Monolith149 Daily

RT @ihnatko

2012-01-30T07:40:00.001-05:00

I'm not saying that getting in a United economy seat is _exactly_ like squeezing into a Mercury spacecraft. But there are similarities. (From @ihnatko)

The 10 Best Android Arcade Games

2012-01-30T07:38:00.001-05:00

From @mashable, in spite of the fact I despise these integer headlines.

Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?

2012-01-30T07:36:00.003-05:00

Michael Wolf's answer.

ISS Flyover Video

2012-01-30T05:48:00.002-05:00

More time lapse [VIDEO] from the International Space Station—flying over the earth.

Cockpit Video

2012-01-30T05:44:00.001-05:00

This is a fantastic cockpit [VIDEO] sent by Hal.

NASA’s New Satellite Captures Amazing Hi-Res Image of Earth

2012-01-27T06:27:00.000-05:00

via @Mashable.

Google’s Python Lessons are Awesome

2012-01-27T06:24:00.002-05:00

via Hartley Brody

The lovably geeky Nick Parlante — a Google employee and CS lecturer at Stanford — has written some awesomely succinct tutorials that not only tell you how you can use Python, but also how you should use Python. This makes them a fantastic resource, regardless of whether you’re just starting, or you’ve been working with Python for awhile.

Google's Python class

Earth at night seen from space

2012-01-27T06:20:00.002-05:00

ISS (HD 1080p) ORIGINAL [VIDEO]

Thirty Books Everyone in the Software Business Should Read

2012-01-27T06:15:00.004-05:00

Micro ISV Blog.

Don't Return Null

2012-01-10T07:43:00.002-05:00

Use a Tail Call. This is a fascinating read, particularly if you follow the links.

Drone Data

2012-01-10T07:35:00.001-05:00

I found this interesting from the article Counting on a Rush to the Cloud from Bits.

(One interesting side note: The cameras on drone aircraft in Afghanistan take such precise pictures that not all the data can quickly travel over the local Internet connections to analysts in the United States. The usual method is to store everything in a local cargo container full of receiving gear, computers and storage, then airlift it home when it’s full, swapping out another container to absorb more info from the drones.)

It reminds me of astronomers returning from a run at an observatory.

iPad Survives Fall from Space

2012-01-10T07:28:00.002-05:00

[VIDEO] http://youtu.be/X4xNcF6T7Is

Large Scale Design with Haskell

2012-01-05T10:01:00.001-05:00

I'm revisiting the question, why and how is Haskell well-suited for large-scale projects? Here's one set of answers at Stack Overflow.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T11:31:00.001-05:00

2012.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

2011-12-31T09:52:00.000-05:00

Peter, Paul and Mary. Wow!

In the Early Morning Rain (1966)

2011-12-31T09:50:00.001-05:00

Peter, Paul and Mary. I don't approve of all the lyrics, but this is one of my favorites.

Cloud Computing Trends to Watch in 2012

2011-12-29T09:22:00.003-05:00

from Data Center Knowledge.

Haskell Authors

2011-12-28T10:07:00.000-05:00

Simon Peyton-Jones and John Hughes interviewed at Channel 9.

The interview looks amateur but it gets more and more interesting as it progresses. Try to ignore the picture taking extravaganza that goes on in the background at one point.

Amazon Builds World's Fastest Nonexistant Supercomputer

2011-12-27T10:41:00.003-05:00

by Carl Metz at Wired.

Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3

2011-12-27T10:40:00.000-05:00

Amazing pictures from the ISS.

Sky and Telescope.

Wikipedia.

Earth's Rotation Measured!

2011-12-22T10:50:00.004-05:00

Actually it's easier to think of this in terms of the wandering of the poles being measured. Story at Physorg.com.

Happy Winter Solstice!

2011-12-22T10:45:00.001-05:00

At 0:30 EST last night (5:30 UTC).

Thu 2011-12-22 00:30:00 -0500
Thu 2011-12-22 05:30:00 +0000

These times are rounded to the minute, the seconds aren't really zeroes.

Android vs. iPhone

2011-12-14T08:30:00.000-05:00

Which looks better? This article in Business Insider says these 11 screen shots prove that “Android apps are uglier Than iOS apps.” I looked at them and I just don't see it. The Android apps don't look worse to me and I generally don't see what the captions of the various images assert.

I do see that the iOS apps look more consistent in some ways.

To me, many of the Android apps look cleaner. In one example the iOS app has a search box at top (taking up a lot of space) but I know Android has a search button that works in all apps (that I've experienced and that have search), so you don't need a search box always on screen.

In another case, the iOS app has letter-of-alphabet dividers for a list but I know on Android if you grab such a list and scroll a little tab appears. That tab has the current letter of the alphabet and you can quickly move it to the letter you're interested in, the list will scroll quickly as you move through the alphabet.

Dawn Approaches Vesta

2011-12-13T09:49:00.003-05:00

“Unveiling [a] spectacular alien world.” by Ken Kremer at Universe Today.

Building the Universe Inside a Supercomputer

2011-12-13T09:46:00.001-05:00

by Ian O'Neill at Discovery News.

In an arXiv preprint publication submitted on Dec. 8, Juhan Kim and colleagues from the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul have completed the largest simulation of the universe ever attempted.

