Random Thoughts & Musings

Daily Tweets

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:00:12 GMT

17:02 From Randy Pausch: "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." #
14:14 Driving a car with an iPhone: bit.ly/NygKN #
14:14 That iPhone-car-controller was RT @gulley #

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Daily Tweets

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:00:19 GMT

10:49 Wow, this is a useful tool! bit.ly/11ZbBE #
13:15 If you ever wondered which graphics format to use (e.g., JPG, PNG, GIF): www.fieggen.com/ian/g_formats.htm #
14:25 To request an invitation to Google Wave: services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/ #

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Daily Tweets

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:00:19 GMT

21:11 My magnificent and wonderful husband made me a glass of freshly-squeezed OJ this morning. **LOVE** #

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Daily Tweets

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:02:32 GMT

12:37 An interesting use of treadmills: bit.ly/sf5Hk #
15:44 Very cool: dirt-powered batteries! bit.ly/iWmw2 #

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Daily Tweets

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:03:42 GMT

14:13 An interesting comment from Jakob Nielsen: "It's possible that [electronic] collaboration systems will depopulate cities." #

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Daily Tweets

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:04:53 GMT

07:40 Hilarious wedding blooper video: bit.ly/4iRFxq #

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Daily Tweets

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:02:59 GMT

16:48 Have you ever wondered if someone invented the word "sidle" because they misspelled "slide"? As in, "I'll just sidle past"--whoops! #

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Daily Tweets

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:01:44 GMT

17:09 From Charlotte, made of awesome: 40 Inspirational Speeches In 2 Minutes bit.ly/Kd75N #

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Daily Tweets

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:02:07 GMT

21:49 Overthinking it: Hogwarts is a terrible school. bit.ly/pcahF #

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Daily Tweets

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:00:57 GMT

12:11 Wow: solar roadways! bit.ly/QHogP #

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Exciting developments!

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:36:29 GMT

Somebody just pointed me at the inexpressibly cool idea that SolarRoadways has just proposed: replacing all of our petroleum-based, only-intended-to-last-7-years asphalt roadways with solar panels intended to last at least 21 years! You wouldn't have to worry about ice or snow. They'd absorb, store, and naturally distribute 3x as much power as the country currently uses in a year! You could charge up your electric vehicle while driving or while it's sitting in a parking lot. There's a great summary and video here. It references this stunning quote (see the New York Times article):

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." - Thomas Edison, 1931

I love the growing sense that our country is on the cusp of a major energy and technology transition and that I will (God willing) be alive to see it happen and actively participate in it. The recent economic upheavals have begun to pave the way for new technologies, new professions, new ideas, and new jobs. I mean, I install Firefox plugins that allow my web browser to do all sorts of cool things that the original designers probably never even conceived of. Can you imagine what sorts of widgets and plugins you could write for electronic, self-powering roadways and the vehicles that travel on them? Of course, the door is opened to all sorts of new ways to misuse it as well...but the possibilities are very exciting! :)

Daily Tweets

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:01:08 GMT

17:20 @mecklaiz I wouldn't call 60 / 1 million "popular", exactly, but Arman doesn't even register. :) I find the "Mary" trend fascinating. #

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Daily Tweets

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:01:03 GMT

11:35 How to Escape Perfectionism: www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=3845 Lots of wisdom in there. #
12:39 RT @jobooker Auto-tune the News: bit.ly/tso0B #
13:10 This is addictive: interactively explore baby naming trends www.babynamewizard.com/voyager #

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Daily Tweets

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:00:33 GMT

07:42 One of the small pleasures of life: that first whiff of dill. #

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Daily Tweets

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:00:49 GMT

22:15 Yay, my piano arrived today! I've been happily playing it, discovering its cool features. First time to have one at home since high school! #
22:16 @AndrewAsh unfortunately, not that I know of. #
08:17 Very highly recommended for Macs: appzapper.com The uninstaller Apple forgot. #
11:07 Public service announcement for MA residents: YOU have to remember to renew your driver's license, the RMV won't. bit.ly/BoL5z #
14:21 Sorry, here's the correct RMV page: www.mass.gov/rmv/alerts/licenseRenewal.htm #
16:48 @AndrewAsh My friend Matt suggested something like: theArray = {'test','test2','notAtest','test3'}; theArray(strncmp(theArray,'test',4)) #
16:48 @AndrewAsh Non-vectorized variation (less optimal): theArray(cellfun(@(s) strncmp(s,'test',4),theArray)) #
16:49 @AndrewAsh You might want to post this sort of question on stackoverflow.com : you'll probably get faster answers #

