Isotropic is …
... my personal blog.
Unless otherwise indicated, anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Monthly Archives: July 2008
26 Jul 2008
Scratch Paper
Despite working in IT and owning several electronic devices that allow note taking, I use a lot of paper notes. Paper is portable, instant on, available in many form factors, works in adverse conditions, disposable … you get my drift. It may be a legacy system, but following my maxim of “just because [...]
21 Jul 2008
Blip
If I were feeling mean, I’d point these two guys at each other.
[ Someone asked where I'd been -- no posts, no email, not online. Well, it was a busy weekend. I offer this post as a blip on the radar. ]
15 Jul 2008
Carebots
“Who doesn’t long for household help at times? Service robots will soon be able to relieve us of heavy, dirty, monotonous or irksome tasks. Research scientists have now presented a new generation of household robots, the ‘Care-O-bot® 3′.” — ScienceDaily, New Generation Of Home Robots Have Gentle Touch
It is interesting that (according to the [...]
15 Jul 2008
Memory and the Law
The post “Guidelines on Memory and the Law” at Neurophilosophy summarizes a report, commissioned by the British Psychological Society, regarding the implications of memory research for the legal profession. “These guidelines, which are available as a PDF, are intended to inform those who work in criminal and civil law – for example, the police [...]
14 Jul 2008
Yakity YACC
For those of you who think you produce bug free code …
As told at New Otto malloc helps spot ancient bug, “Otto Moerbeek recently found and fixed an ancient bug (some 33 years old) in yacc(1). Here is his story….”
image: Dave Pape, Bos grunniens – Syracuse Zoo.jpg, Wikimedia Commonsh/t: Bob Plankers, links for [...]
12 Jul 2008
Choosing Unique Baby Names
No, I’m not.
In Name Scrapers I mentioned the non-uniqueness of my name in an example. That must have sensitized me to pick up on Kevin Kelly’s GoggleUnique Names.
After mentioning several well-known strategies for choosing names, he goes on to discuss two new strategies, which he calls “global branding” and “GoogleUnique”.
The first is about names [...]
10 Jul 2008
Hamming It Up
Bacon. What more can be said? Too much, apparently.
I don’t recall how I found out about John Scalzi’s blog Whatever, but I’m glad I did. Not only did I discover a great science fiction writer, but also a daily source of humor and insight.
But sometimes he can go too far. [...]
08 Jul 2008
Name Scrapers
The Slashdot headline “How to Fight Name Scraping Scammers?” caught my eye, and I had to follow it up. Curt Monash discovered his name on a dating site, but he’d never registered there. It appears that the site paired up first and last names at random and then presented them as being [...]
07 Jul 2008
Linux Filesystem Backups
Backup is an essential responsibility that comes with owning a computer, but it is more honored in the breech than in practice.
Echoing what I said in MySQL Backups, some situations may require more elaborate techniques, but these scripts are “good enough” for my needs. I hope you find these scripts useful, and welcome [...]
