Free as a Nerd

7 Things Christians Need to Remember About Politics

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:16:15 -0400

7 Things Christians Need to Remember About Politics:

Lots of great points in this article and plenty to think about. I’m absolutely elated that this approach to politics, specifically among Christians, is on the rise. If we place our faith in God, who is all powerful, just, and loving, it makes no sense to place our hope or our despair in politicians, and it makes no sense to destroy relationships because of a preference on policy.

Top Startup CEOs

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 09:28:58 -0400

Top Startup CEOs:

These guys are responsible for some brilliant ideas. Definitely worth checking out. Some standouts from reading this article:

- Y Combinator is awesome. I read their news aggregation ‘Hacker News’ nearly everyday. Glad to see many of their folks showing up here.

- Justin Kan is a straight up freak. Highly talented and very innovative. Although, I’m not sure I can let it slide that he is responsible for the heap of trash known as SocialCam.

- It is very humbling that many of these folks (along with Mark Zuckerberg) are my age or younger.

Wikipedia Redefined

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:39:19 -0400

Wikipedia Redefined:

As an everyday Wikipedia user, I’m a fan of this project and I hope Jimmy Wales sees it. Does anyone else remember back in the day when Wikipedia used to show up in a lot of google searches but the site design sucked so you would only use it if there was nothing else? Then they developed media wiki and things really started to take off from there. Not only was there a ton of easily accessible information, but it was free and the site was relatively pleasant to use.

But, it’s been quite a few years since then and it’s about time they invested in a redesign effort, both to keep up with current trends and to harness some needed improvement in the user experience/navigation clarity realm. As it is now, I’m aware that wikipedia has a lot of resources other than their base encyclopedia wiki, but I rarely use them because I find it a bit confusing to get around. Also, their homepage is pretty crappy. I get it, you have a lot of language support… no need to dominate 90% of the screen with that fact.

Designers, what do you think of this redefinition? UX folks, how about you?

thekidshouldseethis: A downward lightning negative ground...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:16:33 -0400

thekidshouldseethis:

A downward lightning negative ground flash captured at 7,207 images per second. A negative stepped leader emerges from the cloud and connects with the ground forming a return stroke.

From ZT Research, who is “trying to figure out how lightning works.”

via Stellar.

McDonald's up close and personal

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 09:54:48 -0400

McDonald's up close and personal:

I have seriously always wondered about this. Definitely amazing how much effort and design goes into ‘styling’ a burger for a production shoot.

Also, I kinda liked how transparent the marketing director seemed about the whole thing. She totally acknowledged that the stuff you buy and the stuff you see in ads do not appear the same, but then she proceeds to demonstrate why that is the case and it seems pretty reasonable to me. Maybe I’m a sucker though…

!Political Screaming Match!

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:01:54 -0400

!Political Screaming Match!:

I dread election season. ESPECIALLY in a presidential election year. The amount of hateful, backhanded, passive aggressive, and just plain old misappropriation of anger is nearly too much to bare. I’ve watched friends become frienemies (sp?) in a single conversation largely because of the amount of hope or despair placed on the shoulders of a particular, fallable, human being running for office.

I hope this website takes off. It offers some similar benefits that you might see with martial arts sparring for people who struggle with physically assaulting others. Instead of destroying relationships with neighbors/coworkers/family, why not just have a shouting match with someone whom you will probably never meet? It’s ideal really.

I’m only half joking. It would actually be nice if people who are inclined enough for political crossfire to get it out of their system and then be able to simmer down a bit for what might be more fruitful/respectful conversations when it actually mattered.

If the option of finding your identity in something other than a political stance is out of the question, maybe this is for you.

Sick new DB solution

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 09:49:53 -0400

Sick new DB solution:

Pretty cool technology. Lots to gain from it if it comes to fruition.

- Querying still done in SQL
- Up to 30 times faster than disk based systems
- Makes a good case for switching from Oracle to MySQL.

This is so well done and very convincing. Although, it might...

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:50:53 -0400

This is so well done and very convincing. Although, it might only be funny if you’ve seen The Shining.

I hate your baby's name!

