Terry is one of the world's leading mathematicians, and produces significant mathematical papers (and books, and blog posts) at a remarkable rate. Interesting to read about time management from a great and prolific scientist. - Michael Nielsen
This is a really great article, I'd recommend it to anyone whose work includes multiple tasks/subtasks that they prioritize themselves. - j1m
Wow, he writes physical letters, and I gather they're real letters, not bill payments. - ⓞnor
"Another thing is that my ability to do any serious mathematics fluctuates greatly from day to day; sometimes I can think hard on a problem for an hour, other times I feel ready to type up the full details of a sketch that I or my coauthors already wrote, and other times I only feel qualified to respond to email and do errands, or just to take a walk or even a nap." +1 to that. - ⓞnor
Yep, matching your task to your fluctuating mental capacity is key. - j1m
Dark family secret: Terry writes LaTeX using Microsoft Word with some heinous custom macros. Not because of any explicit reason, his workflow just kind of evolved that way, partly because his IM network (I forget which one) more or less locked him to Windows. At least, that's what he was doing when I was looking over his shoulder in 2005. - Nigel Tao
Nigel - yikes! Emacs has a great Windows implementation, with excellent Latex support, using Auctex. I like using Word for outlining and brainstorming, but would never use it to write Latex in a million years... - Michael Nielsen
Wow, Nige, what does he do to preview the latex? - Rob Schonberger
Preview!? This is the Chuck Norris of Math we're talking about here. - Nigel Tao
I want chuck norris to write a blog about time management now. - Rob Schonberger
Chuck Norris doesn't manage time. Time waits for Chuck Norris. Sorry... - Neil Saunders
"The thing to avoid is to drop a task when it is only partially finished, without any good “closure”; it then either gets lost, or weighs on one’s mind and prevents one from fully thinking about something else, or has to be redone from an earlier point when one picks it up again. But one doesn’t have to finish each task off completely as it comes, as long as it can be picked up later." Interesting, because this is something I am trying to become more aware of. - Clare Dibble
The example video accompanying this paper is astounding. Any one of the video reconstruction effects in this paper/video would be great in itself, but together it's just astounding for a research project. Expect great things from these folks. They need to join a production house or get a director stat. - Kevin Fox
Hey, Kevin! Did you know FF has a cool new feature that allows you to import your Vimeo in the pre-defined list of services without using the blog RSS feed? Identi.ca, too! *ducks* - Hao Chen
Hey Hao! Did you know I filed a bug when I found out that it won't import my Vimeo 'likes' unless I've actually posted at least one video to Vimeo myself? :-) - Kevin Fox
Like Einstein, we have a small group of trusted collaborators with whom we exchange questions and ideas when we are stuck. Unfortunately, most of the time even our collaborators aren’t that much help. They may point us in the right direction, but rarely do they have exactly the expertise we need. Is it possible to scale up this conversational model, and build an online collaboration market [4] to exchange questions and ideas, a sort of collective working memory for the scientific community? It is natural to be skeptical of this idea, but an extremely demanding creative culture already exists which shows that such a collaboration market is feasible - the culture of free and open source software." - j1m
This article was a big Eureka moment for me. As I read on, it made me realize how much I buy into the idea that the entrenched system of science should stay -- that is, the idea that credit is allocated to journal articles, thus completely setting aside a Release Early, Release Often approach, which would be much more successful. Suddenly, I realize that Science is just as far off-course as the Newspaper industry or the Music industry. And I'm suddenly firmly convinced that the right thing to do is spool your data directly into your www directory as you run your experiment. And have a system where it's a matter of routine for, say, random undergraduates at other schools to analyze your data and write about it, but you get credit for all the buzz you generate, so you don't have to worry about being scooped. - j1m
'If shoestores operated like scientists trading ideas, first Alice and Bob would need to get to know one another, maybe go for a few beers in a nearby bar. Only then would Alice finally say “you know, I’m looking for some shoes”. After a pause, and a few more beers, Bob would say “You know what, I just happen to have some shoes I’m looking to sell”. Every working scientist recognizes this dance' - j1m
