XMPP Intro podcasts Joe Hildebrand of Jabber Inc, and Marshall Rose talk about XMPP in a series of podcasts. Here is the first XMPP talk and second XMPP talk podcasts. This is a good overview for people unfamiliar with XMPP, and who'd like to know more.

Brown Library Entrance

Rusty fence

GhostRider
Ghost Rider videos are supposedly the latest sensation in Europe. I really couldn't understand what the heck was going on until I saw the trailers for the Ghost Rider movies. They're all pretty good, but my favorite has to be Trailer 1 for Ghost Rider -- The final Ride (QuickTime).

This guy is absolutely nuts, but talented. According to the forums on the GR website, GR has never been caught. Swedish law mandates that he has to be caught while out running the police otherwise they can't do anything about it. Oh yeah, the modified, carbon Suzuki GSX-R is impressive in itself.

Japanese rush hour traffic
I saw People Packer off of HotLinks. It's pretty funny unless you're the poor sap trying to get onto the train. I was that poor sap for a while.

I used to take the Toyoko line to work which runs from Yokohama into Shibuya. My stop, Yutenji, was a mere two stops from Shibuya which means that there were already a ton of people on the train coming from Yokohama in the morning.

Tokyo is also a really muggy city during the summer so when those trains pull up, the windows can be wet with the moisture from the people breathing in the subway car. Unlike in NY, most of the trains in Tokyo have very good air conditioners but they can't keep up with the load.

A rational but naive person would take one look at the train, and just decide that they'd wait for the next train which is bound to be there in about 2 minutes. Unfortunately, the next train will be just as packed. I've been the dumb foreigner who tried waiting for the next train (even the packed Japanese people were laughing at me for my foolish attempt to out smart the inevitable.)

Since Yutenji is a pretty small station, there aren't any train station personnel to push people into the train. My favorite technique for getting on the train was to turn my back to the open door, grab at the inside of the door, and then just push back the people with my body.

Good times.

Flower Sampling

Sunday Walk Today was another beautiful day in Providence, Rhode Island. I took the trusty camera out for a spin. The sky was just as blue as can be with nice fluffy, white clouds everywhere.

Yellow Sign

Faking Lomo I was browsing around yesterday for good photoblogs when I came across Tracey's photoblog, Shutterbug. I think a good chunk of her images are amazing.

I noticed she took her earlier pictures with the same camera that I use, the Sony DSC-F505V. She has a really cool effect on some of her images that resembles pictures taken with a Lomo. Tracey was kind enough to point me to the following tutorial for producing the effect.

I took some ordinary photos that I had laying around and applied the effect. I'm pretty happy with the results.

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Bad Signs We were looking for a good photo of the Capital Building and the near by area, and this was the best we could do. Right by RISD. Wes had a neck cramp and could only take pictures looking straight up. Right next to the center of Brown University we found some very New England like buildings. What are the odds of that happening? Rusty brown color was everywhere we looked today. So were the Fallout Shelters in downtown Providence.