Sunday, May 27, 2007

One way to make "cheap" pedometers more accurate

People who choose walking as part of their New Year's resolution to "get more exercise" quickly discover that pedometers are a hassle. The "affordable" models are too sensitive, counting too many steps and failing to give an accurate count of paces or distance. They get frustrated and stop exercising, with justifications like "Why should I bother walking when I can't tell how many steps I've taken, how far I've walked, or how many calories I've burned?"

Here's a tip that might help. Most people wear their pedometers on the waistband of their workout shorts/pants. This doesn't work-- the motion switches in the pedometers get too much vibration there and will frequently register more than one step for each step taken.

Instead, try clipping the pedometer to the collar of your shirt. This decreases the amount of extra vibration that reaches the pedometer, making it less likely to register extra steps. An extra benefit to this approach-- having the pedometer that close to your ear-- means you will be able to hear the motion switch in the pedometer as you walk, allowing you to verify that it is counting the steps you are taking properly.

I hope you found this tip useful, and may it make your walking workout routine more enjoyable.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Perpetual Copyright-- the new inbreeding?

SF author, Mark Helperin (sp?), has written a New York Times editorial proposing perpetual copyright. It's a thought provoking piece, actually. The activists and lawyers have added innumerable comments wrangling over the legal minutae for or against the proposal. Some have even gone so far as to set up a wiki to help craft a rebuttal (which presumably will wind up in the New York Times editorial page when it's completed).

Let's skip the legal crap for a second and talk about . . . genetics.

Ideas are not static, frozen concepts— they are dynamic, evolving gradually over time, and when combined with other ideas can have "offspring." For example, the personal computer would not exist without Morse Code (see Petzold's outstanding book, "C O D E", for the details); "Ten Things I Hate About You" wouldn't exist without William Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew."

Perpetual copyright would create a situation where people who might normally risk combining ideas are discouraged from doing so out of fear of being sued for violating someone's copyright. It's the same thing as the race horse owner who asks for an outrageous "stud fee" for his purebred. In the best case scenario, the horse gets no opportunity to sire, eventually dies of old age, and the bloodline ends. In the worst case scenario, the owner desperately perpetuates the bloodline by breeding the horse with any and every horse in their stable. The problem is the selection of qualities and characteristics in a closed environment, such as one owner's stable or an individual's copyright holdings, is finite. The merit of the idea, both real and perceived, becomes less with each combination and byproduct. Don't believe me? Compare people's responses to Apple's iPod against their reaction to Microsoft's Zune.

But, I hear the lawyers in the crowd objecting, you can't copyright an idea so there shouldn't be any problem.

Yeah, right— because we haven't already seen ignorant misuse or deliberate abuse of DMCA takedown notices by large media organizations (e.g. Major League Baseball) and individuals (e.g. Michael Crook, et alia.) Most people aren't going to have the desire or means to let the legal process run its full course. The "stud fee" is simply too high.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Interesting Quote

"More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice."

-- Robert Smith Surtees

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Be Angry-- yet, do not sin.

Jerry Falwell is dead.

I read that in the news.

He said many outrageous things.

I heard some of them on the radio.

Now, some people think it's their turn to say outrageous things about Falwell.

I've seen that on the World Wide Web.

Jesus said some pretty far out things too. Things like: "Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

That one I read in the Bible.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

The "Forget This" Algorithm

This week, I encountered a recurring theme in my web surfing/reading. That theme is the human psychological necessity to forget things and the potential mental trauma that massive and efficient data storage technologies represent.

The first instance of this theme was when I stumbled (via Boing Boing) across a reprint of a 1983 SF story by Spider Robinson, entitled "Melancholy Elephants." I will not comment on the story specifically, because I don't want to spoil it for those of you who haven't read it.

The second instance of this theme happened while I was listening to Episode (05/10/07 - Broadband in every pot) of Buzz Out Loud. Molly was discussing the possibility of a "forget feature" for computers and echoing some of the concerns voiced in "Melancholy Elephants." It got me thinking about how we frequently attempt to mimic human processes/behaviours, such as facial recognition or dancing, with computer programs . . . so how hard would it be to teach a computer to simulate forgetfulness?

Tom and Molly were critical of the idea of using meta data (and rightfully so, IMO, because meta data is notoriously inconsistent from person to person or even day to day). I'm thinking it should be a formula based on the frequency that a particular file/piece of information is used, possibly how long ago it was first learned, and how long it has been since that piece of information was last used.

In other words, you access/use your own phone number every day (i.e. giving it out to other people, not necessarily calling your own number), so you should never forget that. However, the phone number for your CPA you probably only use once a year around tax season, which is why you always have to look it up.

