…that must read article is this one, The Bitcoin Bubble and the Future of Currency by Felix Salmon. Most of the articles I have seen have no understanding of the technology or how money and currency work. They tend to be bamboozled by the technology and bewildered by economics. Salmon understands the technology well enough and understands the economics better than anybody interested in bitcoins.

This article shows the shortcomings of the bitcoin system but talks about how it points the way to the future. There’s much more about the technological shortcomings you can and should read elsewhere, but what’s especially good here is the financial shortcomings of bitcoin. Even if Salmon was bamboozled by the technology (he isn’t), this article is worth reading for the financial analysis. Not surprising, given his role at Reuters. Still, I am heartened to read the thought he put into it.

Don’t get taken by the crazy growth of bitcoin. Read this instead.

For those wondering why people are getting excited about all this, here’s a graph from Salmon’s article on bitcoin’s market cap growth.

Insanity.

Dave Weigel from Slate posted a recent video of Lloyd Cole playing “Are you Ready to Be Heartbroken?” in a very small club, and it was sad to see. Literally heartbreaking. Like athletes, pop stars don’t age well, and by the time they get to 40, most of them should retire. Yet I suspect for many of them it’s all they know and what they love, and that keeps them running and performing well past when they should.

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions were great back in the day, and I prefer to remember them this way, singing Perfect Skin.

Lloyd Cole and The Commotions – Perfect Skin [Live HQ] – YouTube

Nike+ combined with the iPod Nano are not just for running anymore. You can hack them to do other things if you want, too.

Some background. I have used Nike+ with my Apple iPod Nano device for along time. I love it. But the other day, after my run,  I was syncing my iPod with the Nike+ site using the iTunes software, when I had a problem with my computer. Result? The data didn’t upload. Worse, I tried it again on my next run and it still wasn’t working.

Through some searching, I found the answer here: nike+ website temporarily unavailable: Apple Support Communities. Here is the key feedback I needed:

If you go into your Nano and allow “view hidden files,” there is a pathway to both your latest folder and synched folder: E:\iPod_Control\Device\Trainer\Workouts\Empeds\nikeinternal. Take all your runs from the latest folder — these are the ones that aren’t uploaded — and copy them to your desktop. Put one back into the latest folder from your desktop and try to upload it to Nikeplus. Continue until you get one that won’t upload: It’s the one that’s corrupt. Remove it from the latest folder and get Nike to input it manually. You should have no reason to restore your iPod.

(If you know a bit of XML, you can get all the information from your corrupt runs. The distances are in km and the pace and duration are in milliseconds — this is standard for programming).

That’s right! All that data is there in XML format for you to hack! Highly readable and capable of being hacked with. (Even better, it looks like it keeps a seperate folder for each sensor you use. That means you could have one sensor for running and another for hacking. So you don’t have to worry about messing up your time recordings.)

How you can hack it is up to you. Let’s say you were doing an activity and you wanted to see how long it took to do something (e.g., a presentation). You could treat the presentation like a race, but take a snapshot of the time after each slide. This would give you a sense of how long it is taking you to get through it. Or you could turn your chores into a game. Say you have to clean three rooms, but you found it super boring. Why not try and improve your time each time by “racing” through them and recording your time at the end step?

You don’t even have to be moving. After all, the pace isn’t so important, it’s the stop and start times. So you could devote yourself to reading more each week and you could start and stop the Nano every time you do a reading session. All the times would be recorded on the Nano, which you could pull off later.

There’s lots more data in there besides your times. There’s number of steps taken, your weight, even the playlist you used. There is also the difference between when you paused the Nano and when you just do a time check. With some creativity you can record all sorts of information.

For fans of self quantification, there are more and more devices that you can do this with. But a Ipod Nano and the Nike+ additions provide a cool thing to hack around. I recommend it.

P.S. If you can’t see the hidden files, go here and follow these instructions from Microsoft. On Windows 7, you can see Folder Options in your Control Panel without having to go to Appearance and Themes.

This is a great example of just how much green screening is done in the shows and movies that you watch. It’s remarkable.

The video is here: Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Reel 2009, via kottle.org.

You want to make a dish for St. Patrick’s Day and you don’t know what to pick? Then go here: For the Love of Cooking. They have a wide range of dishes that fill the bill, including this:

There’s a dish for every meal, and there’s vegetarian selections, too. Of course there’s stew, but there’s much more. Cheers!

