Pbrewer

Science Cafe

2011-04-19T21:23:00.002-04:00

I just got back from the Science Cafe talk on black holes given at The Irregardless Cafe in Raleigh NC. I don't normally do an on-line "shout out." But I wanted to thank everyone involved. That includes the staff at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, the local chapter of Sigma Xi, the staff of The Irregardless Cafe (which was PACKED), and the presenter Dr. John Blondin of North Carolina State University.

The talk was wonderful, entertaining, and explained concepts in an easy to understand manner. The food at The Irregardless was great and the staff was friendly even while being over worked.

I only wish there had been a projector, as I'm sure John could have blown the audience away with some cool visuals. Perhaps one more local (read Big Boss) beer options at The Irregardless. Really no complaints on the evening at all!

Job's Companies

2011-01-22T13:03:00.003-05:00

I just listened to Business Week's podcast on Apple without Jobs. What surprised me is they didn't look at the history of the company Jobs did walk away from. Like Apple that company had a long string of hits. It was a late to its industry and set an impossibly high bar for the rest of the industry. Of course I am talking about Pixar.

Pixar was a division of Lucasfilm, and George was going to shut it down if the division leader didn't find a buyer. In 1986 Steve Jobs bought the division from Lucasfilms for $10 Million.

When Jobs became CEO of Apple in 1997 he began slowly stepping away from Pixar. During those 9 years Steve was focusing more and more on Apple, even though his wealth growth was coming from Pixar. It wasn't until 9 years later in 2006 that Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 Billion.

I don't doubt that Jobs was involved in any and all negotiations between Disney and Pixar. But you don't have to be the "mythical Jobs" to be good at negotiation. Pixar has proven that it can keep making hits with Jobs gone or focused on Apple. Pixar's worst movies still hold their own against the best from competing studios. Using Pixar as an example it is possible for Apple to keep making hits after Jobs retires.

Blogs - How many should you have?

2011-01-04T19:45:00.007-05:00

I just got through watching Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on Creativity. During the day I find thoughts flit through my mind that I want to expand upon. The trouble is that I almost never have a notepad or computer with me at the moment to capture them. Or perhaps I lack the discipline to capture the outline without going through the details or job flexibility to devote an hour or 2 to and idea when it strikes me. (That's the great thing about twitter, you only have to produce one short sentence.) Either way, my creativity wants an outlet and so I plan to restart blogging again.

The prevailing school of thought on blogs and twitter accounts is that they should stick to one topic. I have a wide range of topics I'm interested in writing about, and would like to find a way to manage all of that in as small a number of blogs as possible. The list of general subjects would look something like the following:

Computer Science and Information Technology - This is my profession and educational back ground. Today I was thinking about writing about problems that can be solved by buying more hardware and those that have to be solved with better software, and how the non-computer-scientist (management) could learn to tell the difference.
Technical solutions to problems in Computer Science and Information Technology - A place to put solutions I have found that I couldn't find easily elsewhere.
iPhone development - Like above but specific to iPhones
Music, Audio, and Classic Speakers - I love music. I have the affliction of being an audiophile. I collect classic speakers and occasionally build my own. If you have never sat in the dark and listen to music you loved, do yourself a favor and do it tonight. I'm serious find some music that speaks to your soul, cut off the lights, put down you gadgets, close your eyes and just listen for 5 minutes or 50. One of my resolutions is to make the time to do this more often!
Investing and Financial Planning - Sometimes I wish to make a radical career change and go into money management. I actually enjoy pouring over 401K options and making investment decisions.
Taco/Food Trucks - I did work on this iPhone app after all.
Things like my last post here.

So can I put all of this together in 2 to 4 blogs without totally alienating the readers?

Reasons to be Optimistic

2010-12-09T19:41:00.005-05:00

All too often I find the news depressing. Today I started thinking of the glimmers of light in the daily news. Here is my list of news items that should makes us all optimistic about the future.

Over 50 billionaires are pledging to give most of their wealth to charity. Read about it in the Wall Street Journal or at the pledge site.
The wheels of justice sometimes turn very slowly, but they do turn. Jim Morrison was pardoned today of a crime that he was apparently charged with based on a news paper report in 1969.
The Navy is investing heavily in more energy efficient equipment and renewable energy options, because having to deliver less fuel to the front saves soldier's lives. You can read or listen to Science Friday's coverage of this subject. Much of science funding has come from military or strategic spending, over hundreds of years, perhaps thousands of years. The internet is a direct result of US military research.

Before Buffet

2010-03-03T22:47:00.002-05:00

Before Warren Buffet there was John Templeton. I plan to read Investing the Templeton Way in the coming few weeks. (I'm a slow reader.)

Link I plan to read

2010-03-01T09:29:00.002-05:00

New York Times Article on writing a résumé.

Tuning Eclipse on Mac OS X

2010-02-16T11:35:00.002-05:00

Taken from my other blog: pwbrewer.blogspot.com

After you downloaded the Eclipse package, decompress it. Locate your Eclipse.app.
Right-click it and select Show Package Contents.
Under Contents/MacOS, locate the eclipse.ini file. Open it with a text editor.
At the end of the file, add two lines:
-XX:+UseParallelGC
-XX:+UseCompressedOops
Save and close the file.

To that I would add the server option to the same file:

-server

And I suggest changing the following settings:

--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256m
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m
-Xms64m
-Xmx512m

Masters Grant

2009-11-18T18:03:00.000-05:00

In graduate school I worked on a grant as part of RTCPP with some big names in the parallel computing field.