The simulation calculates the evolution of 374 billion cold dark matter particles in a box some 10 gigaparsecs across—this represents approximately two thirds the size of the observable Universe. This virtual universe is 8,800 times larger than the previous record holder.

Images of Jupiter and Moons

2011-12-13T09:43:00.001-05:00

Here are 10 sets of remarkable images of Jupiter's moons, provided by observers in recent months. Many of them resolve surface details. (South is up in all images. Click on the thumbnail images below for full size versions.) From britastro.org.

Higgs vs. Hype

2011-12-13T09:41:00.000-05:00

A mini guide from MSNBC.

Higgs Boson

2011-12-13T09:39:00.000-05:00

Five one-page explanations. Well done!

“In 1993, the UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave, challenged physicists to produce an answer that would fit on one page to the question ‘What is the Higgs boson, and why do we want to find it?’”

Tweetdeck

2011-12-13T09:36:00.000-05:00

Well, there goes the destruction of Tweetdeck by Twitter. Thanks.

WW2 Tweets from 1939

2011-12-13T09:17:00.000-05:00

This is Outstanding! @RealTimeWWII - Livetweeting the Second World War, as it happens on this date and time in 1939, and for 6 years to come.

Meet the Internet's Newest Boy Genius

2011-12-13T09:14:00.001-05:00

by @gigaom.

Third Rock Radio

2011-12-13T09:11:00.001-05:00

from NASA?

BrowserID

2011-12-13T09:09:00.002-05:00

An interesting authentication scheme. This looks pretty good. It's based simply on your email address.

At Mozilla

Browserid.org.

On Security Now. (YouTube)

Nano-Optic Technology for Enhanced Security

2011-12-13T09:05:00.000-05:00

“Nanotech Security [has] created an atoms-thick display that can be read by humans or machines and that shines with the brightness of a typical LED despite using nothing but reflected light.” via @FastCompany.

NOtES exploits an obscure area of physics to accomplish its bright and sharp display, known as plasmonics. Light waves interact with the array of nano-scale holes on a NOtES display—which are typically 100–200 nanometers in diameter—in a way that creates what are called “surface plasmons.” In the words of the company, this means light “[collects] on the films surface and creates higher than expected optical outputs by creating an electromagnetic field, called surface plasmonic resonance.”

Caught Up

2011-12-09T06:26:00.001-05:00

Okay, I think that catches me up on some reading I'd saved up to repost.

Game On!

2011-12-09T06:25:00.001-05:00

The beta episode of a new show on gaming at Twit.tv.

Will Cultural Pushback Kill Private Clouds

2011-12-09T06:24:00.001-05:00

at GigaOM.

Video Editing in Youtube

2011-12-09T06:22:00.001-05:00

from GigaOM.

Car, Table, Counter or TakHomaSak

2011-12-09T06:17:00.001-05:00

by Roger Ebert. A must-read tribute to Steak 'n Shake.

Graphics Rendering on Android

2011-12-09T06:13:00.001-05:00

True facts from Diane Hackborn.

Zero Email

2011-12-09T06:08:00.001-05:00

Finally, a company implements a no email policy! For a long time, I've thought email should go!

Observations on Ten Years of Blogging

2011-12-09T06:05:00.001-05:00

by @GigaOM.

Engulfed Cathedral

2011-12-09T05:53:00.001-05:00

by Claude Debussy is one of my favorite pieces of music.

This electronic version performed by Isao Tomita on Snowflakes Are Dancing (1974) was used in the first planetarium show I ever did. The show was a live lecture for some 50 minutes (too long, but these were the old days of longer attention spans) and the show (created by Mike Hood) ended in a beautiful sun rise with this music. We only used the piece up to the 3m35s mark or so, fading it out there.

Piano

Wind ensemble arrangement

CarrierIQ

2011-12-09T05:48:00.001-05:00

Interview in The @Verge by Sean Hollister is a good attempt to begin sorting out what's going on here. This story is still developing.

It was discussed on This Week in Tech 330.

Lance Ulanoff at Mashable.

The 99 Most Essential Christmas Masterpieces (Amazon Exclusive)

2011-12-05T06:53:00.001-05:00

In the 100 Christmas Albums for $5 at Amazon's MP3 Store. Recommended!

BSD VM

2011-11-20T18:40:00.001-05:00

I'm reasonably familiar with the virtual memory systems on classic UNIX, Solaris and current Linux. However, now that I'm even more a Mac user and (back) in the BSD world, I find myself trying to recall the specific details of memory states, active, inactive, free, wired.

Here's a good reference. It's not the most lucid discussion but it's accurate.

Chapter 7. Virtual Memory System, from the FreeBSD Architecture Handbook, The FreeBSD Documentation Project at freebsd.org.

Astroid 2005 YU55 Fly By

2011-11-14T08:44:00.001-05:00

from Sky and Telescope.

Faster Than Light Neutrinos?

2011-11-14T08:41:00.001-05:00

Nope. From @Endgadget.

Gemini 12

2011-11-14T08:36:00.001-05:00

was launched on 1966-11-11. Story from Universe Today.

Amazon Kindle Fire

2011-11-14T08:19:00.001-05:00

reviewed at The @Verge by Joshua Topolsky.

Knocks aside, I do like the general aesthetic and feel of the Fire. After using this device and then going back to the iPad 2, I was struck at how big and bulky Apple's tablet feels. This size and shape might very well be the sweet spot for many users, and since most people have never seen or used a PlayBook, the Fire should be a relatively new experience for them from a design standpoint too.

