All posts by Richard

Plastics! (oops … I mean location awareness software)

Android | iPad | Kindle Fire

In the movie, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman is given some advice upon his graduation from college, plastics! Earlier this year I blogged about location based design, and how I believed this was the next best thing. While the media rages about how Apple iOS and Android are tracking your every move, and is this legal … consider this fact … there are many applications to which you would want to give your location.

Last week I learned about (and installed on my iPad) a great new software tool named Wikihood. This amazing appllication uses your location and presents articles from Wikipedia. I have found this software fantastic as I move around the United States of various business and pleasure trips. I just start Wikihood, and I learn about the "local hood". For an application like Wikihood, I'll grant access to my location any day. However, I'm a person who when he was young loved to read the World Book Encyclopedia via alpha volume (see blog post … The Art of the Browse, World Book and the iPad).

Here are three screenshots from Wikihood and plastics! In each instance, the content delivered is unique to my exact location, not just the surrounding region. Click upon any image to maximize.

Grand Marais, Minnesota (recent bike trip)

Grand-Marais

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Duluth, Minnesota (my home on Amity Creek)

Duluth-Amity

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Plymouth, Minnesota (my townhome)

Plymouth

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Plastics!

Plastics

Conan O’Brien’s Commencement Address

Uncategorized

Are you tired of the same old commencement addresses … old, tired dignitary delivers boring commencement address. Well, this is not your father's graduation speech. In fact, in just a few days over 200,000 people have watched Conan's speech at Dartmouth via YouTube. I guarantee as Dartmouth alum, there are no where near that many alumni alive today. Thus, the numbers indicate that his talk has broad interest beyond the "Big Green".

Enjoy his talk. He is irreverent, funny, and at the very end serious but in a non cliche manner.

The Circle of Life

Northern Life

My oldest son, Carl, is working as an outfitter / guide in the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area). This wilderness area adjoins the Canadian border, and can only be reached by canoe (no roads). 

Like his father, Carl blogs. He just posted about a canoe trip he took with another guide. Little did Carl know that his Dad and Mom took the almost identical trip 26 years ago. However, the coolest fact is that my son camped on the same lake where Molly first let me know that she was pregnant, and Carl would be born that December.

The Circle of Life. I've now let Carl know the history of Crooked Lake. Here is his blog post and trip report. The image given below is from Carl's trip … sunrise over Crooked Lake!

Crooked-Lake

The Road Less Travelled

Northern Life

Hopefully if you've read NorthstarNerd posts for more than a few months, you understand that I like to take the "road less travelled". After all, it is only by branching out from the normal and common in life that one learns. This is true when it comes to web research and development, but it is also true in terms of ones physical movement from point A to point B in the physical realm.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I needed to help my youngest son who was starting an engineering internship get established in a new apartment. This required my wife and I to drive 300 miles to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Our trip down to Oshkosh was uneventful. However, I decided to try a new route home via US Highway #10. I knew this meant less miles on Interstate #94, and more time spent driving a two lane highway through rural central Wisconsin. Here was my reward …

While most people were fighting the Memorial Day traffic on the high speed interstate highways, it was unusual when I saw more than one car in my line of sight. Most of the time, it was just our car and the surrounding farmland and forest. Every 15 to 20 miles we did have to slow down and drive through small town America … and then … staring us in the face we saw it! The Wisconsin Pavilion from the 1964 New York World's Fair. Yes, this architectural wonder had somehow worked its way after the fair closed in 1965 back to rural Wisconsin. I had found the Big Cheese!

Seriously, US #10 was beautiful and held unexpected rewards … from the Pavilion to beautiful farms. Do you ever take the road less travelled?

In closing here is some data about the 1964 New York World's Fair Wisconsin Pavilion (click upon the image to view full sized):

Wisconsin-NY-Worlds-Fair