231 Erwin Road

My experiences as a Northern transplant down in Chapel Hill, NC, 2005. And now my experiences back up in NYC.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Austin Rocks!

I'm in austin now, chillin w/ Evan H. and Brandon M. from the ibm eb program.

We went wake boarding on wed on lake austin. it was my first time. it was awesome.

We'e heading to Evan's dads hanger. he's gonna take us up in a stunt plane and let me fly. can't wait.

there's been a few changes to the rest of the trip & i'll be heading back to new orleans to drop evan off. so no arkansas and tennesse.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Mud Boggin

Pit stop in Mud Boggin Missippi. I'm about 74 miles to New Orleans and feeling a little tired, I need a boost.

Rockstar

waffle house pit stop

Making a quick stop in Laurel, Mississippi @ Waffle House. Yes.

Did I spell mississippi right?

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Road Trip

I'm 1/3 into my road trip, some stories to be posted soon. But in the meantime, I'm making my drive down to New Orleans from Atlanta, so check out my status:

Live Webcam coverage:
http://vinnie.net/webcamlive.html

Historical Webcam coverage:
http://www.vinnie.net/webcam/webcam.html

Live Wiki updates
http://www.vinnie.net/wikiwig/

Previous Blog Post about the trip w/ comments:
http://231erwinroad.blogspot.com/2005/04/bender-around-south.html

I'm doing my best to clean all this up. Thanks Todd for letting me crash at your dope loft in Atlanta.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Crazy Scary People Search

Try searching yourself - ZabaSearch.com

Thanks Todd.

Prosjekt Bender


Some Norwegian guys made the COOLEST computer case. It's Bender, from Futurama.

It's in Norwegian, so look for "Neste Side" to goto the next page.

Overklokking.no - (Prosjekt) Prosjekt Bender

Monday, April 18, 2005

Dirty Tricks in Mexico

I don't get to read enough international views and thought this we an interesting read. Miguel de Icaza has developed a lot of open source software, such as Ximian (MS Outlook on linux) and Mono (MS .NET on linux)

Exploring the Right to Share, Mix and Burn

I finally had time to read a NYT article that Brent told me about. It was Lawerence Lessig (Standford lawyer/hero) and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco at the New York Public Library on "Free Culture."

I suggest giving it a read, it's a good breif article. Lessig wasn't too happy with the point of view, but I found it pretty resonable.

It's a difficult topic for some people to grasp the otherside of. (How does society survive on 'free' culture?) Feel free to post any questions/comments below and I'll answer them the best I can.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Downhill Battle t-shirts

Some great t-shirts, I just bought the red "P2P v P4P"
Downhill Battle - Postal

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

The Genographic Project

IBM and National Geographic have announced a groundbreaking research project to deepn our understanding of how the human race populated the planet. They will be studying the DNA of over 100,000 individuals of indigenous populations. You can help out as well, and trace your origins with a personal migratory path based on your own DNA for a little over $100. I just signed up (IBM discount of course.)

I encourage all to join, it sounds very cool. - The Genographic Project

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Google Sightseeing

Somebody had a great idea to create a blog of 'attractions' to be viewed on Google's satellite images. They even have some funny images under the "Weirdness" category.

Google Sightseeing

This just absolutly blows my mind!!!

So some guy down at UNC decided to marry 2 of my favorite websites, Google Maps and Craigslist. Their child rests here.

This is just such a great idea.

Friday, April 08, 2005

EB Expo

Expo
So what happens when you put a team of bright kids together and have them innovate for 3 weeks? You get the Extreme Blue Expo. We spent Friday presenting to IBM employees. We had two presentations, I spoke in the morning, Taylor and I split our 4 minute pitch. I was pretty nervous before hand as I'm not the greatest speaker and I get nervous in front of audiences. It went pretty well though. I didn't choke, but I did skip over a few items I wanted to touch on. Once I was up there, I didn't feel too nervous, the fact that we practiced our pitch twice a week for 3 months helped. I wanted to speak so that I could get some public speaking experience, I think it is an important quality to have. We had 'virtual' Martin run through the demo for us (his voice was pre-recorded.)

Policeman
I must mention that I received a speeding violation on my way in, in the morning. We were planning to meet at Waffle Haus at 6:45am. I woke up at 5:14am from my body's internal alarm. I remember thinking, damn, my internal clock is good. But I hadn't planned to wake up until 5:32am (I never use round numbers when setting alarms for some reason.) I went back to sleep expecting to be woken up 18min later by my alarm, but I managed to sleep though it. Martin called me at 6:30 and I rushed to meet them out there. In my rush off 100+ mph I passed an undercover cop. He decided to pull me over. He was nice about it though, after telling him I was only here for another few weeks, he gave me a ticket of 80mph in a 65(anything over 80 would have required a mandatory court experience.) I was so apologetic for some reason, it was pretty pathetic.

