Technology
gregladen | January 1, 2016Minecraft is a gaming world. Or, if you like, a "sandbox." This is a three dimensional world in which characters do things, all sorts of things. The context for the world of Minecraft is very open ended. The player builds things, moves things, gets things, does things, in a way that makes any one gamer's game potentially very different from any other gamer's game.
You can buy Minecraft in various forms such as an XBox 360 version. It comes in Lego form (for example, this), and you can get a Minecraft cloud server version at Minecraft.net.
If you install Minecraft from Minecraft.net (about…
gregladen | December 3, 2015No. Lights of the christmas tree interfering with The Force, not likely.
Well, OK, if all the people in the united states gathered into one state, the gravitational effects of all those bodies in one place would be detectable by the ultra sensitive GRACE satellite system. And, any electronic device that is running, including light bulbs or just wires carrying alternating current, put EMF out into the air, and potentially, this energy could interfere with other EMF energy such as what your wifi uses.
Overall if your house is full of electronic devices that are running, including multiple…
gregladen | November 18, 2015Mike Haubrich and I are developing a science oriented podcasting effort. It will be called "Ikonokast" (all the good names, like "The New York Times" and "Apple" were taken). We decided to enhance the podcast with a WordPress based blog site, perhaps with each page representing one podcast, and containing backup and supplementary information.
Here is the site, set up and running.
After considering our options, we decided to try using a Digital Ocean "Droplet" to host a WordPress blog. Here, I want to tell you how that went, and give a few pointers. This might be a good idea for some of…
gregladen | October 28, 2015Those zany researchers at MIT are up to their usual shenanigans. They have come up with a device, which they call "our device," that sees through walls. Here is a video of how it works, complete with background music to make you feel perfectly comfortable with it:
Here's their web site. Here is a LARGE FILE PDF with their paper describing the research.
This is not new, but has been under development for a few years. But the work is progressing. I'm hoping this will lead to the development of the ultimate stud finder. I the meantime, I'm sure other applications will be discovered.
dr. dolittle | October 27, 2015
A still shot from the 3D-IsoView microscope shows neural activity within a Drosophila larva detected with fluorescent indicators. Image courtesy of Keller Lab, HHMI/Janelia Research Campus
A new kind of three-dimensional technology, called IsoView, allows researchers to view biological processes within nontransparent animals that are rather large by microscopy standards such as the drosophila larva above and even the brains of larval zebrafish. According to the article in Nature Methods, the new type of microscope developed at the Janelia Research Campus (Ashburn, Virginia) gives high…
gregladen | October 24, 2015Samsung Galaxy S4
Looking at just the specs, the Samsung Galaxy S4 looks like a good phone. That's why we got one!
But there are a few things you need to know that may impact your decision. These problems lead me to not recommend this phone.
First, the Android Lollipop version that Samsung produces is a much modified version of the basic Android operating system. Nothing useful or interesting is provided, but the "miscellaneous" storage, which for most normal Android Lollipop phone takes up about 300 - 400 megabytes of space, takes up several gigabytes of space, in order to have these…
gregladen | September 4, 2015The FS608R Digital Camera Binoculars FHD 1080P from Gear Best is a low-end binocular with a built in camera that takes up to 2592 x 1944 (defaults to 2,048 x 1,536, and can go lower) pixel photos or avi movies (no sound).
Really good binoculars cost hundreds of dollars, but there is a range of inexpensive binoculars that everybody who uses binoculars (especially bird watchers) and/or has kids owns a few of. This is the extra set of binocs you keep in your car, near back yard window, let your kids play around with, or if you are a biology teacher, bring to school for the trip down to the…
illconsidered | August 24, 2015August 13th was Earth Overshoot Day. The correct date, if calculated precisely, would come earlier and earlier each year, the current choice is just an approximation.
This year, the year 2015, by sometime around August 13th, humanity had consumed as much of what we require from the lands and seas as our planet can sustainabley provide in an entire year. That is another way of expressing the fact that at current consumption rates, humanity requires 1.6 planet earth's worth of fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood and other organic materials. It is a remarkable annual deficit, and if it is…
pharyngula | July 28, 2015This 1925 Bugatti Brescia was found in a state of profound neglect in a garage, and was auctioned off for almost a million dollars. It's a beautiful work of art. It doesn't run, but still…that would be a fine vehicle for a Sunday drive, once it's restored.
But it's the wrong model! Way, way back in high school, I was really into technical drafting, and I ran across this one legendary Bugatti, and I made it the subject of my class project: drawing scale 3-views, engine diagrams, isometric projections, all that kind of stuff, for a portfolio which, sadly, I no longer have. It's been a while.…
pharyngula | July 28, 2015For people with missing limbs, here's a prosthetic interface that allows them to customize it…with Lego.
Hoping to build the confidence of children living with a missing limb, Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar, of Umeå University in Sweden, has designed a prosthetic arm that’s compatible with Lego so kids can swap its gripping attachment for their own custom creations.
