Well, an old friend and blogger extraordinaire, Barbara Ganley — known for her use of the blog as a tool in the classroom — has a fascinating post up here about blogging from a foreign country. Reminds me clearly of the hours of respite I found in the various internet cafés in San Isidro de El General (Perez Zeledón, Costa Rica) when I was in the city for the weekend in the fall. Also reminds me of internet cafés in Bhutan, where we once encountered a couple of kids playing some WWF wrestling game, swearing in English, yet clearly having no idea what they were saying. The lama with whom we were traveling was checking his email and may have been seen shaking his head morosely 
So, reading her post on blogging gives me hope for my own improvement as a blogger — I at least have a clear goal in my head of what I want my posts to shape up to — whether I have the patience and persistence to apply the writing process to posts such as these that are purely done on MY time is to be seen.
An Interesting and Funny Table from the Science and Engineering Indicators 2004 - Volume 2 report (full report here)
Local file of the table (link being sketchy…) Public assessment of astrology, by respondent characteristic: 1979-2001 here
Or, if that link doesn’t work (this server is being weeird…) then just go here
Shows how many people thought astrology was scientific, or un-scientific, over time by education and sex.
Great article on investing.
Kind of crazy, my dad was just telling me about Warren Buffett and how he invested his money (he read his biography I think), and it sounded really neat. And then I found this article on morningstar!
Warren Buffett has long preached the mantra of investing within your “circle of competence,” or, more simply put, buying the stocks of companies that you can easily understand. One circle of competence for most individuals is the retail industry–you can get a look inside a potential investment every time you go shopping.
Morningstar.com - Shopping Around for Retail Stocks
G4 - Feature - Review: Yamaha YSP-1
Coool.
Final Word
The YSP-1 has no equal for those wanting the best surround sound without all the speakers and cabling hassles. As the Best of Show Winner of G4TV’s Best of CES awards, the Yamaha YSP-1 measures up to the hype.
Pros: Compact one-component system; best non five-piece surround system
Con: Weak bass without an external subwoofer
Company: Yamaha
Price: $1500
Available: Now
On another note…
I got all excited when i saw a link to
gmerge, a script that stitches together the little google maps images into bigger ones… My biggest problem with all these online map services is that the maps are so small, that in order to fit your route in its entirety, you must zoom out enough to obscure any useful details the map may have provided, leaving you with a super-regional overhead view (doesnt matter if its the satellite or map version…). So I hope I find some workaround! ‘Til then, I’ll keep carrying a REAL map around… if only my girlfriend would learn and do the same
(just kidding!)
- Prometheus: NAS President’s Address
My boss just sent me this link to the Prometheus Science policy blog at UC Bolder (see link on right), and I came across an interesting post on a speech given by the president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Bruce Alberts. For anyone interested in science policy, it’s an interesting and short read.
Here are his conlcuding remarks:
“As I see it, there are a number of clear challenges for those of us in the United States who would like to see science – and a science culture – spread much more widely around the world.
First, we must come to respect and support a wider range of sciences than is traditional for our typical university science departments.
Second, we must work to bring many more of our scientists and our students into close contact with the potential ways in which their expertise can make a difference for the 85 percent of the world’s people who live in developing nations.
Third, we must work to enact the vision in the InterAcademy Council report Inventing a Better Future. This will require that we focus much more intensively than we have in the past on helping our colleagues in developing nations build and maintain institutions of excellence in science and technology.”
Printing to Windows XP from OS X 10.3.9 Panther
Okay, so there are endless hints already out there about mac/windows printing. Unfortunately, none of them helped me solve my problem!
My main problem is still the fact that windows workgroups don’t show up in my Printer Setup Utility “windows printing” box, and neither do any printers…even though a co-worker prints without problems from her 10.3.3 machine, and I can print through her SHARED printer, but can’t just find it otherwise.
So the CUPS interface:
http://localhost:631/
is a nice interface to the guts of the CUPS backend, which allows for a manual samba configuration, and is just plain cooler than panther’s printer setup utility. When it asks, login as “root”
You can manually enter the samba address, which I just did using the IP (found using ipconfig on the windows machine) like so:
[code]smb://guest@192.168.0.000/PrinterName[/code]
the driver selection is limited here, so you can modify it later in printer setup utility.
I have yet to try setting up the Unix print services on the XP end — mostly out of stubbornness (”principle”)… i shouldn’t HAVE to… but it is an alternate approach for those of you who are still stuck.
See Strikeman’s post here for instructions on how to set that up.
In the interest of completeness, here is a nicely written walkthrough complete with XP and OSX screen captures of 3 different ways to get panther to print to an XP machine
http://www.ifelix.co.uk/tech/3009.html
Volcano Type
A very interesting typeface meditation on “security”, one of a number of entries, my other favorite being LandingStrip.
The former is a font of facial features that can be used to construct your very own criminal-profile-portriat. (Over 7 million possible combinations). Very neat.
The latter is a font inspired by satellite images of airports (landing strips being the most prominent aerial feature) and is awesome too.
So check em out.
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