Daniel R.

I'm pleased to announce the first release of Zeo Data Explorer. For anyone that uses a Zeo to track their sleep, I've been playing with different ways to visual my sleep data, which some of you may have heard me talk about at BarCamp Boston 5. To that end I put together a generic library for parsing the CSV file you can export from the myZeo site. Along with the generic parsing library I've started exploring different ways to visual my sleep, beyond what you can do on myZeo, in an application called the Zeo Data Display. All of the source code is available on bitbucket at Zeo Data Explorer. This includes a pure AS3 library for parsing the data and a sample Flex application for visualizing it. For those that don't have a Zeo I've included a sample of my own data to get an idea of what it tracks. As time permits I hope to add additional visualizations to the tool now that the overall framework is in place. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Tags: as3 flex zeo

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A former co-worker of mine just announced an awesome new Facebook game that they built with Flex, Swiz, and AS3Signals. It's called Urban Warfare, plays like Civilization, and can be found at http://apps.facebook.com/urbanwarfaregame/.

Tags: flex game

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has taken a little time but I've finally rotated, culled, and captioned photos from the 2 week bicycling trip I took in June between Prague and Budapest. It was a REI Adventures organized tour which had a great group of people and guides. Should you find that I've completely missed the mark on a photo (spelling, wrong caption, etc.) be sure to let me know.

Tags: budapest photos prague

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 7:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had a blast at BarCamp Boston 5. Learned about some new technologies and topics that I'd love to play with and learn more about. Some of my favorites Cooking for Geeks, OpenFrameworks, Wolfram Alpha, and Introduction to jQuery.

I threw some slides together and gave a talk about Agile Programming Methods since there looked to be a bunch of interest. Kind of hard to compress everything cool about agile into 25 minutes, but hopefully I got a couple of points across.

What I was more excited to talk about was my continued sleep tracking with Zeo. I'm not quite ready to release a version of the software (still in prototype phase) but I've got an updated set of slides and screenshots. Thanks to those that attended and gave great suggestions on data that I could pull in and plot against.

Tags: barcamp boston flex graph sleep zeo

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been occasionally following NoSQL over the past year since starting to use SimpleDB for unstructured data storage. A lot of options have opened up and recently Tim Anglade put this list together that I thought was worth sharing. Hopefully I got all the links correct as they were not part of the original message.

• Cassandra
• CouchDB
• Dynomite
• GT.M
• Hadoop
• HBase
• HyperGraphDB
• Hypertable
• InfoGrid
• JackRabbit
• MemcacheDB
• Mnesia
• MongoDB
• Neo4J
• Neptune
• Redis
• Riak
• SimpleDB
• Sones
• Tahoe-LAFS
• Terrastore
• TokyoCabinet
• Voldemort

• BigTable
• Dynamo
• Sherpa

• ESRI ArcGIS (non-free)
• Oracle's Spatial Layer (non-free)
• SAND (academic Geographical/Spatial database)

Tags: nosql

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For most of this year I've been collecting frequent data snapshots of the Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious Kiva Team. I've been a member of Kiva for some time and thought it would be neat to track the success of the group leading up to our one million dollar goal. A few months ago I started playing with the Flex Charting Components to see what I could do with the data I'd been collecting. I don't have the graphical touch (as anyone who has looked at this website can attest to) but working with the charting components made it easy to throw together some basic visualizations of the data.

The code for the application is ugly, so unlike most of my other sample applications, I didn't view source enable it. Given the plethora of other sites talking about the same material this isn't a loss, trust me :) One thing that I'd like to experiment with is other ways to visual the data. Any recommendations are welcome.

Tags: charting flex kiva

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just wanted to recommend to anyone who will be in the Boston area on November 13, 2009 that you should head to RIA Unleashed. Formerly called Flex Camp Boston this is one the lowest cost highest content conferences I've attended. Tickets for this year are going for $60 or less depending on how early you register. Not being above a little self promotion, when you register let them know I (Daniel Rinehart) sent you :) For those that weren't able to attend the last couple of years, a list of talks is below.

