mapping wifi, but not really

February 19, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Alan wrote today about Google's new search by location and how you can use that to search for wi-fi access. Theoretically, that may be the case, but results for my area show that things are far spottier than they appear in Grand Rapids. Let's look at this search for wi-fi near 90007:


  • The first result, 555 Washington St., is in neither of the web results google lists for it. The closest thing it finds in the free wifi hotspots locations list is a different number on Washington St in Monterey. The 555 Washington address wasn't in the zagats pdf either.

  • Second result was a complete dud... One result that doesn't contain the address, and one file not found.

  • Third result same problems... Fourth and fifth are in New York, as are results seven, nine, and ten.

  • So in our first ten results we've got a Boba Loca (the URLs don't work, but I do know it's there and may well have wifi (most likely pay)) and the Omni Hotel downtown.

    • It's a cool idea, but yeah... Not really functional yet. It looks like having a lot of addresses on the same page just throws it for a loop. It's google, though, so I know they've got people a lot smarter than me trying to figure this out.

    dreary days

    February 19, 2004 by Eric Richardson

    LA's not doing too well on the weather front right now. Yesterday was chilly and rainy. Saturday and Sunday weather.com is saying we're going to get more. And then again next week. Normally when it's nice I'd be setting up shop in my office on campus, enjoying the sun while getting some work done. But that's hard to do in this weather. I end up working from my apartment instead. What I really need is something like Founders in GR.


    LA has a lot of great old bar/resturants (I went there for lunch on Monday) but what I can't seem to find is that same kind of place, but with wireless. Alan's list of free wifi in Grand Rapids is pretty extensive. Where's that same list for LA?

    skipping as usual

    February 17, 2004 by Eric Richardson

    I'm skipping out on watching Bullets over Broadway right now in my Post-Modernism class in order to check out the Veritas Forum at USC. Dallas Willard is speaking tonight. So I figure in a choice between him and Woody Allen, the former is a little more important. Add this to the films I need to rent in the next few weeks.

    and i'm back

    February 17, 2004 by Eric Richardson

    I took a trip to nowhere for the last week or so. I think I got busy, but really the time just sort of disappeared and all of sudden I was here now and it was gone and ... uhhh... yeah.


    Saturday the waterski team took its first trip out for the semester, braving the 54 degree waters of Lake Elsinore. Weather was crappy in the morning, but cleared out for the afternoon leaving sunny skies and glassy water.


    Saturday night Kathy and I went to Tesoro Tratteria for Valentines dinner. OpenTable was my best friend in the hunt for a resturant, along with the Downtown News resturant guide. They were out of the crab cakes in the second course, but other than that I was pretty satisfied. Off their special Valentines menu I had the PUREÈ OF GOLDEN CHANTERELLE SOUP, the AHI TUNA TARTARE ON TOAST POINT, the SAFFRON FETTUCCINE WITH LOBSTER AND MUSSELS, and finally the RASPBERRY CHOCOLATE MOUSSE HEART (sorry about the caps... i'm just copying and pasting).


    Sunday night we hit up Genghis Cohen to see Yardley, which is now starting to actually look like a band with the addition of drummer Stuart Johnson (formerly of the New Radicals). Lee Beth had to fight through having an unplugged monitor and not being able to hear herself, but she did just fine.


    Monday Magilla and I walked around downtown, looking for an apartment for next year. Our leading candidate right now is Premiere Towers, on Spring between 6th and 7th. They have 2br/2ba for $1300, which would be ridiculous a lot of places, but is cheap in LA. City Park wants $1820 next year for less space and crappier facilities.


    And I think that brings us up to date. Whew.

    coding philosophies

    February 11, 2004 by Eric Richardson

    I'm doing some contract work these days, just really getting started into it. We were going through some stuff on the phone last week, with them just giving me a bit of feel for the context of the code I'll be working in. The code's broken up into layers, with layer 4 being the user interface and layer 1 being the database. Layer 2 is low-level db calls, etc, while layer 3 is sort of layer 2 glue. Yadd yadda yadda...


    Anyway, what I found interesting was that they wanted me to start in Layer 2, building all the low-level db calls, and then only once all of that was done to start on level 3.


    There's nothing wrong with that approach, I guess, but it just struck me that it was completely backwards of how I tend to write software. The first thing I do is prototype the GUI, be it on the web or something in Glade. Once I have the GUI I'll stub functions underneath to understand flow. Only once all that is filled out do I actually write any of the code that does anything.


    I think this is why I'm a communications major and not computer science. I've always told people I want to be just as technical as I need to be to get the job done.


    I'm curious how other people look at this? What way do you approach something like this? Big picture, or foundation?