Jim Carson One of these things is not like the other
Cool Geek Tricks
Experiences from jailbreaking my iPhone – Part 2
After getting things mostly back to where they were, I had a jail-broken phone with ad-blocking software. The next task was to find some cool, prohibited apps and put it to The Man. Here’s a partial list of what I liked: Ad Blocker and Ad Blocker Networks – this was my first purchase. The latter, an additional add-on [...]
Experiences from jailbreaking my iPhone – Part 1
I used the Evasi0n program for jailbreaking the phone. In brief, it involves backing up the phone to iTunes, letting Evasi0n do its thin Reasons for jailbreaking: Curiosity. The seductress of “let’s break something” whispered sweet-nothings in my ear. Use a different browser. More specifically, I want to install ad-blocking because some of the sites [...]
Reflections on Coursera
Charles “Dr Chuck” Severance put together an interesting video on his reflections on Coursera from his “Internet History, Technology, and Security” class. Some areas in the video that I’d call out: 01:42 – 02:45 — Chuck shows us how cozy his instructor’s room is. He expands upon the technology setup here, but it’s basically a couple [...]
Mac FizzyCalc
During the summer of 2011, I had some mythical Spare Time to blow the centimeter-thick layer of dust off my programming skills and port FizzyCalc, a Windows-based geocoordinate conversion utility that I’ve used for solving several puzzles in my obsessive hobby, geocaching, to the Mac. Mac FizzyCalc celebrated its 2500th download in November, a year after it was [...]
Math-challenged shopping cart
I have an upcoming had a project at work where I’d benefit from being better versed in a specific technology. After combing through the library holdings, and needing something longer-lasting than Intralibrary loan, I found some promising reference materials on Amazon for $40 each. Tech books have a poor payout / useful life ratio, so I [...]
CROC 2012
Over the Memorial Day Weekend, I had an opportunity to head down to Pendleton for the tenth annual Century Ride of the Centuries (aka “CROC”). This was my seventh visit in eight years — having skipped last year’s — and especially anticipated because the Bar M Ranch was reopened as a camping option. What a [...]
Cyan > (Magenta + Yellow)
I have noticed that my Lexmark printer consistently uses 2 1/2 times the Cyan ink cartridges as the other colors (magenta and yellow), which ruins my plans to buy the bulk pack of all three. The consumption is not quite as much as the black cartridge, which I expect, and can forgive as it’s one [...]
Online classes
This fall, Stanford has been offering free online classes this fall in three subject areas of computing: Artificial Intelligence, Databases, and Machine Learning. It’s different from MIT’s excellent OpenCourseWare series in that Stanford is offering a course you can play along with while MIT is providing the materials for self-study. For two of the courses, two [...]
The new Gmail look and feel…
Google’s rolling out their new look and feel to Gmail. After playing with the beta for most of the week, I have two complaints. 1: I would like a more contrast between messages. Here’s the main window using the current, “classic” look and feel: Whattaya think, should I put Fathi in touch with the ICC [...]
Hard Drive Destruction
Since I’m starting a new major project, the family wanted to spend a lot of time on a staycation this weekend. One of the activities was a field trip to Creation Station, a store with, well, bunches of stuff that you would have tossed out, except when you see a lot of them neatly arranged, it [...]
It’s the small things…
WordPress.com has a new plugin package, “Jetpack,” that incorporates their stats and a bunch of other random functions that replace the original WordPress Stats module. While skimming through the list, I came across this: For the Math geeks, a simple way to include beautiful mathematical expressions on your site. That way is… LaTeX, which I [...]
Random passwords
Long ago, I hit the threshold where the number of accounts I had and needed passwords for exceeded my ability to remember them. I thought it reasonable, then, to have tiers of passwords: Banking and financial – alphanumeric, mixed-case, non-alpha characters. An unpronouncable base plus an unique addition for each institution. Shopping (where a [...]
My first iPhone hide
As GPS-enabled phones become more popular, there have been a lot of geocaches placed by people using phones. Many of these will have serious “adjustments” to their posted coordinates because the person placing it just took a single reading, using whatever their phone was reporting and called it good. Usually these adjustments are anywhere from [...]
Seiko battery replacement
Since my watch’s battery died about two and a half years ago, the watch has been sitting in the back of a desk drawer with my vast collection of hotel conference pens, soaps and mints. The clock on my phone has been fine, except during a conversation last week when I really needed to know [...]
Nikon D40 won’t power up
“Hey, we have some time before the flash mob thing starts, let’s run through the (water art thing)!” And I snapped a photo “before.” And shortly after I got back to my chair, my Nikon N40 wouldn’t power on. It got a little wet, but not the worst I’ve done. Still: crap. Once home, I [...]
Mapnificent
The other day I came across Stefan Wehrmeyer‘s very interesting tool, Mapnificent, which estimates how far you can go by public transportation in a specific period of time (defaulting to 15 minutes). There is an option to indicate you have a bicycle available. Obvious uses of the tool are looking at commute times and evaluating [...]
iPhone 4 travel map
Since the phone tracks where I’ve been, I thought it’d be fun to map it out using Pete Warden’s iPhoneTracker application. I spend the most time in the Pacific Northwe’t: I had forgotten about my trips to San Jose: While I was in Houston and New Orleans (separate trips), there was some opportunistic geocaching, spreading [...]
Saved by Calculus
On the flight to Houston, I was seated two seats over from a very strange, inebriated young woman. Tammy, from Billings, Montana, struck up a conversation with the guy between us, soliciting information from Derek, Married Guy™ from Canada, sharing truisms like “anyone who doesn’t know what they want to with their life by the [...]
Notes from SC10
King Neptune, outside Mardis Gras Land A few weeks ago, I spent a week in New Orleans at Supercomputing 2010. (Sometimes my job has perks.) I wrote a really long summary of this for internal use, but thought I’d share some of my notes: Jack Dongarra of Oak Ridge National Labs offered his perspective [...]
PC World’s 100 Best Products of 2010
John writes his thoughts about PC World’s “Best Tech Products for 2010” and asks about others’ intersections. Here are mine: #2 Apple iPad — to be honest, when it was announced, I didn’t really see the big deal. However, then I got an iPhone 4 (six months after ditching my Windows laptop for a MacBook [...]
Neat display
NOAA had a very cool display at Supercomputing 2010 this year. I would like to think think Cliff Mass has one of these in his study: Fig 1:It’s a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A white sphere, suspended in the middle of the [...]
Fossil Digging
Last May, we took a long weekend to go dig fossils at the Stonerose Interpretive Center in Republic, WA. The fossils are from the Eocene epoch (about 50 million years ago), when eastern Washington was tropical. The city of Republic was part of an ancient lake. For a nominal fee ($6/person plus $4 for hammer [...]
Have data, will geek
I had waaaay too much fun with this data visualization software… Sheet 1 Powered by Tableau (Note, you will need javascript enabled as there is an embedded scripty thingie. The controls aren’t ideal — mouse mode selection is on the bottom; to zoom out, use the shift key — but it excites me how little [...]