ConEdison you are wrong!

The other day, I spotted this ad in the subway.

There are bunch of different energy tips. They are generally common sense and correct. However, when I saw this one, I could not resist. This is completely incorrect. The ad reads:

"Run your dishwasher only when it is full" Cool. Good tip, correct. This way it will reduce the times you run your dishwasher.

But the ad also says " Scrap dishes before placing them in the dishwasher". This is plainly wrong. Dishwashers are 1) pretty good at getting rid of scraps 2) do not spend extra power or cycles depending on the cleanness of your dishes, unless you have a super dishwasher that decides how many cycles to perform by checking the cleanness of your dishwasher.
What a BS. If you are going to encourage people to save energy, do it by telling the truth. Do not make up BS facts.

I like Biking

On Saturday I apparently biked almost 20 miles.

This whole thing started on Friday. I took my friend's bike and did a tour in Central Park. It is apparently 6.1 miles. I did not time my self. This was kind of a trial. I enjoyed it.

Then on Saturday, I decided to actually try the bike path next to the Hudson river. I biked up for a while, and finally decided to go to my parents' place in Jersey to take care of some errands.

I left my friends' apartment around 70th Street and biked to my parent's place and then back via Ferry.

Map below. I started at the blue line in Manhattan and then took the Ferry (red line) and then back to my friends'.

View Larger Map

I really enjoyed, and I think I had a decent pace all around. More importantly I really liked it. When I ride the bike at a gym, I usually feel like a hamster on a wheel.
This time, I actually had to take care of some errands at my parents' so there was a goal. On top of all, the weather was beautiful. Not too hot, not too cold nor rainy.

On Sunday, I decided to do two full rounds at the Central Park. This time, I even timed my self to get a sense. Although, I think they were both slow, I did better in the second round than the first one (only by a minute, 24:22 and 23:27). However, this was quite surprising to me. I thought I would have been much slower in the second round.

I may actually do this more often.

Randy Pausch passed away yesterday

Randy Pausch, a former computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University passed away yesterday.

If you have one hour, please watch his last lecture, it will be your best spent hour in the last several years. This is a truly inspirational and candid lecture about life and how to deal with it.

Here it is:


After giving this lecture, almost a year later, he also addressed the graduating class Carnegie Mellon for about 5 minutes. I love his speech. Especially when he defines love:
Here is his commencement speech (about 6 mins)


ABC also had a special about Randy Pausch in April 2008.
It is in pieces, so I put together a playlist for that. Here:


If you rather watch it on YouTube. Here it is.

His last lecture has also been published as a book.



A great man, a great vision.
Rest in peace.

Elections Video Gadget

This is the coolest iGoogle gadget: Election Videos

It allows people to query the speeches of major candidates for any issue.
For example, you can type Tax and hit search. It will find every instance of Obama and McCain talking about taxes in their public speeches.

Great tool to figure out where candidates stand for all the issues you care about. Also, great for finding out if someone is flip-flopping on some issues.

Searching videos based on the transcript of speech. Awesome!
What's next? Making all talk shows searchable? Why not!

The IT Crowd

This is one of my newly discovered favorite shows. It's a British TV show about help desk geeks at the basement of a company (Official Site)

It is a brilliant show where they came up with lines like: "If you type Google, into Google, you can break the Internet. So please, no-one try it, even for a joke."

Here is that brilliant clip:


I watched full two season episodes on YouTube and enjoyed it so much that I want to share and spread it around.

I put together a playlist for Season 1 of The IT Crowd here:
Season 1 Episodes of Channel4's The IT Crowd
- Yesterday's Jam
- Calamity Jen
- 50:50
- The Red Door
- The Haunting of Bill Crouse
- Aunt Irma Visits

If you'd rather watch it on YouTube, here is the link.

and the playlist for Season 2 of The IT Crowd here:
- The Work Outing
- Return of the Golden Child
- Moss and the German
- The Dinner Party
- Smoke & Mirrors
- Men Without Women

If you'd rather watch it on YouTube, here is the link.

Enjoy!
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Reducing the fine on Parking Tickets

Here is a tip if you live in New York and get a parking ticket. The following explains how to get a reduced fine.

Department of Finance, who you must pay your penalty to, manages the adjudication process. They are overwhelmed by the incoming disputes. If you get a ticket, just contest it via good old snail mail.
In a couple of days, you will receive a piece of mail from them offering you a reduced fine. Alternatively, they also offer you to appear before a judge and claim your innocence. My advice, take the reduced fine, because you know you are guilty :-)

I heard this from good authority, and they already got two of their tickets reduced from $65 to $42.

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Accessing YouTube in Turkey

YouTube is blocked once again in Turkey due to some lawsuit. This is one of the many blockings in the past. However, I believe this time it is blocked indefinitely. There are many work arounds for accessing YouTube such as using proxies and monkeying with DNS settings.

One other way is via iPhone!
I noticed that I was able to access YouTube videos via iPhone in Turkey, using a Turkish GSM operator's SIM card and their network. I also noticed that I was able to connect via WiFi.

Bottom line, if you want to watch YouTube in Turkey, get an iPhone, have it cracked so you can use your Turkish SIM card, and then tap on the YouTube icon.

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