Justin Blanton

How to compete with the iPad

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:00:54 -0000

This may be the smartest thing I’ve read regarding the iPad, and I’ve read everything there is to read.

Steven Strogatz on math, from basic to baffling

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:47:06 -0000

Steven Strogatz on math, from basic to baffling.

[Over the next several weeks] I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

Awesome! (Via Jason Kottke.)

Parkour motion reel

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:58:45 -0000

Parkour motion reel.

The coolest, most imaginative video you’ll watch this week. I’ve never seen anything like it.

20 years of Adobe Photoshop

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:46:21 -0000

20 years of Adobe Photoshop.

The good enough revolution: when cheap and simple is just fine

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:58:26 -0000

The good enough revolution: when cheap and simple is just fine.

The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they’re actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as “high-quality.”

Who makes the best plain white t-shirt?

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:19:52 -0000

Who makes the best plain white t-shirt?

Best question ever? Maybe. As some know, I’ve been on the hunt for the best, plain t-shirt for about a decade now (and believe me, when I come across one I really like, I buy 10 or more of them). (For what it’s worth, Abercrombie’s are really nice, but only come in three colors.)

Video of a squirrel with some sort of neurological disorder

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:15:00 -0000

Video of a squirrel with some sort of neurological disorder.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll crack up for the first five seconds and then spend the next two minutes going, “Aww, poor thing.”

A timeline of the ‘Lost’ universe

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:56:11 -0000

A timeline of the ‘Lost’ universe.

Chrome gets native Greasemonkey support

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:13:33 -0000

Chrome gets native Greasemonkey support.

Woot!

∞ The iPhone SmartBase

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:10:28 -0000

The unite/Balmuda SmartBase (buy) is an absurdly simple iPhone stand, as can be seen from the picture below (and from the others on the product page). It’s a single piece of semi-hard rubber, with a channel underneath for the syncing/charging cable, which channel allows the cable to stay connected to the stand and the stand to remain flat against the table. But for the pics and video I saw beforehand, I probably would have been a little upset to find such a simple piece of kit inside the package.

The iPhone fits the stand well, and when within it is tilted at an angle that makes for easy texting, etc., even when the phone is kept near the back of your desk.

My only real criticism is that the base is way too light; it weighs next to nothing. Not only would more weight trick you into thinking that your $18 (it was $24 when I bought mine) went to something other than straight profit, but it also would make the stand a bit more practical.

At its current weight there’s really no way to plug the cable into the phone and then place the phone in the stand with one hand; you have to use your other hand to keep the stand in place because it tends to slide around (or even come off the table a bit) as the attached cable tugs at it. In fact, if you use only enough excess cable as is needed to stow it under the stand when not in use (as shown in the video on the product page), then the tension from the cable (caused by it being bent to plug into the phone) is enough to raise the stand off the desk.

I’d love to say more about the SmartBase, but, well, look at it — it’s a piece a rubber. ;)

(For those wondering, before the SmartBase I was using a Just Mobile Xtand.)

“Stuck in the Past” t-shirt

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:21:40 -0000

“Stuck in the Past” t-shirt.

Sam Javanrouh, author of the “daily dose of imagery” photoblog, on shooting people

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:44:35 -0000

Sam Javanrouh, author of the inimitable “daily dose of imagery” photoblog, on shooting people.

Nice read.

The truth about robotic’s uncanny valley

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:14:58 -0000

The truth about robotic’s uncanny valley.

[I]n person, most robots, particularly ones designed to interact with humans, are simply not scary. They’re bumbling and a little helpless. Like a pet or a child, you cut them slack. In the most generalized, vaguely accurate way, the uncanny valley might apply to the corpse-eyed CG ghouls of The Polar Express or the recent animated Christmas Carol. But when it comes to robots, it’s a largely hypothetical chasm, a term that only partially describes a fleeting, cognitive glitch that has no bearing on the way humans will live with machines.

It seems to me the author is being terribly short-sighted; sure, today, most robots we interact with are as described (i.e., not even remotely close to the valley’s left-handed precipice), but, uhh, it’s just a matter of time before human-like robots are able to accurately mimic our physical and social cues, and along this road, at various progressional stages, there no doubt will be awkward periods — however fleeting — where many facets of the human condition will be questioned, tested and ultimately altered.

I especially liked the following two comments on the article:

(1) I understand the uncanny valley lies in the difference between knowing and feeling. That our brain feels awkward when an intellectual idea (e.g.,, “this is a robot”) contradicts a feeling (e.g., “I could have sex with this”).

