A Mentsh Trakht: January 2006

Monday, January 30, 2006

A horse of a different color

8% of northern European males are colorblind. Gary Stormo once gave a talk, out of frustration, in which he made all the lines in his graphs the same color, and then said things like, "Comparing the red and green lines here shows ...."

But wouldn't this page, here, be a better tool for exploring the subject if it weren't so ugly?

Monday, January 23, 2006

Test post from my phone

Here's a post from my phone.

Everybody needs a hobby

More proof that it takes all kinds. You know the old saying,

One man's meat is another man's ... uh ... shiny mud ball?

ARTNATOMY

Creative use of flash.

Independence Day Quiz

Becky Ruttenberg just pointed me at this Independence-Day Quiz.

She says 96% of HS fail this, and 50% of Americans over 50 do, too. Didn't seem hard, but then I remember surveys that say some huge fraction of Americans can't find France on a world map.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Blogging While Blond

How do you keep Wonkette in suspense?

Thanks, Rich.

T-Mobile Web Access

After spending several hours (yep, hours) on hold, spread over a week, and calling back after three or four times that T-Mobile said they'd call me when they didn't, I finally got web access. I've been generally impressed by T-Mobile service. Their T-Zones service must be staffed by folks who couldn't get jobs in other parts of the company.

It was worth persisting. Suddenly, I've jumped from using 300 anytime minutes to about 800. I've been playing.

Amazon, in contrast, took the advertised two days to get me a copy of "Nokia Smartphone Hacks." I'm reading it right now.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

In the beginning, there was the command line

Here's a command-line interface for the web.

If you're a Neal Stephenson fan, you'll note that what goes around, comes around.

Very easy to customize, too. Try "oeis 1 1 1 3 3 4 9" or "man omim."

Thanks to Oliver Starr
for this tip.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Liquor? But we only just met.

I have way too many draft posts that need to get turned into something real. Perhaps I shouldn't be spending so much time testing all the new AJAX technology.