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.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
New Blogger Looks
Google announces “five new dynamic templates in Blogger that you’ll soon be able to customize and use for your blog. These new views use the latest in web technology, including AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3….”
Here's what they look like on this blog.
Interesting, you can apply them to any blogspot blog by appending /view to the URL. That's an interesting approach to customizing.
Here's what they look like on this blog.
Interesting, you can apply them to any blogspot blog by appending /view to the URL. That's an interesting approach to customizing.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
YADC: The Deathstar
A [VIDEO] tour of Lucasfilm's/ILM's data center by Greg Grusby of ILM, blogged by Arik Hesseldahl and via Data Center Knowledge. (YADC: yet another data center). It is interesting to see him point out the old machines they used for Star Wars Episodes 1–3.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub
The MIT Nuclear Science and Engineering blog is an excellent source of information and explanation on the nuclear situation in Japan. The short answer: There's a lot of unnecessary fear, uncertainty and doubt, some of it malicious. Though the situation is serious, there's just not a lot to worry about.
What's This About IPv4?
We've run out of addresses so now what?
I decided a few weeks ago it was time to think about this a bit and try to come to some reasonable conclusions. I wrote a really long and rambling, i.e., useless blog post which is still sitting in the draft bucket. Now I'm going to take a stab at a shorter summary.
So, how will this problem affect you and me?
It may cost money
There's now a shortage of IPv4 addresses meaning they are scarce resources. That's the definition of an economic problem and the response will be rising prices. I think that the more you care about what your IP address is, the more you'll have to pay. If you don't care, maybe you don't even know what an IP address is, then the impact may not even be noticeable.
For the most part, the ones who care about IPv4 addresses are those providing services. They'll have to pay more and, in some cases, charge their customers more.
There will be down time
Still, a lot of changes will need to be made in the networking infrastructure that underlies the world most of us live in. That means large projects will be undertaken, some in a panicked rush, and mistakes will be made, even in the best of cases. For you and me, that means web sites will go down, we'll lose access from time to time and other inconveniences will pop up without warning. Think of big highway construction projects.
And finally,
IPv6 is not a solution
IPv6 is not a solution to the IPv4 problem. It's an entirely new undertaking that's so huge, I claim it's an entirely new problem, even bigger than the IPv4 challenge. Claiming IPv6 solves the IPv4 problem is like saying we can fix some local problem on Earth by terraforming Mars and moving there. Well, in an indirect way that would render the original problem irrelevant, but it's not an easy or affordable solution and it has a whole lot of details that aren't worked out yet.
I continue to think that the current IPv4 problem can be architected away using network address translation (NAT). We've pushed off the scarcity of numbers this way over the years. Now it just needs to be done on a bigger scale, and it will be accompanied by the problems I've predicted above.
I decided a few weeks ago it was time to think about this a bit and try to come to some reasonable conclusions. I wrote a really long and rambling, i.e., useless blog post which is still sitting in the draft bucket. Now I'm going to take a stab at a shorter summary.
So, how will this problem affect you and me?
It may cost money
There's now a shortage of IPv4 addresses meaning they are scarce resources. That's the definition of an economic problem and the response will be rising prices. I think that the more you care about what your IP address is, the more you'll have to pay. If you don't care, maybe you don't even know what an IP address is, then the impact may not even be noticeable.
For the most part, the ones who care about IPv4 addresses are those providing services. They'll have to pay more and, in some cases, charge their customers more.
There will be down time
Still, a lot of changes will need to be made in the networking infrastructure that underlies the world most of us live in. That means large projects will be undertaken, some in a panicked rush, and mistakes will be made, even in the best of cases. For you and me, that means web sites will go down, we'll lose access from time to time and other inconveniences will pop up without warning. Think of big highway construction projects.
And finally,
IPv6 is not a solution
IPv6 is not a solution to the IPv4 problem. It's an entirely new undertaking that's so huge, I claim it's an entirely new problem, even bigger than the IPv4 challenge. Claiming IPv6 solves the IPv4 problem is like saying we can fix some local problem on Earth by terraforming Mars and moving there. Well, in an indirect way that would render the original problem irrelevant, but it's not an easy or affordable solution and it has a whole lot of details that aren't worked out yet.
I continue to think that the current IPv4 problem can be architected away using network address translation (NAT). We've pushed off the scarcity of numbers this way over the years. Now it just needs to be done on a bigger scale, and it will be accompanied by the problems I've predicted above.
Warning! Take Heed!
Fake USPS Emails in Circulation posted on Softpedia by Lucian Constantin. “A wave of fake United States Postal Service (USPS) emails currently making the rounds are trying to pass a trojan downloader for a shipping label.”
My personal advice continues to be the same: Avoid clicking on links in the email message. Instead, type in the address by hand in your browser to go to the page and see what's up.
The spam emails pose as failed delivery notifications and bear a subject of “Post Express Information. Your package is available for pick up.”
The contained message claimed that an error in the shipping address caused the package to be returned to the post office, from where it can be retrieved.
“Your package has been returned to the Post Express office. The reason of the return is ‘Error in the delivery address’ Important message!
“Attached to the letter mailing label contains the details of the package delivery. You have to print mailing label, and come in the Post Express office in order to receive the packages” the emails read.
The attachment is called Post_Express_Label_ID_[number].zip and contains a malicious executable of the same name.
My personal advice continues to be the same: Avoid clicking on links in the email message. Instead, type in the address by hand in your browser to go to the page and see what's up.
OO vs. FP
Finally, a concise and perfect resolution to the question of object oriented programming vs. functional programming, assuming the debate is even an appropriate one in the first place. I've stuggled along with this issue myself without finding a satisfactory resolution.
Today a blog posting announced, and was echoed on Slashdot, CMU Eliminates OO Programming for Freshman [Sic. I presume it's for more than one freshman]. In the ensuing discussion, bradley13 posts a reply that captures and resolves this issue in the most concise and accurate way I've seen.
That's it! FP is useful for expressing and teaching algorithms! Now, having a programming language that doesn't even include I/O makes sense. Now I understand why colleges wanted to use FP (Scheme and such) for their introductory classes. You can just settle into looking at the pure algorithms with the same mathematical purity as you study 2 + 3 = 5 or a proof in geometry.
That's also why FP seems so difficult to use in the real world, at least to me, in spite of well-written and -spoken arguments, and perhaps even well-documented examples, to the contrary.
On the other hand, OO is indeed well-suited for writing real programs and solving real problems. It is imminently practical.
Now it makes sense. The theoreticians scoff at OO while practical coders are sometimes bewildered by FP. (Okay, it could be that only I am befuddled, and the FP proponents do keep saying that you just have to see the light).
