answer page 2 - Dave's Blog

Hard Drive weight increasing?

2009 Jun 30, 5:50"Thank you for posting on Microsoft Answers Forum. If we understand your question correctly, there is no possible way that copying files or installing programs is increasing the weight of your laptop. Also, the same with your Xbox, downloading games from the Arcade will not increase the weight of your Game Console. Just to explain a little bit more..." lolz ensue

Our soon-to-be outdated beliefs

2009 May 22, 6:55"So many of our grandparents were racist, and some of our parents are homophobes. Which of our own closely held beliefs will our own children and grandchildren by appalled by?" I thought about this too but didn't come up with as good answers.

racism via:kottke

Flickr Visual Search in IE8

2009 Apr 10, 9:48

A while ago I promised to say how an xsltproc Meddler script would be useful and the general answer is its useful for hooking up a client application that wants data from the web in a particular XML format and the data is available on the web but in another XML format. The specific case for this post is a Flickr Search service that includes IE8 Visual Search Suggestions. IE8 wants the Visual Search Suggestions XML format and Flickr gives out search data in their Flickr web API XML format.

So I wrote an XSLT to convert from Flickr Search XML to Visual Suggestions XML and used my xsltproc Meddler script to actually apply this xslt.

After getting this all working I've placed the result in two places: (1) I've updated the xsltproc Meddler script to include this XSLT and an XML file to install it as a search provider - although you'll need to edit the XML to include your own Flickr API key. (2) I've created a service for this so you can just install the Flickr search provider if you're interested in having the functionality and don't care about the implementation. Additionally, to the search provider I've added accelerator preview support to show the Flickr slideshow which I think looks snazzy.

Doing a quick search for this it looks like there's at least one other such implementation, but mine has the distinction of being done through XSLT which I provide, updated XML namespaces to work with the released version of IE8, and I made it so you know its good.

meddler xml ie8 xslt flickr technical boring search suggestions

Language Log - Send a private message to

2009 Mar 16, 4:23The underwhelming answer to the question of "What are the commonest five-word sequences on the Web?"

languagelog culture internet web research language english

DIY Pepsi Challenge

2009 Jan 25, 5:39

Microsoft isn't completely shielded from our economies issues but I still have a job and still get free soda. While that's all still the case, I decided to test Sarah's claimed ability to differentiate between Pepsi, Coke, and their diet counterparts by taste alone. I poured the four sodas into marked cups and Sarah and I each took two runs through the cups with the following guesses.

Soda Identification Challenge Results
Drink	Sarah		Dave
Drink	Guess 1	Guess 2	Guess 1	Guess 2
Coke	Coke	Coke	Pepsi	Diet Pepsi
Diet Coke	Diet Coke	Diet Pepsi	Diet Coke	Diet Coke
Pepsi	Pepsi	Pepsi	Coke	Coke
Diet Pepsi	Diet Pepsi	Diet Coke	Diet Pepsi	Pepsi
Total (out of 8)	6		3

As you can see from the results, Sarah's claimed ability to identify Coke and Pepsi by taste is confirmed. The first run through she got completely correct and on the second run only mistook Diet Pepsi for Diet Coke. Her excuse for the error on the second run was a tainted palate from the first run. I on the other hand was mostly incorrect. Surprisingly though my incorrect answers were mostly consistent between run one and two. For instance I thought Pepsi was Coke in both runs.

coke microsoft waste of soda pepsi waste of time soda

The Faces of Mechanical Turk - Waxy.org

2009 Jan 23, 1:47"When you experiment with Amazon's Mechanical Turk, it feels like magic. ... Last week, I started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it cost for someone to reveal their face?"

privacy research amazon mechanicalturk internet photo experiment social

"Single?" Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape - The Metric System

2008 Nov 6, 6:27Examination of the who and why behind those 'Single?' lawn signs: 'At this point, I came to the realization that every question I answered seemed to introduce two more. In this case, they were "did someone hire these firms or are they acting on their own?" and, more confusingly, "how did a web design firm in Panama or India get a lawn sign physically planted in the front lawn of my high school in South Jersey?"'

sign blog marketing dns advertising business web internet research

List of language inventors

2008 Oct 10, 1:43A blog comment included the phrase 'hard-core conlangers' which at first glance sounds dirty, then based on the context I thought it was made up, but of course Wikipedia has the actual answer: "A conlanger ... is person who invents conlangs (constructed languages)."

language klingon nerd wikipedia conlang

xkcd - Blog Archive - The Goddamn Airplane on the Goddamn Treadmill

2008 Oct 10, 1:32Xkcd providing answers to questions that I forgot I had, like what is the answer to the lawn-sprinkler question from Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. "Feynman used to tell a story about a simple lawn-sprinkler physics problem. The nifty thing about the problem was that the answer was immediately obvious, but to some people it was immediately obvious one way and to some it was immediately obvious the other. (For the record, the answer to Feynman problem, which he never tells you in his book, was that the sprinkler doesn't move at all. Moreover, he only brought it up to start an argument to act as a diversion while he seduced your mother in the other room.)"

humor feynman comic blog xkcd physics science math

Anecdotes from Work

2008 Sep 23, 2:15

The names in the following anecdote have been changed. Except for my name (I'm Dave).

