What I’ve been up to

I was chatting with Ben in the Foundry’s beautiful new design studio, and he mentioned that nobody reads our blog anymore. A check of our stats reveals that he’s basically right, but the truth is a little more complex:

(apologies for the pictures, wordpress doesn’t seem to do sizing very well, I’ll fix them when I get the chance)

We get hits roughly when we sent the link to Students, and then things taper off. Makes sense, except:

you’ll notice that my early post ‘How to get into and out of Boston‘ seems to be doing really well. Now, there are a lot of people that want to get out of Boston, but this is a little suspicious. A look at the next chart helped shed some light on the issue:

 

So it appears that we’ve basically been reduced to a server for jpgs of the New York Subway (which I used in the Boston post). Still, a look at the first graph reminds us that Tim’s valiant posts from the front lines of the Virginia fight for equal rights are not going unnoticed. And if it’s Virginians that are looking for the subway maps, they’ve hit the jackpot!

But the rest of us have largely failed our goal of keeping an up to date record of our many adventures in LOAville. Part of the problem for me has been the feeling that I shouldn’t write about something until I’ve posted about the stuff leading up to it, but never having time to complete this huge task. So I’m punting. Here’s a summary of what I’ve done so far in this term:

• Did research towards starting a company to temporarily install environmental sensors into people’s homes (very similar to what the FBE group is doing now. I was initially annoyed, but then I realized it was free market research!)
• Did the temperature/humidity measurement and control for the MIT Solar7, and ended up with the house in Washington DC for about 2 weeks during the competition. All of the MITers were trying to balance their time in DC with their classwork, so they were really happy to have somebody who could pay attention to all of the readouts without interruption. By the time the awards ceremony came around, I was one of the only ones who hadn’t gone home, so I got to accept the certificate! (In my Olin shirt, of course)
• Recovered with a self-scheduled long weekend home in New York
• Am currently working towards my goal of becoming a mediocre web designer. I’ve got some friends who support themselves entirely through freelance web design, and while I don’t want to do it for the rest of my life, it seems like a good skill to have. Additionally, it’s so much cheaper to start a web-based company than any other kind, and you’d be surprised at how many of them do modestly well without being the next Google or Youtube.
• I’m thinking about getting a real internship for next term. Possibilities include Johnson Controls, which does building energy efficiency, and Digital Design and Imaging Service, which basically involves taking awesome pictures from a mobile, tethered balloon. I was lucky enough to catch them working in NYC, and they let me take some shots of the Manhattan skyline at 100ft, during sunset. It was amazing.

Now you know all about me. I’ll hopefully post some more details on these or future adventures, but it’s time to hop the Wellesley bus!

ps if you’re here for links to the Subway map, scroll down.

pps Unless you’re looking at this on PlanetOlin, in which case you should still scroll down, because the other posts are going to be better.