Blog Posts

December 2011

• 2011-12-14

  Squarespace: What’s a comment spam filter to you?

  You may have noticed that this Blog is now hosted on SquareSpace. I’ve been pretty happy with it so far. While it is kind of a closed system, there are extensive customization features that allow me to get pretty much what I want.

  And their support is 24×7 and very responsive. Although not necessarily always helpful. Note that I am not the first to observe this. Joannes Vermorel’s Blog says:

  “The feedback from the Squarespace support has always two properties:

  Extremely fast, my tickets are addressed within minutes. Extremely useless, canned answers co...

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  #blogging
• 2011-12-13

  Summer’s almost here

  I noticed yesterday that sunset is now occurring at 4:12pm. The day before it was 4:11pm. So sunset is getting later! Summer is almost here, right?

  p.s. Before some smart-alec points it out, yes I know that sunrise is still getting later so the **number of daylight hours are still shrinking. **

  ****It is left as an exercise to the reader to explain why the two events do not occur on the same day – in other words, sunset starts getting later several weeks before sunrise starts getting earlier. Note: the explanation is very complicated.

  #science
• 2011-12-11

  Weight of tablets

  I’ve been playing around with each of the major tablets while considering ‘my next move’ 🙂

  Oddly I have not been able to find a side by side comparison of their weights. After googling for 3 minutes. So as a public service let me transcribe my notes on this vital topic.

  Apple iPad 2: 21.1 oz Barnes and Nobel Nook Color: 15.8 oz Amazon Kindle Fire: 14.6 oz Barnes and Nobel Nook Tablet: 14.1 oz Amazon Kindle Touch: 7.8 oz Amazon Kindle 4: 5.9 oz

  #computing #business #culture
• 2011-12-11

  Super compelling: Narrative of human error leading to catastrophe

  A remarkable article in Popular Mechanics (remember them?) about the crash of Air France 447. It was apparent clear case of human error and resulted in the death of 228 people. It is a compelling narrative.

  “For more than two years, the disappearance of Air France Flight 447 over the mid-Atlantic in the early hours of June 1, 2009, remained one of aviation’s great mysteries. How could a technologically state-of-the art airliner simply vanish? Read more: Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript – What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 – Popular Mechanics …

  … We now und...

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• 2011-12-10

  Latest update on the art for my game

  I continue to spend spare time on developing my Android tablet game. As you may remember from my last post, it involves a top view of a city. I’ve taken the time to learn a lot of Adobe Illustrator so I am used slightly more advanced techniques than last time.

  I have to admit that when I walk around town I am constantly noticing the width of sidewalks, the color of streets, whether there is grass right up to the side of the building and other silly details.

  Anyway, here is what I have so far. How do you like it?

  

  #culture #design
• 2011-12-08

  Guy Kawasaki: What I learned from Steve Jobs

  Interesting article by famous Guy Kawasaki about what he learned from Steve Jobs:

  “But few, if any, of these people have been inside the tent and experienced first hand what it was like to work with him. I don’t want any lessons to be lost or forgotten, so here is my list of the top twelve lessons that I learned from Steve Jobs.” (from What I learned from Steve Jobs)

  #computing #business
• 2011-12-06

  Kashi

  

  Kashi is the new hot breakfast cereal. Wait, let me rephrase that: Kashi is a breakfast cereal that is getting very popular. It portrays an image of healthfulness and kind of a crunchy scrappy small company attitude. Turns out that they are just part of Kellogs Company.Oh Well!

  #life
• 2011-12-05

  Killer feature for Mac OS X?

  What if when I typed into the search box in Safari (Mac OS X’s web browser) the text is interpreted by Siri? I could type “What’s the weather tomorrow” and it would display a forecast for tomorrow, or type “text my wife that I love her” and it would initiate a text message to my wife. Wouldn’t that be cool?

  I just typed into the search box “Is Kashi a company?” because I was in a Siri kind of mood, and of course I didn’t get a good answer. But maybe Siri on my iPhone would have known. (Update: I just tried it, and it didn’t but still, I think it’s a cool idea!)

  #computing #ai
• 2011-12-04

  Siri and Text Messaging

  A lot has been written about Siri (the new voice activated assistant in the iPhone 4s). I have to say that it works surprisingly well. It has been eerily accurate in properly transcribing my voice, although not quite as perfect in understanding what I am saying.

  I just had a 3 message dialog with someone over text messaging using Siri. I never ever would have done that with texting previously but here I went speaking in complete sentences over text messaging and with 100% accurate recognition. I don’t know if the other guy was using Siri but if he wasn’t he must have been annoyed by how quickly I responded with a full sentence 🙂

  It occurs to me that the average length of text messages might become longer and longer with the advent of services like this. I wonder if that is at least part of the reason that Apple is now bypassing the mobile operators when doing iPhone to iPhone messaging.

  #computing #ai
• 2011-12-03

  Doing exercise makes you smarter. Finally!

  From the New York Times, How Exercise Benefits the Brain:

  “For some time, scientists have believed that BDNF helps explain why mental functioning appears to improve with exercise. However, they haven’t fully understood which parts of the brain are affected or how those effects influence thinking. The Irish study suggests that the increases in BDNF prompted by exercise may play a particular role in improving memory and recall.” (from NYT)

  #life #science #culture
• 2011-12-02

  Groupon success catastrophe

  I bought a Groupon for a local restaurant. About 1 week before it expired I went to make a dinner reservation and it turned out that they were booked up for the next 3 months – and so effectively I could not use the groupon for dinner. I have to use it for lunch, and given the price and the value of the coupon, I need to go with a group of 4 people!