Continue reading "RIA Unleashed Boston November 13, 2009" »

Tags: flex riaunleashed2009

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I find that for some of the books that I've read, mostly when it comes to fiction, a complete entry seems a bit much. My goal of writing up these entries has always been about capturing notes, since I'd say the majority of what I read is non-fiction. While I have reviewed fiction books I've read in the past, most of the time a short summary and rating would be better to capture my feelings should someone ask me what I thought about a book I'd read some time ago. As such a few months ago I signed up for Goodreads. I'm using it to its full potential but have found it useful.

Tags: books

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HP has released a tool called SWF Scan for decompiling and looking at SWFs for security issues. Available from http://www.hp.com/go/swfscan.

Tags: flex swf tools

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the election of Obama as the 44th president the transition process has begun. In continuing his use of new technology and grass root movements the new administration is looking for your ideas. Read about what Obama's plans are and contribute at Change.gov.

Tags: obama

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Antennae 1.2.2 has been released. This is a very minor update that just changed the bundled version of FlexUnit. I'm now bundling the version from the Adobe Open Source Site. I've also created a discussion group for Antennae available at http://groups.google.com/group/antennae-discussion.

Tags: ant antennae flex

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its been a busy weekend.

The Tour de France wrapped up this weekend with an everything on the line time trial on Saturday and another fabulous sprint finish on the Champs Elysee on Sunday. Congratulations to Carlos Sastre, this year's winner. My DVR can rest for awhile now that I don't have 4-5 hours of live coverage to zoom through each night. Versus' prime time coverage just can't compare to Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.

Saturday also included an outing to Midwest Grill followed by games in celebration of Craig's birthday. Way too much yummy food and gaming but a great way to spend the rest of the day.

Sunday consisted of helping Erin and Pete move into an apartment down the street, but was mostly taken up by painting my entryway. Stephanie has been helping me pick out colors and look for deals on paint. A couple of months ago she came across this great peach color which fit with the overall scheme. Problem is, now that I've got one room done, I'm itching to do the rest.

Tags: gilmanmanor life photos

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Antennae version 1.2.1 has been released. Grab it from http://code.google.com/p/antennae/. Highlights of this release include:

• Support for AIR based FlexUnit testing, including a project template
• Other minor bug fixes

For anyone not familiar with Antennae here is a brief description:

Antennae is an open-source project designed to automate the building and testing of Flex applications. It uses Ant and Java to provide cross platform utilities to compile Flex libraries, Flex applications, generate FlexUnit TestSuites, and run FlexUnit tests in an automated manner. Antennae also defines a framework for building complex projects with multiple dependencies and intelligently handling recompilation.

Tags: ant antennae flex

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While still in the stupor of jet leg I decided it would be a good idea to try my hand at free handing with my camera some shots of Boston's 4th of July Fireworks. My camera has a fireworks mode on it that worked surprisingly well. I can only image they would get better if I used a tripod.

Tags: boston fireworks photos

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've finally finished going through all of my Nepal photos and have put them online. My next effort will be to go through and comment them, but don't hold your breathe on that. All told I took almost 1000 pictures and culled that down to about 650 by weeding out the blurry and bad. Nepal made for some challenging shooting with the frequently overcast and changing weather conditions. I'm sure some of the photos could use a little touch-up magic with Photoshop but that's stepping a little outside my standard photo expertise.

Tags: links nepal photos

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As my last hike before heading to Nepal I took a trip up to the White Mountains in NH to hike Mt. Flume and Mt. Liberty. These are some of the photos I took along the hike to make sure my new camera worked well.

Tags: flume hike liberty photos

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Adobe has dropped the first public bits in their effort to port Adobe AIR to the Linux platform. You can download them from Adobe Labs. Keep in mind this is an alpha release and everything definitely isn't there, yet.

Tags: air linux

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This afternoon I watched a Google TechTalks entitled The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less given by Barry Schwartz on April 27, 2006. The talk does a wonderful job of summarizing the current state of choice and why in most cases it is making us feel worse. Some of the themes echoed what I read in The High Price of Materialism. Below are notes I took to summarize the key points.

