J . M A I L: Archive

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Tom Bihn Aeronaut Review +

I thought it was time to post a review of a recent purchase, the Tom Bihn Aeronaut Bag, finally I think I have enough experience to post something of use, here goes… ——— Description: The Aeronaut is hard to categorize: Is it soft luggage? A duffel bag? Or a backpack? The Aeronaut is all of the above. It takes the best of all of those bags and combines them into what...

Jul 4th

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The era of watches: time is ticking down

Just had a thought… is the era of watches slowly coming to end? Now obviously clocks are not going anywhere, they are great on the walls of the gym, the walls of classroom, the train station, the airport, while scuba diving, ect … But personal time pieces worn on the wrist seem to be less and less noticeable on people in their 20’s. Growing up I was really into watches. It...

Jan 22nd

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WebLog Reboot

I did some house keeping on my blog recently, getting rid of a lot of the older posts and trying to leave just the ones that were heavily accessed via google searches and those which have some useful computerish/jonish information in them. I decided to clean up and “professionalize” the content of my website a bit so that I could link it to my lab’s website :...

Oct 13th

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Art Interactivity

I have been thinking about an exhibit lately focusing on touch interactivity, audio prompts, and visual reveals. The idea is pretty simple, a show case of different interaction metaphors which each reveal a visual piece of art or info-graphic. Leveraging iPads as the interaction canvases different interaction methods would reveal related work. For example… A pair of headphones is...

Jul 28th

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Acer 1830T First Benchmarks

Battery life via windows (everything at default)… Internals of the 1830t. My old computer benches at (Core2 Solo U35000 @ 1.40 ghz / 3 gigs of ram / mobile intel 4 series express): But check out the 1830t: Check out how the ssd in the old computer crushes the new one. The cpu score with the i3 is over double that of an su3500. Faster memory. Better graphics. Am I sold? I...

Jul 1st

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SSD for Me

Yesterday I bit the bullet and went out and got myself an Intel SSD hard drive. I was able to get an 80 gig drive for around $20 under cost and even still it wasn’t cheap, costing almost half the price of my current laptop (Gateway EC1803h). I posted my windows experience index above and as you can see the score for the hard disk is incredibly high. As for real work noticeable...

Jun 23rd

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Tablets, Netbooks, Nooks, Galore

I am trying to decide if I should pick up a new laptop or tablet. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Here is some internal dialogue: 1. Do I need a new tablet, netbook, or ereader Answer: No. 2. Should I get an ereader for reading papers? Answer: No, I can’t annotate them with any kind of stylus. I also like physical paper and books. 3: Should I get a tablet? Answer: For what I do,...

Jun 21st

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Calibri

Calibri is a humanist sans-serif typeface family under the Microsoft ClearType Font Collection. In Microsoft Office 2007, it replaced Times New Roman as the default typeface in Word and replaced Arial as the default in PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. Calibri was designed by Lucas de Groot for Microsoft to take advantage of Microsoft’s ClearType rendering technology. - - - - FROM...

Nov 17th

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Temperature Affects on the Transmission of the...

Hearing someone say they don’t want to catch cold as they bundle up to go outdoors bothers me all the time. It’s like saying, “Hey I am going outside, better wear a hat to avoid illiteracy.” It makes no sense! Molecular surface of one variant of human rhinovirus. - - - - - From the FBHC “Does cold weather cause a cold? Although many people are convinced that...

Nov 16th

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Nov 14th

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Rethinking My Desktop and Syncing My Online...

I am playing around with my desktop to make it more sleek, less cluttered, and more usable. The first thing I did was install fences to group my desktop icons together. I placed the four most important things together at the bottom of my desktop and everything else will be dumped into the thin column on the left hand side of my desktop. Fences is nice in that when I mouse over to the think...

Nov 13th

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I want it! Wi-Fi Scale

This looks so cool. It would make tracking weight so easy. I think I would use it all the time if I had it. Video of the Web Interface: Video of the free Iphone App and last but not least … …. it posts to twitter. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Price is $160. Thoughts?

Nov 12th

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New bottom bar on TwitCritics

From the TwitCritics Blog: Slight tweak to our bottom bar. We are in the process of working on a lot of exciting big things but we are still paying attention to the little details that make your experiences on twitcritics as easy and understandable as possible. Our careful and considered solution to the bottom bar design was to group items according to who we think will be using them. General...

Nov 11th

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What's in a name? The usability of web names

I learned today that on the web a name is not just a name. Example 1: http://pixelposition.com/hyphens-underscores/ On twitcritics we were using underscores on our links to movies ie: http://twitcritics.com/movies/men_who_stare_at_goats This is not the best practice. FTA: Concensus of “repeat opinion” is that hyphens have an SEO value. Why? We know hyphens are seen as word separators. We don’t...

