According to the giant donut, I have a knee! (2011/01/26)
So my knee’s been hurting lately, and the doctor suggested an MRI. This is awesome fun. HUUUUGE donut full of machinery. Makes loud noises. They provide headphones, which have poor fidelity because they’re driven by a hose with air in it; they couldn’t have actual magnetic drivers near the MRI machine. Note for the curious: You know how they used to have something scary and dangerous called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, which was very scary, but now they have something harmless and safe called Magnetic Resonance Imaging? Same thing. The “nuclear” there just refers to the nucleus of an atom, which is boring and safe, and NMR/MRI is unrelated to fission and fusion.
[read more...]This just in: "flaunt" is not fancy-talk for "have". (2011/01/18)
Someone recently reported that the iPhone 5 would be “flaunting” a Cortex A8 processor. As a guy who works on embedded toolchains, I actually know roughly what that means. I could even speculate as to its implications…
[read more...]The Skeptic's Skeptic's Skeptic (2011/01/06)
I’m sad to write this, because I (used to?) think quite highly of Michael Shermer. His column in Scientific American about skepticism has often really appealed.
[read more...]Numerical literacy: It happens to other people. (2011/01/02)
This article about Zimbabwe’s old currency contains a thing of beauty:
[read more...]My first app, now available! (2010/12/22)
SeebsFrac is now available in the iTunes app store. This is an early version, and there will be, I expect, fixes and updates. There’s stuff that doesn’t work the way I want it to, there’s features I want to add, and so on. For more information, you could see the SeebsFrac support page.
Clueless spell checker leaves me joyless, pointless rant ensues. (2010/11/22)
I am listless without Shinies, but they cost money; since I am at some risk of being penniless, and thence homeless, if I get every pointless Shiny Thing I encounter, I have imposed limits on the limitless and constrained myself to getting New Shinies only when I have found boundless income, such as an extra writing project. In fact, doubtless related to this, I recently sold some peerless writing. While there is some doubt as to whether it is the Perfect Shiny, I have nevertheless acquired an iPad.
[read more...]World of Warcraft and City of Heroes: Some comparisons (2010/10/09)
One of the frustrating things for me about looking for a new MMO when Blizzard turned evil was trying to find information about them which actually communicated anything to me. For lack of a better resolution, I’m writing up a brief comparison of City of Heroes and World of Warcraft, in the hopes that it might be useful to people who are trying to pick one.
[read more...]T-mobile's G2: Android done precisely, totally, wrong. (2010/10/08)
Okay, don’t get me wrong. The fundamental hardware feature set of the phone? Great.
[read more...]Mmm shiny (2010/10/08)
It’s finally happened.
[read more...]We are living in the future. (2010/10/06)
A lot of the things people said we “would” be able to do are now pretty commonplace. One of my phones (the G2) has an app called “tricorder” that can measure gravity (well, acceleration – good luck telling those apart), magnetism, some kinds of EM spectrum, and can do real-time spectrum analysis of audio. It could probably do real-time spectrum analysis of the camera input, too, but they happen not to have written that yet. You can take a picture of an object and have a decent chance of the software figuring out what it is and telling you where you can buy one. If you can get a barcode, you’re set – it can get exactly that item for you.
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