- Naive thoughts the other day: If I subtract the nutridata of an Oreo chocolate sandwich cookie from the Oreo double stuf chocolate sandwich cookie, it should suffice to find out what this mysterious stuf is made from, right? Almost, since the packs appear to have slightly different reference points: the first pack uses 3 cookies (34g, 160cal), while the second only 2 cookies (29g, 140cal). Single cookies in both cases would be (11.33g, 53.33cal) and (14.5g, 70cal). But there is no set rule that says the cookie dimensions have to be the same. If they are, then a single stuf may be described as (3.2g, 17cal). From here, whether we subtract 53.3 - 17 or 70 - 2*17, we get ≈36cal left for the two biscuits that enclose the stuff, each having to be 18cal (or the stuf + 1cal).
- Few properties of various shrubs according to "Home stratosphere" bit.ly/3nVdf44. Was thinking that garden designers frequently want to know how strong the bushes they seek to grow will develop, whether they will be easy to maintain, whether they will support the overall color composition or prefer sun of particular intensity.
- Noticed that Zürich counts pedestrians and cyclists at different locations every 15 mins bit.ly/3ivOnPb ↗. The data about this year tells us that in the evening (18:00) on 11.01.2021, 44 cyclists leaved x, y = (2682278, 1248324). In the afternoon (17:15) on 15.01.2021, 188 pedestrians passed through x, y = (2683512, 1248166). Since the coordinates aren't in the WGS84 format, it is difficult to reason about the exact locations without a suitable converter.
- "63% of 2020 homebuyers made an offer sight unseen" bit.ly/35TH1jh ↗. So ordering website unseen is not an exception.
- HWInfo recognizes the last 4GB DDR3 module (on another machine) and says it is able to operate at both 1.35V and 1.5V. This is again insufficient.
- Second time not having luck with RAMs. Compatibility with old machines like mine tends to be pretty low. Wished I could create websites that worked only on Firefox, but not on Chrome, for instance. Whole luck that among five modules one happens to work.
- In Gatsby: "Together we scrutinized the twelve lemon cakes from the delicatessen shop." Adressen and #ids? Somewhere in Oggsford? bit.ly/3irDf5P
- You unpack complex dictionary with **man and result "to sweit is" gets attached upfront.
- Using Ritz crackers nutrition data, you compute that 100g of whole wheat crackers bit.ly/2XTkcIj ↗ would have 800mg of sodium which according to the label should correspond to a third of the recommended daily intake. In other words, they take ≈2400mg as a base. According to heart.org bit.ly/3qycj7l ↗, there is nothing wrong with a value of 2300mg/day, but the American Heart Association was said to aim towards a new "ideal" of (less than) 1500mg/day (which is significantly lower than the 3400mg/day of the average American). By that new definition, 100g Ritz crackers would cover 53.3% of the daily amount and 200g would exceed it.
- Some artifical ice for rooms and curling would be possible against the opposite Kevlar-wall. Wished the handle-ear was wider to enable the necklace use case.
- light dinner ↔ heavy cookware
- You use curtains for carpets and carpets for curtains, right? (joke)
- A book excerpt mentioned timber had low embodied energy (if locally sourced) relative to other building materials and gave oak and larch as two types best suitable for exteriors (most softwoods not as durable). An article bit.ly/35RUtV2 ↗ happens to agree with that.
- Be aware of the potential low cost - low QoS relationship.
- Build the software in two days, then be swift in taking the money of the next client. Dogs bite the previous. Little surprise that much of the wide-spread software falls apart too soon, achieving too little. Hauptsache, the bank accounts grow.
- "No ideas but in things" - William C. Williams
- Middlemen still earn a lot, but some clients are good estimators of what portion comes from their back.
- As advised, performed the search "Escher symmetry" on Google Images.
- Would be nice if the next step could be a threadmill in the case of a protracted stay-at-home isolation.
- Bought 2x4kg kettlebells today bit.ly/3ilFsQq, on a slightly promotional price (0.66kg/€). At least relative to offers elsewhere (including Amazon). First excercise gear for me since a long time (used to have a mat, but the material started to crumble and someone threw it away). Realized that the irregular push-ups and light excercise was insufficient to keep my posture in good condition in the long term. Already felt slightly low-energy in sustained passive mode used to read books, learn and write code. Since this year could be quite long and I don't expect to travel soon, this felt like a good way to care about the human system. Because without it, the work on any digital system would suffer and be incomplete at best—the one enables the other, although younger me wouldn't necessarily see the connection. Could have asked the cashier whether they load balance for fail safety. Was so tired after carrying these for 500m that it almost felt the weights were chained to me for the purpose of crawling on four legs.
- The next demo is on a sports thematic—the weight-to-price ratio for the kettlebells available at "Decathlon", UK (18.01.2021) bit.ly/2XPQdku. Among these variants, the 16kg weight (34.99£) seems to present the best/sweetest torture for the money.
- Have you quantified your online presence costs of not reaching your expected results so far? What effects aren't you getting and are you satisfied with the scale of those you observe? You can ask, although those skills were locked in a drawer accepting only one, the right key.
- Didn't know cotton could be treated with formaldehyde for wrinkle prevention (bad). Good, fiber-to-yarn and coating-to-weight ratios also sound interesting.
- The economic impact of having 19850 airports bit.ly/3bTbQbE potentially working below capacity could be significant. Would be interesting to compare against the number of hospitals.
- "You become what you think about most of the time." - Emerson
- Thoughts on swept area and round trips for a player in a football game bit.ly/2M0F65K. With no claim of accuracy; reflects my own perception. Tried to make it self-explanatory, although the many variables may potentially put off some of you. Might be better to check after having a pause. Also possible to point me to any mistakes or gaps you discover.
- Several layers of teeth and a paw bit.ly/35GLndA ↗
- Tried to visualize the National Highway Planning Network as provided by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) bit.ly/3sCaici ↗. The result bit.ly/3oNH5sn suggests nothing about possible omissions, so it is shown as is. So glad to be able to create something like this given my operational constraints. This lets us see several things, some of which we already know: 1) the east side tends to have higher road density, 2) there is a white patch left at the north, but it is occupied by Lake Superior (according to GMaps), 3) the road connectivity at the "horn" in Maine feels different (several small lakes and parks there), 4) somewhere near the border between Montana and Idaho is a large white patch, but the map reveals several clustered National Forests there (Nez Perce-Clearwater, Flathead, Payette, Kootenai). Glad to observe how natural resource preservation can be seen as more important than connectivity.
- Chicago must have a very good rail management given the routes that merge in it bit.ly/2XI297H. Notice the stations near north-west Florida, which still aren't connected by a line. Could be a possible expansion route.
- TSMC annual reports since 1994 bit.ly/35HTIhb ↗. So much data waiting for interesting uses.
- Noticed a pattern that several "Gibson" guitars were also using mahogany as body material like the most expensive previously seen bass drum. Is this wood type preferable regarding sound quality of music instruments or it depends?
- And if your business is in deep waters with its software or website, you can find the right service at the right price.
- Properties of the single-unit bass drums at "Sweetwater" bit.ly/3id7IVp. The most frequent brand was "DW", while the most frequent bass drum size was (diameter_in, depth_in) = (22, 18). Forgot to indicate that the biggest circle corresponded to a price of $1620.94.
- The "product-card" selector also selected the candy card.
- Wondered what maximal camera video resolution a given Internet connection would be able to tolerate. Found a source listing download speeds (Mbit/s) for seamless playback: (480p, 720p, 1080p, 4K) = (1.1, 2.5, 4, 20). However, my assumption is that the receiver on the download end has an easier time than the transmitter on the upload end. Upload speeds tend to be much lower (potential bottleneck). Thus I don't expect this connection to be able to satisfy the 4K requirement, but a 1080p camera may still work fine (should the need for one arise).
- Reading mght be the Internet users' download speed bottleneck (you can still multiply average HTTP request time by number of clicks made but that's still fast relative to our brain processing speed). Suppose you see an article and inspect it: 1096 words, 7668 characters. Say you spend ≈7mins reading it, because the topic is new and moderately difficult to understand. If this was a typical scenario, your eye was scanning on average slightly over 18chars/s. If every char was a byte and we abstract away supportive HTML, images and scripts, the brain was effectively "downloading" with ≈160bits/s. Now, suppose your typical usage scenario is watching heavily compressed 1200MB films over a duration of 90mins. This means the brain would "stream" 0.22MB/s on average, corresponding to a rate of 1.76MBit/s. That would be a speed at which the frames would be perceived as soon as they arrive (provided the host hardware allows it), with no extra frames being downloaded (and waiting) in advance. What if the film was the same, but an uncompressed 25GB Blu-ray disc? On average, each second of it would account for 4.62MB of content, corresponding to a rate of 37MBit/s even then. Who needs an extra-fast download speed when their brain can't possibly make good use of it?
- If one were to spend some time examining the offers of Swiss ISPs, they might find extreme speeds bit.ly/38FYwpj. Swisscom has announced (albeit in an info tooltip) that its 10Gbit/s plan costs CHF90/month. This means a 25GB Blu-ray disc with high-quality raw video would theoretically download in ≈20s. If one isn't such an eager user, UPC's 600Mbit/s plan for CHF69/month may offer the next-best value.
