And the final product:
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Seed Starting
Its that time of year! Check out my simple, cheap and convenient method of seed starting:
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Horn Loaded Cellphone Speaker
Here are a couple of templates you can use to create you very own horn-loaded cellphone, handy for when you want to listen to MP3s over your speakerphone (not sure why you'd want to do that, but just in case):
Template 1
Template 2
They are in svg format, and I recommend viewing/printing them from within Inkscape. Firefox doesn't render the second one correctly.
Template 1
Template 2
They are in svg format, and I recommend viewing/printing them from within Inkscape. Firefox doesn't render the second one correctly.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Ubuntu and AMD
For a few years, I'd been happily using the MSI K8NGM2-FID motherboard with AMD Athlon 64 processors (most recently, a 2.2 GHz X2). I've also been using an Intel Core2 Duo laptop (2 GHz), and have historically always used 64-bit versions of Ubuntu. With my recent upgrades to Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10, Ubuntu seems to be more and more sluggish on my desktop, but on my laptop, it is pleasant as ever. Firefox had been especially sluggish. I also had serious (unresolved) audio problems on my desktop. Because of these nagging annoyances, I finally decided to upgrade. I really hate doing that, my hardware was just fine for daily computing, but the fact that Flash sites rarely worked correctly, the audio sucked (if it worked at all) and my (similarly spec'd) laptop was noticeably snappier than my desktop, in general. I couldn't take it any more.
Here's the upgrade I settled on:
I can't describe how much snappier everything is.... must be, on average, about 3x faster. It still annoys me that I had to do this. My new hardware is only about 23% faster (clock speed), so clearly there was some weird driver/hardware issue. With my new, well-supported Intel hardware, however, the driver support seems perfect. My 4 hyperthreaded cores are detected as 8 total processors, and the OS appears to load balance intelligently.
I highly recommend this setup. You will NOT be disappointed!
Here's the upgrade I settled on:
- NVidia 9800 GTX video card
- 3 Gigs of triple channel (1333 MHz) DDR3 RAM
- Intel Core i7 (2.67 GHz) chip
- ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard
I can't describe how much snappier everything is.... must be, on average, about 3x faster. It still annoys me that I had to do this. My new hardware is only about 23% faster (clock speed), so clearly there was some weird driver/hardware issue. With my new, well-supported Intel hardware, however, the driver support seems perfect. My 4 hyperthreaded cores are detected as 8 total processors, and the OS appears to load balance intelligently.
I highly recommend this setup. You will NOT be disappointed!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Installing Google Earth in Ubuntu
I recently installed Google Earth 4.3 in Ubuntu 8.10 (64-bit). I suspect the issue I discovered will be relevant for more than just these versions of software. To install it, use the following method:
1. Download it to your desktop
2. cd ~/Desktop
3. chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin
4. sudo ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
DO NOT let it launch GE after the installation. Close down the installer, then launch GE from the desktop or menu icon. If you let it launch GE from the installer, some files will be created under the root account. You then won't be able to run it as a normal user. If this happens to you, follow this remedy:
1. cd ~
2. sudo rm -Rf .config/Google
3. sudo rm -Rf .googleearth
Things should now work as expected.
1. Download it to your desktop
2. cd ~/Desktop
3. chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin
4. sudo ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
DO NOT let it launch GE after the installation. Close down the installer, then launch GE from the desktop or menu icon. If you let it launch GE from the installer, some files will be created under the root account. You then won't be able to run it as a normal user. If this happens to you, follow this remedy:
1. cd ~
2. sudo rm -Rf .config/Google
3. sudo rm -Rf .googleearth
Things should now work as expected.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Characters
Ya know on Windows you can type ALT+236 to get an infinity sign? (and other special characters with other codes) In Linux, you can achieve the same thing by entering "unicode mode". To do this, type CTRL+SHIFT+U then type the Unicode code. So for instance, to get an infinity sign, the code is 221E. ∞ See, it works!