There are some underlying themes in the discussion on Slashdot I agree with. One is that I don't think any education program should start with OO. I agree that a program should begin with the simplest programming environment possible Most folks around my age, and some younger, learned FORTRAN or BASIC first. That seemed to be a perfect introduction. And yes, I'm well aware of the FP crowd that is shouting at this point: FP is the epitome of purity and simplicity!
In fact, I've heard that some teaching programs are switching to Python and I think that's an excellent solution. Python can serve in all of these roles, from a simple, BASIC-like beginner language, to a functional language for studying theory, to an immensely practical language for solving some of the most difficult computing challenges.
To bradley13 I say, Thank you for clarifying this discussion for me in such economic terms. Well done!
Today a blog posting announced, and was echoed on Slashdot, CMU Eliminates OO Programming for Freshman [Sic. I presume it's for more than one freshman]. In the ensuing discussion, bradley13 posts a reply that captures and resolves this issue in the most concise and accurate way I've seen.
OO is practical for lots of problems, because it makes modelling real-world data easy. However, it is not useful if you want to give students a solid understanding of the theoretical computer science. OO is fundamentally data-centric, which gets in the way of algorithmic analysis.
To give a pure view of programming, it would make sense to teach pure functional and pure logic programming.
That's it! FP is useful for expressing and teaching algorithms! Now, having a programming language that doesn't even include I/O makes sense. Now I understand why colleges wanted to use FP (Scheme and such) for their introductory classes. You can just settle into looking at the pure algorithms with the same mathematical purity as you study 2 + 3 = 5 or a proof in geometry.
That's also why FP seems so difficult to use in the real world, at least to me, in spite of well-written and -spoken arguments, and perhaps even well-documented examples, to the contrary.
On the other hand, OO is indeed well-suited for writing real programs and solving real problems. It is imminently practical.
Now it makes sense. The theoreticians scoff at OO while practical coders are sometimes bewildered by FP. (Okay, it could be that only I am befuddled, and the FP proponents do keep saying that you just have to see the light).
There are some underlying themes in the discussion on Slashdot I agree with. One is that I don't think any education program should start with OO. I agree that a program should begin with the simplest programming environment possible Most folks around my age, and some younger, learned FORTRAN or BASIC first. That seemed to be a perfect introduction. And yes, I'm well aware of the FP crowd that is shouting at this point: FP is the epitome of purity and simplicity!
In fact, I've heard that some teaching programs are switching to Python and I think that's an excellent solution. Python can serve in all of these roles, from a simple, BASIC-like beginner language, to a functional language for studying theory, to an immensely practical language for solving some of the most difficult computing challenges.
To bradley13 I say, Thank you for clarifying this discussion for me in such economic terms. Well done!
Friday, March 25, 2011
What's Wrong with the World
Color syntax highlighting. I could cry. I used to write beautiful code that was completely readable on a properly printed black on white laser-printed page in Courier font. The programs were somewhat literate and completely manageable.
Now I seem to be completely dependent on colored syntax highlighting because my code is brief and basically illiterate. Thank goodness I found go-mode.el for emacs for my Go language programs.
Now I seem to be completely dependent on colored syntax highlighting because my code is brief and basically illiterate. Thank goodness I found go-mode.el for emacs for my Go language programs.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The Super Moon
I saw the so-called super moon last night after it had well-risen high in the sky. It was a beautiful and bright full moon. However, it didn't look that different to me from any other full moon. Phil Plait always does a good job of explaining these kinds of phenomena.
Amazing Earthquake Visualization
From the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, here's an amazing report on the Sendai 2011-Mar-11, 05:46:23 UTC Earthquake featuring GPS Kinematic Solutions and accompanied by fantastic videos.
Happy Vernal Equinox!
Happy vernal equinox today at 19:21 EDT (23:21 UTC).
Sun 2011-03-20 19:21:00 -0400
Sun 2011-03-20 23:21:00 -0000
Sun 2011-03-20 19:21:00 -0400
Sun 2011-03-20 23:21:00 -0000
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Fukushima Nuclear Accident
A simple and accurate explanation by Barry Brook. This seems to be a well written and correct explanation of what has happened in Japan, sent to me by Phillip. The article is long, but not as long as you might think from the web page size—most of the page consists of the follow up comments.
Note that I don't (necessarily) endorse the web site where the article is found.
Here's the most disheartening moment in the middle of the article—the point where the actual failure occured.
When the diesel generators were gone, the reactor operators switched to emergency battery power. The batteries were designed as one of the backups to the backups, to provide power for cooling the core for 8 hours. And they did.
Within the 8 hours, another power source had to be found and connected to the power plant. The power grid was down due to the earthquake. The diesel generators were destroyed by the tsunami. So mobile diesel generators were trucked in.
This is where things started to go seriously wrong. The external power generators could not be connected to the power plant (the plugs did not fit). So after the batteries ran out, the residual heat could not be carried away any more.
Here are the first three of the author's final conclusions.
- The plant is safe now and will stay safe.
- Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.
- Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.
The Power of a Flood
It wasn't that long ago that I came to realize the real power and peril of a flood isn't just the rush of a wall of water, but it's the fact that the raging water is full of rocks, trees, cars, houses, etc. This video illustrates that with disturbing clarity.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Caught Up
Well, that catches me up for the week, I think. I've decided to favor blogging over Twitter for posts that I think are somehow significant since Twitter has become so ephemeral. Right now that means I email to them to myself instead of retweeting them but then there is a delay before I get around to posting them.
There may be some tool out there that allows re-blogging a tweet, but that capability isn't in my favorite Twitter client, Seesmic on Android. Such tools I have tried don't construct the blog post in they way I want it and so just aren't useful.
There may be some tool out there that allows re-blogging a tweet, but that capability isn't in my favorite Twitter client, Seesmic on Android. Such tools I have tried don't construct the blog post in they way I want it and so just aren't useful.
Happy Birthday ZX-81
The little computer was released on 1981-03-05 as the successor to the ZX-80 (1980).
I fondly remember a kit version of the ZX-80 that a group of us bought and built at the planetarium. I wrote software for it to reduce variable star observations we made with a photometer we'd bought for the observatory. The work of building it was really done by one of the planetarium associates, Ron, and he took the interesting approach of building it in something like an old portable case for some type of tape recorder I think. He also built a little keyboard with actual push buttons as an alternative to the little membrane keyboard the kit (and the ZX-80 computers) came with.
The Artificially High Price Of Academic Journals
And How It Impacts Everyone by Mike Masnick at techdirt.com.