The late, Dr. Ken Kennedy from Rice University.

Geoffrey C Fox from Syracuse University and former (?) Director of Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC).

Dr. Donald Bitzer the "father of" the PLATO educational computing system, and developer of the Plasma display.

Dr. Mladen Vouk, Computer Science Department Head at NCSU.

And several others.

As a result of developing computer based educational materials using the earler HTML tools I wrote a WWW Paper, presented at the W3 conference in 1995.

Human Evolution

2009-10-24T11:53:00.001-04:00

My inner science geek found this interesting article. Scientists are studying continued human evolution.

But not all evolutionary changes make inherent sense. Since the Industrial Revolution, modern humans have grown taller and stronger, so it's easy to assume that evolution is making humans fitter. But according to anthropologist Peter McAllister, author of Manthropology: the Science of Inadequate Modern Man, the contemporary male has evolved, at least physically, into "the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet." Thanks to genetic differences, an average Neanderthal woman, McAllister notes, could have whupped Arnold Schwarzenegger at his muscular peak in an arm-wrestling match. And prehistoric Australian Aborigines, who typically built up great strength in their joints and muscles through childhood and adolescence, could have easily beat Usain Bolt in a 100-m dash.

Online Games for Under 5

2009-10-10T17:13:00.003-04:00

I'm putting together a list of games for kids 5 years old and under.

Diego - Paint the Hermit Crabs

I also made an earlier list of counting games for kids around 2 to 3 years old.

Progress Energy's EnergyWise Program

2009-10-05T17:30:00.003-04:00

I came across this program recently and thought it was interesting. Details can be found at Progress's website.

At no cost to you, Progress Energy installs a small device, usually in the garage, that is connected to selected electric equipment such as your water heater and your central heating and cooling system.

This device makes it possible for Progress Energy to temporarily reduce the energy consumption if our community experiences an unusually high power demand. If that happens, Progress Energy can send a signal to selected appliances of any of the more than 400,000 EnergyWise participants to cycle power off and on to reduce the overall energy demand.

Twitter's Problem

2009-08-05T16:38:00.003-04:00

There are people on twitter I would like to follow, but can't deal with the tweets every 2 to 3 minutes. Twitter needs a secondary follow list, so you can remember who these people are, but don't get the constant distraction of their tweets during the day.

Since no such secondary list exists, I'm putting mine here:
@LauraLeslie
@TUAW

Rainbows

2009-07-31T10:24:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I saw two things I have never seen before. First was two rainbows, one inside the other. The other thing I have never seen was the end of a rainbow. The smaller rainbow ended directly in front of me in a field.

Unfortunately I did not see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just grass where it hit the ground. All in all a very interesting vision. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me, but I still feel fortunate to have seen these rainbows.

Spoonflower - On Demand Fabric Printing

2009-07-07T14:57:00.001-04:00

The Story on NPR ran a story today about start up Spoonflower that produces fabric printed on demand. Gart Davis and Stephen Fraser, formerly of Lulu and Stephen's wife founded the company, based on her desire for a particular design of fabric to make curtains for their home.

You can listen to the The Story on Spoonflower at this link, its the second half of the audio file.

The Story picked up the story based on the unlikeliness that someone would want to start a fabric company in NC today. But the synergy with Lulu's business model and inability to find a competitor to the service lead to the creation of the company to services a need. With over 15,000 registered users, apparently many others wanted this service as well.

Stolen from EnInIn.

StartUp Video

2009-06-08T14:00:00.002-04:00

For those wondering what to do when they want to start a buiness. This presentation from StartUp School 08 at Stanford is very interesting. Sometimes it is not worth trying to reach the Billion dollar exit.

Listing MySQL Tables

2009-06-08T13:58:00.002-04:00

To list the tables in a MySQL DB connect to MySQL as a user with appropriate permissions and enter:
show tables from DBname;

Just substitute the database name of your database for DBname.

Web Tools Help

2009-06-03T15:18:00.003-04:00

How to backup a MediaWiki.
Backing up Elgg, discussion.
Making Elgg duplicate.
Elgg backup instructions.

Hosting Providers

2009-06-02T12:39:00.007-04:00

Page Hosting options (there are THOUSANDS of such sites))

Google's Pages or Sites
Squarespace - Currently runs ads on many tech podcasts.

Site Hosting providers:

GoDaddy Look under green hosting menu, many different options.
FatCow

Virtual Servers and/or Cloud Hosting Solutions:

RackSpace's Mosso
Linode in New Jersey.
Tektonic.net in Dallas.
Amazon's EC2 Cloud Options - Amazon has other interesting "Cloud" services, for example Payments.

Elgg hosting at A2 Hosting

Lunch May 27th

2009-05-27T14:31:00.006-04:00

Topics of interest over lunch today:

TWiT 195 - Leo, John C. Dvorak, Becky Worley, and Molly Wood
DrupalCon by the Numbers
The IASP Conference on Science and Technology Parks - Held in Raleigh, NC next week.
Marshall Brain's link to Greek Firework Battle
Gamasutra Interview with Tim Sweeny - Tim Sweeny founded Epic, which is best known for the Unreal Engine, used to make video games, and Gears of War; but they started in the 1990's as a shareware company. Epic is based in Cary, NC. This is a great 10 page interview.
More on Epic - Wikipedia Page and Triangle Biz Journal article with following quote: "The magazine did not report a potential purchase price for Epic, but based on past speculation, it could reach reach 10 figures. Earlier this year, GamePro magazine reported that Microsoft was in talks to buy Epic for $1 billion – a figure that, at the time, industry observers said made sense."
How the Mighty Fall - Business Week Cover Stories Podcast - A very interesting discussion of the stages of failure in large formerly great companies, and how to recognize the problems. Definitely worth listening to for anyone in a large corporation. This podcast is based on a discussion of the new book, How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In.

