tweet ← A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

It took me 7 minutes to break my Syma S107c helicopter

Feb

2013

I’m playing around with nano copters, the first I picked up was the “Syma S107c”:http://www.amazon.com/Syma-Channel-Control-Helicopter-Recording/dp/B0081VOEZM. Cheap and has a camera. So super simple to set up, it comes assembled, you just need to connect the camera up, charge the copter, load batteries in the controller, and go. First run was indoors, and the copter was ...

Recent Books — Going Clear, The Big Truck That Went By

Feb

2013

* “Going Clear”:amazon by Lawrence Wright. A tough look at Scientology. The author does a nice job of letting the evidence speak for itself. If even a fraction of the accounts of abuse are true, the church has some serious issues to face. The public figures who are adherents probably should step up and make ...

Quick gadget reviews — sphero, twine

Jan

2013

The “sphero”:www.gosphero.com is nicely done and drives dogs crazy. Solid packaging and works. But it is crazy expensive for a little gadget. I appreciate everything that has gone into it, but it just costs too much. Because I really want a fleet of them so that I can do things like “this video”:http://www.techrockies.com/sphero-s-robots-impress-in-nyc-christmas-video/s-0046561.html. But at ...

Where to take my ‘stache

Jan

2013

Trying to decide…I am drawn to the Zappa…

Books I’m Reading — Haskell, Viruses

Jan

2013

I am pushing myself a little this month. * “Real World Haskell”:amazon by O’Sullivan, Goerzen, Stewart. Functional languages have always seemed like a research toy to me. But some of the smartest guys I know are using the concepts at least in commercial products, and “this post from John Carmack last year”:http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/26/functional-programming-in-c/ has stuck with ...

Recent books — Machinery of Life, Half-life of Facts, Moonwalking with Einstein

Jan

2013

* “The Machinery of Life”:amazon by David Goodsell. I have a reasonable understanding of atoms and electrons and electron-based chemistry, particularly for semiconductor materials. I have never really understood biochemistry — protein chemistry, DNA, etc. I love this book because it builds up from atoms to proteins and other biochem molecules, and has tons of ...

Board games this holiday season — 7 Wonders, K2, Kingdom Builder

Jan

2013

We always get some board games over the holiday season and have some gamefests. Settlers, Ticket to Ride, Survive have been winners in past years. This year we tried 3: * “Seven Wonders”:http://www.amazon.com/Asmodee-SEV-EN01ASM-7-Wonders-Game/dp/B0043KJW5M/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1357360279&sr=1-1&keywords=seven+wonders. This was the real winner of the holiday season. It seemed crazy complex at first, but the game play is swift, there ...

iPad mini rippling thru my hardware setup

Dec

2012

Ok I got an iPad mini for Christmas — thanks family! The lack of retina display does bother me, it is super noticeable. I will certainly upgrade to an iPad mini retina when it exists. But it is interesting to see the impact on the rest of the gear in my bag. * obviously the ...

Too many bowls? More likely a short term demand problem

Dec

2012

Per @CFTalkThrough, through 14 bowl games, attendance is down more than 11 percent from a year ago. 574,095 in 2011, 508,969 in 2012. Too many bowls? Maybe. But “looking at fan bases countrywide”:http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/, when you take 5.8M fans out of the market for bowl tickets because of OSU (#1 fan base nationwide) and PSU (#3 ...

Recent books – Black List, Quantum Thief, Stone Arabia, and Antifragile

Dec

2012

* “Black List”:amazon by Brad Thor. Eh. A treasonous cabal plans an apocalyptic cyber-attack on the US. Pretty standard suspense tale, some interesting characters left completely undeveloped, pretty standard plotting. * “The Quantum Thief”:amazon by Hannu Rajamiemi. Very nice tale of distant future with terribly advanced nano/cyber systems. Difficult to tell where humanity leaves off ...

