brainwagon

Slashdot mentioned work by Nayar and Nishino on generating images of what people see by processing images of reflections in the cornea. I thought the paper itself was pretty cool, but there are lots of other good things that the two authors have written about. In particular, I liked the idea of A Jitter Camera […]

The gents at Lambda the Ultimate note that John Meacham has set up a Cafe Press Bookstore for Haskell books, including Simon Peyton-Jones and James Lester’s Implementing Functional Languages. Peyton-Jones’ Design and Implementation of Functional Programming was a book that I studied extensively in grad school back in the late 80’s, and it’s good to […]

After penning the article below, I was looking for a picture of the elusive Walter Carlisle (didn’t succeed), but I did find a nice page at the Library of Congress Website that has some nice pictures that you can download. Digging around more, you can find their collection of 2100 early baseball cards. I’m listing […]

Read these declassified accounts of the Trinity Test on the 59th anniversary of the first detonation of a nuclear device. I’d also recommend reading the Pulitzer Prize winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Or you could watch Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, which is narrated by William Shatner and […]

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It seems like a lifetime ago, but I remember as a young five year old watching Saturn V rocket launches with my dad. In fact, it was a lifetime ago. NASA is marking the event on their website, even while planning to return (or, […]

The recent Wired article on the use of evolutionary computation to optimize Formula-1 cars has been getting a bit of press lately, and finally made it to Slashdot. Buried in the comments I found a link to some work of which I was previously unaware: Differential Evolution. You can also read a matching tech report. […]

A nifty group of template for various cards and boxes can be found at Mirkwood Designs. Useful for craft projects, no doubt, and the author does not mind if you sell products which use his templates. Rudimentary, but with some good ideas. This origami CD case is more clever and more useful. I’ve used it […]

Sometimes you read a headline, and it just strikes you as odd. For instance, today on Yahoo! News, I read that: Red Sox: Nixon To Be Activated Tonight For some reason, I immediately thought of this image: I wonder if he plays a good left field. Let me give credit to www.gotfuturama.com for their terrific […]

Today the Supreme Court issued a ruling which reversed the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling that the phrase “under God” was unconstitutional. Instead of trying to present an actual legal argument about the separation of church and state, they chose instead to merely rule that Michael Newdow could not bring suit on behalf of his daughter […]

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day: the date when the Allies of World War II began their invasion of France to defeat the Axis powers in Europe. It is without a doubt one of the most spectacular battles of all time, and represents probably the single greatest achievement of logistics in warfare ever. It’s […]

I love Good Eats, and am a big fan of Alton Brown. His no-nonsense pragmatism has vastly improved my skills at preparing steaks, chicken broth and cheesecake. In honor of his brief mention in Wired, I’ve added his weblog to my list of Celebrity Blogs. Thanks Alton! To pad this entry out, let me recommend […]

Apparently the tale of Elena, the young lady who did a photolog of her trip through the quarantine zone which surrounds Chernobyl is a fraud. Her photos are apparently real, but were taken during an ordinary tour arranged through a Kyiv travel agency. Motorcycles are banned in the zone. What a pity. Some urban legends […]

Pardon my construction. I’m busy revamping brainwagon’s look and feel to be more like it’s previous incarnation, and have unveiled a few warts in the markup emitted by WordPress. All should be better shortly, but until then, don’t be surprised if some of the markup looks a bit strange.

Motivated by the change in licensing in MovableType as well as a general feeling of dissatisfaction with certain elements of its design, I decided to look at other weblogging solutions. An article on Slashdot mentioned WordPress, so I gave it a shot. And was immediately sold. It works very well. It will take me a […]

Cute and useful project: build yourself a $14 Steadycam. Or you could look at this plan for a camera stabilizer from the Guide Book for Guerilla Filmmakers. Or look here, here, or here.