Meeting of the World's Richest Philanthropists

2009-05-24T21:32:00.002-04:00

A report of a secret meeting of the Worlds Richest Philanthropists:

Invited by the world's two richest men Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, along with David Rockefeller, a Who's Who of American wealth and influence gathered around a long table in a window-lined private room overlooking the East River on May 5.

Organics in RTP

2009-05-22T09:50:00.001-04:00

Bella Bean Organics - Bella Bean Organics is an online farmer’s market and weekly delivery service. Each week they deliver fresh local and organic produce and specialty foods in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, or Durham.

RTP Area Companies Hiring

2009-05-21T12:58:00.001-04:00

Stolen from the TriLUG mailing list:

ABB
Allscripts
BB&T
Biscuitville
Bizcom Web
BlueStripe Software
Catapult
Catevo
Channel Advisor
Computer Sciences Corp
Credit Suisse
Duke
Elster Electricity
Extron Electronics
Fidelity
Harris Stratex
Health Decisions
iContact
INC Research
Itron
Lexis Nexis
Liposcience
Lulu
McKesson
Medfusion
NWN Corp
Opnet
Parexel
Peopleclick
Pharmalink
PPD
PRA International
Progress Software
Quintiles
Rackwise
Railinc
Redwood Software
RH Donnelly
rPath
RTI
Sciquest
Sports Endeavors
Square 1 Bank
SRA International
Tekelec
Thompson Reuters
UNC
Wake Med

Teen Entrepreneurs

2009-05-19T20:56:00.002-04:00

USA Today has a couple of articles on teenage entrepreneurs in today's issue.

Many entrepreneurial kids will use their businesses to scrape together summer spending money, but the fledgling firms can blossom into something much bigger.

As a teenager, Tommy Hilfiger sold customized clothes in his Elmira, N.Y., hometown. Microsoft maven Bill Gates co-founded a data business that focused on traffic counts, Traf-O-Data, when he was in high school.

Besides that article they have a side article on tips from teens on starting a business. For example:

"Allow your business to grow, and then grow your equipment into your business," says Rice, echoing advice he was given by others. He invested in his first riding mower at age 12 (bought at a yard sale with savings from a newspaper route) and as his customer base grew, he conservatively bought more equipment.

Many dot-com businesses should have followed the same advice!

Notes on Starting a Software Buisness

2009-05-17T14:23:00.002-04:00

Someone forwarded me a link to this article recently.

It is titled "How To Successfully Compete With Open Source Software", but could just as well be how to start a small software business on the side.

I run Bingo Card Creator, which makes educational bingo cards for teachers and parents. It is about as B2C as you can get. Sales last year were in the $20,000 range, sales this year are up substantially, and I expect profits will exceed my day job salary/benefits/etc by the end of April. I started the business in July 2006, when there were already at least two OSS projects which did roughly the same thing: BingoCardMaker and bingo-cards. (You can tell we really spend a lot of time thinking about naming in my niche, can’t you.)

The tweet-able intro to marketing is short and to the point:

Software solves problems. Customers have problems. Customers do not know that their problems are sometimes solvable with software.

Worth a read.

TED presentation Style

2009-05-13T11:24:00.002-04:00

From Presentation Zen site.

The top ten TED Commandments

Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick.
Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before.
Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee.

Fountain of Youth

2009-05-08T08:33:00.000-04:00

I have recently had the time to listen to a number of Futures in Biotech podcasts. A few of them have to do with research on how to extend life expectancy; for example, the episode with Dr. Cynthia Kenyon. For a while it has been thought that calorie restriction could extend life and slow aging. Dr. Kenyon's research seems to offer an explanation for why we might see those effects.

An other interesting episode is the one with guest Aubrey de Grey speaking on the Thousand Year Lifespan. While de Gray's over all proposal sounds outrageous, his description of individual problems to be solved sounds quiet logical.

The second episode of the podcast involved aging. I think I need to give it a listen.

Wikis

2009-05-06T22:47:00.001-04:00

Need a wiki? MediaWiki is the software behind Wikipedia. It is based on PHP and MySQL.

Dealing with Sounds

2009-05-02T10:35:00.000-04:00

Forum post discussing how to detect when a sound has finished playing.

Using c functions in iPhone development.

Mixing C and Objective-C

OS X and iPhone Dev Links

2009-04-26T11:27:00.002-04:00

Learn Objective-C by Scott Stevenson

Example of an asteroids style game made with core animation.

cocoadevcentral - NSValue: used it to wrap basic C values, such as float and int. Once wrapped, they can be stored in an NSDictionary or NSArray. - 2:22 AM Mar 28th from web

NanoLife - Core Animation Sample Code ---> NanoLife in 3d

Thinking Like a Cocoa Programmer

OpenGL ES From the Ground Up, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 ...

NS Coder Night

Code Insults, Mark I <--- Not sure what this is about, programming style?

