TylerHorton.com

Here we have another lame non-post claiming that I’ve been to busy to write about anything exciting.  Wasn’t last week (eventually) cool, though?  Didn’t you like the fractal program?

No…you didn’t?

:(

Fine.  I’ll optimize it.  Provide source code.  Add more features.  Improve rendering.  Support deeper searching.  Will that make you happy?  You think I’ll never do it!  You’re probably right but there’s no reason to say it out loud.  That’s how people’s feelings get hurt.

That and having no one actually read their blogs.

It’s a little late, but here is some of what caught my attention during the week:

#6 Fractals

I made this quick little applet that allows you to explore the Mandelbrot Set, a famous fractal with a simple formula (Z –> Z^2 + C). I could explain how fractals work, but I’m sure you’ve figured out how to use Wikipedia and Google by now. Directions for using this applet are provided below.

Your browser is completely ignoring the tag!

Use your mouse wheel button to zoom in and out wherever your mouse cursor is located. Click and drag the image to pan around. Click the color palettes on the right any time for a different view.

I’m feeling a lot better than I was last week, but I’m running behind schedule making up for lost productivity.  I’ll try and post something exciting tomorrow or the next day.  If all else fails, next week there will be a double post.

This is not the kind of post where I talk about the cool things I did, learned, saw, or otherwise experienced during the past week. Instead this time I offer something that I’ve been looking forward to for several days:

#5 Cure for the Common Cold

We’ve all heard the saying, “There’s no cure for the common cold.” Well, that’s not true. All you have to do to is cough, sneeze, hack, wheeze, sleep, eat, hydrate, and wait until the cold runs its course. Not the most pleasant solution, but at least it works. Unfortunately for me, that’s the exact remedy I’ve been using this week. In fact, I’m still coughing and blowing my know every 2 minutes, but at least I feel good enough to type today…just not for too much longer.

Before I stop typing all together, I’ll make some sort of grand promise that next week will bring an exciting post. No, really, it will. Fine! You don’t believe me, just wait and see!

Jerk!

I didn’t mean that. It’s the cold talking. Will you still be my friend? OK, good. Time to sign off then. See you next week (maybe sooner).

Multiple posts in the same week, I must be really excited about something!

#4 Qubits

Cubits are an ancient unit of measure equal to the length of an average forearm (an imprecise 20 inch approximation). I am not excited about cubits. I am excited about qubits.

Now, if you are already a quantum mechanic well-versed in Dirac Bra-Ket notation, then everything I’m about to say will bore you. You’d be better served going to read one of my favorite webcomics like xkcd or Something Positive. On the other hand, if you have no idea how computers, math, or the chaotic nature of the universe work, then everything I’m about to say will bore you too. That’s OK. You can go read the webcomics if you like, but I think that you should at least be aware that I’m excited about qubits this week.

I still haven’t told you what a qubit is. Well, a qubit is the smallest unit of information used in quantum computing. So the same way that a computer uses a bit (1 or 0, true or false) to store and process information, a quantum computer uses qubits. However, unlike bits, qubits can store exponentially more information due to a phenomenon called quantum entanglement. I’m not going to try and explain what that is (google it, or something!) or how qubits are used when actually perform calculations. Instead, I’m just going to say that I think there is a lot of promise for quantum computing in the future and I’d like to become more involved in that field.

I promised way back when that I would provide all of my nonexistent loyal readers with a link to the thesis I submitted “in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” You can click the previous link for direct access to the PDF document (requires Adobe Reader) or you can use DSpace from MIT Libraries. Here’s part of the summary just to wet your whistle:

SKINNI: The Smart Kiosk Information Navigation and Note-posting Interface

SKINNI is an application that allows users to access, annotate, and share contextually relevant information from smart digital kiosks in public spaces. These platforms will not only enable information exchange from public spaces, but will also support more complex tasks like enterprise integration, informal collaboration, and public need servicing. To test the effectiveness of our system, we deployed SKINNI on four kiosks throughout MIT CSAIL. Usage statistics that we have gathered suggest that SKINNI has been well-received by both lab members and visitors. In short, SKINNI has contributed to the utility of ubiquitous computing in transitional spaces like elevator lobbies, hallways, and lounges.

Last week I promised to post something exciting on a weekly basis.  Well, this week I remembered to actually post something.  Choosing a topic for this installment was easy, but finding good examples can be hard.

#3: Super Bowl Commercials

I just got finished watching the Super Bowl (The Colts beat the Bears 29-17), which I only watch for the commercials.  Here is a quick run-down of what I thought were the best (and by that I mean funniest) commercials this year:

1. Nationwide Insurance - Kevin Federline: You just know it’s going to be good when an ad is built around one of the biggest non-celebrities who has well overplayed his 15 minutes of fame.  This advert begins as an excerpt from a K-Fed music video.  The audience sees that the video is being viewed on a surveilance monitor for a fast food register.  The manager of the restaurant is watching the monitor, turns toward the frialator, and sees Kevin (decked out in paper hat and striped uniform) lip-synching into the security camera.  Nationwide’s slogan, “Life comes at you fast,” appears on the screen, suggesting that Kevin’s career as a rapper was just flash-in-the-pan and that he should have planned better for the future.  I fail to see how Nationwide could have done anything to help the former Mr. Spears, but ut was entertaining nonetheless.
2. Bud Light - Hitchhikers: A couple are driving along a deserted country road and see a hitchiker carrying a case of Bud Light and an axe.  The man sees the Bud an wants to give the guy a lift, but his lady friend sees the axe and protests, “But he’s got an axe!”  The man reassures her that there must be a good reason, so he asks the transient for an explanation.  His response: “It’s a bottle opener.”  After a brief message from the sponsor that Bud Light is “always worth it,” we see another hitchhiker, this one with a case of Bud Light and a chainsaw.  The guy driving the car again wants to offer the stranger a ride, to which the first hitchhiker now protests, “But he’s got a chainsaw!”  An unxpected ending that gave me a good chuckle.  Defintely worthy of this spot in the countdown.
3. Budweiser - Rock, Paper, Scissors: More beer! (which I don’t even drink.) In this ad, two guys reach for the last beer in a cooler at the same time.  Neither wishes to relinquish his hold on the bottle until they agree to Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine rightful ownership.  The guy on the left throws paper while the guy on the right throws a rock, literally.  Left guy falls to the ground and right guy took the beer, despite the semi-conscious protest from left guy that paper should’ve won.
4. Garmin - Maposaurus: Maybe I’m the only person who enjoyed this commercial, but I just thought it was great to see a foldable map transform into a Godzilla-type creature.  Then, seeing the driver whip out his Garmin and transform into a robot (Spoof of what?  Comment, please!) to battle Maposaurus was brilliant.  All the while, a made up theme song which sings the praise of GPS navigation playes in the background.  I loved it!  The only reason this commercial isn’t higher on the countdown is because it was too niche and campy for widespread appeal.

Garnering honorable mentions this year (in my totally non-binding approach to commercial review) was a Taco Bell commercial featuring talking lions and a series of ads by CarrerBuilder.com where working in an office is compared to some sort of tribal wilderness survival exercise.  In all I found that about half of the commercials trying to be funny were moderately successful, but none really made my sides split.  Better luck next year advertisers.

After 4.5 months of operation, my blog has only 8 posts (this is the 9th). Who’s fault is that? Mine! Well, I came up with a plan to get some more activity. Once a week (lets say Sunday, or so) I’m going to post what I’m excited about that week. I came up with this idea earlier, but haven’t motivated myself until now. So, without further ado, here are the first two installments:

#1: Metalocalypse

Metalocalypse is a flash-animated show currently on Cartoon Network as part of their [adult swim] line up. It follows the adventures of the fictional death metal band known as Dethklok, the most successful and brutal musicians ever to exist. I admit that there are a lot of references from the genre that I didn’t get until reading about them online, but even if they go over your head you’ll still find the show brilliant and hilarious (with a properly twisted sense of humor). If you don’t want to stay up until 12:15am, you can watch selected episodes on the fix or wander over to LordSkatan’s YouTube page for all episodes uploaded in 2 parts at a reasonable quality.

#2 elfa

Switching gears from death metal cartoons to closet organization systems may seem a bit unusual to you, but that’s too bad. If I actually remember to keep up this weekly posting scheme (and anyone reads them) they’ll be covering all sorts of random topics. Anyway, the reason I’m excited about elfa is because I’m really trying to make an effort to organize my life and all the material things in it. My basement is already a forest of stacked blue rubbermaid bins storing everything I’ve ever owned. The next step is to use the modular closet system from The Container Store to control all the shirts, shoes, pants, coats, boxes, bags, and general cruft crammed behind the sliding doors in the bedrooms. The feature that I like most about the elfa system is that it is rail-based, meaning that once you attach one piece of C-shaped metal to the top of the wall, the remaining assembly is just sliding and snapping. There are no other screws or supports to adjust. If you decide that you want to change the entire layout of the wall, you can just unhook the modular shelving, slide the vertical supports along the rail, and reconfigure with ease.

OK…that’s enough blogvertising for now. I’ll see if I can’t get excited about something less commercial next week.

…about the weather. I am typing with my office window open because the weather is too good to pass up. So why am I ranting? Look carefully at the date of this post and realize that I do not live in Death Valley, but it is still almost 60 °F (15 °C) in winter. Yes, I know that winter doesn’t technically begin for a few more days, but with only 14 days left in 2006, my Massachusetts home has not seen any snow.  This is highly unusual, as I have lived outside of Boston long enough to know that you should start carrying rocksalt and a snowbrush in the trunk of your car starting in late October.

I’ve been meaning to post about this pattern of high temperatures for a while now, but I’ve been too lazy and busy (yes, I can be both) that I figured I’d miss the window of opportunity.  I didn’t want to write in a couple of weeks when we probably will get a blizzard, “Hey, remember back in December when it was warm still?”  However, the local news meteorologists think that this will really be the end of our Indian summer, so I decided not to put off ranting any longer.

Now the flipside of my rant—I hate cold weather.  I know I just spent the last two paragraphs explaining that it is unseasonably warm in MA, but this is New England and it should be cold here now.  That doesn’t mean I have to like it.  I have come to accept that I live somewhere that frequently receives many feet of snow accumulation over the course of the winter (which is normally October-April here) and that’s the way it should be.  I’d probably rather live in some place like California where the weather is supposedly idyllic at all times.  Maybe some other day I’ll go into a rant on why I don’t live in CA (though I was born there).

Anyway, isn’t the weather something people talk about when they have nothing to say?  Oh right…it’s a blog.  Well, I’m sure I’ll continue to not say anything here for a while longer.  Maybe I’d post some more rants (or other content) if I thought anyone was actually reading this.  There is currently 1 registered user for my blog (besides me) and it isn’t even anyone I know.  I think it is just someone else named Tyler Horton who was googling his name and found my site.  Good for him, shame on the rest of you.  Mom, don’t you even read my blog?  It’s a sad day on the interblag when a lonely geek can’t even get his mom to read his inconsequential rants.

Happy Halloween everybody! I’ve been lax with posting recently (only one other this month), but at least I’ll make up for it with some cool pictures. These are the jack o’ lanterns that I carved last year (geek-ghost) and this year (meta-pumpkin). Any blurriness is clearly the fault of my camera, not from me having a case of the shakes