I got a new laptop a while back. I had it in my office and Tim came in to ask me something but paused when he saw my laptop. "Oh, is this one of those new touch screen laptops?" he asked, the whole time moving his hand towards my laptop and punctuating his sentence by pressing his finger to the screen. "No" I responded.

Walking down a hallway I heard Winston, one of our managers, say, "Hey Tim!" Winston catches up to me and asks, "Are you almost done with the XYZ bug?" I realized Winston was talking to me and got my name wrong but I figured I'll ignore it and perhaps he'll realize his mistake. Winston continued "I just talked with some people who say they're blocked and waiting for Tim to finish the XYZ bug." "Dave" I said helpfully attempting to diplomatically correct Winston since he apparently hadn't realized his error. "No, it was Jeremy and Bill." Winston said naming the people he had talked to who were waiting for me to fix the XYZ bug. At this point I decided it would be easier to just answer his question and end the conversation than to get into this whole thing. As far as I know, Winston has not gotten my name wrong at any other time.

work nontechnical

rec.arts.sf.science qdFAQ

2008 Aug 26, 3:42Links to write ups on how much energy it would take to destroy the Earth or at least make it inhabitable in various fashions: "Destroying the Earth, It is often asked what it would take to shatter the Earth into little pieces. Erik Max Francis gives a rough answer. A less drastic measure would be to sterilise it by heating the outside. Brian Davis does the arithmetic, but I think he should have calculated what it would take to boil the oceans, which is a few thousand times more by my BotEC. Occasionally it is asked what would happen if you shot a fast-moving projectile at the Earth; I've written something up."

scifi science math

Paul Ewald asks, Can we domesticate germs? | Video on TED.com

2008 Aug 8, 12:29"Evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald drags us into the sewer to discuss germs. Why are some more harmful than others? How could we make the harmful ones benign? Searching for answers, he examines a disgusting, fascinating case: diarrhea."

video ted evolution biology

ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset Review

2008 Mar 23, 1:25

I ordered a ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset to use at home. When I come home I plug my phone in to charge in my room, but then I can't hear it ring elsewhere in the hosue. The idea was to take this handset which wirelessly connects to cellphones via bluetooth and place it in another part of the house so that I can tell I'm getting an incoming call. The only issue I have with that setup is that it ringing isn't any louder than conversations held over the phone, that is, the ringing is a little quiet.

The handset pairs with cellphones in the same manner as any other handset over bluetooth. It has an internal rechargeable battery which is charged via a standard USB port built into the base of the handset and it comes with a USB cable. Next to the USB port is the only button on the phone which is pressed to answer a call, hang up a call, or begin voice dial, held down to turn the handset on and off, and held down longer to begin pairing with a cellphone. There's a blue LED in one of the holes in the microphone portion of the phone which blinks to indicate if its on or trying to pair. Transitioning between on, off, and pairing produces a cute sound and a change to the LED.

Overal I'm pleased with its simplicity and use of common parts although I wish there was a way to adjust the volume of the ring.

thinkgeek bluetooth cellphone phone product handset

Web Q&A: XPath, XML Notepad, Data Islands, Case Sensitivity, XSL, and More -- MSDN Magazine, September 2001

2008 Feb 7, 2:36To summ up the last Q&A, the one I was interested in: "Is there any way to escape the characters " and ' in an XPath expression...". And their answer is no. Lame. I thought XPath folk would have defined this.

microsoft msdn xpath xml article

GPS

2007 Sep 18, 2:16Sarah got me the Garmin StreetPilot c580 for my birthday last month. I really like this because its a small device that makes my life easier without me having to learn anything new. Just the way tech. should be.

The device gets current weather, traffic, and movie times. The information is sent via FM and received via the FM receiver in the cigarette lighter power adapter of the GPS device. MSN sends out this info and I get a free one year subscription. In addition to taking traffic info into account when planning my route it will estimate the number of minutes I'm going to spend in traffic. Just knowing how long I might be in traffic somehow makes it more bareable.

The other day while driving for dinner I got a call. I got my phone out of my pocket and answered it. I heard Jon's saying 'Hello' under my passenger seat. After a moment of confusion I remembered that the GPS device also acts as a bluetooth hands free phone adapter and that it was under my seat.

gps garmin personal traffic nontechnical

Unspun IE List

2007 Jun 21, 2:38Unspun is a social list creation website from Amazon. For instance, you could create a list named 'Most Desired Features for Next Version of Internet Explorer' and users of Unspun fill in and rank the answers. There's a mix of serious answers that are excellent suggestions, fan-boy answers that are lame, uninformed answers that are already implemented, and hilarious answers that are awesome. The following is the very short unsorted list of the awesome suggestions.

Innovative Anti-Phreaking Technology: Given the work done in IE7 on anti-phishing, subsequent work on anti-phreaking just makes sense.
AXELROD 2.8 Acceleration with XML Bindings: I'm not sure what AXELROD 2.8 is but accelerating it sounds good. Also I enjoy binding things to XML so...
Larger Buttons for My Mighty Fingers: For maximum humor this should be read by Richard Horvitz as Zim of Invader Zim. This one makes me laugh every time I read it.

amazon personal ie humor nontechnical