(2) If we really want to evolve as a species, and be able to take advantage of the amazing technologies that are coming down the pike – then maybe the first changes shouldn’t be about robots becoming friendlier. Or AI becoming human-compatible. Maybe it’s us that has to change. Maybe, along with the apparent strides we’ve made in conquering racism, we need to also reconsider our automatic reflex of repulsion, when gazing upon all things that are different, or weird. Whether those things are human beings of a different pigment, robots who don’t fit our standards of human-like, or strange looking aliens in the future – maybe the first steps in approaching a truly advanced technological era, lies first in changing ourselves, our reactions, our snap judgements.

Into the uncanny valley

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:11:40 -0000

Into the uncanny valley.

While the purpose of Mori’s [1974] paper[, The Buddha in the Robot: A Robot Engineer’s Thoughts on Science and Religion,] was to inform robot design, in a concluding paragraph he cannot resist offering his own theory about the origins of the uncanny valley. He writes: “When we die, we fall into the trough of the uncanny valley. Our body becomes cold, our color changes, and movement ceases.” Human models fall into the uncanny valley because they remind us of death. “It may be important to our self-preservation,” he concludes. […]

But all along Mori hasn’t seen our avoidance of death as a consequence of repressed emotions the way Freud did. Instead he has understood it to be a mechanism we developed to keep ourselves safe. Nearly every hypothesis since has had this flavor. It has been suggested, for instance, that we avoid almost human figures because their peculiarities make them look sick, and we have developed an evolutionary mechanism for steering clear of pathogens. Another theory posits that we avoid figures with features slightly off from our own because they appear to be less-than-ideal mating material.

Ghazanfar rejects all of these hypotheses. “What is really going on is much simpler,” he says. He believes the uncanny valley response occurs because an animal—human or nonhuman—is evolutionarily inclined to develop an expectation of what members of its species should look like, a supremely important skill, as it lets the animal know with whom it can and cannot interact.

Remote-controlled SR-71 Blackbird

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 08:08:30 -0000

Remote-controlled SR-71 Blackbird.

You kind of have to watch this don’t you? (Take-off is ~2:30 and landing is ~5:45.)

You know what is not being accessed in this now-dated Hollywood imagined future?

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:51:36 -0000

You know what is not being accessed in this now-dated Hollywood imagined future?

Freakin’ love it.

∞ The new gadgets “page”

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:02:49 -0000

A few weeks ago I linked to my new gadgets “page” (really it’s nothing more than a widget) on Twitter and figured I probably should do so here given that the original gadgets page played such a prominent role on this site, albeit some time ago. The truth is, it became a rather large chore to continuously update the page, and once I decided I wanted it to encompass more than just phones and PDAs, it was clear that the page would be all but impossible to maintain. (I buy tons of gadgets and was cataloging each of their technical specifications; it was total insanity.)

Enter GDGT. When I first got wind of the site my immediate thought was, “Woah! Hopefully I finally can ‘outsource’ the gadgets page to someone else, and take advantage of thousands of others who, collectively, have the time to punch in all of the critical data for each device.” Fortunately, the site/service turned out to be exactly that, and from here on out it’s where I’m keeping track of all this stuff.

Their database already contains a large portion of my older gear (but not everything; for example, it’s missing nine mobile phones of mine, which I may add myself at some point), and newer gadgets almost always are there when I go looking for them. The best part about the whole system is that adding a device to my “have,” “had” or “want” list takes just two clicks, which is infinitely easier than what I was doing before when I was trying to keep up with everything myself (including pictures!).

(I realize all of this means little to most, but in the off-chance you’re interested in what hardware I’m currently using or have used in the past, the new page should sate you. Please try to contain your excitement.)

Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:50:20 -0000

Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution.

Darwin’s explanation of evolution, [Woese and Goldenfeld] argue, even in its sophisticated modern form, applies only to a recent phase of life on Earth.

At the root of this idea is overwhelming recent evidence for horizontal gene transfer – in which organisms acquire genetic material “horizontally” from other organisms around them, rather than vertically from their parents or ancestors. The donor organisms may not even be the same species. […]

In the Darwinian model, evolutionary change occurs because individuals with genes associated with successful traits are more likely to pass these on to the next generation. In horizontal gene transfer, by contrast, change is not a function of the individual or of changes from generation to generation, but of all the microbes able to share genetic material. […]

For the researchers the conclusion is inescapable: the genetic code must have arisen in an earlier evolutionary phase dominated by horizontal gene transfer.

How the brain filters out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:04:54 -0000

How the brain filters out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information.

We investigated how gamma waves in particular were involved in communication across cell groups in the hippocampus. What we found could be described as a radio-like system inside the brain. The lower frequencies are used to transmit memories of past experiences, and the higher frequencies are used to convey what is happening where you are right now.”

A brief guide to DNA sequencing

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:01:14 -0000

A brief guide to DNA sequencing.