- Used the websites of some ISPs in Germany to visually compare their monthly Internet prices bit.ly/2XDBWaA. (Note that these speed-price combinations can be changed anytime, so ensure your information is timely.) What we see is that "Eazy" offers the lowest cost (18€) for a speed of 40MBit/s. PYUR's 200Mbit/s plan for 33€ might also be something to consider. We also see that beyond a maximum download speed of 250Mbit/s, Vodafone starts to scale quite well, offering up to 1000MBit/s for up to 50€.
- Nutrients in few series of yoghurt products by "Yoplait" bit.ly/3bHJwca. Interesting that Wikipedia's "random article" functionality led me to this idea. Otherwise wouldn't even know about the existence of this brand (or that it was so rich in products). Among the selected ones, "Gushers" variants appear to have the highest amount of added sugar.
- Humangous progress is one of my inner hopes.
- A mobile human platform is where the presence is. The absence makes the functionality unavailable. Polite people gradually expand their external access to such functionality while those not knowing how to appreciate it find their future options limited.
- Better to act like a platform instead of trying to create a questionable/unused one. We have too many software platforms, where our human platforms are either sold for someone's interests or lacking. Make sure clients have to sign in with you using the right credentials or hear your spoken "access denied" message. After this nothing should happen.
- You also have to be ready for the good one, not get it now while spending several years to learn how to use it effectively. By that time it will be old and no longer as effective. Better to start on cheap hardware and switch to more expensive one once your clients allow you to afford it and the old one has become a bottleneck to your self-expression.
- Few properties of the excavators by "CAT" bit.ly/3q8dRVi. You probably also look constantly for a better equipment. Good one is often prohibitively expensive, but that shouldn't stop anyone from creating with whatever they have at hand.
- Renderings of the day bit.ly/2XAEcz8. The first appears as if releasing air at three places simultaneously.
- While waiting for work, this machine detail broke to RGB pieces bit.ly/35wexfB
- This horizon is shrinking bit.ly/3buRJR5
- On my door handle bit.ly/2XyBgTy ↗ with the subtext: "put anything inside to be considered as soon as possible".
- Farrah Wallet bit.ly/39lqVzV ↗ reminds that what we put inside has to matter at least as much as the design on the outside. Not quite lack of style or self-appreciation.
- Hello, officer bit.ly/2XwGqje ↗ has embossed triangular pieces.
- Everything starts from the belief subsystem.
- Wordplay: apotheosis apoptosis, actor factor, horizon prison, quarantine brine
- Joke of the day:
A: What do you do?
B: Working.
A: More specifically?
B: Mining. - Solve the cause and leave the rest to promote their symptom-tracing products.
- So many variables (a, b, c ... z) and so little time to understand what they all mean. The consequences show in equally diverse forms.
- "Many German fashion and shoe stores fear of becoming ruins, request better financial support from the state and open their doors for short-term protests." Did you know? You can have your whole inventory online, reaching more clients in a fraction of the time they need to walk in. You can reach billions of stay-at-home people instead of few hundreds which happen to be in your city, in close physical proximity and in work pause. Keep your locations, but don't waste the chance to look around how to become more open and web-savvy. Be aware of already paying the price for being late and only protest towards tangible improvement.
- It's difficult to see what might be the right move once you arrive at RightMove. One would likely need some form of computation to aid the search and focus only on few results.
- "HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro+" page speaks about 5nm Kirin 9000 CPU and 24-core GPU. Liked this idea to make the laptop camera look like a key tilted at an angle once active, although it may take some time to get used to this extra shown to lie between F6 and F7. Let's consider what might happen with the eye during a video call. If the participant is looking at the center of the screen, it means a top-camera would be filming a greater portion of their eyelids, leading the eye to appear more closed than it actually is. A bottom-placed camera on the other side may capture a greater visible portion of the eye behind the lid, creating the impression the person is more open to the conversation. We also close our eyes to the bottom, which means they are probably best shown bottom-up. This is simple usability and from this perspective, it's nice to see such interesting change.
- Yesterday saw an article at SAE saying that engines were getting smaller while processor sizes were growing. Couldn't find the source today.
- Revenue per room isn't necessarily what I'd consider KPI for a hotel. Perspective.
- Difficult to find proper parking space for those private jets.
- Sandisk 1TB NVME SSD is now 98€ (-37.7%) (bit.ly/3i33ZcO ↗ or bit.ly/39ilbXP ↗) and weighs 7.4g. That's lots of storage for the gram. Could space-speed per price have been better?
- On the Internet of bodies bit.ly/39mhqAI ↗
- serious payments → fluent conversations
- Some people write million lines of code before even taking the time to understand how bad their coding practices are. By that time what they created is not only impossible to change, but they wasted so much time on it that they have little else to show. Worse only when they make it public for the rest of us to learn from.
- Has your business relied on regular blood-boiling subsidies so far? What do you think will it take to normalize its health and how do you plan to achieve it?
- How I think about the hierarchy of sugar: Base is pure refined/unrefined sugar, chocolate bars, confiture, marble cake, artificial sweeteners (_ or maybe ↓); middle is honey; top are fruits. (Middle and top in moderation.) Trying to stop at top, sometimes sinking to middle or subscribing to blood boiling at most tempting base.
- Atomicity, consistency, ISOlation, durability (ACID). Standard.
- One day, when they look at your museum achievements, you don't want them to think "they could have done better".
- You can now safely assume your business is asymptomatic as well and take the necessary precautions to prevent the worst.
- Another week for select few projects and their dedicated, happy-making budgets/payments.
- "The human heart beats 100000 times/day, pumping 2500-5000 gallons of blood through 60000 miles of blood vessels within our bodies." - excerpt of "The encyclopedia of natural medicine" by Murray and Pizzorno. If you noticed the table on recommended daily dose of various vitamins and minerals, there is also a way to explore it more visually bit.ly/38upakX. The first three boxes are the same, where only the scales vary. Now thinking of the K:Na ratio in my salt (1:2 → 5:1), blood-flow improving arginine in nuts, fibrinogen-reducing alliin in garlic.
- Self-made diagram of this data bit.ly/38qUyRk ↗ shows that the total number of cases in Berlin started to increase much faster in October last year, approximately preserving the slope since then. Any idea what might have caused the number of cases to rise differently back then?
- Density of common hardwoods and softwoods bit.ly/3np9Vhb. No guarantee of accuracy.
- Length and height of some known cats according to Wikipedia bit.ly/35mStUu. Some roaring dimensions here.
- Recalled "Bounce" by Nuance now.
- Modern chariotry might be a branch with many distinct, discrete sound nuances.
- Read a paper explaining the collapse of Zijin Bridge, Heyuan City (length 420m, width 9m) after being in operation for 47 years. Interesting that it was designed with 100-120 years expected life in mind, but unexpectedly severe flooding damaged it. The authors wrote that during 2009 and 2019 there were 418 reported bridge collapses in China. The most common cause was found to be construction overload.
- Peloton problemon. Of no use to spin the hamster wheel.
- Wikipedia says that third-heaviest "Yellowstone" locomotive weighs 566tons. Asuming it is fully made of steel and main line track weighs 64.5kg/m, "melting" it and spreading the material over long distance allows it to harden to 4388m (≈4.4km) of two-parallel tracks. One might have expected more.
- Plenty of SUV specifications here bit.ly/3pR54ae ↗. Must be sufficient to create a highly-informative table. Perhaps you have a better idea how to highlight the differences.
- I'd very much prefer 30 years of Hubble images for $16 than a single (incomplete) scientific paper for $35.95. Value is king.
- Launched the laundry.
- The transfer window is short and the game season is long. Unwise to lose the best players just because you didn't analyze who they were or couldn't sense the most effective means to pursue them. The implications of this will unfold slowly over time.
- "We're hiring" and expecting candidates to show up just because the company is paying is at best average (subscription to convenience) while already losing the stubbornly-pursued star performers to the competition. Today the interviews no longer even need to happen; a lot of the information is known in advance (many distribution channels), employees can gauge how much respect they receive for their work, the potential upside of their commitment and the probability of meeting their goals inside an already firmly-sclerosed corporate culture.
- Convenience platforms and stores tend to be slightly more expensive where the clients develop insensitivity for the true price over time. Boiling frog reminder given that more convenient or available doesn't necessarily mean better.
- Wise to buy increasingly expensive and faster cars for long-distance travel towards convenient clients for the cents; foolish to expand the relatively cheap online presence to reach and serve the right clients for the pounds. Locally optimal while globally absent is no longer viable. New clients and service providers are only a click away—much faster than the average sports car can even turn on.
- What a pedestrian afraid of being hit by a car would think: their nose is sticking out too much, their head shell is too thin, their eye holes not deep enough, their neck too long and graph-cut-ready, their knees disconnectable at the collagen-joint...
- Looking at interior design of expensive homes on Zillow, one gets the impression that people spend a lot of time perfecting the color palettes of each room (some also filter the photos for consistent looks) as even subtle changes from good to great can influence the perception of harmony and affect the mood of the viewer. Web design can learn from this too and it's not difficult to come across inspiring work taking full advantage of it.
- It's not the framework that matters most, but how accurately the work is framed (question) and which combination of virtues will rise in finding and properly validating the answer. Start with the question, not the framework. Asking more people to pick on the techical debt of a wrong framework creates laborers, not answer-seeking inventor-innovators.
- Web design is interior design for monitor homes in one-of-a-kind guided invitation for interactive guest experiences.
- Tempting to bind the greatness of the website/application to the distribution of the poll results.