The arm functions very similar to traditional prosthetics, but it features a twist-and-lock modular design that’s easy for kids to assemble. And with a special motorized adapter, its standard three finger gripper can be swapped out…
gregladen | July 9, 2015Problems with the Apple Magic Mouse
I had been using the stock Apple Magic Mouse on an iMac. The right click often didn’t work properly. Also, selecting and dragging files in Finder, or the Finder replacement I use (PathFinder) often failed. I figured the former was related to the mouse but assumed the latter was related to the OS. That turns out to not be the case.
The Magic Mouse will run on any AA batteries but if you don’t want to change the batteries a lot and have other problems, you need to use super-duper electronic device batteries. I think I was spending at least $50 a year on…
gregladen | June 4, 2015Android Lollipop is the new Android OS, and it is a good one. If you want to get a new Android phone, you will probably be happier choosing a one with Lollipop already installed.
This is not to say that phones with the older Android OS, KitKat, won't or can't be upgraded to Lollipop. Nor do I suggest they will be. It is a bit of a mystery. At some point, I assume, some older models will not be upgraded. One might assume that if you get a new model phone that still runs KitKat that you'll be upgraded eventually, but that is not 100% certain.
We are looking into a new phone, we use Verizon…
gregladen | May 13, 2015As an anthropologist, I find the interface between technology and the larger culture in which it is embedded fascinating. You all know the old story of the family cook who habitually cuts the ends off the roast before slipping it in the oven. One day her child, hoping some day to be the family cook, asks why this is done. It turns out that nobody can remember, and the matter is dropped. But the question comes up again, at a later family dinner, this one attended by great grandma, who was the family cook a generation ago, and of course, she knows the answer.
"Back in the day," she says, "…
drorzel | May 6, 2015A couple of weeks ago, after one of my Forbes posts, I got contacted by a publicist working for Makey Makey. They really wanted publicity in Forbes, but that's above my pay grade; I did, however, say that it sounded like the sort of thing my kids would get a kick out of, and I could mention it here...
So, they sent me one. It's a small circuit board with a USB connector and a bunch of places for alligator-clip leads, and functions as an input device for the computer-- if you complete a circuit from one of the clip leads to ground, it records that as a mouse click, or a key press of some sort…
drorzel | April 15, 2015So, I get a lot of comment spam here, probably a couple of orders of magnitude more than I get real comments (sigh). The vast majority of this gets blocked by built-in filters, so none of the stuff pitching medically implausible treatments for whatever makes it to a point where I have to see it. There's one new category of junk comment, though, that slips through the filters and requires human moderation (i.e., I have to approve or reject it), and I find this utterly baffling.
The comments are sorta-kinda relevant to the post that they're sent to, albeit with dubious English, and they don't…
drorzel | March 25, 2015I mentioned last week that I'm giving a talk at Vanderbilt tomorrow, but as they went to the trouble of writing a press release, the least I can do is share it:
It’s clear that this year’s Forman lecturer at Vanderbilt University, Chad Orzel, will talk about physics to almost anyone.
After all, two of his popular science books are How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog. Orzel, an associate professor of physics at Union College in New York and author of the ScienceBlog “Uncertain Principles,” is scheduled to speak on campus at 3 p.m. Thursday, March 26.
As…
gregladen | March 4, 2015Ubuntu Linux 15.04 will be released in April.
There is not a lot new for the average desktop user in the new release, as far as I can tell. One good "change" is a feature called "locally integrated menus." This is where the menus are, by default, where they are supposed to be, instead of, well, invisible until you stab at the menu bar that must reside at the top of your screen in Ubuntu with Unity. Then the menu appears and maybe you can use it. That was a bad idea, and over the last few revisions of Ubuntu with Unity, the top menu bar menus have slowly gone away, first as something you…
drorzel | February 20, 2015I didn't see this before yesterday's post about Twitter, but over at SciLogs, Kirk Englehardt gets evangelical, offering a very chipper list of "Ten Reasons for Academic Researchers to Use Social Media." I'll just put the item headers here, though each of these has a more complete description, with links to lots of other stuff:
10. You’re in the Driver’s Seat
9. It’s About the Network
8. It’s Newsy and Trendy
7. Promotion (may) = Citations and Downloads
6. Spreading Your Love of Science
5. Setting the Record Straight
4. Sharing Interesting Things
3. Enhancing Your Research
2. It’s Easy
1. It…
drorzel | February 19, 2015The AAAS annual meeting was last week, which apparently included some sessions on social media use. This, of course, led to the usual flurry of twittering about the awesomeness of Twitter, and how people who don't use Twitter are missing out. I was busy with other stuff, so I mostly let it pass, and of course I can't find representative examples now because Twitter.
The truth is, though, Twitter is kind of useless. Or, rather, it's only useful for certain kinds of things-- it's social media, and much more social than media.
So it's a great medium for talking to people you're not physically…
gregladen | February 7, 2015From FiveThirtyEight:
You probably don’t know the name Grace Hopper, but you should.
As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard Mark 1. And she headed the team that created the first compiler, which led to the creation of COBOL, a programming language that by the year 2000 accounted for 70 percent of all actively used code. Passing away in 1992, she left behind an inimitable legacy as a brilliant programmer and pioneering woman in male-dominated fields.
Hopper’s story is told in “The Queen of Code,” directed by Gillian Jacobs (of “Community” fame). It…