musings from the sleep deprived

I once again find myself regretting that I can’t seem to commit to writing anything full length. Yet another nanowrimo gone with just a couple chapters completed. Or at least attempted. So I’m back to just trying to do some writing as often as I can, even if it is an open format and not specifically fiction or whatever. Read more

Just so you know, if you call me, and when I answer the phone, I hear your auto-connection-system ringing you to let you know that your cold calling has yielded a person, I am going to hang up on you. I don’t care who you are, what company you represent or what you’re trying to sell me.

Smoochies,
– me

I’ve had so many people ask me if these pixelart images I’ve made are “legit” or really made block by block, or what have you. So to save myself from having to type in this explanation yet another time, I’ll put it all down here in one place to set the record straight. Read more

c’mon feel the noise. girls, rock your boys…

Didn’t have as much time this week for reading/research. Chaos reigns supreme, it seems…

• Soviet Space Cannons! (popularmechanics)
• That there is a big stone. (bloomberg)
• Do good manners matter in software development? (peerj)
• Aircraft eject at 780mph. (F15einfo)

Nomnomnom… food for the mind.

• A somewhat negative review of Fallout 4. *cries* (arstechnica)
• Breathtakingly gorgeous. <3 nature. (guardian)
• How do we tolerate spicy food? (discover)
• Northern Cygnus over Tibet. (skyandtelescope)
• Carl Sagan (smithsonian)
• Hardest logic puzzle ever (nautil.us)
• Yay! More from Randall Munroe! (gatesnotes)
• OOOooo, story idea. (experiment)
• Rubber hand illusion. (newscientist)
• Reading dead scrolls. (newyorker)
• Publishing industry dark matter. (techcrunch)

I read, you read, we all read for…. ok, that didn’t work as well as I might have liked. Here are some links:

• Mario for AI research! (vice)
• Now we’re talking. Smartwatch that doesn’t break the aesthetic. (fossil) and review (arstechnica)
• This is pretty hilarious. Command line bullshittery. (blog)
• I loves me some meteors. One in Bangkok and one in Poland (guardian)
• Naturally occuring nuclear reactor. (medium)
• Data Scientist interview. Interesting views on data science. (blog)
• This has interesting potential. “Superman fends off alien invasion” game. (polygon)
• Great discussion in “near layman” terms about quantum/classical physics. (guardian)
• Coordination Avoidance in Distributed Databases (thesis)
• A love letter to science (nytimes)
• Do I hate Quicken enough to go CLI? (ledger)
• Maybe when I am a gojillionnaire. (arstechnica)

Some new links for the week. Let James Brown be your guide!

• Catch the biggest waves! (theatlantic)
• What *really* drains your battery? (blog)
• Very interesting. IT ideas that must die. (highscalability)
• The most popular MOOCs (onlinecoursereport)
• Crypto-entrepeneur. (arstechnica)
• Fuel cell cars getting closer. (forbes)
• VC level analysis of the EMC/Dell deal. (a16z)
• I had no idea this was happening. Wow. (fastcodesign)
• beer or wine? (bbc)
• Yay for Prison Architect!! (slate)
• Abandoned Games? Maybe not. (arstechnica)
• NOAA is fudging data, says Rep.Lamar Smith (arstechnica)

This week’s links, courtesy of yo momma’s tasty fried chicken…

• An Amazon response to the Times piece. (medium)
• Technology failure impacts visualized. (ieee)
• Good thing this new fangled thing is more secure. (arstechnica)
• Home automation tinkering (wsj)
• Identity online (about.me)
• I have no idea what to think about this. (bbc)
• Some thoughts on crytography (blog)
• Maybe we are mermaids. (nautil.us)
• $100M in controller design research. Yessssssss. (polygon)
• Finally, the LUCK video from Bethesda. (polygon)
• Drone disabling guns. (popularmechanics)
• Einstein and non-locality. (scientificamerican)