Minor complaints aside, my main takeaway from the Fire on the process of finding and purchasing content is this: Amazon has done it better and more elegantly than anyone else in the space right now, and I hope the competition follows suit.

There are some bright spots, like the use of tabs, but overall I was underwhelmed with browser performance.

Furthermore, because the Fire is on Android 2.3, many of the applications offered feel like glorified phone apps. That works sometimes, but often it feels clunky and cheap.

Scenes from Autumn

2011-11-10T06:46:00.002-05:00

Standing in the checkout line at Burt's Pumkin Farm hoping the price of the pumpkin I have is $8 and not infinity.

The Reengineering of Facebook Messages

2011-11-03T09:49:00.000-04:00

From IEEE Spectrum.

Robot Riding Bicycle

2011-11-03T09:47:00.001-04:00

In @TechCrunch. [VIDEO]

Oh great, not only do we have to worry about these things chasing us through the woods on foot, but now they have bicycles!

The Mac App Sand Box

2011-11-03T09:42:00.001-04:00

This posting on Naming Things bemoans the new required sandbox for App Store apps on Mac OS. They may be right but I think this is a move in the right direction.

I don't know about you, but it's become clear to me that putting user data into files on systems and putting system data into the same types of files on systems has led to many of the troubles we have with system security today. User data should never have been allowed to mix with system data.

In general, sand boxing in various forms works to prevent this problem.

In the article, the author complains about not being able to grab screen shots or not being allowed to communicate with another process. In fact, a better model than shared files is for the system to provide a service which apps can access. The system could provide a screenshot service that can take a screen grab from the display system and offer it to a client app. Interprocess communication services have been there all along.

There's a long rant in the article about plugins. I'm not sure how important plugins are, but I can see a service that registers and stores plugins if a plugin needs to be shared by multiple apps. If it doesn't, if a plugin is app-specific, then there should be a service that allows each app to register and store it's own plugins. They don't need to go into files. No data does. Files just contain data and the data can just as easily be stored other ways.

An architecture like this is actually better all around and doesn't preclude functional software. In fact, a service-based architecture like this provides for more easily moving parts of the architecture to other machines, if the communication can occur over a network.

I, for one, welcome our new service-oriented architectures. If there's a down side, it isn't clear to me yet.

Apple Television

2011-10-28T08:40:00.002-04:00

Here’s why Apple’s TV needs to be an actual television, and not just a cheap add-on box from Dan Frommer, @SplatF.

Citrix claims it will make virtual desktops cheaper than real ones

2011-10-26T07:37:00.000-04:00

by Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica.

I think a lot about cloud computing and I'm ready to go (pretty much) all in. Actually, I'm already there to a large degree. However, when I think of possibly needing to run Windows (I don't expect to), I usually think of needing to get some VM software, a Windows license, and software to boot up at least a virtual Windows machine.

It hadn't occurred to me, really, that a service could provide Windows machines on demand. You could have a fully running, personal, persistent desktop, or an ephemeral Windows machine on-demand, or even just a virtual app that runs, popping up a virtual Windows VM underneath it, again on-demand.

Confessions of an iPhone User Who Recently Switched to Android

2011-10-26T07:29:00.004-04:00

by Cullen Roche at Business Insider.

Yes! HAL from ThinkGeek (for iPhone 4S)

2011-10-26T07:13:00.001-04:00

From Mike Elgan.

From ThinkGeek.

Does Anyone Use Twitter Any More?

2011-10-26T06:55:00.000-04:00

Brian asks.

I use Twitter a lot, mainly for reading. I essentially abandoned RSS for Twitter some time ago (> 1 yr but I forget how long), so essentially all news I read is via Twitter.

Because tweets act like they're ephemeral and seem to act even more so over time (they aren't really but it can be hard to dig up your old tweets), I've backed off to blogging for any message I really care about, and even some that I don't. All of my blog posts go to Twitter via Feedburner.

In the past, I thought Twitter was extremely powerful since it provided an instant communication infrastructure for almost anything you wanted to do on the Internet. The buzz over that seems to have died down. I don't know if it's really old news but I'm sure there are so many examples on either side of that question, it's probably not worth debating.

So, I use blogs and Twitter for almost anything I want to say to groups of people or in public. If you read those two sources, you can see almost anything I've said. For other places like Facebook, Google Plus, I forward the blog and Twitter posts on to them.

On rare occasions, I do post or reply in other places.

Ice Cream Sandwich on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus

2011-10-20T08:07:00.000-04:00

Announced yesterday. Google.com/nexus.

Ice Cream Sandwich is the name of version 4.0 of the Android operating system.

Movie Being Shot on Marietta Square Today

2011-10-20T07:58:00.000-04:00

The stars are reported to be Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller but they won't be there today. See the AJC.com.

Siri Security Flaw

2011-10-20T07:54:00.000-04:00

from Business Insider, SAI: Tools by Dylan Love.

Even if you have a passcode set to keep your phone inaccessible to other people, Siri's default setting is to ignore this. By holding the home button to activate Siri, anyone can bypass whatever preventative measures you have in place.

Don't despair—it's a simple fix. Start up Settings and navigate to General/Passcode Lock. Make sure that the “Siri” option is set to “Off.” That's all it takes to disable Siri while a passcode is in place.

