Kendall Giles

The article about Dr. Rubin and evoting security made the New York Times! It seems that they cut out all the comments from the students and seemed to focus more on the controversy over the electronic voting machines with security problems.

They cut me out of the online photo (?!), but I am in the print edition.

Here's a link to the online version: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/technology/03vote.html

Technorati Tags: academia, security, technology

A while ago we had a major addition to the household - kittens! Here is a pic of a couple of them.

Still working on getting them to sleep at the same time as the humans. As it is now, human bodies under the covers seem to provide a perfect playground for little ones who seems to want to romp and pounce at all hours of the night. Sigh.

Technorati Tags: living

Since we have two mother cats, each with litters at the same time, I also wanted to give a shot of the other litter. Here's one taken around lunchtime.

Technorati Tags: living

In the Northern parts of Virginia and in Maryland in general the 17-year cicadas are in full force. While the talking heads on the local tv stations caution people about the cicadas flying into your hair and other hysteria-mongering (as is usual for tv-type news), they are in actuality a miracle to behold.

I've taken a simple sound recording of them just to show how awesome they are - I simply opened my window in Falls Church, Virginia (where I work) and held out a microphone (actually I didn't even clear the window because of the screen, but you get the idea). In the mp3 clip (about 1.2MB) you can hear normal outdoors-in-the-city sounds, such as cars passing on the road or birds chirping. But if you listen closely you will hear a definite background hum, kind of like the sound of an original Star Trek phaser firing constantly. This hum is the sound of thousands of cicadas way up in the trees trying to attract a mate so that they can breed, die, and let the 17-year cycle start anew. The audio might have been better had I actually gone outside the window, perhaps climbing to the top of a tree, but I think from the sample you can get the idea.

Technorati Tags: living, virginia

We got to go see some family over the Memorial Day weekend - my sister had a very nice dinner at her house on the lake.

Below is a shot from her dock. As you can see the weather was a little overcast, and just as we moved inside it started to rain. But overall it was a nice day.

Unlike my last cicada song entry, here is a short sample of just one cicada - up close and personal. I tend to pick up wayward ones who have missed the trees and found themselves on the sidewalk or parking lot - not a strategic spot for a cicada. So twixt the sidewalk and the tree, we stopped by the microphone, one cidada and I.

There is a brief period of silence at the beginning - my little friend decided to crawl away from the mic, so it took some time to retrieve him. Little did he know the tape was rolling when he decided to take a break - performers are like that sometimes.

Technorati Tags: living, virginia