Ethan Zuckerman (who is on the Wikimedia Advisory Board) has a post discussing Wikipedia’s recent fundraising drive, with some comparative numbers: In the past 17 days, the [Wikimedia] Foundation has raised over $478,000 in online gifts. That’s a pretty amazing number, on the one hand, and a concerning one, on the other hand. If Global… Continue reading Wikipedia and Charity
Category: Technology
Night of the Living Tablet PC
I ordered a tablet PC a little while back (Lenovo X61, with all the options maxed out, because, well, book advance). It shipped a couple of days ago, so I’ve been tracking it via UPS, where it has experience some odd delays. The strangest by far is this message from today: LOUISVILLE, KY, US 10/31/2007… Continue reading Night of the Living Tablet PC
Online Dialogue About Nanotechnology
While I’m passing on announcements from my email, there’s an online event scheduled for Tuesda and Wednesday about nanotechnology and the consumer: Nanotechnology–the ability to measure, see, manipulate and manufacture things between 1 and 100 nanometers (1 billionth of a meter)–is seen as the driver of a new industrial revolution emerging with the development of… Continue reading Online Dialogue About Nanotechnology
Tablet PC Query
So, for the last several months, I’ve had a loaner tablet PC from our ITS department, that I used when teaching in the Winter and Spring terms. It’s a Toshiba, and a few years old, but it worked pretty well for what I was doing. Since I’ve got some book money coming in, I’m looking… Continue reading Tablet PC Query
The Job Hunt
Now that I’m back in College Station, it’s time to start getting applications ready for the great job search. I don’t know how it is in other fields, but in math/physics, this generally involves three to four letters of recommendation, a CV, a research statement, sometimes a teaching statement and maybe an annotated bibliography. In… Continue reading The Job Hunt
New Toys
Well, I’m back in Texas and just in time for Steve Jobs to introduce new toys I can’t afford. At the risk of turning Chad’s blog into an Apple advertisement, every time I pass an Apple store, it takes significant willpower to not walk out of there with a new iPhone. I find it endlessly… Continue reading New Toys
Thoughts on Clarke’s Laws
Speaking of dubious and oft-cited “Laws”, I’ve run into a number of citations of “Clarke’s Laws” recently. Of course, these were apparently subliminal mentions, because I can’t seem to locate any of them again, but it put the subject in my mind, which is partly why I was primed to be annoyed by the subject… Continue reading Thoughts on Clarke’s Laws
Query: After-Market iPod Connection?
So, back in November, I bought a new car, which came with a six-month free trial of Sirius Satellite Radio. That’s about to run out, and while it does have its good points, I’m not really interested in paying money to listen to the radio. What I would prefer is to be able to play… Continue reading Query: After-Market iPod Connection?
Dorky Poll: Science In Your Lifetime
I’ve got another long lab this afternoon, so I’m stealing an idea for an audience-participation thread from James Nicoll: Name five things we didn’t know in the year that you were born that make the universe a richer place to think about. This is actually a really interesting exercise for showing how rapidly the world… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Science In Your Lifetime
Controls to Indicators
We’ve been having some problems with our DSL service at Chateau Steelypips again, which has gotten me thinking about the design of devices that are annoying to use. It occurs to me that you might use a sort of control to indicator ratio as a measure of how irritating a device is to use. This… Continue reading Controls to Indicators