Archive: April 6, 2014

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APOD: Saturn's raging storm

Sunday,  04/06/14  07:40 PM

 

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day:
Saturn's Raging Storm
(click to enbiggen)

The atmospheric turmoil extends all the way around the planet
Just the large swirl at upper left is larger than the Earth

Saturn's rings are seen nearly edge on as the blue line
Note their shadow cast on the planet's surface

 

 

Q two

Sunday,  04/06/14  07:45 PM

Watched Grand Budapest Hotel tonight; wow, how cool!  Entirely different from any other movie you'll see this year, and visually amazing.  Capped an interesting weekend ... a little riding, a little sailing, a little coding, and a lot of thinking.  Meanwhile, it's all happening...

I'm at an interesting transition point with eyesFinder; we're one quarter old now (sort of, if you consider the start of the year as day zero), and it's time for some changes.  Good ones.  Perfect timing as I started reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things... it's a great book, has me highlighting passages left and right.

So ... didn't pick the final two did I?  Who knew we'd end up with a #7 against a #8 in the final (Connecticut vs Kentucky)?  So my final pick now is ... UConn.  They looked very good against Florida.  We'll see! 

The Huskies have a chance to win both the Men's and Women's NCAA championships ... the Huskie women defeated Stanford today and will play Notre Dame in the final Tuesday night.

Did you see this?  The enchanting Tesla ad that wasn't made by Tesla.  So awesome...  In 2014 you know you have a cool product when your customers are making ads for you. 

Did you know?  A Tesla Model S owner has found a hidden ethernet port, and attached a laptop to his car's "network".  Inevitable, right?  Can't wait to jailbreak my car :) 

Interesting that Tesla knew about it, and warned the owner not to do it anymore.  The legal position is quite interesting, are they allowed to do that?

Knolling.  Okay, now there's a word for what I do.  "Knolling is the process of arranging like objects in parallel or 90 degree angles as a method of organization."  Aka, minimize entropy wherever possible :) 

Looks like Adobe's transition from one-time sales to subscriptions is working.  Good for them.  This is a tough change for a public company to make, because revenue drops during the transition, but long-term it is a much better model.  For the company and the customer. 

Excellent: The massive soviet sub that inspired Hunt for Red October.  Too bad such a cool thing was built for such a bogus purpose. 

Interesting: Livestrong without Lance.  I *still* wear my Livestrong bracelet every day; I started because of Lance, but continued because of Livestrong.  This is my conflict with Lance; yeah, he cheated at bike racing, and that's bad, but he founded an amazing organization which has done incredible work to fight cancer, and that's good.  Maybe in the end the good outweighs the bad. 

Do you understand Secret?  Me, either.  So you can share things anonymously, so what?  You could always do that before, and it was always uninteresting.  (Apparently there was a secret version of iMessage called Rumor Monger.)  If people aren't willing to self-identify with their message, it's questionable. 

John Patrick: Reflections on Bitcoin.  Links this nice overview article in Newsweek. 

IRS: Bitcoin is property, not currency.  Hmmm.  That means its increases in value would be subject to capital gains. 

Not surprising: Sony turns down Android Wear in favor of its own tech.  This is interesting... we'll have to see whether the devices themselves win out, in which case proprietary approaches have a chance, or whether the platform will turn out to be more important.  Given the need for Apps to make a smartphone smart, I think the best platform might win. 

Stephen Hawking: Space exploration is vital to our future.  Well yeah.  "We'd be 'castaways on a desert island not trying to escape' if we don't explore."  Agree. 

ZooBorn of the week: A pygmy Slow Loris.  You're welcome :)

 

 
 

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