02.28.05
Externalized Brain Syndrome
Huh… I just realized I hadn’t visted a certain set of my favorite web sites in a week or so. Turns out I had accidentally closed one of the folders in my bookmark tree. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.
02.27.05
PR for PC
This article, Largest Machines On Earth: Particle Colliders, is interesting in its own right, but the thing that struck me as I was reading it was: what kind of amazing chain of PR goes on to get billions of dollars of funding for something so abstracted from the average person’s everyday life? I’m gonna have to ponder that one for a while, because I think there’s something deep in there…
Of course, a lot of males could be swayed by the simple argument: “It’s a HUUUGE freakin’ machine! Like a racecar track, kinda!” 
02.24.05
Upside to pollution
I’m thankful for… the fact that some of the nasties humans create can have some positive effects on other living entities, too: Pollution Can Convert Airborne Iron Into Soluble Form Required For Phytoplankton Growth.
02.23.05
pdftk
Doncha love free software? Have I asked that before?
I had a 91-page PDF document with the pages in backward order. That’s annoying. I tried to use Acrobat (Standard) to reverse the pages, but I’m too dumb to make that work. My best guess after 20 minutes of searching Adobe’s help and the web was to print to PDF with the ‘reverse pages’ turned on. That did not produce a satisfying result.
Then I popped over to Freshmeat to ask that oasis of software goodness for some help. In less time than it took to try the print experiment (it had cranked for a good 15 minutes…), I found pdftk, installed it, learned how to get it do do what I wanted (pdftk manual.pdf cat 91-1 output manual-rev.pdf), did it, got a satisfying result, and mailed the developers a thank you note.
Woot.
Google movies
I’m sure this doesn’t need any more linkage, but I’m just a bit amazed sometimes at how well Google’s new features come out. Google movies
Data => Place
I’m thankful for… the fact that I can get directions from someone and end up at the geographical location intended…
Dasher
Dasher is an interface to allow for text entry via ‘natural continuous pointing gestures’. I’ve played with it a bit and it’s kinda neat, although I don’t yet have a use for it. In any case, it points out some nice techniques for getting information through narrow channels. Grab it and play with it.
02.21.05
Stirring: Theory and Practice
Stirring: Theory and Practice is one of those books I’d assign one of my clones to read. I mean, if I had clones, you know.
But I’d settle for a good answer to the following question: does juice mix better if there’s a little air in the bottle, or not? I have a belief that it does, but I haven’t yet come up with a really convincing experiment to try…
02.20.05
Real numbers
‘Real numbers’ are sorta fascinating when you try to meld the mathematical view, the physical view, and the computational view. Chaitin has an interesting (and slightly weird, of course) article on the subject: ‘How real are real numbers?’
02.19.05
Interview with mathematicians
Good interview (if you’re into mathematics):
MathForge.net :: Michael Atiyah and Isadore Singer on the state of today’s mathematics
MetaPost
Metapost (main page, nice tutorial) is pretty cool.
In doing some homework for a class that’s heavy on mathematical notation, I had to get beyond the world of the word processor, so I decided to have another look at TeX. Good stuff.
I wanted to embed vector images. Additionally, I was biased toward PDF output rather than PS. That all led me to MetaPost.
Overall, it’s been a pretty big learning curve, but I’m having fun with TeX, MetaPost, and the general world of freely-available typesetting software.