Proxy Bookmarklet January 31, 2012
Posted by stuffilikenet in Geek Stuff, Video.add a comment
So You Want Help With Android Programming… January 29, 2012
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Brilliant words, Geek Stuff, Uncategorizable.add a comment
I alternate between loving this video for saying all the things I wish I could say, and someone saying them. I am somewhat conflicted.
Exciting update: there are lots of excellent resources there at forum.xda-developers.com, including the reminder that “Despite the name, Android will not help you create an unstoppable army of emotionless robot warriors on a relentless quest to cleanse the earth of the scourge of humanity.” Also, the forum moderators are disinclined to let n00Bz post questions, so if it hasn’t been asked already you are honked. I have always wondered how anyone is going to learn when NEW questions are discouraged.
I mean come on, this isn’t church.
Octopus Mouse Holder January 29, 2012
Posted by stuffilikenet in Octopus, Toys.add a comment
Oh, yeah. This is a beautiful little sculpture with a purpose: it keeps one infant from shutting down Sesame Street by grabbing the mouse on the media center and making the other cry. From Instructables.
My Stepdaughter Turns 16 This Year January 24, 2012
Posted by stuffilikenet in Uncategorizable.add a comment
I can’t wait.
New Weighted-Key Digital Piano! January 23, 2012
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My wife took advantage of a terrific deal on this Casio CDP-120 88 Weighted-Key Digital Piano
I am delighted. Not only is it light enough to stand on end in the corner when not in use, it sounds great and, although the action is a trifle heavier than I’m used to it still has nice enough responsiveness. It has five sounds, reverb and chorus and a USB connection on the back which I am told will allow me to use other voices as a MIDI-type controller with Propellerhead Reason 4.0 Recording Software
I do love to freak out the stepchildren. The only thing creepier than a mad stepfather playing Bach is one playing “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, but they probably don’t get the movie reference yet.
Look for references to public-domain sheet music here later.
Win CE Audible Spanish Flashcards January 20, 2012
Posted by stuffilikenet in Applications, Awesome, Brilliant words, Geek Stuff, Publishing Tools, Toys.add a comment
This is an update of previous work on the Win CE Spanish Flashcards program I wrote earlier. I find that driving while using this I would look away too often from the road, which is stupidly unsafe. The new and improved program here will speak the word displayed in a sexy Spanish lady’s voice while displaying the word. You can turn it off by pressing the Options button on the bottom left of the screen. Everything else works as before.
I ran into a nasty little problem while creating the .CAB file which contains the installation, since I have a thousand sound files, which is more than the cabwiz.exe which comes with Visual Studio 2008 can accommodate…and the error code for this defect is completely unhelpful, in the grand Microsoft tradition:
Error: File c:\users\[me]\appdata\local\temp\wizbbe1.inf contains DirIDs, which are not supported
ERROR: The Windows CE CAB Wizard encountered an error. See the output window for more information.
It turns out that VS2008’s cabwiz.exe chokes on more than 998 included files, and this application has 1057. The workaround is to download the SDK for Windows Mobile 6 and use the cabwiz.exe (and the cabwiz.ddf) from that version instead (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\SmartDevices\SDK\SDKTools\CabWiz.exe and CabWiz.ddf with the ones under C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\Tools\CabWiz). No problem once I had done this.
Here is the all-new singing and dancing Win CE Spanish Flashcards App.
Sci-fi Films Should Use This Video From ISS January 19, 2012
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The ISS passing over central Africa to sunup over southern Madagascar.
Want! (part three) January 18, 2012
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Octopus, Toys.add a comment
By Maximo Riera.
Serial Killer Did Obey One Law, At Least January 16, 2012
Posted by stuffilikenet in Brain, Science, Uncategorizable.add a comment
I know this is supposed to be a happy blog, but arxiv.org is hosting the pdf of “Stochastic modeling of a serial killer”, which is exactly what it sounds like. A serial killer (very successful serial killer:54 known victims) murder spree is plotted as a function of time and the units are number of neuronal firings between acts of murder. It produced a curve that can be nicely fitted to the data, indicating the compulsion to kill is based on number of firings and obeys the power law distributions:
“Simkin and Roychowdhury used their model to simulate the pattern of firing in a brain to see how often it surpasses a given threshold long enough for a murder to take place.
In the model, they used a 2 millisecond period as the fundamental time step, that’s about the time between firings in a real neuron. And they simulated some 100 billion time steps, equivalent to 12 years or so, that’s about the period that Chikatilo was active.
The results are remarkably similar to the distribution of Chikatilo’s real murders and Simkin and Roychowdhury speculate that it would be relatively straightforward to introduce a realistic correction factor that would make the fit closer.
They say: "One could enhance the model by introducing a murder success rate. That is with certain probability everything goes well for the killer and he is able to commit the murder as he planned. If not, he repeats his attempt the next day. And so on."
This model leads to an interesting insight into the nature of serial killing. It suggests that the likelihood of another killing is much higher soon after a murder than it is after a long period has passed.”
Neurology is a lot more of a science than either psychology or psychiatry. So there. And don’t get me started on sociology.
