Good Morning, RVA: This city’s like a pressure cooker turned up to high

Cold, like truly cold, weather descends upon us later this week.

November 10, 2014; 6:59 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: BlueGoo Studios

Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F, and that seems pretty awful. Highs this afternoon will reach the mid-60s, which, admittedly, does seem less awful but doesn’t do anything to make my scooter ride into the office this morning less unpleasant. Later this week, cold weather shows up in truth with highs in the upper-40s–at which point I will complain about the afternoon weather, too!

Water cooler

Friday evening, republican challenger Ed Gillespie conceded the senate race to Mark Warner saying, “The votes just aren’t there.” VPAP has the final, uncertified, margin of victory at 16,540 votes.

If Brookland Parkway is part of your day-to-day travels, you’ve probably noticed new markings on the road. It’s a bike lane! A rare and wondrous thing not often found in RVA, a bike lane can present confusion to drivers, bikers, and pedestrians alike. For those of you unsure how to navigate this new transportation infrastructure, Sam Davies has a handy flowchart.

The Washington Post released a new series of articles and videos called The N-Word. Intense and awesome stuff that is certainly worth your time.

Yesterday, folks in Germany celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Atlantic’s In Focus has some great photos from Lichtgrenze 2014, a public art project that put 8,000 lighted balloons along the former path of the wall.

I spent my entire weekend with this 11-minute video, and I wouldn’t feel right not sharing it. Be warned: it’s…bizarre.

Sports!

• Wahoos lost to Florida State, 34-20.
• VCU cruised to a 92-43 victory over the University of California (PA).
• Caps downed the Hurricanes 4-3.

This morning’s longread

The app that would end math homework

First, this is rad and feels like the future. Second, my TI-82 (or was it my TI-89?) could solve equations for variables and play Drugwars, and I did just fine.

And then, the video below shows PhotoMath, a new app by the startup MicroBlink. Point a phone’s camera at an equation and it solves for a variable, sparkles twinkling around the letters and numbers. Since its debut a couple weeks ago, PhotoMath has become one of the most popular free applications in Apple’s App Store. It’s not the first software that can do basic algebra (that would be 1967’s MATHLAB). Nor is it the first app that can recognize letters and numbers that you show to it: those have been around for years. But it’s the seamless way PhotoMath combined character recognition and math skill that captured people’s imaginations. More than two million people have watched the video demoing its capabilities.

Could it be that math homework, as we once knew it, is obsolete? I tried the software out on this 7th-grade assignment, and I got answers to all 14 problems in under a minute using the app.

This morning’s Instagram

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November 10, 2014 6:59 AM 0