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📺 Wisdom of the Crowd Season 1, Episodes 2-4

Watched Wisdom of the Crowd Season 1, Episodes 2-4 from CBS
A drama about a visionary tech innovator who creates a cutting-edge crowdsourcing app to solve his daughter's murder, and revolutionize crime solving in the process. Inspired by the notion that a million minds are better than one, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jeffrey Tanner, develops "Sophe," an online platform for publicly shared information he's certain will find his daughter's killer.
I managed to miss the first episode. Episodes 2 and 3 are a bit stilted and feel a bit preachy, but I’m willing to watch a few to see where it goes.
It seems like a relatively timely concept though they could do a better job explaining the science behind what they’re doing. They do manage to do a reasonable job on the drama though.

I haven’t read any of the recent articles on Jeremy Piven, but I’m a bit curious how long this series will last given his recent PR scrape. It seems relatively interesting and has some potential, but I’m not sure if it’s got traction to go more than a season. If allegations pull on it, it may not make it very far. Piven is pretty good in the show, but I actually think he could be better if he removed his stereotypical “geek” glasses. They somehow drag on his performance.

I thought it was pretty funny that the series uses the fictional search engine “Chum Hum” which also appeared as a search engine in the CBS series The Good Wife.

Episode four delves into some interesting moral questions about technology and follows in the footsteps of Law & Order in their “ripped from the headlines” plotting. I’m curious if they’ll follow some of the nebulous moral endings that Law & Order had as well?

Spent a chunk of the afternoon working on the book for NaNoWriMo. I’ve pushed out 1,214 words in sections on rel-me, themes, and added some additional outline material. It’s coming along at a nice clip. I’ve also worked on \label{key} and \ref{keys} for cross referencing things a bit more nicely to make the editing portion next month go more smoothly.

It dawns on me I ought to update my totals to date on the NaNoWriMo website. (Oops!)

I’ll come back later tonight to (hopefully) add some additional material, but here’s the count:

Currently: 1,214 words.
Total: 18,528 words

I did manage to eek out about a thousand words today somewhat related to the book for NaNoWriMo, but since none of them will actually end up in it in the end, I’m going to count it as a zero. I did manage to do a good bit of additional reading, research, and thinking however, so it felt like a good day despite the low number.

I am still at 1,574 words per day on average for the month, so I am relatively close to the 1,667 average I’m supposed to be keeping up. This doesn’t seem bad to me given the amount of time I’m putting into testing out some pieces and research I’m doing along the way. I think is only the third day with a total of zero words for the day too, so I don’t feel as bad.

Today: 0 words
Total: 17,314 words

Blarg!! It would have been a much better day, but somehow, after listening to a podcast this very morning in which they dispensed the advice “Don’t write in the CMS” I managed to do just that and lose about 1,500 words! I bounced back after wasting an hour trying to do some recover and churned it all out again–this time in my editor as is fitting and proper.

Today: 1,607 words
Total: 17,314 words

Checkin Trader Joe’s

Checked into Trader Joe's
Rush hour shopping. At least this location has lots of parking. Their mascot is Cap’n Jack.

Apples at Trader Joe's
Apples at Trader Joe’s
Apples arranged from sour to sweet at Trader Joe's
Apples arranged from sour to sweet at Trader Joe’s
The mural on the entrance of Trader Joe's
The mural on the entrance of Trader Joe’s
This side of the sign means goodbye....
This side of the sign means goodbye….
A nice reminder as you enter Trader Joe's. Pretty useful since I always forget my bags.
A nice reminder as you enter Trader Joe’s. Pretty useful since I always forget my bags.
A view of Trader Joe's from the massive parking lot in the rear.
A view of Trader Joe’s from the massive parking lot in the rear.
Cap'n Jack, the store mascot, was hiding near the sample kiosk tonight. If your child finds him, they can usually get a treat when you visit.
Cap’n Jack, the store mascot, was hiding near the sample kiosk tonight. If your child finds him, they can usually get a treat when you visit.
I want a flying machine like this....
I want a flying machine like this….
And Shazam! Take that NaNoWriMo! This is the kind of day I need to be doing more of… The research and work is paying off. I once heard a quote in which Mozart described how he wrote music. It entailed something along the lines that he worked on it in his head and then dumped it all out on the page much like a cow urinates. Today I know how that feels.

Today: 3,667 words
Total: 15,707 words

A meh day for my NaNoWriMo project as I’m turning in a goose-egg for the day. I feel a bit bad that this update post is more words than I manufactured for the main project. I did do a bit of reading/research and fixed a relatively large \LaTeX error I was having for the last two days, so that is something I suppose.

Some of the research and work will actually result in some physical changes to my site later this week to, so that’s a bonus I suppose! (I’m not counting any lines of code toward the book though.)

Today: 0 words
Total: 12,040 words