links | January 24, 2012
Started reading Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel.
links | January 24, 2012
Future Perfect » The Handbag Paradox
...handbags carriers (and to a lesser extent other carriers of daily-use bags) are confronted with the handbag paradox that states: it is nearly always easier to add additional items to the bag than to sort through items to be removed, with the net result being that people walk around with significantly more stuff than they need.
IKEA Hack: LACK coffee tables with TROFAST drawers and SIGNUM cable management
That Guy I Married and I recently replaced an old, tiny sofa with the IKEA KARLSTAD corner sofa. It’s huge. So huge, that we realized there was a hidden cost: We had to replace our old coffee table as well.
We decided to get two of the ~30″ square LACK coffee tables. The couch is also our dining area, so really, the more table space, the better. These tables have a shelf about halfway down the legs, but we have two active cats. Anything we left on that shelf would be identified as not bolted down, and therefore a cat toy.
So we needed drawers on rails that would hold from the top, instead of the side or bottom.
Based on another hack I’d seen around, I knew the TROFAST drawers had a lip that made them pretty much perfect for this use. My husband picked up the STRECKET rails from the kitchen department, and after testing that the rail and lip were a match, we took them home with us.
One of the tables also has the SIGNUM cable management rack attached for wrangling laptop cords since we work on the couch a lot. At some point, we might spraypaint those bright green drawers. :)
Daily Summary
I read:
Finished Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. Passed it on to a co-worker in exchange for Freakonomics.
Maria Popova’s Beautiful Mind
The creator of Brain Pickings on how to think outside the corporate box.
Daily Summary
Daily Summary
I did:
Got all my boundary service code ready to go: made changes to finder.js, settingsoverride.py, and definitions.py. Added shapefiles. Didn’t have to look up git commands! John Keefe got an EC2 instance running for me, using Chicago Tribune’s GeoDjango image. I should be able to get the app up pretty quickly from here!
Baked another couple hundred cookies. Wrapped said cookies up for mailing to family and friends. Spent an hour at the post office. Hey y’all, you’ve got cookies!
I learned:
Installing GeoDjango is STILL a bitch.
I need to start a notebook on all my project stuff as I do it; I keep forgetting passwords and filenames and commands. (Been meaning to do this for a long time, have never managed to implement it.) Have notebook, will fill.
EC2 isn’t as easy to work with as it should be. Why is this prep stuff so hard?
I read:
The Defense Bill Passed. So What Does It Do?
In Which We Teach You How To Be A Woman In Any Boys’ Club
Building Social Software for the Anti-Social
Dear Internet: It’s No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works
Daily Summary
I did:
Made like 200 cookies. My hands smell AMAZING.
Got two awesome books from my in-laws: Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens and Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. Thanks Mom and Dad!
Attended two different birthday parties. Happy Birthday December people!
I learned:
Preheating the oven is not optional.
I read:
Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works
Daily Summary
I did:
Sent my first chain email since…no, wait, EVER. In my defense, it’s a recipe exchange. And BCC was used.
I learned:
I knew this already, but it should be repeated: Spider Robinson is AWESOME.
I read:
An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, 1949-2011 Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit
Introduction to Databases Statement of Accomplishment
Just got my statement of accomplishment from Jennifer Widom for the Introduction to Databases class!
Congratulations! You have successfully completed the free online offering of Introduction to Databases, offered October through December, 2011. To successfully complete this free online class, students were required to watch lectures, complete quizzes and automated exercises, and take a midterm exam and a final exam. According to our automated system, your scores on these components were as follows:
Quizzes: 57 out of a maximum of 67
Exercises: 69 out of a maximum of 71
Exams: 26 out of a maximum of 38
Scaled total (exercises doubled, exams tripled): 273 out of a maximum of 323We thank you for your interest in studying databases, and for participating in our ambitious experiment to deliver quality educational content to a worldwide audience.