Continue reading "The Paradox of Choice" »

Tags: choice time

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From a recent article in the NYTimes about the new Facebook Beacon program:

“Isn’t this community getting a little hypocritical?” said Chad Stoller, director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital advertising agency. “Now, all of a sudden, they don’t want to share something?”

This guy is completely missing the point. There is a big difference between explicitly sharing information, which is what Facebook user's have been doing up to this point, versus the implicit sharing that the Beacon system is doing. I'm not a Facebook member so I can't comment on the opt-in or opt-out features the system which would make it more explicit and only slightly less disturbing.

MoveOn.org is running a petition that I encourage you to sign.

Tags: facebook moveon

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe announced today that beginning in November qualified education end-users will be able to get Adobe Flex Builder 2 for free. I think this is another good move on Adobe's part to help open up and promote the platform.

Full details here.

Tags: flex

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From http://www.xogiving.org/:

Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home

Tags: computer olpc

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just outside of Davis Square Kickass Cupcakes has opened their doors. While walking back last night I stopped in to sample their wares. Tasty. A little over priced and it didn't look like there were discounts for buying in quantity. Be aware that they also sell cupcakes designed for cats and dogs although the labeling on them (especially after a pint or two) isn't immediately obvious.

From left to right, top: The Mojito, Strawberry Shortcake, and Vanilla; bottom: Chocolate, Cinnamon Chai Pecan Sticky, and Lucky Cupcake.

Tags: food

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tonight I attended Ignite Boston. This was the first "the attendees make the conference" conferences I'd been to. From a single stage, a wide variety of short (5 minute) technology focused talks were given (full speaker list from the above link). The majority of speakers had their talks geared towards the format. Taking place at a bar was good for the social aspects, but the resulting background chatter overwhelmed some speakers that were not as adapt at speaking into the microphone.

Continue reading "Ignite Boston" »

Tags: boston ignite

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I recently got back from a week of vacation in Maine at my families' camp. It was great to be off the grid and relax with nature as a backdrop. The only real technology I took along was my camera, which I used to capture the beauty. It had been many years since I was last at the camp for a vacation. My last couple of trips were to replace the roof. It was as I remembered it from my youth. Simplicity is good.

Tags: camp life pictures

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm going to be speaking at the upcoming MAX about Continuous Integration with Flex, FlexUnit, and Ant. The talk description is:

Learn about tools and techniques needed to get continuous builds, integration, and testing running with a Flex project. I'll cover the fundamentals of build and test automation, the popular open-source Ant build tool, setting up and running FlexUnit tests from the command line, and integrating the entire process into an automated build system. I'll also demonstrate Antennae, a publicly available set of templates for building even very complex Flex applications using Ant.

If there are particular topics that you'd like to see covered let me know.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm pleased to announce the release of Antennae version 1.0000. This is the first release since Antennae was migrated from Joe Berkovitz's blog up to Google Code. You can access the project at http://code.google.com/p/antennae/. This release includes a bunch of tweaks and new functionality. For those that are not familiar with Antennae it covers:

• Macro tasks for invoking mxmlc and compc
• Ready made templates for application projects and library projects
• A robust system for importing and exporting assets from one project to another
• A solid way to compose projects inside container projects
• Dependency checking on sources and libraries to avoid unneeded recompilation
• Handling for HTML page token substitution and web app deployment
• Automated unit test suite generation and command line integration with Flexunit

This release is primarily aimed at getting the tools out there for public consumption. Future releases will focus on additional documentation and other ways Ant can help automate your Flex builds. Please let us know what other improvements you would like to see.

Tags: ant antennae flex

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been very impressed with USA's lead up to the start of this season of 4400 (Jun 17th). I've been getting a steady stream of SMS messages since signing up for them at the end of last year. They have also launched an aggressive online video, blog, website campaign (which at times has been more interesting to follow then the real news). The focus is around these sites:

• the4400.com (which has links to the following three sites)
• promicininfo.com
• promicinpower.com
• promicinterror.com

Then there are the YouTube videos (which are linked from the above sites).

