Internet Gumbo

NOTE: Shout outs after the jump

Already, we’re ¼ of the way done! WOW! How do I feel about this? How do you feel about this? In some ways it’s kind of sad, but I am sure glad to be done with finals!! At the same time my mixed feelings towards being a quarter of the way done is also reflective in my finals. Although, they were stress filled and often error prone, especially wireless Ping Pong (Kate Hartman ROCKS!), I found the experience very stimulating, motivating and full of adrenaline. Actually after finals I felt this void and I found myself waking in the morning asking “now what?” and then that’s when the sadness (stress?) kicks in because in 3 more semesters that “now what?” will no longer be a whisper greeting me at sunrise, but a scream echoing through my dome. Carpe diem and live in the present little Steven, at least a little bit.

So now what? Maybe I’ll head over to the list and check out movie and book recommendations, helloooooooo anybody theeeeeeeere. Or maybe I’ll help Dan Phiffer with his KICK ASS remix of floor 4, . Oh, oh I’ll get on dodgeball and find some people to hang out with, damn I forgot I broke my cell phone at the last TNO, NOTE TO SELF: Burn some candles and rub ya Gris Gris bag. And then comes that voice again “If I had more time, If I had more time I would” are final presentations coming back to haunt me?

Because we are not suppose to know what we are doing and it’s okay to miss the basket as long as you showed up to practice, I often said and heard during finals “If I had more time I would”. So what if I gave myself another week to complete one project from one class? I would give myself 6 hours of power a day for a week on one project. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do, that sounds nice, completely burn myself out to appreciate my break. So, what should I work on? pongTalk? NewsBalls?

Maybe I’ll work on pongTalk, the wireless interactive Ping Pong paddles, for those of you in the lounge (why do we call this a lounge) during finals that’s what kept saying “Steve Jackson” (Thanks Anne). Nope, can’t work on that, for one I don’t own a Ping Pong table and number two for some reason people end up hitting their bottoms with paddles, while the paddles yell “Steve Jackson, Oh Yeah, That’s Right”. Project Completed.

So this leaves NewsBalls. NewsBalls is graphic visualization of Google News. It collects news from Google News and displays the news in the form of balls that bounce around the screen. The number of sources for each news story determines the size of each ball; the more sources the bigger the ball. The color of the ball is determined by the category of the news story. When you click on a ball the ball pauses and the computer reads the title of the news story. So, for the next week or so I will make this a full application with it’s own logo/icon, maybe a website and add a bunch of new features like a:

- Slider to scale the ball size
- Slider to add more or less balls
- Ability to show all news at once
- Ability to select news a based on time publish (ex. news received in the past 20 minutes)
- Cleaner interface
- Pause all balls button
- Ability to show news connections (news in more than one category).

So in the next couple of weeks I’ll be working on this and trying to get my mind right and trying to figure out how to get to Brooklyn.

Shout Outs:

To 2006 – you are gonna so rock!!

Christen – You know I gotta get to Willyburg, have you talked to ya boy??

What up Dedi, Todd and Carolyn, thanks for letting me harass you.

Kate Hartman Rocks

Johnny “wireless” Schimmel

Yo Josh Dickens - if I can figure out how to get Mikey’s in Brooklyn I wanna play ya’ll in Ping Pong. “IN YO FACE“

Jenny Chowdhury – The Worlds Hottest Nerd

Gabriel B.C., please don’t come back from LaLa Land playa hatin!

Katie Baer – next semester is gonna so rock.

Matt Burton – Will give a logical explanation of why I should sell my soul to the devil

Matt Chmiel - Will give a logical explanation of why I should sell my soul to the devil

Anne – You still wanna get some chicken curry

Michael Horan – You so craaaaaaaazy, but you my dawg though.

Ran – Where the party @