Go Computer Language
Go is a new programming language designed and written from scratch by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson (Wikipedia). The main web page is at golang.org. There's a wonderful little playground tool there which let's you try out Go right in your browser.
A little informal study group at work has formed to look at Go so I've finally started playing with it a bit myself. Colleague Jeff McNeill started this off with a series of blog posts on Go, which are quite well done.
Here are a couple of outstanding videos which tell you a lot about the language.
Talk by Rob Pike
Andrew builds a URL shortener
A little informal study group at work has formed to look at Go so I've finally started playing with it a bit myself. Colleague Jeff McNeill started this off with a series of blog posts on Go, which are quite well done.
Here are a couple of outstanding videos which tell you a lot about the language.
Talk by Rob Pike
Andrew builds a URL shortener
Interesting Ngrams
I finally got around to playing with the Google Ngram Viewer. Here's an interesting example comparing IBM, Microsoft, Google, Linux and UNIX.
What they say is true, you can spend a lot of time playing with this!
What they say is true, you can spend a lot of time playing with this!
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Hooray! Seesmic Gets goo.gl
My favorite Twitter app on Android now supports the goo.gl URL shortener: Seesmic on Android.
In the meantime, I've really been enjoying Tweetdeck as a Chrome App on the desktop.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
IMAX 3D Still Isn't Worth It
We saw Tron Legacy last weekend and I've concluded that IMAX 3D still isn't worth it. I had actually already decided not to see any more IMAX 3D movies but, because I heard a recommendation that Tron was particularly worth it, I tried it again.
It wasn't. The movie was okay, as most reviews said, but the 3D was terrible and just in the way. Maybe something was wrong with my glasses, but I tried another pair with no improvement. There were multiple reflections of high contrast images, bright white on black, off axis. I suspect this might have been a result of 3D glasses over my regular glasses, but I never noticed it before. There is a lot of high-contrast coloring in Tron.
Still the biggest problem is that 3D makes a giant, five-story-tall IMAX screen look like a small screen in front of you. This is necessarily true since it's a property of 3D photography. I still love the IMAX experience of the giant screen and the incredible sound. 3D simply destroys the giant screen experience.
I'll grant that Avatar was really amazing in IMAX 3D, but I don't intend to see another IMAX 3D movie regardless of what people say. From now on when I make the rare trip into a movie theatre, I'll seek out the digital, e.g., DLP, high-resolution projections and will avoid 3D altogether for the most part.
It wasn't. The movie was okay, as most reviews said, but the 3D was terrible and just in the way. Maybe something was wrong with my glasses, but I tried another pair with no improvement. There were multiple reflections of high contrast images, bright white on black, off axis. I suspect this might have been a result of 3D glasses over my regular glasses, but I never noticed it before. There is a lot of high-contrast coloring in Tron.
Still the biggest problem is that 3D makes a giant, five-story-tall IMAX screen look like a small screen in front of you. This is necessarily true since it's a property of 3D photography. I still love the IMAX experience of the giant screen and the incredible sound. 3D simply destroys the giant screen experience.
I'll grant that Avatar was really amazing in IMAX 3D, but I don't intend to see another IMAX 3D movie regardless of what people say. From now on when I make the rare trip into a movie theatre, I'll seek out the digital, e.g., DLP, high-resolution projections and will avoid 3D altogether for the most part.
Google Art Project
I finally got around to spending a little time looking at the amazing Google Art Project. Zoomable, high-resoution images allow you to zoom down to the cracks and brush strokes. Street view techniques let you walk through virtual representations of great museums of the world and look at the exhibited pieces.
Friday, February 18, 2011
In The World of Firesheep
When in a hotel room, it's nice to be able to use your Android Nexus S to set up your own private, secure wifi network to use your laptop on.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Planet Tyche?
Four Jupiters and out in the Oort cloud. It's possible that WISE could detect such a planet if it exists, according to Mike Brown in this Universe Today article.
My first response to seeing the tweet for this article was to say, Bah!, Humbug!, and ignore it. However, this theoretical outer body has some basis in patterns of comet orbits.
Actually, the most fascinating part of the article is the diagram. Look how evenly spaced the planets appear when put on a log scale! (Well, yes, with Uranus omitted).
Image originally from NASA/JPL.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
HP Desktop Computer (Refurb) $99
HP Compaq DC5750 Desktop, Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz, 1GB,80GB, DVD-Rom, Windows XP Pro - Refurbished at Buy.com, if you need a cheap, desktop.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
OO Design for Testability
An excellent talk by Misko Hevery on writing OO code to make it easier to test—highly recommended if you are an OO programmer in any language.
3D Will Never Work
Walter Murch explains to Roger Ebert why 3D movies will never succeed due to the physical realities not matching what our eyes and brains expect. It's quite simple when you think about it. In a 3D movie, our eyes aren't focusing on the point they are converging on.
The secondary effects he mentions I've already noted myself, e.g., the 3D view makes the screen effectively smaller. I've already concluded it's a waste to watch a 3D move on IMAX for that reason. Scott Wilkinson aruges effectively that 3D IMAX is worth it because the resolution is higher, they use two projectors making the resulting movie brighter, and the screen is more likely to fill more of your field of view.
The secondary effects he mentions I've already noted myself, e.g., the 3D view makes the screen effectively smaller. I've already concluded it's a waste to watch a 3D move on IMAX for that reason. Scott Wilkinson aruges effectively that 3D IMAX is worth it because the resolution is higher, they use two projectors making the resulting movie brighter, and the screen is more likely to fill more of your field of view.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Bing Copying Google Search Results?
Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land tells the story of how “Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this.”
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Chrome Sync
I just set up Chrome to sync across all computers, meaning it will sync bookmarks, themes, apps, extensions, etc. Note that I still have to enable the syncing on each computer where I want it to sync.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Down Right Now
I heard that Yahoo Mail was down today and I found this interesting status tracker: downrightnow.com.
It tracks Gmail, Blogger, Yahoo Mail and others. Interesting.
It tracks Gmail, Blogger, Yahoo Mail and others. Interesting.
Read Anyone's Tweets As a Diary
From TweetSmarter. It doesn't look as good as it sounds, but it works.
Fermi Spots Antimatter in Thunderstorms
by Jennifer Ouellette on Discovery News. NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has detected antimatter, indirectly by observing gamma radiation at energies of 511 keV (kilo electron volts). Those energies indicate an electron-positron pair annililated each other. Positrons are anti-electrons, i.e., antimatter.
Google Megastore
Three billion writes and 20 billion read transactions daily. This is a nice blog post on Google Megastore from a blog called High Scalability.
