Turns out Leopards can change their spots.
Animate a Web Site
Use the code linked into post to “Make Google Go Crazy” — works with amazon, flickr and others. No, it doesn’t do anything malicious to the web site.
Technorati Tags:
javascript, google, fun
Motivations For Tagging
I think that this blog posting over at librarything is spot on when it comes to peoples motivation for tagging: they will do it for ‘their stuff’ but are less likely (or even motivated) to do it for other peoples stuff. I love the analogy of spending time tagging stuff at Amazon is like going down to the grocery and tidying up the shelves. Yes, it looks nicer, but it is the grocer that benefited and not you.
In reality the same thing goes for writing reviews on Amazon, you do the work, they get the benefit. At least if you write a review on your own blog (and are an Amazon affiliate) you might make a few cents if some one clicks through your review and buys the book (or whatever item).
Technorati Tags:
tags, tagging, amazon, librarything
iPhone Competitor (In Concept Only)
The ASUS Aura concept mobile phone is a stylish competitor to the iPhone. It addresses a few key issues that the iPhone lacks (like expandability via memory card and an option for a keyboard). Problem is, it is just a concept and probably won’t see the light of day anytime soon.
More Not Necessarily Better
…When it comes to megapixels supported by digital cameras:
More subtle problems also are possible. Camera image sensors rarely get larger from one generation to the next, so squeezing more megapixels out of a sensor means each pixel on the sensor is smaller. In most of the chip business, smaller electronics are dandy, but with cameras, they translate to less light per pixel.
That light difference means it’s harder to distinguish the signals produced by light from the electronic noise in the sensor. The idea of making the signal-to-noise ratio worse may sound pretty technical, but possible consequences are easily understood: images suffer from color speckles and cameras work poorly in dimmer conditions such as indoors.
Technorati Tags:
gadgets, photography
Overclock Your Brain
22 Ways to Overclock Your Brain.
Technorati Tags:
ideas, intelligence, brain, neural
Printer Hacking Threat
Interesting article at ComputerWorld about how network attached printers may become the next security threat. It is difficult to say from the article the extent of the threat and how much is theoretically possible versus likely (or already hacked for that matter).
Happy New Year
Got back on New Years Eve from a week on a lovely island. A few photos can be found on flickr. Now to get re-organized enough to find time to blog the backlog.
Shakespeare on the Brain
Interesting post about how Shakespeare’s use of language in his writings stimulates a positive reaction in the brain that is observable via EEG.
technorati tags: brain, shakespeare, neural
Town Bans Santa
This story sounds like something out of the Onion – the town of Hazleton, Pennsylvania is banning Santa on the basis that he is an illegal worker:
The people of Hazleton, PA are proud to announce a citizen-organized public awareness campaign called “No Santa for Hazleton.” The campaign will use Santa Claus’ status as America’s most-loved illegal worker to demonstrate Hazleton’s new “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal aliens.
Hazleton has been at the forefront of the War on Immigration since this past summer, when, in response to a surge in illegal immigration, the city passed its “Illegal Immigrant Relief Act.” The public response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive. Mayor Lou Barletta’s heroics gained the town national attention, including appearances on 60 Minutes and CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight. Following Hazleton’s example, over 30 other towns across America have passed or are considering similar laws to drive out illegal immigration and labor.
This might be funny if it wasn’t so ignorant. And let’s not forget the Easter Bunny, as well. Lest we forget that laws have their maximum effect when focused on made up characters.
Defeating the ‘N-Word’
When I was driving home today, I heard a conversation on NPR with Paul Moody talking about how he wasn’t going to use the ‘n-word’ in his comedy routines any longer. This in the wake of the well publicized Michael Richards tirade.
This all made me think of an incident when I was in college. A group of us were hanging out with a young black guy from Baltimore in one of the common areas of the dorm. At some point a couple of hillbilly baseball players got some alcohol in them and starting dropping the n-bomb within earshot. More than likely they were trying to get some type of reaction from him which they thought would be great fun.
Finally one of the guys who was sitting around talking to him asked uncomfortably “Doesn’t it bother you when people use that word?”
His response was priceless. He smiled and said: “It doesn’t bother me at all. I figure he is saying a lot more about himself than he is anything about me.”
Simple, eloquent and to the point. And I have never forgotten the lesson.
Safety?
I gotta say, with Russians apparently flying around with radioactive substances to poison those whose opinions they want to silence combined with people leaving Improvised Explosive Devices on the side of the highway here is lovely Cincinnati that I definitely feel the world is much safer with all of the security measures put in place after 9/11.
Jack The Ripper found?
The BBC has a posting showing the e-fit (basically a police sketch) for what is believed to be Jack the Ripper’s face. Using modern forensic techniques, they have a level of confidence that they know where he lived and how he evaded police at the time. Shame it is 118 years too late.
technorati tags: forensics, jacktheripper, crime, history
Robert Pirsig Interview
I found this interview with Robert Pirsig to be very interesting. I guess I also never realized how semi-autobiographical Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance really was for him.
High Tech Passport Failure
It seems the UK version of the high tech passport has failed the first hurtle — a writer at the Guardian and a tech expert managed to crack the passport security with relative ease. Seem those who hatched the security scheme made the rather naive mistake of going to great lengths to secure the communications between the RFID reader and the passport, but used information that is available on the printed passport as the ‘key’ to unlocking that communication. Just dumb.
Fatally, however, the ICAO suggested that the key needed to access the data on the chips should be comprised of, in the following order, the passport number, the holder’s date of birth and the passport expiry date, all of which are contained on the printed page of the passport on a “machine readable zone.” When an immigration official swipes the passport through a reader, this feeds in the key, which allows a microchip reader to communicate with the RFID chip. The data this contains, including the holder’s picture, is then displayed on the official’s screen. The assumption at this stage is that this document is as authentic as it is super-secure. And, as we shall see later, this could be highly significant.
technorati tags: passport, security, encryption, rfid
On Intelligence and Stereotypes
A summary article over on Psychology Matters asserts that Believing You Can Get Smarter Makes You Smarter. This seems somewhat intuitive as in most things, believing that you can accomplish something is the first step to accomplishing it.
technorati tags: psychology, education, intelligence, achievement
The Depressive Brain
I came across this fascinating article that indicates that the brain structure of people with depression is structurally different that the brains of people who don’t experience depression. It seems that depressive people have an area of the brain which handles negative emotions that were 20 percent larger than normal.
Makes me curious where they go with this observation. Is this something that can be screened for an monitored appropriately? How strong an indicator is this of depression (after all, there were only 49 people in the study)? How will this influence future treatment of this condition? More to come, I’m sure.
technorati tags: depression, brain, biology
Birth of an Island
A sailing crew observes and documents the birth of an island right in front of them. Very cool.
Reactions to Death
From Kuro5hin: How Christians React to Death and Murder. Nuff said.
Let The Price Gouging Begin!
I predict that this well timed incident by BP will have gas prices at or near $3.25USD by the end of today in the Cincinnati area (currently gas is around $2.98USD). I further predict that big oil’s goal is to have the price at the pump flirting with $4USD just in time for the Labor Day/end of summer driving push — just as they manipulated prices up to the current $3USD range last year in this same period.
Clearly an industry that is in need of regulation (and also clearly not something that will happen with the current administration).