Technology
pontiff | March 19, 2008Since my laptop was stolen, it's time for me to think about getting a replacement. My last laptop was a tablet PC, a Toshiba M400 Portege, which was "Vista capable," which I'm pretty sure means that it was "just barely Vista capable." I loved having a tablet PC, but the Toshiba wasn't exactly behaving great under Vista (slow, slow, slow.) So now the question is what should my next laptop be. In particular I am almost tempted to (close you ears Seattlites)....buy a Mac.
Tablet PC benefits:
All my notes are on my tablet for the last few years. This is very convenient. Unfortunately the…
clock | March 18, 2008In one of those "if you like this you may also like this" e-mails from Amazon.com, I got a suggestion I may like a book called Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. So, I took a look. I've been blogging since 2004, so I thought I knew who the top bloggers were and could find it interesting to see what they had to say.
As it turns out, the title is a misnomer. It should be "......American Top TECH Bloggers". I recognize three names (Anderson, Scoble, Rubel).
Perhaps they say interesting things in the interviews, as observers of the blogosphere. But, I am not…
gregladen | March 18, 2008Gnome 2.22 was just released (a few days ago). This is not the big-bang major overhaul type of release we have just seen with KDE, but it is worth nothing.
Information on Gnome can be found here.
A few highlights:
GNOME 2.22 introduces a new application, Cheese. Cheese lets you take photos and make videos using your computer's webcam. You can apply a range of different effects like mauve, noir/blanc, shagadelic, and warp. You can share these photos and videos with your friends, load them into F-Spot, or set them as your account photo.
Cool.
GNOME 2.22 introduces GVFS: a new network-…
gregladen | March 17, 2008If you are interested in astronomy, you know that there are a lot of Planetarium applications that you can install on your computer in order to find your way around the night sky. Kstars is a well known standby for KDE (but of course it will run under Gnome as well). Search for "stars" in your package manager and you'll see quite a few other pieces of software as well.
But when you get to "Stellarium" ... stop and install that one.
Stellarium pretty much has all the stars. Well, not all of them. It has 120,000 stars (I understand there are billions and billions of them...). It has the…
gregladen | March 16, 2008Researchers at the University of Utah tested how quickly people performed tasks like editing a document and copying numbers between spreadsheets while using different computer configurations: one with an 18-inch monitor, one with a 24-inch monitor and with two 20-inch monitors. Their finding: People using the 24-inch screen completed the tasks 52% faster than people who used the 18-inch monitor; people who used the two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those with the 18-inch ones.
Read the details here. Print it out and give it to your boss. In fact, hang it on his/her computer screen…
clock | March 16, 2008The OpenOffice challenge: can you do what needs to be done?
Exploring OpenOffice: what did we learn?, part I
Exploring Open Office: part II, can we have our pie and eat it too?
clock | March 15, 2008The early orders of the XO laptop arrived quickly. My wife and daughter have been enjoying them for three months now. But the late orders got pretty much stuck - they were overwhelmed with the numbers. We got a couple of apologetic e-mails offering to send us back the money if we are sick of waiting, but we decided to be patient. Finally, this morning, my son's XO arrived. And so did Anton's. Now I am mad at myself for not getting one for me as well...
revere | March 15, 2008You may not know Joe Weizenbaum's name, but many people are familiar with the computer program he wrote more than 40 years ago, Eliza. Eliza mimics a Rogerian psychotherapist, picking up key words you type in and spitting them back in the form of questions:
You: "I feel anxious today." Eliza: "That's interesting. What are you anxious about?" Etc.
