Lego Case Mod

Because I love all things Lego, here's a Lego case for your computer. Not as complex as the Lego Aircraft Carrier but probably more useful.

Brad Feld's Treadputer

What do you do if you want to spend lots of time running but your too busy working at your computer? Combine the two! I hate running on treadmills - my long stride means I have to use the entire length of the running surface so I'm either running off the end or clipping the front of it. But Feld claims he can get work done using it:

When we first assembled the Treadputer, Ross was skeptical that I would be able to read the screen while walking and assumed that reading while running would be impossible. While the three monitor setup helps a lot, it was surprisingly easy to read while walking or running. We’re running all three monitors at their standard 1280x1024 resolution and haven’t juiced up the font sizes.

While we thought reading would be difficult, typing seemed like it was going to be a real challenge. We started with a shelf built into the treadmill for the keyboard to sit on. After about five minutes, it was clear that the keyboard needed two controls – both height and tilt. To be really usable, especially while running or walking fast, the keyboard needs to be tilted up at a 45 degree angle and be able to be lifted and lowered to suit the person on the treadmill. All I’ve got at this point is a sweat soaked prototype (build out of a cardboard box) – Ross promises me that a real version is coming soon.

To be fair Brad is trying to run a marathon in all 50 states before he's 50 so he probably does a lot more running than I do. Generally I run to get away from my desk and usually use the time to think about difficult problems I'm working on and I usually get my better ideas while I'm running.

Lego Aircraft Carrier

Based on my recent trip to the Midway, this Lego Aircraft Carrier seem unbelievably accurate. Amazingly, it's not a just hollow shell - they built the hanger decks and some of the berthing decks too. To understand the scale, here's a picture of it next to a Lego person. Can't wrap your mind around that? How about a picture of it next to Lego Freedom tower!

Non-intuitive Statistics

Malcolm Gladwell cites an excellent example of non-intuitive statistics:

For instance, for years people in the pharmaceutical business have been aware of the fact that a large number of reported adverse reactions to a particular drug can mean one of two things. The obvious meaning is that a drug is dangerous. The other meaning is that a drug is SO much better and safer and more effective than any other drug in its class that it tends to be given to the sickest and most troubled patients.

If, for example, a drug company company came up with the best anti-depressant in the world--something twice as good as Prozac--we would EXPECT that drug to be associated with, say, more reports of suicide ideation. Why? Because it would be prescribed overwhelmingly to the hardest cases, to the most depressed and suicide-prone sector of the psychiatric population.

Senna's NSX Test Drive

Jalopnik (based on a tip from myself!) has an article on a Senna clip on Google Video where he takes the (then new) Acura NSX for a test drive. Jalopnik didn't find the footage as interesting as some recent video of drifters test driving an NSX and Ferrari F430. Here's what they wrote:

But somehow after having seen the Drift King’s recent adventures in an NSX and watching Jeremy Clarkson attempt to beat his Gran Turismo time in one at Laguna Seca, the footage proved to be anticlimactic. Still, it’s got a pedal-cam, and we love us some pedal cam.

Now the drifting footage is good (really, how did they get that Ferrari?) and Clarkson was just sawing away at the wheel but here's the thing. The footage is less exciting because Senna is a god. He's driving that car in loafers, drifting it around spoon bend and taking 130R flat. The pedal cam lets you see Senna's technique for driving turbocharged cars - he blips the throttle in the middle of corners to keep the turbo boost pressure up. You can hear him doing the same thing in a Formula one car in this qualifying lap of Spa. That was Senna - he was always sizing up all of the angles and driving with total commitment using his sublime natural talent.

USS Midway

I had a few free hours before O'Reilly ETech started last week in San Diego so I took the tour of the USS Midway Museum. The "museum" is actually an aircraft carrier that was decommissioned in 1992. You start out walking over a gangplank to the hanger deck which has a few aircraft in it and get a headset for the self guided audio tour. I then walked around the enlisted sleeping quarters and the anchor in the forecastle. Since I mostly wanted to see the flight deck and the aircraft, I skipped the rest of the below decks tour. The flight deck was probably the most impressive part of the tour - they had a variety of aircraft (F14 Tomcat, F18 Hornet, A6 Intruder, a Sea King helicopter etc) on display. There were also displays with guided presentations of the arresting gear (for landing aircraft on the carrier), the "Meatball" that the pilots use to judge their glidepath to the flight deck and the catapult system for launching aircraft. From there, I took the tour up to the bridge and the flight operations center where the Air Boss directs traffic. It being San Diego, people were asking questions that started with "When Maverick and Goose buzzed the tower..." but it was entertaining anyway. The staff of the museum were formerly in the Navy so they have an excellent depth of knowledge on the topic - in my case, the fellow showing us around the bridge and flight operations center was a former anti-submarine warfare helicopter pilot who had served aboard several carriers. There are a series of steep ladders to get up to the bridge - it makes you wonder how people did it during combat operations. One thing is for sure, I would not have lasted long as I'm quite tall and there are plenty of places to hit your head on. I couldn't even stand up straight in most of the enclosed spaces. From the bridge, you can see across the harbour to the USS Indianapolis which is an operational carrier. On my way out, I headed down to the mess hall and some of the living quarters below the hanger bay. Wow. Low ceilings - after an hour and half of this my back was fairly sore. There is also a Russian nuclear submarine tour nearby in the harbour but I figured that would have even less head room so I waved off. My Flickr photos from the USS Midway

Star Wars Holiday Special

Someone posted the Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978 on YouTube - catch it before it gets taken down. It's teeeeerrible! If you can watch more than five minutes I'll be impressed - apart from the regular Star Wars cast it's got Bea Arthur, Art Carney and Jefferson Starship. How can it not be good? Here's the blurb from IMDB:

Chewie and Han Solo are trying to get home to Chewie's family, so they can celebrate Lifeday, a holiday that is celebrated on Chewbacca's home planet Kashyyyk. Chewie and Han Solo are trying to get to the planet where Chewie's family is waiting for him, but the empire is out searching for the rebels, giving everyone a hard time. While we are waiting we get a look at the everyday life of a wookie family. We meet all the familiar characters from Star Wars and we are introduced to Bobba Fett during a small cartoon. We also pay a visit to the Cantina and meet all the monsters again.

