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Monthly Archives: October 2009

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–And How it can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman

I finally got around to reading Thomas L. Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Friedman is one of the few columnists that I read on a regular basis and the book is on an interesting subject, so I was expecting to enjoy reading it. I didn’t. While I don’t agree with all his ideas, the main [...]

MagSafe

Apple’s MagSafe power supply connector is one of the rare inventions that I wish I had thought of. Once you see one, it is an obvious solution to a common problem. It is much more convenient than standard power connectors, and has the advantage of easily breaking away if someone trips over your power cord. [...]

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Infrared/visible hybrid photograph taken before modifying the camera: Warning: If you try this and get zapped, it is your own fault! Large capacitors are dangerous! I enjoy infrared photography. I have experimented with film and digital IR photography over the past few years. I usually use a D70 with a good IR filter. This works [...]

Indiana passenger train upgrade?

INDOT is applying for federal money to upgrade passenger train service in the state. The proposed new route through Fort Wayne is a needed upgrade. There have been a number of times when I would have liked to take a train, but the option wasn’t available. This project can’t be approved and completed soon enough. [...]

Zipf’s Law

I’ve run across the interesting Zipfian distribution several times recently. Zipf’s law states that for many things, particularly words, the frequency is inversely proportional to the rank of the frequency. So, for example, the most common word is used twice as often as the second most common word, which is used twice as often as [...]

Extreme Ice Survey

I’ve enjoyed James Balog‘s photography for several years. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the results of his Extreme Ice Survey, were he installed cameras on several glaciers around the world. Since the last time I checked, EIS has posted several high-quality time-lapse movies of glaciers! Go to the EIS site to see more. GL-05 [...]