i don't think we'll see another day like today the rest of the year, a warm (70's) indian summer day. i opened as many windows as possible to air out the house and let the warm air in. there was street cleaning this morning, must've caught a lot of people off guard because the tow trucks were busy. afterwards i went outside and swept the sidewalk since cleaning continues tomorrow on my side of the street.

with drew gone, i took the opportunity to do some clean: scrubbed the mildew off the shower curtains, washed the toilet bowl, wiped the soap scum from the bathtub, and vacuumed the bathroom and living room.

i invoiced client R today even though the flash project isn't done yet. edits won't be finished until november, and as i expected, there will be 2 additional interactives on top of the one i worked on, so i'm happy to get a bit more work.

i went to rite aid to get some toothpaste. after many years of trial and error, i've finally found a toothpaste that i like: listerine gel. it's one of the spiciest toothpastes, which makes sense since gargling listerine mouthwash is like gargling with fire. they didn't have any gel (just regular paste) but they did have a listerine whitening gel which i'm willing to try. next i went to market basket, but lacking any specific recipes to make, i just grabbed some unhealthy snacks instead. i'll come back later in the week when i have an idea of what want to make.

drew came home at 3:30. i told him about a 4:30 bike lecture at the harvard graduate school of design (GSD): "promoting cycling and walking for sustainable cities: lessons from europe and north america" by john pucher (rutgers). he wasn't sure if he wanted to go but finally decided it was worth checking out; we left around 4:00.

i noticed when drew rides his bike he has a casual disregard for traffic. i saw it when we rode the wrong way down my street. i thought i was reckless, but he seemed to be playing chicken with the oncoming vehicles. maybe it's because he doesn't drive and can't appreciate what a car driver feels when obstructed by a bicycle. later we rode onto the sidewalk to park our bikes and he didn't understand why people might be upset.

the lecture was interesting up to a certain point. there were a lot of charts (statistic porn) but drew was disappointed that the speaker didn't further interpret the data. i was curious about bicycling infrastructures in other parts of the world, particularly china, which has a long history of bicycles.

back at the house, drew cooked up his usual pasta with salad, while i resorted to some soup from a can.

i had some free time in the evening so i tried building an arduino mood lamp. i was trying out my protoshield with the mini breadboard for the very first time. i had a hard time getting it to work: the problem was i didn't insert the protoshield pins all the way onto the arduino uno. once i did that it worked better, but not perfect. the lights don't change as smoothly, not sure if it's a hardware or software issue. something else i tried was powering the whole thing from an external battery pack. i managed to get it to work over the weekend (have to jiggle the batteries a little bit). the final creation looked like a heavy electronic tank with a color-changing paper tube chimney on the top.