| papertygre | 2012-12-21 20:12 | Reset[August 2009]In the midst of some housecleaning. Sorry about the dust. | { Leave a comment | Permalink } |
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| papertygre | 2009-10-19 09:21 | (no subject) |
| papertygre | 2009-02-12 09:04 | 1234567890 dayTomorrow at 3:31 PM Pacific it will be 1234567890 in unix time. |
| papertygre | 2009-02-04 17:03 | Glass sculpture by Rebecca CooteStumbled across this site by accident. Some nice stuff. Also, "kiln-formed glass" sounds highly sophisticated. |
| papertygre | 2009-02-04 10:16 | Ponzi economyIn other economic ideas... Tim O'Reilly writes about The Biggest Ponzi Scheme of Them All:The current financial debacle is really ... a crisis of overgrowth of financial assets relative to growth of real wealth [quoting Herman Daly]Having a roughly transhumanist outlook, I like to think that growth of wealth is ultimately unlimited, but I am also a realist and believe it is a bad idea to outpace your resources. Whenever policy and business conventions make it really easy to ignore reality, watch out. And be nice to the countries that lend you money: Thirty years ago, the leverage of the investment banks was like 4-to-1, 5-to-1. Today, it's 30-to-1. This is not just a change of numbers. This is a change of fundamental thinking. | { Leave a comment | Permalink } |
| papertygre | 2009-02-03 10:40 | Contrarianism in a recessionArticle about how pursuing growth in a recession can lead to an increase in market share, which is the intuitive result if you are advertising and innovating when everyone else is cutting back! Apparently Trader Joe's, MTV, and the iPod were all introduced during recessions.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/2369508 | { Leave a comment | Permalink } |
| papertygre | 2009-01-25 16:26 | Power of two year | { Leave a comment | Permalink } |
| papertygre | 2009-01-24 19:05 | Oddly fascinating bloghttp://www.aharrisonbarnes.com/This post for example: Cheap Is Expensive: A Marine Disaster. Excerpt: When we finally got the boat launched and started going through the harbor, everything seemed like it was going pretty well. The anchor was rested in the front of the boat and we had to travel very slowly because the front end of the boat was practically in the water. Within about five minutes I was feeling very good about everything but then saw a boat screaming towards me with lights flashing. Since I had never captained a boat before in my life I could not imagine what was going on. I thought I might be about ready to go to prison due to the mooring sitting on the front of the boat.Hard to guess if these stories are true, as they are almost equally convincing and farfetched. But they are entertaining and often sort of inspiring also. |
| papertygre | 2009-01-09 16:46 | Leadership in Software DevelopmentWatched a Google tech talk by Mary Poppendieck with the above title. Interesting bits for me:( Read more... ) |
| papertygre | 2008-12-22 13:46 | Browser switcher appThis weekend I made a utility for Windows that sits in your notification tray and lets you select your default browser out of a menu. Screenshot:Yeah, this is not very exciting, but it has been driving me crazy for a long time that there was no easy way to do this, since I need email links to click through to IE at work, and want them to go to Firefox at home (and during lunch break). I applied for a sourceforge project for it, but it still needs some finishing touches before I'll feel ready to publish it, like some memory cleanup niceties and a configuration editor and a Readme. Edit: The sourceforge project was approved and now has a URL: http://browserswitcher.sourceforge.net/ Update again (12/23): Source and installer uploaded! |
| papertygre | 2008-12-16 22:11 | Android dev phone 1I ordered the Android Dev Phone 1 (unlocked version of HTC G1) and it arrived yesterday. My AT&T SIM works in it though I can only get Edge. It is very slick and shiny and thoroughly net centric. Posting from LJ client available in Marketplace. I want to write a Pyramid solitaire game for it - looks like none is available yet! |
| papertygre | 2008-12-10 18:55 | Adhesives for Velcro/ReflectixI am trying two different adhesives to attach velcro (woven plastic) to the Reflectix panels (aluminum) for my 12' yurt's cover: Polyurethane hot glue and VHB double-stick tape. I have 9 panels, each about 4' x 6', which need velcro applied around the perimeter of one side - about 20' per panel. I will split these panels up between the two adhesives, both to see which one will perform better, and to add variety to the tedious assembly task :)3M™ VHB™ Tape 5952: An industrial strength double-sided tape. $90 for one 36-yard roll (1" wide), which should be enough to complete five panels. HiPURformer™ hot melt glue: Apparently the only product of its kind, this is a cordless glue gun and cartridge system. Polyurethane glue is a very durable adhesive (most common brand name is Gorilla Glue). The MP75 formulation supports multiple materials including metal (as opposed to being specifically for wood like the other formulations) and sets up in 75 seconds after application. Base kit is $100; each $11 cartridge produces about 71 linear feet of bead, which should do about 1 1/2 panels, so 3 tubes should be enough for 4 panels. Advantages of this system are that it is flexible and potentially useful on other woodworking projects, and also less expensive once the gun kit is purchased; disadvantages are that glue is messier to apply than tape, and this particular kind of glue has only a 6 month shelf life. |
