Marc Dominus over at The Universe of Discourse has done some research into the history of the equal sign. Part of the reason a pair of parallel lines was chosen was "because no 2 things can be more equal." The entry also mentions the origin of a two other diacritical marks, ˜ (tilde) and ¨ (umlaut), which evolved from the letters "n" and "e", respectively. Very fascinating stuff.
I only stumbled across this entry a few minutes ago, but the rest of his blog looks equally interesting as well.
Technorati Tags: math, equals, letters, history, etymology, characters, Universe of Discourse
I'm liking Google Calendar more than the other online calendars and more than offline calendars. Why? The interface is much cleaner and much faster (even faster than iCal and Entourage). What else could I ask for?
I definitely see GCal + GMail as a great alternative to Outlook/Exchange because of the open standards it uses to achieve the same functionality. Yes, GCal is only replicating Exchange's functionality, but with GCal's use of XML, I can mash up the feeds and do whatever the hell I want with them. Want to embed an image or audio enclosure to the XML GCal generates? Shouldn't be too difficult. The possibilities are endless. Try doing that with Exchange.
Technorati Tags: Google Calendar, GCal, GMail, Outlook, Exchange, Google, Microsoft, XML, RSS, open standards, feeds, calendars, iCal, Entourage
The folks at Marginal Revolution have a post on the melting of pennies and the discussion that follows is excellent (partly because I can follow all the finance-speak :))
Technorati Tags: money, pennies, zinc, copper, currency, precious metals, finance, economics, bullion, Marginal Revolution
Saw an article in the Financial Times today (FT.com requires a sub, but I found it here for free) about how zinc and copper prices have shot through the roof in the past few weeks/months.
Zinc, in particular, has seen an astronomical price increase (55%) in the past three weeks. If it increases by the same amount again ($550 per ton), a pound of pennies (160 of them) will be worth $1.61 and you could get more by melting them down and selling the metal (in theory).
So what does that mean? Will our pennies no longer be pegged to the dollar? If the metal in a pound of pennies were worth $3.20, would our pennies be worth 2 cents?
Either way, it's time to start stocking up on pennies.
Technorati Tags: money, pennies, zinc, copper, currency, precious metals, finance, economics, bullion
A mere 5 days after O.A.R. played in front of a sold-out audience for the University of Pennsylvania's Spring Fling a recording of the show has appeared on archive.org. It's downloading as I write this.
O.A.R. (.....of a revolution.)
April 7, 2006
University Of Pennsylvania - Spring Fling
Philadelphia, PA
Taper: Nathan Acker (somovedon@gmail.com)
Source: SBD + CMC-4 Mix
(SBD) SBD -> Henry Engineering Patchbox -> Creative Nomad Jukebox 3
(AUD) SP-CMC-4 (card) -> SP-SPSB-6 -> Creative Nomad Jukebox 3
Conversion: Nathan Acker (somovedon@gmail.com)
Equipment: Nomad Jukebox 3 -> IEEE 1394 -> Adobe Audition 2.0 for Mix -> CD Wave
***** DO NOT ENCODE TO MP3 WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE TAPER!!! *****
------------------------------------------------------------
Disc 1:
01: Introduction
02: 52-50
03: Destination (Fire On The Mountain Tag)
04: Lay Down
05: Untitled
06: Anyway
07: Heard The World
08: Hey Girl
09: Wonderful Day
Disc 2:
01: One Shot
02: The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) ->
03: City On Down (First Half Only) ->
04: Delicate Few (Second Half Only)
05: I Feel Home &
06: Sunday Bloody Sunday
07: Love And Memories
08: E: That Was A Crazy Game Of Poker
------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
Entire show with Michael Paris on keys, vocals, and percussion.
Compiled by Nathan Acker on April 8, 2006
Technorati Tags: University of Pennsylvania, Penn, UPenn, OAR, Of A Revolution, music, live, concert, Spring Fling, FLAC, archive.org, etree
A day after Apple releases Boot Camp, Parallels releases a beta of their virtualization software for ICBMs (Intel Core-based Macs). This software has similar functionality to Microsoft's VirtualPC, except that no processor emulation is necessary so apps should run at near full-speed (barring the overhead of having run two operating systems at once).
This looks like a good solution for those wanting to limit the time they spend in Windows, either for malware concerns or religious reasons.
It should also be noted that both this solution and Apple's Boot Camp allow other operating systems, not just Windows to be run on ICBMs. As OS X is already based on Unix, being able to run Windows is perhaps the biggest concern for most users.
[via Engadget]
Technorati Tags: XP on Mac, Boot Camp, virtualization, Apple, Mac, OS X, MacIntel, Intel, Microsoft, Windows, Windows XP, emulation
Apple BootCamp showed up on the Mac OS X site today. It does practically the same thing as the hack released a few weeks ago, but in a much nicer fashion.
BootCamp is an OS X application that lets you non-destructively partition a drive for Windows use. It will also create a drivers CD for use with Windows. At reboot, you select the partition to use (like the previous hack) and you're set.
I'm curious as to why Apple waited to announce this after the third-party hack was made available. I can't imagine them using any of the code provided by the project, since this seems much more elegant. With access to OS X and EFI's deepest layers, Apple probably had an easier time developing this than the third-party hackers did.
I can't wait to see some test drives of this software and how it compares to the previously-mentioned hack. This appears to be more elgant but I wonder if the hack is more flexible.
Did Apple have this in mind all along? If they have, then those hackers cashed in right on time.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Windows XP, XP on Mac, BootCamp, dual boot, operating systems
I saw a link to this in my referrer logs…
PennTags is the University of Pennsylvania Library's social bookmarking tool. I haven't added anything yet, but at first glance, it looks a lot like del.icio.us.
It has a feature called projects, which are basically folders for those who aren't folsonomified yet. There also all the goodies you'd expect from commercial social bookmarking sites, such as RSS feeds for everything, bookmarklets and even a Firefox toolbar (for bookmarking and other library tools).
This is the first I've heard of this, but a quick Google search reveals that this is at least 4 months old. I'll be the first to admit I don't spend much time at the libary (Whartonites are averse to any text not in Excel), but this is the first I've heard of it so they haven't done a good job of advertising it.
Technorati Tags: PennTags, UPenn, Penn, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, education, library, social bookmarking, del.icio.us, web 2.0, folksonomies
Last weekend I participated in the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life, an all-night event whose purpose is to raise money for cancer research, remember those lost to cancer and celebrate those who have survived.
The event was held at the University of Pennsylvania's historic Franklin Field and ran from 7pm Saturday night to 7am Sunday morning (11 hours). By my estimates, about 400 people participated and about 100 stayed through the entire thing.
You can view all 69 photos I took at the event here.
Technorati Tags: Relay For Life, American Cancer Society, ACS, cancer, Franklin Field, UPenn, Penn, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, charity, Sigma Nu, philanthropy
