Uploads from GustavoG, tagged new

A weekly activity tide

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:39:00 -0700

GustavoG posted a photo:

Seeing the strong time-of-day dependency of thread starting activity in FlickrCentral, and the midweek dip, I wondered whether they could be related. Here is the full weekly timeline. Each curve depicts one weekday.

Clearly, Wednesday through Friday are the slowest times. In particular, Wednesday evening saw the strongest drop in activity, which remained relatively low until Thursday night.

In the weekly flow and ebb of activity, Monday is clearly high tide, while Thursday is lowest.

[Technical detail: numbers are smoothed using a rolling 5 hour window.]

Plant a tree

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:10:08 -0800

GustavoG posted a photo:

Me with new eyeglasses, fresh haircut, and having just planted a Lapins cherry tree. Also planted a pear tree nearby.

Photo by my daughter.

One new way

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Wed, 09 May 2007 12:22:13 -0700

GustavoG posted a photo:

There's more than one way to read "one way".

Go figure art installations

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:42:43 -0700

GustavoG posted a photo:

To me, it looked just like an abandoned pair of glasses... but then again I'm not into modern art.

new milk jug searches

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:39:08 -0700

GustavoG posted a photo:

Another case where the stats show interesting background trends.

Last year Costco introduced a new milk jug, which is overall better for the environment. To make us buy two gallons at a time, Costco wraps them in unneeded plastic, which (at least here) is non-recyclable. Since the good environmental aspects of the new format were not explained with its introduction, I posted complaining it creates more garbage. I'm glad to stand corrected on this; too bad things weren't better explained to start with.

Recently, buzzfeed ran an article linking to my photo. I couldn't fail to notice the big spike in views in my stats. What surprised me was that most views didn't come from buzzfeed's article, but rather from direct google searches. The referrers are unambiguous: people are searching for information on the "new milk jug" using a wide variety of related search strategies.

How can one make sense of this? One possibility is that there is some source that I'm not aware of (TV?) that brought the topic to the public's attention; many people went searching for more info, and buzzfeed posted about it as well. Alternatively, perhaps many of buzzfeed's visitors opted to run their own web searches instead of following the links in the article.

In either case, it is interesting (and nice) to see people getting used to researching the net independently. While google provided the vast majority of the hits, the referrers from the other search engines (AOL, Yahoo, Netscape, etc) show the same pattern of many variations on the "new milk jug" research theme.

Restroom humor

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:55:32 -0800

GustavoG posted a photo:

I sense some frustration...

Shopping for antiques?

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:04:15 -0800

GustavoG posted a photo:

All new?

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:26:42 -0700

GustavoG posted a photo:

How can it be "all new" if it's a revision and resizing of something old?

What does "beyond the road" mean? Only runs through ditches?

he tuff of iought

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:12:04 -0700

GustavoG posted a photo:

Yesterday when grocery shopping in COSTCO I picked Pinker's new book, "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature". I haven't had time to read it yet, but shuffling through it I noticed the subject of chapter seven - freedom of speech, and unprotected speech. Rather timely.

What I wanted to share was the check-out moment. The cashier marked the bread (bleep!), the cottage cheese (bleep!), the book (bleep!) and kind of froze, looking at the book's cover. The chit-chat between the cashiers immediately stopped. A few seconds later she commented, "wow, this looks interesting..." The second cashier agreed, "yeah... definitely have to read it..."

Eventually she released the book and slowly returned to reality. Groceries, checkout line, bleeping sounds, the erratic humming of many overlapping voices all around.

The cashiers' eyes looked different, though. Curiosity was piqued.

Resilience

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:28:39 -0700

GustavoG posted a photo:

This is the stump of a beautiful fast-growing tree from our front yard.

It grows so fast it becomes unstable, and a couple of winters ago I woke up one morning to find the tree half-uprooted, lying across the neighbors' driveway. I had to cut its branches rather severely until I was able to push it back up to a vertical position. I thought that would kill a tree, but it continued growing merrily. In fact, the next winter it was already tall enough to be toppled again by the chilly Northern wind.

Last year I thought I'd prevent this from happening again by trimming the tree before the winter. Instead of falling, it dried entirely, and I had to cut it as you see in the photo. I asked myself whether to remove the stump entirely or not... I joked that this coming Halloween we'd have a nice spot for displaying a jack-o-lantern, and my daughter loved the concept. Meanwhile, many saplings of nearby conifers enjoyed the tree's absence and grew in a thick crowd.

A few days ago, I noticed all the newly growing branches from the base of the stump, which I thought was dead.

Such resilience!

Tree

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 01:19:01 -0700

GustavoG posted a photo:

A tree grew strong, straight and tall. Its trunk supported and transported, and was Alive.

Then came people and cut it down. The tree trunk became Dead.

Eventually the people decided its best use was to support a volleyball net. The dead tree trunk became Useful.

Rain, Sun, hot and cold. The wood started cracking and rotting. The dead, useful tree trunk became Worn.

This last year, a seed found its way into one of those cracks, up there at the top of the tall, dead, useful, worn tree trunk.

The tree trunk is now Home.

Side view

nobody@flickr.com (GustavoG) — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 16:49:53 -0800

GustavoG posted a photo:

That's all - there is no separate box for the computer. It's all tucked behind the monitor.