Your Next Camper

2011-10-20T07:50:00.000-04:00

Via @GuyKawasaki from The Designer Pad: A Suite on Wheels for all of the campers in our family.

These other posts there are also interesting.

Size Does Not Matter

Living in 500 sq ft. The Bedroom

Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson

2011-10-14T09:32:00.000-04:00

dmr::7:3::/usr/dmr

2011-10-13T08:05:00.000-04:00

wget http://simh.trailing-edge.com/sources/simhv38-1.zip

unzip *
mkdir BIN
make pdp11
cd BIN

wget http://simh.trailing-edge.com/kits/uv7swre.zip
unzip uv7swre.zip

./pdp11

PDP-11 simulator V3.8-1
sim> set cpu u18
Disabling XQ
sim> set rl0 RL02
sim> att rl0 unix_v7_rl.dsk
sim> boot rl0
@boot
New Boot, known devices are hp ht rk rl rp tm vt
: rl(0,0)rl2unix
mem = 177856

# cat /etc/passwd
root:VwL97VCAx1Qhs:0:1::/:
daemon:x:1:1::/:
sys::2:2::/usr/sys:
bin::3:3::/bin:
uucp::4:4::/usr/lib/uucp:/usr/lib/uucico
dmr::7:3::/usr/dmr:

# ^E
Simulation stopped, PC: 002306 (MOV (SP)+,177776)
sim> exit
Goodbye

So Long, Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-13T06:54:00.003-04:00

Inventor of UNIX.

NGINX

2011-10-12T08:53:00.001-04:00

How is it that I've never heard of, or noticed, NGINX until now?

The Mythical Man Month

2011-10-12T08:51:00.000-04:00

by Dhanji R. Prasanna at Rethrick Construction.

I vividly recall my first week at Google. It was in Google's old office in Sydney, high up on the 18th floor of a triangular skyscraper. The views from virtually everywhere in the office were breathtaking. And inside, the walls beamed the warm glow of those wonderful colors so familiar from a childhood playing with Lego--Yellow, Red, Blue and Green.

Fast-forward six months and Google was in a lavish, new office with Walkabout fully underway and around 35 strong. The trouble, I am sure, began a lot earlier but this is when I started to really feel it. First, there was the dreaded endless meeting--they lasted for hours with very little being decided. Then, you started having to push people to provide APIs or code changes that you desperately needed for your feature but that they had little to no interest in beyond the academic.

Of course I enjoyed my time on Wave like no other time in my career. It was equal parts frustration, joy, defeat and passion. I don't regret a single moment of being associated with it. It remains a wonderful attempt at creating something unique, exciting and incomparably bold. Nor do I want to ascribe blame to anyone on the team or Google at large. I just want to point that even the smartest, most motivated and talented people in the world--with a track record of delivering success--are alone not sufficient to overcome complexity that creeps up on you. Maybe we should have known better, but we didn't.

In the end, the man-month as a scalable unit of work is hubris worthy of a Greek tragedy.

The iPhone 4S

2011-10-12T08:45:00.000-04:00

by John Gruber, Daring Fireball.

No, Facebook Is Not Ruining Your Grades [STUDY]

2011-10-12T08:42:00.000-04:00

by Sarah Kessler at Mashable.

All Facebook activities do not have the same relationship with grades. Posting status updates and using Facebook chat generally mean a lower GPA, while checking to see what friends are up to and sharing links suggest a higher GPA. In other words, social Facebook activities were correlated with lower grades and information-related Facebook activities were correlated with higher grades.

This doesn’t necessarily mean forgoing Facebook status updates and chat is likely to improve a student’s grades. Nothing in the study implies cause and effect. Instead, it seems that what’s important about Facebook in an educational context has very little to do with how much time you spend on it.

Watch Large Hadron Collider Collisions with an Android App

2011-10-12T08:39:00.001-04:00

Open Source Matters By Rikki Kite. The Department of Physics at the University of Oxford releases super-cool, free Large Hadron Collider Google Android app.

The app downloaded quickly to my HTC Incredible, and nine buttons on the first screen display the app options: Explore the LHC, What is ATLAS?, ATLAS in 3D, Hunt the Higgs Boson, Stream 2-D Events, Stream 3-D Events, Web links, Credits, and Feedback.

The coolest options are probably the stream 2-D and 3-D event buttons. If the detector is currently taking data, events collected in real time at the ATLAS detector are streamed live to your phone. How cool is that?

Dart: a language for structured web programming

2011-10-11T17:28:00.000-04:00

From Google Code.

Today we are introducing an early preview of Dart, a class-based optionally typed programming language for building web applications. Dart’s design goals are:
Create a structured yet flexible language for web programming.
Make Dart feel familiar and natural to programmers and thus easy to learn.
Ensure that Dart delivers high performance on all modern web browsers and environments ranging from small handheld devices to server-side execution.

Dart targets a wide range of development scenarios: from a one-person project without much structure to a large-scale project needing formal types in the code to state programmer intent.

Steve Wozniak Talks about Steve Jobs

2011-10-10T08:30:00.003-04:00

http://youtu.be/dK_XEGrzHUo

Snapshots of Life in a World with Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

In 1977, I drove up Peachtree Street to Datamart on Pharr Road in Buckhead. At the time it may have been the only computer store in Atlanta. If it wasn't, there weren't many. I clearly remember, not long after, when only three were listed in the Yellow Pages. The IMSAI and North Star computers there were wonderful to see, but the star of the store I came for was the Apple II.

