LA Weekly Interviews Henry Waxman

March 03, 2005 by Eric Richardson

The LA Weekly is running a good interview with Henry Waxman. Waxman is the congressman who's famous (or infamous, depending on how you want to look at it) in transit circles for getting a law prohibiting federal funding be used on tunnelling under portions of Wilshire known to have methane gas pockets. I recommend reading this interview, but you'll have to get past this right at the beginning:

Ever wonder why a leg of the Red Line ends at Wilshire and Normandie, miles short of the museums and office buildings that would make it worthwhile to thousands?

Well, see, here's the thing... I've never wondered that, since the Red Line goes to Wilshire and Western, which is a bit farther down the street. Sometimes I wonder if people actually fact-check these things.

It's Test Day

March 03, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I haven't mentioned much about school here lately. Today, though, I have two midterms. The first one was this morning, in my class Public Service in an Urban Setting. Questions dealt with Los Angeles' widening "two-tier" economic structure (expansion of the poor and the rich while the middle-class sort of disappears), philanthropic practices of different ethnic groups, service learning, and one more that I can't remember at the moment. I felt like I did pretty well. Of the four essays two had multiple options and two were mandatory. I lucked out with feeling comfortable on the required ones while having a definite favorite in the choices.

And now in an hour and a half I have a midterm in my anthropology class, Exploring Culture Through Film. This one I don't feel at all as comfortable about, but my saving grace will be that it's (at least largely... I think all) multiple choice. I like multiple choice.

Trying to Find a Music Player

March 02, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I'm getting lazy in my old age. There used to be a day when I would write my own mp3 players, but these days I just want something that works and that I don't have to fuss with. I've run xmms since 2000/2001 or so (before that I ran a little perl client called smartplay for a while), but I really do want something more these days. Particularly I want something with easier/smarter playlist handling. So just a few minutes ago I decided to give a shot to rhythmbox on the GNOME side and juk from KDE. The short answer: they're both good starts, but both have issues. — Continue Reading...

"Podcasting" Comes to KCRW

February 28, 2005 by Eric Richardson

KCRW has finally put online their podcasting feeds, first announced sometime during this past pledge drive. I haven't looked into podcasting software yet, but I did download the Which Way LA feed and one day's show. They're doing 48kbps MP3, which is a good size for voice. The 128MB memory stick duo I ordered for my phone just came in today, so that means I can easily fit four hours or so of audio while still keeping a good chunk of room for photos.

Now I just need to write a little script to manage sync'ing recent shows over to the phone via bluetooth each night.

Sitting and Waiting and Sitting and Waiting...

February 28, 2005 by Eric Richardson

It took me a little over two hours to get to work today. The Gold Line is still feeling the effects of the weather and running a questionable temporary schedule which threw me off for my connection to the 50-minute headways on the 177. This is more proof that my route is far too fragile. You may or may not remember that largely the same thing happened to me back in January. I've got a lot to rant about, but I'll throw that in the body so that you can skip it if you're not that interested in transit. — Continue Reading...