Well, I'm currently at the SOHO Apple Store. My bus arrived at 11:20, well before I expected it to. The trip was almost depressingly uneventful. The bus was clean, in good repair, and well driven. No problems what so ever. The only delay we encountered was a broken down bus, and it wasn't even a Fung Wah!

So far, I have to say that Fung Wah does things far better than the MBTA.

Today I'm taking my life into my own hands. In just 2.5 hours (after I first drop Jessi off at the airport), I'm getting on the dreaded FungWah bus and heading to New York.

We'll see if I make it there alive. The first thing I plan on doing is heading to the SoHo Apple Store (I haven't been to that one yet, and it's located conveniently close to China Town), so I'll check in there. Check back around noon to make sure I haven't died horribly in a freak bus mishap.

For the past year or so I've been doing pretty much all of my work from home. Occasionally I go into a client's office and work from there, but the vast majority of my work I do here. Right now, for example, I'm sitting on my back porch.

This week, however, has been a little different. As anyone in the area knows, it's been extremely hot. Over 90° for the past three days in a row with about 50% humidity. Not pleasant. We have an air conditioner in the bedroom, but I prefer not to run it if I don't have to so I've been doing a lot of work from elsewhere. Specifically, I did a lot of work from the Breugger's Bagels in Porter Square. They have free WiFi and free air conditioning, so it's a pretty good deal. Yesterday and today I also spent a little time working at the Boloco in Davis Square. Their air conditioning isn't nearly as strong, and wasn't quite enough yesterday, though their free WiFi seems a little more reliable and faster.

Anyway, working from Bruegger's for basically an entire week was an interesting experience. I definitely wasn't the only one; every single day there were at least three or four other people there with their laptops working. Oddly though, there were very few people who did it multiple days. I definitely saw a buch of the same people every day, but they were mostly people who just came in for lunch. The people who came in to do work generally didn't seem to make a habit of it (except me, of course).

I also discovered something about myself. I found that it's much easier for me to focus on work and be productive when I'm not at home. Pretty intuitive really, but the extent to which it's true was surprising. I was definitely much more productive when I was working from Breugger's or Boloco than when I work from home; which isn't to say that I'm not productive from home, just that it's a little easier to get work done when I'm not. As a result, I plan on working from other places more often. This should help my productivity, probably my quality of work too, as well as just get me out of the house more, which will be nice. I only wish that there were more places around here with free WiFi. It's basically Breugger's in Porter, Boloco in Davis, The Druid in Inman, and Grand Prix in ...uh ...out past Porter on Mass Ave. Those places are all nice, but of them only Breugger's and Boloco are really that good for working. The Druid is a bar and doesn't have the most comfortable seating and Grand Prix just doesn't do it for me. I tried working there, but the big Plasma screen showing Sky Sports kept distracting me with rugby highlights. Maybe this is something I can help address as part of the Young Somerville Advisory Council.

In the meantime, I'd like to compile a more complete list of the places in Cambridge and Somerville with WiFi. There's any number of websites out there that claim to have a searchable list of this sort of thing, but in my experience they're usually pretty poorly done. I'm not sure why that is, it's an extremely simple concept. Maybe once I have a big enough list I'll try making one of my own. It's the perfect application for a Google Maps mash-up. Might even make a good added value service for the dy/dx tech website.

Anyone have any suggestions for good places with free WiFi in the area I might not know about?

I finally gotten the pictures I took in Wales online. (Thanks to recent improvements to Zooomr I was able to upload them all at once instead of having to break it up in to small chunks of photos.) Now that I've got illustrations, I plan on writing in more depth about the trip, but for now, here are some of my favorite shots.

If you read the Globe you may have noticed this article that ran on the 17th. Basically, Mayor Curtatone of Somerville is putting together a group of young Somervillians, the Young Somerville Advisory Council, to help provide the city with input from its younger citizens. What the article doesn't mention is that I am one of the 25 Somervillians on the council. So far, I don't have a whole lot of information about what, exactly, we'll be doing. But our first meeting is scheduled for next week so I'll get a chance to meet Mayor Curtatone, some of his staff, and the other 24 members.

I'm really looking forward to this. Now that I'm a homeowner, I've made a bit of a commitment to stay here in Somerville for at least a decent period of time, so it makes sense for me to be as involved as possible with the city and, if possible, the city government. Short of running to be an alderman, being able to, in at least some small capacity, advise the mayor on some matters seems like a pretty good start. It'll definitely be an interesting experience and, hopefully, a rewarding one.

It's hardly news that Facebook has released an API to allow people to create custom 'applications' that will run on people's Facebook profiles. What is news is that I'm now looking at that API in more detail as there is a possibility that I will be creating just such an application.