I am a fan of Braun’s products and design, and if you like Apple products, chances are you would too. Yet if you live in North America, there is also a good chance you don’t even know of Braun products. That’s a shame, because as this Gizmodo article points out (1960s Braun Products Hold the Secrets to Apple’s Future), Apple owes a lot to Dieter Rams and the work he did on the design of Braun products. See this photo from the article to see what I mean:

And this is just a small sample. I think Apple is smart to borrow ideas from Braun. If Braun were smarter, they would capitalize on this by strongly marketing their products in North America. I think they could sell a lot more and become a much larger presence in North American households if they did.

Mostly the amount of labour that goes into it. As this article shows (The $482 Difference Between Two Loafers – The Everything Guide to Shoes — New York Magazine), a shoe that costs under $100 can look like a shoe that costs over $500, but the (price) difference is in the details. I liked this article because it gives you a better sense of what goes into the making of a pair of shoes. I am sure the same could be said for most clothes nowadays.

BIEGERT & FUNK‘s web site, including this

They make a number of watches and clocks like this, and they are all beautiful.

Chances are you will do spring cleaning around your house/apartment/condo in the next few weeks. You should also spring clean your financial house and get everything in order. A great way to do this is to take a day off and tackle everything at once, as this article suggests: Your Money – A Day Off to Tackle the Financial To-Do List – NYTimes.com.

You will be surprised how by the end of it that you are paying less on your overall bills and maybe saving more at the end of the exercise too. Well worth while, both the article and the exercise.

At Urban Outfitters Bike Shop, you can. You don’t have do any fancy welding, just go to their interactive web site and go from there. You start with a pattern like this:

And they help you with designing it yourself. This model, the Plato Dutch Diamond, comes in around $399 for a fixie/1-speed. I have a bike like this (not from them), and I love it. There’s even a random option if the choices overwhelm you. Now you can have that 5 colour bike you always wanted. 🙂 Or for that matter, a basic black model with a touch of red. Whatever, you have lots of flexibility. And in the end, a bike all of your own.

I love this recipe for pie crust: Stop Being a Wuss: How To Make Pie Crusts the Easy Way | The Awl. Most recipes are dry and detail oriented. Not this one. It has loads of personality, wit and humour. And it is still a valid recipe for how to make pie crust. More than that, you will WANT to try and make a pie when you are done reading it. But wait, you say: what do I do once I have the pie crust? That, my friend, is easy. If you want to be terribly lazy, when you are at the grocer, pick up some pie filling and pour it into this wonderful pie of yours. If you think, “that’s wussy!”, then go all the way and look up apple pie or some berry pie recipes on Google. You will be glad you did.

Now, you are no longer a wuss, and even better, you have pie.

Yes, even new runners training for something less than a marathon can benefit from some speed training. This article, Adding Speed Workouts to Marathon Training – NYTimes.com, is focused on marathon training, but I think anyone running should give it a read. I am a big fan of fartlek training and at a minimum, I’d recommend people that run regularly should add to their training. This article covers that and more. A good read for runners of all types.

I bookmarked this ages ago, but this post, How I Hire Programmers by Aaron Swartz is worth reading. It’s from 2009, but it is timeless.

I am sure it could be applied to anyone, not just programmers. It’s a very humane way of interviewing and hiring people.

That’s more or less what the Congress gave the Secretary of the Treasury (Paulson, under President Bush), in order to save the economy when it was threatening to crash and burn in the fall of 2008. Here’s the Text of Draft Proposal for Bailout Plan (NYTimes.com).

Basically it gives Paulson the ability to buy any mortgate-related asset from anyone for any amount up to $700B. It’s a remarkable document. Read it just to see how much leeway Paulson had. It’s astounding.

How do I know this? Easy! I went to Data Paradigms – Data, data, data! and looked at this chart.

And yes, it is hard to read: you will need to go to that site or here (Next Pope) to play around with the prediction tool. Let’s see. It says the top five candidates are Scola (Italy), Ouellet (Canada), Scherer (Brazil), Turkson (Ghana) and Bertone (Italy).  I will be surprised if it isn’t one of those.

For those who like looking into data centres, there’s this: Search Me – The New York Times > Magazine > Slide Show. I think data centres are mysterious things for many people, which accounts for the fascination with them. Once you’ve been in as many as I have, though, they seem pretty straightforward, despite the visual complexity.

Of all the photos in that spread, this is my favorite:

You may think this is far fetched, but you’d be surprised how people will randomly hit buttons in data centres.

While Obamacare is the law, there are lots of developments happening there, and the GOP is still battling it in a number of ways. If you want to keep track of that, or many other topics concerning healthcare in the United States, take a look at Kaiser Health News. It has a focus you won’t find at alot of other news sites. Well worth reading.