The Night Sky Explorers
This is an *outstanding* video by the Flint River Astronomy Club, hosted by Philip Sacco. The astrophotography is beautiful. The content is well done. Also, the observatory that appears in most of the video is actually the observatory at the Fernbank Science Center in Decatur.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Happy Birthday HAL
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Blogs To Facebook (Ongoing)
Tweets from Twitter are picked up by Facebook in seconds, but blog postings take from hours to infinity.
If You Think Today's Date is 1/1/11
You may be interested to note the time will be 11:11:11 in a few minutes.
In fact, if you have a precise clock, the time will actually pass through 11:11:11.1111... at 1/9 second past.
I think today's date is Sat 2011-01-01. Granted, there are still a lot of ones!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Feeling Deep, Heavy Pain
At the passing of Kodachrome.
There's a Kodachrome slide of me as a baby with almost perfect color. I shot many rolls of Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 in the latter half of the 70s and early 80s. Because it's Kodachrome, we'll be looking at those brilliant reds for years to come, but there won't be any new images.
This past Thanksgiving I drug out my old Kodak Carousel projector, dug out some old slide trays and old yellow boxes, went to the old camera store and bought a spare ELH lamp in case the over-25-year-old bulb in the projector expired (it didn't!) and showed some slides to the family.
Like everyone else, I've succumbed to making digital images for the past few years. I knew this day was inevitable. Still, it's sad to see it come.
So long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPvF1MOU2kE
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30film.html?_r=3
There's a Kodachrome slide of me as a baby with almost perfect color. I shot many rolls of Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 in the latter half of the 70s and early 80s. Because it's Kodachrome, we'll be looking at those brilliant reds for years to come, but there won't be any new images.
This past Thanksgiving I drug out my old Kodak Carousel projector, dug out some old slide trays and old yellow boxes, went to the old camera store and bought a spare ELH lamp in case the over-25-year-old bulb in the projector expired (it didn't!) and showed some slides to the family.
Like everyone else, I've succumbed to making digital images for the past few years. I knew this day was inevitable. Still, it's sad to see it come.
So long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPvF1MOU2kE
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30film.html?_r=3
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Big Win on Hulu Plus
Okay, the Roku box we got for Christmas has been fun to watch but the big score was last night when I discovered on Hulu Plus all seasons of Saturday Night Live going back to season one in 1975-76, really the only one I really enjoyed or watched on a fairly regular basis. I was able to watch some sketches that I haven't seen since then but had a pretty good memory of.
Sinuous Chrome Browser Game
Is clever and fun to play. What's this about apps in the browser? Here's a good example.
I just realized, now that the Chrome App Store is public, I can pass on this really neat game! Just install it in your Chrome browser. There are other apps in the Chrome Web Store.
However, I discovered a rare example of the graphics on my old desktop PCs being slow! The only thing I have fast enough to really run this at an enjoyable speed is the Macbook from work.
I just realized, now that the Chrome App Store is public, I can pass on this really neat game! Just install it in your Chrome browser. There are other apps in the Chrome Web Store.
However, I discovered a rare example of the graphics on my old desktop PCs being slow! The only thing I have fast enough to really run this at an enjoyable speed is the Macbook from work.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Talking Tech and Building an Empire From Podcasts
Jon Kalish in the New York Times writes about Leo Laporte's TWiT.tv network.
I listen to four or five shows per week, and sometimes more but I don't always have time. I usually listen to the podcasts (via Listen for Android) in the car and sometimes watch the videos, e.g., on Youtube, or now on the Roku.
The shows I listen to are:
I listen to four or five shows per week, and sometimes more but I don't always have time. I usually listen to the podcasts (via Listen for Android) in the car and sometimes watch the videos, e.g., on Youtube, or now on the Roku.
Balancing on a giant rubber ball in a broadcast studio and control room carved out of a cottage in Petaluma, Calif., Leo Laporte is an unlikely media mogul.
From that little town in California wine country, he runs his empire, a podcasting network, TWIT. For 30 hours each week, he and the other hosts on his network talk about technology — topics like the best e-book reader or how to get rid of a computer virus — for shows that he gives away online.
Mark McCrery, chief executive of Podtrac, which is based in Washington, and measures podcast audiences and sells advertising, said TWIT’s advertising revenue doubled in each of the last two years and was expected to total $4 million to $5 million for 2010.
Starting at $40 per thousand listeners, TWIT’s ad rates are among the highest in American podcasting and are considerably higher than commercial broadcasting rates, which are typically $5 to $15 per thousand listeners.
The shows I listen to are:
- This Week in Google (the first I started with)
- This Week in Tech
- MacBreak Weekly
- Security Now
- The Tech Guy
And, as time and circumstances allow.
- Tech News Today
- Live Specials
- Home Theatre Geeks
- Net@Night
- Four Cast
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Space Troubles
SpaceflightNow sent this tweet this morning…
Then they corrected it to say…
(The bold is mine).
An Indian tumbled out of control shortly after launch today, dealing major blow to India's space program. http://bit.ly/eK4A0C
Then they corrected it to say…
An Indian rocket tumbled out of control shortly after launch today, dealing major blow to India's space program. http://bit.ly/eK4A0C
(The bold is mine).
Monday, December 20, 2010
Thoughts on Getting a PhD
I recently forwarded the insightful post by Matt Welsh on getting a PhD. This article by Eduardo Pinero is similarly astute.
Happy Winter Solstice
Tuesday 21 December 18:38 EST. Yeah, that's tomorrow but I wanted to send this before I forget.
Thinking About Little Home Servers
Where size=small (Mac mini) or size=zero (virtual, cloud).
Size = small
I find myself thinking about smaller servers at home now, mostly inspired by the Pogo Plug (pogoplug.com).
Smaller servers could mean the Mac Mini. It's not the cheapest, but it's capable and brings the usual Apple Mac reliability and style (e.g., silent running). Could I switch over to OS X-based servers rather than Linux-based?
Could I? Should I? Would I move completely away from Linux? Well, since Linux is central to my work, abandoning it at home doesn't seem like a good idea. It's also much cheaper to run and more flexible, for what that's worth. But then tt's not clear to me that flexibility is that important lately, I find yearning for simplicity.
And can you run a OS X machine as a server? Of course, and it's not that much different from Linux. However, I expect that adding something is not as simple as sudo apt-get install. Also, I'm not sure what would happen if I needed to do a wget, configure, make, make install. You can certainly get to the point where this second case works, but how easy or hard is that? It turns out that Apache and it's LAMP-ish friends are most important and Apache and ssh are already installed on MacOS. Add MySQL and a little mini-server would be pretty much set.
That's what the little Pogo servers are. I looked and you can buy generic Linux boxes with that little form factor.