TED Curator Interview

2009-04-21T16:16:00.002-04:00

About a year ago Charlie Rose interviewed Chris Anderson of TED. See it here on the TED Blog, or on the Charlie Rose site.

C64 Emulators on OSX

2009-04-21T09:31:00.002-04:00

Macscene has a list of Commodore 64 emulators for OS X. One of them is called Frodo.

Cringely at Kauffman Foundation

2009-04-16T14:09:00.003-04:00

In the 1990's before everyone had a blog I was an avid reader of the "I, Cringely" blog on PBS. Like many embracing the "new media" Bob is now on his own site, where there is the following video among other things.

Benevolent

2009-04-15T08:22:00.004-04:00

Link to Video of Paul Graham at Startup School '08.

Presentation by Paul Graham at Startup School '08. Paul's Website.

There are more videos from Startup School 08.

Another interesting blog

2009-04-13T19:33:00.001-04:00

The Simple Dollar's list of side businesses.

Investing in Academic Research

2009-04-13T06:10:00.003-04:00

Forbes has an article, Venture Academics, about investing in Academic Research.

Pritchard decided to start the company after a 2003 visit to Purdue University on behalf of a British company he was funding. The mechanism for getting technology out of the university was sclerotic. Except for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, which have developed strong networks of fundraisers, most research institutions, he found, were grasping for help getting technology off their shelves.

More iPhone Development

2009-04-09T17:33:00.000-04:00

iPhone OpenGL Example - Flag waving

iPhone Help Desk?

2009-04-09T10:17:00.001-04:00

Raleigh area TV station article.

ACS plans to hire 240 people at its customer care center in order to provide technical support for Apple iPhones.
“We want these people as soon as possible,” said ACS spokesperson Chris Gilligan. “The jobs will pay above minimum wage with benefits. Individuals will have the ability to increase compensation after training and increase it further based on productivity.”

Home Soda Maker

2009-04-05T15:45:00.002-04:00

I got an e-mail about this product this morning. Seems like a number of people I know who like soda might be interested in one. They are made by Sodastream, but you can get one from Amazon.

See the Sodastream website http://www.sodaclubusa.com/ for more info.

RTP Area VCs

2009-03-28T08:19:00.005-04:00

RTP Startup Weekend July 11-13 last years event coverage.
2008 E-week at Duke

Economy Story Links

2009-03-27T10:00:00.004-04:00

Ready the Biz plans - Thinking a head.

The Big Takeover - From Rolling Stone

The other linkedin -- Zoominfo.

Best places to start a company -- Raleigh #1 and Charlotte #2

TechCrunch50 2009 Announced

2009-03-26T15:44:00.002-04:00

TechCrunch50 2009 has been announced.

It’s that time of the year again. We are pleased to announce the opening of business for the third annual TechCrunch50 event, to be held once again on September 14-15, 2009 in San Francisco, California. Last year we hosted 250 start-ups pitching to nearly 2,000 attendees, including 200 VCs, corporate buyers and angels and more than 150 members of the press. All the details are at TechCrunch50.com.

Thinking about buying

2009-03-23T15:09:00.004-04:00

Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition 2TB

SanDisk 16GB Ultra II 15MB/s SDHC SD Card
Previous Model Mac Mini for < $500

PHP Reference Links

2009-03-21T13:08:00.010-04:00

PHP doing HTTP and HTTPS gets - fopen

PHP Manual - English

XML Parsing in PHP 4

Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh

2009-03-18T16:47:00.006-04:00

Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh Test Drive from Andy Ihnatko on Vimeo.

Really amazing video of the market Apple is missing out on at the moment!! I'd like more disk space, perhaps with a SD SDHC card I can get what I need.
Added 3-21-09: Link to the Mini 9 at Dell.com. TomsHardware mini 9 hackintosh article.

Apple Dev Links

2009-03-16T20:40:00.013-04:00

Pinch Media - Analytics and Advertisements for your iPhone App

Jeff Lamarche on UIimage from TGA.

Forum Help on OpenGL sprites.

Forum Question on Multiple Texturing mistakes.

Apple Sample Code - Must be an apple developer to login and see page.

Subversion and Xcode -- Subversion Notes

Objective C Memory Management Model explained

Intro to Memory Management for Cocoa

Cocoa iPhone example

Animating the UI

Particles on iPhone Video of particles on iPhone
iPhone Particles Code

Apple Developer Site

Sound on the iPhone

Formatting Cocoa Text Edit Field example

Researcher to Entrepreneur

2009-03-14T01:41:00.003-04:00

Interesting article about a British Academic bringing Silicon Valley entrepreneur culture to British academic research. This article about Mark Ferguson, from 2001 details his career leading to the formation of the Manchester Incubator and Renovo, a company he co-founded.

So rather than just approaching a company with an idea, it was necessary to have a fully developed proposal. "Then you need to find people in the company who will support you, you need to be clear how you can develop your research into something that they can make and make money from, so there not only has to be some underpinning science but also a product development pathway. You definitely have to be astute about intellectual property, and either have filed patent applications or know how to do that, because that’s the whole basis of the industry."
. . .

After several years, Ferguson found he had built up good relationships with some pharmaceutical companies and was securing substantial funding for research. But, there was a problem. "They didn’t actually take the things forward from R&D into development."

Even though Ferguson’s group had made some genuinely useful discoveries, the technology was not being taken to market. He was falling into what the DTI has long identified as the "development gap". Getting out of it would require going a step further.

