Posted by Eric Stewart
Fri, 17 Feb 2006 20:30:00 GMT
Bring out your links! Bring out your links!
- Ted Dziuba is taking a mathematical approach to understanding the popularity and success of social bookmarking. In particular, he looks at sites that use voting such as Reddit and Digg. His Epsilon-Delta blog covers topics related to mathematics and programming. Isn’t that what most of us CS grads were supposed to do instead of getting mixed up in a MIS run world?
- Like to prepare food? Have an analytical mind? You might enjoy visiting Cooking for Engineers. It’s not too geeky, so I think even non-engineers will find it useful.
- Like I needed another excuse to enjoy wine! Scientific American reports that red wine might make fish live longer. Who cares if it is true, just break out the bottles and corkscrew! And give credit to the author for touting Pinot Noir. Just another reference, along with the movie Sideways, to give the Pinot makers something to smile about.
Posted in Links | Tags food, links, mathematics, networking, social, wine | no comments
Posted by Eric Stewart
Fri, 17 Feb 2006 04:06:00 GMT
Is Alexander Muse right? In Brain Drain for Austin he muses that Austin is losing ground to our neighbor up the road, Dallas.
Another hi-tech company has given up the ghost and decided to leave Austin for the Dallas suburb of Plano. General Bandwidth, …
This loss follows several high profile losses for the city including Tyco’s departure last year. And one of several big wins for Dallas including Wednesdays announcement of QI System’s move to the city from Canada. I think we are witnessing a gravitational shift from Austin to Dallas – Austin will still be important, but the resources (human and otherwise) available in Dallas will irresistable for companies seeking a place to live.
Certainly Dallas is a much bigger city, but Austin has always had a strong tech presence including big players like IBM, Motorola (now Freescale), AMD, and National Instruments just to name a few. Not to mention the multitude of smaller players and startups. In fact, Austin just recently won out in a battle over the new future headquarters of Freescale. There is a ton of talent here.
Or is there?
By far, most of the jobs I see listed in the Austin market are for generic J2EE web/enterprise shops. I know there are companies with other software/hardware products out there. Has Austin’s talent pool become too heavy in one area? Are there just not enough tech workers? Or is it just the usual tax incentives game?
Maybe Alexander is jumping the gun. I hope not. If so, what can be done to attract more companies?
I’m not really sure either, but can someone check the plug just to be safe?
Posted in Austin, Software Development, Java, Misc., Technology | Tags industry, jobs, software, tech, technology | no comments
Posted by Eric Stewart
Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:57:00 GMT
Not long ago I finally upgraded my Kubuntu Linux machine from Hoary Hedgehog to Breezy Badger. Since I was in a masochistic mood (although the upgrade went surprisingly well with only a few minor hiccups), I decided to try enabling compositing in XWindows.
Read more...
Posted in Software Development, Technology | Tags compositing, graphics, linux, xwindows | no comments
Posted by Eric Stewart
Mon, 30 Jan 2006 04:03:13 GMT
You are a Faithful Inventor.
Personal DNA is a new twist on personality tests. Not radically new. The difference is in the way a user enters their responses. I did like the test question entry forms, which let you balance out multiple aspects of a question or choose a point on a coordinate system.
My results seemed consistent with various past tests that classify me as an INTP.
Try it for yourself
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Posted in Misc. | Tags personality, tests | no comments
Posted by Eric Stewart
Sat, 21 Jan 2006 19:47:00 GMT
All you web developers and users out there should go take a look at the Google Word Verification Accessiblity Petition that was started by Blind Access Journal.
In a nutshell, it’s asking Google to make their captcha scheme used in registering for services accessible. A user that doesn’t see so well hits a roadblock when they are presented with those crazy little captcha graphics.
The typical solution for most cases of this problem is to provide an audio equivalent.
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Posted in Software Development, Technology, Ruby On Rails | Tags accessibility, captcha, web | no comments
