The influence of Facebook’s vote-up approval matrix crossing over in the physical world. Gives new meaning to “writing on someone’s wall.” Or is this case, the MTA’s.

Plastic. Do we have to encase everything in hermetically-sealed containers?

In the not too distant past, pancake palaces provided syrup in a pitcher. Sure, the retractable self-sealing mechanism didn’t prevent drips or stickiness, but it also didn’t choke our landfills needlessly. And whatever became of the pat on a mat with a hat? This was the old way of providing a single serving of butter: it was a “pat” of butter on a “mat” (biodegradable square of waxed paperboard) with a “hat” (a little square of wax paper on top.)

Convenience can have far-reaching consequences.

My only wish: that my parents could have seen this day!

Something to watch while the data is logging

I’ve been logging the ambient light levels for a project I’m working on. In the process of developing a system that records dawn and dusk, I created a little program for an Arduino that sends values from a photo resistor to Processing. Processing then records the values with a time-stamp then after 24 hours, spits out a text file with the data.

Here it is for you, in case you ever have a need for something like it. You can easily swap out a photo resistor for any input you like, and change the timeframe to meet your parameters.

Here are the links to download the Arduino code and the Processing code.

OK, finally set up WordPress and am now ready to do some real blogging!