Published 2020-10-24
A large statue of George Washington looks west from the edge of the University of Washington (UW) campus in Seattle. When I was an undergraduate in 2004, the only thing I remember thinking about the statue was that its hands looked too big for its body. As far as I could tell, most students only noticed the statue insofar as it facilitated the punnily named By George, a nearby cafe. The fact that Washington’s too large hands were resting on a medieval longsword never struck me as odd.
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Published 2017-05-22
Last week I was featured in a post on the Cambridge website as a featured alumnus. You can find the find the link here .
In it I talk about the path I took to get to Cambridge, as well as some of my more recent work. The only thing I regret not including is a shout out to some of my favorite pubs.
Published 2016-04-29
This December at ACM DEV in London I met Richard Batty from the Good Technology Project . He and his collaborator, Michael Peyton Jones, are interested in using technology in development and seem very interested in going about it the right way.
I skyped with Richard and Michael last month. They just did a writeup over on their blog .
They asked about my general feelings on technology for the developing world (ICTD) as a discipline as well as what I think could be useful things for them to contribute to.
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Published 2016-04-07
Site redesign with an import from my old blog.
Published 2011-03-02
One of my favorite blogs, Bad Astronomy, recently posted pictures of the Space Shuttle Discovery preparing to dock with the International Space Station. The picture was taken and uploaded on Saturday by Paolo Nespoli, an astronaut currently stationed on the...station. To paraphrase Bad Astronomy, he is able to take pictures from space and upload them to the internet for millions worldwide to see, all in nearly real-time. As BA noted, the future is now.
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Published 2010-10-22
So, I have arrived and am more or less settled. This took forever to post, and I apologize. At first I had no internet, and now I have gotten busy. To begin with, here is a link to a few pictures (have to copy/paste it): EDIT 2016-04-09: changing to link.
I don't have time for a full update post at the moment, so I'm just going to copy/paste some stories I've been typing up for people about my first month here.
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Published 2010-07-05
Headed to the airport in minutes. I meant to write more this morning, but got distracted. I met the actor Aki Aleong at my hostel, who got kicked out of the Marriott. He was in an episode of the Outer Limits, and also an ambassador on Babylon 5. I told him what I studied and he called me a book jockey. China has finished strong. In the next week or two I will try and get a few more posts up about the last days.
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Published 2010-06-26
I'm now in Hangzhou, which is an hour or two outside of Shanghai. I arrived this morning on a night train. One of the good things about the night trains is that you give the attendant your ticket, and then she comes and wakes you up when your stop is next. The last time this was necessary I got about 10 minutes and had to rush. That meant that when I was woken up this morning, I rushed like a fiend to get my stuff together and get to the door.
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Published 2010-06-16
FINALLY! The Chinese government has an iron grip on information control in the country. For some reason they deem both Facebook and my blog as potential security risks. Not a football blog called "freedomblogging," however, which kind of makes you hate their system all the more for its illogicality.
Thankfully, I have found a program called "Freegate," which gets you around government blocking. And guess who developed it--the US government!
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Published 2010-06-08
I'm in Hanoi, have fallen slightly behind on posting. I'm leaving this morning for Nanning, China. I've heard that very few people speak English in China, so I am planning on it being a test of my new-earned traveling skills. The other day I went to a snake restaurant, where I pulled the beating heart from a snake and ate it. I had expected something pretty hardcore at a snake restaurant, but not quite THAT hardcore.
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