I remember seeing a lunar lander game, probably the first time I'd seen computer graphics on a screen and certainly the first time for color graphics. I also recall a screen filled with BASIC code. At some point I probably keyed in and ran a bit.

A few years later, my wife and I went to another computer store to see the Apple Lisa. This was the first time I'd experienced a mouse and windows. The simple icons on a black and white screen, with a menu at the top, were compelling.

When I started work at Emory University in 1985 we had two Macintosh computers in a computer lab that was two doors down the hall from my office. In an handful of days we were unboxing a new LaserWriter. The big three-ring binder, “Inside the LaserWriter,” filled with loose leaf pages, and Adobe PostScript were a joy.

Just a few years later, my boss' boss had come from serving on the committee representing 25 universities that helped design the NeXT machine. We received two of first NeXTcubes produced and kept one in our office. My team named it Rubick. Not long after that, I had a NeXTslab on my desk. I was very fortunate to be able to put a NeXTslab, along with a PC and Mac, on the desktop of each of the five full-time professionals in my group.

The NeXT machines and NeXTSTEP were among the most delightful experiences I've ever had using and programming a computer.

Today, the Macbook Pro 13-in is one of the most beautiful computers ever made. That's the portable system I use now.

I'll miss the moments like these.

Photo by Marie Matthews.

So Long, Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T07:24:00.000-04:00

Understanding Virtual Memory

2011-10-04T07:40:00.002-04:00

An excellent web page.

“Our context for this discussion is the AICT Linux Cluster, which runs 64-bit GNU/Linux on AMD Opteron hardware. If you have a comment or question about the material presented, please send a note to research.support@ualberta.ca.”

Security Checklist for Twitter

2011-10-04T07:38:00.000-04:00

From dev.twitter.com.

Some best practices have nothing to do with your Tweets. The security of your Twitter account is crucial, especially when you have thousands of followers relying on you for trustworthy information. Please review this Security Checklist and bookmark the relevant Support pages.

Facebook's ticker privacy scare, and what you should do about it

2011-10-04T07:35:00.001-04:00

by Clare Washbrook in Naked Security.

Remember, check your Facebook privacy settings early and often. —KG

A Look Back at a 1966 Scientific American Article on Systems Analysis

2011-10-04T07:32:00.000-04:00

by Peter Norvig.

As a teenager in the early 1970s, I enjoyed going up to the attic and looking through old stacks of Scientific American magazines. …the issue that had the biggest effect on me was the September 1966 on Information (which I read about 40 years ago).

In this essay I’ll concentrate on one article from the issue: Christopher Strachey‘s contribution on “System Analysis and Programming.” At the time I had seen only a few snippets of BASIC code—nothing more than a few lines. This short article by Strachey was my first introduction to a high-level programming language and the first non-trivial program I’d ever read: a checkers-playing program. When I rediscovered this article recently, I was surprised to find two things: (1) the programming language and programming style are thoroughly modern, and (2) there is a serious mismatch between the design and the implementation, or the systems analysis and programming as Strachey calls it.

Star Shells Show Sun's Fate

2011-10-04T07:24:00.001-04:00

By Dr. Emma Rigby, Astronomy Now. “Giant dust shells around CW Leonis, an elderly giant star in the constellation of Leo studied by the Herschel Space Telescope, are providing clues on how our own Sun will behave when it nears the end of its life, around five billion years from now.”

How to Stay Safer and More Secure Online

2011-10-04T07:20:00.000-04:00

From Google.

The Knowledge Navigator was set in 2011

2011-10-04T07:17:00.002-04:00

@arnoldkim RT. [VIDEO] I was quite taken with this Apple video that came out in 1987. At Emory, Jim will remember, we used to show it to freshmen during their computer technology orientation.

(An article is cited from 2006 as “five years ago.”)

OS X Lion

2011-09-29T06:39:00.001-04:00

Here are two of the best reviews of Apple OS X Lion.

Apple OS X 10.7 Lion roars with futuristic, and maddening, upgrades by Andy Ihnatko (Chicago Sun-Times)

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica reviewBy John Siracusa

Skeuomorphic!

2011-09-29T06:31:00.003-04:00

Now I've discovered a word to describe my more than small dislike of page-turning animation: Skeuomorph.

In John Siracusa's extraordinary, voluminous review of Mac OS Lion at Ars Technica, he pulls out the definition of skeuomorph from Wikipedia.

A skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs may be deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar, such as copper cladding on zinc pennies or computer printed postage with circular town name and cancellation lines. An alternative definition is “an element of design or structure that serves little or no purpose in the artifact fashioned from the new material but was essential to the object made from the original material.”

The bold emphasis is his.

Perfect!

I'm a Mac?

2011-09-29T06:18:00.000-04:00

I'm trying an experiment. For the first time in longer than I can remember (probably the first time since the Mac II (series) in the very early 90s, I'm trying switching to a Macintosh as my main desktop system at home.

I've had a Macbook Pro of some flavor or another from work for five years now, so the Mac OS X environment is no stranger. Also, everyone else in the household has a Macbook.