According to the article, our photoreceptors respond to four different wavelengths, but our lenses block the lower wavelengths (the shaded portions in the picture). Surgical replacement of biological lenses with more transparent ones might allow us to see into the UV A range. - Sanjeev Singh via Bookmarklet
FriendFeed is slowly discovering all the links that I've been collecting for my future blog post, “We are all color blind.” - Amit Patel
This appeals to be in a bizarre fashion. - Jerry Welch
"Note that the above optical density is for a human lens of about 5 mm thickness. The optical density is proportional to the thickness of the lens. As will become apparent below, smaller animals have better ultraviolet visibility than humans because of their thinner lens. Larger animals have even less sensitivity in the ultraviolet and even blue regions for the same reason." - bob
And the fourth color look like pea soup? ;-) - Jim Norris
Yeah but I'm guessing the lens blocks UV A for a reason, which has something to do with keeping your retinas from being fried. Just a guess though ;-) - Karim
How would we process the data, though? (For that matter, how do X-chromosome heterozygous tetrachomats process the data?) Our retina and visual pipeline is pretty set up for trichromacy. - ⓞnor
nor, that's interesting, where could I learn more about "our retina and visual pipeline is pretty set up for trichromacy"? - Jason Wehmhoener
j1m probably has some more technical references, but I very highly recommend reading http://www.handprint.com/HP/WC... if you are at all into geeking out about the fundamentals of color. From http://www.handprint.com/HP/WC...: "Evolution could arrive at a more complex visual system, but it would require modifying a visual cortex specialized to receive and interpret the three cone outputs; adding a fourth cone would mean reengineering the brain as well." - ⓞnor
So has anyone had these new lenses installed? I thought that was a relatively common procedure. Maybe they use uv blocking replacements? - Paul Buchheit
I've heard of experiments where people (probably Army "volunteers") had their vision extended into near-UV, but with the predicted retina-burning results. - Gabe Schaffer
Cataract surgery and the use of replacement intraocular lenses has been around for a while. I am not sure, but I am under the impression that originally people were encouraged to wear sunglasses or UV-blocking lenses to block UV, though lately the replacement lenses seem to block UV (see http://archopht.ama-assn.org/c...). This is to prevent retinal damage. - Karim
There is a fascinating article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/scie... that confirms my suspicions that UV looks like the color white under a black light: whiter than white, tinged with blue or violet. If you have ever seen someone's clothes or teeth glowing under a blacklight, you might have an idea what being able to see into the near UV is like. - Karim
I am not of the opinion that a fourth cone would require re-engineering the brain, so much as it might involve co-opting the existing channels. UV might be perceived as a change in brightness (luminance) rather than a new color (chroma). - Karim
paul, egnor: the studies that this article refers to involved people who had their lense in one eye replaced. One of the investigators is himself akaphic and can see UV: http://starklab.slu.edu/humanU... Karim's link is good too. - Sanjeev Singh
@Karim, the problem is that the perception of brightness will continue to be needed for (a drum roll) actual brightness. - j1m
:-D good point, j1m. i guess i am thinking of UV looking "unnaturally" bright, glowing, the way the color white does under a blacklight. so the perception of UV would be of things being radioactive ;-) just a guess, mind you... - Karim
I think you might actually need to have one normal eye to see uv light: you'd need to compare the differences between the eyes and if your UV eye sees a whitish blue that the normal eye doesn't, then it's UV. - Sanjeev Singh
Well, think about how you see violet -- you don't need a violet-sensitive and a non-violet-sensitive eye, just a violet-sensitive cone, whose signal can be compared to a few non-violet-sensitive cones a few microns away from it. - j1m
From the sound of it, there is no UV cone, it's just that the regular cones are uv sensitive (though the blue more so), which is why it looks like a bluish white. - Paul Buchheit
The reason you can't "see" UV directly might be due to the processing circuitry, not the cones themselves. - Sanjeev Singh
"The protest group has not only become a huge force on Obama's site--it is now double the size of any other user-created group and its traffic slowed the campaign's server last week--it has also swiftly asserted itself in the broader spying debate. Organizers have been covered and quoted repeatedly in the mainstream media, including a New York Times profile of founder Mike Stark" - j1m via Bookmarklet
