Technology
drorzel | January 14, 2009So, a month or two ago, I started occasionally getting an error message from iTunes, saying that it was unable to save the library file because the disk was full. This seemed improbable, but when I checked, the C: drive did, indeed, have very little space left. I deleted some stuff, restarted (which freed up a surprising amount of space by itself), and went back to my usual routine. It happened again, and then I did a comprehensive sweep of old install files and upgrade residue and the like, and freed up 1.2 GB.
A couple weeks later, the message was back, in spite of making an effort not to…
gregladen | January 13, 2009If you are currently using Ubuntu 8, the upgrade to Ubuntu 9 will involve the implementation of Ext4. Ext4 is a super duper very fast file system that will make your computer sing. Sing fast.
If you are not using Linux at all, say you are using WinDoze, switching to Ubuntu 9.04 will make your computer run Two Zillion times faster, and it will not keep breaking and doing annoying things.
But remember, Linux is NOT FOR EVERYBODY. No ...
It is only for cool and smart people. For everybody else, Windows. Because Microsoft is there to help you.
details
ksharpe | January 12, 2009Review by Jessica Palmer, on Bioephemera
Originally posted on: January 12, 2009 8:20 PM
I went to a party the other day wearing the shirt above. I'd seen it online, expressed covetousness, and the staffer actually tracked it down and bought it for me (thus scoring major points for A) an early Christmas present, B) listening to my incessant stream-of-consciousness babble, and C) appreciating his girlfriend's geeky streak.)
Anyway, at the party, most of my friends couldn't decipher anything past "OMG, WTF." I was surrounded by "digital immigrants." In fact, I'm a digital immigrant myself: I…
edyong | January 11, 2009You've just been in a horrific car crash. You're unharmed but the vividness of the experience - the sight of a looming car, the crunching of metal, the overwhelming panic - has left you a bit traumatised. You want something to help take the edge off and fortunately a doctor is on hand to prescribe you with... Tetris.
Yes, that Tetris. According to Emily Holmes from the University of Oxford, the classic video game of falling coloured blocks could prevent people who have suffered through a traumatic experience from developing full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As ideas go, it's…
drorzel | January 7, 2009I get tons of all-campus email, and more and more of these seem to be of the form "Please see the attached Word file, containing a plain text document with minimal formatting that could just as easily have been pasted into the body of the message." Happily, I have my campus email forwarded to my GMail account, and I can opt to view the text as HTML, rather than opening Word to see it, but it's irritating.
Is there some reason why it would be preferable to send campus announcements out as Word files rather than as plain text in an email? Or is this just a case of laziness and technical…
gregladen | January 7, 2009As I'm sure you already know, you can type this into a google search box:
time Minneapolis
and you can put lots of different words in there and get the time.
What you may not know is this. If you look at the page you get back, there is a little clock graphic next to the time. The time on the clock graphic is correct. Like this:
Cool.
gregladen | January 7, 2009Consider Super Ubuntu. It is a version of Ubuntu that includes additional extra stuff that many people install anyway.
Here is a wiki page about it.
And you can download an ISO here. (That web site might make a little noise.)
I have not tried it. If you do, let me know how it goes.
evolvingthoughts | January 2, 2009I's an ego thing, sure, but it's also a handy way of seeing what one did this past year. Here are what I think of as the substantial posts of Evolving Thoughts from 2008. Sorry for the lateness - it's a longish list. I (and my guest blogger) have been real busy this year...
Religion and Creationism
Desecration, blasphemy in public, and manners
Why are there still monkeys?
Can a Christian accept natural selection as true?
Does religion evolve?
