Technology
drorzel | October 3, 2008Over at Nature Networks, Timo Hannay has posted a conference talk in which he questions the future of science blogging:
"Science blogging is growing" I confidently wrote in an essay a few months ago. Then, like any good scientist, I went in search of evidence to support my prejudice. But I couldn't find any beyond the anecdotal. For a year or more, estimates of the number of blogs by scientists about science seem to have been stuck at about 1,500 (give or take). Services such as Alexa and Compete.com (if they can be believed) show traffic to sites like ScienceBlogs.com to have been flat for…
clock | October 2, 2008Great article in Carrboro Commons today - I know because I'm in it! The concepts of 'work' and 'office' are changing and those in the information economy are starting to adapt to the new world:
Creative Coworking offers a new dynamic:
"People left the office and cubicle and they say, 'OK, I'm going to break out.' ... So you start doing that. You work at home. You want to get something better than the couch, so you get a table. ... You start creating an office in a spare bedroom. That works great for a while," Russell said.
"Then you get a little bored, and your spouse is like, 'Why haven't…
clock | October 2, 2008
ConvergeSouth - October 16 - 17, 2008 and BlogHer October 18, 2008.
It's the weekend to be in Greensboro!
ConvergeSouth has big updates. See the updated conference schedule here: http://2008.convergesouth.com/schedule/
Read more about the video/photo walking tour here and be sure to sign up (seats are going fast): http://2008.convergesouth.com/schedule/videobustour.php
Be sure to register for ConvergeSouth here: http://2008.convergesouth.com/register/index.php
The ConvergeSouth blog will be seeing more action soon. Be sure you have the blog feed in your RSS reader: http://2008.convergesouth.…
drorzel | October 2, 2008First, you hit "ctrl-p" which brings up a print dialogue box. Then you check the settings, andclick "OK." At this point, a small status bar pops up at the bottom of the page, showing that 0 pages have been sent to the printer:
This bar will remain in this state forever. Wait as long as you like, and it will continue to show 0 pages printed.
If you want the document to actually print, you must click the red X next to the status bar (if you mouse over it, it says "Cancel"). Once you click the cancel button, the counter will rapidly scroll up through the pages, and the document will print.…
clock | October 1, 2008On Friday 10/3 from 10 - 11:30am:
SILS Academic Productivity Seminar:
Are you struggling with information overload, focus and concentration, or the quiet chaos of an unstructured, unscheduled "job" (despite all that ILS training)? We feel your pain. Join us to share your ideas and learn from others. We'll discuss productivity methods and systems, tech tips, the latest tools... and just vent.
Sessions include:
# 10:10 - 10:20 - Inbox Zero - Erin White
# 10:20 - 10:30 - Your Computer's Desktop is Not a To-Do List - Mike Brown
# 10:30 - 10:40 - Literature alerts and push-button citations - Fred…
edyong | September 30, 2008
I am walking strangely. About a week ago, I pulled something to my left ankle, which now hurts during the part of each step just before the foot leaves the ground. As a result, my other muscles are compensating for this to minimise the pain and my gait has shifted to something subtly different from the norm. In similar ways, all animal brains can compensate for injuries by computing new ways of moving that are often very different. This isn't a conscious process and as such, we often take it for granted.
But we can get a sense of how hard it actually is by trying to program a robot to…
gregladen | September 29, 2008Here are excerpt from a list of things you will never see on Star Trek
1. The Enterprise runs into a mysterious energy field of a type it has encountered several times before.
2. The Enterprise goes to visit a remote outpost of scientists, who are all perfectly all right.
4. The crew of the Enterprise discover a totally new life form, which later turns out to be a rather well-known old life form wearing a funny hat.
6.The Captain has to make a difficult decision about a less advanced people which is made a great deal easier by the Starfleet Prime Directive.
12. The Enterprise visits an…
gregladen | September 27, 2008It has been a while since I've updated you on the latest very important technology movies. If you are PC, don't bother watching. You won't like any of these They are below the fold.
edyong | September 27, 2008
In medieval times, crusading Christian knights cut a swathe through the Middle East in an attempt to reclaim Jerusalem from the Muslims. The Muslims in turn cut through the invaders using a very special type of sword, which quickly gained a mythical reputation among the Europeans. These 'Damascus blades' were extraordinarily strong, but still flexible enough to bend from hilt to tip. And they were reputedly so sharp that they could cleave a silk scarf floating to the ground, just as readily as a knight's body.