While I'm not a particularly big fan of Facebook (although I am a member because it does have it's useful moments), it would be pretty foolish to ignore it altogether, and the new Facebook Applications opens up a whole new world of possibilities for one, such as myself, who works extensively with web development and web technologies. It also opens up a whole new world of possibilities for marketers and those who could potentially abuse personal information.

For example, when someone adds your Application to their Facebook profile you are given their user id. The Facebook API allows you to look up a users profile based on their user id. I haven't yet looked to see exactly what information is provided, but I imagine that you can get your hands on pretty much all of it; certainly everything that's public. It also allows you to look up the user ids of all the friends of a particular user, as well as all the groups they're in. Considering the whole 'seven degrees of separation' phenomenon, it would not be difficult, assuming you could get just a few people to use your application, to get all the profile information on just about everyone on Facebook. You have access to their pictures as well.

Clearly this was all possible before, but now it's much much simpler to set up an automated system to do it for you. All you need to do is create even a vaguely popular application, and the data will basically just gather itself. Throw in a little data mining, and you've got an extremely powerful tool for gathering personal information about a whole lot of people.

We've already seen how poor judgement when it comes to what goes on your Facebook profile or your MySpace page can get you into trouble. It seems to me that Facebook Applications have the potential to bring a whole new world of hurt down on the users, especially now that it's no longer limited to just students.

Of course, as always, you, the user, have the power to control what information others have access to. If someone pulls some personal information about your off of your Facebook profile and uses it in a way you don't like, you really have only yourself to blame.

This is not to say that it's all doom and gloom, of course. The Facebook Applications also open the door to a whole host of exciting new possibilities. It will now be possible for Facebook to position themselves as the hub of your Web 2.0 experience with all your web services being pulled together into one, easy to use dashboard on your Facebook profile. I think there are going to be some very cool tools developed as Facebook Applications. Maybe I'll even create some of them myself.

Just remember, that you are the one that's ultimately responsible for what information you make publicly available to the internet. If there's any information that you would want your employers, parents, &c; to know, don't put it on your Facebook profile.

Rhea, over at The Boomer Chronicles, has just posted about some very interesting information.

Apparently Jesse Marcel Jr., son of the late US Army Intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel, is releasing a book telling his father's story. This doesn't really sound very interesting unless you happen to know that Major Marcel was the first officer on the scene of a crashed aircraft in July 1947 at none other than Roswell, NM. Jesse Jr. claims that he will be revealing the true story of what happened; a story his father was never allowed to tell due to the military's official coverup of the incident.

Everything about this book, of course, will have to be taken with a grain of salt, but I—and a lot of other people—have been fascinated by this story since I was a kid. I'm definitely curious to see what Marcel has to say, though the possibility that he's just trying to use his position as a relative insider to cash in on the gullibility of the UFO crowd seems rather high. Regardless, I'm sure it will be an interesting read, and that it will prove to be an incredibly popular (and lucrative) book.

Last night, at 11:22 PM, I was driving down Mass. Ave. when I received what is probably the strangest text message I've ever gotten:
Cheri est ce que tu me comprends je t'aime j'envie de te voir a mes cote pour t'embrasser sans cesse.I NEED YOU DARLING bonne nuit LOVE

Fortunately, my French is good enough that I can translate: Darling [or possibly a woman named Cheri], do you understand me? I love you. [Possibly: do you understand that I love you] I need to see you a mes cote [I'm not sure what that means. Perhaps it's supposed to be à mes côte: at my coast? If it's supposed to be coté (dimension) it makes even less sense. And, of course, mes is plural while cote would appear to be singular.] in order to kiss you forever. I NEED YOU DARLING good night LOVE

The number it came from is international, but as I was driving at the time and not at my computer all I could tell was that I was pretty sure it it wasn't France's country code. It also had the wrong number of digits to be a Canadian number, and it had the 011 prefix which I don't think is needed with Canada. So it couldn't have been from any of my friends in France (who are also excluded in that I don't think any of them have my cell number). Turns out I was right, France is 33, this message came from a 509 number which it turns out is Haiti.

So I've got four possible theories about this message:

1. Cheri is a name: Someone in Haiti had a fight with their American girlfriend named Cheri and accidentally sent the message to me instead.


2. Cheri is the (masculine version of the) word 'darling': Someone in Haiti had a fight with their American boyfriend and accidentally sent the message to me.


3. Cheri is the (masculine version of the) word 'darling': I have a secret Haitian admirer.


4. It's some sort of scam.

In any event, what I should do about it is unclear. If it's likely a scam, I should probably ignore it. If it's a secret admirer ...I'm not really sure what to do. If it was sent to the wrong number maybe I should respond and let them know so they don't keep wasting both of our money on international text messages.

What do you all think I should do?