(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Darren Anderson, the Chief Technology Officer for Vive Nano. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their future careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.–post-doc–academic-job track.) 1) What is your non-academic… Continue reading PNAS: Darren Anderson, Start-Up Chief Technology Officer
Category: Technology
Laptop Recommendations
As previously noted, the Lenovo ThinkPad X61 tablet that I use for my lectures is limping badly these days (it blue-screened this morning, whee). The options for a direct replacement are pretty limited, but in thinking about it a bit, I realized that I hardly use the tablet functions other than to annotate slides during… Continue reading Laptop Recommendations
Ask the Internet: DSL Service Question
Our home Internet has been out since Friday, which is, as you might imagine, somewhat vexing. The most likely cause is that our DSL modem is dying (it’s nine years old), which raises a technical problem. A few years ago, when we last had a problem requiring a service call, the tech who came out… Continue reading Ask the Internet: DSL Service Question
On Multitasking
After chasing a bunch of kids with cell phones off of his lawn, Kevin Drum has kicked off a discussion of “multitasking”, specifically about whether it’s merely a threat, or a positive menace. He points to an interview with Clifford Nass, a researcher who says his experiments show that nobody is any good at doing… Continue reading On Multitasking
Living in the Future
My talk yesterday at AAAS went well, if too long (the person who was supposed to be flagging the time got distracted, and never gave me any indicators that I was going on, and on, and on… But that’s not really what I want to post about. The thing that triggered this is the speaker… Continue reading Living in the Future
Replacement Tablet PC Options?
I have a Lenovo thinkPad X61 tablet that I use for a bunch of things, but mainly for working on the book in places that aren’t my home or office on campus, and lecturing. I do use the tablet features, primarily for marking up my lecture slides (I have PowerPoint slides that I use for… Continue reading Replacement Tablet PC Options?
Who Are You People?
I gave a talk today on blogs as a tool for science communication (basically the same as this one, with a few minor updates), and got asked “Aren’t the people who read science blogs mostly scientists already?” Which reminded me that it’s been a while since I did a “Who are you people?” post. So,… Continue reading Who Are You People?
Academic Poll: Appropriate Language
We did a lab yesterday that asked students to measure the speed of a ball leaving a spring-loaded launcher in a few different ways. this is a great way to talk about the difference between systematic and random errors and how those are dealt with. As a way of starting that discussion, I asked the… Continue reading Academic Poll: Appropriate Language
The Internet Makes Everything Better
For one obvious example, I’m typing this on a plane– Southwest has started doing wi-fi on some flights, and it is totally worth $5 to be able to web-surf in flight.It would be even better if the flight wren’t packed, so I could type more comfortably, but I’m ok with just reading (once I post… Continue reading The Internet Makes Everything Better
In Which I Join the Century of the Fruitbat
Lookit the shiny: That’s a new Droid X smartphone, and it’s mine. I got it yesterday after discovering the existence of a slightly cheaper “data only” plan that is so secret only about 10% of Verizon Wireless employees know it exists. As my previous phone was a freebie LG flip phone from about three years… Continue reading In Which I Join the Century of the Fruitbat