- What can disturb your eyes more than a page with several visible animations running at the same time? Static wins.
- "Hell is based on good intentions" may still be true for the cases when one sees the deficiencies and closes the eyes for them in full knowledge of the effects or hope to cover up the situation. No need to import that in the software.
- Reminds of what I heard from an Auschwitz survivor few days ago. She (and others) were forced to play music in front of people that were asked to go inside train wagons and were then locked there. The music was meant to sound increasingly loud and attractive as the wagons were rolling against a hidden gas chamber. A horror example of flawless execution of bad intentions.
- Many software applications fail on intentions, not quality of implementation. Better software is made on good intentions with (still) mediocre execution than on bad intentions, flawlessly executed. Imagine how bad our world would be if we had only the second. At least the first teaches and allows improvement.
- Observation helps a lot. If you determine the retail store is promoting the same products repeatedly over long time, this might be for the goal of maximizng inventory turns by creating a sense of exclusivity. This doesn't necessarily make the products better or cheaper than they were last time. And it's probably safe to assume that switching few price labels and pushing few items to the warehouse and back is much easier to do than re-ordering them just-in-time for the promotion. The goods have been already delivered, but the spotlight falls only on those in the current brochure (rest invisible and too space-demanding anyway), waiting for people to pick them up. This impression may not necessarily be valid for your area though.
- So often you find a clean package only to discover the internals are what used to be modern many years ago. Cleaned and offered at current price in hope people wouldn't notice.
- The idea was to obtain a useful and shareable IBAN to enable people to support this feed if they find it useful. Ideally, in a way that is convenient for both sides. Because it takes a lot of time and energy to create unique content like demos (static and especially interactive), diagrams, computational images, decision-making code, data analysis (big data on small machine), mathematical models, book summaries, links to curious products and more. Especially in the long-term and with many ideas that are difficult to formulate or see in this form elsewhere. This work is an addition to the projects you provide me with, which (since they aim to solve concrete problems in context) are still my much preferred way to get paid. Still, finding a stimulus to expand and grow the bits will ensure they continue to serve you well and better, while becoming richer or more sophisticated (technology, science). If you are interested in seeing this and have an idea how this could be supported (whether through separate periodic payments or an infrequent optional extra next to a project payment), feel free to speak. Otherwise I may not be able to preserve the quality of this work in the future (or may have to let it drop further) and it may disintegrate.
- And to be fair, I've never seen such carefully crafted system for human behavior manipulation before. You receive series of emails in which each subsequent one tells you by which hour, minute, second and day you have to complete a seven-step procedure in the right order and at an exact location and what follows from there. An attempt to make you a walking robot that lives according to their rules of the moment. Got out of this psychologic attack on the spot. Sadly, it happens under the pretext of obtaining a way to receive international payments (assuming it affects lots of people). Which means now I won't have them the way they want.
- Can't remember to have offered a single service integrating client lock-in at the outset. Tried two new services and in few hours they tried to tie my shoes twice under the premise of "free". Be aware of the contracts you subscribe (especially small letters) and whether they tell you it was "normal procedure" to link your data to the tracking device in your pocket (often explained to be for security rather than tracking reasons). Assume the worst: that it's never for security and always for tracking reasons. The earlier you reject services placing ridiculuous barriers in front of you (no service if no phone, no chat if no QR scan etc.), the earlier your pocket will thank you.
- If you wish, feel free to look elsewhere and pay the high prices of agencies. You'll be making lots of people happy.
- Remember, the services you never asked for are those you never received. After hearing your project requirements, we can determine whether further service is technologically possible or feasible within your unique constraints. The bits are here to remove the uncertainty about what is possible, so explore them well if in doubt. If you believe dummerAugust has something to offer you, feel free to use the contact page to share the specifics of your project bit.ly/3fORn6p. Acceptance of your proposal is never guaranteed.
- Thought for split-second whether Day 1 wasn't already few days ago. Not at all. It's real.
- Which articles/books/code left strong impression on you in 2020?
- They ask you for your CV, you send them an OpenCV script to capture and send yourself the face seen on their webcam. Probably not how CVs were meant to work (joke).
- Watched someone manipulate makeup. If a face looked nice in advance and became slightly nicer after using plenty of tubes, was there an optimal stopping criterion somewhere in the middle? A light touch for maximal effect? (how we programmers think) First time face-using extra virgin oil after years of no cosmetics. Might have done better if I prioritized look over thought. Plus, this statement "men should cut their eyebrows too" still doesn't leave home-me calm. Although being accused of developing backhead "stairs" from hair self-trimming, that stops making impression on you. At least didn't spend maxi-time fretting over subtleties.
- JPMorgan: "$146000 per Bitcoin is a possible long-term target." In search of the big wins would they hesitate to obliterate the dollar? Probably not.
- "Loss of privacy remains a primary concern for many online customers." Yesterday saw a page at IKEA giving an overview of the tracked variables (others aren't as explicit and hide them in minified/obfuscated scripts). The explanation would likely print over 3-4 pages. They asked for my consent. Why can't I select which variables I want you to know about? At the end, what I would ask a client would be: "Which variables do you want me to know about in order to be able to do the work you expect well?" Then assuming I'm not granted rights to deal with the rest.
- I know you hate me; would you enjoy my loyalty card?
- Another subtle insight from the last book: sales per visit not as important as seconds per dollar. Reduce all experience and monetization times.
- Tight coupling: If a new refrigerator has a much wider belly than its owner, the latter has to fear growing proportional. (Probably not economical to operate a large one in an empty state.)
- There was a source once that put it this way: shooting rockets privately burns societal money, but the mass is in awe of it. Certain truth in this statement after the fireworks-reminder. Which means the responsibility of how someone else's money is shot in space is anything but low. Not judging the activity at all; reminding what is at stake.
- How high could a transaction fee be relative to the quantified cost of the probability of corporate bankruptcy and its after-effects? Food for thought when you choose whether or not to wire + & -.
- You don't have to be blind to see that the world economy has operated on three (perhaps more) leading principles for far too long: 1) first come, first served, 2) after us noone else and 3) environment-later. Problematic only that these now lead to all groups paying the price. Eventually self-service led to extreme inequality (exacerbated by corona). Complete erosion of trust at all levels. Low ability to convince with nothing; low willingness to listen to authority.
- No need to even touch upon what dollars could buy one in terms of art, for instance. Really low value. The good art is long being kept private and enjoys steady appreciation rates. Relative to these, one can't expect much for the cents.
- Even a simple pair of shoes costs $100+ at many stores today and a good, harmonious outfit could easily top $1000. Not much value in the dollar, which is precisely what I work for.
- The dollars and euros aren't what they used to be. Today someone would need a lot more of them just to draw my attention and then even more to retain it (if they need any of the service offerings at all). If not, I'm sure those can be found elsewhere. Imagine the frustration of a store owner whose client bought a backpack online for $400. Now the owner can't even take their money due to exceeding the daily transaction limit on their card. Those dollars and euros bring them less and less every day thanks to parallel Bitcoinomy (in which the banks are participants as well).
- "I am the worst salesman; therefore I have to make it easy for people to buy." - Frank W. Woolworth
- Open the windows while cooking at home bit.ly/3ocRa1K ↗
- Wayfair shows "12786 results" in the office chairs category. How could you select one that is much better than average in a short time?
- These portfolios of underperforming retail estate remind me of the mass of underperforming websites (have a portfolio?), which were built when this was cheap, accessible and popular, but are now disadvantaged and struggling against the continuous change, which is relentlessly highlighting their bad prior choices and exposing the sound of cracking mechanisms.
- What do you think of first when you hear the phrase "tired visual design"? Can performance or a year be "tired" for external circumstances?
- Liked the excerpt of "Remarkable retail: How to win and keep customers in the age of digital disruption". That 20% of the malls get 75% of the traffic volume may sound familar (Pareto). It was said that there are 23sqft of retail space per person in USA (growing 4x faster than population), 16.4sqft/person in Canada and less than 5sqft/person in the UK, France and Spain. But the number of mediocre middle retailers was said to accelerate fast, offering bankruptcy lawyers and liquidation firms great business, according to the author. An array of issues may contribute to such an outcome. Also interesting to read about Amazon winning online when noone was watching and then expanding presence to many offline locations when others were already too tired to watch. Wouldn't suppose they hide behind brands like "Lily & Parker", "Lark & Ro" and many others that don't even have the word "Amazon" in them (e.g. AmazonBasics, AmazonEssentials). So understandably the author said "I see dead brands. And they don't even know they are dead." Does this remind you of the boiling frog or the photographer watching through the viewfinder while the legs of the tripod and one of his shoes were catching fire?
- You get a breadboard and a dozen or two electronic parts, play combinatorial explosion and quickly forget where the bread was.
- Burj Khalifa had 57 elevators in 2017. Perhaps a way to reduce the waiting times at each of the 163 stops.
- Sunday wordplay: snail prevail, complex simplex, economics comics, export report, steering engineering, cockroach coach, involves wolves, jaws laws, hÿgelig, hypnothesis, slowledge, comfortance, covidence.
- Among other things, liked the piano and the mini library in this home in Bakersfield, CA bit.ly/3pFUcvV ↗ (2332sqft, $289000, 123.92$/sqft)
- My diagram about California had practically no chance to be clean bit.ly/2JCdJOj. San Francisco, having estimated population of 864816, appears to be the only city with median house price above 1000$/sqft. On the opposite side is Victorville with median of 171.44$/sqft and population of 122225. You can also see a diagram relating city populations and median house prices bit.ly/2X6RPpH. Hope that helps.
