[VIDEO]
Friday, September 23, 2011
A Campus Champion for Women in Computer Science
They've switched from Java to Python. Article by Ari Levy in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Happy Autumnal Equinox!
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
Fri 2011-09-23 05:05:00 -0400
Fri 2011-09-23 09:05:00 +0000
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Scariest Face
This is one of the scariest faces I've ever seen!
http://www.discovernewengland.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Huntington-SC179578.jpg
http://www.discovernewengland.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Huntington-SC179578.jpg
Computer CPUs 1000x Faster
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.”
“…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.”
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Nine Years Ago
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.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
TL;DR
I finally looked up tl;dr. It's not a mistyped or misinterpreted bit of HTML markup as I first thought.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Star Trek 45th Anniversary
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Xoom Part 2
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.
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.
Friday, September 02, 2011
Hubble ST Movies of Stellar Jets
[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.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Stupidest Idea of 2010
While I am at the zenith of my curmodgeonliness, I'm reminded I never got around to awarding the Stupidest Idea of 2010: Animating e-book pages to look like real pages turning.
Yes, it looks really neat, but it's dumb. I hope the programmers remembered to add code to make the pages slowly turn yellow and then randomly delete themselves from the e-book as years go by. Maybe they never got around to that because they're off re-programming terminal apps to scroll text by at 300 baud.
Again, I appreciate the artistry, but having seen it, it's then about the most annoying thing I've experienced in a user interface. Please, at least provide a way to turn this animation off.
This effect should be one of those little novelty apps your friends download and say “Ha Ha, Look at This.” You look at it and reply, “Neat.” Then you never have to see it again.
Yes, it looks really neat, but it's dumb. I hope the programmers remembered to add code to make the pages slowly turn yellow and then randomly delete themselves from the e-book as years go by. Maybe they never got around to that because they're off re-programming terminal apps to scroll text by at 300 baud.
Again, I appreciate the artistry, but having seen it, it's then about the most annoying thing I've experienced in a user interface. Please, at least provide a way to turn this animation off.
This effect should be one of those little novelty apps your friends download and say “Ha Ha, Look at This.” You look at it and reply, “Neat.” Then you never have to see it again.
I don't like Tablets and Pads
Okay, I have a Motorola Xoom for a week and so far, after spending maybe 20 minutes with it, I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Basically it's a device that does what my phone does, but it weighs about a million times more. Holding it makes me physically uncomfortable. I can operate my phone just fine with one hand but this thing always requires two.
I tried watching a Youtube video but there I was holding this thing. I tried laying it down on my desk but then it was flat and at the wrong angle. All I could see was a reflection of an overhead light. It didn't seem like it would stand up when I tried to lean it against something. So there I was, awkwardly holding the thing I couldn't wait to put down. I probably watched less than a minute of the video.
Basically, it's like using a computer that has no legs. Now I know what Chewbacca felt like when he was carrying the blown-apart C3P0 around on his back.
I tried it again last night. So far, I've only used it for 20 minutes because that was about all I could stand and probably half of that time has been spent factory-resetting the device to erase my personal data. The happiest moment was turning it off, putting it down and taking my phone out of my pocket.
I tried watching a Youtube video but there I was holding this thing. I tried laying it down on my desk but then it was flat and at the wrong angle. All I could see was a reflection of an overhead light. It didn't seem like it would stand up when I tried to lean it against something. So there I was, awkwardly holding the thing I couldn't wait to put down. I probably watched less than a minute of the video.
Basically, it's like using a computer that has no legs. Now I know what Chewbacca felt like when he was carrying the blown-apart C3P0 around on his back.
I tried it again last night. So far, I've only used it for 20 minutes because that was about all I could stand and probably half of that time has been spent factory-resetting the device to erase my personal data. The happiest moment was turning it off, putting it down and taking my phone out of my pocket.
My Next Camera?
Samsung Introduces A Trio Of New Cameras as reported on TechCrunch by Jordan Crook.
I really like using my Nexus S as a camera but it lacks a good zoom lens. So, what I really need is something like a smart phone with a bigger lens stuck on it. The Samsung MV800 really looks a lot like this! The other two models in this article also look intriguing.
Could this be enough to make me give up my infatuation with the Olympus PEN series, which is probably too expensive anyway?
My main motivation is the growing need to replace my aging DV tape video camera.
Mon 2012-04-02 03:58:19 -0400
Updated. Here are the cameras I'm referring to above, for reference.
Samsung MV800
Samsung NX200
Samsung WB750
I really like using my Nexus S as a camera but it lacks a good zoom lens. So, what I really need is something like a smart phone with a bigger lens stuck on it. The Samsung MV800 really looks a lot like this! The other two models in this article also look intriguing.
Could this be enough to make me give up my infatuation with the Olympus PEN series, which is probably too expensive anyway?
My main motivation is the growing need to replace my aging DV tape video camera.
***
Mon 2012-04-02 03:58:19 -0400
Updated. Here are the cameras I'm referring to above, for reference.
Samsung MV800
Samsung NX200
Samsung WB750
AT&T and T-Mobile: Is the deal dead?
No one knows by David Goldman @CNNMoneyTech.
The graphic tells a lot of the story.
Image credit: The image was in the original CNN Money article.