But, for almost 10 years, when I sit down at my desk to do something serious, it's been the old Dell running Windows XP. Now, mainly pushed by the growing Gmail app, I'm faced with needing to add more memory to the old Dell but I'm tempted to make the jump to a more modern OS.

Around 2007 I made a solid decision. I'd never move to Windows Vista. In the same way that Windows 95 was a clear win and I abandoned the Mac interface, thinking it was for good (note that I had been a Windows user simultaneously all along and was using various UNIX workstations as well), it was just as clear that Vista was as horrible a mistake.

To be fair, Windows 7 seems to have redeemed the design and Windows 8 looks very interesting but the jury is still out. However, for now, I still have no intention of using a Windows machine, at least as my main workspace, every again. I still reserve the right to later change my mind, just like I did with the return to the Mac world, when a new boss suggested I really use a Macbook.

So, I finally decided to take the plunge that I've been considering for a while. I'm using my daughter's abandoned white 2007 Macbook as a desktop machine, plugged into my LCD monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers.

Parents of college students and high school seniors take note. I wondered if the Macbooks would last a full four years, including the battery remaining functional enough, etc. The answer for us is Yes! The Macbooks can easily hold solid for a full four years of use. I think the aluminum Macbooks even more so.

This is in contrast to my observations of other laptops. Their batteries seem to barely work for more than a year or two and I usually see the whole laptop being replaced in from one to three years, i.e., you'll be buying two traditional Windows laptops for a four+ year undergraduate degree run. Factor that into the price/cost/value comparisons: A Macbook for school is worth two non-Mac laptops.

I should also point out that I always have an Ubuntu Linux workstation nearby including on my desk and I still find them extremely functional and sometimes even delightful to use. If I had to use Ubuntu for my daily environment, I think I could.

Also, rest assured, the old XP machine is still humming away right here, still plugged into the same monitor. I still miss the nicer looking, more pleasing fonts of the Windows XP GUI compared to the slightly too-weighty sans serif fonts of the Mac. But, I'm making that compromise to move on.

Next on the radar: Upgrading from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.7 OS Lion. Do I make that plunge? I'm intrigued by this new OS.

Brian Brushwood Teaches a Card Trick

2011-09-23T08:50:00.001-04:00

[VIDEO]

WISE mission captures black hole's wildly flaring jet

2011-09-23T08:38:00.001-04:00

Article from Physorg.com.

Galactic Cannabilism

2011-09-23T08:35:00.000-04:00

by Matt Williams in Universe Today.

A Campus Champion for Women in Computer Science

2011-09-23T08:29:00.001-04:00

They've switched from Java to Python. Article by Ari Levy in Bloomberg Businessweek.

Happy Autumnal Equinox!

2011-09-23T08:26:00.002-04:00

A bit belated, it was 5:05 EDT this morning .

Fri 2011-09-23 05:05:00 -0400
Fri 2011-09-23 09:05:00 +0000

Faster Than Light Neutrinos?

2011-09-23T08:24:00.001-04:00

It sounds like crazy talk to me. We'll see.

An article

Commentary

The paper.

Scariest Face

2011-09-20T07:40:00.003-04:00

This is one of the scariest faces I've ever seen!

http://www.discovernewengland.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Huntington-SC179578.jpg

Sigh. Things Today's Babies Will Never Know

2011-09-20T07:33:00.000-04:00

by Stacy Johnson at Yahoo Finance Things babies born in 2011 will never know.

Computer CPUs 1000x Faster

2011-09-20T07:14:00.001-04:00

At Mashable by Charlie White.

“…3M and IBM have unlocked a secret low-tech shortcut.”

“It’s an adhesive that dissipates heat so efficiently that layer upon layer of chips can be stacked on top of each other into silicon ‘towers’ up to 100 layers high, glued together with this special adhesive that keeps things cool. The result? Faster chips for computers, laptops, smartphones and anything else that uses microprocessors.”

Nine Years Ago

2011-09-17T10:03:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was this blog's ninth anniversary. I started out using Blogger, but Blogger was configured to FTP the files to my desktop computer, a NeXT machine which also acted as a server on the Internet. (We had no firewalls at all in those days. Every computer was literally a peer on the Internet). . This was before Google bought Blogger. Later on I moved the blog, called Monolith Daily, to Blosxom (pronounced like blossom) software which ran off of my desktop computer at workBloxom provided for blog entries as simple text files.

Later down the road, as I left behind hosting my own services on the Internet, I moved Bloxom back to Blogger. This time it was fully hosted on Blogger with none of my own machines involved.

The name Monolith Daily came from the fact that my desktop computer's name was Monolith, taken from the main character of the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey. The Next computer was a flat, black slab, so it sort of looked the part.

Here's the very first post on the blog.

Mon 16 Sep 2002

This is the first entry. This is just a blog to check out and experiment with the template and other such stuff.

I don't plan to keep it---it should be deleted soon.

00:29

This is the first post of substance. Initially most of the blog consisted of snippets about work activity at the time. The blog itself was mainly aimed at folks at work.

Wed 18 Sep 2002

Today, I printed out the PeopleSoft copy of the config file for the Emulex card driver. I am comparing it to the document that Chip left of me that recommends settings in the config file. For example, it has a column with my software listed. There are some differences between the PS version and the recommendation in the document. I'll come back at some point and list them.

Once I have the lpfc.conf configured correctly, I'll either try the disks, drvconfig, etc., plan.

