Lingua Franca

My wife and I were sitting behind a car with a license plate frame that said ”alumni” across the top and ”kamehameha” across the bottom. I laughed and said, ”That's a magical incantation from a Japanese cartoon show” thinking that it was some sort of cryptic reference.

My wife looked askance and said, ”He's the first king of Hawaii, and that's probably a reference to a school named after him.”

So I looked up ”kamehameha” on my phone and sure enough, it is the name of the first king of Hawaii and there is a school named after him.

Is it weird that my knowledge is largely informed by pop culture?

Glympse into the Minds of Programmers

I love Glympse. It is a great tool for long trips; I just pick some family members, a destination, click "send" and then those family members can follow my progress to that destination. It's also great for letting people know where you are around town in case you want to meet up.

The app has gone through some updates recently which drastically changed the interface but made it much easier to send Glympses. In addition, some feature came to my attention (either they were added or they were new). One of the features I noticed while setting up a new Glympse is the feature to add a message. So I tapped on it.

Up popped a list of 50 or so canned messages as well as a text box to enter a custom message.

Scanning through the list, some of the messages appear useful. For example, "Almost there!" "I'll be right there!" and "I think I'm lost."