In some ways it was very simple minded and Joe himself considered it a parody of psychotherapy. But in other ways it struck a deep chord. It was one of the first computer programs to simulate a human conversation and to give the impression of a…
clock | March 14, 2008Of course, I got this video on Facebook as someone put it on my FunWall (and yes, I ignore 99% of invitations to do stuff, get new apps, etc.):
neurophilosophy | March 13, 2008
The Visible Body is a small application created by the Massachussets-based company Argosy Publishing. The software can be downloaded for free, and includes computer graphic models of more than 1,700 anatomical structures, which can be rotated in a three-dimensional 360 degree view:
The Visible Body consists of highly detailed, anatomically accurate, 3D models of all human body systems. The models were developed by an extensively trained team with decades of experience in medical illustration and biomedical visualization. All anatomical content has been reviewed for accuracy by our panel of…
gregladen | March 12, 2008The Acid Test is a webs standards test to which browsers can be subjected to see which is best. Here are some of the current results for browsers that are released (the one you are likely to use if your software is reasonably well updated):
Konqueror on Ubuntu 7.10: 62%
Epiphany on Ubuntu 8.04: 59%
Camino on a Mac and Firefox on Mac, Windows XP, or Windows Vista: 52%
The list that I'm looking at then has fourteen combinations of different browsers, versions, and operating systems ranging from 39% to 52%
Then, way down the list, we get:
INternet Exporer 5.50 on Windows XP at 14%
Then a bunch…
hrynyshyn | March 12, 2008Unless you're a fictional misanthrope who also happens to be the best medical diagnostician on the planet, telling people they're idiots isn't the best way to get ahead. How then do we get the message across to those stubborn folk who insist upon talking on their cell phone while driving? And it's not a few stubborn individuals ;;;;; every second car and truck on the road seems to be driven by someone whose attention is measurably distracted by wireless telephony.
And it's not as if they haven't heard that it's dangerous. Studies attesting to the significant causal relationship between…
clock | March 11, 2008POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT:
Title: Manager of Web and Publications
Reports to: Director of Operations
Project Exploration Background: Cofounded in 1999 by paleontologist Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon, Project Exploration is a nonprofit science education organization that works to make science accessible to the public-- especially minority youth and girls--through personalized experiences with science and scientists. Project Exploration meets its mission through youth development programs, services for schools and teachers, and public programs such as exhibits and online initiatives.…
gregladen | March 11, 2008I have purchased a few songs from iTunes, but I don't like doing it. I have the sense that you are not really buying the song in the same way you do when you buy a CD. But I do use the iTunes software (for now) on my Windows box to keep track of the CDs I own. Eventually, I'll change how I do that (I find iTunes to be a bit annoying).
Anyway, there is some important and interesting news about iTunes that you may want to know.
Multiple UK news outlets are reporting today that Sir Paul McCartney has reached a deal with Apple to offer the Beatles catalog on the iTunes Store. The deal,…
gregladen | March 11, 2008You know that old Bradbury story, and the Simpson's redo of it, where someone goes back in time, steps on a butterfly, and when they return, everything is slightly different? Has this happened?
I look at Google's Press Center, and I find no mention of this, but things have changed ever so slightly. For instance, in Google Analytics, over the last couple of days, the current day no longer shows up on the graph even if you specify it in the date selection drop down box. Even stranger, the layout of the Advanced Search Page is different. This morning, I was trying to parse out the URL code…
neurophilosophy | March 8, 2008
Sea cucumbers are marine invertebrates which live on the sea floor and feed on debris that drift down. When threatened, they can harden their skin within seconds, so that they are less likely to be devoured by the approaching predator.
This behaviour is made possible by the structure of the sea cucumber's skin, whose deeper layers contain a network of collagen nanofibres enveloped within a viscous and elastic matrix of connective tissue. The arrangement of the collagen can be transiently modified, in response to a protein secreted by nerve cells found in the skin, which alters the chemical…
revere | March 8, 2008The first computer I used was a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-9. It had 48K (that's 48KB, not 48MB or 48GB) of wound ferrite core memory that took up half a very large room. The we booted it with paper tape -- a strip of tape with holes punched in it that got read by a paper tape reader. First we had to set some register switches by hand. No time share. We signed up for use two hours at a time. There was someone in the lab 24/7 using the beast. My first desktop, an Apple II+, had the same amount of memory but it fit on a table top. That was 13 years later. Without a monitor it cost $2200…