I’m working full time Mon-Fri as an intern to the Streaming Media Manager of Academic Media Production Services (AMPS), educational technology for the MIT community: video production and post-production, online video, distance education, multimedia and video conferencing.

We capture and publish streaming video for students at MIT as well as two universities in Singapore that are affiliated through the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA).

Some pictures I took of the room I’m going to be spending most of my time in for my internship at MIT this semester. The James Cromwell looking guy is my supervisor and the girl is another student from school. I plan to take more pictures during the coming months.

This is the first in a continuing series.  A brave explorer known as Parkey Parkinson embeds himself right in the midst of a certain gigantic spring party at a certain university.

His findings will be displayed here exclusively at NineCents.

Here’s a video clip compiled from a bunch of pictures and videos I took from the Memorial Day BBQ early this summer.  Enjoy!

Date:  May 24, 2008
Place:  Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
Music:  “California Sun” covered by the Ramones

I forgot who I was talking to a while ago, but I think I talked to someone briefly about a paintball sentry gun video clip that was on YouTube.  Anyways, here is the clip:

We’re that much closer to being able to play Team Fortress in real life.  SPY SAPPIN’ MAH SENTRY!

Over the Fourth of July weekend, I visited some family in San Jose, California.  While I was there, my uncle brought me to one of his dragonboat competition practices.

“What is dragonboat,” you say?  Basically, it is a watercraft paddling competition or sport.  Pictured below is a typical team:

Typical dragonboat team.  From left to right: one steerer, a team of 20 paddlers, and one caller/drummer.

Competative races vary in length, from short bursts to long endurance trials.  The sport is also a very high intensity work-out, with emphasis on cardio and back muscles.  Here are some short clips I took of my uncle’s team (the Bay Area Dragons):

Above: Team is loaded and ready to head out.

Above: The team working it’s way back towards the starting area.

The sport is pretty much in its beginning stages in the United States, as there are only a few teams from predominantly the West and East coasts.  Additionally, there are competitions held with various teams around the world, including India, Singapore, Japan, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Australia, England, Canada, and South Africa.  The United States has participated in a few of these competitions as well.

More information about dragonboating can be obtained from here:
http://bayareadragons.org/

wow….

I do a lot of multitasking on my computer, and I am frequently moving my mouse to the taskbar to click the “Show Desktop” icon. I switch back and forth between windows a lot, and need to get to icons on my desktop all the time. I don’t know what made me think of it, but I googled “keyboard shortcut show desktop” and jumped to a wiki page full of keyboard shortcuts for all operating systems. There are a ton of commands that make everyday computing faster and more efficient. A good page to check out if you use a computer (lol who doesn’t?).

Table of Keyboard Shortcuts

Also, one they forgot to mention,

gives the user total control of the weather and the ability to manipulate peoples’ thoughts.

In a move meant to shore up the broad vote, it was announced today that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be the GOP’s Vice Presidential Nominee. She’s currently serving her first term as governor, but you may know her as the former mayor of Wasilla.

Personally, I see this VP pick as insulting. Yeah, McCain’s talking a good game about how she’s a “Washington outsider”, but come on. This pick has nothing to do with who would be best suited as VP, and everything to do with snatching votes from Hillary supporters who thought they were going to see a woman president. Are we so easily manipulated, America?

Sadly, the answer is yes. The Republican Party (of which I can currently affiliated, in the interest of full disclosure) is making a calculated gamble. They’ve had their pollsters and statisticians run the numbers, and think this will give them an edge against Obamarama. Quite frankly, I see the move as sleazy and tactless…But before you bitches start nailing me to the cross, let me state for the record I have no problem with a woman running the country. Or a black person. Or a Jewish person. Or a gay person. Or a Muslim person. Or even a fucking quadruple amputee who cheats on his wife with his male nurse.

I’m outraged because it’s no longer about who is best suited, or who has the best ideas. It’s about who the media throws in your face every day, and how they spin them. It’s about the impulse-issues that in the grand scheme of things don’t make a fucking lick of difference. It’s about false paradigms.
And now, it’s about gender or race or some other superfluous attribute that might help the electoral numbers. Isn’t she cute?

I’m not going to sit here and say I’m not voting for the Republican nominee because he pulled a cheap trick, latching his wagon to a broad. This has really reinforced my view that it’s all a game, it’s all a show. They’ll pander to us on the bullshit that doesn’t matter, and never even whisper to the public about the real issues. I cannot in good conscience lend my support to either major political party.

If you have any sick days left at work, you should take them sooner rather than later. In less than 2 weeks, CERN will be firing up their large hadron collider, possibly bringing an end to all existence.

In an attempt to probe deeper, and further our understanding of how the universe works, we’re going to smash atoms into each other at nearly the speed of light. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, better know as CERN, has built the biggest particle accelerator ever and will be flipping the switch on September 10th. Behold, the Large Hadron Collider:

What it’s supposed to do:Like I said, they’re going to use this beast to smash atoms into each other at almost the speed of light, but why? Well, inside the nucleus of an atom there are these things called Hadrons, and the only time they ever existed in an isolated state was a couple milliseconds after the Big Bang. So basically, these scientists want a peek at what the universe was like at it’s inception.

This thing actually runs for 17 miles under Geneva, and a bunch of other European towns. The staggering thing is, the scientists aren’t entirely sure what will happen when they turn it on. I mean, they’re only trying to re-create aspects of the Big Bang, the most violent explosion of energy and matter…uh, ever. Some of the eggheads seem to think the particle accelerator may result in black holes, strange matter, or even a tear in the space time continuum. I don’t know enough about quantum theory or sub-atomic particle physics to weigh in one way or the other, but there is the possibility of this revolutionizing science and maybe even giving us zero point energy propulsion (READ: FREE ENERGY), or even proving that there are other dimensions and the Multiverse model of the universe is correct.

Some Russian scientists seem to think the collider may open wormholes that time-travellers will pop out of. Aside from possibly causing paradoxes that end the universe in a confusing flash of light, that is just too fucking cool to pass up.

Concerns about the Doomsday Machine have been addressed in a lawsuit that you can read all about here: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx, but it looks like CERN will be going forward with the experiment. Personally, I would be disappointed if we didn’t give it a shot….Maybe it will finally lead to flying car technology.

If you want to learn more about CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, google it yourself you lazy bastard.

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