- Had the hypothesis that the biggest cities in Utah must be on the same road bit.ly/3b4uSvo. The second biggest, West Valley City (136208, 160.32$/sqft) looked fine in terms of median house prices even when overall Utah had fewer offers on Zillow compared to other states. Some people see small cities as an advantage though. For instance, found this offer in West Valley City bit.ly/384scw0 (980sqft, $39500, 40.30$/sqft) and this one in West Jordan bit.ly/3pHgQE1 ↗ (1300sqft, $75000, 57.69$/sqft).
- When you zoom in to show the cities close to Phoenix, the state border gets out of view bit.ly/388m5H8. For this selection of eight cities in Arizona the populations and median prices were: Phoenix (1563025, 197.46$/sqft), Tucson (531641, 165.54$/sqft), Mesa (471825, 189.81$/sqft), Chandler (260828, 218.32$/sqft), Glendale (240126, 175.33$/sqft), Scottsdale (236839, 300.22$/sqft), Gilbert (247542, 211.62$/sqft), Tempe (175826, 232.64$/sqft). Of these, only Tucson is located away from Phoenix. Again, Scottsdale and Tempe are relatively small, but have the highest prices per unit area. Phoenix is much larger than the rest, but the median price is at two thirds that in Scottsdale. Even in small Glendale (said to be 16km away from Phoenix, by car), one can find potentially interesting units: bit.ly/353oXTE ↗ (2280sqft, $300000, 131.57$/sqft) or bit.ly/354HkYf ↗ (3976sqft, $535000, 134.55$/sqft) that are less than half the median price in Scottsdale and still lower than the median for Glendale, which is itself about 12% lower than that in Phoenix.
- The housing price pattern for the cities in Georgia looks slightly different than that in Texas bit.ly/3b3RqMP. Atlanta, Sandy Springs and Athens appear most expensive according to Zillow, although the latter two were again the smallest among the seven considered. The populations and housing prices were: Atlanta (498044, 230.61$/sqft), Augusta (196939, 104.44$/sqft), Columbus (194160, 88.84$/sqft), Macon (153095, 79.76$/sqft), Savannah (145862, 144.44$/sqft), Athens (125964, 190.75$/sqft), Sandy Springs (108797, 207.08$/sqft). Something to like about Macon is its location, which is close to most of these. There is also a good quantity of cheap housing, although the search may be difficult, because many units appeared old and likely needing renovation. Another option is Columbus, where the units seen were more pleasing to the eye and the median price was still almost a third that in Atlanta.
- Could be that someone used milling, grinding or other machines to prepare a nice metal "2021" piece overnight after identifying the new business opportunity. So good when you don't have to sleep with noise cancellation on.
- Barely first day of the year and some websites have already started to fail. Error message reads as "Our servers are overloaded. Please, try again in a few minutes". The same for half an hour.
- The other day saw an article on fishing quotas for herring in Germany and asked myself why I haven't also seen an interactive map with significant fishing locations, the type of fish caught there, who the operator is. Such maps already exist for wind turbines, but my GSearch returned nothing useful about fishing resources. Perhaps used a weak keyword or the information is kept confidential. But it's good for a consumer of imported fish to know where it comes from and whether it has been farmed in a sustainable way. Otherwise fish depletion will continue at unknown spots independent of the severe restrictions imposed on the known ones. In 2018, for instance, a report claimed that humans consumed over 150 million tons of fish that must have come from somewhere.
- Happy New Year 2021! bit.ly/3hE4s4X Stay healthy, become wealthy, grow wise. Happiness and excitement about everything you do. Seek the truth and true yourself. Glow and shine with extreme endurance. Pack the time with more & more valuable moments.
- Already inspecting the wine with eyes on the Elektrodenmikroskop and testing various glass belly diameters for the right collision sound under full, half-full and almost-empty scenarios? With resistance ready to overcome highest insistance?
- In doubt that on New Year you are looking for a new shirt, but if so, here is the price distribution by brand for the items on sale at "hemden.de" bit.ly/2KT1PQJ. More voluminous bubbles signify the availability of more units at that price. (This online store listed almost 6600 shirts.) Perhaps an opportunity to learn more about shirt brands. "ETON" seems expensive at first sight.
- Reused an old script at year end to compute the median housing prices in the four biggest cities in Texas: Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin. The values came out as 119.72, 130.13, 203.84 and 337.02$/sqft. According to Wikipedia, their 2019 populations were estimated to be 2.320, 1.532, 1.345 and 0.964 million, while their areas were said to be 1733, 1307, 993 and 704km2. In this case the median housing prices happen to rise as a city gets smaller. Since Austin was most expensive, what could a potential buyer find there? Well, some of these options bit.ly/3aWAbwQ ↗ (2067sqft, $94995, $45.96$/sqft), bit.ly/381vS1p ↗ (1568sqft, $92995, $59.31$/sqft), this large one bit.ly/3pHmBSl ↗ (7679sqft, $848950, 108.17$/sqft) or bit.ly/2L477bY ↗ (2334sqft, $315000, $134.96$/sqft). At least these had aesthetically pleasing photos.
- Didn't expect this could be possible. A VW Golf was said to use 6.1l/100km, but when driven on Nürburgring, it started to use ≈20l/100km in the more demanding segments (a 725PS RB6 bolide was said to use 47-70l/100km). The demands of the environment and extra load. Also liked these playing cards, each showing a car and its specifications below. These object instances might engage every small programmer. My guess though is that the one holding the best performer would get the other cards and ask to repurpose the backyard into a large parking space.
- Instead of eagerly awaiting the LEGO, you could have kindly asked Santa to take you on his sleigh (fulfillment center, really) while delivering the gifts to all other kids. You could have been anywhere, in no time, no border checks. And in doing so, continue to travel with the flow, not against it.
- Agile, flexible, modern, little Zojirushi-послуши. Proper gift-receiver business sense.
- Even the flowers hope now bit.ly/3rD1jad
- Tannenbäume-Träume bit.ly/3ryz2BL
- 1kg Hausschokolade bit.ly/3pvueuX ↗. These days you buy in bulk because it's cheaper, right? Instead of periodically going out to obtain a total of 10 bars, you risk once and also reduce pollution from extra packaging. The drawback is that having more of it at once predisposes you to consume more, which reminds of a well-known precondition.
- Some properties of the interchangeable-lens cameras by "Sony" bit.ly/3nYrdmC. Don't know how these 9.43 million dots were packed in the viewfinder of "α7S III" (1.64x of the secоnd-highest "α7R IV"), but it could be a small reason behind its price of $3500. The latter camera had the highest seen still image resolution (9504 x 6336px).
- You can also see a diagram of motor power vs. price for the cars at these two car dealers bit.ly/3ryqoTz. Above 350-400PS the number of automobiles on offer is visibly lower. Had to remove few very expensive outliers; not all cars at "Dinnebier" were included. Also visible how their vehicles (since offering many makes) appear more diversified than what is possible with BMWs only.
- Reused the script for the cars by "Dinnebier Gruppe" in Berlin bit.ly/2KI76dV ↗, but found only 946 with complete specifications. Among these with efficiency class of at least "A", it found "Ford Fiesta Titanium 1.0L EB" bit.ly/3hqc2A6 ↗ (12.2020, 550km, 95PS, 118g CO2/km, 4.5l/100km, 19790€), followed by "Land Rover Range Rover Evoque 1.5 P300e SE" bit.ly/37UPuEz ↗ (11.2020, 1299km, 300PS, 43g CO2/km, 1.9l/100km, 60076€). Admittedly, I was looking, where Kias would rank. On place 4 was "Kia Sorento 1.6T HEV 2WD AT6 VIS 7S BCA STY" bit.ly/3aSRMWv ↗ (11.2020, 500km, 230PS, 124g CO2/km, 5.4l/100km, 43290€) and on place 7 was "Kia Niro Spirit 1.6 PHEV" (11.2020, 500km, 141PS, 110g CO2/km, 4.3l/100km, 34980€). Also first time seeing "Suzuki Across 2.5 plug-in hybrid Comfort 4x4" bit.ly/3ps7mfO ↗ (11.2020, 1900km, 185PS, 26g CO2/km, 1.2l/100km, 46295€), which was sandwiched between the Sorento and Niro. Hope this helps.
- Wrote a tiny script to walk around "BMW Autohaus Rhein" and look for potentially interesting cars among 1318 units. The selection criteria it was allowed to use was a mix of distance traveled (km), time since admission (days), motor power (PS), CO2 emissions (g CO2/km), oil usage (l/100 km), price (€). Additionally, it was aware which units had manual/automatic transmission or used diesel/gasoline. It found that the car dealer already had electric vehicles and pushed the scores of various "BMW i3 120AH" high, of which this one came first bit.ly/38Dj2pq ↗ (08.2020, 1191km, 120PS, 0g CO2/km, 31650€). They haven't even taken a photo of the car yet. But what happens if the car can't be electric? Well, in that case, it showed preference for "BMW 330e Limousine" bit.ly/2WOhlQb ↗ (07.2020, 4018km, 292PS, 35g CO2/km, 1.5l/100km, 49900€). It was followed by "BMW 225XE iPerformance Active Tourer" bit.ly/3nZft39 ↗ (05.2020, 9160km, 224PS, 42g CO2/km, 1.9l/100km, 30890€) and one "BMW 530E iPerformance Limousine" bit.ly/2L0IJIa ↗ (03.2020, 8656km, 252PS, 36g CO2/km, 1.6l/100km, 46900€), both with photos. These are hybrids, still using electric power. Note that this result could be useful only in the context of this specific website. Can't serve as recommendation since the bigger picture of the choices available elsewhere is missing.