Software I’m dorking around with, waiting for the Seahawks kickoff

Dec

2012

* Great list of tools from Patrick Rhone at “MinimalMac”:http://minimalmac.com/post/38230590462/some-tools-that-made-my-computing-life-better-in-2012. Installed doublepane right away. * “Infoxicate”:infoxicate.com seems like it could be IFTTT only really useful. Tho seems to be just a concept so far. * Powerpoint is so dull. I love “Haiku Deck”:http://www.haikudeck.com. And “Timeline”:http://www.beedocs.com seems interesting. Both seem to really highlight the story and ...

Programmable behavior everywhere, in everything.

Nov

2012

“A nice article”:http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/11/to-eat-or-be-eaten.html from @mikeloukides that extends on the “software is eating the world” idea, and talks about how the world is eating software. Programmable behaviour is getting stuffed into everything, and the trend is just going to accelerate. I’ve got a pile of computers on my desk right now — Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, Beaglebones. ...

Raspberry Pis — Limit 25 to a customer

Nov

2012

It is fascinating to me that a site like “MCM”:http://www.mcmelectronics.com/content/en-US/raspberry-pi has to limit raspberry pi sales to 25 to a customer. Many possible reasons for this of course, but exceedingly interesting.

low end computing grab bag — arduino, sensors, fritzing, LEDs, coin batteries, etc

Nov

2012

A random collection of links I’ve noticed in the past month or so, need to follow up on most of these. * “APDuino.org”:http://apduino.org/. Standard software for managing an arduino fully populated with sensors. Feel like arduino hw and sw ought to evolve to include more sensor capability by default * “Understanding coin cell limitations”:http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/11/15/ee-bookshelf-understanding-coin-cell-limitations/. Great ...

Books — a bunch of airplane fiction, Makers, MLK Jr.

Nov

2012

A handful of airplane reads: * “Up Against It”:amazon by M. J. Locke. YA SF, set in the asteroid belt. Nice technical treatment of asteroid belt life and some interesting political plotting, but tissue paper thin characters for the most part. * “Red Hook Road”:amazon by Ayelet Waldman. In a Maine coastal town, a wedding ...

I watched episode 1 of Bravo’s “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley” this weekend.

Nov

2012

Hey, Ohio State had a bye, I had to watch something. 3 observations after watching “the show”:http://www.bravotv.com/start-ups-silicon-valley: * I am now embarrassed to say I work in the tech industry. * Apparently there are just as many venal, shallow people in the tech industry as there are in Orange County, the Jersey Shore, or any ...

Hal Berenson defends Office on Windows RT

Nov

2012

Hal presents “a reasoned and rational defense of the current state of Office on Windows RT machines”:http://hal2020.com/2012/11/07/understanding-office/. I am almost half convinced. But I do differ with Hal on some points. * The Office and Windows businesses have always been intertwined, they owe big parts of their individual successes to each other, they are all ...

Two thoughts spurred by FiveThirtyEight

Nov

2012

* “FiveThirtyEight”:http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/ and other election watchers have made it crystal clear that candidate attention has moved entirely to swing states — and increasingly swing counties and swing demographics within those states. You have to believe this trend will continue, and we will see ever finer-grained focus on counties, on precincts, on finer and finer demographic ...

At least the Surface has forced me to think about what devices I carry

Oct

2012

Overall the Surface is, well, a turd. It is a crappy cheap laptop. Or maybe an ok-but-expensive tablet, although completely lacking the tablet apps I want. But it has forced me to think about the gear I carry. Right now my bag contains a laptop (MacBook pro or ASUS ultra book depending on the day), ...

I wouldn’t rush out to buy a Surface.

Oct

2012

I have the attention span of a gnat, and too large a hardware budget, so of course I ordered a “Surface”:http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US day one. I got my Surface on Friday. 64G, black, both the touch and the type covers. My motto — “Buying first release technology since 1979 so you don’t have to!” There are a ...