In other news

A couple months back, I confessed to finding Gmail ads fascinating, and going so far as to bring them up as objects of discussion. According to today's Wall Street Journal (subscription req'd), I'm not alone in this.

In other news, it's suddenly turned chilly in Seattle. This morning I wore the scarf my sister gave me for the first time in seven months or so.

In other news, we have a midterm in microeconomics today. We're allowed to bring in a one-page cheat sheet, and I believe I've set a new personal record for fitting a plethora of tiny text and graphs onto a page. Our instructor warns us that many of us will find this exam difficult, cheat sheet or no. The experience has certainly been building an in-the-trenches camaraderie amongst my classmates.

In other news, happy Halloween!

Tags: Gmail marketing ads

Uganda's solar-powered airport

Taking a quick study break from my team paper -- which is about blogging, so I'm technically not grazing too far afield here -- I noticed a post in the Practical Environmentalist about Africa's first "solar-powered airport," for which construction will begin in Uganda next year.

Sounds like the airport will include a lot of excellent features. For instance, rainfall will be harvested from the solar roof for irrigation purposes.

Curiously, though, I can't find any other online news sources for this story, other than the AND article. I'd like to learn more about this. Will the entire airport be solar-powered? That sounds amazing. But I can't help but suspect that we're really only talking about portions of the airport's infrastructure.

Do any other airports in the world make innovative use of alternative energy? Now I'm all curious. But I need to get back to this paper. Anyone with any information on this, do feel free to post a comment.

Tags: solar Uganda airport

Genetic discovery suggests humans were once nocturnal

Fascinating!

I wonder what it's called when an animal is both diurnal and nocturnal. Omnicturnal? That's me these days...

Tags: science nocturnal sleep

OpenID and digital identity

Doing research for one of my group projects this evening, I ran across a post about the growing interest in Identity 2.0: tools are appearing that facilitate a digital identity that you can use anywhere online.

OpenID appears to be the most well-known.

I'd love to look into this further, but I've got to get back to my project research at moment. It's an interesting project, actually, exploring the future of corporate blogging and its implications for business.

Tags: OpenID digital identity

A bright, blue Sunday morning.

I love the fact that the little closet I transformed into a study has a view. Especially on mornings like this.

Last night, after joining some of classmates for a Korean dinner (many students in my class are Korean), I was up until 2:30 hashing out details of an upcoming presentation over email with members of my study team. I was back to work at 7:30, and after finishing another draft of my section of the presentation, I went out for a walk around the neighborhood.

I can't help but feel happy on a morning like this one. For fourteen years now, autumn in Seattle has definitely been my favorite time of the year.

Tags: Seattle Autumn MBA

Econofun

Advice nugget #1 for prospective MBA students: if you've never studied a lick o' economics before, you might do well to read up on it a bit before you start classes. You've got to get adept with the maths.

Methinks I could have done a bit more advance preparation.

Tags: economics MBA study maths

Keep your eye on Second Life

Three Minds @ Organic reports that Reuters and Sun have both joined the growing list of companies that have established a presence in Second Life.

If you haven't heard about Second Life yet, this this article provides a good primer. Basically, it's a rapidly growing virtual world that's worth paying attention to.

I'd elaborate further, but I need to finish this stats assignment.

Tags: Second Life marketing

Early riser

There was an odd surge of interest in early-rising techniques among the blogging community earlier this year. I even hopped on this bandwagon myself.

Currently this is a moot point. I am, for the time being, a morning person. Studying just gets too difficult past a certain point at night. After midnight or so, I generally start to enter a hypnagogic state. Not so good for the concentration.

So I'm already in a rut; I wake up early every morning. Like 6 AM. The other night I was up til 2:00, by necessity, and I thought I’d sleep in the next morning, maybe get up at 7:30. No such luck.

Tags: waking early

YouTube: not a cheap date

The big news today is that Google aims on buying YouTube. The rumored price tag: $1.6 billion. Apparently, News Corp is another interested suitor.

Speculation about the acquisition of YouTube has been buzzing for months now, but there hasn't been anything like today's news flurry. Will Google succeed in this? The market seems to think so; its stock (GOOG) is up over 2% today.

$1.6 billion. Staggering. Google is sitting on mountains of cash and short-term investments, so this isn't going to break its back or anything. Still, Google should have given this a shot earlier this year, when it could have secured a better purchase price. Perhaps they tried this; I'd be curious to find out.

Tags: Google YouTube acquisition

This blog has been smacked (soundly)

This blog was reviewed today over at italk2much. The blogger there and assorted commenters raked me through some fiery coals. I shouldn't really take it personally, though; I submitted my blog for review figuring that I'd be resoundingly trashed. I did it anyways...does that make me a masochist? Hmm..

The blogger brings up a good point: that I'm not really showing my personality in this blog:

I think it reminds me of magazine articles because there’s not a whole lot of personality in it. I read one post, started to glaze over, and skipped to the next one. I glazed over again and wondered if it was because I needed a nap. Then I figured out it was just the blog I was reading.

Particularly lately, I've been enthusing about the MBA program and I can imagine that's boring or much worse for anyone other than the MBA-curious and the handful of friends 'n' family sorts who read this blog.

The commenters were a bit more pointed. Some of them made good points, others didn't, and most made me laugh (wryly). Some of my favorites:

Another MBA student. Why do they feel the need to announce this like it’s a plus or a badge of honor?

Alliteration is of the devil.

Holy shit the last one is fucking boring. Ignorant Google ads and the design leaves a lot to be desired. Although he is slightly cute.

...It’s also boring as hell and I don’t think he’s all that cute...

I only said he was slightly cute. Not a hunka hunka burnin’ love.

I wonder why someone chasing an MBA would blog about MySpace. Does this mean the intellectually superior have been sucked in by the Evil Empire’s Tractor Beam too?

The title is stupid and I’m even more pissed off that he thinks he has to explain it. And yes, it’s just as it sounds, no hidden meaning, really. Yep, another “uber-geek” MBA student, optimistically gushing, “I can tell I’m going to learn a lot!” and off to fix the world with his brilliant “Management” skills.

it bothers me that someone that seems to have something to say, is not saying it. What are you hiding?