It's Time To Upgrade My RAM
It looks like I'm going to have to add memory to my nine-year-old Dell 4550 Windows XP desktop which I'm using here and which is my usual desktop machine at home. Right now it has 768 MB but watching Task Manager it seems lately that I need from 800 MB to 900 MB with the number of Chrome tabs I have open for Gmail, documents, etc. Amazon Cloud player is currently running. In spite of a growing RAM appetite, I haven't seen my old machine cross 1-GB yet (knock on wood).
It has a 256-MB DIMM and a 512-MB DIMM so I'll probably just replace the 256 with a 1-GB which seem to be available for $15 to <~ $20 or so. That will bring the total to 1.5 GB, over twice what I currently need.
I think Gmail and other Google apps are slowly using more and more memory. But maybe it's just Chrome.
It's worth noting that, even with 930 MB of memory usage (commit charge), which is what it is at this very moment as I type this, I don't really notice the paging or much slowness. Typing this entry is going fine and the Cloud Player music is playing nicely. However, I'd definitely notice it if switching to another tab that hadn't been used in a while or, worst of all, trying to fire up something else that's big like Acrobat Reader.
Hm, I don't think it was that long ago that I upped the RAM from 384 MB by replacing a 128-MB DIMM with the 512-MB. Memory usage seems to be accelerating.
In case anyone is curious, the only thing running down in my system tray is AVG and something from Nvidia for the video interface.
It has a 256-MB DIMM and a 512-MB DIMM so I'll probably just replace the 256 with a 1-GB which seem to be available for $15 to <~ $20 or so. That will bring the total to 1.5 GB, over twice what I currently need.
I think Gmail and other Google apps are slowly using more and more memory. But maybe it's just Chrome.
It's worth noting that, even with 930 MB of memory usage (commit charge), which is what it is at this very moment as I type this, I don't really notice the paging or much slowness. Typing this entry is going fine and the Cloud Player music is playing nicely. However, I'd definitely notice it if switching to another tab that hadn't been used in a while or, worst of all, trying to fire up something else that's big like Acrobat Reader.
Hm, I don't think it was that long ago that I upped the RAM from 384 MB by replacing a 128-MB DIMM with the 512-MB. Memory usage seems to be accelerating.
In case anyone is curious, the only thing running down in my system tray is AVG and something from Nvidia for the video interface.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
On this 6th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
(RT @jamiedupree) I can't get this video out of my head http://youtu.be/oZi1Mk2Njtg
Astrophysicists report first simulation to create a Milky Way-like galaxy
by Tim Stephens at UCSC.
The paper.
According to coauthor Piero Madau, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, the project required a large investment of supercomputer time, including 1.4 million processor-hours on NASA's state-of-the-art Pleiades supercomputer, plus additional supporting simulations on supercomputers at UCSC and the Swiss National Supercomputing Center.
“The simulation follows the interactions of more than 60 million particles of dark matter and gas. A lot of physics goes into the code--gravity and hydrodynamics, star formation and supernova explosions--and this is the highest resolution cosmological simulation ever done this way,” said Guedes…
The paper.
OpenDNS, Google and Verisign team to speed up the web
By Stacey Higginbotham at Gigaom.
A few million Americans may find their YouTube requests get delivered faster on Tuesday as Google, OpenDNS, VeriSign and several content delivery networks announce the Global Internet Speed Up effort.
At the center of the partnership between DNS providers and participating CDNs is the creation of a standard that attached location data to a DNS request so a user’s request for content goes to server nearby. Typically, a CDN or content provider routes a user based on the address of the DNS server, as opposed to the user’s location, but they aren’t always in the same region.
For now, only users of Google’s Public DNS service, OpenDNS and Verisign will send out DNS information with a snippet of information gleaned from the user’s IP address. That will help the domain name servers that direct traffic around the web to send that traffic the closest provider. As for privacy concerns about attaching IP addresses to a DNS request, Ulevitch says the information only goes to companies that would see the IP address in a typical HTTP web request, so it’s not sharing any more information than is typical.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Moving an Elephant
Large Scale Hadoop Data Migration at Facebook. Paul Yang describes moving Facebooks 30-PB data via replication across datacenters. (Previous Post)
As the majority of the analytics is performed with Hive, we store the data on HDFS — the Hadoop distributed file system. In 2010, Facebook had the largest Hadoop cluster in the world, with over 20 PB of storage. By March 2011, the cluster had grown to 30 PB — that’s 3,000 times the size of the Library of Congress! At that point, we had run out of power and space to add more nodes, necessitating the move to a larger data center.
Hubble STIS data on the M101 supernova is great!
(RT @d_a_howell) Mark Sullivan: “If the theorists can't do something with this, then I give up.”
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Hurricane Fashion?
Okay, I just tuned in Hurricane Irene on Google+ Sparks to compare it to Twitter. The fourth headline/story down from the top is: “Hurricane Irene: Fashion report” from cbsnews.com.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
NASA's Chandra Observatory Images Gas Flowing Toward Black Hole
“The flow of hot gas toward a black hole has been clearly imaged for the first time in X-rays.”
The black hole is at the center of a large galaxy known as NGC 3115, which is located about 32 million light years from Earth. A large amount of previous data has shown material falling toward and onto black holes, but none with this clear a signature of hot gas.
By imaging the hot gas at different distances from this supermassive black hole, astronomers have observed a critical threshold where the motion of gas first becomes dominated by the black hole's gravity and falls inward. This distance from the black hole is known as the “Bondi radius.”
