Big Dave’s Blog
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Why We Need Audiophiles
Gizmodo – Why We Need Audiophiles – Audiophiles This is a great read for anyone that is interested in great sound. I’ve said it a few times, I’m not into expensive audio gear because I like gadgets (although that part is fun too). I’m into expensive gear because I flat-out love music, and I want […]
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Red Sox Opening Day 2009
What an amazing day. Yesterday, my friend Brian sends me a tweet offering a ticket for Opening Day at Fenway Park. Now, I’ve been a fan of baseball and the Red Sox since I could walk, but I’ve never had the privilege of seeing Opening Day. On top of that, after I can’t count how many Red […]
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The Perils of Testing Code
Testing code is good, right? No! Testing code is bad. Testing functionality is good. How many of us have written a bunch of code and then turned around and wrote a bunch of tests for that code? Be honest! Everyone has done it, but why is it a bad thing? The problem with this is […]
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Replacing Mongrel with Passenger (mod_rails)
I’ve been using Apache + Mongrel for a while now. I read about Passenger when it first came out, but I never felt the need to bother with it since I have a bunch of recipes for Apache and Mongrel (see a previous posts about background tasks with Workling). The other day, I figured I would […]
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Music Is Dead: iPods and Young People Have Utterly Destroyed Music
Music Is Dead: iPods and Young People Have Utterly Destroyed Music This is depressing for someone like me. A Stanford professor did an informal study over several years, and he found that students each year preferred low-quality MP3 more and more. Like the author, this is disappointing for me because it most likely means it […]
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Phew! That was close!
I’m not sure why, but I seem to be on an astronomy kick lately. I came across a little tidbit today that reminded me of Deep Impact and Armageddon. At 13:44 UT today (March 2, 2009), a 30 meter asteroid (identified as 2009 DD45) will pass by earth and miss by only 37,282 miles. Even though […]
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Reflecting on a New Generation of Mirrors
Gallery – Reflecting on a new generation of mirrors – Image 1 – New Scientist Continuing on the theme of interesting optics, Andrew Hicks, a mathematician, has created mirrors that accomplish some amazing feats. Imagine looking at text in a mirror, and the text is not backwards. Imagine 360-degree panoramas without distortion. It’s all pretty cool stuff. All […]
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Navy Says Combat Robots Multiplying Fast, Need “Battlefield Ethics” Pronto
Machine Takeover: Navy Says Combat Robots Multiplying Fast, Need “Battlefield Ethics” Pronto Things like this make me nervous. I love the idea of technology and robots (building one would be a blast), but my concern is that war and combat will stop being dangerous. When that happens, it will be too easy to resort to […]
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iPhone Wishlist
I’ve been an iPhone user since the first weekend the 3G came out, and so far I love it. Prior to the iPhone, I was a Blackberry user for a while. My reasons for waiting to change were: My contract with Verizon conveniently ended the same month the 3G came out. AT&T had lousy coverage […]
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The Secret in Building 26
I just finished reading The Secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of How America Broke the Final U-boat Enigma Code. What a fascinating read! I’ve written before about the UK’s contribution to code breaking during WWII (Neglect of Bletchley condemned and Bletchley Park Update), but this is the first time I learned about some of […]