'Labor Day' detour

this morning i was bicycling from (Bolton to) Acton to West Concord, headed to Nashoba Brook Bakery (where i am now), and part of Piper Road (the way i usually go) was closed, all blocked off with traffic cones.  there was a cop waving cars in the direction of the detour; but he let me go through, saying "Keep to the left."

i didn't know if there had been a big accident, or if there was  construction, or what might be going on.  no cars were coming the other way on Piper, and after a little while i came to a big crowd gathered in the street.  there was an older-looking New Hampshire police car at a jaunty angle in the driveway and a lot of people milling around the property, a few trucks parked here and there, and a cop in the road.  i wondered what might have drawn New Hampshire police all the way to Acton/Concord Massachusetts?

even though there didn't seem to be any big emergency going down, i stayed to the left and slipped through the crowd, past the cop.  when i got to the end of Piper, where it dumps out onto School St, there was another cop and i asked him what was going on.  he said they were shooting a scene for the movie 'Labor Day' (with Kate Winslet).

cool!

i think that's the closest i've ever been to a movie shoot, and the only reason i was going through Acton at all was that i needed to stop at a bank there.  lucky me!  (and lucky that i was on bicycle; if i'd been in a car, they never would have let me through.)

Demonoid down? :-(

just spent a while reading comments on the unavailability of Demonoid:

http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-to-suffer-prolonged-downtime-after-ddos-attack-120727/
http://www.zdnet.com/demonoid-hit-by-ddos-attack-7000001732/
http://www.tekgoblin.com/2012/07/27/demonoid-down-after-ddos-attack/
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/07/demonoid-brought-down-by-a-severe-ddos-attack/
[and the list goes on....]

very sad.

illegitimi non carborundum, demonoid.

oh well, back to more "legitimate" stuff.

i couldn't resist this JPG . . .

i'm making an effort not to post partisan political stuff on Facebook, but i couldn't resist this image from MoveOn:

i'll be mighty glad when the stupid pre-election media blitz is over and we can go back to "normal" life.

sultry July afternoon

sitting on the back deck, now that it's becoming shaded.  hot as Hades today (for Massachusetts), and humid as the Everglades (with only a mild exaggeration).  my phone just warbled like a sick electronic parrot to give me a flash flood warning, but the radar shows it none too close.

after a twenty-year sabbatical of sorts, i guess it's time for me to go back to school for real—time to begin catching the commuter rail into Tufts and taking the CS classes i should have taken twenty years ago.  i should have extended my undergrad a year or two back in 1993 and taken the classes then, but all i can do is now.

by waiting twenty years, i can spend my time with C++ instead of C, and on computers a whole bunch faster (roughly 200 times faster).  [if anyone can give me a better number comparing computers of 1992 to 2012, i'd love to hear it.]

wish me luck with my computational consciousness development (and with finding some financial aid!).

stay cool, peeps.