Trojan asteroid discovered in Earth orbit
by Stuart Gary at ABC Science.
“WISE looked at the infrared light coming from all over the sky and was particularly good at detecting asteroids, finding about 150,000 of them, including 500 which come near the Earth.”
By examining the orbits of these objects in the WISE data, Connors and colleagues identified a small asteroid called 2010 TK7 as a probable Earth Trojan. The researchers then used ground-based telescopes to confirm the sighting, calculating that it's been in a stable orbit with Earth for more than 10,000 years.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Monday, July 25, 2011
Byte is Back
Byte magazine is back at byte.com, under the new editorship of Gina Smith. And it even features the return of Jerry Pournelle and his Chaos Manor column!
She reposted the original editor, Carl Helmers', introductory letter.
I first discovered Byte when I bought my first issue at the Georgia Tech Bookstore. I'm pretty sure it was volume one but I'm not clear on which issue it was. I think I still have it around here somewhere. I need to dig it out and check. I thought it was issue #2, but looking up issues online, I'm now in doubt.
She reposted the original editor, Carl Helmers', introductory letter.
I first discovered Byte when I bought my first issue at the Georgia Tech Bookstore. I'm pretty sure it was volume one but I'm not clear on which issue it was. I think I still have it around here somewhere. I need to dig it out and check. I thought it was issue #2, but looking up issues online, I'm now in doubt.
TWIT Moves to the New Studio
[VIDEO] Leo Laporte shuts down the old cottage and walks down the street to the new brick house studio. Jason Cartwright posts about the move on TechAU.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Instantwatcher for Netflix
For keeping with with movies coming and going on Netflix, Instantwatcher is quite good.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Dark Energy and Zombie Stars
by Tammy Plotner from Universe Today.
Image credit: Supernova 1994D. The supernova is the bright point in the lower-left. It is a type Ia thermonuclear supernova like those described by Howell. The supernova is on the edge of galaxy NGC 4526, depicted in the center of the image. Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope
Monday, July 04, 2011
The Outer Limits Influence on Star Trek
I must have read it before but I didn't realize or remember the ties from The Outer Limits to Star Trek.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Google Fixes Privacy Flaw? (Part 2)
Okay, when you write a post (or even after) there's a little drop down menu (triangle, arrow thing) at it's upper right. One of the options is to disallow re-sharing. You have to do it manually every time I think—I don't see a way to make that the default setting.
That's better than not having that option at all, better than email, and also annoying to have to do.
(Part 1)
That's better than not having that option at all, better than email, and also annoying to have to do.
(Part 1)
Google+ Solves the Social Privacy Problem
By Making Friending Very Complicated by @LizGannes at All Things D.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Google Fixes Privacy Flaw?
(SAI Business Insider) Oh no. I thought G+ didn't allow a reader to reshare a post to a wider audience than the original post.
Google+ and Twitter
So I just reposted a story about the halo seen in Hawaii. I found that story by reading my sparks (spark?) on Google+ where I've entered astronomy as an interest. The question is, would I have seen it reading my Twitter feed?
I scanned back through my main Twitter stream for about an hour, which is a typical short reading session for me. A long session might involve reading back through two or three hours.
Then I went to my astronomy Twitter list and read back through those messages, well into yesterday.
The story wasn't there, or at least I didn't catch it. (Granted I did a quick skim and didn't actually read the Twitter posts). Hm.
I scanned back through my main Twitter stream for about an hour, which is a typical short reading session for me. A long session might involve reading back through two or three hours.
Then I went to my astronomy Twitter list and read back through those messages, well into yesterday.
The story wasn't there, or at least I didn't catch it. (Granted I did a quick skim and didn't actually read the Twitter posts). Hm.
Weird Expanding Halo Seen from Hawaii
Another idea posted by board member neufer was that this was from a detonation charge in the missile’s third stage. There are ports, openings in the sides of the third stage. Those ports are sealed for the flight until the right time, when they’re blown open by explosive charges. This allows the fuel to escape very rapidly, extinguishing the thrust at a precise time to allow for accurate targeting of the warhead.Image credit: Frame processed by Phil Plait from the video by Kanoa Withington/CFHT.
At this point, the missile is above most of the Earth’s atmosphere, essentially in space. So when that gas is suddenly released from the stage expands, it blows away from the missile in a sphere. Not only that, the release is so rapid it would expand like a spherical shell — which would look like a ring from the ground (the same way a soap bubble looks like a ring). And not only that, but the expanding gas would be moving very rapidly relative to the ground since the missile would’ve been moving rapidly at this point in the flight.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Inside Google+ by Steven Levy
From Wired Magazine @stevenjayl (author of In the Plex) writes about Google+ as he witnessed things from his inside view.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Happy Summer Solstice
Happy summer solstice today at Tuesday at 13:16 EDT (17:16 UTC).
Tue 2011-06-21 13:16:00 -0400
Tue 2011-06-21 17:16:00 +0000
Tue 2011-06-21 13:16:00 -0400
Tue 2011-06-21 17:16:00 +0000
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Ihnatko Writes for Television
Hah! If Ihnatko was a TV writer 25 years ago, as he ponders in his blog post N-B-SEEEEE us.
Friday, June 10, 2011
API Design Matters
from ACM Queue by Michi Henning (2007-06-07).
