Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, September 29, 2003

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Measuring the speed of light with chocolate: "The only equipment you need for this experiment is a microwave, a ruler and chocolate, cheese or any other food that melts. [...] There will be some melted hot spots and some cold solid spots in the chocolate. The distance between the hot spots is half the wavelength of the microwaves, and the frequency of the microwaves will often be printed on the back of the oven. The speed of light is equal to the wavelength multiplied by the frequency of an electromagnetic wave [...] So from this simple experiment, and some easy math, you can work out the speed of light [...]" (via Slashdot)

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Nokia Snapshot of the Future: "In a move analysts say is an indicator of what's to come in the camera-phone business, Nokia releases a series of imaging products, including a necklace, digital picture frame and kaleidoscope." [Wired News]

Managed to publish to .Mac with iBlog -- Comment()
I made a small test of publishing to .Mac with iBlog, trying out the same categories as here. Here is the result. If iBlog could handle publishing to the Radio Userland server, I would switch my weblog application. The user interface of iBlog is really nice. However, I would like to modify the appearance of the weblog so that it would be similar to this one. How hard this would be, I wonder.

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Two new Lisa Rein songs online: "Lisa Rein has posted two more of her original songs to her site: Hiding and It's Alright. Both very good, both under a Creative Commons license." [Boing Boing Blog]

iBlog from Apple? -- Comment()
John Robb writes: "Paolo has heard that Apple is giving away iBlog (from lifli Software) to people that renew their .Mac accounts. Backup Brain has heard this too. [...] Paolo's demo weblog looks like lifli has done a good job at integration with other .Mac tools. There is no doubt in my mind that people will like this tool much better than Apple's current Homepage tool." [John Robb's Weblog]

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Java for Bioinformatics: "Bioinformaticians and biological scientists have to sift through a lot of data. Visualization helps. While Perl has been a mainstay of bioinformatics, several projects and APIs in the Java world are making Java a viable development language. Stephen Montgomery surveys the scene. [O'Reilly Network ONJava.com, via A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

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Linux for Poets: "Once upon a time Unix used to be for geeks only -- the platform of choice for godlike SysAdmins and obsessed hackers who muttered strange phrases and giggled over inside jokes, as they swigged gallon after gallon of Mountain Dew. [...] Then a strange thing happened: Unix started to get friendlier. [...] Finally, that bastion of the Hide the Moving Parts Club, Apple, broke all tradition and built a lovely and sophisticated operating system, Mac OS X, on top of a Unix platform. [...] Today's Unix: slicker, safer, smaller, better...but push aside the fancy graphics and built-in functionality and simple installation, and you're still going to be faced, at one time or another, with a simple command line and dire warnings about what not to do." [Burningbird]

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Your photos are beautiful...: "The problem with film photography is that the costs can be prohibitive, especially if you use professional film and development. With the digital camera, there were no costs involved and I felt free to experiment, try new things, explore new territory. By doing this, I was able to find not only the type of photography I enjoy -- journalistic photography, not what is known as 'art' photography -- but also to post examples online and get excellent, brilliant, and spot on feedback from readers." [Burningbird]

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Pentax Optio33LF: "Pentax UK has today announced the Optio33LF. It has a 3.2 megapixel CCD, 3X optical zoom lens and advanced PENTAX image processing technologies. It also offers the advantage of a handy swivelling LCD monitor [...]" [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier: "Just started reading Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier. He write a lot about actual risks versus perceived risks. [...] PS It's interesting to note that traffic accidents account for about 10,000 deaths a year in Japan compared to 30,000+ deaths due to suicide. You're 3 times more likely to commit suicide than get in a deadly traffic accident in Japan." [Joi Ito's Web]

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Proposal for a collaborative learning system: "As a self taught programmer I have always been interested in finding better and faster ways of educating myself on any subject. In my experience I have found the biggest blockade to learning is the quality of information. The problems I most commonly encounter are: Assumes you already have studied a certain technique/skill/area but fails to mention this. [...] Wastes time explaining a different subject to the one it is meant to be explaining. [...] There is no structure across different documents which often leaves gapping holes in a students knowledge." [kuro5hin.org]