FeedBurner’s view of the feed market. “In today’s post we’ll take a look at one aspect of the feed aggregator market – the web-based aggregators – and draw some conclusions about how audiences are consuming content in new and different ways.” A very insightful post from one of my favorite Internet companies.
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Colossal squid caught off antarctica. “The squid, weighing an estimated 990 lbs and about 39 feet long, took two hours to land in Antarctic waters [...] If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires.”
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For first time, chimps seen making weapons for hunting. “Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals — the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.” How cool is this?
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February 19, 2007
Am I the only person who would kill for one of the chain coffee houses to start carrying Thai milk tea? I don’t know what it is about this creamy concoction, but I’m utterly addicted to it and usually order it whenever it’s available. I’ve found that it’s mostly relegated to Thai/Vietnamese restaurants, but I’ve also come across it at various boba shops in the area, though it’s always way overpriced considering its constituent parts and the ease with which it is made. OK, so that begs the question: why don’t you make it yourself? Simple, I’m lazy.
Speaking of lazy, I’ve been trying out McDonald’s coffee lately because, well, they have signs up that say, “let us add the cream and sugar.” You read that right, I go to McDonald’s because they’ll mix up my coffee for me, except when they don’t. You see, I’ve now gone three times, once through the drive-thru where something like this would make the most sense, and twice inside, and not once have they added the sugar and cream for me. The story is always the same: I ask for coffee, they ask if I would like cream and sugar, I say yes, they ignore the machine that’s right behind them that performs this wonder while standing under the sign that says “let us add the cream and sugar,” and then they hand me my coffee parts and I do the manual labor while screaming on the inside.
I’ve asked, in no uncertain terms, the meaning of the sign, and cannot, for the life of me, get a coherent, sensible explanation of why, after I fork over $1.50, I’m still made to mix everything up myself. I’ve even asked what that machine does, but the response I got back was one of confusion; I could tell this lady thought she was in trouble (I don’t speak whatever language she was whispering in, but she was scared) and so I backed off.
Remove the sign or add the cream and sugar for me!
Google’s Page on artificial intelligence. “We have some people at Google (who) are really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale. It’s not as far off as people think.” Hrm.
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DVR owners watch more commercials than previously thought. “According to new data released yesterday by the Nielsen Company, people who own digital video recorders, or DVRs, still watch, on average, two-thirds of the ads.” You’ve
got to be kidding me. What? I’m this guy: “People who have DVRs often insist that they never watch commercials, as if skipping commercials is a badge of honor.” I don’t think I’ve seen an ad on my TV or computer in five years.
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February 18, 2007
A few hours ago I updated this site to WordPress 2.1, seemingly without issue. Most of the plugins I use here were already compatible with the new package, and if they weren’t, their newest versions were, and so I basically just upgraded everything across the board. None of the plugins that I’ve written and currently use gave me any trouble, save Smart Archives, which I updated a couple of weeks ago to silence the unruly masses (just kidding, kinda).
Anyway, if you notice something funky around these parts, please let me know.
Apple to re-enter the sub-notebook market. I’m so sick of all the rumors — I want this thing now! In all seriousness, I’ve really been hurting for something like this for a while and hope I’m not made to wait too much longer.
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The mystery of consciousness. “Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.”
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Canon’s Virtual Lens Plant walks you through the entire lens-making process; it almost makes me appreciate the exorbitant prices I’ve paid for some of my glass, but not quite.
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Building the cortex in silicon. “The first-generation design will be composed of a circuit board with 16 chips, each containing a 256-by-256 array of silicon neurons. Groups of neurons can be set to have different electrical properties, mimicking different types of cells in the cortex.”
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Matrix-like camera spies flying bullets. “An Air Force contractor has developed the first high-speed camera that can follow speeding bullets midflight. It may lead to “active armor” that intercepts speeding rounds out of the air, or personal-protection devices that deflect incoming bullets with rapidly inflating Kevlar air bags.” Insane. Be sure to check out the
gallery of pictures and video.
