December 2009
89 posts
Glyphboard 2.0 →
mrgan:
Just in time for today’s release of iPhone OS 3.0 with its oh-so-handy pasteboard, I’ve updated a little project of mine, Glyphboard. It’s a sort of keyboard which lets you type glyphs not available on any of the standard iPhone keyboards. These glyphs include , ☂, ☺, ✔, and even ♫.
You may find this handy for Twitter, text messaging, emails, and I’m sure I don’t know what else. A...
November 2009
83 posts
When Information Overwhelms Facts →
The SquareTrade study utterly fails to provide any meaningful statistical analysis of its numbers. It finds “the average total failure rate of laptops to be 31% over 3 years”. An average can not stand on its own: to be of statistical use, it must be accompanied by at least a standard deviation of the data from which the average was taken. (A range would be helpful, too). SquareTrade’s sloppiness...
Human Capital: Are You a Stock or a Bond? →
Well that’s an interesting way of looking at yourself…
When you’re young, your human capital may very well dwarf your 401k balance. With this in mind, it may make you feel better about any short-term losses.
Your human capital can be viewed as a hedge against the losses in your financial capital. So, as a 50-, 40-, or especially 30-year old, you should be willing to take more chances...
Planning for a million years →
BLDGBLOG has a fascinating interview with geoscientist Abraham Van Luikabout how to confine nuclear waste for 1,000,000 years at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. One of the problems is keeping people away from the site in the far future:
We have looked very closely at what WIPP is doing — the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. They did a study with futurists...
“Only by trying something new, struggling, learning, and then trying again do we...”
– The 40-30-30 rule (via jingc)
Cloud Computing
If I had to suffer a data loss, I’d rather it be my own damn fault than because some random server went down in a server farm.
The Geography of the U.S. Recession →
Animated time-lapse map of county-by-county unemployment rates in the U.S. since January 2007. Jarring.
Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod →
The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, generally shortened to just Black Rod, is an official in the parliaments of a number of Commonwealth countries. The position originates in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. His equivalent in the House of Commons is theSerjeant at Arms.
“Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be.”
– 1001 rules for my unborn son
The Leonids →
But the story really started much earlier than tonight’s opening scene in the desert….it begins November 13, 1833. Late that night, insomniac Americans were greeted with a sky filled with streaks of light. This was not just a meteor shower, but a rare event with so many meteors that it is called a “meteor storm”, so named whenever the number of meteors exceeds 1000 per hour. That night in...
Screaming Circuits: Via-In-Pad - Let It Slide? →
Sometimes, you can get by with vias in your pads. Sometimes, but not very often. I wrote about this a while back here. The thing is, I was talking about big pads - like QFN or QFP thermal pads and stuff like that. We never like to see it and it’s always a manufacturing risk at some level, but as described in the earlier post, sometimes you can just roll with it.
Pretty much never with a...
“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above...”
– James Cameron (via Daring Fireball)
Contrasts in How Google Suggests Searches →
When you type a query into Google it will suggest the most popular completions to the given prefix.
There are some remarkable contrasts, Slate found, between “dumb” searches and “smart” ones. People who start their search “how 2” are more likely to search “how 2 get pregnant” or “how 2 grow weed.” People who start their search...
Verizon: How Much Do You Charge Now? →
Virtually every bill I get has a couple of erroneous data charges at $1.99 each—yet we download no data.
Here’s how it works. They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. Often we have no idea what key we hit, but up pops one of these screens. The instant you call the function, they charge you the...
Google wants to speed up the web by ditching HTTP →
The main problem with HTTP is that today, it’s used in a way that it wasn’t designed to be used. HTTP is very efficient at transferring an individual file. But it wasn’t designed to transfer a large number of small files efficiently, and this is exactly what the protocol is called upon to do with today’s websites. Pages with 60 or more images, CSS files, and external...
California Increases Income Tax Witholding By 10% →
California has come up with another “creative” way to get some money from its residents. First, I had to figure out how to redeem my California IOU. Now starting back on November 1st, the state increased the income tax withholding on regular wages by 10%. There is no actual accompanying tax increase, they are just looking for an interest-free loan from now to when you file your income taxes.
Adobe is Bad for Open Government →
“Since the advent of the web, an entire infrastructure has evolved to enable public access to information. Such technologies include HTML, Adobe PDF, and Adobe® Flash® technology.”
This is nonsense. The fact is, sticking to open, standards based technologies like HTML, XML, JSON and others are far more important and useful in getting your information out to the public than the...
What does a lightning bolt look like? →
Does anyone know what the cross section of a lightning bolt looks like? I’ve always wondered if forces akin to the skin-effect are trying to spread out the electrons while it’s constrained in a tube of plasma. Is it round? Is it a sheet? What’s the electron density like? What sorts of pressures would you expect in the center of a bolt?
I’d love to find out the answers.
Glims for Safari →
An excellent Safari plugin.