Tags: 4400

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm going to be speaking at the upcoming Flashforward Boston about Automated Flex Building and Unit Testing. The description hasn't made it up onto the site yet but is roughly something like:

A talk focusing on tools and techniques needed to get continuous integration running with a Flex project -- that is, ensuring that at any given point in time, your application is buildable and free of errors. I'll cover how to automate the build process with Ant, setting up and running unit tests both interactively from the command line, and integrating the entire process into an automated build system. All tools used are open-source and publicly available.

If there are particular topics that you'd like to see covered let me know.

Tags: ant flex

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just got back from visiting Erin in Aberdeen Scotland. It was a blast. I've not had time to collect my thoughts and do a proper summary but I have done a first pass at putting up pictures.

Tags: life scotland

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some issues seem to only get worse. Some updated statistics about credit cards and debt in American since the last time I posted about this:

• Americans spent one in seven of their take-home dollars on debt payments last year, up from one in nine in 1980.


• In 2006, the industry mailed out nearly 8 billion credit card offers, up from 3.5 billion in 2000.


• Credit card debt, less than $8 billion in 1968 (in current dollars), now exceeds $880 billion, more than tripling since 1988, adjusting for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank.


• In part because of the debt burden, the consumer savings rate fell below zero percent in 2005 and has stayed there.

Tags: debt

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the past couple of days my blog has been heavily hit with comment spam. In the last 10 hours I've gotten more than 100 spam message attempts posted to my blog. I moderate all comments so none of those messages saw the light of day but I still have to deal with them. I've never really tuned the comment spam features of MT and I still haven't. Instead I installed a CAPTCHA system. Previously I had required TypeKey in order to leave a comment but that felt a little to draconian. Not everyone has a TypeKey account or wants to create one. Email whitelists are another option but that still requires that I approve or junk email addresses when they are entered.

I'm all about not even having to look at the spam. While this may mean I automatically trash some important comment or email, I think most people are coming to realize that when 90% or more of all email is spam, people will take drastic measures and at some point a message will be lost. As such I'm now running the SCode plugin. The usability of CAPTCHAs is a concern but unless I go back to TypeKey only comments I don't have another good solution at this point. In fact the use of TypeKey on my system just means that your comment will automatically be posted but you still need to enter the security code in order to post.

Tags: links mt spam

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

I met up with people I used to work with at Ruckus for a few drinks tonight. I'm killing a little time before going to bed and figured I'd do one of these silly memes. So here it is...

Continue reading "Midas Touch" »

Tags: life links

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In looking at my web logs today I noticed something very odd. I was getting referrer entries for iamnotstephencolbert.com. I did some digging and for reasons that I can not explain. That domain points at my server's IP address. The bigger mystery is the fact that it has been pointing at my server since the middle of August. I guess whoever registered the domain isn't using it. As a result I present to you http://www.iamnotstephencolbert.com/. View it while you can, I suspect someone may catch on.

Update: My friend who registered the domain finally found the page. The above link now points to a cached copy of the page I put up.

Tags: iamnotstephencolbert life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I think I've caught up on a bunch of pictures that had been sitting on my camera. For your viewing pleasure: David and Karen's Wedding, Gilman Manor's Roof, Saying Goodbye to Matt, Bubbles, and Elissa's Apartment.

My camera acted up a bit so I didn't get a picture of Matt driving off or of Craig during the wedding. Yeah, I should get a new camera, but gosh darn it if my current one just mostly works... Also Elissa's room was just too messy to subject her to having a picture of it on the web.

Tags: gilmanmanor links photos

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Random Number

Tags: fun links

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study. To quote:

Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

That might help explain a few things :)

Tags: atheist links religion

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I finally got around to upgrading the version of SpamAssassin that I use. I was previously running 3.0.2 and am now running 3.1.4 I also spent a bunch of time installing a optional Perl modules to enable additional features of SpamAssassin. Boy am I glad that I did. Prior to upgrading I'd say at least 20 spams were getting through a day. In the last 24 hours I've only see one spam that didn't get flagged and it was as close as you can get to not being considered spam.