After more than 25 years as a software engineer, I still find myself underestimating the time it will take to complete a particular programming task. Sometimes, the resulting schedule slip is caused by my own shortcomings: as I dig into a problem, I simply discover that it is a lot harder than I initially thought, so the problem takes longer to solve—such is life as a programmer. Just as often I know exactly what I want to achieve and how to achieve it, but it still takes far longer than anticipated. When that happens, it is usually because I am struggling with an API that seems to do its level best to throw rocks in my path and make my life difficult. What I find telling is that, after 25 years of progress in software engineering, this still happens. Worse, recent APIs implemented in modern programming languages make the same mistakes as their two-decade-old counterparts written in C. There seems to be something elusive about API design that, despite many years of progress, we have yet to master.
New iGoogle Email Client
The new Gmail client in iGoogle is actually pretty neat. It's essentially the same as the web-based client on, e.g., the Android phone.
VLT Survey Telescope 268-megapixel camera
(PhysOrg.com) -- The VLT Survey Telescope (VST), the latest addition to ESO’s Paranal Observatory, has made its first release of impressive images of the southern sky. The VST is a state-of-the-art 2.6-meter telescope, with the huge 268-megapixel camera OmegaCAM at its heart, which is designed to map the sky both quickly and with very fine image quality. It is a visible-light telescope that perfectly complements ESO’s VISTA infrared survey telescope. New images of the Omega Nebula and the globular cluster Omega Centauri demonstrate the VST’s power.
Read more….
Image credit: ESO/INAF-VST/OmegaCAM. Acknowledgement: OmegaCen/Astro-WISE/Kapteyn Institute
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Post-Mortems at HubSpot
What I Learned From 250 Whys by Dan Milstein at HubSpot. This is quite good and worth reading!
I've learned about how HubSpot's systems work, why they sometimes break, and what we can do to make them more resilient. Beyond that, I've learned a lot about complex systems and failure in general. Which, in case you're wondering, is a fascinating topic. I highly, highly recommend Richard Cook's essay “How Complex Systems Fail” in O'Reilly's Web Operations. Or Atul Gawande's Complications and Better. Or basically anything John Allspaw writes.
If you'd like to build resilient systems, here's some of what I've learned from the fifty-plus 5 Whys I’ve been a part of. (And by &rlquo;systems,” I mean systems of people + machines, and by “resilient,” I mean I'm stealing from Allspaw.)
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Weighted Random Selection in Python
This morning I was looking for a Python implementation of weighted random selection, i.e., I have a set of weighted items and I want to randomly select one where the probability of selecting each item is proportional to its weight. I found this blog post by Eli Bendersky which exposes a set of approaches nicely.
Friday, May 27, 2011
New Redshift Record of 9.4
Gamma ray observations of the gamma ray burst object GRB 090429B supplemented by infrared observations from the Gemini North telescope and United Kingdom Infra Red Telescope, both on Mauna Kea, place the object at a redshift of z=9.4, as reported by Emily Baldwin at Astronomy Now. (Also at Cosmos by Miles Gough).
In the cosmological model, that would mean the scale of the universe was 9.6% of it's current size at the time the gamma rays and IR were emitted. (1 / z + 1).
Also, see: Cosmological Distances and Gains of Salt
Image credit: Gemini Observatory / AURA / Levan, Tanvir, Cucchiara.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Change Your Facebook Password
Access to your account may have leaked. This discovered problem means it's been possible for others to access your account since 2007 via third-party applications.
The best thing to do is change your password as soon as possible. That will invalidate any leaked tokens if they were in the possession of any evil doers.
More information is in this article at Symantec.
This is also explained in this installment of Security Now. Skip ahead to the 58-minute mark.
P.S. Note that you will have to enter your new password to third party apps you're using after doing this. For example, on my Android phone I cleared the data and entered my email address and new password into the Facebook app.
The best thing to do is change your password as soon as possible. That will invalidate any leaked tokens if they were in the possession of any evil doers.
More information is in this article at Symantec.
This is also explained in this installment of Security Now. Skip ahead to the 58-minute mark.
P.S. Note that you will have to enter your new password to third party apps you're using after doing this. For example, on my Android phone I cleared the data and entered my email address and new password into the Facebook app.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Cicadas Attack!
Well, I've experienced the 13-year cicadas that I've heard so much about. In Middle Georgia yesterday as soon as I opened the car door I was greeted by an almost deafening, hard to describe sound coming from the trees. It sounded like the summer cicadas I've always known, but louder and sharper.
They also filled the air. You could look up and see them constantly criss crossing the sky. Two or three flew into my face and hair.
It seemed like they'd taken up residence in every tree and bush in sight, but the rumors of the bugs eating every bit of vegetation in sight turned out to be unfounded.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Dark Energy Is Driving Universe Apart
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer Finds Dark Energy Repulsive from Science Daily.
The findings offer new support for the favored theory of how dark energy works -- as a constant force, uniformly affecting the universe and propelling its runaway expansion. They contradict an alternate theory, where gravity, not dark energy, is the force pushing space apart. According to this alternate theory, with which the new survey results are not consistent, Albert Einstein's concept of gravity is wrong, and gravity becomes repulsive instead of attractive when acting at great distances.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The First Hour or Two with the Cr-48
So, I've been using this ChromeOS notebook for a couple or three hours now. Most things work fine. I've done the usual email and documents work in Gmail, made a couple of phone calls using Google Voice in Gmail, and played a couple of screens of Angry Birds.
