Smart Brake Lights

Some interesting engineering news: a mechanical engineering team at Virginia Tech developed an intelligent braking system for cars. Imagine this situation: you’re driving in inclement weather and can’t tell if the car in front of you is breaking quickly or slowly. Wouldn’t it be neat to know the rate at which the other car is slowing down?

On AOL

Back in the day, I was one of many millions of Americans who got their internet service from America Online (AOL). It took about thirty seconds to log in, but there was never guarantee of staying logged in. Quite the opposite usually. AOL would randomly decide to boot me from their servers, which was a very frustrating ordeal (especially in the middle of conversations via IM).

I decided to write something about AOL because I just received an e-mail from an AOL user saying that my previous e-mails to that account have been sent to the junk folder. I really don’t understand how that could have happened, as I was using a .edu address.

Which begs the question: why would anyone still use AOL as their internet client, when one can get DSL internet and use Mozilla Firefox as their browser?

Atlanta tornado

Yesterday, at approximately 9:45PM local time, a very strong tornado (EF-2 on the Enhanced Fujita scale) hit the center of downtown Atlanta. Extensive damage occurred across downtown Atlanta. Places of interest that sustained damage included the CNN Center, OMNI Hotel, Westin Peachtree Plaza, Philips Arena (during an Atlanta Hawks game), and the Georgia Dome (in which the 2008 SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament game between University of Kentucky and University of Georgia) was postponed. The tornado had a path length of about 6 miles and was 200 yards wide. 

Today, the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed that it was a tornado that touched upon in Atlanta. NWS mentioned that the winds exceeded 130 miles per hour in yesterday’s tornado. This was a very strange event indeed, as tornadoes rarely touch down in city centers. According to the second map on this page, the chance of tornadoes touching down in Atlanta that day were about 2%.

Recent Organization

I am a fan of minimalist website designs. If you check out my photoblog, Erudite Expressions, you’ll notice that all you get is the title of my photoblog at the top, photo of the day in the center, the title of the post and the date posted, the caption behind the photo, and links at the bottom to see the archives and the about page, for instance. Very minimalist, but I like it a lot.

Right now, I like the WordPress theme that I am using for its simplicity. However, there are a few things I want to change.

On Adobe Illustrator

I have been working with a trial version of Adobe Illustrator CS3 in the last few days. It is a very neat program.

More on this later.

So it begins

So, I am starting another blog. The purpose of this blog is to provide commentary on interesting things going on around me. I already post a photo a day on my photoblog, Erudite Expressions, but the commentary there is usually restricted to the image of the day. If this blog takes off, I see myself writing entries on book reviews, interesting stuff I find around the web, and other random musings.