Links for Further review

2009-03-09T01:04:00.016-04:00

A list of links I might want to read when I have time:
Go Big Network
University R&D Revenue - Forbes Article - Related Post
Local coverage of Wake Forest Ranking
Biz Journel Article
North Carolina Electronics and Information Technology Association

Patent Reports
Patent Search
AN/Duke AND ISD/1/1/2008->12/31/2008 returns 42
Angle Technologies -VC Group specilizing in taking univeristy R&D
Business Link NC
Researcher to Entrepreneur
Serial Entrepreneurs and Venture Performance
Smart Business Article: Alfred Mann
Phoenix University
Smart Grid research in RTP
Hacker Spaces

Charlie Rose interviews Buffet & Gates.
Department of Labor Layoff Site
List of Science Twitters
Story from NPR about ENERGIZE Clinton County
Global Sources - OEM Directory

Using rsync to mirror sites
http://speedtest.net/ names says it all
Encrypting everything - A Discussion on Slashdot
CURL at godaddy hosting

RTP based Start Ups:
BIOLEX Therapeutics founded by Anne-Marie Stomp

Cool Video Podcasts

2009-03-05T20:02:00.000-05:00

A list of Video podcasts I enjoy.

Hidden Universe HD: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope - Stunning pictures from the space telescope. Great for showing off an HDTV.
TEDTalks - Uplifting, amazing, optimistic look at the world. Who doesn't need that view point these days?
Hubblecast - Images from the Hubble and Spitzer Telescopes, with Dr. J.
Irving Renquist, Ghost Hunter - For those that love B Ghost Movies. Irving Renquist is a B ghost hunting fictional drama. It gets much better and more interesting after the first 2 episodes.
DiveFilmHD Podcast Video - HD scuba dive videos. Some of these are seriously cool. Some of them are whale poetry (for better or for worse).

Buffet Quote

2009-03-01T11:30:00.002-05:00

NBR: As you know it's the 30th anniversary of Nightly Business Report. As you look back on the past three decades, what would you say is the most important lesson that you've learned about investing?

Warren Buffet: Well I've learned my lessons before that. I read a book what is it, almost 60 years ago roughly, called The Intelligent Investor and I really learned all I needed to know about investing from that book, in particular chapters 8 and 20 so I haven't changed anything since.

Hope for the Laid off

2009-02-24T21:17:00.003-05:00

I read this article in USA Today (but can't find it on their website), so here it is reprinted at Chain Leader: From laid off to company leader; Business founders likely to emerge from meltdown.

But among them may be a Tom Stemberg, who founded 43,000-employee Staples after he was pushed out by supermarket chain Finast-Edwards when his division was sold in 1985; or a New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, fired from Salomon Bros., only to start the financial news service that made him a billionaire and today employs about 10,000.

Here's too all of the great ideas and companies that will emerge from the carnage of the financial crisis.

Tells of iPhone Riches

2009-02-14T17:57:00.003-05:00

Wired Blog on Trism and Tap Tap Revenge from back in Sept.

Following that up is another wired Blog entry on the game iShoot.

I think Apples app store is key to their success. Its one place you have to get into, not a wild combination of online stores and brick-n-mortor.

New: 4/5/09
More coverage of iShoot, Trism, and similar iPhone Apps.

Old Research Grant

2009-02-03T17:43:00.001-05:00

Was looking for some names from my past and came across a link for the research grant that I worked on in graduate school to pay for part of my education. Wanted to link to it here for safe keeping. This was part of the work for RTCPP.

Graduate Papers

2009-01-30T21:06:00.004-05:00

Doing a little self googling to see what is out there and found a few of my old Graduate papers on a German scientific website. Interesting paper list for one of my advisers also: Donald L Bitzer.

Here is a link to the paper, Advanced Computer Based Education on the World Wide Web, at NCSU (PDF). It fun to read what we were thinking in the early days of the web, when java was new, cookies were just coming out (I think the paper was written months before the release of browsers supporting cookies), and standards for audio and video didn't exist.

Triangle Games Conference

2009-01-22T20:58:00.001-05:00

Triangle Games Conference

The Research Triangle Park region is home to more than 30 game companies, employing over 1,000 people – one of the largest concentrations of game development companies in the U.S., including luminaries such as Epic and Red Storm. Triangle Game Conference will present a program including a keynote by Epic Games and five tracks with content drawing on the strengths of the region.

Speaker Parts Sites

2008-12-28T22:13:00.004-05:00

List of sites for purchasing parts to build stereo or home-theater speakers.
Madisound
Meniscus Audio
Parts Express
MCM

Added 02-08-2009:
Madisound's Recession Buster Kit Sale.

Dec 18th Lunch

2008-12-27T07:04:00.004-05:00

A while back I had an interesting lunch with a group of friends. I wanted to catalog our lunch time conversation but with the holidays, it has taken a while to find the free time.

Qualcomm's Snappdragon processor - More here and here, from youtube.
Optical proximity correction and other approaches used to enhance photolithography and keep Moore's Law alive.
Pay Job site, The Ladders.com.
Is Texas Instruments (TXN) a good stock buy?
Using the Yahoo stock screener to look for stocks of companies with little or no debt.
Biotech in general and this TED Video by Craig Venter.
Futures in Biotech podcast, is biotech advancing faster than "Electrotech"?
Metagenomics as evidence that biotech might be on a curve faster than Moore's Law.
Video Game company Destineer, which is partially funded by the CIA. See this post.