Right now I'm listing to music on Amazon Cloud Player.
Connecting to wifi was very simple.
Mouse motion, famously problematic on this hardware, was a little flaky when trying to play Angry Birds, but otherwise I don't notice much problem. I finally found the check box to enable tap to click, so that is all better now.
I found the terminal with ssh via Ctl-Alt-T and tried it out. It works but, again, wide-screen insanity prevails. Also the font and colors need to be fixed in the terminal. It's a limited set of commands but ssh is really all I'd need.
Right now it's on the charger and has charged up to 78%.
Right now I'm listing to music on Amazon Cloud Player.
Connecting to wifi was very simple.
Mouse motion, famously problematic on this hardware, was a little flaky when trying to play Angry Birds, but otherwise I don't notice much problem. I finally found the check box to enable tap to click, so that is all better now.
I found the terminal with ssh via Ctl-Alt-T and tried it out. It works but, again, wide-screen insanity prevails. Also the font and colors need to be fixed in the terminal. It's a limited set of commands but ssh is really all I'd need.
Right now it's on the charger and has charged up to 78%.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Using a Cr-48
This is my first blog post and my first user session with a Cr-48 running ChromeOS.
Everything is great so far except for one thing: The windows are all full screen. That's about the most annoying thing I could think of.
Otherwise, everything is working pretty well with almost no problems. I like the size, form factor, weight and even the keyboard so far.
Everything is great so far except for one thing: The windows are all full screen. That's about the most annoying thing I could think of.
Otherwise, everything is working pretty well with almost no problems. I like the size, form factor, weight and even the keyboard so far.
Tidal Energy In the UK
Fascinating. They have tidal energy generators in the UK as reported by this article by Chris Goodall in The Guardian. I find it amusing that they call the energy “renewable” when it's really depleating the angular momentum of the earth's rotation and the moon's orbit.
Still, as far as I can tell, renewable always means a big enough supply that we can't imagine when we'll run out. That's the way new energy supplies often start out.
Still, as far as I can tell, renewable always means a big enough supply that we can't imagine when we'll run out. That's the way new energy supplies often start out.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Projection on 26-Story Coca-Cola Building
For it's 125th anniversary, Obscura Digital arranged to turn Coca-Cola's 26-story headquarters building in Atlanta into a giant, four-way projection screen.
The show
About the show
Article from The Street
Obscura Digital
From The Street:
The show
About the show
Article from The Street
Obscura Digital
From The Street:
The entire Coca-Cola North Ave. tower in Atlanta—26 stories high and 402 feet (122.8 m) high—is canvassed in scrim.
The projection covers an area 339 feet high and 157 feet wide per side of the building. The projection surface area from all four sides of the building totals more than 210,000 square feet, making it the world’s largest single building illumination.
This display uses 45 projectors that are 20,000 lumens each, for a total of nearly 1 million lumens of light simultaneously projected onto the building. The overall projection resolution is more than 7,000 pixels wide (7040 x 3800).
Friday, May 06, 2011
Paper Computers
I remember an interview with someone from Xerox PARC, probably almost 30 years ago, where they were talking about ubiquitous computers that were like paper. I remember a quote that went something like, You'd just tear a new computer off a pad when you needed one. They'd just be laying around your office in piles.
Well, they seem to be here, as reported in this article in The Economic Times.
Well, they seem to be here, as reported in this article in The Economic Times.
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Cloud Computing
Seth asked about our sightings of and thoughts on cool, emerging technologies.
I continue to hold that the technology that promises one of the most significant impacts is cloud computing. It's been coming for a long time but cloud computing has recently turned one of those corners and it's influence is rapidly accelerating.
Basically, cloud computing means that your data and your applications are out on the Internet, “in the cloud” as we say.
I've been moving my own work into the cloud and I'm probably following that acceleration curve pretty closely. Here's my current score card.
I've been a user of web-based email since Rocketmail and Yahoo's re-branding and evolution of the same when they both took off around 1997. For years I merely echoed email into the cloud, keeping my own personal copies on an email server at home. Sometime around the introduction of Gmail, I stopped keeping my own copy and switched wholesale to Gmail.
I've been using Google Documents in earnest since 2006. Since then, probably 99% or more of every document or spreadsheet I've created, including home and work, have been in the cloud. I added slide presentations to that in 2007, and drawings most recently. (Note that I've still not found a replacement for Windows Paint, though).
In 2006 I moved my blogging off of my own server and back to Blogger and Blogspot.
For the past several years I've been putting more and more pictures in Picasa, though it's not my sole storage medium in that category.
In the fall of 2009 I became a user of GTD and moved my next action lists and projects to Gmail Tasks.
Over this past year, my move into the cloud has gone mad.
I've used Piknic solely for photo editing.
I've migrated all of my note-taking into Google Documents. Many folks will remember the blue notebooks I used years ago, inspired by my old friend Leonard's use of them for journals when we were at Georgia Tech. For a number of intervening years I moved most of my note-taking into on-line text documents edited with Emacs. Over this past year I've migrated almost 100% of my note-taking on-line into Google Documents. I create several new documents every day.
