TiddlyUniverse

Looking through the examples for TiddlyWiki below, I came across this site:

http://deferentialgeometry.org/

This is being put together by Garrett Lisi, the mad surfer theoretical physicist who is trying to demonstrate how all of the Standard Model and Gravity can be unified via E8. I won't try to explain what that is, mostly because I don't get it. Anyways, if you're feeling brave and happen to have a decent grounding in Lie Algebra, check it out. There are fun pictures too for those of us who thought that algebra could never lie...

Organizing the Detritus of Life

I am on a quest to find the optimal to-do list and the perfect organizer for my pack-rat nest of quotes, figures, writing conventions I like, vocab to learn, McSweeny's lists to plagiarize, etc. To-do list be damned, but I feel that I have finally worked out a good work-flow for an organizer. It finally gelled tonight!

I found TiddlyWiki while searching for wiki software that I could host locally. Throw in a better skin here. Then get a Firefox add-on that basically makes this notebook your clipboard.

I am stoked that:

• TiddlyWiki is not a wiki at all--no configuring SQL databases, managing Php installation, etc. Everything required to run the little bugger is included in a ~300k html file.
• My crap will be consolidated into one place, searchable, taggable, linked back to its internet source, easily backed up, and easily brought online should I chose to do so later.

I feel like I finally found something where I can easily build my own internal reference desk--quotes from books and articles I have actually read, rather than a flood of info off the net. The marginal effort to organize it all seems only slightly above writing it down by hand (eg tagging quotes) but makes the resulting info ten times more useful.

Japan in 15 Min Intervals

So as part of the latest census in Japan, people wrote what they were doing every 15 min for a week. Of course the data is available online and of course there are cool graphs. So now you can figure out that on Wednesdays at 4:55 AM about 980k people are consuming mass media in Japan, while approximately 94 MM are sleeping. Just saying...

Warning! This game is fun and addictive.

I'm falling asleep at work because of this.

When Did Architects Stop Designing Buildings?

I was looking forward to the results of the White House Redux competition for quite some time. Basically, the competition asked architects to redesign a presidential home / symbol of national power. The guy that won threw together what looks to be the CAD equivalent of animated gifs. Check out his crappy video.

I am fine with whacko art. I really am. I just thought that architects, even crazy ones, would actually design a structure. As far as I can tell, the grand prize is part 1990s webpage, part anime, part malformed and misinformed politcal commentary, and completely useless self-indulgent computer doodles. Where do architects get off thinking they are 1) artists and 2) legitimate critics of anything?

iTunes Genius Mode

So you may be the type that doesn't like your data floating around cyberspace, but I just downloaded iTunes 8.0 and already love the Genius function, which automatically generates playlists based on any song you chose. It can also provide recommendations from the iTunes store. I haven't really used pandora before but it sounds like the same concept. What I like is I can match a mood with songs with zero effort, and results at initial testing seem solid. You know they can't go too wrong because they are using all of your music, but a lot of good stuff I wouldn't have thought up came to the surface as well. Creating your own playlists is so August 2008.

Here is the playlist that came up when I selected Smashing Pumpkins "Landslide."

Landslide Smashing Pumpkins
Yellow Ledbetter Pearl Jam
About A Girl Nirvana
A Long December Counting Crows
Across the Universe Rufus Wainwright
The Freshmen The Verve Pipe
Don't Go Away Oasis
She Don't Use Jelly The Flaming Lips
The Scientist (Live) Aimee Mann
Gravity Rides Everything Modest Mouse
Tonight, Tonight Smashing Pumpkins
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town Pearl Jam
Time Is Running Out Muse
Round Here Counting Crows
Lover I Don't Have to Love Bright Eyes
Lucky Radiohead
All Apologies Nirvana
Babylon (iTunes Originals Version) David Gray
Better Man Pearl Jam
Don't Look Back in Anger Oasis
Where It's At Beck
Wonderwall Ryan Adams
6th Avenue Heartache The Wallflowers
Zero Smashing Pumpkins
Hash Pipe Weezer

Free Conference Calling -- What!?

