SkyHarbor needs to go embedded

A few weeks ago I went to Terminal 2 at Phoenix SkyHarbor Airport (PHX). [PS: I'm always impressed by the cleanliness.] There were new 'Arrival/Departure' screens .... not the normal TV-Monitors.

These monitors were large, LCD monitors ... 4 monitors in a group .. at body-height. It was nice because the old TV-Monitors are usually mounted up high and you have to always look up to see them.

I was able to look behind the monitors and took a great snap-shot. Notice what they're doing? Each monitor has its own Dell small-footprint PC .. what a waste. It would be so much easier to have one monitor with an embedded PC .. and that PC driving the video for all the monitors. If they make it wireless and use a low-power PC .. imagine the cost savings (in support and power).

It's nice to find these issues ... I just wonder to who I should communicate this idea.

Kodak Gallery -- download script

I have some photos that I uploaded to Kodak Gallery (2002-2003). Now, I want those photos back .. going into each album, viewing the picture then downloading the picture. Luckily, I found a script does all the grunt work for me.

Axon Flux has a great Ruby script that easily downloads all your albums into separate folders. I modified the script based on the comments and validated that it works in Windows-XP.

First, install Ruby for Windows (http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?RubyInstaller)
Then install the 'mechanize' and 'fileutils' addons:
At a prompt type: c:\Program Files\Ruby\bin\gem install mechanize fileutils

Modify the ruby script with your KodakGallery username and password.
Now run the ruby script: ruby ruby_script.rb

It's that easy!