| papertygre | 2008-11-02 20:51 | Yurt and hiking in SBThis weekend I mainly started my yurt cover and went on a hike. Didn't do anything special for Halloween -- potential plans fizzled at the last minute, so I went home and hit the sewing machine, which turned out to be a satisfying substitute.My finger is doing better. All the scabs are off, but it's a bit of a funny shape now, and the fingernail is still too short. Although the wound appears to be healed, I think the nerves are screwed up, because when something touches it (like if I try to type with it), there is a diffuse tingly feeling like pins and needles. I'll be seeing the doctor again a week from Monday, definitely will ask him about this. --- For the yurt cover I am making 9 panels of 4' x 6' each: one side white canvas and the other side Reflectix. (The canvas should be more aesthetically pleasing for an interior wall than silver, and should protect the Reflectix from having its aluminum coating scratched off by the lattice bolts.) It will be held together with velcro. One frustrating thing, after I cut the 18 yards of canvas into 9 pieces and put them through the wash to pre-shrink them, they shrank almost 10% in length! So even though I had factored in some buffer, they were still several inches short. So I ordered some cotton twill with a neat "snow camo" pattern from The Rain Shed, and I am sewing 8" of this onto each canvas panel to make up the missing length. Result: there will be a stripe of a few inches of camo around the bottom inside of the yurt. I have never worked with such large and thick materials on a sewing machine before. So far so good, this weekend I prepared 7 of the 9 panels with the camo strip, and I created a sample of the velcro attachment with small pieces of canvas and Reflectix, so the theory seems sound. --- Hike was San Ysidro trail in Montecito. I went by myself around 3:30 today. Sad to say it was the first hike I've tried since moving here a year ago. I managed 1.5 miles of the 2 mile goal before turning back because it was getting dark and I am out of shape. The air had a strong sweet smell, like cedar or pollen. I wondered if it was just mulchy ground, because the soil appeared to be black. Many interesting plants (including cactus!) and overhanging rock formations. Overall worthwhile, and I am pleased to learn there are numerous hikes available within a 20 minute drive, but I wish I had other people to go with. |
| papertygre | 2008-05-26 22:17 | SurfingDamien and I went surfing this afternoon - first time. We bought wetsuits yesterday and rented surfboards today. We went with Andrew from work, who'd done it one or two dozen times before. We went to "Mondo's Beach," which is just south of Carp and is noted to have good beginner conditions. The waves were 2-4 feet high and not too frequent. Today Andrew stood up while riding a wave for the first time, he was very excited about it. I caught about three waves and rode them to the beach, but I couldn't stand up more than on my hands and knees. That was definitely fun. The part I didn't like so much was the paddling - my arms are not in any shape to do all that paddling! I was exhausted after just a couple of minutes and took long breaks just lying on my board. Also, the salty water was way more unpleasant than I remember from swimming in the ocean as a kid. It sticks in your mouth and makes you thirsty, stings in your eyes (or maybe that was the sunscreen), and it makes you nauseous if you swallow it. Damien seemed to have trouble just lying on his board without unbalancing and falling off, so he never caught any waves. We were on big foam beginner's boards, which are supposedly easier to deal with for newbies, but talking to another coworker tonight, it sounded like the suitability of the boards might have been an obstacle.So, D isn't excited about surfing at this point and I'm only mildly positive, but it seems like there are some other water sports we could try, now that we have wetsuits. I'm pretty interested in windsurfing actually. Damien mentioned SCUBA diving. After getting back to Carp and showering at Andrew's house, we went to the Brew Pub (what we call the Island Brewing Company storefront - it is a little independent brewery in the middle of town that work people like go to) and there was a big event going on: it was Paul's (the founder's) birthday. You could get free refills on beer just for asking, and there was a huge buffet, possibly potluck. There was a large band playing live music (the "Brewery Boys") and Paul was on drums. We had some chocolate cake, hamburgers/hotdogs, strawberries and brie, and beer while greeting other local folks and listening to the music. |
