Geek Stuff category archive

Via the Coyote’s Byte.

The Rubyologist investigates “beer goggles”:

Incorrectly estimate the difference in attractiveness between individuals
The term beer goggles suggests a mechanism that alters one’s perception. There are two mechanisms by which H could be incorrectly estimated. First, one could underestimate one’s own attractiveness (V) when intoxicated, thus reducing H. Empirical evidence suggests that this mechanism (i.e., drunks underestimating themselves) is implausible.

Second, one could overestimate the other individual’s attractiveness (B) when intoxicated, thus reducing H. Back in the good old days when they tested myths that did not involve explosions, the MythBustersTM[5] tested this one. Unfortunately, due a flawed experimental design[6], wide variation in results, and a small sample size, the results were inconclusive. Other research from the University of Leicester[7] is claimed to suggest that the estimations made by men are not affected while those of women are. The actual study (PDF) shows that the gender differences exist for age estimation, not estimation of attractiveness.

Details here.

It looks like Apple and AT&T might have shot themselves in the foot by blocking Google Voice. Michael Arrington abandons the iPhone:

What finally put me over the edge? It wasn’t the routinely dropped calls, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an iPhone (and which drove my friend Om Malik to bail). I’ve lived with that for two years. It’s not the lack of AT&T coverage at home. I’ve lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn’t the lack of a physical keyboard, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the Google Voice debacle.

Most of you won’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain.

One reason I refuse to Apple is their walled garden.

H/T Karen for the link.

WebMonkey Microsoft’s attempts to portray Internet Explorer as better than the competition:

Here’s a nugget:

More troubling are the claims that IE8 is on par with Firefox and Chrome when it comes to support for web standards and performance.

The fact that both Firefox 3 and Google Chrome are both leaps and bounds ahead of IE8 when it comes to support for both established and emerging web standards, like HTML 5 and CSS 3, is no mystery to anyone who’s developed websites using anything beyond CSS 2.1, the latest CSS standard Microsoft IE8 supports, or to those developing user experiences with open video players or offline data storage features. Furthermore, for users of Ajax-heavy websites like Gmail and Netflix, IE8 performs just fine, but it’s not nearly as fast as Google Chrome.

Follow the link for more MicroSpinCycle.

Via the Cranks.

Why are the persons who write WordPress plugins so lax about uploading screenshots of what they look like on the front page of your blog?

I really don’t care what it looks like on the backend.

We leave tracks.

Here’s where I’ve been, courtesy of web2.0collage dot com (pretty boring, ain’t it).

Dorkazine explains.

500@ekiga.net works.

520@ekiga.com does not.

Damn computers. Expect you to be able to read and rite.

I set up my new computer over the weekend, replacing the one that died. You can read about it on Geekazine.

One thing I have learned is how to use the Linux scp command to copy files between computers. I haven’t finished tweaking the networking yet and wanted to get some pictures on the webserver without, like, you know, actually walking into another room.

I found I could do it through the scp command in a terminal. This command, for example,

scp configure.jpg [username]@[local IP address]:~

copies the file “configure.jpg” from this computer to my home folder on the other computer. If I used a DNS server, I could use the computer name, but I don’t; the IP address works just fine.

The target computer demands a password and the whole process is encryted.

And it’s a lot faster than using a graphical interface. But, then, the command line is always faster, as long as you know the commands.

Why would Dell ship a Ubuntu box with a Windows button on the keyboard?

The new laptop arrived, a week early right on schedule.

I’m setting it up even as I type (that means I told it to copy some files over the network, then I wandered off to do other things).

Jeez oh man! I’ve got more than 16,000 files in my docs folder!

Look for a post on Geekazine when I’ve got it all fine-tuned.

Addendum:

This puppy is sweet. The only complaint I have is the position of the speaker jack. It would be great for headphones in an airport (it’s in the front below the keyboard), but it’s lousy on a desk or table. I’ve now got one more wire that’s not out of the way.

The wireless works flawlessly (wireless is the Achilles heel of Linux, because so many manufacturers of wireless components do not make native Linux drivers), the webcam works, and everything is now restored from backup. I haven’t tested out Ekiga yet; that’s tomorrow.

The new Linux laptop to replace the one that died has shipped.

A week before the projected date.

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El Reg lays down the law. A nugget:

Rule 1: (In the Python manner) Naaaaaaaaah hobbits!

Rule 2: An enlargement and clarification of rule 1. We mean not only no Frodo, no Bilbo, no Merry, no Pippin, no Marmadoc Brandybuck, nor Adalgrim Took, nor Lobelia (Bracegirdle) Sackville-Baggins; we also mean no Gandalf, no Gollum, no Preciousss, no Treebeard, no Sauron, no Glóin son of Gróin nor yet Glóin son of Thorin, even if your network does support mixed case, UTF-8 and spaces in its names. The ban also implies no Eöl, no Rohirrim, no Melkor, no Mordor, no Sindarin, no Eleventy-first birthdays and definitely, absolutely, certainly no Tom bloody Bombadil.

Curiously, however, ‘Tolkein’ is quite a good name for a server.

I name all my computers after sea creatures, such as Mackeral, Orca, Marlin, Tuna (the webserver), and Sardine (the netbook, of course).

Phillygrrl was teasing me most politely the other night about my refusal to twit. Frankly, a lot of it is a tendency I have to resist hype. I have never been, am not, and probably shall never be an “early adopter.”

Will Bunch takes on the hype about Twitter and Iran:

So why all the focus here in America on the social networking story? Well, it is “news,” literally, since Twitter is only a couple of years old. What journalists don’t want to acknowledge openly is that they’re reporting so much about Twitter because it’s easy — anyone can log in from anywhere and read what people are saying. But reporting on the ground from Tehran — spending all that money and somehow getting past the government censors — that’s hard work. On top of all that, Twitter is a way for a lot of Americans to feel they are somehow “taking part” in what seems like, for now, a cathartic global event — even if the truth is that at the end of the day it will be Iranians, and not us, who decide whether this rebellion actually succeeds.

The larger reality is that Twitter is a medium, but it’s not the message. If change really does come to Iran, it will not be cause of 140 characters but because of the character of millions, who are literally risking death to march for the things they believe in. It was like that in Massachusetts in 1775, when the news traveled at the speed of horse, and it is like that in Tehran in 2009. Same as it ever was.

When their vans don’t fit, it’s back to people power:

A pedicab-like vehicle with an 8-foot-high camera is rolling around the walkways at the University of Pennsylvania to collect 360-degree views of the campus for the “Street View” feature of Google Maps.

Follow the link for a picture of their high-tech trike.

The laptop that has been my primary computer for over five years finally gave up the ghost.

The screen died. I can get a whole nother computer for less than a new display.

I jacked a monitor into it and am backing every thing up across the network to my file server (the important stuff gets backed up regularly anyway–I’m concentrating on the hidden configuration files in my home directory).

The timing is a little frustrating, since I spent several hours this weekend fine-tuning Fluxbox. But I can’t complain. The box has taken everything I’ve thrown at it and, as my old mechanic used to say, doesn’t owe me a dime.

Oh, well.

Jeffrey demonstrates how to load Windows 7 as a virtual machine on a Ubuntu box. Watch it here

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