Ned Gulley’s Blog. Resident buzzwords: synthetic biology, ambient displays, swarm robotics, wise crowds.
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 27th, 2009
Growing up, I was a serious aviation geek. I used to pedal my bike to the library every week so I could check out the latest books on flying. I eventually took flying lessons (enough to solo, but I never got a license) and I majored in aerospace engineering in college. So you might think [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 23rd, 2009
Scientific journal articles serve two purposes: as a permanent record of an experimental result (which in theory is repeatable), and as a token of achievement to be exchanged at some point for more money and a nicer office. Publishing makes or breaks your career. Since the stakes are very high, people feel a need to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 20th, 2009
Everybody has a smart phone these days, which means that everybody is constantly within hailing distance of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, Settler of Disputes, Furnisher of Backstory, and Destroyer of Conversations. You start with two people talking over lunch about who played the Riddler on Batman, and the next thing you know, one of them is nose-down, [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Jan 15th, 2009
Check out these beautiful time lapse movies of the nighttime sky: The Sky in Motion – Movies – Digital Images of the Sky. The quality of the photography is superb, so the movies are like butter. Like dark starry butter smeared all over the sky. Okay, there’s no such thing as dark starry butter, but [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 14th, 2009
One of the fun things about using an online service, say something like Gmail or LibraryThing, is that it gets better when you’re not using it. Software that you install doesn’t have this property. Or it hasn’t until very recently. Increasingly, even the software that lives on your computer makes it easy to see if [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 8th, 2009
When I was in fourth grade, I thought I was pretty darn good at the Standing Broad Jump. I would practice with a yardstick, and after every jump I would look back and admire the great distance I had flown. I had to practice because I was representing Mrs. Murphy’s class on Field Day, the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 5th, 2009
On New Year’s Day, I speculated (via Twitter) that we’ve now made it through the better part of this decade without giving it a single clear name. And not for lack of trying… we’ve seen suggestions ranging from the Noughties to the Zeroes. The point is that none of these has stuck in the popular [...]
