There's nothing like a geodesic dome in the springtime

You Walk Wrong: It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot. But we’re wrecking it with every step we take.

Fascinating article, but the author assumes a person is standing ON their feet... not always the case around here.





(That's a coworker's child you see there. Everyone take note... although I'm not having any of my own, I get along just fine with kids when they're acting like fun, interesting people. I'm sure it helps that I consider partner acro of any kind to be a mature and civilized activity.)

I'm still overcommitted and am spending weekends studying. I have spring-cleaning fever, though, and somehow found time to get rid of a shelf's worth of books and clothes last week. Something about the change of season always makes me want to throw half my possessions out the window. It's strange... being weighed down with things has never been to my taste, but in the spring it starts to feel important. Out out, damned stuff.

How about an algorithm to make time go faster?

Work plus 6.046 has been pretty all-consuming lately. Here I am in front of the Golden Gate bridge, on a business trip to the Googleplex:



I can't say I love business trips, but business bike rides are not bad. And business plane flights are good for getting the back of a sweater knitted.

Now I'm back in Boston doing my usual spring thing, which is to say, waiting for summer. It seems that every mid-winter I want to geek out, and every summer I realize I've overloaded myself again. Right now, it's very early spring -- the light is usually diffuse, the air is cool and damp, I'm just getting into my annual pangs of remorse over whatever ambitious thing I started in January. I was taking a break last weekend from sudying the Rabin-Karp algorithm when I photographed this beautiful little dragon-paw, which was hiding in my hedge:



To give you an idea of scale, the part of the twig in that photo is a little under 2 cm long. An amateur (and amateurish!) photographer can hardly ask for more. It feels like it was around this time last year when I took all my pictures of the abandoned Somerville warehouse... I want to go back there, now that I think of it. Most likely there's some new graffiti from last summer, just waiting to be immortalized.