There’s a Twitterer that I follow called @denyreligion. Most of his tweets are quite interesting, but every night my Twitter client is inundated by a string of posts of the following form: Thanks for the RTs and discussion! @XXX, @YYY, @ZZZ…. In other words, every Twitterer who mentioned @denyreligion during the day gets acknowledged. This…
Read More Twitter automation run amokFrom this afternoon’s MLS game between the Seattle Sounders and the Colorado Rapids: Injustice: giving a penalty for handball against a guy in the wall who was protecting his face from a hard-struck free kick. Justice: the penalty hits the woodwork. It was an enjoyable game, which the Sounders won 3-0. The last 20 minutes…
Read More Injustice and justiceJuly is going to be a busy month for me. Between the 1st and 25th, I’m booked to fly nearly 18,000 miles. Here’s how the Great Circle Mapper lays it out: That breaks down into a hop down to San Jose and back before the 4th of July; then a merry dance around California for…
Read More A busy month of travelI’ve been trying to decide whether I trust myself to comment on the current state of affairs in my favourite sport, but reading Only In America‘s amusing but information-free rant persuaded me to offer a few thoughts. For those who haven’t been following things, here’s my analysis of the situation. First, the players: The FIA:…
Read More Formula 1Larry Hamelin (the Barefoot Bum) just posted an important essay on two dichotomies which are frequently confused, identified, misidentified, conflated, linked, and generally misunderstood: Natural v. supernatural. Materialist v. non-materialist. He begins: There seems to be considerable confusion and equivocation about naturalism and supernaturalism. Naturalism is often confused with materialism, at the methodological and metaphysical…
Read More Larry disentangles naturalism and materialismReaders of my twitterings will know that I’ve been trying to decide what kind of car to get when I move to California at the end of next month. I want to get all of my planning done in plenty of time, because I expect to be travelling in China right up to the time…
Read More Choosing a car…Here’s a nice introduction by Todd Huff to the topic of graph databases: what they are, and why they’re relevant. The author starts by trashing all of the candidates: So relational database can’t handle complex relationships. Graph systems are opaque, unmaintainable, and inflexible. OO databases loose [sic] flexibility by combining logic and data. Key-value stores…
Read More Neo4j and graph databasesJust over a month ago, I bought myself an Asus EeePC 901 netbook, and wrote a blog piece describing my first impressions, including the process of installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix as the default OS. And then I started using the device, and didn’t think much more about it. A couple of days ago, a friend…
Read More A month with a netbookDan Ellard tagged me in the “15 books” meme. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutess. I’m doing mine in my blog, so I don’t lose it in the bowels of Facebook: “Lord…
Read More 15 books in 15 minutesHere’s my latest Amazon product review, for the JVC Everio GZ-HM200 Dual SD High-Def Camcorder. Plug and play HD for this Mac user It’s been a number of years since I had a camcorder. It was a tape unit, and after the initial infatuation with the new toy, I found that I never used it.…
Read More Plug-and-play HD video for the Mac