A la peanut butter sandwiches!

More Proof that DMCA-style Copyright Laws are Misguided

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:57:07 -0700

More Proof that DMCA-style Copyright Laws are Misguided: Normal things that people want to do with their media is already illegal in the US, and is about the become illegal in Canada: things like what the WALL-E robot does in the new Pixar movie!

"This “innovations versus gimmicks” thing … the truth is very straightforward,..."

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:05:42 -0700

“This “innovations versus gimmicks” thing … the truth is very straightforward, actually: innovations are just gimmicks you happen to like.”

- Tycho (slightly paraphrased)

"Organized minorities are always more powerful than disorganized majorities."

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:25:39 -0700

“Organized minorities are always more powerful than disorganized majorities.”

- Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum on NPR June 22nd

More SCIENCE!! Tiny life forms: Nanobes

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:08:30 -0700

More SCIENCE!! Tiny life forms: Nanobes:

This article just misses on giving a good picture of the scales involved. It says these are the size of viruses 20-150 nanometers and refers to other things at the 100nm scale. According to here: hydrogen atoms are a tenth of a nanometer, a DNA helix is 2nm, 10nm thickness of cell walls, 200nm: smallest bacteria, 1000nm: smallest cells, 2000nm: e-coli bacteria, 10,000nm: most plant & animal cells.

Substitute centimeters for nanometers to visualize: atoms & molecules are grains of sand & pebbles, these nanobes & virus fit on a table, whereas a cell is the whole city.

Nano-everything!

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:06:00 -0700

Transistors on modern chips are 10s of nanometers in size, just like viruses, but they also operate at nanosecond speeds! Computer chips usually do about 1 operation per nanosecond (like adding two numbers, etc).

In a nanosecond, light travels about a foot, electrical signals in wires travel about 9 feet. If someone asks you how long a nanosecond is - hold your hands a foot apart and say about yay big, like you’re showing the size of a fish.

When dealing with software and networks, I like to think about how many operations can run in the time it takes for things to happen on the network. In a few operations, a signal propagates across the wires of a local network. In a few hundred operations, still a time slice in which the OS probably hasn’t yet switched attention to another program, a whole message finishes being sent across the network. Return times over local networks are usually measured in a small number of milliseconds, thousands of nanoseconds, so in a few thousand operations a message might have been returned. This is often time for the computer to get bored and switch attention to other programs, so conversations happen in separate steps: sending a message, looking at what was sent back & sending the next thing, and so on.

Going over the internet, return times are tens of milliseconds to thousands of milliseconds, so for every syllable of the conversation with another computer over the internet, your computer has done tens of thousands to maybe millions of things, given maybe a few chunks of execution time to every busy program, and usually done a lot of waiting :^)

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:06:28 -0700

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences: Some light reading. I saw a link to this old essay in this discover magazine interview with cosmologist Max Tegmark.

Best episodes of the new Doctor Who

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:56:22 -0700

After last season’s Doctor Who episode “Blink” (S03E10) won acclaim and awards, this seasons story by the same writer, Steven Moffat, had high expectations. It was in 2-parts, “Silence in the Library” and last weekend’s “Forest of the Dead” (S04E08 & S04E09), and it seems to be generally regarded: expectations met or exceeded. The first of the 2 parts is perhaps meandering by my judgement, but well sets up the conclusion which many people are saying is the best since the series rebooted in 2005.

Find torrent files for downloading these episodes here here and here (found via eztv.it)

There’s news that has many people exciting for the future of Doctor Who on BBC: this writer Steven Moffat is taking over for Russell T. Davies as lead writer and executive producer for the 5th season. Sadly, though, this new season won’t be airing until 2010, with 2009 only bringing us 4 near-movie-length “specials” which will be Russell T. Davies’ “swan song” for the show.

BMW's Shape-Shifting Car with Cloth Exterior

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:05:09 -0700

BMW's Shape-Shifting Car with Cloth Exterior: I don’t think this works all that well, some other non-engineered material that doesn’t fold would work better, but I liked what the car does at the very end of the video (which is after all the pictures, scroll down).

To anyone who doesn't understand Dungeons&Dragons

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:39:35 -0700

This is a good series of audio episodes featuring the webcomic celebs from penny-arcade.com and pvponline.com doing a little adventure under the new D&D4 rules. Being the first D&D session for one of these three follows, there’s a lot of explanation and interesting tangential discussions.