Lunch is such fun, too bad it only lasts an hour.

Updated RTP Game Companies

2008-11-04T13:24:00.005-05:00

Stolen from the Triangle Chapter of IGDA. (I hope my version is easier to read!)

Also for those interested in how to get others to work for free watch this WIRED video.

iPhone Reversi Game

2008-06-28T17:52:00.001-04:00

http://gc001.geewa.com/games/reversi/ajax/iphone/

Works on the iPhone or in your browser. Play the computer or play live players over the network.

Buffet and GSK

2008-03-04T10:42:00.000-05:00

Interesting article on Buffet and his GSK investment.

This article notes that well-respected investor Warren Buffett recently bought a 1.5-million-share stake in struggling drug company GlaxoSmithKline(GSK). With the company dealing with a seemingly endless list of obstacles – slumping price action, expiring patents, declining sales of Avandia, and a weak 2008 outlook – the author points out that "investors betting with Warren better have his patience." The litany of near-term challenges facing the stock are carefully enumerated by the author, including regulatory delays and a rather clogged product pipeline.

Grant the whole Pharma sector is facing rough times in the short term, but the long term outlook is good. Warren Buffet is rarely wrong ("Rule Number One: Don’t lose money. Rule Number Two: Never forget Rule Number One.").

And if you look at the dividend and share buy back GSK stock looks good.

I own GSK stock and work in the industry.

Counting Games with Fish

2007-12-18T21:25:00.000-05:00

Links to Counting Games with Fish (for my little one).

Connect Numbers to the Fish Game - Worked on a PC but not on my Mac. It was very simple.
How many Fish? - This works on the Mac and has sound. The games shows a number of fish and asks how many are there. Its multiple choice with a list of 3 numbers.
Fishin' Mission - Drag the correct number of fish into the net.

I will add to the list as I find more.

Gaming Related Companies in RTP NC

2007-12-11T07:28:00.004-05:00

NOTE (Nov. 4th 2008): It has been pointed out to me this list is not very good. For a better list look here or at this post here.

A list of companies based on list in Business Leader Magazine.

RTP Area Game Studios

2007-11-17T17:11:00.000-05:00

I attended a Game Developer Open House/Job Fair in RTP today. Companies I saw in attendance:

Icarus Studios
EA Games
Vicious Cycle - With their Engine.
Emergent
Destineer - Both a game developer and publisher of other games. Only company in attendance that advertises being funded (indirectly, slightly indirectly) by the CIA.
RedStorm - a division of Ubisoft.

Missing was Epic, and probably several others I don't know about from the region.

Recycling Junk Mail

2007-07-10T22:29:00.000-04:00

I created the following petition to get the post office to make it easier to recycle junk mail.

Check it out and if you agree please sign the petition.

Music and CD's

2007-07-10T22:23:00.000-04:00

I'm going to have to try what is suggested in this Yahoo Tech Blog. On the flip side, I wish the iPod had compression built into it. The only place I want audio compression in my music is in the car, and thats where I listen to my iPod 80% of the time.

Trying to Live Without China

2007-06-30T22:32:00.000-04:00

Saw this article on Yahoo this morning.

I've been recommending Kumho tires to people, thinking the Korean company made them in Korea. But reading the label on a set this morning reviled the Made in China stamp. Because of corner cutting in Chinese business from pet food, baby bibs, toothpaste, toy trains, to tires I feel I can no longer recommend any product made in China for safety concerns.

Sleep or lack there of....

2007-06-13T13:41:00.000-04:00

I've gotten about 5.5 hours of sleep the last 2 nights. Not good timing to read this article on the risks of sleep lose.

To Wii or Not

2007-06-11T22:15:00.000-04:00

It is still not possible to find Wii on the shelves of a store in my general area. This must be a great embarrassment to the likes of Sony and Microsoft when I walk by stacks of PS3's and XBox 360's in the same stores. I had previously thought that shortly after Christmas 2006 I could walk into a store and buy a Wii without waiting in line. Here it is 6 months past Christmas and they are still rare in the wild. The guys at the local GameStop said they heard Nintendo won't be able to meet demand until sometime in 2008.

In another note, this Model of Rome is pretty cool. Although at times it has the feel of a Sid Meier's Civilization game.

At yesterday's fill up the Honda got 29.7 MPG.

BBQ and MPG

2007-06-09T21:37:00.001-04:00

Since lunch I had a cup of ice cream, and a NC style BBQ dinner that I shared with my daughter, she ate the fries and hushpuppies. I'm about to sit down and share some dry cherreo's with her.

With gas prices high, I'm tracking usage regularly again, for example the last tank got 28.5 MPG. This is from a 4 cylinder 160HP Honda Accord.

Diets

2007-01-06T00:51:00.001-05:00

I'm not on a named diet, and I'm not counting carbs, calories, or fat. I am just trying to eat moderately sized portions and get a little exercise.

See this article for a down to earth description of dieting.

Live Music

2006-12-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

It has been a while since I have heard small venue live music. It is nice. Tonight I went to hear Kyler England. It has been well over a year since I have caught her when she was passing through town.

Large venue concerts tend to have horrible sound quality. Of course some small venue's aren't ideal either, but there is no wall of speakers. You can see the artist without opera glasses, and the sound has an immediacy and intimacy that is hard to find at bigger shows.

