Author Archives: Brock Tice

Christopher Rice on New Orleans

In an interview with Chris Rose, the son of writer Anne Rice ( a novelist himself ) had this to say when asked about New Orleans’ effect on a person who has lived there:

“To be from New Orleans is to enter into a contract with it, that you will try to articulate its magic to those who are not from there, to those who can’t help but see it through the lens of fantasy and cliché. New Orleans bombards your senses without regard for discretion of gentility, so to have spent any time at all here means you have been branded by its purple sunsets, to have been given memories that, quite simply, could not have been made anywhere else.”

Thanks to my mom for the link to the article.

Mac Beautiful

I’ll pop my head up from working on the paper to share this with you:

For the record, I have a mac like that with the 30″ display at work, and yes, it’s everything it looks like and more.

Thanks to bluekitsune for the link.

Recharging ICDs Wirelessly

As far as I know this is not an April Fool’s joke. The article is two days old, and the patent does apparently exist.

A company called powercast has developed a way to capture energy from radio waves at a variety of frequencies, and to thereby wirelessly power devices. There is huge potential here for the implantable pacemaker/defibrillator business, as the devices currently have to be (surgically) replaced when the batteries run out. I think the current lifetimes are around 10 years.

In which I am once more car-enabled.

Today was my first experience with car sharing (or as I think of it, mini-renting). I reserved a car yesterday so that I could run some errands today. When the time came, I walked up, waved my evil RFID card over the windshield, and off I went. It was a hybrid and an automatic, both things I’m not accustomed to driving, but overall it wasn’t too hard to get used to.

I hit a little snag when I tried to extend my reservation because I was running late. The automated system told me that someone else had the car reserved, and that I couldn’t extend, but when I got home I discovered that nobody else had the car reserved for two more hours. When I called to ask why, they seemed puzzled and were unable to give me an answer.

When I was done, I took my stuff out, waved the RFID card over the dash again, the car locked itself, and I was done.

It was handy to have a car to run those errands, but I almost got sideswiped when I had a protected left by some lady in an (of course) SUV who ran a red light. It didn’t help that the guy in front of me panicked and slammed on his brakes, putting me right in the path of the SUV with not much of an escape route. Anyway, the woman caught herself in time and I was saved from impending doom.

My passenger was a little more shaken than me — he would have been on the impact side. Maryland drivers…

Overall it was a very neat experience, and I think it’s something that will continue to catch on.