- Can't read this paid article starring a real Taz bit.ly/37Tvpys. "Cute animal with a very strong bite" (source).
- Trying to catch up with Alice's adventures bit.ly/3rIN3Ng
- The years, people and bad projects all come and go. What remains is the lasting impact of great work and the eternal policy of "no tango with no ..." required to achieve it.
- You feel a bit wrong, winter sun. And your rays end sharp. bit.ly/3aObB1o
- Few properties of the webcams by "Logitech" bit.ly/37RNFIw. Their resolutions of 720p, 1080p, 1080p/60fps or 4K seem to fit the price ranges of $40-55, $70-130, $170 and $200 accordingly. The usual refresh rate is 30fps.
- Kjøp rug mjøl. Norwegian HTML entities.
- Some properties of the flours and grains sold at "Alnatura" bit.ly/34MyEpk. This coconut flour looks too fatty and sweet. "Flohsamenschalen" (indian plantain), Flohsamen, wheat bran and spelt bran look especially fiber-rich. Soy flour, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, hemp seed (peeled), sesame seeds (unpeeled), red lentils like rice, crushed flaxseed, chickpeas like rice and chia seeds appear especially protein-rich.
- Hoped for something else, this is what happened bit.ly/3pr8G2G. Almost what I wanted bit.ly/37QrRNe, although still with a small defect.
- Other brands had whole turkey wrapped in green-style package and "beep" foods ready in no time where one would hesitate to check the ingredients. They probably thought about the analogy with the sound of their cash register.
- Nutrients in the products by "SPAM" bit.ly/3nN0JEt. Had no idea this was available even to cautious home tables (think email). Some columns aren't showing differences, but left them for completeness.
- Square rotations bit.ly/2M0iFNM
- Difficult to imagine another way to intersect my intervals bit.ly/2WLn89l
- Last time I checked (25.11.2019), there were 4099 exoplanets in the catalog; today they are 4324. In other words, 225 new ones were discovered in 13 months (≈17.3 new exoplanets/month on average).
- A film about Michelangelo showed details from his work. What he did in terms of paintings inside the Sistine Chapel was jaw-dropping. This work called "The last judgement" bit.ly/37LQwT1 was so detailed, the faces so emotion-real, the explanation of what they symbolize and the way he chose to integrate himself in it so telling. It's quite a lot of work to paint so many figures to such level of detail. In fact, one of his next sculptures seems to have suffered in effect, since he didn't seem to have had the creative power left to complete it.
- Received my first physical book from a long time, so thought I could share few details to (at best) merry someone else's Christmas. It's called "Astrophysics for people in a hurry" by Neil deGrasse Tyson and starts with a story about the formation of the Universe (and that Earth solidified at the right distance from Sun to have water and life), passes through explanation of microscopic particles (quarks having the property that attraction force gets proportional to distance), the most common chemical elements found (to let us know we are stardust), background radiation, some large telescopes in existence (FAST, ALMA, Kepler, large-array) and a suitable matching between wave and telescope types, dark energy and dark matter (the latter having ≈6x the gravitation of visible matter, enabling insights about difficult to observe objects in space), that curious alien engineers wouldn't have difficulty to detect Earth by the radiowaves our devices emit (proof of technology at play). The author says that the most interesting things happen between the 100 billion galaxies and that the more we look in space, the more we see in time (as going deeper in layers of soil). He explains that Earth has some protection from smaller asteroids (most said to be between Mars and Jupiter), but Jupiter helps a lot with its strong gravitation in diverting their trajectories away from Earth. Unsure whether we are Marsians walking on Earth, but when it comes to Jupiter moons, it pays to differentiate between Europa and Io if we don't want the possibility of finding life to end in strong volcano-death. You'd certainly enjoy the whole, not just for the author's sense of humor.
- Used on article on TechRadar to create a table with few properties of selected drone models bit.ly/3pfcBiT. The most expensive "DJI Inspire 2" appears to have a 30MP camera.
- Used an article on corona seen at Spiegel today bit.ly/37IQtaS ↗, but my coloration of incidence levels seems to deviate from the bar colors bit.ly/3mFMccj. Independent of lens, Sachsen seems "different" from the rest and the second, Thüringen, is its neighbor. If correct, Niedersachsen is currently "surrounded" by 4 states with visibly higher incidence rates, so it has to be cautious.
- Currently looking at the "VL53L1" proximity sensor bit.ly/34Cu7pj and the "MP23DB01HP" MEMS audio sensor/microphone bit.ly/3rlDIe8 by STMicroelectronics
- Noticed that the datasheet of the "BME680" gas sensor by Bosch mentions that 2.1µA current is used when measuring humidity and temperature, 3.1µA when measuring pressure and temperature and 3.7µA when measuring humidity, pressure and temperature. What could be the individual contributions? Solving a simple matrix in 5s gave (humidity_µA, pressure_µA, temperature_µA) = (0.6, 1.6, 1.5). IAQ (index of air quality) output does not appear very useful; I'd prefer few raw, accurate values instead of a single derived, rounded one that leaves me guessing what's happening. For the 9-axis absolute orientation sensor "BMX160", they wrote that (max_accelerometer_µA, max_gyroscope_µA, max_geomagnetic_sensor_µA) = (180, 850, 660), but the combined use was given as 1585µA and not as the sum, 1690µA. Assuming there are small effects in the previous numbers as well.
- Some properties of the ship fleet by "Princess Cruises" bit.ly/2M05fBy. Exploration showed that guest and crew capacities of 3560/3660 and 1346 were typical. Only one ship (out of 16) was architected to transport fewer than 2000 guests. Someone who was on "Grand Princess" listed a lot of amenities in a book excerpt.
- Which other recipes contain this exact subset of n ingredients?
- You probably need software that works, not fireworks.
- Always liable for reliable. No other way.
- If you sell furniture and it doesn't fit all on the page, avoid rearranging it in real-time. The site isn't a top-level view of hectic room order enforcement in front of the new guest, so keep unnecessary animations at minimum, please.
- From a distance you believed it was yellow cheese with the typical holes in it. Then you approached with the idea to taste it and actually saw it was a brick with the typical holes in it. There's no coming back—the energy and time to check were already expended and couldn't be used for something else (opportunity cost). It calls to select a lot more carefully what and who you approach in the future.
- At the end, no two websites are alike even if they look similar. Using different frames of thinking, processes, skills and methods. Looking for cheap could mean they become pollution to the environment as tiny pieces of broken-off asphalt or providing the base for holes to break future equipment.
- Similarly no two roads are equal, despite the fact they look so on the surface. One was built in a hurry to create the impression of work done (celebrating on the beach of Mallorca after the fact), while the other was built by considering how the soil should be made even, what the asphalt thickness should be (based on expected traffic loads and volumes), what the expected vehicle per-axle weights look on a diagram, how the right material mix and its temperature should be for proper binding and stability of the surface layer, what the expected climate impacts are (temperature, moisture, effect of temperature on moisture, freeze-thaw cycles, drainage). That person would think in terms of amplitudes and frequencies passing through, in terms of durability, sustainability and cost-effectiveness, not only flexural strength. They wll also recall that paving asphalt (bitumen) is a product of crude petroleum refinement, effectively meaning that oil is used to drive over oil, never stopping to seek, try and experiment with alternatives.
- The grass isn't equally green everywhere. But having to manage large pastures to feed lots of cows, where one was said to digest ≈20tons/year must be quite difficult. One has to be constantly aware where the (perennial) grass has been already depleted to restore it as quickly as possible and keep the meal sources diverse. Good to learn that some tech-savvy shepherds already use satellite images to inform their choices where to improve next. Their goal: equally-green, well-fed.
- Why do face shields need a label "face shield"? Shouldn't this be obvious by design?
- If the formula R = thickness (m) / thermal_conductivity (W/mK) is correct, then the mineral wool for walls "PUREONE Trennwandplatte TWP 37" by URSA must provide 0.635m2K/W per inch, whereas an inch of sheep wool may account for 0.747m2K/W. But we can't allow ourselves to treat animals badly.
- If my understanding is correct, a product like "Varirock 035" (rockwool.de) would provide 0.72m2K/W per inch, whereas Wikipedia assigns 0.88m2K/W per inch to polystyrene board. For standard to high-quality double-glazed windows (4mm + 24mm air gap + 4mm), my computation came to 0.283-0.66m2K/W and for highest-quality triple-glazed windows (said to enable "Passivhaus") to 1.16m2K/W per inch. Since most windows are standard, double-glazed, it becomes visible how much we pay in terms of heat loss in winter (proportional to window area and temperature difference) for the advantage of letting natural light in to affect our overall well-being.
- Over-sitting chair melt protection with 60A legs bit.ly/37wQQF5. Liked their product history and thought of a comparison table.
