environmentally-friendly lawnmowing

It’s that time of year again (at least in this southern region) to fire up the lawnmower and make for a presentable abode. The recent Wired article on transgenic lawns is as captivating as any Wired article. I find it to essentially be a rebuttal to some NYTimes cover story that they reference. In short, the Wired article claims that the transgenic grass is not taking over Oregon as some apparently believe, and that even though transgenic has a negative connotation – plant life is plant life – the more of it the better we all are. What’s wrong with boosting a grass’ DNA to be immune to one of our man-made pesticides anyway? Probably something, but nobody knows what. I would think the answer is so utterly impossible to predict that your most erudite global ecologists will have an opinion as defensible as Kurt Vonnegut would might have. So I’m sitting the fence on this one.
And short of ripping up our yard and installing a xeriscape (my friend says “xeriscape just means your yard will look like crap”). I’ll be plowing down the St. Augustine that I so cherish every week in my two-stroke polluter. The neighbor newsletter once extolled the benefits of a push mower – doesn’t pollute (chemically or aurally) and you get a ton of exercise. So, my idea for the day is to find something between a mower powered by human-yoking and a mower powered by an internal combustion engine. The answer to me seems obvious – a bicycle mower! Think of it, bike parts are so well-evolved.
You won’t go fast, so you’d need basically some low gearing to move both the wheels and the blades. Perhaps a flywheel is in order to keep the blades spinning fast and evenly. Of course, safety will demand a brake or two (one on the blades and one on the wheels). Plus there’s the issue of bike tires on your lawn. You’d need fatter tires to prevent damaging the lawn – perhaps like mountain-bike tires from a kids bike – only fatter.

Here are two ideas, the first is a recumbent with blades. Careful getting on and off!

This one is hybrid of the gym stair climber, the roomba, and the segway.

You’d get a good view of where the blades were – maneuverability could be a plus if you could design the geartrain.

plane ride to Paris

I had a dream last night that my wife and I were flying to Paris. Sounds
great, but in the dream we never leave the airport. It
was one of those anxious dreams where you never accomplish the menial
tasks of, in this case, boarding an airplane. In the dream I have
trouble with the TSA people, which isn’t exactly fantasy. Ever since the
ramp-up in security, I’ve been on their watch-list. Not me specifically
but rather my name is apparently a cause for alarm. If this happens to
you, you should know that there is a form on the TSA site that can
remove you from said list. I never knew it existed until it was
mentioned to me rather casually by a check-in agent. You can get that
form here if you’re in the same boat and afraid you’ll miss your plane.
Anyway, this uninteresting dream lead me to a new brainteaser which I’m
not sure is solvable. Here goes…
You’re lucky enough to get a first class window seat on a transatlantic
flight, but your (wife, husband, friend, etc.) is stuck in a middle seat
in coach. You’d like to sit with them but you can’t get over the fact
that you’d have to give up such a great seat. You happen to know that
there are a few empty middle seats in coach, so you’d ideally move back
to coach to join your friend so long as the two of you can have that
extra seat in your row to stretch out in. What’s the minimum number of
moves of people you can make to arrange this (if it’s even possible)?
Understand that you can move people, or rather convince people to move
only if they get a better seat.
1. first class is preferred to coach
2. window seats are preferred to aisle seats
3. aisle seats are preferred to middle seats
4. and sitting next to an empty seat is preferred to sitting next to
people.

Make sense? Is there a solution?

sticking with monopolies vs. antiestablishmentarianism

I’ve been interested in starting a blog for months now. When I happened upon Yahoo!’s new 360 approach earlier this week. I decided to jump in. After messing around with 360, I soon became dissatisified with it – no custom url’s, and the typical cartoon-y Yahoo! look and feel. My dissatification was compounded by the fact that I really like to interact with as few internet and computer companies as possible. You see, I currently use Yahoo! a lot. I use them as my default home page. I find phone #’s, and directions with them. I do all my internet searches with them. I choose movies and restaurants by on Yahoo! pages. The thruth is, I honestly believe I am most efficient when I work closely with one site/company/product.
I would say that this is not the norm compared to many. I, for instance, like Microsoft products for the same reason. Many people though, would rather be a little edgy – buck the establishment if you will – going to many different sources for their various needs. Is this better or worse?
It’s all really a second-order-effect, the primary effect should be performance and/or cost. But our decisions are often muddled by some commitment to companies we’ve used in the past. Why should we care commit our affections to such companies?
Perhaps to confirm our past decisions. Or for those of you who have antiestablishment leanings, it more about being unique in supporting the little guy, and avoiding being a contributer to big corporations which have all been evil in America for the last 50 years or more (the facetiousness is intentional here).
So in summary. I’ve defected from Yahoo! on this one, and went with blogger.com. Such instances can be sources of important self-reflection. Now hopefully I can apply this to other things. But I must say that I’m still anxiously waiting at the “gates of microsoft” for whatever slightly-clunky-but-extremely-useful product they let out next.

Entry for March 27, 2006 – "do it later, dude-a-lator"

Here it is, futureman or futurewoman!
You’ve scrolled all the back to my first blog back in March of ’06. God, remember the Naughts?! What a crazy time.

So, the motivation for starting a blog should probably go here. And, what can I say about the need or desire for such a thing? Yes, it is egotistical. Yes, it is self-serving. But, I can sincerely say of the latter that I hope it helps me in organizing my thoughts – and once an entry is written I have satisfied my goal (thoughts instantly organized into electronic bits). I post it online just in case that I am one day famous, and you – futurewoman or futureman – are here to see what made this famous person tick. Or perhaps, you are from a future not far removed from this present tense, and are indeed reading this as a way to assuage your guilt for not doing that arduous thing that you are supposed to be doing.

Well, that makes two of us!

Right now, I am supposed to be making up a test for my grad students to take in the not-so-distant-future – a.k.a. tomorrow morning. The test is to see how well the students have learned a dozen or so optimization algorithms, which as far as I can tell is a difficult thing to ask on paper. It’s like asking a dance major to draw their moves on paper instead of performing them.

As for the title of this seminal entry- my wife has a pet name for me which is dude-a-lator. She is not fond of me using the term “dude”, and so her approach is to internalize it as a name for me. This is a two-prong term as it feeds into my tendencies as a professional procrastinator. What’s that, futureman (or futurewoman)? You’re a procrastinator too?! Well, then you too can be as famous as me someday!