Also this year I made the conscious decision to start migrating all of my media consumption into the cloud and at the same time, decided to get a Roku box instead of a Blueray player. I use Netflix and Amazon, and occasionally Dish on Demand, for movies, Kindle for books, and Amazon, Pandora and Slacker for music. My thought is to never again purchase physical media.
I've moved most of my own little command-line utilities into AppEngine equivalents.
I've also become a recent user of Dropbox for file sharing.
The personal Linux “main machine” that I use at work for programming has been a virtual machine for the recent few months. The next (final?) frontier, for which I'm waiting with poised fascination, is a browser-based integrated development environment for writing, testing and running the computer programs I write daily. A lot of work is underway and there are some initial results out there now.
I'm late to this ballgame, but I'm also getting ready to move my backups to Carbonite. That will probably be another case of just putting a copy there, while maintaining other current schemes.
I'm already at the point that I can do almost any thing of significance I do on a computer from any computer that I truly trust.
I continue to hold that the technology that promises one of the most significant impacts is cloud computing. It's been coming for a long time but cloud computing has recently turned one of those corners and it's influence is rapidly accelerating.
Basically, cloud computing means that your data and your applications are out on the Internet, “in the cloud” as we say.
I've been moving my own work into the cloud and I'm probably following that acceleration curve pretty closely. Here's my current score card.
I've been a user of web-based email since Rocketmail and Yahoo's re-branding and evolution of the same when they both took off around 1997. For years I merely echoed email into the cloud, keeping my own personal copies on an email server at home. Sometime around the introduction of Gmail, I stopped keeping my own copy and switched wholesale to Gmail.
I've been using Google Documents in earnest since 2006. Since then, probably 99% or more of every document or spreadsheet I've created, including home and work, have been in the cloud. I added slide presentations to that in 2007, and drawings most recently. (Note that I've still not found a replacement for Windows Paint, though).
In 2006 I moved my blogging off of my own server and back to Blogger and Blogspot.
For the past several years I've been putting more and more pictures in Picasa, though it's not my sole storage medium in that category.
In the fall of 2009 I became a user of GTD and moved my next action lists and projects to Gmail Tasks.
Over this past year, my move into the cloud has gone mad.
I've used Piknic solely for photo editing.
I've migrated all of my note-taking into Google Documents. Many folks will remember the blue notebooks I used years ago, inspired by my old friend Leonard's use of them for journals when we were at Georgia Tech. For a number of intervening years I moved most of my note-taking into on-line text documents edited with Emacs. Over this past year I've migrated almost 100% of my note-taking on-line into Google Documents. I create several new documents every day.
Also this year I made the conscious decision to start migrating all of my media consumption into the cloud and at the same time, decided to get a Roku box instead of a Blueray player. I use Netflix and Amazon, and occasionally Dish on Demand, for movies, Kindle for books, and Amazon, Pandora and Slacker for music. My thought is to never again purchase physical media.
I've moved most of my own little command-line utilities into AppEngine equivalents.
I've also become a recent user of Dropbox for file sharing.
The personal Linux “main machine” that I use at work for programming has been a virtual machine for the recent few months. The next (final?) frontier, for which I'm waiting with poised fascination, is a browser-based integrated development environment for writing, testing and running the computer programs I write daily. A lot of work is underway and there are some initial results out there now.
I'm late to this ballgame, but I'm also getting ready to move my backups to Carbonite. That will probably be another case of just putting a copy there, while maintaining other current schemes.
I'm already at the point that I can do almost any thing of significance I do on a computer from any computer that I truly trust.
Dark Matter Valliantly Holds On
In it's flight to remain dark but Jennifer Ouellette says the debate is heating up in this analysis at Discovery News.
Image credit: Computer simulation of large scale structure from Science Magazine.
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Finally, the Voice of Reason Regarding Aid to Japan
From The Economist article After the Quake.
From the article:
From the article:
What you shouldn't do is give money to charities that are raising money off the disaster. The New York Times' Stephanie Strom explained why last month:
[W]ealthy Japan is not impoverished Haiti. And many groups are raising money without really knowing how it will be spent — or even if it will be needed. The Japanese Red Cross, for example, has said repeatedly since the day after the earthquake that it does not want or need outside assistance. But that has not stopped the American Red Cross from raising [tens of millions of dollars] in the name of Japan’s disaster victims.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Monday, May 02, 2011
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Is up for sale as reported by Gizmodo.
More information is at Profiles in History.
More information is at Profiles in History.
Built on a custom ladder frame chassis, many old world forms of car building were employed, and modern technology stepped in to created a vehicle which was both accurate enough to fool veteran and classic car experts, when held under the scrutiny of 70mm cinema cameras, and durable enough to withstand everything from driving in sand, cobbled streets and down staircases. The bonnet is crafted of polished aluminum; the boat deck is hand-crafted of red and white cedar built by boat builders in Buckinghamshire, and the array of brass fittings were obtained from Edwardian cars. Even the alloy dashboard plate is from a British World War I fighter plane!
Most powerful millimeter-scale energy harvester generates electricity from vibrations
From physorg.com. This is fascinating.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Pad Reviews
If you're even a little interested in a computing pad, here are two excellent reviews by one of media's best writers, Andy Ihnatko, both from the Chicago Sun-Times.
(Note, Andy's writing is a joy to read even if you aren't interested in pad computing).
Are the Blackberry Playbook and LG G-Slate ready to take on iPad?