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Daily Tweets

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:01:19 GMT

09:14 RT @gulley Fascinating! bit.ly/3w2Bny #

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Daily Tweets

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:02:28 GMT

22:29 A fascinating must-read article on thinking about taboos and how to respond to them, by Paul Graham: www.paulgraham.com/say.html #

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Daily Tweets

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:03:37 GMT

08:03 Kudos to naturalizer.com: they sent me a catalog, I asked them to stop, they did and said thank-you for helping to reduce wasting paper. #
08:07 Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women bit.ly/DQf3L #
14:12 Jews who escaped Nazis as kids recreate train trip bit.ly/5dbRl #

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Daily Tweets

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:02:42 GMT

20:00 Kudos to Aveda.com: if you leave a product review, they reward you with free shipping on your next order of $25 or more! #
20:56 RT from J: Google "recursion" #
21:27 A friend recommended this site to me, seems to facilitate a balanced dialog between Christianity and Hinduism: www.karma2grace.org/ #
22:10 RT @gulley Kutiman mixes a virtual band that never existed from disparate YouTube videos bit.ly/oXdyM #
13:42 Word of the day: aleatoric. Incorporating the element of chance. Learned from this fascinating article on musical notation: bit.l ... #
13:43 Gar! here's the correct URL: bit.ly/11uVcV #

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Daily Tweets

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:03:28 GMT

19:29 Yay! I can get the date to show up in the Snow Leopard menu bar! (FINALLY, after how many OS X releases?) #
12:47 @AndrewAsh Why is conditional indexing into cell arrays frustrating? #
12:57 @physbryan have you been able to reproduce that? #
13:10 @christydunn what do you mean by "polishing hexagons"? Are you doing computational geometry in MATLAB? #
14:00 Cheerful thought: we're in a literacy revolution! bit.ly/jWVDf #
16:29 @quantnet Another good MATLAB forum is here: bit.ly/LbihA #

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Daily Tweets

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:02:12 GMT

10:38 Spolsky's User Interface Design for Programmers is great: clear, no frills, fun read, and all solid. bit.ly/Yszra #

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nothing has to be pedestrian

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:01:30 GMT

"A true source of human happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life and elevating them by art." -- William Morris

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever your work is, do it gladly. Do it as you would do it unto the Lord and not for people." -- Colossians 3:17, 23

"Usability, fundamentally, is a matter of bringing a bit of human rights into the world of computer-human interaction. It's a way to let our ideals shine through in our software, no matter how mundane the software is. You may think that you're stuck in a boring, drab IT department making mind-numbing inventory software that only five lonely people will ever use. But you have daily opportunities to show respect for humanity even with the most mundane software. Even if you are just working on a code library, an API that is invisible to everyone but other programmers, if you can design the API in a way that is consistent, easily understood, more obvious, and easier to get right, the programmers who use your API will be happier. By focusing on usability, you show your respect for the happiness of the people who run your code. That's why I care deeply about usability, and you should, too." -- Joel Spolsky, User Interface Design for Programmers

Daily Tweets

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:01:36 GMT

16:35 I told Jamie I was going to clean the grill and I was going to put on music I could scrub to. He suggested "Look For The Silver Lining". #

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Daily Tweets

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:01:30 GMT

22:04 Upgrading a TON of software on my Mac. It's a snowstorm of software updates, now that Snow Leopard has been released. #
11:25 www.ThereIsNoHealthInsuranceFairy.com #

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Daily Tweets

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:03:47 GMT

09:00 Word of the day: "abecedarian". The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is abecedarian. #
12:26 Scientific zombie-outbreak analysis: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8206280.stm bit.ly/xQHZD #

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