Read a sort-of introduction, with word and drawings about the team and each of the characters, at http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/6/6/ (scroll down to “More Dungeons and Dragons” section).

To listen to the series of 40-minute episodes (two as of today, more to come), subscribe in iTunes or other podcast “catcher” software to the feed http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rsspodcast.xml (in iTunes, use the Subscribe option from the Advanced menu, then paste in that feed URL). You want the “Penny-Arcade” episodes, feel free (if you want) to delete rather than download everything preceding them.

To listen to each directly from your browser, and see the couple of comic panels accompanying each segment, they want you to setup a free account with the Wizards of the Coast company (current stewards of D&D) at https://accounts.gleemax.com/UserRegistration/DobForm.aspx - then go to http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dragon .. login at the upper-right and finally click on “Penny Arcade/PvP Podcast” entries under Features, starting with the lower one dated 5/30/2008.

The "Cruel Shoes" of Videogames

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:46:15 -0700

The "Cruel Shoes" of Videogames: Too painful, I can’t watch

The irony here is unbelievable. How did the person installing...

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:53:15 -0700

The irony here is unbelievable. How did the person installing this camera not realize what he was doing and suddenly quit his job?

New favourite joke

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:56:09 -0700

New favourite joke: (at the end of this movie trailer)

Science Fairs are cool

Sat, 24 May 2008 12:46:50 -0700

Science Fairs are cool

Powers of 10 - an awesome short video

Sat, 24 May 2008 12:41:41 -0700

Powers of 10 - an awesome short video

Fiction for the attention-deprived

Tue, 20 May 2008 23:21:00 -0700

Fiction for the attention-deprived: Every weekday a new 101-word story. Since July 18, 2003! By someone named Brendan Adkins, a 20-something Oregonian.

Favrd

Mon, 19 May 2008 19:15:00 -0700

Anyone who doesn’t understand the service/site twitter.com that everyone is talking about, this site Favrd might help.

Twitter is like a blog but the messages (called “tweets”) are limited to only 140 characters of text and can be posted from mobile phones via text messages, little desktop apps & widgets, as well as a user’s custom page on the web site.

People can follow their friends, which will make those friends’ messages show on their page on the site, in that same app on their computer, or even back to their mobile phones.

It seems originally intended for people to post updates about what they’re doing that their friends and family might be interested in, like “have a cold, home sick today” or “cactus club was busy, went to milestones instead”, pretty much like status messages on facebook or instant messaging services. However, it seems to have degenerated into a general minimalist blog for the most part, with many people just trying to be funny and attracting the most followers. I think they need to add a classification system so users can separate their real friends & family from the celebrites and funny strangers they also follow. They haven’t done that yet, but one thing they do have is a feature where users can mark funny/interesting tweets they see as a “favorite”, which then puts them on a special saved list in their page on the website.

The site has an API meaning other websites have been made (“mashups”) that read tweets from twitter and do interesting things with them. For example, one that shows a random stream of tweets in real-time superimposed on a map of where they come from (I have a screen saver that does that too).

Favrd, pronounced “favoured” it seems, is another such mashup site. This one appears to collect some of the tweets of the day that several people have marked as favourites, showing them like a blog with newest tweets at the top. It’s little bit like how digg.com collects new weblinks with the most votes to it’s front page. So visiting Favrd gives you sense of the kind of tweets people are posting and seeing on twitter, however it apparently skews a bit towards the dirty jokes and oddball non-sequiturs (yes i’m talking about you, hotdogsladies).

Ars Technica is now part of Wired(Ars Technica is a popular tech blog with occasional in-depth...

Sat, 17 May 2008 02:51:00 -0700

Ars Technica is now part of Wired

(Ars Technica is a popular tech blog with occasional in-depth articles, it was recently bought by the company that owns Wired magazine/etc)

"The irony of being a procrastinator who writes about procrastination is exhausting."

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:57:23 -0700

“The irony of being a procrastinator who writes about procrastination is exhausting.”

- Merlin Mann

&: per se, and.

Mon, 05 May 2008 11:54:00 -0700

&: per se, and.: More than you wanted to know about that shift-7 character.

I recommend for everyone to read this

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:04:00 -0700

I recommend for everyone to read this