On a side note - I read the NYT profile when it came out, and stumbled over the fact that Stark wasn't actually the founder of that group. He is cited as having "suggested to a group of liberal activists who share an e-mail list that they should organize a group [...]". The group was actually created by an unnamed "member of my.barackobama.com". Suggestions are cheap - I'm not sure why NYT made this a profile piece, rather than a policy piece. - Jutta Degener
i'm afraid that pressure is cheap enough - the other side which drove Obama into FISA shit is much thicker and applies pressure of different magnitude and quality - silpol
I was just thinking that July 4th is an awesome day to have as your birthday. 1) You don't have to ask for the day off 2) It isn't a holiday where gifts are given so you don't have the Christmas birthday issue and 3) It isn't a huge holiday where people would have other plans like New Years. - Benjamin Golub
actually Ben, you'd be surprised how often people have other plans. Its a three day weekend so people go away alot. But you get fireworks for your birthday so that is awesome! - Rachel L Fisher
Happy Birthday Kevin! Hope you guys are enjoying some dinosaur sauce. :) - Chris White
Ah, THAT'S what all the celebrations were for today! As I was standing around Charleston Park and watching the explosions in the air, I thought to myself... wow, this must be about someone important. Congrats, Kevin! :-) - Adam Lasnik
"The browser isn't broken, and doesn't need to be "fixed", either by a proprietary platform, or by a shiny new language. Instead it needs to be extended, and functionality gaps need to be plugged. That's why I don't care about JS2: its fundamental message is "the Browser of Tomorrow is the Browser of Today, just with different syntax." This is spinning our wheels, and won't do anything to advance the web.
So what is the right solution? Well, in my opinion what we need is to formalize and standardize the DOM API, agree on a single vector model and API, and specify an intermediate compilation format. That is, specify the boundaries, and let existing languages do what they're good at." - Jason Chen
JS2 is a huge improvement over JavaScript 1x if you are doing more than just writing small snippets of code. The mechanisms for easier to read, write, and debug code, including object-oriented programming are pretty well understood. So much, that they've been added to most modern scripting languages, including Python and PHP. I'm just surprised it has taken so long to actually make this change. This should have been done back in 2002. Now Flash has a better language than web browsers. - Chris White
Just so everyone is clear on this, JS2 is backward compatible with the current version of JS (1.5-9) in browsers. I don't buy the argument that JS2 has a fundamental message about the browser which says there should be no new functionality added except for a syntax change. The two improvements are mutually exclusive, and it seems misleading to imply one impacts the other. My comment about Flash is because ActionScript 2.0 is an implementation of JS2., and has been around for a while now. - Chris White
From the original post: "So in a way I guess I should be interested in JS2. And to whatever extent JS2 is better than JS1, then the web benefits. I guess. I don't really know though, because I haven't even so much as glanced at a spec. People whose opinion I respect think it's an improvement, but like I said, I don't care. " - Chris White
@Chris I believe the point the article is making is that web browser implementers should not be betting on a single language like JavaScript. Instead, the author is recommending that something like a standard language-independant bytecode and VM be the focus of the efforts to extend the platform. There is no reason that JS2 could not be the dominant language that gets interpreted to run on this VM. - scott anderson
They're exclusive in that there's a limited amount of effort to develop, test, implement, push, evangelize, and teach new browser features. There's only so much shelf space on the books-for-webmasters section of the bookstore. I would certainly rather those books be about some DOM that's actually standard than about class syntax for JS. But, you know, I think OO is basically a mistake, so... - ⓞnor
Why I don't like hybrid cars: The reason is because we should be using all electric cars. Burning fossil fuels is bad, so we shouldn't be spending our limited resources on building this intermediate solution. Instead we should be building solar, wind, and nuclear plants and infrastructure to power our electric cars. - Chris White
@Chris Your analogy re: hybrids is a spurious straw man. If your goal is a fully-electric car economy, hybrids are an intermediate step and therefore helpful. If your goal is to actually advance the browser state of the art in some way and not just replace one syntax with another, then JS2 is *not* an intermediate step, it's wasted effort. JS2 does not in any way enhance the browser. JS2 will not make it possible to write a new class of application that you cannot write with JS1. That is my complaint. - Dan Morrill
