It is what you don’t expect that most needs looking for. From Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, p 29. More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
Month: February 2009
This is fantastic. Brian May (yes THAT Brian May) not only blogs, but talks about all kinds of challenging subjects. Like how and why space and time are linked. Worth a read. -m
I’m (just barely) enough of a writer that I can spend cycles on Steorn‘s claims without being branded a crackpot. After all, the novel I’m working on involves a similar device being invented 4,000 years ago. It’s all research. Imagine if Earth’s gravitational field, instead of being a constant 1.0G, rocked back and forth between…
Honestly, I don’t even need to write a punchline for this one, it sounds so much like the setup of a Monty Python-esque joke. Give it your best shot in the comments… -m
From the company home page, reknown XSLT trainer and friend G. Ken Holman has expanded his offerings to include XQuery training. The first such session is March 16-20, alongside XML Prague. I’ve always thought there is great power in having both XSLT and XQuery tools at one’s disposal. I’ve seen people tend to polarize into…
Steorn is making noise again about the free energy device they claim to have invented. The proper scientific attitude to have toward such claims is skepticism, though most responses (always from individual who have never seen it) goes well beyond that. But think of the downside if every phone, iPod, refrigerator, car, air conditioning unit,…
A few days ago, a carrier update arrived for my iPhone. Since then, my battery life has suffered a significant decline. Anyone else seen this? -m
From Jeffrey D. Kooistra’s April 2009 Alternate View column in Analog magazine: If there is one thing that has become clear in the twenty years since the advent of [Cold Fusion], it is that presenting the straight scientific facts in straight prose and to a significant level of detail doesn’t sway set-in-concrete, or even set-in-Jell-O,…
XSLTForms, the cross-browser XForms engine (written about previously) that makes ingenious use of built-in XSLT processing, reached an important milestone today, with a beta release. Tons of bug fixes and additional support for CSS and Schema. If you’re thinking about getting involved with XForms and are looking for something small and approachable, give it a…