High Rate Savings

2006-07-06T18:50:00.002-04:00

Internet based savings accounts are again ratcheting up the interest rates to attract customers. Here are a few examples in no particular order:

emigrantdirect.com - Currently advertising 5%.

Capitalone.com - Currently at 4.75%

ING Orange Account - Currently advertising 4.35%.

As I have said in the past, Kiplinger's and Money magazine have longer lists, if you can find them. The key is that these rates are high enough that they are above inflation.

Is Glass a Liquid?

2006-03-29T17:57:00.000-05:00

During dinner with friends recently I mentioned a fallacy I was told in high school by one of my science teachers. "If you can see through a substance it must be a liquid." This was used to justify the statement that glass was a liquid, which I did believe for many years.

One of my friends said he thought that the "glass is a liquid" statement was also false. The next day a flurry of e-mails and google searches turned up the "truth." The idea that glass is liquid appears to be a myth nearly unique to "english speakers of North America." See the wikipedia entry on glass and a page created to show that "Glass is a Liquid" is an Urban Legend.

Carb Addictions

2006-01-23T17:42:00.000-05:00

In trying to do the diet on my own, I have come to know, in a deeply personal way, that carbohydrates are addictive. Its the classic sugar rush. If I have a significant number of carbs, then about 2 to 2.5 hours later I have a sugar crash and I either need more carbs or I feel like I can not stay awake.

If I have a large bagel for breakfast, then I'm going to end up eating way too much all day long. So while I'm not sure you have to be as drastic as the Atkins diet, I can see why the low carb diets seem to have a higher success rate. My plan is to try not to eat much carbs in the early part of the day. Ironically I seem to do better when I have oatmeal for breakfast.

Interest Rate War

2005-12-30T10:45:00.000-05:00

Back in Sept. I wrote an little about the interest rate war. Well it has now broken the 4% barrier. Looking at the latest Money Magazine The top five Bank Money-Market Rates range from 4.1% to 4.5%. Given that I like banks I have heard of before, and for most people a small minimum is preferable I'd pick E-Trade Bank from their list (4.1% with $100 minimum).

So it is worth shopping around to see where the best rates are. And given the lag in published magazines, it is possible that somewhere there are rates better than this.

Natural Gas Prices

2005-12-26T21:07:00.000-05:00

Earlier this year I was really worried about heating costs this winter, as natural gas (NG) prices doubled and then almost quadrupled after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I recently got our gas bill and ran the numbers. Real world consumer increase (at least for me) appears to be 44.5%. That is not a small increase, but its not nearly as bad as it might have been. I do worry about those living up north on moderate to low incomes, they are going to feel a big bite in their wallets this winter!

Pick your Chocolates

2005-12-21T10:00:00.001-05:00

New study shows dark chocolate could cut the risk of heart disease.

After two hours, ultrasound scans revealed that dark chocolate -- made up of 74 percent cocoa solids -- significantly improved the smoothness of arterial flow, whilst white chocolate, with four percent cocoa, had no effect, the study published in Heart magazine said.

WheatThins and Babies

2005-12-18T22:49:00.001-05:00

New lesson of the day don't feed a 10 month old adult crackers. Baby girl choked on half a generic wheat thin cracker and threw up her dinner all over me, herself, and the living room floor. Fortunately she is fine, but the moral of the story is no more adult crackers until she has some rear teeth to go with the front ones. Maybe nilla wafers, but not the hard crackers.

Scales and Latte Money

2005-12-09T10:50:00.001-05:00

This article on lattes and saving money was interesting to read, but I feel it missed a few points. The main one being that an occasional $5 coffee isn't a big deal unless you are living on the edge. But a daily $5 coffee is significant to anyone but the truly rich. A $5 coffee everyday you go to work adds up to $1250 a year. Over 18 years that is $22,500, if the money were invested and got a 10% return on average in 18 years it would be worth almost $57,000. (The difference wouldn't buy you a coffee.) Anyway the article is worth reading but don't dismiss the cost of small daily purchases.

No Change

2005-12-07T22:30:00.001-05:00

I'm about to travel to ApacheCon in San Diego next week. I wish I had arranged to spend more of the weekend there, it would be cool to see LegoLand and spend a day at the zoo.

Mondays

2005-12-05T00:10:00.003-05:00

I read two interesting articles this morning on Yahoo.

A recent study finds that coffee can help prevent liver damage.
Coffee and tea may reduce the risk of serious liver damage in people who drink alcohol too much, are overweight, or have too much iron in the blood, researchers reported on Sunday.
Another study finds that moderate drinkers are less likely to be obese.
Researchers found that among more than 8,200 U.S. adults, those who said they enjoyed a drink every day were 54 percent less likely than non-drinkers to be obese.

Small Car

2005-11-29T15:56:00.001-05:00

The Canadian Driver website has an article on a highly efficient VW prototype.

Potato Tips

2005-11-19T16:59:00.001-05:00

Quick Tip of the Day: If you want to eat potato chips or similar no-nos while dieting, put a "reasonable" amount of them in a bowl and eat from the bowl. You are likely to eat far more than you intend if you eat directly from the bag.
Read this article (aimed at college students) for tips on surviving Thanksgiving.

Loosing Again

2005-11-17T12:10:00.001-05:00

In other news decaf coffee might be bad for you, if you are over weight!!