| papertygre | 2008-05-03 19:16 | Flickr videoDamien at stevens pass on a lift Originally uploaded by papertygre Today I uploaded about five videos that have been hanging around on my camera memory card for a long time with nowhere to go. They are at the top of my photostream. Here is my favorite one, of | { Leave a comment | Permalink } |
| papertygre | 2008-04-27 18:48 | Female leadershipInteresting excerpts from Harvard Business Review article Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership.The existence of a distinct "female" leadership type (page 4): Consider, for example, journalist Michael Sokolove's profile of Mike Krzyzewski, head coach of the highly successful Duke University men's basketball team. As Sokolove put it, "So what is the secret to Krzyzewski's success? For starters, he coaches the way a woman would. Really."The double bind (page 3): In the language of psychologists, the clash is between two sets of associations: communal and agentic. Women are associated with communal qualities, which convey a concern for the compassionate treatment of others. They include being especially affectionate, helpful, friendly, kind, and sympathetic, as well as interpersonally sensitive, gentle, and soft-spoken. In contrast, men are associated with agentic qualities, which convey assertion and control. They include being especially aggressive, ambitious, dominant, self-confident, and forceful, as well as self-reliant and individualistic. The agentic traits are also associated in most people's minds with effective leadership -- perhaps because a long history of male domination of leadership roles has made it difficult to separate the leader associations from the male associations.The article's primary topic is whether there really is a "glass ceiling." The thesis is that according to the research, there is no absolute ceiling, but instead there is just about equal resistance to promoting women at all levels of management. So it suggests that a better metaphor than an invisible barrier might be a labyrinth, and it leverages the metaphor in an upbeat way by suggesting that research and education might make it easier for women to solve the labyrinth by revealing the layout as if viewed from above. |
| papertygre | 2008-01-18 00:31 | Speech-to-text utility ideaSomething that I think would be useful: A device or software that does the following: Lets you record speech -- lectures, notes while driving, interviews, diary entries -- and auto-transcribes the speech into text. Then presents the text in an interface that allows you to click on any word and hear the audio that was the source of that word. So if the translator couldn't match a word, it will show in the text version as question marks or something, and you can click on the question marks to hear the source audio and then you can fill in the missing word. Or if a word looks funny and you think the translator got it wrong, you can click on the word and hear it, and then make a correction. Bonus points if the translator can be trained from the corrections.This would be an improvement over other transcription interfaces I've seen because you normally seem to have to listen through from the beginning to get to the part you want to hear, which is time consuming, since you can't skim audio the way you can skim text. (Jott is good, but designed for short messages, and I am imagining something designed for long-form content.) The ready availability of the transcription process would make it actually useful to record things like class lectures, or to keep an audio diary, because you can search and skim through the material; or if you want to hear a particular passage, you can select as much text as you want to hear and issue a Play command. Maybe the interface could be like OneNote and let you build up a reference library, by maintaining time/date metadata for each item and letting you add tags (aside -- am I weird to want hierarchical tags? or put another way, multi-folder categorization.) |