The idea here is a little minimum-sized server, possibly Atom-based, with local solid-state storage for the OS (no moving disk). You attach an external 2.5-in hard drive for large-scale moving-disk storage and plug in an ethernet cable. I like that form factor as I gaze over a nearby set of mini-tower-sized machines.
Size = zero
Well, what about zero-sized virtual servers? Why have home-based physical servers at all? I could just set up one or more boxes in the cloud, something like on Amazon's EC2, and run my servers there. Now the hardware part of the equation is cancelled out and only the essense of OS administration remains. Storage is elastic and similarly free of hardware worries.
Okay, so it's all on >= 1 VMs. What do I really need to run there at that point? Half of what the home systems provide is infrastructure, but that could really be handled by the wifi router, the ISP, and the Internet in general.
Ultimately, for home, I need a few web-based services, file-sharing and data backup. Data backup is one of the most important functions. So, a cloud-based file-sharing and data service, say maybe Carbonite, Drop Box (yeah, I know they are different services, so maybe both) or something like Amazon S3, might be sufficient for that.
There's still a missing puzzle piece. The cloud still doesn't support code development meaning I still need a Linux shell, emacs, Python, etc., etc., for code development. To provide that in the cloud, at least a VM is required but it will be great when we can put all of that into a browser-based experience. Sometime I'll have more to say on this topic.
You might ask, what happens when you lose connectivity when your ISP fails? That is a key concern. Generally everything stops anyway.
That brings us to the point where everything is in the cloud and there are no servers with administration worries. It also brings me back to the same three questions: Could I? Should I? Would I?
It's a thought.
Size = small
I find myself thinking about smaller servers at home now, mostly inspired by the Pogo Plug (pogoplug.com).
Smaller servers could mean the Mac Mini. It's not the cheapest, but it's capable and brings the usual Apple Mac reliability and style (e.g., silent running). Could I switch over to OS X-based servers rather than Linux-based?
Could I? Should I? Would I move completely away from Linux? Well, since Linux is central to my work, abandoning it at home doesn't seem like a good idea. It's also much cheaper to run and more flexible, for what that's worth. But then tt's not clear to me that flexibility is that important lately, I find yearning for simplicity.
And can you run a OS X machine as a server? Of course, and it's not that much different from Linux. However, I expect that adding something is not as simple as sudo apt-get install. Also, I'm not sure what would happen if I needed to do a wget, configure, make, make install. You can certainly get to the point where this second case works, but how easy or hard is that? It turns out that Apache and it's LAMP-ish friends are most important and Apache and ssh are already installed on MacOS. Add MySQL and a little mini-server would be pretty much set.
That's what the little Pogo servers are. I looked and you can buy generic Linux boxes with that little form factor.
The idea here is a little minimum-sized server, possibly Atom-based, with local solid-state storage for the OS (no moving disk). You attach an external 2.5-in hard drive for large-scale moving-disk storage and plug in an ethernet cable. I like that form factor as I gaze over a nearby set of mini-tower-sized machines.
Size = zero
Well, what about zero-sized virtual servers? Why have home-based physical servers at all? I could just set up one or more boxes in the cloud, something like on Amazon's EC2, and run my servers there. Now the hardware part of the equation is cancelled out and only the essense of OS administration remains. Storage is elastic and similarly free of hardware worries.
Okay, so it's all on >= 1 VMs. What do I really need to run there at that point? Half of what the home systems provide is infrastructure, but that could really be handled by the wifi router, the ISP, and the Internet in general.
Ultimately, for home, I need a few web-based services, file-sharing and data backup. Data backup is one of the most important functions. So, a cloud-based file-sharing and data service, say maybe Carbonite, Drop Box (yeah, I know they are different services, so maybe both) or something like Amazon S3, might be sufficient for that.
There's still a missing puzzle piece. The cloud still doesn't support code development meaning I still need a Linux shell, emacs, Python, etc., etc., for code development. To provide that in the cloud, at least a VM is required but it will be great when we can put all of that into a browser-based experience. Sometime I'll have more to say on this topic.
You might ask, what happens when you lose connectivity when your ISP fails? That is a key concern. Generally everything stops anyway.
That brings us to the point where everything is in the cloud and there are no servers with administration worries. It also brings me back to the same three questions: Could I? Should I? Would I?
It's a thought.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Total Lunar Eclipse Monday night-Tuesday morning 20--21 Dec
On the actual winter solstice! The circumstances of the eclipse are reported in Sky and Telescope.
Partial eclipse begins 1:33 EST
Total begins 2:41
Mid-eclipse 3:17
Total ends 3:53
Partial eclipse ends 5:01
Binoculars are a great instrument for observing
Partial eclipse begins 1:33 EST
Total begins 2:41
Mid-eclipse 3:17
Total ends 3:53
Partial eclipse ends 5:01
Binoculars are a great instrument for observing
Saturday, December 18, 2010
ChromeOS---Finally Someone Gets It
Joe Wilcox and, via reference, MG Siegler, actually understand ChromeOS. Wilcox writes about it in his blog post A week with Google’s Chrome OS laptop, Day 4: Who is the cloud for?.
Look, there are basically three (well, four) easy steps to grokking ChromeOS.
Step 0: Most people use a browser for most things most of the time
At my own house, this has been obvious for years. When I set up a Linux workstation in years gone by, I would install Firefox, Flash and that was about it. They were ready to go.
Even at work for several years, most applications have been accessed via a web interface. It's a huge advantage to just browse to a secured site rather than install and maintain a thick, or even thin, client.
And finally, I've been using Google Gmail and Apps (Documents, etc.) at work for years as well. From any trustworthy computer and browser I can get to nearly everything at work that's important. That was true even at the university.
Step 1: For most folks, an OS is a liability
For most of us, the OS underlying the browser just brings trouble. It's a place for viruses and worms to take hold, for cruft to build up until it crawls along so slowly that many people just give up and buy a new computer. It requires constant help and repair and, in the best of cases, constant updating and vigilance to keep it safe and useable.
There are only a few computer professionals that really need, or think they have a good reason to need, an actual OS with all of the rights and priviledges thereof.
So, with ChromeOS, you just shave all of the OS overhead down to the minimum necessary to run Chrome, and that's it. You still need the parts that talk to Wifi, card reader slots, USB ports for a camera and such, but there's a gigantically huge amount that you don't need.
The resulting system can then be reinforced and rearchitected to make it maximally secure.
In the ChromeOS world, you're using on-line apps. They are updated constantly and invisibly to you. You don't have to worry about the above problems and their related tasks.