Hands-on review: How does Motorola Xoom compare to iPad?
More about Andy Ihnatko
(Note, Andy's writing is a joy to read even if you aren't interested in pad computing).
Are the Blackberry Playbook and LG G-Slate ready to take on iPad?
Hands-on review: How does Motorola Xoom compare to iPad?
More about Andy Ihnatko
Can Your Programming Language Do This?
An excellent argument for functional programming from Joel Spolsky.
I take exception in a couple of ways. One is that, for some of the example code, it might actually become harder to read/understand as you go further into the article. I don't think anyone would have trouble understanding the earlier versions.
Second, it's true that having map-reduce be natural to the language and, more importantly, the programming style may lend to thinking in those terms. However, I don't think that's necessary to think of using map reduce as a solution for large scale computing. It's possible to understand the concept without it being natural in the language. (I explain it regularly in non-FP terms).
I take exception in a couple of ways. One is that, for some of the example code, it might actually become harder to read/understand as you go further into the article. I don't think anyone would have trouble understanding the earlier versions.
Second, it's true that having map-reduce be natural to the language and, more importantly, the programming style may lend to thinking in those terms. However, I don't think that's necessary to think of using map reduce as a solution for large scale computing. It's possible to understand the concept without it being natural in the language. (I explain it regularly in non-FP terms).
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Solar System Telescope
solarsystemscope.com is very neat. At first I was bothered by the schematic representation of planet's orbit sizes. However, in fact, there's a control that lets you slide between the schematic and true display of relative distances and sizes. It's a nice tool for visualization.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
ISS Flyover
I just happened to be outside with the dog and looked up to see the International Space Station flying over. I was quite sure that's what it was. It was extremely bright, like Venus, up around mag -3 or so I'd guess. It was in the SSE and gliding across the sky at the speed a plane would fly over but with no blinking lights at all.
It was quite beautiful since, at the same time, a high-altitude jet was passing in the other direction with a faint con trail illuminated by the already-set sun.
Data at NASA confirms the sighting for tonight at 20:49 EDT and predicts a similar flyover tomorrow evening at Mon 2011-04-18 21:14:00 -0400. (21:14 EDT). It will pass from WSE to NNE and achieve a maximum altitude (above the horizon in degrees) of 43 deg, quite high.
For more information: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/
It was quite beautiful since, at the same time, a high-altitude jet was passing in the other direction with a faint con trail illuminated by the already-set sun.
Data at NASA confirms the sighting for tonight at 20:49 EDT and predicts a similar flyover tomorrow evening at Mon 2011-04-18 21:14:00 -0400. (21:14 EDT). It will pass from WSE to NNE and achieve a maximum altitude (above the horizon in degrees) of 43 deg, quite high.
For more information: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
A Beautiful Phase Change Demonstration!
Using sodium acetate. [VIDEO] Phase change material at Wikipedia.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Hottel Memo a Hoax
Re: FBI UFO investigation. Story from International Business Times by By Jesse Emspak.
Friday, April 08, 2011
Own Your Profile and Web Identity
Good advice that some web pundits hand out is that you should own your own profile, your own web identity.
That means you shouldn't depend on, e.g., Google, Facebook, or Twitter as your only presence and identity on-line. It's a good idea to register yourself with all of them, and *carefully* control what information is there, but it's also a good idea to have your own site which you own and fully control and which is always the main place people can go to find out what you want them to know.
To do this is cheap. The main requirement is a domain name, yourname.com or whatever you want to call it. Of course you'll be limited by what's available. You can get these from, e.g., hover.com, for about $15 a year. Once you register a domain name, you legally own it and can always control what information it points to.
From there you can build a home page, even a minimal one, with Google Sites, Wordpress.com, or even Facebook or Twitter. You can also buy a site web hosting service like Squarespace.com.
Then you just forward your domain there. If something happens to the site you're pointing to, then you just forward your domain name to another site.
The main idea is that this gives you a somewhat “permanent” address on the web. Your “permanent” address used to be your email address, but that turned out to be a bad idea as spam and other email abuses blossomed.
From this main identity page, you can point to any and all of any other sites you'd like to point people to such as a blog or even your Facebook page if you must.
That means you shouldn't depend on, e.g., Google, Facebook, or Twitter as your only presence and identity on-line. It's a good idea to register yourself with all of them, and *carefully* control what information is there, but it's also a good idea to have your own site which you own and fully control and which is always the main place people can go to find out what you want them to know.
To do this is cheap. The main requirement is a domain name, yourname.com or whatever you want to call it. Of course you'll be limited by what's available. You can get these from, e.g., hover.com, for about $15 a year. Once you register a domain name, you legally own it and can always control what information it points to.
From there you can build a home page, even a minimal one, with Google Sites, Wordpress.com, or even Facebook or Twitter. You can also buy a site web hosting service like Squarespace.com.
Then you just forward your domain there. If something happens to the site you're pointing to, then you just forward your domain name to another site.
The main idea is that this gives you a somewhat “permanent” address on the web. Your “permanent” address used to be your email address, but that turned out to be a bad idea as spam and other email abuses blossomed.
From this main identity page, you can point to any and all of any other sites you'd like to point people to such as a blog or even your Facebook page if you must.
Video Games vs. Books
I thought I'd comment on Christopher's very thoughtful and well-written post on Video Games vs. Books here.