Nov 8th

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Objectified

I just watched the documentary “Objectified”. My brain is buzzing with hundreds of thoughts and comments. I want to get them all out but first I am going to re-watch this movie and write down my thoughts as I go. Expect to read a number of blog posts in the near future centered around design and interaction design. I highly recommend you watch (*download) this film. (btw the above...

Nov 8th

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SimplyNoise.com - The best free white noise... →

Pretty cool application.

Oct 22nd

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First Impressions Review: Microsoft Wireless...

Picked up the Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 6000 today. I was trying to decide between a bunch of different mouses. Most were too expensive. I was also looking at the VX nano logitech, the v550 logitech, and the microsoft arc mouse. The arc didn’t have one of the new nice super small usb connectors that can be left in all the time. This mouse features something microsoft calls Bluetrack,...

Sep 9th

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First Impressions Review: Gateway EC Series ULV...

I bought a new laptop! This is the first new one since the 7” eeepc, which was a waste of money, and the computer I first got when I came to Guelph for undergrad in 2001. It’s a Gateway EC Series ULV 11.6” Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 (currently only selling at future shop, not yet for sale in the states, it actually only came out friday at my local future shop, which I happened...

Sep 1st

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Jul 12th

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Anatomy of a Cutting Diet

Today I begin my third cutting diet. I am currently 170 pounds. Soon I will be 155 pounds. Let me start from the beginning. I could say that today I start my diet but that wouldn’t be specific enough. Really, we are all on diets all the time. We tend to associate the word diet with an effort to lose weight but a diet can be program to gain weight or simply a word to describe what we tend to eat....

May 25th

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Movie Review: Rachel Getting Married

* * * * _ - 4 / 5 stars ————————————————————— I saw this movie the other night on campus and I am glad that I did. It is the story of Kim coming home from rehab to attend her sister Rachel’s wedding. Kim has to confront her family, particularly her father, sister,...

Mar 3rd

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“I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I...”

– William Penn

Feb 23rd

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Life Lessons: How to Not Fail at Life

I recently ran across a comic posted on Digg (some 4chan fodder called : How To Not Fail At Life [GUIDE/PIC]). This some what juvenile comic has some important lessons to offer and stuck with me. It made me pause and think. I thought I would share one part of the comic here. Please make of it what you will…

Feb 19th

Pew Internet: Twitter and status updating →

The Pew Internet Project is an initiative of the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. Pew Internet explores the impact of the internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care and civic/political life. The Project is nonpartisan and takes no position on policy...

Feb 13th

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The Physical Genius →

… “When I interviewed the surgeons who were fired, I used to leave the interview shaking,” Bosk said. “I would hear these horrible stories about what they did wrong, but the thing was that they didn’t know that what they did was wrong. In my interviewing, I began to develop what I thought was an indicator of whether someone was going to be a good surgeon or not. It...

Feb 3rd

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American vs. Continental

Both are perfectly correct, and neither is preferable to the other. It is important, however, to be consistent. American Style The knife is used for cutting only. It is held in the right hand to help control the object being cut. The knife is then put down on the edge of the plate (blade facing in), and the fork is switched to the right hand to lift the cut piece to the mouth. The tines of the...

Feb 2nd

Jan 29th

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Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire

* * * * * - 5 / 5 stars ———————————————————- I can easily say this is the best movie I have seen this year (note this is the first movie I have seen this year). The story of young man in India describing his past as it relates to the TV show who wants to be a millionaire. The...

Jan 10th

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Watch

So I have posted a bit about mediatation lately. I have been slacking in my own practice. I hope this video will inspire me as well as anyone else that watches it. This is a longer lecture given by Ricard at the Google campus (those lucky people and their private lectures) (note how he brings up Ekman)(also note that Ricard brings up 10,000 hours, read Outliers by Gladwell for more about this). ...

Jan 8th

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Movie Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

* * * _ _ - 3 / 5 stars ———————————————————- An interesting watch. One of the best movies of the year? No. The idea is pretty well done. The acting is reserved but interesting by the two main characters. The film feels fairy long. I understand that it has been compared to Forest...

Dec 28th

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Movie Review: Happy Go Lucky

* * _ _ _ - 2/5 stars —————————————————————- Finished watching Happy-go-lucky last night. I had seen a preview for this film at the Bookshelf a month ago and thought it looked interesting. However, the main character is ultimately annoying to watch on screen. The...

Dec 28th

Dec 23rd

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Watch

TED - Matthieu Ricard: Habits of happiness

Dec 12th

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Watch

Watch these videos back to back.

Dec 12th

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Watch

TED - Martin Seligman: What positive psychology can help you become

Dec 11th

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Watch

TED - Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy?

Dec 11th

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Watch

TED - Helen Fisher: The science of love, and the future of women

Dec 11th