Step 2: You can work in the cloud
In this browser-only world, you keep all of your files on-line, in the cloud. You don't have to worry about backups, installing apps, or lost data. Your files are backed up, usually geographically distributed on a wide scale for redundancy, and easy to find.
It's true, relying on the cloud requires a level of trust. We're used to having our stuff on our own computer and media. Truthfully, though, most people do a bad job of managing and securing it. The cloud is many times safer than what they currently do.
We've kept our personal finances, our money, in banks and financial institutions for all of my life. Most corporations do, too. Most businesses don't keep their money in a closet behind someone's desk. For all practical purposes, the financial institutions are a cloud. We're convinced that they take reasonable and appropriate security measures and that there are sufficient backups and failsafes in place. And further, most of us continue to use and trust them even in the face of some recent reasons perhaps not to.
Step 3: Then the rest of the apps
Okay, even if you admit that you can do your email, social networking, word processing, spreadsheets, etc., in the cloud, what about the heavy applications that just have to be run on a computer, i.e., that require a real OS?
In my experience, examples of these heavy apps fall into three categories.
Look, there are basically three (well, four) easy steps to grokking ChromeOS.
Step 0: Most people use a browser for most things most of the time
At my own house, this has been obvious for years. When I set up a Linux workstation in years gone by, I would install Firefox, Flash and that was about it. They were ready to go.
Even at work for several years, most applications have been accessed via a web interface. It's a huge advantage to just browse to a secured site rather than install and maintain a thick, or even thin, client.
And finally, I've been using Google Gmail and Apps (Documents, etc.) at work for years as well. From any trustworthy computer and browser I can get to nearly everything at work that's important. That was true even at the university.
Step 1: For most folks, an OS is a liability
For most of us, the OS underlying the browser just brings trouble. It's a place for viruses and worms to take hold, for cruft to build up until it crawls along so slowly that many people just give up and buy a new computer. It requires constant help and repair and, in the best of cases, constant updating and vigilance to keep it safe and useable.
There are only a few computer professionals that really need, or think they have a good reason to need, an actual OS with all of the rights and priviledges thereof.
So, with ChromeOS, you just shave all of the OS overhead down to the minimum necessary to run Chrome, and that's it. You still need the parts that talk to Wifi, card reader slots, USB ports for a camera and such, but there's a gigantically huge amount that you don't need.
The resulting system can then be reinforced and rearchitected to make it maximally secure.
In the ChromeOS world, you're using on-line apps. They are updated constantly and invisibly to you. You don't have to worry about the above problems and their related tasks.
Step 2: You can work in the cloud
In this browser-only world, you keep all of your files on-line, in the cloud. You don't have to worry about backups, installing apps, or lost data. Your files are backed up, usually geographically distributed on a wide scale for redundancy, and easy to find.
It's true, relying on the cloud requires a level of trust. We're used to having our stuff on our own computer and media. Truthfully, though, most people do a bad job of managing and securing it. The cloud is many times safer than what they currently do.
We've kept our personal finances, our money, in banks and financial institutions for all of my life. Most corporations do, too. Most businesses don't keep their money in a closet behind someone's desk. For all practical purposes, the financial institutions are a cloud. We're convinced that they take reasonable and appropriate security measures and that there are sufficient backups and failsafes in place. And further, most of us continue to use and trust them even in the face of some recent reasons perhaps not to.
Step 3: Then the rest of the apps
Okay, even if you admit that you can do your email, social networking, word processing, spreadsheets, etc., in the cloud, what about the heavy applications that just have to be run on a computer, i.e., that require a real OS?
In my experience, examples of these heavy apps fall into three categories.
- Media-heavy such as image- and video-editing.
- Graphics-heavy such as 3D games.
- Programming and development
With the advent of HTML5, all of these are possible to do in the browser. There are earnest efforts to bring to market instances of the first two. I've seen them. Since last summer, I've done nearly 100% of my photo editing on-line in Picnik. It actually works great!
Number three is the last hurdle and there are people hard at work on that one. I've been thinking about it a lot myself, and I've done some experiments and even changed my daily work habits. The only real thing I need other than a browser, really, is an xterm emulating a vt100 to access a Linux machine with Emacs, Python and some other tools. If those can be moved out of the very old VT100 environment into a browser window, then I'm basically done. Even I admit I'm not sure I'm ready to make that shift from 25 years of doing things a particular way, but I'm ready to give it a try.
One more final step is support for off-line caching so you don't have to skip a beat when you disconnected from the Internet for a while.
Once this is all done, the computer, whether it's a ChromeOS laptop or whatever, just doesn't matter. You can close the lid and leave it on a table in a restaurant. If someone else picks it up, if they don't know your password, they don't have your data. But I can pick up another ChromeOS laptop, even borrow one from another person, log in, and pick right back up where I left off. Secure, with all of my tools and data, ready to work.
This may be apple pie, but it's not blue sky. Most of this technology is in place and it only needs to have the edges smoothed and polished.
See also: What does Chrome OS and Google notebook mean to you? by Andy Ihnatko in the Chicago Sun-Times.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Voyager Is Near Solar System's edge
BBC News reports. A distinct change in the general velocity of charged solar-wind particles measured by Voyager 1 indicate is close to crossing the heliopause, by one definition, the edge of the solar system.
Now 17.4 [billion] km (10.8 [billion] miles) from home, the veteran probe has detected a distinct change in the flow of particles that surround it.
It means Voyager must be very close to making the jump to interstellar space - the space between the stars.
The newly reported observation comes from Voyager 1's Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument, which has been monitoring the velocity of the solar wind.
This stream of charged particles forms a bubble around our Solar System known as the heliosphere. The wind travels at “supersonic” speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock.
At this point, the wind then slows dramatically and heats up in a region termed the heliosheath. Voyager has determined the velocity of the wind at its location has now slowed to zero.
Story by By Jonathan Amos,
Science correspondent, BBC News, San Francisco
Monday, December 06, 2010
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Where's My Workspace?
I find myself once again dabbling in ~LISP in the form of Racket Scheme as part of an informal study group at work (perhaps, having apparently lost my mind completely). Since most of my (extremely modest) LISP hacking hails from over 30 years ago, my first question was, How do I preserve my workspace? I want this to work like Smalltalk!
My colleague, JB, showed me the scheme mode and some commands in Emacs which let you load definitions from an Emacs region or a single s-expression. Hm, maybe that will work.
I found this blog post to be an interesting discussion on the topic.
For the record, I'm just auditing the study group! 8-)
And yet, I'm sitting here compiling a racket workspace for myself on a VM.
My colleague, JB, showed me the scheme mode and some commands in Emacs which let you load definitions from an Emacs region or a single s-expression. Hm, maybe that will work.