Percentage chance of "forgetting" (i.e. archiving off of primary storage) = number of days since that file/database record was last used divided by the number of times that file and/or database record has ever been used.

EXAMPLE:

200 days since last used / 100 accesses = 2% change it gets "forgotten"

20 days since last used / 100 accesses = 0.2% chance it gets "forgotten"

20 days since last used / 10 accesses = 2% chance it gets "forgotten"

20 days since last used / 1 access = 20% chance it gets "forgotten"

It needs some tweaking, definitely, because right now those stats are significantly better than real human memory. For instance, twenty days ago if you looked up the number for a business that you have never dealt with before or since, I doubt you are 80% likely to remember that phone number now.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Thinking about Thumbdrives

Even though I've read many articles at Lifehacker about all the cool things you can do with a thumbdrive, I find myself not doing a whole lot more than using it as a basic file storage device. I think part of the problem is that I use a Mac at home and a PC at work, and many of these "cool tricks for thumbdrives" don't do cross platform very well.

DemocraKey, for example, works on PC, but not on Mac. (Truth be told, I can't get DemocraKey to autorun on my PC, either, but that might be the result of security policies from my workplace.) Likewise, there are portable/thumbdrive apps for the Mac OS X only platform that become nothing more than wasted space when you plug that thumbdrive into a Windows PC.

There are plenty of Java apps out there-- is it so hard to believe that something like DemocraKey might have been done in Java, and thus be cross platform?

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

WWW Wednesday: LaptopLock

Some time ago, I wrote about Lojack for Laptops, a software and service that allows people to recover their stolen laptops. Although that product is available for both PC and Mac, I focused primarily on the Mac OS X version.

In the interest of "equal time," I wanted to post a quick entry about LaptopLock. I haven't had a chance to actually try it out yet, but it appears to be a free software client for Windows PCs that allow you to carry out certain actions if your laptop is ever stolen. Examples would be things like: erasing critical data, sending a message to the person using your laptop, etc. All of this presumes that the computer gets connected to the Internet after it is stolen, of course.

They do not have a version for Mac or Linux at this time, although they do say that if you feel like writing one, they'd be happy to talk with you. If only I had the time and the skillset.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Music Monday: Johnathan Coulton

That's the great thing about the World Wide Web. One minute, you're logging in to write a blog entry, the next thing you know, you get sidetracked by a hysterical "music video/song" entitled "Re: Your brains." It's about . . . um, well, cannibalistic, corporate zombies. ;)

If you like indie music with a clever sardonic streak, go check out Jonathan Coulton's web site. Do it now-- before I eat your brains! ;)

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Sunday Sudoku


When I first started solving Sudoku puzzles, I used a "brute force" approach. I wrote tiny numbers in every square for every possible value that square could have. Invariably, I would find one or two squares that could only have a single value (e.g. last row, fourth cell from the left can only be a 2).

This discovery would cause me to go back and eliminate all the 2's from that same column and row, which would usually give me another cell that could only be a single value. The process tends to sustain itself, as you can see. It's actually a successful strategy, but it's labor intensive, tedious and takes up a lot of time. Who wants to spend an hour a day or more working sudoku puzzles?

So, you begin to find other tricks (from trial and error, or talking with other people who do sudoku puzzles, or reading books on the subject) that cut down on the time and effort. For example, I can see that the value of the fourth column, fourth row has to be a 1 because the 1's in the fifth and sixth rows make it impossible for any other cell in the middle square to have a value of 1. Since each square has to contain one cell with the value of 1, the process of elimination makes it necessary for the fourth column, fourth row cell to be 1.

Likewise, the 9 in the sixth column makes it impossible for the two cells above it to have a value of 9. The only cell left is the fourth column, fifth row. The only two numbers remaining for the center square are 3 and 6, and the 6 in the sixth row makes that pretty obvious. See, we've solved the entire center square and I didn't have to write down each possible value for the four empty cells in order to do it. There's something to be said for techniques that save time and effort.

I must admit I do still revert back to the "brute force" approach when faced with puzzles of great difficulty. I suspect there are probably other tricks and techniques out there that I am not yet aware of. If I could add a few more of those to my proverbial toolkit, I'd probably be faster/more proficient at solving these harder puzzles.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

WWW Wednesday

The folks over at Clean Air Partners have redesigned their web site. Those of you with allergies, or who have other interests or concerns about the quality of the air you breathe might want to go check it out.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Tuesday Trivia

The earth's atmosphere consists of multiple layers. Name the warmest one.