YouTube - Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

ETech 2006: Roomba Fighting Video

I shot two videos of the Roomba Fighting event at ETech 2006. There is an article here on hacking your Roomba vacuum robot and apparently a forthcoming O'Reilly book on the subject. Once it's all over, the winner can clean up the ring...

Malcolm Gladwell on the two kinds of creativity

Malcolm Gladwell gave a talk at Columbia recently on the different types of creativity - you can listen to it here. He claims that the standard prototype for creativity is the "natural" who acheives success early on in their career - he gives as examples Picasso, the inventors of Tylenol, Mozart and "The Eagles" (I'd add Einstein and Heisenberg as further examples). Gladwell argues that there is another type of creativity for people who acheive success (often great success) later on in their careers. His prototype for this type of creativity is Fleetwood Mac and Cezanne. Fleetwood Mac released 14 albums (which Gladwell describes as "terrible") before they produced one of the best selling albums in history. Likewise, Cezanne painted his most valuable paintings late in his career. The take away from this is that society is prone to praise those who acheive success early on but those who are slow starters are often never given the chance - Gladwell argues that Fleetwood Mac might not even make a single album in today's music business which is almost certainly true. On the other hand, it's not that easy to tell the difference between someone who is going to acheive success later on in life and someone who won't acheive it at all. Gladwell hopes that there is someway for society to make the cost of letting people have enough time to succeed low enough that they are given the chance. I kind of doubt it but I think / hope the people who will really have talent and believe in themselves will continue on.

Tech Talks From Google Video

Like a lot of companies, Google has speakers (internal and external) give talks - unlike a lot of companies, Google has put them up on Google Video:

Google TechTalks are designed to disseminate a wide spectrum of views on topics ranging from Current Affairs, Science, Engineering, Humanities, Business, Law, Entertainment, Medicine, and the Arts. ... Authors@Google is a speaker series where thought-provoking, Zeitgeist-making, trend-setting authors come to the Googleplex to read from their works and share their thoughts with us. The following authors have agreed to release their talks to the world on Google Video.

I don't think "Zeitgeist-making" is a real term but several of the talks do look pretty interesting.

Free Weekend WiFi for TMobile Customers

This is neat - if your a TMobile cell customer, you can now use any of the TMobile WiFi hot spots for free on the weekends. We'll see how long this lasts but I do use TMobile so I'll see if it really works.

Defragging your work week

I've been experimenting with ways of getting more done with my days lately along the lines of Jeremy Zawodny's Removing Distractions at Work. Mostly this is because I have become desperately busy and as a software engineer, anytime your not at your desk building things you have to ask yourself why. My focus has been on eliminating interruptions that cause me to have to context switch my attention away - extended periods of focus are key. No single interruption is a problem but in aggregate, you find yourself spending a lot of time getting back to where you started. Along those lines:

• No IM Clients and check email periodically - every few hours
• Don't answer the phone unless it's something you know you have to deal with - once people can't get you on IM, they start calling. Making people walk to your desk usually filters out the frivolous stuff.
• Strictly limit the number of meetings you go to and know when to eject! I'm a big believer that meetings should be an event with a fixed agenda and a specific goal. The reality is that meetings have become so common place that people are often late or do other things in them. I've also noticed that if a meeting is scheduled for an hour it invariably lasts an hour - people will just fill the available space. Having short 10 minute meetings is usually a better way to go. Also, the number of people at a meeting is usually inversely correlated with how useful the meeting is.
• Make yourself available for distractions at least part of the week - this isn't about ignoring people, it's about defragging your schedule.
• Work early mornings and weekends - zig when everyone else zags

Del.icio.us Wish Lists

Amazon seems to be doing some major renovations on Wishlists these days which is great but they are evidently having some teething problems. So now I just tag everything I want for my birthday (hint hint!) in del.icio.us with the tag wish. Now you can get an RSS feed of my wants and whims ;-)

Flickr Day in the Life

Flickr is having a "Day in the Life" Event - take 5 photos on March 20th and submit them to be part of the fun.

TrailRunnerX

Brad Feld was asking about online tools for runners and I suggested TrailRunnerX. It's a mac application that will track your trailrunning (using a GPS watch) and suggest routes for specific mileage. It will even download directions into your iPod.

More del.icio.us Reading Lists

I wrote before about using tagging srrvices like del.icio.us as an OPML Reading List Generator - apparently what I was looking for (a way to get all the feeds with a specific tag ) is now possible (it's just a proof of concept so I still hope that it is added to del.icio.us). Also, Dave Winer has opened up a working group for a specification for OPML 2.0 - this is excellent news because most of the complaints about OPML are about the spec and aspects of the format that are being addressed. The one thing that OPML has going for it is that it's (fairly) widely deployed. Given this, I'll probably try and see if I can get ETags added to the spec along the lines of my earlier ideas of having ping state for RSS Reading Lists and Directories stored in OPML.