I understand that both JS1 and JS2 are Turing complete languages, and therefore equivalent in capability at some level. I don't agree that syntax changes are trivial in value and wasted effort, and I actually think class oriented programming is a major improvement over what was there before. Not using the latest version of the language seems like a shame to me. Better software engineering often leads to better user experience. - Chris White
Also a couple disputes: 1) JS2 is not a "replacement syntax" for JS1, it was designed to be an enhancement of the original syntax. 2) Having multiple language support with a byte-code VM does not appear to me to provide the capability for a new class of applications either, although I am not against the idea. I'd be fine using Python in the browser, but I'm tired of dealing with the prototype syntax in JS1. - Chris White
That's crazy. It amazes me how well he can lecture too and his vocabulary with respect to coding and project management was impressive - Grant Gochnauer
solution looking for a problem. Very few sites have the number of comments you are referring to. As part of a broader package, maybe, but I think this is what NoiseRiver is aiming at, or maybe I read the post wrong (Giovanni has a point) - Duncan Riley
Given the number of Friendfeedsters and ex-Googlers who immediately "liked" this post, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. - Mark Trapp
I don't think anything is rotten, but there's an opportunity. Relatively few blogs have that many comments, but a lot of us read those blogs, and letting us make conversation on our own terms, slicing through noise to tune in the voices we're interested in hearing, could be awesome. - ⓞnor
@Giovanni: Having failed once, I'll probably fail again, but here's what I mean: Just like FriendFeed contains many commenters, but I just see the comments of about 100 people I follow, I'd like to be able to choose who to follow on other blogs. So it's Friendfeed's selection mechanism that I want to let out into the wild. - j1m
+1 Giovanni Slash.dot and many other websites never got me to participate because the noise-level was too high (aka quality-level too low). Being able to tune people in/out (while still hearing people though "friend of friend" or "everyone") is great! - Mitchell Tsai
And wasn't the constant discussion of FriendFeed why j1m unsubscribed from some of us in the first place? Hmmm? :-) - Louis Gray
Tried any deblurring filters, like that Focus Magic thing? - ⓞnor
it makes the dirt/dust on the sensor very visible - bob
Yeah, the sensor dust is kind of interesting. - Paul Buchheit
Is that because light from a point source casts a sharp shadow, but light from a lens casts a softer shadow? That would imply that the dust is suspended some distance above the actual sensor. If you take an out-of-focus shot with an ordinary lens, does it look the same? - ⓞnor
Yes, the photo sensor must have a transparent layer. The dust is mostly invisible with a large aperture, but very noticeable as it narrows (the easiest way to see it normally is by taking a picture of the daytime sky). - Paul Buchheit
The sensor has a number of layers over it: microlenses, Bayer color filters, an antialiasing filter, and an infrared filter. In the case of your camera, the AA filter also probably filters IR. And just as a pinhole aperture makes everything in front of the lens in focus, it also makes everything behind the lens (mostly dust) in focus. Don't forget that leaving the sensor open to the air also lets in additional dust. - Gabe Schaffer
Cute. Be interesting to see when people start doing this with multiple cameras in the same scene, and "videoshopping" in general. Also needs better perspective correction and blending, like everyone now has for still panoramas, but they'll get there. - ⓞnor
Very nice blog! Us fathers do go the extra mile no matter what the embarasment.. Key in point walking out of Kung Fu Panda the other night with 1-year-old throw up all over me. - Chris Reed
thanks everyone! i should have had a caption for the picture: that's a pic my mom took after we walked around washington dc all day on the fourth of july and our feet were so blistered we had to soak them in the tub. - Ginger Makela
Great post, Ginger. I miss working with you, but I'm glad your time is freed up for reflections like these. - Todd Nemet
oh, Ginger. That was terrifying! But worth it. And I love the picture, too. I have thought about the embarrassment I would feel if I started choking or drowning somewhere public...but I am not sure if it occurred to me that everyone might be immobile with fear. scary. - edythe
In addition to everything else said here, your brother is clearly a badass. - Erik Dafforn
Very moving post... Dad's are amazing! I am annoyed by all those brain-frozen dummies working at Arby's - Susan Beebe
@directeur Chris means "we fathers", not U.S. fathers, I believe. - Anne Bouey
This is fascinating stuff. My husband is a pro photographer/retoucher (for advertising), and this is the kind of stuff we talk about a lot. He's constantly asking me: "Does this look real? What about if I do this?" - Ginger Makela