Spurred on by the coolness[1] that Viper007Bond (aka Alex Mills) enabled with his v007.me site-specific URL shortener, I have also implemented a similar functionality, also using YOURLS. a-n-d-r-e-w-f-e-r-g-u-s-o-n-.-n-e-t is 18 characters. I’ve managed to reduce that down to a mere seven (a 61% reduction in effort). http://afdn.me is primarily designed to serve at the short…
Technology’s Infestation of my Life Archives
Examples of how technology has permeated every single bit of my life.
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I hope everyone had a merry Thanksgiving! I spent some of my time setting up OpenMediaVault on an Acer Aspire 3610 that my Kolby gave me. It’s a pretty small machine, running an Intel Atom 330 1.6 GHz with 2 GB of RAM[1], but I think it will be perfect for running my new NAS!…
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The most interesting thing was how they used physics simulation of the materials to determine and optimize the material geometry and actualization parameters for the servos. The result: cloning a real humans’ face onto an animatronics figure. The top comment is perfect as well: mas8705: So Disney is Skynet. You would think we would have…
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Not All Pixels Are Created Equal →
Whenever I help friends and family buy a new camera, they almost always turn to pixels as the dominating trade point. The reality is, that’s probably not the most appropriate measure of “bestness” and here’s why:
The metric most often used by camera manufacturers and marketers to tout their products has been pixel count. That’s a shame, but it was probably inevitable — it’s easy to measure, and consumers are used to the idea that more is better. However, the number of pixels is a measure of quantity, not quality.
This is a great article explaining in a mostly non-technical way why pixels aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Case in point: I can (and have) print a 30″ x 20″ from my eight-year-old 6.1 MP Nikon D70 that look great because it has a 23.7 mm × 15.6 mm[1] sensor. If I were to print a picture at the same size using my year-old iPhone 4S with its 8 MP 4.54 mm x 3.42 mm[2] sensor, it would look very noisy.
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I’m going to spend the day nerding out!
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Scientific American had an article on the costs of light bulbs[1]. I wanted to figure out a way to fairly compare the rough lifecycle costs of the bulbs to the consumer. I figured the best way to do that would be to determine the cost per an operating lux-hour. We’re going to figure out the…
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The printer was hole-punching my printouts at work (on the wrong side of the page, to boot). I was mystified by why it was doing this. I tried changing the print settings. I tried restarting my computer. I tried restarting the printer. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the printer driver. I tried that rain dance…
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I shared this video[1] with Peter, who then asked: I saw that a couple days ago. Awesome! And has some cool practical applications. I [couldn't] quite tell if the pitch of the robot was adjustable by the user, or of it always jumped in the same direction. Did you get a sense for that? It…
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I’ve been busy with work, but I’ve been keeping my eye on the news. Politics have always been a bit…screwy. I’m not sure if they’re getting more screwier or I’m becoming more aware of what’s going on. – maybe just more cynical. Representative Lamar Smith and Senator Patrick Leahy now joins the ranks of former…
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I met Rachel’s friend from college, Laura. Laura has the awesome job of being a researcher at MSU in their ICAL (Imaging and Chemical Analysis Laboratory). Of particular interest was Laura’s job of operating the scanning electron microscope! So of course I asked if we could have a tour! Not only did we get a…