So I was trying to figure out how to get my whole family on a conference call this evening (all 8 of us, mostly in different places) and I came across this sweet service PowWow Now. It's 100% free. There is no advertising, no signing up, nothing. You just call the number 1 641 715 3777, come up with a 6 to 9 digit pin, tell you friends and you all call in and enter the pin. Standard call rates apply (which on cells is free) and apparently they make money from some sort of reimbursement they get from telecoms. I'll let you know if it doesn't work or if there are some adverse affects, but trying it out once and cruising the site it seems 100% awesome.

Where are the terrorists?

Underrated Science Fiction?

The most underrated science fiction movies, according to Marginal Revolution:

1. Primer - Hmm, seems interesting, but super indie.
2. Aeon Flux - Underrated? Besides Theron in latex, seems like the rest is irredeemable.
3. Body Snatchers - 1990s goodness!
4. Tron - "Soon the ultimate tool will become the ultimate enemy!" -- there is hope for me yet.
5. Sleeper - WTF? I have never liked Woody Allen.
6. eXistenZ - Weak "science fiction" framework for Jennifer Jason Leigh to get naughty.
7. A Boy and His Dog - "A rather kinky tale of survival." O RLY?
8. Enemy Mine - "Brothers because they dared to be." I don't think it works that way.
9. Gattaca - I like it to, but I don't think it is underrated, and if it was, surely it beats Aeon Flux.
10. Silent Running - "Meet the almost human drones..." Errrr....

All in all, that list sucks. He tries to redeem himself with some additions:

"My picks would have been Mission to Mars and Titan A.E. Sunshine is also quite good and not so well known. At times I regard What Dreams May Come as science fiction."

Titan A.E. What a turd.

Batman III: Indecipherable

By now, I hope you've all seen and enjoyed The Dark Knight. If so, expect that you also found Christian Bale's Batman voice annoying and over-the-top. Did you also know that they used sound effects to make it more that way? In case you haven't seen it yet, I think this parody does a good job mocking the pointless bat-growl.

The Criticism Hamburger and Other Useful Hacks

Not that anyone who visits this site might occasionally have trouble interacting with dirty society, but here's maybe the first useful top-10 list I've ever seen on the internet. It's 10 conversation hacks. I'm standing up and folding my arms now, which is your cue to stop reading.

For Tom

This looks nice with it's 16x9 widescreenieness.

Amos Lee Street Corner Preacher

One of my new favorite songs.

Self-Driving Cars

A nice collection of all the benefits made possible by self-driving cars. Though to convince anybody besides me, this guy needs a website not made in 1997. http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/

IE Tab Firefox Plugin

Where has this been all my life? (Answer is Taiwan.) Sites like Netflix and Windows Update which require Internet Explorer can be opened in a new tab in firefox using this plugin. You still need to have IE installed on your computer, but you don't have to actually open it. Adds an "open in IE tab" option to your right-click menu on links. You can edit that and other behavior in the settings, including a filter list of sites you want to always open using IE.

Sweet Video Converter

Problem: In my first attempts to use iMovie to edit the video I shot last night at the American Idols Live concert, I was frustrated by the fact that iMovie only accepts a couple of formats. (The music was pretty excellent, by the way, to all the doubters out there). Solution: After minimal searching I found this sweet application, Squared 5, that seems able to converter anything to MP4 or other iMovie friendly formats. It even has some basic editing image editing, cropping and an automatic volume control that took a lot of the excess noise out. The last piece was better than anything I could find in iMovie, although I'm no expert in the app. You can compare the iMovie clip to Squared 5 clip with what I've loaded to YouTube.

Point Counter Point with Feed

Me: That's what you get for using a camera.
Feed: That's what you get for using a camera outside.

A walk to remember

Mesmerizing stroll through Tokyo. Nobody seems to mind or notice the camera, which is yet another reason I must go there. Skip about a minute in for the good stuff.

Michael Bay's rejected Batman script

Classic.

Pyrotechnics erupt in the distance. Guitar solo.

Once Again the Guitar Proves Worthy

Just when I think there aren't any more good things you can do with a guitar:

Find more videos like this on w.a.s.t.e. central

I Am In Your Interwebs, Locating your Earthquakes.