  I spoke to the owner about the situation, and based on his sad tone I asked him if the groupon promotion had been a good thing. He was adamant that it was the worse thing they had ever done and he would never do it again! They had sold tons of groupons and everyone waited till the last week or two to try to book and suddenly they are overrun.

  H...

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  #business
• 2011-12-02

  Advice about listening to yoruself

  A few months ago, a friend of mine told me he was struggling, really struggling with a big career decision. Here’s what I told him, and what I believe and have applied to my own decisions:

  “Try to pay very close attention to what you yourself want to do. It is easy to get confused by expectations put on you by others or by yourself based on what you think others – parents, friends, colleagues and so on, would expect you to do or what the conventional wisdom says is the right thing to do. All that is confusing.

  You need to try hard to filter that out and find out what you – YOU – really want to do, what your heart tells you. It’s hard to do but I have found it to be a very good exercise. On...

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November 2011

• 2011-11-29

  Tens of Thousands of Servers. Wait.

  Just one phrase that jumped out of the new missive from Zuck about privacy:

  “As a matter of fact, privacy is so deeply embedded in all of the development we do that every day tens of thousands of servers worth of computational resources are consumed checking to make sure that on any webpage we serve, that you have access to see each of the sometimes hundreds or even thousands of individual pieces of information that come together to form a Facebook page.” (fromOur Commitment to the Facebook Community)

  When I tell (non computer) people that it takes hundreds or th...

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  #blogging #software-engineering #programming
• 2011-11-28

  Aw, come on: Apple iPhone spontaneously combusts aboard flight in Australia

  This is just a weird story:

  “An Apple iPhone spontaneously began smoking and emitting a red glow while aboard an airplane in Australia. Passengers aboard Regional Express flight ZL319 were welcomed to their destination in Sydney, Australia on Friday by a frightening ordeal. According to the airline, a passenger’s iPhone began “emitting a significant amount of dense smoke” shortly after the flight landed, and the smoke was accompanied by a red glow.” (from Bioy Genius Report)

  

  #computing
• 2011-11-27

  Getting the best deals… Check out decide.com

  A useful article in the New York Times today, just in time for the holidays. Anew site that tries to forecast the best time to buy that item you really want.It seems to draw a graph showing how the price of, for example, a Nikon 50-300mm Zoom Lens has varied over the last 3 months and whether I should buy it today or wait till next month. It’s a very nicely done site and if it works, it could be very useful. The site is decide.com.

  “Oren Etzioni writes articles about artificial intelligence for scholarly journals, is a renowned expert on data mining and gained fame when Micro...

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  #ai #culture #business
• 2011-11-25

  What they teach in lawschool

  This article gives a fascinating perspective on the disconnect between what they teach in law school and what knowledge is required to actually be an effective lawyer. Some great facts from the article:

  “Last year, a survey by American Lawyer found that 47 percent of law firms had a client say, in effect, “We don’t want to see the names of first- or second-year associates on our bills.” Other clients are demanding that law firms charge flat fees.”

  …and …

  ““Law school has a kind of intellectual inferiority complex, and it’s built into the idea of law school itself,” says W. Bradley Wendel of ...

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  #education #politics #culture
• 2011-11-24

  Provocative article about a sensitive topic

  Eric Riesis locally famous as being one of the strong promoters of the Lean Startup.

  He writes an excellent and courageous article that explores why it is that there seem to be many more white males starting new technology companies than other genders, races, and nationalities.

  I say courageous because no matter what one says about the topic, he (or she) is sure to be attacked by some corner.

  “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you can’t have missed the recent dust-up over race and Silicon Valley. Like almost every di...

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  #business
• 2011-11-23

  Watch out for fake 3d party charges on your phone bill

  Heads up: “Phone Bill Fees: How to identify 3rd-party charges and protect yourself” FROM FRAUD!

  #internet
• 2011-11-21

  How do you feel about Software Patents?

  I am not dead set against software patents, although I’ve been on both sides of the issue.

  I am the proud inventor listed on 3 or 4 patents. Some are more worthy in my opinion that others. I was also leading a development team that had to stand on its head to avoid conflicting with a patent that everyone agreed should never have issued, but we didn’t have the nerve or resources to contest.

  So I was interested to see some behind the veil of “Intellectual Ventures”, Nathan Myhrvold’s IP/Patent company:

  “…But IV is not buying inventions. It’s buying patents. And most software engineers will tell you, at least when it comes to software, a patent and an invention are not the same. Lots of patents cover things that people who write software for a living wouldn’t consider inventions at all… (from When Patents Attack)

  #politics
• 2011-11-20

  Mysql – NoSql – KnowSql

  A catchy headline, but is it true? “Facebook Trapped in MySql ‘a fate worse than death’.This is a quote of what Michael Stonebreaker supposedly said in this interview article:

  “The widely accepted problem with MySQL is that it wasn’t built for webscale applications or those that must handle excessive transaction volumes. Stonebraker said the problem with MySQL and other SQL databases is that they consume too many resources for overhead tasks (e.g., maintaining ACID compliance and handling multithreading) and relatively few on actually finding and serving data. This might be fine for a small application with a small...

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  #programming