Pediatric Medicine of Wallingford

Pediatric Medicine of Wallingford
Here's a plug for a friend's pediatric practice in Wallingford, CT. Hopefully, this will cause Google to crawl the page and include it in its index. Hopefully, it'll also help to increase its PageRank.

Just so you know, the practice is called Pediatric Medicine of Wallingford in Wallingford, CT, which is located in Central Connecticut. They are a group of pediatricians offering services in vaccination, hearing screening, vision screening, physicals.

Yes, you webheads are probably seeing that I'm including many of the site's META keywords to try and increase relevancy ranking.

They also have pages that describe their staff, location, as well as a page of Frequently Asked Questions.

New home for Miranda photos

Miranda Pictures Photo Album

I've moved the photos of Miranda to a new location. Some of you may have seen the photos of Miranda that I posted online at Ofoto.com. At the time, I thought it was an adequate online service to allow people to view photos, and also order prints if they so chose.

I also dabbled with posting photos to a free hosting service. However, I had to create the interface for viewing the photos, and the process was somewhat cumbersome and time consuming. Each time I decided to add a photo, I had to recreate and upload the entire photo album: photos, pages, thumbnails, and all.

Then, Ofoto recently informed me via e-mail that unless I purchased a print from them, they would shut down my account and delete my photos on September 30.

Bye bye, Ofoto.

I then came across Flickr, a promising new service that combines photo sharing abilities with other social networking type features. So, I've moved the photos that were on Ofoto to Flickr.

I find it's best to use the "next in set" and "prev in set" picture buttons on the right hand side to navigate, as that will take you through the pictures in the order that I've specified. The forward and backward buttons above the photo take you through the pictures in the order I've uploaded them in Flickr (what they call my "Photostream"), which may or may not be in any sort of logical order.

Let me know if you like using Flickr, there are some things I really like about it (like a cool slideshow feature), and some things that I find confusing (like the above mentioned navigation).

Chinese Grand Prix

Chinese Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit [planet-f1.com]

The inaugural Chinese Grand Prix kicks off this weekend as the newest race on the Formula One calendar, joining Bahrain as first time races on this season's calendar. As an American-born Chinese (ABC, Banana, Twinkie, what have you) I can't say I am that closely tied to the land of my ancestors, but there are still some residual feelings of nationalism whenever China is mentioned in the world arena. Or at least in an apolitical world arena. It's times like these when say "Hey, China and the Chinese can [do|be|put on] a kick-ass [whatever]." It's like how we all rooted for Michael Chang in the late 80s and early 90s, even if we had no previous interest in tennis whatsoever.

I continue to be amazed at myself for feeling as I do about Jacque Villenueve's return to F1. I've never really rooted for him, and despite his World Championship in '97, never gave much respect to him as a driver, either. I didn't follow F1 back then, and when I did start following it in 2000 he had signed with the nascent BAR team and was struggling to score points. Still, I find myself cheering his return, and anxious to see him do well this weekend. Maybe it's just the terminally robotic Schumacher always giving his slight grin while answering questions at press conferences, but F1 has sorely lacked personalities ever since JV left. We could use Eddie Irvine back, too, but I don't think that'll be happening anytime soon. Anyway, it's good to see JV back in action. And in a Renault!

Anyway, back to the Shanghai race: The circuit looks really interesting. I've only looked at the map and at some photos, but the drivers have been giving it raves. The first corner (or two) in particular looks very different from any other first corner on the F1 calendar, and while the first complex (turns 1-3) is slightly reminiscent of Malaysia, the steadily decreasing radius turns 1-2 (>270 deg. !) will certainly make for an interesting first corner at the start. The Turn 5 kink will prevent any serious overtaking opportunities at 6. Then it's a couple of high speed sweepers before what look to be essentially a double apexer at 9-10, although it's hard to tell from the map.

Following a short straight comes a critical complex at 11 and 12. You probably have to get these just right, as turn 13 is a slightly banked increasing radius turn that opens up onto the back straight, the longest straight on the circuit, capped by the tightest hairpin. This is probably where most of the overtaking will take place, but you won't be in position unless you get turns 11 and 12 right. Turn 13 is a blind apex left hander that leads onto the start/finish straight.

I don't know how much overtaking will happen at the end of the start/finish straight into turn 1, because, as I've said, it's a couple of turns with profiles not seen before in F1. If it's wide enough through 2 and 3, you could see some inside/outside maneuvering for position.

I'll end this by saying all my comments here are based on track map inspection, grainy photos, and driver comments only. I've yet to watch Friday practice broadcast on the Speed Channel.

Trivia note: The Shanghai circuit, penned by Herman Tilke, the architect of Maylaysia, Bahrain, and the emasculated Hockenheim, was designed to mimic the Chinese word "Shang"(上), which is the first word in Shanghai and means "above" or "up."

The Home Computer of 2004

A picture of a "typical" home computer in the year 2004 "...with teletype interface and FORTRAN!"

Brain Teaser of the Day

Petals Around the Rose Figure out how the score is calculated, and "become a member of the Fraternity of Petals Around the Rose. Also, read what happened when Bill Gates was introduced to Petals Around the Rose in June 1977. How he tackled this brain teaser is an interesting insight into the man at the helm of Microsoft."

I'm pleased to note that I figured it out in much less time than Bill Gates.

Note: It is disappointing that this version does not work on Mozilla Suite or Firefox. I'll have to adapt it. Google for other versions of this game if you run Mozilla or Firefox.