For those who had body mass indexes (BMIs) of more than 25 (considered overweight), drinking decaffeinated coffee increased HDL2 by about 50 percent. But those in the decaffeinated group, who were not considered overweight according to BMI, saw their HDL2 drop by about 30 percent.

Down

2005-11-09T13:45:00.001-05:00

Something that concerns me is that the US is losing ground as the technology world power. There is a steady stream of news articles on this that never seem to make it to the front page, for example this article on a recent Marconi Society report. I fear the recent success that the radical fundamentalists have had in "dumbing down" science classes in the US will only accelerate the problem. See the following articles for reference:

29.2

2005-11-07T12:25:00.001-05:00

I found this link on teaching babies sign language and am starting to read it. I heard about this a couple of years ago on an NPR show.

Politicians

2005-11-05T10:45:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I took the afternoon off and spent part of it at the local mall, where I ran into former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards. I briefly spoke to him while he was shopping at J. Crew. I didn't get pictures, although being there with our 8 month old child we had both camera and video camera with us. Unlike the paparazzi I just think it would be rude to start snapping pictures while someone is trying to shop for cloths.

On the other hand I do wish I had spent a little more time discussing national politics and what I think the US needs in its next presidential administration. What I think we need is some one moderate enough to appeal to the moderate members of both parties and take the government away from its fractured extremism that is standard practice today.

Update

2005-11-03T17:36:00.001-05:00

Diet Update: So I'm back to having lost a total of just under 29 pounds.

Sharing a few interesting news items today:

In what might have been an effort to see how far off the mark The Day After Tomorrow was, Lawrence Livermore Lab released a report on extremes of global warming.
A little good news on the educational front. More schools need to encourage the study of science like Sacred Heart Academy.
And the topic of Ford and GM:SUV Sales Send Out An S.O.S.

Post Halloween

2005-11-02T21:59:00.001-05:00

For Halloween the little babe went as the Great Pumpkin. Speaking of babes and diets, there was an interesting article on the rising interest in organic foods for children. Most baby food is much better than most food Americans eat, but the organic baby food does mean less exposure to pesticides.
I leave you with this link.

Change Today

2005-10-28T11:15:00.001-04:00

I recently heard that insured damage from Hurricane Wilma could be $6 to $9 Billion. Combined with losses from Rita and Katrina (beware of women whose names end in "a" or at least hurricanes named after them) it will clearly be another record year for hurricane losses.

Power

2005-10-27T11:58:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I was discussing power requirements for various home appliances. I have an old smallish full sized fridge in the garage. Over a day it used 3.37 KWH of power. At $0.095 per KWH that is $116.85 a year (3.37 X 365 x 0.095), or $9.74 a month to run that fridge. A larger but more modern fridge would probably use a similar amount of power.

Weather

2005-10-25T11:30:00.001-04:00

In the news Hurricane Wilma has helped create a Nor-easter storm in the North Atlantic. Reminds me of The Perfect Storm, which was an excellent book.

Back on Track

2005-10-24T12:29:00.001-04:00

Over the weekend I saw an interesting article on a new break through for cheap LED White lights over at IntTech.

Something all tax payers should be upset about is the lack of financial responsibility in Congress.

Fuel

2005-10-18T09:45:00.001-04:00

Interesting news items:

Europeans buying vegetable oil to run their autos.
Record Atlantic storm year with Wilma set to become a major hurricane.

Baby Diets

2005-10-10T10:19:00.001-04:00

Yahoo had an interesting article on feeding babies. It is an interesting article, although our baby breaks out in a rash if she eats green peas.

Gained a little

2005-10-06T19:27:00.001-04:00

Looking back over the last week, I realize I have let myself get back into the habit of not drinking enough water. Water consumption is important to weight loss. Worse still, having too little water causes the body to retain water adding to your water weight.

Energy Use

2005-10-03T10:37:00.001-04:00

This hurricane seasons is forcing the Whitehouse to urge Americans to cut back on energy use. I'm happy to see only an expected 52% increase in NG costs, somethings I read implied the cost could increase as much as 400% over last year. It reminds me of this posting there.

More People Biking

2005-10-02T14:15:00.000-04:00

I found this new item surprising, but it appears that high gas prices have driven more people to bikes. Could have other benefits as well, like working off Big Mac's and Quarter Pounders.

Sunday Morning

2005-10-02T09:53:00.001-04:00

No big news today. But I found out about the following free StarWreck Sci-Fi Movie from slashdot.

Out of Season

2005-09-30T08:37:00.001-04:00

I went out last night to buy new gym shorts. I had been wearing casual shorts to the gym and wanted something more comfortable on an exercise bike. Lucky for me the things I wanted seemed to be out of season and on sale, so I got 2 pairs of shorts and a Linen "summer" shirt all for less than $18, at the local Target.

Honda n Toyota

2005-09-29T14:01:00.001-04:00

In other news I think people are rushing to buy stock in companies producing hybrid cars. Toyota is up about 25% since I bought it, and Honda is up over 17% since I bought it.

Also see this article, which has the following quote:

In the end, Hurricane Rita released its fury on the Gulf of Mexico drilling area, damaging more offshore rigs than any storm ever, before hitting four refineries on the Texas/Louisiana border.

While damage to rigs, which drill for oil, will drive up future fuel prices, the damage to refineries on top of the run on petrol in the evacuation is likely to have an immediate impact at a time when Americans already are seeing petrol for $3 per gallon at the pump.