The heat of religion
The religious we have always with us
Agriculture and the rise of religion
The origins of agriculture now extended
Darwin, God and…
grrlscientist | January 2, 2009My gmail account has been completely inaccessible for more than 24 hours now, and I have been able to access it only sporadically during the previous three days. In short, any time I try to access my gmail account, I get a white screen that reads;
Bad Request
Error 400
Am I the only one this is happening to? Does anyone know what is happening with gmail and how long this will continue into the future? I mean, there are some emails on my account that are very important, such as those from my upcoming conference that I cannot respond to, for example .. *panic*
Worse, there is NO WAY to contact…
clock | January 1, 2009The Psychology of Cyberspace is a course taught by John Suler in the Department of Psychology at the Science and Technology Center at Rider University. The website is a collection of a large number of thought-provoking essays on various aspects of human behavior online:
This hypertext book explores the psychological aspects of environments created by computers and online networks. It presents an evolving conceptual framework for understanding how people react to and behave within cyberspace: what I call "the psychology of cyberspace" - or simply "cyberpsychology." Continually being revised…
gregladen | January 1, 2009I do not have the vaguest clue what a Microsoft Zune is, but there are reports that they are all crapping out roughly at the same time for unknown reasons. Microsoft technical support is on vacation, so apparently they don't know about it. Details can be found here.
It is a good thing it is only the Zunes that are doing this, and not, say, the Microsoft Air Traffic Controller Thingie or the Microsoft Heart Implant Thingie.
clock | December 30, 2008This article is almost two years old, but it is perhaps even more current today than it was when it first appeared:
Pretend for a second that you're a CEO. Would you reveal your deepest, darkest secrets online? Would you confess that you're an indecisive weakling, that your colleagues are inept, that you're not really sure if you can meet payroll? Sounds crazy, right? After all, Coke doesn't tell Pepsi what's in the formula. Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. But that's exactly what Glenn Kelman did. And he thinks it saved his business.
----------snip-----------
The…
clock | December 23, 2008VHS era is winding down - "The last big supplier of the tapes is ditching the format, ending the long fade-out of a product that ushered in the home theater.":
Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past.
After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home-entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Fla., warehouse run…
clock | December 23, 2008Duke University's John Staddon makes the case for less, and more effective, road signage in the U.S - using Durham roads and streets as examples:
From here, which I discovered here because I am fascinated by the science of traffic and driving. If only explaining the mathematical models of traffic flow and the cognitive psychology of driving to the traffic cop could get one out of a ticket....
grrlscientist | December 23, 2008
Image: TouchGraph and Google [larger view].
Thanks to a reader, sparc, I have reconstructed another web phylogeny of this blog for you to look at. If you actually go to the site itself and look at the graphics as well as the left sidebar, you'll find all sorts of interesting things pop up, thanks to Java.
So what does your blog phylogeny look like using this search-and-graph paradigm?
evolvingthoughts | December 21, 2008Because I have to hand back my laptop to my present employer, and my future employer won't have a Mac for me before mid-January or later, I may not be able to post much for a while. I do have access to a desktop PC, but what can one really do with that sort of SNAFU technology anyway? I may get a loan of an old G4, but that won't run some of my software.
So nobody play Mornington Crescent while I'm gone, OK? Enjoy the surfeit of food if you have access to it, and survive the family reunions.
gregladen | December 21, 2008This, I've gotta try:
Build a three-screen workstation for $230 or less. ... This involves taking the video output of a laptop and running through a widget that gives you two (or four, for a bit more money) additonal screen, which, in turn, you've bought really cheap somewhere.
There are open questions as to how windows would be managed on this extra real estate; This method may not be as smooth as the multi-head systems when you have an internal video card. Worth a look, though.
Or, just buy one of these: Lenovo to release ThinkPad laptop with 2 LCD screens
clock | December 20, 2008At the Western RCAC Symposium last week:
Rodd Lucier: Fertilizing the Grass Roots:
My personal suspicions are that most attendees will fail to make effective use of any of the many tools introduced today. Even with everyone recognizing that we have a long way to go: A significant knowing-doing gap will remain!
David Warlick: So Now What Do We Do?:
Then Rodd listed some comments that he overheard during the conference, that support his concern. I'm listing them here and will try to make some suggestions that may be useful. My suggestions are indented just a bit to better distinguish them…
drorzel | December 20, 2008I've complained previously about the idiotic positioning of the radio antenna on my car, which has nearly cost me an eye a couple of times, when I needed to hack ice off the windshield. Today brought up another example of really small design flaws that make a big difference.
Last night's storm dropped about a foot of powdery snow all over everything (in fact, it's still snowing a little bit). This is mostly pretty easy to deal with, except for the end of the driveway where the plows compact it into much denser material. So I went to the shed, and dragged out the snow blower.
Said snow blower…