If you are planning to come to New York City this weekend for PodCamp NYC and are following the The UNOFFICIAL Guide to PodCamp NYC and you want to take the subways or buses to get around (hey, they are a bargain at $2.00 and are relatively safe), there are two websites you should check out:

MTA.info
For those coming from out-of-town who want to take the New York City subways or buses, check their website since the weekend often has significant service changes:
http://www.mta.info/nyct/service/advisory.htm

HopStop
If you are not sure which train or bus to take, try the great directions and travel time estimates at this website: http://www.hopstop.com/?city=newyork

Though I live here, I find myself using these as well for weekend travel, especially when the trains run on different lines and make express stops on the local tracks!

I am amazed with Google's speed. Just tonight, I posted what was expected to be my final post of the day, after which I decided to look at the remainder of my newsfeeds that I follow with FeedDemon (though not by using Lee Lefever's method tonight), and what did I find in my Google keyword search that FeedDemon tracks for me?

Yes, my own post. I posted about my changing interest in what I post, and made reference to a qualitative methodology of which I am particularly interested, autoethnography.

Movable Type, which I use, pings Google with my new post when it is published. Google then indexed it and my own Google keyword search with my newsreader found it. All within 2 minutes. Yes, 2 minutes. Do the calulations since the time is captured in both places. I am wondering if we have our own keyword searches, perhaps with our own names or our organization's names or anything else we want to track, then within a very short time of posting, Google can tell us what has happened. Google keyword searches that can be followed with FeedDemon makes a powerful eyes and ears on the processing and indexing of information. Hmmm, so who is watching the watcher?

I am not sure if this is always so fast, but it certainly was on a snowy March night here in NYC.

Well, I lost .6 pounds this week on Weight Watchers! I shared my 5 pounds good news two weeks ago, and then was disappointed last week having gained .4 back. I know those things happen (thank you for your encouragement in this, Michael, Robin, and Ernie). That makes a total of -5.2.

Phew. I need some chocolate!

I was reading the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, and read an interesting article on lifelogging, which is "continually recording images from their vacations, conversations from business meetings, and even intimate confessions to friends." Strange as this sounds, it involves wearing a camera around our necks or a recorder, and recording everything which is done.

According to one of the researchers,

"I fully believe that we will all be wearing this stuff all the time," said Mark T. Bolas, a visiting associate professor in the film school at the University of Southern California, as he hung a digital voice recorder around his neck when we met a few months ago. "The day before you die, your kids are going to look at you, when everybody else is doing this, and say, You mean you didn't record when you were growing up? You're just going to die and all of this is going to go away?"

Sounds interesting, but somewhat unrealistic. Do I really want to sift through every conversation I had at work yesterday? How about the sound of the subway last week? Bathroom sounds? Arguments? Snorring? CLient meetings (yeah, sure they would give permission!). Why would anybody want to record all that? How would it be tagged to find any of it and make use of it? I don't even tag my own blog, much less look at pictures from five years ago or lecture notes from last my college days. There may in fact be some use or functionality with it, but I am not yet convinced.

It came as a shock to me, but I actually lost one pound while on my second week of Weight Watchers, for a grand total of 5 pounds!

Look, here is my bookmark and sticker to prove it!

As Ernie said last week, water and slight weight fluctuations are ok. I find that this blog as support is quite helpful . . .

I was weighed today and lost 4 pounds after my first week on Weight Watchers. That is the most I have lost in a week in several years. Hey, I have to start someplace and am happy I am following through with this decision. At least with the new Weight Watchers program, I am not hungry as I was in previous weight-loss efforts! 

After watching 24 this evening and hoping our global situation does not worsen after tomorrow’s State of the Union Address, I thought I needed something a little lighter as I finish tweaking my lesson plans for tomorrow night’s class, so I turned to my friend Dilbert.

Today’s Dilbert is the story of my work over the last five year. Click to see it full-size.

So, our friends at Boing Boing explain how the founder of Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales, is planning a new search engine, Search Wikia, to challenge Google and the like. I like the idea that orinary mortals, like us, can have a voice. I just hope that the masses will lead to better results than those done automatically by Google. After all, Wikipedia has been accused of errors as well . . .

Thanks to our friends at LifeHacker, David Seah’s one-page Compact Calendar for 2007 calendar helps us get organized with an entire year at a time. If knowledge is power, then this handy calendar provides a good vantage point for us!