This site shows it  from 1983 to 2009.  It’s fun and amazing to see how much cell phones have evolved in a very short period of time. If you are like me, you will go through it and think, “oh, I remember THOSE!” :). For example,  I still remember being so impressed when I saw this for the first time:

Anyone wanting to make predictions about the future of mobile technology might want to review this and see just how much changes and how dramatically are the changes.

I am a big fan of Microsoft Project: I think it is fantastic not just for work, but for home. If for some reason you can’t get a copy of that software, I highly recommend that you consider this software: OpenProj – Project Management | Free Business & Enterprise software downloads at SourceForge.net. It’s free, and it looks very similar to the software from Microsoft. It will even open and work with files that come from Microsoft Project.

I highly recommend both tools.

So, working backwards from this, Paul Krugman Bankruptcy Story False, Spreads – Business Insider, I go to here, Paul Krugman Files Chapter 13 Bankruptcy | Stock Market Summary (NSDQ, NYSE, AMEX and more) on Boston.com, which got it from this Austrian paper, here Paul Krugman ist pleite • format.at,
which got it from…..The Daily Currant – The Global Satirical Newspaper of Record. Yes, the Daily Currant! The one that states it is satirical right up front. To be fair, I have fallen for the Currant’s posts before, but I also don’t work for a newspaper.

Krugman is having fun with this, as you can see here: Breitbarted – NYTimes.com.

As for the other writers that ran with this… well, I fact checked that in a couple of minutes. Not sure why they couldn’t.

This is not a ubiquitous idea, but it could be. It’s also one of the better uses of QR codes that I have seen. Ideally if I had one major medical condition (e.g. a specific allergy), then I would like to see it written next to the QR code. Of course the advantage of the QR code is the ability to contain alot of information on a very small place, which is ideal for people who do have a number of medical conditions. Plus the stickers are cheap and you can have them everywhere.

For more information on this, go here: Lifesquare. Found via this article: Personal QR codes could help first responders get vital patient information | IBM Smarter Trends

This article, This Story Stinks – NYTimes.com, received some bad comments itself, mostly for stating the obvious (or at least the obvious to some people on twitter). I think it is worth reading, though, because it verifies what we suspected: negative comments have an effect on a reader. Indeed, as the article states

The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.

It would be great if more people learned to not read the comments, but they do. Bad comments, like spam, are one of the awful things about the Internet. It needs to be treated seriously and tackled with energy. Studies like this will help us decide how to do this and proceed.

According to this, Algorithmic Rape Jokes in the Library of Babel | Quiet Babylon, the T shirts were generating automatically and the company that sold them, Solid Gold Bomb, is saying that they not responsible because, hey, algorithms. I agree with the article: this is a bogus excuse. It’s like someone saying I wasn’t responsible for my car putting you in the hospital if it hit you because, hey, the car hit you, not me. Just like you are the operator of the vehicle and you are responsible for the operation of that vehicle, so too are companies and the people that run them responsible for their algorithms / computer technology as a whole.

You are responsible for the technology you deploy, and if you don’t understand that, you shouldn’t deploy it.

Also, Amazon needs to act, too. It’s a great company in many ways, but this and other practices that occur on their web site needs to be cracked down on.

Then check out this post: (Feb 2013) How Many People Use the Top Social Media, Apps & Services?

A comprehensive compilation of social media stats. Very impressive.

I mention this because Daniel Gross (@grossdm) on twitter pointed out this article, which was written in March, 2009: Michael Boskin Says Barack Obama Is Moving Us Toward a European-Style Social Welfare State and Long-Run Economic Stagnation – WSJ.com. Is this true?

It’s true that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was low when that article was written, dropping to a relative low of 6,626.94. However, Obama took office in January, 2009. During the summer and fall of 2007, the DJIA was just over 14,000. It then proceeded to fall month after month, with big drops in the fourth quarter of 2008. And just who was in office in 2007 and 2008? President Bush.

What has happened since March, 2009? The DJIA has been rising consistently, with a small dropoff in July, 2010, after which it recovered and now stands at just over 14,000 as of February, 22, 2013.

There is still too much unemployment as well as other problems with the U.S. economy. But the stock market has been the beneficiary of President Obama and his form of governing.