They were superlative weapons that gave the Muslims a great advantage, and…
clock | September 26, 2008C-Span's Debate Hub is better than twitter, or so they say.
I'll watch it on TV at a neighbor's house, then come back and see what the folks on FriendFeed and around the blogs say as well.
gregladen | September 25, 2008... according to a recent study funded by ... oh, never mind. Funded by Microsoft. OK, skip that, but there is some other interesting tech news.
Here's a piece on how Linux is better than Windows. I don't know where I find these things. Have a look:
Microsoft encourages us to think of Linux... as an also-ran operating systems for nerds. The last thing Microsoft wants us to think about is that there are some spaces where Microsoft is a distant number two and Linux is on top. ... One such is HPC (High Performance Computing).
At HPC's very highest end, supercomputers, Linux rules. The…
neurophilosophy | September 25, 2008
A short piece in the MIT Technology Review describes a new retinal implant designed to remain in place for long periods of time:
In retinal diseases such as acute macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, the light-sensing cells of the retina may no longer work, even though the neurons that carry signals from these cells to the brain are still healthy. The Boston project uses an array of electrodes to stimulate these cells and reproduce a simplified visual image in the subject's brain. A camera mounted on a pair of eyeglasses captures an image, which is rapidly processed by a…
gregladen | September 25, 2008The fact that this is an astrobiology rap is a good thing. Like the recently memed-out Large Hadron Collider Rap, the Astrobiology Rap places important and difficult to understand science on the pop cultural smorgasbord, and that is good.
But this isn't the Large Hadron Rap. It is simply, IMHO, not as good.
Which reminds me of a story, see below. Anyway, here is the rap for your review, I'd love your opinion:
[hatip: amee]
The music is dull, the rapper is mediocre, the words are totally cliff note. Or maybe I'm just having a bad morning, having just eaten the last cookie.
The story:…
gregladen | September 24, 2008Save all important documents and bookmark essential web pages, because this might crash your computer. But don't worry, a reboot will fix it.
Go here, click "here" and then stay there for the whole thing. You will need about two minutes.
Have duct tape (or as we call it in Minnesota, Duck Tape) handy.
clock | September 24, 2008Since BlogHer cancelled several parts of their Fall Tour, including the one in Greensboro, this does not mean that you go home on Friday night after ConvergeSouth as there WILL be a Saturday program, says Sue.
gregladen | September 23, 2008If we replace every standard light bulb with an energy efficient light bulb, we'll save enough electricity to go to the moon and back 11 times. Everybody knows that, of course. But what you may not realize is that if you use the commonly available shortcut keys that were designed into your computer, you would save enough keystrokes that all the computer keyboards in the world would last an extra 11 years. Honest.
So, we are going to start learning some shortcut keys.
Here I am ready to use the short cut keys to go back and fix a few typoes. Typos.
The way to learn shortcut keys is to…
drorzel | September 23, 2008Derek Lowe has posted an article about X-ray lasers in chemistry, which amused me because of the following bit:
Enter the femtosecond X-ray laser. A laser will put out the cleanest X-ray beam that anyone's ever seen, a completely coherent one at an exact (and short) wavelength which should give wonderful reflection data.
This is funny to somebody in my end of the science business, because we usually think of femtosecond lasers as have an extremely broad spectrum, not an "exact wavelength." It's a striking example of something I see all the time with chemists-- what chemists think of as "…
clock | September 23, 2008danah boyd was hired by Microsoft, where she will have freedom to continue her research on online social networks at Microsoft Research New England in Boston. Congrats, danah!
clock | September 23, 2008OneWebDay is....
....an Earth Day for the internet. The idea behind OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy), focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills), and create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet. So, think of OneWebDay as an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem. It's a platform for people to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet's future.
There will be events organized around the world,…
gregladen | September 22, 2008Codeweavers has got a Linux 'version' of Chrome!!! (And a Mac version too.)
Chromium is the new Google browser. It is good because it is open source. (Yes, Virginia, that is one criterion for being 'good'). Also, it might be good for other reasons. My friend Gayle really likes it, for instance. I might especially like the fact that it is multi-threaded, so when some moron produces a web site that crashes my browser over there (pointing to left side of monitor) I don't lose the thing I'm working on over here (pointing to right side of monitor) like I did the other day (angry, frustrated…