- Used data on specific absorption rate (SAR) for mobile phones, provided by the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz). Observed how the medians for selected manufacturers would compare bit.ly/3apwQGi. To be seen as approximate. Data on body worn usage was less complete. What we see is that devices by Swissvoice (first time hearing about the brand) leave a very positive impression (head: 0.49W/kg, body: 0.45W/kg). Used to associate TP-LINK only with network equipment, but it turns out they also make mobile phones. Unfortunately, while being very good at head use, they were seen among the worst in body use. Samsung is another well-known brand that does relatively well (head: 0.57W/kg, body: 0.58W/kg), followed by HTC (head: 0.54W/kg, body: 0.65W/kg). One source claimed that HTC U12+ had head/body SAR values of 0.66/0.53 respectively, so they don't seem to deviate too much. Panasonic deserves perhaps a good word too (head: 0.62W/kg, body: 0.49W/kg), especially for body use. Oppo phones had median SAR for head use of 1.36W/kg (albeit only from 4 devices), so they ended at the end of the first list. Manufacturers like Google, Apple and OnePlus may need to invest additional effort in improving their devices in both dimensions. Microsoft/Nokia devices were less radiating in body use than in head use. Xiaomi, Motorola and Lenovo had medians of over 0.70W/kg in head use and over 1.30W/kg when body worn, which is perhaps reason enough to think about improvement as well. A combined diagram gives a simple (yet, not very informative) overview bit.ly/37y5LPu. It seems that in many cases one could expect body worn SAR to be higher and slightly drop after picking up a phone call bit.ly/3paBdcK.
- So many other interesting details. The delta in water flow velocities between river and basin can determine the width of a river delta. 1000 volcanoes silently wait to erupt. Yellowstone was seen as concern in the past, so they attached a power plant to take away extra energy buildup. Italy has Vesuvius and Etna, which reminded me of a diagram with the boundaries of tectonic plates. Had no idea the south pole was much colder than the north one (-30 to -80°C). (Not surrounded by warm water, avg. elevation of 2300m.) Cutting frozen food with a saw and then warming it for up to a week sounded as if from another planet. The weight of the International Space Station (ISS) was said to be 420t (not even aware when it was built and for how long) and an 11-layer space suit was said to weigh 140kg. Large telescopes are in construction bit.ly/2IZEn3k (mistook a lens for an ice rink) (telescope radius = 138 / lens diameter) with the hope of much greater resolving power than Hubble. With jet engines, Rolls Royce RB41 had weight of 725kg and thrust of 2t; GE90-115B had weight of 8282kg and thrust of 50t. The "checksum" digit in a variety of barcodes/cards is an interesting detail.
- Also learned about the icecream production process. So much equipment is needed to deliver this end product. What I felt a couple of times, but couldn't express in words, was that the volume felt "expanded" in a way. Learned that air bubbles of size 0.1mm are integrated into the product, so its actual volume can be up to twice the one after melting. A fat-arm product may contain slightly less air. The cheaper the icecream, the lower one can expect its density to be (weight at same volume). So the air is paid for too. Didn't know that more sugar is added not only to stimulate better the insensitive at low temps tongue, but also to reduce the intolerance some people have to lactose. So at least 15% sugar and 20% fat (milk binds it well) are to be expected. Also didn't know that lower storage temperatures can improve icecream quality (premium products may be cooled down to -78°C) and that ammoniak can be used for the cases down to -30°C. I highly doubt that the recommended -25°C is kept at the local supermarket, since the few times I bought one, it had ice crystals on top, which was said to be a sign that the icecream melted (possibly during transportation) and then was frozen again (quality reduction).
- CHIP Wissen writes that all ships together use 500 million liter sulfur-contaning heavy oil per day and that the biggest 200 ships emit as much sulfur as all cars together. (Falling on the ground as rain affects soil quality and is linked with asthma.) Probably understandable when one considers that one engine to carry as many containers as possible, at once (23000 in the case of MSC Gülsün), can reach up to 109000PS and use 6 tons of diesel per hour.
- Chrome after hearing about the new restrictions bit.ly/2KhUolM
- My naive understanding is that a potentiometer must have an internal 'input type="range"' representation. Found some properties for the most common trimmer type at "DigiKey" bit.ly/2K35lb3. In the data seen, the maximal number of turns was 25 (would unscrew my hand), which allows perhaps finer adjustments than doing the same work on a single turn. Yet, linear usage could mean one can't simply click elsewhere on the slider and have the handle instantly show there. Among 2975 parts, the temperature coefficient varied between ±50 and ±1000ppm/°C.
- Didn't expect this idea would fit on a single screen bit.ly/3gRYeOF. Hard-coded few values to save on additional code/time.
- In case you were informed how valuable our collaboration was this year, you have the chance to engage my full attention on a project of your choice for the rest of the year (great if you can make it count). In doing so, you can accelerate its progress while other projects of new and existing clients remain on hold until the start of the next year. A small gift of attention as a thank you for your special attitude. Already excited what you come up with!
- Not concerned with the growth of Shopify or any other web platform getting too many non-paying clients and locking them into long-term passive contracts that effectively ruin them. This is because paying long-term web rent comes with a heavy cost. A company overloaded with clients can't be expected to defend their best interest either. When you offer a flexible service that reacts to the smallest changes in real-time, you practically have very little competition.
- Getting lots of clients is one thing, but doing what's right is very different and difficult without having lots of experience.
- 75% of the websites made by web design "agencies" of 2020 didn't meet my criteria of responsiveness. Bad enough for you if you already overpaid to obtain mediocre results.
- A brochure about REC Alpha solar panels mentioned that they reach 217W/m2. By my own calculations from other PDF documents and research at europe-solarstore, the "LG Neon 2 Bifacial LG415N2T-L5" (22.7% efficiency, 415W, 259€) and "Trina Honey TSM-285PE06H" (16.7%, 285W, 105€) achieve 200W/m2 and 167W/m2 accordingly. In theory, not terrible to see 68.7% of the max. output at 40.5% of the price.
- Saw that Texas Instruments released a new temperature sensor (TMP9A00-EP), operating at min. voltage of 1.8V and max. current of 4µA, which must be equivalent to power use of 7.2µW. But disliked its accuracy of ±2.5℃, so took the chance to learn what else they have on offer bit.ly/3a8YoQh. Found only 5 among 107 sensors, whose accuracy was below ±0.5℃ having price below $10/unit (one part couldn't meet the criteria). After mapping their voltage, current and price, TMP116 seems cheap and efficient enough to excite my battery-powered time/date/temp device, showing current room temperature of 17.8℃. Currently it uses one CR2025 Li-ion button battery per year to power all components. If this battery was solely used to power TMP116, at a theoretic minimum it could last ≈4.31 years.
- Prices of sweaters for men and women at "Patagonia" bit.ly/3oSbgyc. Passive technology. No visible difference is seen in the price distributions. Yes, the wrong use of a boxplot, but if it aids clarity and saves space, the trade-off may be worth it. The median price is the same at $139, but the item counts are different (112 vs. 98), which a violin plot would have captured better.
- Number of users by year of the railway stations in Switzerland (2012-2019) bit.ly/2KoE6aI. There are a lot more stations, but these have been measured. One learns this by finding out that 79 stations have WiFi connectivity, while 24 already have or plan to have LoRa.
- Revenue and net profit for UBS Group and Credit Suisse Group bit.ly/2KpbMEU. Again no guarantee. Notice how both made strong corrections in 2008. According to the annual repots, in 2019 UBS Group must have had 28.4% more revenue and 25.8% higher net profit than Credit Suisse Group.
- Knoten und Kanten remember December.
- Radio news said that in a small village someone attached illegally 1000 computers to the electric grid for the purpose of bitcoin mining (said to be very energy-intensive), resulting in the biggest seen theft by the electric company. Keep an eye on your networks. Work in a sustainable mode, with a strong bias towards real value creation.
- Revenue and net income for Deutsche Bank and Hypovereinsbank (HVB Group) bit.ly/3agtcym. No guarantee of accuracy; reflects only what I found in the annual reports.
- Compared the revenue and net income of the delivery services UPS and FedEx bit.ly/3gJF0uz. FedEx performance in the last two years seems to have been weaker than usual. Their revenue in 2014 was approximately as high as that of UPS in 2009. UPS values saw a lot of variation between 2006 and 2013, but seem to have slightly stabilized since then. On the cover of one UPS report, liked how they packed lots of transport vehicles in their shield emblem. Geometry showing no overlaps.
- Market capitalization, revenue and net income for some corporations (Q4 trailing, 2020) bit.ly/3gJwOdz
- Kasse, dann Klasse. Wer das nicht verstanden hat, meldet sich auch nächstes Jahr nicht.
- All those postcards you collected from the cities you visited... have you tried to sell them now? Their value might have increased by a lot.
- Getting the impression that the idea is to use robots with AI to vaccinate/heal patients in the future. Might be already work-in-progress. Betting that one of the main selling points of this technology would be "they don't complain or get exhausted". Even so, the line of what's acceptable and what isn't is getting thinner by the minute.
- Few properties of the space heaters by "Vornado" bit.ly/3gHpS0x. In case you are looking for warmth or want to gift it to someone. Unsure about this brand, but if "Wirecutter" recommends "VH200" ($70) and "AVH10" ($110), it must be fine. Using the data my script would prefer "SRTH Small Tower Heater" ($50) or "Velocity 3 Whole Room Heater" ($70), but it can't test its choice in context. Tending towards passive methods, whenever possible, rather than active ones (climate chan ge).
