we've only, uh, gone to Mars

February 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I was talking to a professor today and he asked me where I worked. I told him JPL, and it didn't ring a bell. "The Jet Propulsion Lab," I tried. "Is that on campus?"

No, it's not. And it's only been in the news pretty much constantly in the past month for having a pair of rovers operating on the surface of Mars. But who would have heard of that?

so i wrote a paper, but it's not that paper

February 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Last night / this morning I wrote a paper on blogging. It was for the assignment I mentioned a week ago. Nothing from this draft will end up in the final. I've mulled this paper for a week and a half now having no clue what it was that I was actually going to write. I thought I had a good idea, but the step that turns that magic idea into a bit of reality with a thesis was nowhere to be found.

So I wrote this draft. It's a decently written piece, but it's not this paper.

Then I took a shower, and instantly knew what I wanted to write. My real problem was that I had two papers fighting in my head.

In one, I would write about how I felt that the first few years of the Internet were us sort of doing things just because they could be done. "Wooo! The Internet's global!" we said, and we reveled in the fact that we could now order cds from Sweden and chat with people in Spain. The global information economy ruled. Then a couple years later we looked around and saw that 90% of our lives weren't global. When I go grab a bite to eat it's here, in LA. When I go to a movie it's here, in LA. When I go see music it's here, in LA. And my thesis would be that sites like blogging.la and LA Blogs and others like them are a response to that 90%.

I'm not writing that paper either.

My second paper would couch itself in a narration. It would look at the LA.comfidential controversy and say, why are these bloggers so uptight about a corporation trying to sneak into their club? What is it they're trying to protect or worried to lose? Why can't a corporation write a blog? Tony Pierce seems to always be talking about wanting to do it. Yeah, sure, he sees the downsides, but when has that ever stopped anyone?

This is the paper I'm writing. It'll go better now that we have that out of the way.

it's go time

February 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I have a draft due tomorrow for my blogging paper I mentioned a few days ago. As of right now I couldn't really tell you much about where it's going. I feel like I'm right on the edge of the thesis that sparks the entire paper.

But I don't have it yet.

First off, I need to make a case for why blogs are significant. Then I need to say why it's important that a bunch of bloggers are centering their sites around their real-world location. Here are the type of notes I keep writing myself:

Geography contextualizes what you have to say into a frame of reference where I can relate to it and understand it.

It'll be interesting... After tomorrow I have a good week and a half before the final's due, so I'm sure there will definitely be a lot of revision and realignment between now and then.

mmm... cheap

February 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I'm looking to buy an extra battery for my laptop. Right now I get about three and a half hours from one battery, so I figure getting into the 6 - 7 hour range will basically free me up to go unplugged all day. My laptop doesn't support having two batteries in at once, so it would be a deal where I would have to suspend to disk and swap them, but other than the hassle of switching them out to charge, that's not too big of a deal. Toshiba has the battery I need for $99. That's not bad at all. What's surprising is that their price is by far the lowest I can find. CDW, where I normally look for low prices, has the same battery for $140. Odd. Toshiba also has 256MB of RAM for $79, so if it turns out I've got an open slot (which I'm pretty sure I do, I'll most likely pick that up too.