Ned Gulley’s Blog. Resident buzzwords: synthetic biology, ambient displays, swarm robotics, wise crowds.
Posted in Elvish on Dec 23rd, 2005
I like to think that sophisticated readers like you come to my site for the sparkling prose and pointed insights, but when I look at my logs, it’s plain that Elvish pays the bills. My little page Write your name in Elvish in ten minutes has tickled some kind of popular resonance. It’s been around [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 20th, 2005
The Sunday Boston Globe had a commentary piece by Matthew Battles called The Wiki Effect. In it, Battles recounts the recent story of a Wikipedia hoax/joke on journalist John Seigenthaler that went sour and went on to damage the reputation of the entire Wikipedia enterprise. We hear in this article the same old objections to [...]
Posted in St Frank on Dec 19th, 2005
I have known St. Frank since my days in California, many years ago. He has been a steady friend of the Star Chamber throughout its tenure, and has contributed many pieces to this site, of which the most graphically disturbing is surely The Naked Felix. The proprietors of this site cannot in good conscience recommend [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 15th, 2005
I have a book, Languages of the World, in which a page is devoted to each of maybe 150 different languages. You don’t learn much about each language, but flipping through the book is a pleasure in much the same way as strolling through a botanical garden and admiring the amazing variety of plant and [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 13th, 2005
Here’s a nice Innovator’s Dilemma style example of how easy it is for free software to come along and take money away from a perfectly good commercial product. If you want to take a screenshot in Windows, you can always use the built-in “PrintScreen” capability, but it’s pretty limited. SnagIt, from TechSmith, is a much [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Dec 12th, 2005
Every winter I look forward to Earliest Sunset Day. Here in New England, the sunlight drains away with distressing speed in October and November, so I always feel a little warmer inside (even though there are currently 8 inches of snow on the ground) knowing that the sunsets will start getting later and later starting [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 6th, 2005
Elena Filatova is a Ukrainian woman who gained some notoriety on the web for her remarkable pictures of the condemned zone around Chernobyl. Since posting those pictures (which I highly recommend), she has added more material to her site. One is a short photo set of the Orange Revolution, the event that has happily displaced [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 1st, 2005
Ever wonder how a Wankel rotary engine works? Matt Keveney’s excellent animated engines site does more than just show you a little diagram. You get a lovely, instructive animation. Actually, a Wankel rotary is pretty straightforward to understand. It’s just got that marvelously rude name going for it.
It’s more fun to look at some [...]