I found this blog post to be an interesting discussion on the topic.
For the record, I'm just auditing the study group! 8-)
And yet, I'm sitting here compiling a racket workspace for myself on a VM.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Matt Welsh Leaves Harvard for Google
In his blog posting he discusses leaving his academic post for Google. He's also written a nice post about things to consider before starting on a PhD. It's slightly computer science focused, but generally it's all very much on target!
Monday, November 22, 2010
Blue Moon Definition Was Wrong
From a Space.com article by Joe Rao.
I was wrong. My wife said last night that the moon was a blue moon. I said, that's not possible because a blue moon is a second full moon in the same month and that couldn't happen on 21 Nov. It has to happen at the very end of a month. She pointed me at the above article that explains it.
The short answer is that the two full moons in a month definition is actually erroneous.
Rao notes that Lawrence J. Lafleur, in Sky and Telescope in 1943, quotes a 1937 edition of the Maine Farmer's Almanac, stating that a blue moon is the rare occurance of four full moons in a season instead of three. The blue moon is the third moon in that season.
The mistake was apparently made by James Hugh Pruett in a 1946 Sky and Telescope where he misinterpreted Lafleur's explanation to mean a second full moon in a single month. (See the above article for details).
The wrong explanation was propagated by Deborah Byrd in the radio program “Stardate” in 1980 and then the wrong definition, quoting Rao, “went viral.”
It all makes me wonder when I first learned of the two-full-moons-in-a-month definition. I would have thought it was long before 1980, but maybe it was after that date.
Well it sort of spoils the whole thing. Now we'll have to talk about old-correct-definition blue moons and new-incorrect-definition blue moons and none of them will seem quite right any more.
This would all be a lot simpler if the moon would just actually turn blue once in a while.
I was wrong. My wife said last night that the moon was a blue moon. I said, that's not possible because a blue moon is a second full moon in the same month and that couldn't happen on 21 Nov. It has to happen at the very end of a month. She pointed me at the above article that explains it.
The short answer is that the two full moons in a month definition is actually erroneous.
Rao notes that Lawrence J. Lafleur, in Sky and Telescope in 1943, quotes a 1937 edition of the Maine Farmer's Almanac, stating that a blue moon is the rare occurance of four full moons in a season instead of three. The blue moon is the third moon in that season.
The mistake was apparently made by James Hugh Pruett in a 1946 Sky and Telescope where he misinterpreted Lafleur's explanation to mean a second full moon in a single month. (See the above article for details).
The wrong explanation was propagated by Deborah Byrd in the radio program “Stardate” in 1980 and then the wrong definition, quoting Rao, “went viral.”
It all makes me wonder when I first learned of the two-full-moons-in-a-month definition. I would have thought it was long before 1980, but maybe it was after that date.
Well it sort of spoils the whole thing. Now we'll have to talk about old-correct-definition blue moons and new-incorrect-definition blue moons and none of them will seem quite right any more.
This would all be a lot simpler if the moon would just actually turn blue once in a while.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thirty Years Since We Watched Voyager on TV
I was the director* of the planetarium at the time and had received a letter from NASA that they were broadcasting live coverage of the Voyager 1 encounter via satellite.
When I was a kid, reading library books about the solar system, there would often be a chapter at the end of the book on the Grand Tour of the Planets. A favorable alignment of the four gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, would allow a single spacecraft to visit each of them using gravitational assist, in the distant future of the 1980s.
Fast-foward to 1977, either 5 Sep 1977 (Voyager 2) or 20 Aug 1977 (Voyager 1), I forget which.** It's morning and I'm lying on the sofa after being at the museum's observatory all night. I'm watching the Voyager spacecraft launch on TV. With those launches, the Grand Tour became a reality and Voyager 2 visited all four planets.
However, it was Voyager 1 that visited Jupiter and Saturn first. The spacecraft stole some of Jupiter's orbital momentum, causing Jupiter to fall just a little bit toward the sun, as it accelerated on to Saturn
The event was going to happen on 12 Nov 1980. There was no NASA channel at the time so I had to call the local cable operator (Cox) and ask them to tune into the particular satellite and transponder that NASA had arranged and to feed the coverage out over a spare channel on their cable plant. It took some convincing since they were reluctant to actually commit a channel, even for a one-time event. In the end, I think I ended up talking to a guy in control shack, probably running their dish farm, who didn't seem to want to be bothered with events from other planets. My memory is that I never got an absolute firm commitment, but something more like a shaky okay, which was more than a little worrisome.
Next, it was necessary to find a video tape recorder and it turned out there was one I could borrow from the board of education. I drove down to their dusty equipment warehouse to pick it up. Or maybe it was just the road by the warehouse that was dusty. It was an old 3/4-inch U-Matic machine, a video cassette size that was heavily used by TV stations in those days. The 1/2-in cassettes were just starting to become popular as the VHS vs. Betamax battle was raging.
We hauled the recorder over to one of our staff member's parents' house to record the coverage, since they had cable. The encounter was in the middle of the day and several of the planetarium staff were crowded into their den, watching the show.
It was a heady time indeed as we watched those black and white pictures scroll slowly in (because the data download rates from the space probe probably slower than the modems of the time!). Of course they were not digitally post-processed yet—they were pretty raw images, so there were just the beginning hints of some of the amazing sites to come. The coverage cameras showed ecstatic scientists watching the same images appear on their control room monitors and there were several interviews with Ed Stone, Carl Sagan and others who were seeing their own life-long fantasies come true. Sometimes you suddenly arrive at those moments when you get goosebumps and a lump in your throat, when you know you're experiencing pinnacle achievements in human history. This was one of them.
As the pictures crawled in, I believe it was possible, even in those first images, to see the spokes in the rings, the braided F-ring, and some of the other jaw-dropping, never-imagined features of Saturn up-close.
After recording the fly-by, we borrowed a TV from one of the local TV stores (yeah, it's weird to recall that there actually were TV stores then***). It was just a standard 19-in CRT or it might have been larger. We set it up in the planetarium and opened to the public for a replay of the “live” Voyager-Saturn encounter. I remember we had a bit of difficulty because the video tape recorder had a separate RF modulator that had to be physically plugged into the back of the machine (think small, chunky game cartridge) before we could get a signal to the TV.
I guess we had enough lead time to advertise the event using the usual TV and newspaper avenues because I remember a pretty good turnout. There were college professors, amateur astronomers and many other enthusiastic folks from the community there who were just as thrilled as the crew at JPL to see these first images coming back from the ringed planet, even though our replay was delayed by hours.
