- Cliodynamics: History as Science — a systematic application of the scientific method to history: verbal theories should be translated into mathematical models, precise predictions derived, and then rigorously tested on empirical material. In short, history needs to become an analytical, predictive science.
- Cricket — indoor location system from MIT. In a nutshell, Cricket uses a combination of RF and ultrasound technologies to provide location information to attached host devices. Wall- and ceiling-mounted beacons placed through a building publish information on an RF channel. […] The listener runs algorithms that correlate RF and ultrasound samples (the latter are simple pulses with no data encoded on them) and to pick the best correlation. Even in the presence of several competing beacon transmissions, Cricket achieves good precision and accuracy quickly.
- The World at Night — an international effort to present stunning nightscape photos and time-lapse videos of the world’s landmarks against celestial attractions.
- Paul Steinhardt on Impossible Crystals (YouTube) — quasi-crystals with five-fold symmetry previously believed impossible. And then he found one, and led an expedition in 2011 to Chukotka in Far Eastern Russia to find new information about its origin and search for more samples. As you do when you’re the Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton, a job title that comes with no pressure at all to bring home the impossible.
"photography" entries
Four short links: 25 June 2013
History as Science, Indoor Location, Nightscape Photography, and Finding the Impossible
Four short links: 3 August 2010
Structured Data, Graph Tools, Photo Lives, Prize Theory
- OpenStructs — an education and distribution site dedicated to open source software for converting, managing, viewing and manipulating structured data.
- TinkerPop — many (often open source) tools for graph data.
- Polaroid a Day — a moving human story told in photographs.
- Prizes (PDF) — White House memorandum to government agencies explaining how prizes are to be used. The first part, the why and how of contests and prizes, is something to add to your “here, read this” arsenal.
Four short links: 3 June 2010
Passionate Users, Mail APIs, Phone Hacking, and Patent Data Online
- How to Get Customers Who Love You Even When You Screw Up — a fantastic reminder of the power of Kathy Sierra’s “I Rock” moments. In that moment I understood Tom’s motivation: Tom was a hero. (via Hacker News)
- Yahoo! Mail is Open for Development — you can write apps that sit in Yahoo! Mail, using and extending the UI as well as taking advantage of APIs that access and alter the email.
- Canon Hack Development Kit — hack a PowerShot to be controlled by scripts. (via Jon Udell)
- 10TB of US PTO Data (Google Books) — the PTO has entered into a two year deal with Google to distribute patent and trademark data for free. At the moment it’s 10TB of images and full text of grants, applications, classifications, and more, but it will grow over time: in the future we will be making more data available including file histories and related data. (via Google Public Policy blog post)
Time Lapse of Galactic Center of Milky Way rising over Texas Star Party
According to William Castleman: “The time-lapse sequence was taken with the simplest equipment that I brought to the star party. I put the Canon EOS-5D (AA screen modified to record hydrogen alpha at 656 nm) with an EF 15mm f/2.8 lens on a weighted tripod. Exposures were 20 seconds at f/2.8 ISO 1600 followed by 40 second interval. Exposures were controlled by an interval timer shutter release (Canon TC80N3). Power was provided by a Hutech EOS203 12v power adapter run off a 12v deep cycle battery. Large jpg files shot in custom white balance were batch processed in Photoshop (levels, curves, contrast, Noise Ninja noise reduction, resize) and assembled in Quicktime Pro. Editing/assembly was with Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9.”
Space Shuttle Atlantis during Solar Transit
In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault) Thierry made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D…