Tomorrow the plan is to be able to see the LUNs, install Veritas Volume Manager and File System. Then build the filesystems. I also need to remember to copy the binaries and support files over from the current.

23:51

The first non-work-related entry I could find is this one. Morph a celebrity was a web site that let you distort images of celebrities, apparently it's not around any more, at least at that site.

Fri 27 Sep 2002

Okay, for hours of fun try this: Morph-a-celebrity.

21:40

This is the next non-work related post, slightly more substantial.

Fri 04 Oct 2002

Astronomy and Distance

I will be making some presentations to fifth graders at Magill Elementary on Thursday 10 Oct so I'll be out some that day but working the rest of the time.

A Micro Essay: Thinking some about that presentation has me thinking that humans like to boil all measurements (of anything, any physical quantity) down to one of three things: distance, time or a quantity (just a number). Distance seems to be our favorite. Almost everything we measure we eventually do with some sort of ``meter'' which is just some needle or indicator moving a distance.

In these latter digital days, our meters read out numbers (ultimately integers, even if we pretend there's a decimal point in there). I've heard over the years that we really don't comprehend numbers larger than seven to 10. So, when numbers get really large (1000, million, billion), guess what we are interested in then? Not the actual number, but the magnitude of the number, i.e., how many digits it has. But the number of digits is just the answer to the question, how long is the number?, which is back to length again.

We sometimes count the digits (by using a logarithmic scale) but, for most of our experience, those quantities fit nicely back into our zero to 10 range.

13:07

It was Sat 2006-06-24 when I moved the blog from Blosxom and back to Blogger and Blogspot. Here's the last entry from the Blosxom version.

Sat 24 Jun 2006

Moved Blogging

I've moved my blogging to…http://monolith149daily.blogspot.com/

…at least for now. This is an experiment of sorts. I'm sort of caught in transition on blogging at the moment and I haven't quite decided what to do. So, for now, I've gone back to Blogger and Blogspot.

I'm working on a more long-term solution (permanent would be the wrong word) for the next edition of my public blogging.

My main motivation is to move my blog to another site. A secondary motivation is that Blosxom is getting slower due to dynamically generating the views. There are a lot of files now since each posting is a file.

I can generate static pages but then the searching feature (which is really useful, at least to me) doesn't work for those pages.

My current idea is to generate a static copy of this version Monolith Daily to this posting and put it up on a site that is linked such that Google can crawl and index it. Maybe that's the way to handle blogs. After some point, freeze them and publish them as a final, static archive of some type. A set of HTML pages perhaps.

I've also changed the look and feel. I really like the old look of Monolith Daily but thought I'd try something new.

I have to say, though, I really, really like Blosxom and miss using it!

13:43

It continued here.

TL;DR

2011-09-11T07:39:00.002-04:00

I finally looked up tl;dr. It's not a mistyped or misinterpreted bit of HTML markup as I first thought.

Star Trek 45th Anniversary

2011-09-09T08:31:00.000-04:00

I celebrated Star Trek's 45th anniversary last night by watching “Charlie X,” which I'm pretty sure was the first episode I saw in 1966. I found it by accident while flipping channels. Note that in 1966 our town only had one channel and, because we lived on a hill, we could get three to five out of town channels. There were only three networks anyway so flipping channels wasn't what you might think.

Of course I was a fan during it's original run though 1969. The first season was on Tuesday nights, the second on Thursday nights, and the last year it was on fairly late on Friday night, either 21:00 or 22:00 as I recall.

However, I became an even bigger fan when they started the reruns in 1970 or 71, when it was on every afternoon after school.

Xoom Part 2

2011-09-07T00:48:00.000-04:00

Okay, since my first comments regarding the Xoom, I've played with it on a handful more occasions.

I've tried it both as just a user-less machine with no particular account attached and also by syncing in much of my Google account so that everything worked as designed. I tried Gmail, Google searching, various sites via browsing, Amazon Cloud Player (the app), the Kindle App, Angry Birds (of course!), Youtube, Google Maps, and looked for the Netflix app (apparently there isn't one for this device, and it's not supported in the browser).

Basically my opinion hasn't changed. I don't really like it. It's heavy. Yeah, I know that I could eventually find a perfect holder/case/cover that would make it easy to hold, prop up and even add a keyboard. However, out of the box it was never comfortable to use. The most comfortable was when I just laid the thing down on the desk. At that point it became a really big glass touchpad that happened to have moving color displayed items on it. (Hey, this might not be a bad thing. See all versions of Star Trek after the original series).

A Few Good Points

I'll admit that I was impressed by a few features. It's Android and I consider that a plus. Honeycomb was quite impressive though I don't like the visual appearance for some reason. It seems to have borrowed the theme of the latter day Tron movie, interesting and slick, but tiring and even annoying after a while. It was slick and sort of responsive though there's a noticeable delay when you try to do things sometimes. You tap or drag and it seems to take just a moment to catch up with what you're trying to do. The operation and design of the menus was okay and fairly functional. It didn't take too long to get used to them.

HD Youtube video on the display looked pretty good so maybe I was wrong about my first impression of the resolution, i.e., that it looked “soft.” The Youtube feature where you see the big scrolling wall of videos is impressive. It's not clear that it has any practical value at all. I can hardly think of any video I've watched by browsing, I watch a video either because someone sent it to me or I searched for something.