Awkward
For some reason, some guy that came over to our table to ask me a few questions brought me to the side and said "Don't be offended by what I'm about to say" to which point I had a lot of thoughts run though my mind, including, is this guy about to hit on me. He then continued to talk about a mole on my neck and said I should get it checked out for Melanoma - "not by any doctor though, make sure it's a dermatologist". WTF? I wasn't offended, it was just incredibly awkward. I think it's really funny and hope somebody might get a kick out of the vision of this conversation. I thanked him and walked away.

This blog made possible from viewers like you.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Media-Shifting

Jon Udell: From time-shifting to media-shifting

Jon make's a good point about "media-shifting." That is the ability to listen to a video recording. Let's say you want a CNN clip on your iPod. It's currently cumbersome to turn that video/audio into audio only. We need some cool apps to help this.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Asian Karaoke bar in the Triangle

I need some more help and I can't find the answer on Google.

I'm looking for an asian karaoke bar in the triangle area. You know, like the ones in k-town (nyc) or in "Lost in Translation." One of those deals where you get your own private room for a party. Extreme B needs to celebrate this Friday after our expo, and this is the only way I know how ;)

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

My 2nd Blogger's Meetup in Raleigh

Had fun at another Blogging Meetup. Yeah it's geeky, but I find it a pretty thought invoking experience. A lot of new ideas come up in the meetup. Kinda of like talking about what the future of blogging has in store for us, what new ideas we would like to implement, and who are the people making this happen. This is more then just technology, blogs are changing our culture.

Josh has an excellent writeup. We also joked about holding up cybercafes. A robber could easily walk away with $10k worth of laptops. D created some del.icio.us tags.

Mario Cart


The EB Lab took us out for a little celebration and relaxation this afternoon. I can't remember the last time I had as much fun as the go-cart slick track at FunWerks.

The slick track is amazing. It's like playing mario cart on a muddy track. You can spin people out, do 180's and smash into the wall. If you're on a straight-way and you tap the corner of the cart in front of you, you can totally spin them out. We T-boned each other every once in a while, it was painful but fun. One time, TJ smashed right into me when I was stoped and I had the wind knocked out of me. I was hit so hard that as my head was bobbing around, my hat flew off.

I have video that I'm looking to host somewhere. In the meantime, peep the photos on flickr.

Light 'em up boys


Celebrated UNC winning the NCAA championships. It was crazy, you can view all the madness on flickr. This is how the night went down (from what I remember):

Arrived at Shaw's during the 2nd half of the game. Watched a bunch of UNC fans show all of their emotions, happy, sad, angry, frustrated, stressed, happy, very happy. Complete pandemonium in the streets. Horns honking, people screaming, everybody rushing the streets.

Our walk up to Franklin was nuts. People were carrying/dragging anything flammable they could find. We saw a kid dragging the bottom of a box crate (4'x4') The crowd got denser as we approached Franklin. Everyone in the area was on the street, everyone. We even saw an 85 year old couple walking (slowly) hand in hand.

The mob on Franklin was insane. There were two bonfires going on Franklin alone (who knows how many in people's backyards.) I'll call the Franklin Fires Camp 1 and Camp 2. Camp 1 appeared to be located in front of Top O' the Hill. Somebody was lighting off fireworks at Camp 1, our troops couldn't make it. We set up base at Camp 2. Camp 2 was about 50 yrds east of Camp 1 but there must have been 4,000 people between the two camps. I heard a number of around 20,000 people in total on Franklin. Sport shops had their doors open and were selling tshirts and hats like crazy. Josh B. got in a few jumps over the fire (camp 2 was smaller then the 8' camp 1 fire.) We could here helicopters above us and cops lined the streets. It was policed anarchy.

We lost a few men and our troop was down to 3 individuals - Philip, Bria, and myself. We headed down to Lucy's and tried to give Josh a ring, but you couldn't get any service with 20,000 cell phones spread across 1 sq. mile. However, we were able to text Josh and made our way to The Coffee Shop. I believe we may have drank more shots then I have fingers and toes to count.

At some point, I thought it would be a good idea to let Josh's fiance, Kelly, know how much fun we were having. Here's what Josh had to say about it.

Kelly was sleeping since she had to be at work at 5am, and mr. lauria thought it would be funny to send her 2 messages from MY phone at 2am: "I'm really horny!" and the 2nd one 5 mins later: "I'm hooking up with whores right now!" Well needless to say she woke up from the messages, and then couldn't go back to sleep and had an awful awful day at work from being so tired. Needless to say she would like to have words with Vinnie, and she wasn't very happy with me.. Only 2 days later can I look back and laugh. even better, vinnie took pics using my camera of random girls at the bar. Luckily, i could erase those.