This week’s reading…

• The language used by climate scientists and their skeptics. (arstechnica)
• Recreational Math is important! (nytimes)
• Tech Giants are the Walking Dead (wired)
• I’m *keenly* interested to see where this goes (polygon)
• Screen UIs in the Martian (territory studio)
• The first keylogger! (arstechnica)
• Gegenschein! (skyandtelescope)
• The most prolific wikipedia editor. (priceonomics)
• Very cool bedsheets. (etsy)
• Freeman Dyson is the Man. (thereg)
• REM sleep on demand (berkeley)

And here we go again with another week’s worth of fun reading…

• International border visible from space (nasa)
• Hilarious generic tech recruiter letter (blog)
• TWO player bomb defusing game. Lovely idea. (arstechnica)
• Math is hard, mmmm’kay? (nature)
• Fallout4 S.P.E.C.I.A.L. videos (youtube)
• I’m afraid I don’t have anything to say about this. (guardian)
• Elephant genetics! (discover)
• Gene patents (arstechnica)
• View the Milky Way in many wavelengths! (chromoscope)
• Android TV from nVidia (arstechnica)
• Vulnerabilities in bitcoin (motherboard)

Aaaannnnddd…. another week of links!

• Fallout 4 is getting a lot of pre-release press. *drool* (polygon)
• Inventing languages for a living (npr)
• Neat map of RDBMS evolution over time (hpi.de)
• Yummy mechanical keyboard love. (polygon)
• RIP, Alex King (poststatus)
• And I don’t even drink coffee. More fool me, it seems. (harvard)
• Whoa. worms eating plastic. (stanford)
• Some of the things on this wishlist are AWESOME. (nautilus)

This week’s links!

I should mention, though perhaps for some it goes without saying, that I don’t necessarily agree with all of the things I’m pointing to here. In fact, I’d go so far as to say some of them are just blatantly wrong. However, I point them out because they are interesting reading. Your own brain is going to have to reach its own conclusions about the veracity of the article, its source(s) and whether what they purport should influence your own thinking or opinions. I’m not an expert on (ok, most of) these topics. You may be. If you want heated debate, we can take that up over a beer. In the meantime, I’m just going to throw stuff out there for your amusement, and leave it up to you whether you elect to consume this fare or not. Enjoy…
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Links from this week:

• Robotic legs on helicopters! (alphr)
• Ah, Infocom. You were my first love. (mit.edu)
• And, hilarity ensues around Burning Man (sfist blog)
• Thoughts on AI, brought to you by Google (bbc.com)
• Rubik’s cube solver, *cries* (blog)
• Oh my goodness. Thanks for the link Tom. (chocolatey)
• Ok, this is just weird. Cool, but weird. (guardian)
• The blockchain is mesmerizing to watch (blockchain)
• List of bitcoin/blockchain white papers (startup management)
• Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid, has a new game coming out (ars technica)
• Staggering. scale model of the solar system (universe today)

Enjoy!

More links from this week’s reading…

• Some very insightful points on data science and Big Data. (blog)
• I miss mutt. Was using this actively up until about 3 years ago. (vice.com)
• Don’t forget playtime, kids (for parents). (wash.post)
• Remember Diablo? Here’s some insider discussion from the principals in making that happen. Great insight into the gaming industry around that time, and how Blizzard was involved. (usgamer.net)
• Science. Ah, science. Bloody, science. The king is dead. Long live the king. (facebook post)
• Procedural dungeon creation. Nom nom nom. (gamasutra)
• Ok, now this is a fascinating approach to site-specific passwords. (networkworld)
• This is so chewy, I don’t even know where to begin. And work-relevant, as it happens. (blog)
• And this? This is just hilarious. I can’t form words for laughing so hard. (ars technica)
• Going to have to find this book. I <3 Lem. (nautil.us)

Enjoy!

Here’s my attempt at some weekly content aggregation from stuff I’ve read in the past week that was interesting. Curated from a variety of my RSS feeds. The focus will be on the things I generally read. Tech news, science news, gaming news, TV/movie/media news, etc. Occasionally someone else throws me a link that hits my brainpan too. Without further ado, the inaugural first set of Sapientia Delecti… Read more