I agree that games can have educational value, especially when they act as some sort of real-world simulator. I learned a little bit about Indy racing some years ago from a racing game. I never realized racing involved things like wheel diameter (different on the inside from outside for the Indy oval), gear ratios, type of rubber, etc. Even simple things like weight of fuel in the tank. I don't know if I would ever have read a book on racing in the Indianapolis 500, but I learned a lot from fooling with this game.
Similarly, I've learned more than a little about flying from flight simulators and even a some basics of city planning from Sim City.
In the past, and still going, has been the same argument about TV: Can it really be educational? What about the fact that kids don't read as much, etc.? At least games require engagement and some problem solving, and sometimes even reading!
As for games causing violence, I firmly believe that, generally, all technology is amoral, neither good nor bad. Any technology can be used for either.
As a kid, we played army (always WW II), cowboys and Indians, police and bad guys, nearly 100% of the time. Incidentally, all of my favorite TV shows were about the same things. Oh yeah, I forgot humans vs. aliens.
Many of the video games out there are great at teaching strategy, planning and related problem solving. I always enjoyed Starcraft for that reason.
I guess I find the first person shooter games a little disturbing because they train one to move quickly through an enclosed space and shoot as many targets as possible. Those targets are living and moving, and usually shooting back. The nature of games themselves can cause a boy to spend hours and hours on this and, as a result, become quite well trained in that scenario. The games may not cause a person to turn to violence but if a person does, the result may be a more effective killer, perhaps with a higher sense of confidence.
Here's a wonderful thing about books. They aren't just pure action, or even strategy and tactics. They involve thoughtful introspection by the narrator. You get to see into the mind or minds of characters, how they think and feel, and even how they deal with morality of the issues at hand, at least in the better writing. Maybe some of the better games have this same property, I'm not sure.
There's something about reading a book that encourages one to pause and think, particularly when the reader is challenged by something there. Or at least you may have to stop reading and go do something else, and then your mind can continue on reflecting on what you've read.
As amazing as movies and video games are, and there's no slowing down, they still haven't caught up with the experience of a good book.
I agree that games can have educational value, especially when they act as some sort of real-world simulator. I learned a little bit about Indy racing some years ago from a racing game. I never realized racing involved things like wheel diameter (different on the inside from outside for the Indy oval), gear ratios, type of rubber, etc. Even simple things like weight of fuel in the tank. I don't know if I would ever have read a book on racing in the Indianapolis 500, but I learned a lot from fooling with this game.
Similarly, I've learned more than a little about flying from flight simulators and even a some basics of city planning from Sim City.
In the past, and still going, has been the same argument about TV: Can it really be educational? What about the fact that kids don't read as much, etc.? At least games require engagement and some problem solving, and sometimes even reading!
As for games causing violence, I firmly believe that, generally, all technology is amoral, neither good nor bad. Any technology can be used for either.
As a kid, we played army (always WW II), cowboys and Indians, police and bad guys, nearly 100% of the time. Incidentally, all of my favorite TV shows were about the same things. Oh yeah, I forgot humans vs. aliens.
Many of the video games out there are great at teaching strategy, planning and related problem solving. I always enjoyed Starcraft for that reason.
I guess I find the first person shooter games a little disturbing because they train one to move quickly through an enclosed space and shoot as many targets as possible. Those targets are living and moving, and usually shooting back. The nature of games themselves can cause a boy to spend hours and hours on this and, as a result, become quite well trained in that scenario. The games may not cause a person to turn to violence but if a person does, the result may be a more effective killer, perhaps with a higher sense of confidence.
Here's a wonderful thing about books. They aren't just pure action, or even strategy and tactics. They involve thoughtful introspection by the narrator. You get to see into the mind or minds of characters, how they think and feel, and even how they deal with morality of the issues at hand, at least in the better writing. Maybe some of the better games have this same property, I'm not sure.
There's something about reading a book that encourages one to pause and think, particularly when the reader is challenged by something there. Or at least you may have to stop reading and go do something else, and then your mind can continue on reflecting on what you've read.
As amazing as movies and video games are, and there's no slowing down, they still haven't caught up with the experience of a good book.
Use the Wall Phone. The Wall What?
[VIDEO] My kids showed me this. Life in the 21st century. (If the link doesn't take you there automatically, start watching at 2m37s).
Powerful Space Explosion May Herald Star's Death By Black Hole
From space.com. A large and unusually long-lasting outpouring of x-radiation brought attention to GRB 110328A.
The explosion looks like a gamma-ray burst — the most powerful type of explosion in the universe, which usually mark the destruction of a massive star — but the flaring emissions from these dramatic events never last more than a few hours, researchers said.
“We know of objects in our own galaxy that can produce repeated bursts, but they are thousands to millions of times less powerful than the bursts we are seeing now,” said Andrew Fruchter, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, in a statement today (April 7). “This is truly extraordinary.”
The space explosion was detected on March 28 when an instrument on NASA's Swift satellite detected an X-ray eruption
“The fact that the explosion occurred in the center of a galaxy tells us it is most likely associated with a massive black hole,” said Neil Gehrels, the lead scientist for Swift at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Image credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler
Monday, April 04, 2011
Happy 38th Birthday Cell Phones
My faorite part is where the picture description says Cooper is the one on the right.
Image at http://www.oaktreevintage.com.
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