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Forbes on Windows Vista: “more than five years in the making, more than 50 million lines of code. The result? A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump.” Ouch.
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February 9, 2007
Just wanted to quickly point out some minor changes I’ve recently made to the site. The bits are now included on the monthly archive pages (see last month as an example; the monthly archives now look/act just like the index page). Also, as per multiple requests, I’ve added permalinks to all of the bits (see the “∞” symbol following each bit; note that I’ve added these to the bits feed, the bits page, the index page, and the monthly archive pages). Not quite sure why I didn’t put these in from jump, but, well, there you have it.
As you were.
Yahoo! Pipes “is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator … that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment.” Very, very interesting; I already have a few ideas in mind.
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Does evolution select for faster evolvers? “New studies by Rice University scientists suggest a possible answer; the speed of evolution has increased over time because bacteria and viruses constantly exchange transposable chunks of DNA between species, thus making it possible for life forms to evolve faster than they would if they relied only on sexual selection or random genetic mutations.”
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Steve Jobs expounds on DRM in rare, open letter to the public. “If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store.” None of the points Jobs makes are new, indeed, all are regurgitations of everything myself and others have been saying for years, but it is interesting to hear them come from someone with such cachet in the industry. Perhaps Jobs could prove to everyone he’s serious by allowing those artists who aren’t beholden to the “big four music companies” to sell their music through iTMS without DRM (assuming they want to, and most do), something he has heretofore forbidden. Why wait on the major labels?
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How does your brain tell time? “Every time the brain processes a sensory event, such as a sound or flash of light, it triggers a cascade of reactions between brain cells and their connections. Each reaction leaves a signature that enables the brain-cell network to encode time.”
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Open XML translator for Microsoft Word available. “Companies have completed the first phase of a Microsoft Corp.-sponsored project to create software that can convert Microsoft Word documents between Open XML and Open Document Format for Office Applications file formats.”
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February 4, 2007
I’ve just updated Smart Archives to bring it into full compliance with WordPress v2.1, which was released a couple of weeks ago. I probably would have sat on this for a while were it not for the constant e-mails from SA users alerting me to the fact that the latest WP update was breaking some things.
The problems were minute and I was able to whip up a fix in less than five minutes, which amounted to nothing more than changing all instances of $tableposts (which has been deprecated) to $wpdb->posts, and adding another argument to all of the SQL queries to draw a distinction between “posts” and “pages” (which are actually just a type of post).
Unfortunately, the changes have required me to ‘fork’ the code, and so from here on out there will be two versions of Smart Archives, one for WP 2.0- and one for WP 2.1+.
The new version is now available on the project page. Please e-mail me should you have any trouble.
Found: Most of the Universe. “Implementing techniques not even dreamed of when dark matter was first postulated, they have created a map two degrees on a side (roughly 15 times the area of the full Moon) and 6 billion light years deep. The Cosmic Evolution Survey, or COSMOS, reveals the spatial distribution of dark matter stretching back to a time when the Universe was half its present age.”
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Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study. “Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.”
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February 4, 2007
A few days ago I received an e-mail from someone I’ve never met requesting technical assistance from me. Now, this isn’t in and of itself odd as I seem to get similar e-mails hourly, but what was odd, and welcomed, was how this person framed the question/problem:
Hi Justin,
I’m sure that people bug you about this all the time so I am hoping that you are either a patient man, or that you have a reply to this query prepared that you just paste and send…
[...]
I hope that you don’t mind this (by now, rather desperate) plea for help.
[...]
Because of these simple, appreciative sentences I’m almost compelled to move this person to the front of the reply queue. It’s a shame that something like this is cause for such highlighting, but if you saw some of the e-mails I’ve received I think you’d agree that this sort of acknowledgment and understanding is rare.
iConcertCal “is a free iTunes plug-in that monitors your music library and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts in your city.” Brilliant!
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