The Old Blog
I used to run a Wordpress blog with random thoughts and other content; it fell by the wayside around the time I started working for UHN.
I’ve pulled some of that content over here for history purposes. This is all a decade or two old, so don’t take it too seriously.
4 Oct. 2003
Blog, Jvstin Style: Cardinal Directions
Well, I had to do some research with MapQuest and Google to find the answers. Here goes:
What is the furthest North you have ever been?
Hønefoss, Norway (slightly NW of Oslo).
The furthest South?
Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.
The furthest West?
Tofino, British Columbia, Canada.
The furthest East?
Either Munich, DE or Garmisch-Partenkirchen, DE (whichever is farther east; MapQuest has them on a perfect North-South line).
4 Oct. 2003
So the integration team, including a swarm of HR people, arrived on Tuesday morning to give us three days of training on the company organisation, philosophy, practics, policies, and procedures. There were also IT people running around setting up e-mail and teaching us about IT services. Somewhere in there we managed to deal with a couple of customer issues. In short, it was busy.
My brain is completely fried; I think we just tried to pour a gallon of information into my cup-sized head!
29 Sep. 2003
Speaking of information warfare…
I can’t find a primary source right now, but Google certainly asserts that carrots aren’t as good for your night vision as we’ve been taught.
During the Second World War, the Allies didn’t want the Germans to find out about radar (but see update). They needed a way to explain how RAF pilots could “see” in the dark. Someone came up with the story that the pilots had a diet high in carrots, and this allowed them to see in the dark…
29 Sep. 2003
Here’s an entry covering two of my favourite topics!
Today Sensity posted Coventry Cathedral. I love his photpgraphy! I don’t remember how I tripped over his photoblog; if I recall correctly, it was right around the time he built a new studio in the attic. Anyway, I’ve been reading (viewing?) it ever since.
“Coventry” is one of the classic stories of information warfare. To maintain secrecy, the Germans used a complicated machine called Enigma to encrypt their radio communications. They believed (with good reason) that Enigma was unbreakable. By the later part of 1940, the Allies had cracked the code, thanks to the work of brilliant cryptologists at Bletchley Park. It is easy to argue that this project (codename Ultra) won us the war; it’s amazing what you can do when you know the enemy’s plans in advance.
28 Sep. 2003
In Boom Bouma!, we read that:
There are: 1: Word-shape is critical in word-recognition 2: The reader recognises each letter in turn (serially) and then assembles a word 3: The reader recognises each of the letters at the same time (in parallel) and assembles a word.
Kevin presented the evidence which supports and undermines or falsifies each of these propopositions, on the way addressing most of the objections which typographers are likely to raise.
28 Sep. 2003
From slashdot
A Slashdot article appearing last Monday, which reported on the claim that scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place, was circulated to the University of British Columbia’s Linguistics department. An interesting counter-example resulted:
Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr.
27 Sep. 2003
I always liked Escher art; I still have some old, beat-up prints from my university days around somewhere. So I remember seeing and marvelling at the LEGO version of Ascending and Descending when it was mentioned in slashdot a while ago.
Well, the boys have been busy; turns out there are four more LEGO Escher creations: Balcony, Belvedere, Waterfall, and Relativity. Excellent!
[ trace: Blog, Jvstin Style → Stet → Electrolite ]
27 Sep. 2003
The CAIB report released in August focused in general terms on the “broken safety culture” within NASA that ultimately led to both shuttle disasters. But according to the New York Times, the reality was even worse:
Dogged Engineer’s Effort to Assess Shuttle Damage
New interviews and newly revealed e-mail sent during the fatal Columbia mission show that the engineers’ desire for outside help in getting a look at the shuttle’s wing was more intense and widespread than what was described in the Aug. 26 final report of the board investigating the Feb. 1 accident, which killed all seven astronauts aboard.
26 Sep. 2003
I’m only blogging this book ban article because of Les Orchard’s comment:
…because Huxley’s Brave New World might cause “inappropriate sexual arousal of young teens.” Have these people not lived with teens long? An oddly shaped cardboard box will cause sexual arousal in young teens.
I laughed.
26 Sep. 2003
Workweek Causes Climate Changes
Fascinating; researchers have found that diurnal temperature ranges are different between weekdays and weekends, and suggest that maybe atmospheric aerosols are to blame. More evidence that we really do affect the environment, and not always in predictable ways.
The effect is largest in North America, of course (remember we have more cars than licensed drivers now).
I’d like to see if the effect shows up on holiday mondays, too…
20 Sep. 2003
U.K. phone retailer bans e-mail
U.K. phone retailer bans e-mail | CNET News.com
John Caudwell, CEO of High Street mobile retailer Phones 4U, announced Thursday that he’ll ban all employees from using e-mail across the business.
The reasoning behind the total ban is apparently to improve productivity by reducing the time Phones 4U employees spend unnecessarily on e-mail-which Caudwell estimates will save the company around $1.6 million (1 million British pounds) a month.
20 Sep. 2003
From InfoWorld TechWatch: Bluetooth reality check
Bluetooth isn’t going away, but the original idea that it would be ubiquitous as a cable replacement technology is pretty much dead in the water.
Well that sucks. I still think there are applications for short-range, low-cost wireless connectivity; 802.11 doesn’t fit the bill in many ways. It would be great to drop my camera, cell phone, and printer on a table next to my laptop and have them all communicating without a snake’s nest of USB cables…
19 Sep. 2003
An internal news clipping service led to a Google search, and I eventually found the original article Information Security ROI: Not Every Expense Is an Investment by Tom Scholtz of the META Group.
“Organizations should not consider every expense to be an investment,” adds META Group analyst Chris Byrnes. “Many security expenditures are completely valid and necessary and even legally required, but they are not investments that will produce a quantifiable return. In many instances, ‘What is the return on investment?’ is simply the wrong question to ask.”
19 Sep. 2003
Perverse Access Memory → Comfort Foods Switch Off Stress, Scientists Find
Bad news for those of us that turn to food when we’re stressed out, and thus tend to be overweight…
Eating calorie-rich food seems to calm the nerves, but eating too much can lead to obesity, depression and more stress.
This is the first time it has been shown that the tendency to overeat in the face of chronic stress is biologically driven…
14 Sep. 2003
Ordering of Letters doesn’t matter
Fascinating. As soon as I figured it out, I read the rest of the paragraph as fast as I could, which was pretty close to normal speed.
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
12 Sep. 2003
Harald talks about gods and religion in old and current campaigns.