This makes me happy. I've never been that good with email to begin with but having to spend most of my email time filtering through my inbox only made matters worse. The few times that I've checked email since upgrading I've almost not known what to do. It's sad, but spam in my email has become so common I've almost forgot what it's like. This is a good problem to have to readjust to.

I do have to say that the documentation that I've come across so far for SpamAssassin has been pretty disorganized. I find this really odd since it seems to be under the Apache Software Foundation, which having used many of their other projects, I've usually been happy with the documentation. I suspect that the SpamAssassin wiki holds the knowledge I'm seeking but damned if I can find it. In any case, less spam is good and AFAIK no false-positives.

Tags: spam

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Science on Screen

UPCOMING: Tuesday, November 22, 7 p.m. @ Coolidge Corner Theatre

THE ELEPHANT MAN with guest speaker Jerome Groopman, M.D., whose research on degenerative diseases has lead to groundbreaking advances in the study of cancer and AIDS, as well as multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, and Alzheimer's.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been on the search for some new tea lately and rediscovered Republic of Tea while browsing in Cardullo's over the weekend. In particular I was looking for caffeine free teas. I ran across three that are all very yummy.

• 
  Lemon Wintergreen: A great mint based tea with the kick of lemon grass. Great for sipping after lunch.


• Republic Red Chai: The best non-caffeinated chai tea I've had. Very flavorful.


• Cedarberg Organic Red Tea: Wonderful substitute for black tea and a great base for mixing with lemons, honey, or both.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Children

From The Economist's Survey of America. The entire set of articles is a good read, this one statistic caught my eye though:

College-educated women are also postponing children for the sake of their careers. On average, they have their first child at 30, five years later than in the 1970s and eight years later than their contemporaries who have not been to college.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Digital Library

A great way to organize your library of books, music, and other media.

I think it would be great if they also included an option to read bar codes from digital pictures. For users that don't want to spend the money on an iSight or bar code scanner, but would rather not type in bar codes by hand, snapping digital pictures would be a great alternative. I'm guessing, but I'm sure most of the image processing logic being used by the iSight to read the bar codes could be adapted for reading digital pictures.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's a Whole New Internet

Great article on the rebirth of rapid innovation on the Internet.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What do you want to do with your life?

Being between jobs and relaxing by doing almost nothing has given me time to think and find my ideal rhythm. I probably won't blog on just what that is since it would require too much thinking :) I do offer up this link as a way to plan what you want to do.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More Fake Food

Food Companies Test Flavorings That Can Mimic Sugar, Salt or MSG.

While I'm sure that the product is safe, it's just scary what companies are doing to food these days.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am from the future.

I love eBay.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The past two weeks have been a roller coaster of thoughts, discussions, and emotions, culminating in another life changing event. It's just over two years since my last such event and I'm hoping that I don't also blunder this one. Given how draining times like this are, I'm glad they are infrequent.

My fortune cookie from last night offered hope in these simple words: You will come to realizations in you [sic] life that change you forever.

Two weeks ago on Valentine's Day I went into work excited about the first of many transition meetings discussing what will happen to dbConnect (part of Towers Perrin Administration Solutions) when it gets merged into a new (still unnamed) joint venture with EDS. Part of this process will include being rebadged as an EDS employee. I came away from the Town Hall meeting with a positive outlook and a pile of transition paperwork.

My dilemma started when I read the EDS Employment Argeement. It includes a random drug testing clause. This was the first time I'd ever seen such a requirement. I wasn't quite sure how to react to it. I knew such a policy wouldn't affect my employment, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way. In that past I've taken issue with non-competition agreements, but the fact that they are time limited and have a built in appeal/approval process makes them palatable. The drug testing clause struck a different, deeper cord.

Continue reading "Standing up to fall down" »

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Super TPS

I got your TPS right here!