- Saw the supercapacitor quick reference by "Eaton" and looked what I could find about few of the properties (capacitance (F), equivalent series resistance (mohm), nominal voltage (V), leakage current (µA) and size (mm)) for the 97 described models. Capacitance may have something to do with leakage current (0.98) and size may be somewhat linked to nominal voltage (0.63). One source said these elements are also used in wind and solar applications (the span is much wider as the document shows).
- How tall must a solid wall be in order to not give insight to a random observer that the house owner has solar panels installed? bit.ly/2W7hbTJ
- Of a feather bit.ly/2LjvAdm has to compensate for the rainy, dull weather and nights starting at 16:00.
- You probably remember that a population pyramid shows the distributions by age and gender for a given country. Can we then find countries whose population pyramids are similar? This question led to the following diagram bit.ly/3guWYR5 including 199 countries, using data from WorldPopulationReview. Values were collected only once every 5 years in the age range 0-100 to reduce the amount of manual work (still 42 values per country). They were divided by the country populations to obtain values more closely resembling percentages. Countries with particularly young populations like Niger, Angola, Uganda, Mali and other tend to come close at the bottom right. Some countries with older populations include Japan, Greece and Italy, which appear closer at the upper left. Another view (not shown here) allows us to see more clearly countries like United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Maldives, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, whose pyramids are visibly male-dominated at least somewhere on the age range. Interesting about Uruguay is that is has slightly more boys than girls at the beginning. But starting from age 70, women begin to dominate the numbers by a large margin. At 80 years, they are almost twice as much, at 90 years, almost 3.25x as much and at 100 years almost 9x as much (at least according to the source).
- Learned that pulses of ultrasonic energy can be sent towards a liquid treated metal to inspect weld quality (for cracks and small defects). In the context of ship building. But something similar was said to be used in pipeline inspections.
- Drive that car until you learn an online parking space that meets your needs.
- Still not having a look meeting the earthquake- and ambulance-ready definitions, but now at least thinking about them.
- Sometimes it feels teachers working against teachers. The moment their student receives the exam tasks, they try to push them to another teacher to solve it for them (so they ask the day before). Because, online anything should be possible, right? Since the cheating mindset was prevalent even before coming online, you can imagine the type of gargantuan problems standing in front of most corporations who picked the convenient, in mass quantity.
- Small regret: never to have taken more books from a library than my body could carry. They rightfully said that body strength was the limiting factor of mental life, but a student in disbelief waits for corona to happen to validate the claim. By that time, weak mental growth has made the lazy potato body less striving. And the same courses and books now cost thousands of dollars to buy.
- Interesting to see non-trivial arrangements of building polygons (from top). As if someone tried to assemble a puzzle and was looking for a good (but not boring-best) fit.
- The nearby "Kaufland" store must be ≈4365m2 according to simple calculations. But rarely visiting it anymore. Saw at most 5-6 employees stocking up the goods in the public area of the store. Guessing they are worked to exhaustion (only because they agree with the penny-terms).
- Wrote some code to look at volume to price for 25 round metal rods available at "Lowe's" bit.ly/36P5vLE. Note that in your case the prices may vary. Here, the first zinc-plated steel round rod (there were many sizes) had diameter of 5/8in, length of 3ft and price of $10.88. Corrosion-resistant, it seems.
- Barely able to mumbo-jumbo, wrapped in solid medical care bit.ly/3mR0asQ
- Probably one of my most beautiful spirals so far bit.ly/2JPjiJ3
- As the year approaches its end, tree leaves turn into lamps bit.ly/37UWP5V. Possibly animatable.
- Hopping between NBA arenas in tthe USA bit.ly/2VLBaYa. More specifically, between "Moda Center" in Portland and "TD Garden" in Boston. Left one not agreeing with the description for the eagle-eyed.
- Cities by population in Saudi Arabia bit.ly/36KO4Mc. Created primarily for personal learning.
- Overview of the Intel-based HP laptop "doorbusters" bit.ly/3lKRbIc. Many in the latest generation. Perhaps "17T-BY400" (i7-1165G7, 8GB DDR4 2666MHz, 1TB HDD, 16GB Optane, Iris Xe GPU, $500) or "15T-DY100" (i7-1065G7, 12GB DDR4 2666MHz, 256GB SSD, 16GB Optane, Iris Plus GPU, $510) might be interesting to someone. Reports show the integrated GPU of the first to be better (but the HDD is slower).
- Few properties of the cars by "Tata Motors" bit.ly/3mKxC4h
- According to their annual reports for 2019, "Pfizer" and "AstraZeneca" both had 8 products exceeding revenues of $1 billion. "Novartis" and "Johnson & Johnson" appear to have slightly more. Made small tables to list these medicaments and their primary uses, assuming that if people buy them a lot, the diseases they act upon must be either widespread or difficult to heal bit.ly/2VDJokL.
- Oscar awards by category and year (1927-2019) bit.ly/2VEmN7Z. A total of 3284 awards were mentioned in the Oscars database, where some seem to have been collecive (e.g. more than one indvidual), so it is more difficult to say exactly how many people were awarded. Also, my script did not capture the information about one award and it would have taken a lot of time to seek exactly which one. The category bin width is expanded (e.g. actor, actor in leading role and actor in supporting role awards were merged into a single category). Not perfect, but gives some orientation. As you can see, the most awarded category is "scientific and/or technical award" with a total of 850 awards (25.8%). This is not exactly what I would immediately associate the Oscars with—an eye-opener. Other highly awarded categories include: music (220), writing (199), actor (177) and actress (177), documentary (159), sound (132), honorary award (129), cinematography (120). There were also 109 awards in art direction (and 93 in directing, although unsure whether ithis is the same) and 73 awards in special/visual effects. Constume design and makeup (and hairstyle) accounted for 89 and 38 awards accordingly.
- Also updated the diagram of the traffic accidents in Denver, Colorado bit.ly/2JADgaK. Given so much data, tried to predict probable accident locations at specific times of the year (summer and winter, 2001-2021, every two years) bit.ly/37yqRfv. First time doing this and it took longer than usual. It appears that these winter locations are closer together, while the summer locations are more dispersed. Perhaps a possible explanation could be that in summer people feel inclined to explore roads which are more distant from the city center.
- Updated my diagram with the net income as reported by some banks (2014-2019) bit.ly/3qsyOvj. "JPMorgan Chase" seems to extend the lead. Will have to include 2020 data soon to validate whether this is still the case.
- Number of Nobel laureates by year and discipline bit.ly/2Jz0yha (Source: Wikipedia, "List of Nobel laureates"). The dot sizes reflect that awards were given to 1-3 individuals. It is visible that a single person was most often awarded in the literature category each year, while the greatest chance to have three awardees was either in physiology & medicine or in physics. A total of 942 medals have been awarded so far, of which 430 (45.6%) fell in the last two mentioned disciplines.
- Used the data in the last annual report by "Johnson & Johnson", summarizing performance in the period 2009-2019. It seems that net property, plant and equipment (and total assets) grow with the number of employees (0.95, 0.94). Percent increase in diluted net earnings per share and provision for taxes on income come at 0.91, which is visibly more than the next highest provision value. Sales to customers in the US go well together with market price per share (year-end close), which in itself may inform (together with dividends paid per share) the research and development expense (0.97). A small excerpt of what left an impression with me.
- In the diagram which led to the previous bit, Monaco and Mongolia appeared as the most and least densely populated countries respectively. Somewhat unexpected to me, although Wikipedia seems to agree.
- Canada - low population density, high number of infections. Singapore - much higher population density, lower number of infections. Australia has very similar population density to Canada and its number of infections (27923) is less than that of Singapore (58239) and much less than that of Canada (389776). (In absolute terms, Australia has 0.1% of its population infected, while the other two countries are at 1%). Can proximity to USA and differences in testing and lockdown implementations be the only factors leading to such varied results?
- Area vs. population (2020) for the countries in the world bit.ly/3ltCDN6. Greenland, Falkland Islands and Nue appear underpopulated relative to their areas. There was once a reportage about two women living on the Falkland Islands who were knitting to sell their products to international buyers. The camera that walked around showed a large landscape of no people, so asked myself how difficult their life must be. Another view, leaving only EU member states bit.ly/3g7c7Ij, shows that that Finland, Estonia and Latvia have slightly smaller populations than one might expect. Although not shown here, Iceland is even more distant from the line than they are.
- Stacking steaks for December? Can't stand this mindlessly-run platter.
- Mostly costly. As M. L. Geiger said: "It's not show fun; it's show business." Good to be aware which of the two you bring.
- Tearing apart my images bit.ly/3mExIdK
- Not to resign from redesign, but to be comfortable with the discomfort working against stagnation.
