$ du -sh Library/Application\ Support/Google/Picasa3/
136M Library/Application Support/Google/Picasa3/

iPhoto puked while trying to import the entire set into a single library, so I broke it up by year.

$ du -sh ~/Pictures/20[01][0-9]
38M /Users/dberger/Pictures/2001
148M /Users/dberger/Pictures/2002
215M /Users/dberger/Pictures/2003
123M /Users/dberger/Pictures/2004
333M /Users/dberger/Pictures/2005
2.0G /Users/dberger/Pictures/2006
1.1G /Users/dberger/Pictures/2007
4.2G /Users/dberger/Pictures/2008
3.5G /Users/dberger/Pictures/2009
5.8G /Users/dberger/Pictures/2010

Note to Apple - stop converting my CR2 raw files into jpegs and you might have a fighting chance...

Over the last several weeks I've tried, unsuccessfully, to configure it in such a way that it's usable as a Boxee box.

So far, it's been pretty much a total software fail.

If you haven't read Predictably Irrational, read whichever one you can get from your local library (or bookstore) first.

And then read the other one.

I was in the middle of trying again to make it through the first few chapters of Piracy (spoiler: I gave up), and figured some fiction was a great way to cheat on a book that made the Sahara seem positively damp.

I ended up as the on-call two weeks ago, and spent a week living with (and playing with) the Nexus One.

And all I can say is "wow."

And not in a good way...

I mostly agree with the Amazon aggregate of 3.5 stars - it had some great ideas and some interesting characters and locales, but just never really grabbed me.

Far from the worst SF I've read, but not something I'd read again, or seek out sequels to.

It arrived the other day, and weighing in at only a hundred and eighty pages, it was a pretty quick read.

While I completely agree with the cover quote, from Douglas Hofstadter that "Our society would be unimaginably different if the average person truly understood the ideas in this marvelous and important little book" I can't say that the existence of the book had any real chance to change society, given it's tendency toward innumeracy.

If you've taken probability and statistics, or discrete mathematics, you've almost certainly been exposed to the ideas in the book. And you've almost equally certainly failed - as most of us do - to correctly apply those lessons to day-to-day life.

Worth reading, but difficult to proselytize.

I expressed interest in the (2009) demo unit - and the fellow I was dealing with explained that he couldn't sell it yet, as it had only 1900 of the required 2500 miles before it was salable per BMW.

He then offered to let me take the bike home over the weekend, put 600 miles on it, bring it back on Tuesday and buy it.

Had I not been headed to Maui that Monday...

Why, in the name of all things right, did my high school insist on teaching macro economics (which is, generally speaking, utter bullshit) rather than micro economics? Seriously, if I had realized there was a whole discipline focused on the study of how people respond to incentives, I might not be writing software for a living.

Or, given the relative incentive structures in play, perhaps I would...

Anyway, the book is definitely worth a read. And if you haven't read it's predecessor, give that a whirl, too.

I ended up only getting about 2/3 through The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science before having to return it to the library. I wanted very much to love this book, but when compared to works like Longitude, or Stiff it just didn't quite hold up to expectations. As a series of semi-connected essays, those I read were interesting, but I never really "got" or connected with Holmes' thesis.

Most recently, I returned The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and haven't put it back on my hold/buy list. The first few chapters weren't particularly engaging, but that could have been more about other stuff going on rather than the merits of the work, so I may give this one another shot.