And by the way, who is Michael Boskin? According to the article, “Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.“

All DJIA come from here: Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) History

If this works, the recipe is here: https://ifttt.com/myrecipes/personal/2934895

It may seem odd to talk about the success of these two devices. Many of the reviews that I (and likely, you) have read have said that the Pixel is a great device, but too expensive and to be avoided. And Google Glass is not even shipped yet. Given that, how can I talk about their success?I think their success can be measured in another way. Regardless of the success of these or other offerings, Google is successfully positioning itself as a leader with regards to emerging technology. This is important for IT companies. If you are perceived as failing, then regardless of how good your technology is, it will always be framed in terms of your failing to lead. (see RIM/Blackberry or Microsoft). Likewise, if you are someone like Apple, a perceived leader, then whatever you do is measured in those terms. Given that, Google succeeds on the whole even if individual products do not. Furthermore, Google was gaining a reputation for missing the mark (Wave, Google+). Products like these can help change that perception.The Verve has two good reviews of these products here (Chromebook Pixel review) and here (I used Google Glass: the future, but with monthly updates). If you want to know more about these products, I recommend those articles.Finally, since this is IT related, I should state these are my opinions only and do not and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of my employer (IBM).

Why? Because it will be soon the end of Posterous (R.I.P. Posterous). The good news is that you can migrate from Posterous to other platforms, but you may want to do so soon.

As an IBM employee, I am happy to see IBM has their own tumblr: IBMblr | IBM Innovation on Tumblr. There’s lots of good stuff on it, including this:

 

I also like this:

>

I came across this entry about Melba Roy from this tumblr, Vintage Black Glamour. I tried to do searches on her to see if I could find more information about her, but I couldn’t. This is a terrible shame, since Ms Roy appears to be very accomplished, from what I read on the Tumblr. Not to take anything away from the tumblr, but here’s what it said:

Melba Roy, NASA Mathmetician, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland in 1964. Ms. Roy, a 1950 graduate of Howard University, led a group of NASA mathmeticians known as “computers” who tracked the Echo satellites. The first time I shared Ms. Roy on VBG, my friend Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a former postdoc in astrophysics at NASA, helpfully explained what Ms. Roy did in the comment section. I am sharing Chanda’s comment again here: “By the way, since I am a physicist, I might as well explain a little bit about what she did: when we launch satellites into orbit, there are a lot of things to keep track of. We have to ensure that gravitational pull from other bodies, such as other satellites, the moon, etc. don’t perturb and destabilize the orbit. These are extremely hard calculations to do even today, even with a machine-computer. So, what she did was extremely intense, difficult work. The goal of the work, in addition to ensuring satellites remained in a stable orbit, was to know where everything was at all times. So they had to be able to calculate with a high level of accuracy. Anyway, that’s the story behind orbital element timetables”. Photo: NASA/Corbis.

I think this is an impressive story and we should know more about her. If anyone does, please post it here or the original tumblr. The world should know more about her.

P.S. Yes, I happen to love the IBM computer behind her. That makes her even better IMHO.

I was skeptical of this, but Carl Franzen pointed out this detailed article: ChromeBook as Developer Machine. It makes a good case for how a developer can get alot of use out of a Chromebook for their development needs. I think the same can be said for anyone with a tablet or iPad with a bluetooth keyboard as well.

Well done. Worth reading.

As this article points out, Why Russians Are Obsessed With Dash-Cams, Russian roads are a lawless place, and your best chance of limiting your liability when you are driving on them is with a dash-cam. Hence, the proliferation of them in that country.

I would not be surprised to see them in North American cars soon. Our roads may be more lawful, but there’s still enough bad driving and bad driving conditions here to make for some interesting footage.

 

Love this.

Skrillex – Summit (feat. Ellie Goulding) – YouTube

 

Can be found here: Doing beautiful things with self-tracking data « RescueTime Blog.

I thought turning self quantified data like this….

 

….to be a brilliant idea. But there are numerous brilliant ideas on that blog: well worth a look.

(Thanks to AmritaMathur on twitter for that)

It’s simple. Go to a Starbucks. Pick up one of those cards that has free apps/movie/song of the day. On the back is a code. Use that as your password. Keep the code in your wallet. Do this on a frequent basis.

Want to make it more secure? Add numbers and punctuation to the beginning or the end.

Worried the code isn’t random enough? Type it in backwards or add punctuation and random characters in the middle (e.g. after the first three characters).

For example, here is the code on the card I have: A63RKXMEWWJ6. (No, it is not used on any of my passwords.)

If I go to a site like this, How Secure Is My Password?, and type it in, it tells me it will take 37 years to break it using a PC. If I add !123 to the end of that, it will take essentially forever to break it (16 billion years).These times are based on using a PC to break it. But even if the hackers had an enterprise class computer, it will still take a long long time. Furthermore, if you change your password very often, you will make it next very difficult to hack your password the way the passwords were hacked at the New York Times.

There are ways to get your password that doesn’t requiring stealing and cracking the password database. But you can practically eliminate this way if you take this approach.