Ned Gulley’s Blog. Resident buzzwords: synthetic biology, ambient displays, swarm robotics, wise crowds.
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 25th, 2010
This is, to me, serious evidence that the robot age is right around the corner. For a long time now, it’s been easy enough to solve the Rubik’s Cube problem on a computer. But solving a real cube using a computer, that’s a different matter. First you have to take pictures of all the sides. [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 22nd, 2010
You know you’ve struck a cultural nerve when you inspire not just one but dozens of parodies and copycats. It’s hard to say, for instance, why the Lazy Sunday video inspired so many spin-offs, but YouTube tells me there are 278 as of this writing. Across the Pond, the Keep Calm and Carry On poster [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Feb 18th, 2010
Great news! Dan Schroeder, the physics professor whom some of you will remember from his excellent reviews of iPhone astronomy apps, has written his own astronomy applet. Give it a look. Why write another astronomy program? Here’s Dan’s answer. To be useful to most of my students, a simulation program has to be (a) free; [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 11th, 2010
Here’s a little slice of Ned’s Ancient History: I artfully surfed the dying wave of the Cold War. I paid for an expensive education with the help of an Air Force ROTC scholarship, thanks to Ronald Reagan’s extravagant defense bender. After three years of thoroughly enjoyable active duty, I emerged from the Air Force earlier [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 8th, 2010
If you have any interest in synthetic biology, Nature Biotechnology has been kind enough to A) devote a special issue to the topic and B) make it available for free. I first learned about this on Rob Carlson’s Synthesis blog because he’s the author of an article on the economics of DNA synthesis (PDF). I [...]
Font designer Mark Simonson does an occasional blog piece called Typecasting (or more recently Son of Typecasting) in which he skewers films for the anachronistic foibles in their fonts. Did you know, for instance, that the steam pressure gauge on James Cameron’s Titanic was set in Helvetica? Crikey! That font was sinking 45 years before [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 2nd, 2010
I can’t let this day pass without a salutation. Mr. Groundhog has some good news to share: you made it halfway through the winter. It’s February, and you can actually sink your teeth into the afternoon sunlight. Yum. People often remark that Thanksgiving is nice because, as holidays go, it’s not overly commercialized. Groundhog Day [...]