| papertygre | 2007-12-09 22:19 | The drive down.Finished the drive from Seattle to Santa Barbara today. We planned it over 5 days with stops at 2 ski resorts. Damien drove the whole way because I'm inexperienced at driving manual, and he thought I might forget to clutch when braking on the highway. We packed his little coupe with 3 bags for each of us (suitcase, backpack, and ski clothes), ski boots, skis and poles, tire chains, some food, our desktop computers (sealed in XXL ziploc bags and concealed under a blanket), and a bundle of cat supplies (bed, food, litter, catnip). Damien didn't think we could fit it all but I unleashed my mad tetris skillz. On the drive, I used the cell modem on my laptop to navigate in real time, research and book accommodations, etc.Day 1, Seattle to Timberline Lodge, OR. Should have been 227 miles (4 hours) but since I-5 was closed between Seattle and Portland due to flooding last Monday, we had to detour through Yakima, adding 3 hours. Got in after midnight. Day 2, Thursday, skiing at Timberline. Overcast and snowing lightly; although limited lifts and runs were open because of early season, it was not crowded and the conditions for skiing were great. We stayed at the Lodge the night before and after, which is an awesome place and only a little expensive. The resort as a whole seemed very pleasant and well-run - I wish it were easier to get there. Day 3, Friday, driving from Timberline to Lake Tahoe, 11 hours. Left at 9:30 AM, arrived at 8:30 PM (not bad time, given that this included driving breaks). Google Maps sent us along some pretty gnarly back roads, which was probably more direct but also slower and more uncertain of cell signal. Day 4, Saturday, skiing at Heavenly. I picked this resort out of the large number of options there because it appeared to be the largest one. We stayed at the Blue Lake Inn, which was cheap and close to the gondola, but pretty eh in quality. On the mountain, it was foggy and snowing. Visibility was OK but got steadily worse over time. This is apparently unusual; the standard for Tahoe area skiing is "bluebird days," we were told. Not many trails or lifts were open since there wasn't a lot of coverage yet. And it was COLD! But the snow was silky soft under our skis. The slopes were also really crowded, since it was, coincidentally, the first day of the season to have fresh natural snow. The people we met were friendly - on the lifts we talked to folks from as close as the north side of the lake, to as far away as Bordeaux, France. We got a late start, getting off the gondola around 11:30, but by 3:00 (almost closing time) we had skied all the runs multiple times and were losing feeling in our fingers and toes, so we were ready to quit. Day 5, Sunday, drive from Tahoe to Santa Barbara. 8 hours, 10 AM to 6:30 PM. We stopped at a little coffee shop on the way in Avila Beach - "Joe Mama" - because I was curious to try coffee from a Clover machine (not bad). Rather than drive with our cat, we checked him in to the Airpet Hotel on our way out, and booked him on the Monday morning non-stop flight from Seattle to SBA through Alaska Airlines Animal Express (the Airpet Hotel people said they could drive him over for the flight). I thought this would be the least traumatic way for him to travel, and considering (a) how full the car was, (b) how pressed for time we were to get all the driving and skiing done, and (c) the uncertainty of lodging when you are traveling with a pet, driving with him would probably have been traumatic for us as well. It was a crazy idea to combine skiing and moving, but we managed to do it, which is satisfying. And now we are only a little tired and a little achy/bruised. | { Leave a comment | Permalink } |
| papertygre | 2007-12-09 21:43 | A quote about leadershipJohn Kinde, Humor Specialist:An amazing thing I’ve learned after presenting improv workshops for more than ten years is this: There is no such thing as a weak improv player. There are only skilled improv planers who are not skilled enough to make the weaker players look good. When a worker has substandard performance, the question is: Are YOU good enough to lead, motivate, and work with them. You are responsible. Make them look good. Bring out their best. This isn’t a gimmick. This is a reality of life. The responsibility and power lies with you. Lead by example. What would the world be like if everyone was present for you, if everyone listened to you, if everyone treated you like a genius, if everyone agreed with you, if everyone trusted you. What would it be like if each of your employees experienced that kind of world. It’s your job to be the "someone" who creates that experience for them. Every choice you make affects other people.(emphasis mine) |
| papertygre | 2007-12-02 22:25 | Too much of a good thingDamien and I decided to drop everything and go skiing today. We knew Mount Baker was open, and I got a snow report email yesterday that said there would be good conditions in the morning. So we got up at 6:30 (couldn't quite manage 5:30) and loaded D's car in the rain. He has a little Honda Prelude coupe, the back seats of which fold down to reveal a pass-through to the trunk, and our skis fit nicely inside. We also fortunately had some tire chains (well, tire cables) that we went out and bought last night.( Story and pictures ) |