Cool, eh?
Cool, eh?
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Evolution
A recent Ted talk, by Susan Blackmore, discusses the idea of memetics. She offers the best explanation of memetics that I've heard yet, and goes on to make the claim that the idea of evolution (Darwin's) is the best idea anyone ever had. I really have to agree with her: it is a beautifully elegant way to describe an incredibly powerful process. She also lays out a very concise description of the requirements for evolution, which I will paraphrase:
"A system in which information is copied, with variance, followed by selection, must produce evolution."
For clarity, a definition of terms is warrented. Evolution is a universal process, and is not specific to biology, so I'll use the word "unit" rather than "organism" to describe a packet of information, which participates in the evolutionary process. I use the word "population" to describe a collection of units (similar to the idea of "species").
Evolution is the process of adaptation to a selection process. Multiple diverse units, where each is equally adapted to a static selection process, are no more or less evolved with respect to each other. Winners and losers emerge only when the selection process changes, thus "evolving" the population.
Variance means that the information is not copied perfectly, but there is some (low) probability of a small copying error, during each copy operation. If the copying process leads to too high of an error rate, then the new units will be so different from their parents that they will be poorly adapted to the subsequent selection process.
Selection is the process by which units are selected for inclusion in the subsequent population, as a function of their characteristics. The selection process must be slowly time varying with respect to the copying rate of the units, in order for them to adapt. Otherwise, a new set of copies may be adapted to a very different (older) selection process than the one currently in place. A perfectly static selection process (one which does not change over time) will not result in evolution. The units will adapt to it, and then will remain equally adapted from then on. Their information may appear to change over time, due to the gradual accumulation of copying errors, but they will remain equally adapted to the selection process. A biologist might say that this is an example where the genotype varies, but produces a static phenotype. Of course, there may be instances where multiple phenotypes are equally adapted to a given selection process, but that's more detail than I want to get into. Periods of selection stasis lead to the accumulation of variance. If the selection process suddenly changes, a population's variance gives it the resources to quickly adapt to the new selection process, thus squeezing it through the "evolutionary bottleneck". The absence of sufficient variance, in such a scenario, results in extinction.
"A system in which information is copied, with variance, followed by selection, must produce evolution."
For clarity, a definition of terms is warrented. Evolution is a universal process, and is not specific to biology, so I'll use the word "unit" rather than "organism" to describe a packet of information, which participates in the evolutionary process. I use the word "population" to describe a collection of units (similar to the idea of "species").
Evolution is the process of adaptation to a selection process. Multiple diverse units, where each is equally adapted to a static selection process, are no more or less evolved with respect to each other. Winners and losers emerge only when the selection process changes, thus "evolving" the population.
Variance means that the information is not copied perfectly, but there is some (low) probability of a small copying error, during each copy operation. If the copying process leads to too high of an error rate, then the new units will be so different from their parents that they will be poorly adapted to the subsequent selection process.
Selection is the process by which units are selected for inclusion in the subsequent population, as a function of their characteristics. The selection process must be slowly time varying with respect to the copying rate of the units, in order for them to adapt. Otherwise, a new set of copies may be adapted to a very different (older) selection process than the one currently in place. A perfectly static selection process (one which does not change over time) will not result in evolution. The units will adapt to it, and then will remain equally adapted from then on. Their information may appear to change over time, due to the gradual accumulation of copying errors, but they will remain equally adapted to the selection process. A biologist might say that this is an example where the genotype varies, but produces a static phenotype. Of course, there may be instances where multiple phenotypes are equally adapted to a given selection process, but that's more detail than I want to get into. Periods of selection stasis lead to the accumulation of variance. If the selection process suddenly changes, a population's variance gives it the resources to quickly adapt to the new selection process, thus squeezing it through the "evolutionary bottleneck". The absence of sufficient variance, in such a scenario, results in extinction.
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