Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
The CVCL (Computational Visual Cognition Lab) at MIT presents a gallery of perceptual image illusions. The hybrid faces are very interesting. They combine high and low spatial frequency information to create a face that changes with viewing distance. (via Ian Rowland via reddit)
Doh! Right after posting this, I realized that Steve Hoelzer beat me to the punch. Nice scoop, fellow reddit reader.
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
FlightAware has real-time tracking of flights, current flights to/from OHare, and an awesome animation of all US flights in one day. Toward the end of the animation, you can see the country wake up starting with the east cost, then midwest, then west. Impressive. (via reddit)
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
Python + Readline = Auto Complete
I can’t really tolerate a command line and/or programming environment that doesn’t include a usable auto-completion feature (like Python’s built-in shell). To solve this problem, I’m using the “enhanced” shell IPython on my Windows machine. It wasn’t working well, but then I found that IPython’s docs suggest that I need the readline extention:
While you can use IPython under Windows with only a stock Python installation, there is one extension, readline, which will make the whole experience a lot more pleasant. It is almost a requirement, since IPython will complain in its absence (though it will function). The readline extension needs two other libraries to work, so in all you need:
- PyWin32 from http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond.
- CTypes from http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/ctypes (you must use version 0.9.1 or newer).
- Readline for Windows from http://sourceforge.net/projects/uncpythontools.
Sweet. Download 3 exe’s. Install. It works and I’m happy. Lesson: sometimes it’s useful to read documentation.
See IPython’s quick tips for a crash course in the magic of IPython.
Also, see ONLamp’s tutorial.
Sunday, October 9th, 2005
DARPA’s Grand Challenge (a race between vehicles that are able to navigate an off-road course without human intervention) started yesterday. It looks like they will soon be announcing the winner because only 1 of the 23 teams is still running with no chance of catching up to the very tight pack of 4 teams that have completed the 132 mile race in less than 10.5 hours.
It’s looking like the final placing will be:
It is amazing how close the 4 teams that finished were. Sandstorm only lost by 4 minutes!
Saturday, October 8th, 2005
Web-Based Collaborative Writing
Drew McLellan reviews a few tools that allow multiple people to edit a document together online: Writely, JotSpot Live, and Writeboard. His criticism of Writeboard leads to improvements the following day.
Sunday, October 2nd, 2005
Tim O’Reilly clarifies how he defines Web 2.0.
Let’s close, therefore, by summarizing what we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:
- Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
- Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
- Trusting users as co-developers
- Harnessing collective intelligence
- Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
- Software above the level of a single device
- Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models
Saturday, October 1st, 2005
The creator of the creative commons license, Lawrence Lessig, has made his book Free Culture available free online. Since his license allows noncommercial derivitive works with attribution, people have remixed the book into many interesting versions:
Of course, you can also buy the dead tree version if you want to give his publisher a few bucks.
Suggestion: Eat a Burrito Every Day.
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