As I recall there were encounter events over two or three days as Voyager flew by some of Saturn's moons and made its way across Saturn's “miniature solar system,” so we had probably two and possibly three nights of replay.
Today Voyager 1 is over 115 AU (astronomical units) from the Sun. By definition, the Earth is 1 AU from the Sun. Pluto is, on average, 40 AU. Voyager 1 is the most distant, active spacecraft in the solar system and it's still collecting and transmitting data.
“In four to six years, Voyager 1 is expected to cross beyond the heliosheath, the outer layer of the bubble around our solar system that is composed of ionized atoms streaming outward from our sun, ” reports a news release from NASA this past October.
We've come a long way from those solar system books from the library, written in days when artists never even thought to include clouds when illustrating the Earth as seen from space. I've been amazed to see so many of those funny but always awe-inspiring artist's conceptions come to reality. It will be fascinating to see which ones come next.
***
It was just past the turn of the century and I'd never thought about it before even after a couple of years or so. It was a friend who pointed out to me that the two vehicles sitting in my driveway were a Voyager and a Saturn.
__________
* Technically my title was curator at the time. It was a few years later that we reorganized and all department heads became directors. The main change was that we each gained full spending authority over our budgets.
** No that's not a typo. Due to the solar system mechanics involved, Voyager 2 was actually launched before Voyager 1.
*** When I was a kid and the TV malfunctioned, a TV repairman actually came to our house to fix it.
Image Credit
Ghostly Spokes in the Rings
Scientists first saw these somewhat wedge-shaped, transient clouds of tiny particles known as “spokes” in images from NASA's Voyager spacecraft. They dubbed these features in Saturn's B ring “spokes” because they looked like bicycle spokes. An electrostatic charge, the way static electricity on Earth can raise the hair on your arms, appears to be levitating tiny ring particles above the ring plane, but scientists are still figuring out how the particles get that charge as they analyze images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
The image on the left was obtained by Voyager 2 on Aug. 22, 1981. The image on the right was obtained by Cassini on Nov. 2, 2008.
Image credit: NASA/JPL and NASA/JPL/SSI
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Demolition Goes Wrong
[VIDEO] I think the lesson is clear here: Don't let Ms. Johnson's Fourth Grade Class do your demolition. Use professionals.
Note the video appears on this page from msnbc.msn.com.
Note the video appears on this page from msnbc.msn.com.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
GAMMA RAY BURSTS
SCREAMING BABY BLACK HOLES?
In this article, Ian O'Neill at news.discovery.com describes how new data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have indicated that gammar ray bursts are too energetic to be generated by magnetars and must come from black holes.
A magnetar is a neutron star, a highly compact object made up of degenerate neutrons, with an extremely strong magnetic field.
In this article, Ian O'Neill at news.discovery.com describes how new data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have indicated that gammar ray bursts are too energetic to be generated by magnetars and must come from black holes.
A magnetar is a neutron star, a highly compact object made up of degenerate neutrons, with an extremely strong magnetic field.
The largest stars undergo the most energetic supernovae producing either a massive, magnetically dominated neutron star (known as a "magnetar") or a black hole. It is thought that young magnetars are the key driver behind GRBs.
But a GRB is a very different creature to an 'average' supernova. Via a mechanism that is poorly understood, intense narrow jets of hot plasma are blasted from the dead star's rotational axis. Intense radiation is also produced. If one of those jets are pointing directly at Earth, we'll see an explosion that seems too powerful to be a supernova. That's a gamma-ray burst.
It would appear that in all cases too much energy is generated for the magnetar model to be valid.
"The magnetar model is in serious trouble for such incredibly powerful events," said coauthor Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy. "Even if the magnetar energy limit is not strictly violated, the tremendous efficiency required by this process strains credulity."
The Three C’s of Social Content
Consumption, Curation, Creation by Brian Solis at briansolis.com. This is quite fascinating.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Eris Gets Dwarfed
Pluto may be the biggest Kuiper Belt object again. Sky and Telescope has a news item by Kelly Beatty describing observations of an occultation of a 17th-mag star (named L1654635357407160223) by Eris set new and smaller upper bounds on Eris' size.
…successful observations from widely separated sites create two chords across Eris's shadow that yields a unique solution for its diameter (assuming that the object is spherical).Previous observations were based on direct infrared measurements and size estimates were derived from assumptions about the surface brightness (albedo) and other aspects of the body.
That number, according to Bruno Sicardy (Paris Observatory), is hard to pin down exactly because timings derived from the three telescopes' light curves have some uncertainty. Even so, Sicardy notes in an email, "Almost certainly Eris has a radius smaller than 1,170 km" — and that would make it ever-so-slightly smaller than Pluto, whose diameter is thought to be 1,172 (±10) km. Don't be surprised if the final value gets pushed another 50 or 60 km lower.
Image credit: Marselo Assafin and others. From Sky and Telescope.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Herschel-ATLAS Finds Gravitational Lenses
Large numbers of unusually bright images in the far-IR which appear to be galaxies magnified by gravitational lenses in newly released data from the Herschel-ATLAS project
“Our survey of the sky looks for sources of sub-millimeter light. The big breakthrough is that we have discovered that many of the brightest sources are being magnified by lenses, which means that we no longer have to rely on the rather inefficient methods of finding lenses which are used at visible and radio wavelengths,” says lead researcher Mattia Negrello of the Open University.
Negrello says that “…Our results show that gravitational lensing is at work in not just a few, but in all of the distant and bright galaxies seen by Herschel.”
Tumblr, Twitter and Blogging
I just read the article Can Tumblr Topple Twitter by Paul Sawers and poked around Tumblr a bit more this morning. One thing I realized about Tumblr is that it can look quite a lot like Twitter. You can post brief, tweet-like messages and the page display (using one of the default themes) is quite clean and Twitter-like.
Add to this the searching function, the Reblog buttons, and the ability to follow other users, and you basically have Twitter. Hm.
But, there's also the versatility of it being a blog with titles and of course much longer posts, if you wish. Hm.
Looking at the default set of themes on Posterous, there's no doubt the thinking there is that this is purely a blog. All the themes and layouts look blog-like.
Of course there's nothing preventing you from posting short, subject-less posts of, say, 140 characters or less.
Add to this the searching function, the Reblog buttons, and the ability to follow other users, and you basically have Twitter. Hm.
But, there's also the versatility of it being a blog with titles and of course much longer posts, if you wish. Hm.
Looking at the default set of themes on Posterous, there's no doubt the thinking there is that this is purely a blog. All the themes and layouts look blog-like.
Of course there's nothing preventing you from posting short, subject-less posts of, say, 140 characters or less.
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