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Posts Tagged Geekery

HTC Droid Incredible [Tech Review]

May 16

Posted by Aaron in Featured, Technology Reviews | 11 Comments

UPDATED: Some corrections about the SD card issue. Details below.

The HTC Incredible is aptly named.

After using my Motorola Droid for a couple of months now, it’s going to be difficult to go back to it after using this miniature powerhouse for only a week.

At face value, there are plenty of specs to ogle; the 1 GHz snapdragon processor, 8 megapixel camera, and a beautiful touch screen that rivals the iPhone or any other fancy-pants smart phone out there.

But specs only take you so far — it’s all about the performance, and this this phone not only speaks its lines, it does it without cue cards. It does stutter a little in a couple areas (generally all OS / software related), but those impediments are all outshone by its otherwise stellar delivery.

If this phone had been offered when I upgraded earlier this year, it would have been a no-brainer to switch. Details & in-depth review after the jump … Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 17% [?]

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Quake-style terminal window [Linux FTW]

Jan 22

Posted by Aaron in Linux FTW | 6 Comments

Long ago (mid-90′s), there was a revolutionary 3-d first-person-shooter game called “Quake”, made by id Software, the same people that made DooM a few years before.

Quake had this really cool feature where you could press the ~ key at anytime during the game and a terminal window would drop down from the top of the screen. This terminal screen could be used for anything from chatting to changing maps and more. It was sweet.

Since then, there have been many attempts at replicating the functionality in both Mac and Linux environments, where it is still common to use a terminal window with some regularity.

One such software package, Guake, has become a personal favorite of mine. It’s very simple; no bells or whistles other than the ability to adjust the Opacity. My only beef with it was simply that the terminal would just pop up on the screen rather than drop down from the top. Totally superficial — but what’s the point of using an open-source OS if you can’t customize it to do exactly what you want?

Last night, I figured out how to do it. And it’s glorious (video demo after the jump). Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10% [?]

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Tracking Motivation

Jul 20

Posted by Aaron in Academia | 2 Comments

As I have mentioned previously, I often struggle with task-completion and self-motivation with some things.

Example: After commencement, when summer “break” began, I had started to read some Bioinformatics textbooks. One of my Profs is lending me a textbook they’ll be using for one of the courses, and I started reading it and taking notes — purely because I find it interesting.

Then I got a new book (Reason 4 Ignite, which I previously reviewed), and obsessively started doing that every day. Bioinformatics got shelved for the time being, along with all the passion and sincere interest in learning it. The thought of picking up the book and reading it actually repulsed me — normally, this might give some pause, but it’s nothing new; I’ve been through it many times. I know that eventually, that interest will come back around with the same intensity; I just don’t know WHEN.

What was different this time, though, is that it got me thinking: What if I could track these interests somehow? If I could collect enough data, perhaps I could find some cyclical nature to my interests and develop some reasonable expectations of myself. Heck, maybe a predictable periodic function would emerge, and I could create a differential equation to plot my interest in differential equations. The question is, of course, how do you quantify interest? Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 3% [?]

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The Marble Puzzle [From the Archives]

Jun 9

Posted by Aaron in Geekery | No Comments

My “Day I Left Pennsylvania” led me to some archived website posts (before blogs were invented) I had written many years ago. I’m re-posting them now. Bear in mind that most of the content in this series is over 5 years old. I have left the content more or less intact. I have removed some links and added some others — but that’s it. Enjoy!

You are presented with the following puzzle:

In a box there are 20 balls: 10 white and 10 black. With a blindfold on, what is the least number you must draw out in order to get a pair that matches?

Some people get this one right off the bat, other people don’t. If you answered 3 then you are one of the people that DO get it. If you answered 11, then you are in the latter category. Why is the answer three? The best way to explain it is by analyzing the worst-case-scenarios of draws, which will give us the minimum number of draws necessary. (W = White, B = Black)

Drawing #
Current Draw
Total Draws
1
W
W
2
B
WB
3
W
WBW

The problem most people run into is that they forget that the problem asks for ANY TWO balls of the same color. If the problem said “how many must you pick until you can guarantee two white balls” then the answer would be 12. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: unranked [?]

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