Mon, 28 May 2012 09:57:04 -0400

I hate your baby's name!

Edx - This is awesome

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:20:03 -0400

Edx - This is awesome:

I’m really excited about this. Last year I signed up for one of the Stanford University online CS classes, and it was pretty cool. I got what I wanted out of it and was able to use it effectively at my job. It was an interesting experience, moving the availability of education in the direction of accessibility, but not to such an extent that it would replace existing structures.

Edx, however, will be potentially disruptive to the academic industry and I’m eager to try it out this fall. I don’t know if anyone will be able to acquire a formal degree (seems doubtful) but we’ll see.

KEGDROID!

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:51:01 -0400

KEGDROID!:

Beer brewing, and kegerating are on the rise and this looks like a neat beer project using several of Google’s technologies. Too bad the pour was all foam :-/ I’d like to think it was just a new keg or something, but the guy who made the kegroid doesn’t seem to mind drinking 8 oz. of it.

Octabones! Wow, I haven’t really looked into what is...

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:01:02 -0400

Octabones! Wow, I haven’t really looked into what is currently ‘cool’ in the concert percussion world since high school. This song is amazing. So is the talent of these two marimba players. So is that one dude’s hair. So is the use of the smoke machine.

Conceding to find humor in poor grammar

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:01:19 -0400

Conceding to find humor in poor grammar

The worst things in the (first) world

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:04:06 -0400

The worst things in the (first) world

There’s not much to say about Rush that hasn’t...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:49:24 -0400

There’s not much to say about Rush that hasn’t already been said. So, I’ll just point out my favorite parts of this video/song.

- The Rotisseries

- The Chicken mascot that is basting the rotisseries

- Guitarist Alex Lifeson’s face during his solo after the reggae bridge.

In response to Google’s project glass.

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:37:52 -0400

In response to Google’s project glass.

A little technology nostalgia

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:25:30 -0400

I just got a new laptop last week. Nothing special, in fact, it’s lack of specialty is key here. It’s just an ordinary HP Pavilion laptop that was on special at Costco. Yes, I realize that as a nerd I am in huge violation of not having a legit hacker laptop, but my previous laptop (used, bought for $150) was a piece of junk and it lasted me 3 years… so this is a step up in that it is both new anda little moreexpensive. Also, I’m more interested in providing for my family, supporting my church, paying off my house, etc. than having a 1337 h4xx0r b0x.

Anyway, to my point…

With this new laptop I downloaded an operating system ISO file to toy around with some stuff I’m interested in for work. The file is over 1 GB and the total download time was around 12 minutes. After it finished I got a little nostalgic (and embarrassed about the fact that I was nostalgic) because when I was a fledgling nerd with my first computer (~15 years ago) you couldn’t do things like this. The term Gigabyte wasn’t really even thrown around much yet.

I specifically remember that Netscape Communicator was being released one Saturday in my youth and I was so excited to download it. Unfortunately, with my lightning fast 28.8kbps dial-up modem the estimated download time was 12 hours. 12 FREAKING HOURS! So, around 9pm (bedtime) I dialed up and proceeded to download the MASSIVE 3.5 MEGABYTE file, praying that nobody would pick up the phone and disconnect my download session. Fortunately it all went through and it was like waking up on Christmas morning to have an alternative to Internet Explorer (yes it sucked hard even back then).

Fellow nerds, do you have any stories like this?

Huge fan of Anchorman and I’m really stoked about the...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:21:00 -0400

Huge fan of Anchorman and I’m really stoked about the sequel that was announced last night.

"The role model of our time should be an actress who was never nominated for an Oscar. Hedy Lamarr..."

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:02:05 -0500

“The role model of our time should be an actress who was never nominated for an Oscar. Hedy Lamarr did well enough on the screen but, just in case, she spent her free time developing something called frequency-hopping spread-spectrum. It’s a wireless-communication technique still in use in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Not bad for a fallback.”

- Adam Davidson, NPR’s Planet Money

Does texting at the altar annul the marriage or something?

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:04:06 -0500

Does texting at the altar annul the marriage or something?