"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein

New year goal? Use online courses to boost professional development!

February 13, 2012

Nerdy Things, Technology

1 comment

I’ve signed up to these courses offered online through Coursera. The courses are free, with videos and materials all available on the respective websites.

Take a look and see if any of the courses offered past and present interest you! I’ll blog more about them as they start up.

Crowd-funding science projects through SciFund and RocketHub

November 28, 2011

Nerdy Things, Science

(No comments)

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving! In the giving mood? SciFund and RocketHub have teamed up to raise funding for over 50 diverse science projects. This is a bit like Kiva if you are familiar with microfinancing, except that this is straight giving and not loaning. They also offer rewards for different levels of giving, similar to some other giving sites like Kickstarter.

Projects range from microbiology to conservation to ancient Roman DNA to zombie research. Some of my favorite projects (to which I have donated to) are:

These projects have 18 days left to reach their funding goals, so give to these projects while you can!

Recycled plastic eyeglasses frames

September 23, 2011

Misc, Nerdy Things, Technology

4 comments

A year ago this month, I purchased new eyeglasses frames from the Earth Conscious Optics line by MODO. They are made completely of recycled plastic. I could also chosen frames that were made from recycled metals. They have been awesome so far, although they don’t sit quite evenly on my nose, but that just might be because my nose is a little uneven!

Here’s what they look like:

They are also doing an interesting promotion where they plant a tree for every pair of frames purchased. Check out their website: ECO Optics

Hopefully I’ll be able to used these frames for several more years to get as much mileage out of them as I can.

This makes me wonder, what other cool upcycled things are out there? Know of any?

Say No to Twilight, Say Yes to (free) classics!

August 30, 2010

Books and Stuff to Read, Nerdy Things

4 comments

Instead of reading mediocre to bad fiction in your spare time, how about some classics? For free?

I might be defining my opinion about Twilight by this entry, but, really, what happened to reading good literature? After leaving high school where many of us had required reading, how many continue to pay tribute to the oldies (English majors not included)? There are plenty of classics in similar genres to what is available today.

Many classics have been freely available for while, since works enter the public domain after copyright expires. Project Gutenberg has been making available public domain books since 1971 and is the largest collection of free ebooks around. It is a pretty huge collection, and a great source of reading material especially if you own an ebook reader.

Something new on the rise, however, is Read Print, which is a website that also puts out books, but in more modern Web format complete with Facebook, Twitter, and extensive chat capabilities (Meebo, Facebook, AIM, MySpace IM, Google Talk). It was recently named one of TIME’s 50 best websites. I would still use Gutenberg for getting ebooks to read on my Sony Reader, but being able to read online is an attractive function of Read Print.

It would be interesting to try to have a virtual book club meeting through Read Print. It would be quite easy to communicate and the readers would not have to be worried about buying the same edition of a book to keep track of page numbers. It would be possible to even try to schedule our reading sessions to be synchronous so that we can chat as we read. That might be more distracting than helpful, but it would more closely emulate watching a TV show or a movie together.

Check out the Read Print collection. You can browse for books by title or by author, here are a few:

Depression-era color photos and 2 cool blogs to read

August 5, 2010

Nerdy Things, Science, Society, Technology

2 comments

This entry has a common thread that everything is about different, thought-provoking visual stimuli.

The Denver Post posted this gallery by photographers from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information. These color slides were recovered from the 1939-1943 and show glimpses into what life was like for Americans during harsh times.

The data nerd in me really loves the blog Information is Beautiful for its use of data to create visualizations that are beautiful and interesting.

The science nerd in me loves the website The Fun Theory for the psychological experimentation it is conducting.

Piezoelectricity in mini form and gecko tape

March 2, 2010

Nerdy Things

2 comments

Here are some articles a friend sent to me recently (thanks Katie!).

I posted earlier about piezoelectricity being used in dance clubs and subway turnstiles, but here is an article about a smaller version that could be used in cell phones.


The second article is about gecko tape. Geckos have a really fascinating ability to climb on the pads of their feet using Van der Waals interactions between the tiny setae (each with a diameter of 5 micrometers) on the pads of the toes and the surface of the thing it is sticking to. The article says that tape and adhesive technology being developed now that imitates the gecko’s abilities may be available on the market in 3-5 years!

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