I've setup a minimal search page that uses a Yahoo Pipe to sort of search through my content. I say sort of search because I only get full text search over my recent item feeds and
otherwise I just search over my tags.
To get real search I'm going to have to keep an archive of all my content on my own website. This is a pain but on the other hand it will let me easily backup my content or display old items on my page. Why didn't I just use a prebuilt solution?
More ideas stolen from me in the same vein as my stolen OpenID thoughts.
Fast
Pedestrian Crossing on Four Way Stops. In college I didn't have a car and every weekend I had weekly poker with friends who lived nearby so I would end up waiting to cross from one corner of a
traffic lit four way stop to the opposite corner. Waiting there in the cold gave me plenty of time to consider the fastest method of getting to the opposite corner of a four-way stop. My plan was
to hit the pedestrian crossing button for both directions and travel on the first one available. This only seems like a bad choice if the pedestrian crossing signal travels clockwise or counter
clockwise around the four way stop. In those two cases its better to take the later of the two pedestrian signal crossings, but I have yet to see those two patterns on a real life traffic stop. I
decided recently to see if my plan was actually sound and looked up info on traffic signals. But the info
didn't say much other than "its complicated" and "it depends" (I'm paraphrasing). Then I found some guy's analysis of this problem. So I'm done with this and I'll continue pressing both
buttons and crossing on the first pedestrian signal. Incidentally on one such night when I was waiting to cross this intersection I heard a loud multi-click sound and realized that the woman in the
SUV waiting to cross the intersection next to me had just locked her doors. I guess my thinking-about-crossing-the-street face is intimidating.
Windows Searching
Windows Media Center Recorded TV's Closed Captions. An Ars-Technica article on
a fancy DVR described one of the DVRs features: full text search over the subtitles of the recorded TV shows. I thought implementing this for Windows Media Center recorded TV shows and Windows
Search would be an interesting project to learn about video files, and extending Windows Search. As it turns out though some guy, Stephen Toub implemented Windows Search over MCE closed captions already. Stephen Toub's article is very long and describes some
other very interesting related projects including 'summarizing video files' which you may want to read.
Sarah and I went down to California at the end of last month for a Thanksgiving visit with my parents. We visited the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium (fun fact: the aquarium scenes in Star Trek IV were filmed here) and saw many jelly fish. We wandered around Capitola where we visited many local
shops and ate on the wharf. We shopped in Carmel and ate at the Forge in the Forest (fun fact: Clint Eastwood was the mayor of this city in the late
80s). We visited the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk which was very cold and closed.
My parents took us out to dinner on the first night and the rest of the nights we ate dinner at their house. They had the Shelton's over and I got
to see Chris and Alison. It was fun to talk with them and catch up since its been quite a while since I'd seen them.
We stayed in the lovely beach house of our family friend's the Goodwins.
My parents have been helping them fix it up and decorate it and it looks great. It was quite a treat staying in a house right on the ocean. Also of note, this was the first trip on which I was old
enough to rent the car and accordingly I did all of the driving. This trip was very fun and relaxing.
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Cadbury yawns.
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From: David Risney
Views: 1165
 
5 ratings
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| Time: 00:10 | More in Pets & Animals |
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Cadbury hears something, slowly.
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From: David Risney
Views: 94
1 ratings
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| Time: 00:15 | More in Pets & Animals |
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