May, 14, 2003 archives

here's a raw dump of my pictures from budapest. the first five are from the area around the hotel (near the east train station), and the rest are from the royal palace area. (i didn't take very many pictures. i work for a company full of shutterbugs.)

and no, the buildings don't lean that much. i generally have a fix-it-in-post shooting philosophy, although you're getting the benefit of unfixed photos here.

a while back, i wrote that i could not find a charity focused on computer recycling in los angeles. the city does have an e-waste program to handle the stuff. they have collection events every weekend, and a permanent facility in playa del rey.

this still isn't quite what i was trying to find. there are charities in other cities that take used computers, buff them up, and give them out.

well, my skechers have lasted about nine months. i'm sorely tempted to just do an online shoe-ordering crap-shoot rather than deal with going to a shoe store. (not high on my list of favorite things to do.)

a mathematician did a little scribbling, and says we should ditch the dime for less change, replacing it with an 18¢ piece. that would be truly odd. imagine the innumerate trying to give change with that. using a different algorithm for giving change, the single addition that would be most effective is either a 2¢ or 3¢ coin. i got tripped up by the two pence coin while passing through heathrow. it is one of the largest coins, despite the small value. it seemed pretty pointless to me.

one aspect of his calculations that seems like it should have been easy to fix is assuming that any amount of change from 1¢ to 99¢ is equally likely. there must be any number of companies (wal-mart, burger king, etc) that would be able to provide a breakdown that would provide some clue of how valid this is. i wonder if any of them have done any analysis on how their own prices impact the amount of change they have to deal with.