Sometime later that night we headed over to my favorite food joint down here, Hector's. After waiting in line for 45min on the stairwell and barely into the 2nd floor doorway, we decided to hit up a less delicious place where would actually have a chance of getting food. I can't quite recall where or what that place was, but I know we did get food.

That was the night the UNC won the NCAA championships. I'm not a sports fan, but I like drinking, parties, and mobs of people lighting stuff on fire. I'm glad I got to be a part of it.

Monday, April 04, 2005

If I can build a computer

If I can build a computer ...then...

Thanks Anwar

A bender around the South

Hi Everybody!!!

I need your help. I'm planning a road trip around the south and I want it to be directed by a bunch of random people. That means you (and your friends.) I've created an outline which I would like to reasonably stick to. So feel free to comment on what I should do in each city, what or who I should take a picture with, ... Be as creative as you can be. Think of this as an experiment in geekyness/art/blogging/community/....

Go for it!


I'm planning a Southern Road Trip and I need some feedback. I want to make this trip interactive for a web audience. I'm gonna blog/photoblog it, so think of things you would like to see me do, and I'll snap a picture of it (within Vinnie's reason.) Think of it as a roadtrip that the you, the web community builds for me.

Chapel Hill -> Atlanta
Wed 4.20 (yes, i know)
6.5 hrs

Chill with Todd (Port Wash. folk)

Atlanta -> New Orleans
(Stop in Mobile, Alabama, other thoughts?)
Sat 4.23
7.5 hrs

New Orleans -> Austin
(Stops in Baton Rouge and Houston)
Sun 4.24
9.5 hrs

Chill with Brandon and Evan H (EB folks)

Austin -> San Antonio
Mon 4.25
1.5 hrs

Chill with Evan Z. (BU folk)

San Antonio -> Memphis
(Stop in Little Rock)
Wed 4.27
11.5 hrs

Memphis -> Chapel Hill
(Stop in Nashville)
Thur 4.28
12 hrs

Chapel Hill -> D.C.
(Stay with Thomas again if he's down for it)
Sat 4.30
4.5 hrs

D.C. -> New York City
(maybe stop in Philly and see Josh)
Sun 5.1
4.0 hrs

I'm also in need of a place to crash/people to hang out with in New Orleans and Memphis, let me know if you can hook me up.

I'm planning to add a geek factor to this road trip, maybe something like an hourly photoblog, any ideas?

If you can think of a creative thing for me to do in each city, I'll take a photo of it. Be creative, be funny, don't be gross. Post your ideas below.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

I've been working all weekend


At least this is where I get to work.
Extreme Blue Lab - a photoset on Flickr

Fake, funny Craig's List roomie-wanted ad

Boing Boing: Fake, funny Craig's List roomie-wanted ad
Too funny, a must read. The posting actually received many REAL replies.

Paint by Numbers

Wired 13.04: Paint by Numbers
Interesting artcile I read this morning. Not a matter of if it's a good idea or not, just interesting. Basic premise is that some entrepreneur type decided to create a pension fund of up and coming artist. You have to be approved into the trust, from which point you donate your art to the trust for it to be sold off a later date. The wealth is distributed by all of the trust (we a hefty 20% lost on commision.) And the artist can feel safe to retire. The idea is innovative, I think it could be tossed around a bit and improved on. I'm thinking more along the lines of wealthy artist trying to help out starving artist.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Jason Bradbury: World's First Phone Glove!


Jason Bradbury: World's First Phone Glove!

Such a simple idea. Rip apart a bluetooth headset and sew the small pieces into a glove.

Creative Commons

Why is there a Creative Commons license on the side of the page? Well I just finished listening to two IT Conversation Podcasts about blogging, copyright, and the internet archive. I highly recommend listening to both of them.

If you haven't heard the term 'podcasting' it refers to listening to audio feeds (usually news, conferences, or interviews) on your iPod or mp3 device. (My device of choice being the Treo 650.) Some may call it time shifting, I call it a good way to utilize my drive into work.

The two conversations I just wrapped up were:
  1. Larry Lessig @ Bloggercon III
  2. Brewster Kahle discussing his Internet Archive project [archive.org]
So what does my Creative Commons (CC) license say? Well it says that you are free to copy, modify, and distribute any of my blogs. I'm even giving you the permission to use them for commercial use (just give me a shoutout.)

A lot of you think I'm a fanatic about copyright issues. Maybe you're right. I'm not saying that everything should be FREE, but current law is flawed. The laws were not build with the ability to so easily share information. It's difficult to spread information that an author doesn't want to hold exclusive rights to. So go on - rip, mix, burn.