Use IP addresses to locate epicenter of earthquakes. Love it.

Mint.com - Money, Not Candy

If anyone hasn't checked out www.mint.com for managing your money, I suggest you do so. When tax time came, I tried Quicken and Microsoft Money each for the second time, and I can't imagine how they made it that far in this world. Not that mint.com is perfect - you can't create your own categories, for example, and I have yet to find a way to have it show me only the transactions where money is going out as opposed to in. Probably some part of their ultimate ploy to make money off of me. For now it *seems* free.

OSX NTFS FTW (NSFW)

I didn't think this was possible. Mac owners, particularly dual-booters, may have run into trouble accessing Windows-formatted external hard drives or partitions. I certainly did. In swept Google out of nowhere with MacFuse, a "mechanism" (their word, no doubt for lack of a better one) which allows people to implement their own file systems for OSX. Naturally. I can envision Andrew writing his own file system, but I suspect the rest of us will want to grab NTFS-3G, which is an implementation of NTFS. (Download is at the bottom of sketchy blog post.) I was skeptical, but it worked great. Install MacFuse, install ntfs-3g, and suddenly OSX can read and write to my Windows partition.

Pre-Fab Political Ads

But they seem so real!

Terrorist Fist Jab

Ah, Fox News. From "fair and balanced" to "fairly balanced" to "let's find new and creative ways to get the words 'terrorist' and 'Obama' in the same soundbite" balanced.

The lead-in: "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? ... We'll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says."

I, for one, can get behind this. It's about time a new sensation swept the nation (while covertly communicating terrorist leanings with others). I hereby petition all responsible readers of YST to strike the terms "dap," "fist bump," and "that thing Tom does" from the lexicon. It's "terrorist fist jab" from here on out.

Baby I Got Your Money...

Even though I only take out cash once a month, I wish Bank of America's ATMs had better UI--like Wells Fargo. At "the next stage" they display a transaction history--like a custom menu that you never have to customize. One click to get my cash, that's what I want. Now, if we could only up the $300 limit and get rid of 20s.

Side note: when I was in Japan, the smallest denomination they give out at ATMs is 10,000 yen notes--$95. Large notes, automatic umbrella shrink-wrappers, and blade hand driers (the fact that they were everywhere makes me think Dyson ripped off the idea)--all our base are indeed belong to Japan.

More spheres

Uh oh, someone mentioned math. The guy who came up with this also happens to have an abiding interest in the problem. He wrote a good summary of the then-current state (2002) of the n-dimensional sphere packing problem (from 2 to 128 dimensions) here. How many integer sequences did you discover today? (for fun, try the web cam...).

Why I will never get an iPhone

Too much information. One problem with "persistent" memory like flash is it's sometimes not obvious whether or not it's really gone away.

Sats

So when you are bored at work, you end up in weird places. (I know, you are nervous about clicking that link.)

I never appreciated the scale difference between low earth orbit satellites and geostationary ones. I noticed that it seems sort of crowded out there. "How many satellites can actually fit in geostationary orbit?" Well, figuring out that problem seemed much more interesting than examining a huge database of misclassified Accounts Payable.

Here's what I came up with from my searching, rough back of the envelope:

geosynch orbit = 35,600 km
earth width = 12,800 km
circum @ orbit = 263,900 km
+- latitude = 10 dg
+- latitude (tan 10 dg) = 7,400 km
+- altitude = 200 km (higher than that is where sats go to die)
+- positioning of sats = 35 km (margin of error)
min distance between sats = 10 km (made that up)
passing lane east = 35,600 + 35 + 10 + 5 = 35,650-35,800 km
passing lane west = 35,600 - 35 - 10 - 5 = 35,400-35,550 km
# of belts of satellites = 2 (also made up)

Total # of satellite slots @ geostationary orbit = (7400*2/45)*(263,900/45)*2 = 3.86MM.

I'm sure there are more limitations--like it is too expensive to keep satellites in a precise orbit, so most wobble in altitude and latitude. Also, if 70% of the earth is water, you have a lot of coverage where you don't need it. The point is, we can fit a lot more.

Shigeru Miyamoto is pretty much where I would like to be, when I'm 55.