Blog of Josh Hall

how about a small pod like thing with 4 cameras on it, that you mount upside down in the roof of your car where the overhead light usually is.  the cameras would record video of all angles of your car for accidents, police abuse, or anything at all.  It could have a small hard drive on it that records a set number of hours of video, or for a monthly fee, it would upload it to the companies servers where they would archive it and you could search it and stuff through an online interface.

i woke up at 9 o’clock for a 10am calculus recitation. just went about my normal business, nothing out of the norm. got to class about 9:55, and no one was there. then 2 people walked in. and all 3 of us were wondering where everyone was. then 1 guy walks in and sits down and says "did you guys hear what happenned in new york?" we just said no. he said that someone had flown a 747 into the world trade towers. i audibly laughed and said "dude, do you even know how big a 747 is?!?!? there is no way, those are the biggest commercial planes, that is just insane." and he said "well it was one of those planes anyway, maybe a 737 or something." so he lost all credability in my mind by not getting the facts straight. 10:10, our prof showed up, and she said, in her ukranian accent, "go back to your dorms, class is cancelled." and she confirmed that someone had indeed flown a plane into the towers. got back to my dorm, found out that another one had hit. filled my hard drive with 2 hours worth of footage from CNN.  Jackie Mattassa was going to Penn State and her and I were IM’ing back and forth and she said some kid had a heart attack in the commons and died. His parents worked in the towers.

the Bodies exhibition is coming to the carnegie science center october 8th.  If you haven’t heard about it, you need to be a little more cultured.  It’s quite the topic for a few reasons.  The first would just be about the exhibit itself, how remarkable it is to see the human body disected like this in such well preserved fashion.  There’s nothing else like it.  The jenkos saw it down in DC and they said it was amazing.  The second reason it’s been so talked about is the origin of the bodies.  There are criticisms that the bodies are part of an underground Chinese body and organ harvesting community, where people’s bodies are just taken and sold without any paperwork or family notice.  Because there is nothing illegal about how they are obtaining the bodies, they are allowed to say it’s legal, despite how unethical it may seem.  1 lady even resigned her 11 year position at the Carnegie Science Center after it was released that they would be hosting the exhibit.  It is certainly creepy to think that these people did not volunteer their bodies to be used for this purpose.  You can read what the post gazette has about the exhibit here.

updated a few versions of the software used for the site, let me know if you see anything funky.

I’ve been recognized as a pittsburgh blogger thanks to http://www.pghbloggers.org/.  So, I’ve created a new topic for pittsburgh only content.  May go back and change some previous articles to this topic…we’ll see.  Anyway, check out this webcam for the new arena being built for the pittsburgh penguins.  They are supposed to blow up the left building in october, so that should be fun to watch.  They expect to have the arena completed by 2010.

http://penguins.nhl.com/fanzone/arena_cam.htm