You can also download a zip file (12mb) of the higher-quality lot.
 

it is also the last known picture of my long hair

Above, a photo from the first day of gallery touring in Chelsea. More pictures to come, but Casey is being stingy with my Internet time.

 
Random thoughts from a conversation I had today with an experienced and anoymous entrepreneur:
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Zachary Klein
To: Nick Gray
Subject: Re: No excuse for brief updates
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:54:58 -0500

I will never send you another email again, in fear of its exploitation.
 
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
I am en route to visit Casey at M.I.T. for two days.
 
Guest peer blogger: Megan S.
Wow. Nick is currently in the process of getting his locks chopped by hair-stylist-to-the-stars, Oscar Blandi. I skimmed through the coffee table promotion book and was amazed at his CV. Apparently Sarah Jessica Parker, Cameron Diaz and J-lo are regulars at the Blandi salon here in the Plaza hotel. Shit--I've gotta give it to Nick. He just called Blandi back after he'd "finished" his masterpiece to argue with him about the quality of his cut. More strands falling to the floor.

Here I am watching, with my long, stringy, box-dyed hair hidden beneath a beanie, praying that Oscar-the-hair-God will take pity on me and give me a freebie. Not likely.