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Optimus Prime gets prostate cancer

There should be more PSAs like this.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The current 15 minutes of fame

The NY Times has a write up on the back story to the video.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OASIS allows patents on standards

OASIS is seems has created a new policy that will allow some of their standards to be patented. This pretty much shuts out the possibility of OSS using such a standard. As mentioned in the posting, send email to open@rosenlaw.com to indicate your support against OASIS adopting this new policy.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Baby Names

Explore the rank and frequency of baby names over the decades. Really cool. A couple neat ones to look at are Mike and Wendy.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

rss2email

A simple easy to use RSS reader that sends email when it detects a new item.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why American Idol Works

One question that I hear every time someone starts talking about American Idol is "Where do they find these people?" or something alone the lines of "They have got to be paying that person to audition!". The PDF linked to is entitled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". The items I found most interesting were as follows:

• The bottom quartile inflated performance the most.
• The top quartile underestimated performance.
• After reviewing the work of peers, the bottom quartile ranked performance the same, while the top quartile upped performance rankings.
• After training both the bottom and top quartile better estimated performance.

Granted I've not watched much American Idol, but the really bad singers are always amazed that they are judged so poorly while the good ones are modest and surprised by the kind remarks. I'm also reminded of the one very bad singer who found five other people out on the street that said he sounded good (blind leading the blind).

It's a good read.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some links I've run across lately:

JonesCAM helmet camera

UncommonGoods find anything but ordinary

MoMA online store

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Slava Asipenko's Photos

Slava is a friend of mine who I used to work with at BiT Group. He's quite the photographer and has put up a gallery with some awesome photos. Enjoy.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Firefox

A helpful web page for Firefox users that are having problems viewing a particular web page.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How Hangovers Work

Cool, I didn't know How Stuff Works added a health section. This article on hangovers is a good read. Not that I actually have a hangover, but I was trying to remember the chemical in alcohol that doesn't really exist in sake, making it less prone to give you a hangover. Turns out it is congeners. Another handy URL is a list of all their articles.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Credit Card Debt

Who do you know that doesn't carry a credit card? On one hand a credit card enables you to easily make large purchases but you will easily screw yourself over if you don't pay in full. Some of the updated statistics from the article:

• To a degree, they subsidize the 40 percent of credit card customers who pay in full each month without incurring any fees or charges.
• The typical household has eight cards with $7,500 on them.
• Last year, card issuers made $2.5 billion a month in profit before taxes.
• Last year, they collected $11.7 billion in penalty fees, more than half of the total $21.5 billion in fees they collected from cardholders, according to CardWeb, a research firm.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bangkok Pictures

The first week of November I took a vacation to Bangkok. I had a wonderful time and really got to explore the city. I've finally gotten around to putting up my pictures and getting some descriptions added.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Random notes from the BLU Beowulf Talk

Kurt Keville

The old formula for possible cluster speedup didn't account or map to what ultimately was observed.

Linpack still used

The Space Simulator Cluster

Low latency is still key, different topologies, machine design versus OTSC.

MIT Roofnet

Flash Mob Computing

Co-processor

Cluster administration is still one of the biggest problems

The Aggregate

MPI, custom NICs, Interprocess communication, MOSIX, SMP, RapidIO, Enfuzion

Differences in Theory, Building, and Simulating clusters

File systems PVFS

Green Destiny low power cluster.

Cluster in a box software: OSCAR and HA OSCAR

General information: Beowulf (the original), Linux Clustering, Cluster World,

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Urban Archipelago

If you can wade through the author's ranting and inflammatory remarks, there are some statistics and points worth thinking about. A couple that I found interesting:

And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000.

Ruby's walk to class on the first day of school inspired Norman Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With. In this painting ..., a very black Ruby Bridges is escorted to school by four big white U.S. marshals. The image is powerful because it represents the federal government as an institution and enforcer of reason. ... This image of the federal government is now in a coma. The lawmaking bodies that are clustered in Washington, D.C. ..., no longer form the enlightened center from which reason and justice emanate.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rotation Game

The site says it all. The higher levels offer a good challenge.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Give Bush a Brain

Neat little flash game.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Origami

This guy does creates amazing origami pieces. Most of them use just a single piece of paper.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

Jon Stewart offers some constructive criticism about the media and Crossfire itself. One of my favorite bits:

STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.

CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.

STEWART: You need to go to one.

The thing that I want to say is, when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk...

CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.

STEWART: No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What's wrong with the debates

A history of why the format of today's debates are so structured.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back-room dealing a Capitol trend

Great article about the negative effects the Republican controlled congress are having on the law making process.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Idea to sink your teeth into

This guy is working on a project to create an MP3 player that looks like a PEZ dispenser. Brilliant!

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looking for a bargin?

Information about flea markets that operate in all the fifty states. Maybe a little late for this year, but start planning for next spring :)

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Trafficking in miles

Supposedly a legit way to get cold hard cash for all of those frequent flyer miles. You could probably cash in and buy tickets cheaper and have money left over for other things.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Latex for Word Processor Users

A step by step explanation of how to do everything that Word can do in Latex.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Did a bot get the pot?

An interesting article talking about the possibility of poker bots given the recent increase in online poker playing.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

9/11 Pentagon Hit

A video that calls into question what really happened at the Pentagon.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Doctor Who Webcasts

The BBC currently has three animated Doctor Who adventures. These are excellent quality and really fun to watch.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

350Z Zetail

Finally got around to putting up a pet project I've been working on to capture the various elements of Z styling found around the car. I'll let you be the judge if I've stretched a little too much on some of them.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My first road rally

This long weekend Chris and I went down to Lime Rock to compete in a SCCA Road Rally. This was the first such event for either of us. It was awesome and a little stressful. It's not common for me to glance at my speed every 5 seconds as I'm driving hoping to maintain that elusive CAS (commence average speed). We managed to do fairly well on most of the legs but botched a couple of them really good. Overall we placed fifth out of eleven teams and won second place (out of six) for first timers.

While I've always been tempted to take my car out on a track sometime or do some auto crossing, those are a little more extreme and I could easily see myself trashing the car :) Road rallying still has that competitive feel, but without the adrenaline rush. For now that is a liveable compromise to me.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Paper crane anyone?

An amazing origami piece.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mercedes-Benz Driving Event

Mmmmmm, a chance to drive around in lots of expensive cars on nifty little tracks. I think you'll have a better chance of getting a spot if you happen to know someone who already owns a Benz.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blog Off: Olympic athletes largely barred from posting online diaries

A fine example of why I feel the Olympics has stopped being about the athletes and become another money making opportunity.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

File-Sharing Sites Found Not Liable for Infringement

It has been nice to see that the courts seem to be doing the right thing with P2P technology. Napster's model of storing information on a centralized server definitely put them in legal limbo, but the second generation got it right and the courts have agreed.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nation's Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal

While statistics can be manipulated to favor a particular viewpoint, since this looks to be a reasonable finding, it will spark additional analysis of the situation. The argument that students in charter schools may excel as they continue to progress through the grades could be easily backed up by a follow-up study looking at eighth graders. I'm glad that people are starting to question the benefits of charter schools instead of assuming they are just better.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bananaphone

I, I can't stop laughing!!!!

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kerry You Blew It!

For five days now, as the long-distance arguments between President Bush and Senator John Kerry have focused on the wisdom of invading Iraq, Mr. Kerry has struggled to convince his audiences that his vote to authorize the president to use military force was a far, far cry from voting for a declaration of war.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Less due process

Citing concerns about terrorists crossing the nation's land borders, the Department of Homeland Security announced today that it planned to give border patrol agents sweeping new powers to deport illegal aliens from the frontiers abutting Mexico and Canada without providing the aliens the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Addis Red Sea Ethiopian Restaurant

I've been down to Addis twice now and have really enjoyed the unique cuisine they have to offer. Their sampler for two is a great way to try a bunch of the dishes they offer and get a better feel for what you might want to order in the future.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:50 AM | Permalink

Inside Jack

A great little exploration of the Sun and Microsoft money settlement.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Team America

Next up from the South Park folks.

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Totally GridBag

The joys of the Java GridBag...

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)