The battery life was good. Again, I didn't use it much but I've had the thing over a week now and have never plugged it in.

It wasn't too difficult to find the MAC address when needed to set up wireless.

The Gmail app redesign for Honeycomb is quite slick. Once again, I don't know if I'd prefer it to the more standard layout, but it is functional.

The Biggest Problem

Here's the biggest problem with this tablet and, I think, with all current pad devices. When you sync your Google accounts with it (which is pretty much just like you would with your Android phone) it becomes your device. If anyone else uses it, they'll be authenticated to Google as you with all of your authorization. This makes it extremely un-useful as a device that's just laying around for any family member or visitor to use.

In fact, this is where the ChromeOS notebook is a big win and, IMHO, a much more useful device than the tablet. Anyone can pick it up and log on. If their Google accounts are set up to sync, then it becomes their device until they log off. Their whole world is just automatically available and present with no noticeable syncing or downloading. Then they can log off and another person can come on, type in their userid and password and the same is true for them.

I could probably learn to get faster but, at this point, I can literally type just as fast on my Android Nexus S phone screen as on the 10-in tablet.

Summary

Okay, you should probably take into consideration that I thought voice mail was useless and opted out of taking part in an early trial. I also thought the web was just for marked-up documents and would not be appropriate for applications and software. I don't like the Xoom tablet and am still happy to put it back in the box.

My phone does what I need and, for me, does it better and more conveniently.

For a tablet-sized device, I think the 11-inch Macbook Air is the most wonderful solution out there.

I've been evaluating a ChromeOS notebook for months now and I'd take it over the Xoom anytime, even with it's faults. The ChromeOS device was immediately useful, including for real work, and I was able to use it for a couple of weeks as my only machine at work. The Xoom didn't even begin to be useful for any sort of real work.

I'll be interested to see the next devices to come out. Maybe they'll capture my heart and mind.

Postscripts

P.S. Yes, I've played with the iPad's 1 and 2 briefly and my reaction was bascially the same. I don't remember the sensation of them being uncomfortably heavy though.

P.P.S. You might say the Xoom weighs less than a lot of books. I thought about this and wondered why books don't seem so bothersome. Maybe it's because the book really is more pleasant and comfortable to hold when reading than a flat slab. When I think about it, I've used a clip board for taking notes and checking things off, but never really as a platform for reading. For reading I'd probably staple the sheets together and hold them, folding and rolling them up in various ways that made them easier to hold.

See Also

My earlier comments on the iPad in 2010-01-30.

Hubble ST Movies of Stellar Jets

2011-09-02T09:48:00.000-04:00

[VIDEO] Posted by David Ruth-Rice at Futurity.org. Time lapse movies made from Hubble Space Telescope images, spanning 14 years, show motions inside stellar jets of gas.

Monolith149 Daily

RT @ihnatko

The 10 Best Android Arcade Games

Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?

ISS Flyover Video

Cockpit Video

NASA’s New Satellite Captures Amazing Hi-Res Image of Earth

Google’s Python Lessons are Awesome

Earth at night seen from space

Thirty Books Everyone in the Software Business Should Read

Don't Return Null

Drone Data

iPad Survives Fall from Space

Large Scale Design with Haskell

Happy New Year!

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

In the Early Morning Rain (1966)

Cloud Computing Trends to Watch in 2012

Haskell Authors

Amazon Builds World's Fastest Nonexistant Supercomputer

Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3

Top 10 Data Center Stories

Earth's Rotation Measured!

Happy Winter Solstice!

Android vs. iPhone

Dawn Approaches Vesta

Building the Universe Inside a Supercomputer

Images of Jupiter and Moons

Higgs vs. Hype

Higgs Boson

Tweetdeck

WW2 Tweets from 1939

Meet the Internet's Newest Boy Genius

Third Rock Radio

BrowserID

Nano-Optic Technology for Enhanced Security

Caught Up

Game On!

Will Cultural Pushback Kill Private Clouds

Video Editing in Youtube

Car, Table, Counter or TakHomaSak

Graphics Rendering on Android

Zero Email

Observations on Ten Years of Blogging

Engulfed Cathedral

CarrierIQ

The 99 Most Essential Christmas Masterpieces (Amazon Exclusive)

BSD VM

Astroid 2005 YU55 Fly By

Faster Than Light Neutrinos?

Gemini 12

Amazon Kindle Fire

Scenes from Autumn

The Reengineering of Facebook Messages

Robot Riding Bicycle

The Mac App Sand Box

Apple Television

Citrix claims it will make virtual desktops cheaper than real ones

Confessions of an iPhone User Who Recently Switched to Android

Yes! HAL from ThinkGeek (for iPhone 4S)

Does Anyone Use Twitter Any More?

Ice Cream Sandwich on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Movie Being Shot on Marietta Square Today

Siri Security Flaw

Your Next Camper

Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson

dmr::7:3::/usr/dmr

So Long, Dennis Ritchie

NGINX

The Mythical Man Month

The iPhone 4S

No, Facebook Is Not Ruining Your Grades [STUDY]

Watch Large Hadron Collider Collisions with an Android App

Dart: a language for structured web programming

Steve Wozniak Talks about Steve Jobs

Snapshots of Life in a World with Steve Jobs

So Long, Steve Jobs

Understanding Virtual Memory

Security Checklist for Twitter

Facebook's ticker privacy scare, and what you should do about it