- So class Liver contains 500 known methods (Source: British Liver Trust). This bit is about other curious details from the excerpt of "Molecular biology of the cell" by Bruce Alberts. There are 10-100 million living species on Earth. Humans have 50-70 trillion cells. The simplest known cells have about 400 genes, while most bacteria and archaea were said to have 1000-6000 genes. Cell sizes have been found to increase proportionally to genome sizes, where large eukaryotic organisms tend to be made from more cells. Gene sequences determine gene functions, but the number of revealed proteins is so big that their functions are still not well explored. The more time has passed between two (historically) living organisms, the more diverging their genes are expected to be. An example was given with the high similarity of genes in flowers and trees since plants were said to be separated by "only" 150 million years (compared to mammals (450), vertebrates/insects (700) and bacteria/archaea (3500)). Consequently the genes of bacteria/archaea must vary the most. Even genetically identical individuals (twins) are still epigenetically different. (Epigenetics can be influenced by the environment.) About 85% of the aminoacids in humans and elephants were said to be identical (70% in humans and birds). Protein functions depend on amino-sequences. (A protein can function as a microprocessor.) DNA molecules can contain the specs of thousands of proteins. Enzymes are the most selective and powerful catalysts known (accelerate chemical reactions to stable transition states). They can couple oxidation to energy storage and the product of one can become the substrate of the next. They can tightly bind to small non-protein molecules to perform some functions that aminoacids alone can't. Cells can have thousands of enzymes, controlling their catalytic activities. Fungi posess only mitochondria (no chloroplasts to enable photosynthesis), so they secrete enzymes to their exterior and feed on them to grow. Note that this reflects my own understanding. To validate my words or learn more, feel free to explore the original source.
- Saw a stamp with the face of Buckminster Fuller where the top of his head was triangulated. Very creative way to demonstrate clearly the geodesic dome and its inventor in a limited space.
- Liked the redirect to ppm image trick by Peter Shirley and collective bit.ly/3fUATeq ↗. Normally, it would have taken me quite a lot longer to create anything nearly as beautiful as this bit.ly/2HZFHTu.
- Used 3 different sources to combine data about 8 chemical elements (aluminium, steel, zinc, copper, silver, paladium, gold and platinum) and their atomic mass, electronegativity (Pauling scale), atomic radius (van der Waals), ionization energy (eV), electron affinity (eV), melting point (K), boiling point (K), density (g/cm³). The goal was to inspect (albeit with too little data) on which of these their energy intensity (embodied energy) (MJ/kg) depended most. The resulting factors in order (please validate since your results may vary): atomic mass (0.2394), element number in table (0.2148), density (0.1956), electron affinity (0.1648). The other factors tended to be much smaller.
- CPU Mark and Thread Mark against TDP for Intel Core laptop processors as reported by PassMark bit.ly/3mmFGYN. Hoped to observe what changed in terms of performance since the 10th generation. But the picture appears incomplete with only three tested models belonging to the 11th generation (Intel's database shows 20 variants). What we see is that 10th Gen processors containing "H" at the end tend to have higher base clocks and align verticaly at TDP of 45W. Some 11th Gen CPUs containing "G7" already have equal thread performance to these, but at a TDP of 15W. Six "Ryzen" laptop models have CPU marks above 17000 and they mostly contain "4800" or "4900" in their names. The max Intel CPU Mark was 16835, whereas the max Ryzen CPU Mark was 19807 (+17.6%). However, the highest achieved Thread Mark by a "Ryzen" laptop CPU was 2710, whereas for these Intel CPUs it was 2967 (+9.5%).
- "World-class manufacturing requires world-class equipment." One that doesn't break a week after purchase.
- Total minutes scheduled to various titles on "Seattle Channel TV" (31.09.2020 - 06.12.2020) bit.ly/39tUeCm. Tried to highlight what sounded intriguing or emotion-stirring. A total of 159 civic cocktails engage 9540 minutes (159 hours) and 275 art zones take 8415 minutes (140 hours 15 mins).
- There is a difference between writing custom software after the requirements of clients coming from different sectors and writing/selling complete know-how software products intentionally designed to pull in clients from all of these sectors. The first is fine, but the second isn't.
- Can you trust a corporation active in 120 sectors at a time? I can't. Smells as intransparency designed to maximize profits, very likely in a way that is net negative for society. Can recognize a company and recall what it does (by UI design rules) if it is active in at most 8 sectors even when its interests may span much more broadly. But operational in 120 sectors (via beefy acquisitions)? No. The majority of the corporations which expanded big style after 2015 shouldn't have existed at all.
- Show a ladybug to the market and wait for it to price it accurately.
- better occupant comfort → higher productivity
- BUKO GERMSORT/10000 sorts up to 10000 diamonds/hour using computer vision and counting image pixels to determine diamond sizes (e.g. 0.7-3.6mm). Quite a lot more value when you compare with the number of error-free, meaningful letters/hour (far too cheap mini gems) the average programmer blows out in the same time.
- Earlier you went to shop from the malls, today you shop the malls. The rest of us does morning stretches.
- Consistent stone etching style, never conversing with the smallest strawberries.
- Wouldn't think an oven could be double and weigh over 200kg. Or that a record-breaking "hypercar" (1340HP) could be based on the "weak once you push towards the end" electric technology. But faulty assumptions evaporate pretty quickly.
- Source said recycled aluminium has 10% of the environmental impact of new one made from bauxite ore and recycled steel has 20% of the impact of new steel from ores.
- Few properties of the luggage by "Victorinox" bit.ly/2Veknww. My script seemed to develop preference for "Airox Medium Hardside Case" (74l, 8.4lb, $290) bit.ly/3fKUmhB ↗. Two softsides follow, but the next hardsides are "Spectra 2.0 Extra-Large Case" (96l, 10.1lb, $440) and "Connex Medium Hardside Case" (71l, 8.7lb, $369). Liked that these were made from strong polycarbonate.
- Few impressions from the excerpt of "Think for yourself": ≈135 million books exist; every 10 years the number of people listed on patents grows 17%; unchecked infomania reduced IQ twice as much as pot smoking; choice presentation can impact selection; anchoring confuses decision making; people we seek advice from can influence our choices; blind reliance on algorithms leaves us with a false sense of security; depth of focus is blinding us from breadth of perspective; early screening can be accompanied by overdiagnosis and desire for overtreatment (more active search revealed more cancers).
- Picked to read for the first time an issue of RIT Research Magazine bit.ly/3q8WQLI ↗. Lots of ideas. Had no clue that 222 million tons/year could be the food waste in rich countries. Other keywords: biodegradeable packaging with limited material, remote drone crop scouts with plant dissection and inspection tools, infrared cameras for same room-multispot measurements, hyperspectral imaging generating big data and more.
- Briefly looked into the "Towed vehicles" dataset provided by the Chicago Police Department bit.ly/3mhpZSA ↗. In the period 30.08.2020-28.11.2020, a total of 2975 vehicles found themselves at a new place. On average, almost 1000 vehicles/month. Chevrolet (15.5%), Ford (9.4%), Nissan (8.1%), Honda (7.3%) and Dodge (7.2%) were the five most commonly towed brands. The colors of the most towed vehicles were black (20.4%), grey (16.5%), silver (15.5%) and white (14.3%). By make, color and first two letters of the plate, most common were black Chevrolets starting with "CC" (6 tows), "CA" (6 tows) and "CG" (5 tows). The only brand that had more than 3 tows and wasn't Chevrolet were grey Nissans starting with "BF" (4 tows). Only five cars were towed twice (duplicate plate number).
- Housing prices by neighborhood in New York (RedFin) bit.ly/3nW5b3s. Travel distance by car was said to be shortest between Bronx and much more expensive Manhattan (4x). Since people there enter from the narrow side of Manhattan, I was concerned about potential traffic congestion. But the number of bridges linked from Manhattan to its closest neighborhoods as shown on Google Maps suggest that Bronx has the most (12), followed by Brooklyn (4) and Queens (3-4). But then it is not clear from the map how big their flow capacities are.
- "Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere." - Shakespeare. Tried to read his work only once, long time ago, when the libraries were still open. Found the language too hard for me to interpret and left the book back on the shelf. Invoked the association about (wordplay) "cool foolery" I've seen so often in code.
- Please, do not assume you'll be served over the weekend. Unless you are willing to pay a lot more than usual.
- Had another idea that it seems will remain unrealized. To look whether the biggest banks in USA (which were listed as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have properties on sale among their assets and if so, how their price-to-area compares relative to market levels for the corresponding city as estimated by RedFin. Might be interesting to home owner prospects whether it is rational to seek a property directly at a bank. The idea came after remembering my passage near a showcase of "Sparkasse Immobilien", highlighting plenty of real estate offers. Assumed similar ones might be available online for each US bank, but the offers were very few (if any) and sometimes presented on what looked like abandoned pages. (Imagine if they no longer find property valuable enough to present it well.) Found "RealtyTrac", but this was not what I was looking for (uses bid instead of end prices, no bank subdivision). The intention was to create diagrams for each bank and then for each city (with existing property) depict on a vertical axis the market level with small, horizontal black line and the asking price with a red dot if above or a green dot if below. My rationale was that perhaps some bank-city combinations could offer more favorable conditions to buyers, which I was looking to depict.
- The daily $2 latte is $14/week or $730/year. The habit of small amounts to add up.
- Beats my previous wordplays in inventiveness: "If you pay, you stay; if you don't, you won't."
- Spaghetti with banana taste: the code looks like the first, but spoils as fast as the second.
- "If money talks, I need a hearing aid" - Joe L. Whitlet. Quickly disengaged if frequency and amplitude weren't attractive.
- Really nice to see so many companies understanding the importance of improving their websites during these difficult times. Didn't know that "Zales" had so many online offers on sale, working for them day and night. True, jewelry is not cheap and few sales may be sufficient to justify the website improvement cost. And yet, they know the value. Smaller companies may have a more difficult time finding a service they can afford. Especially when their product palette is too small, they don't expect to sell much or are uncertain whether they still want to remain in business.
- Used an article in "Forbes" to visually view few financial parameters of 35 large public real estate companies bit.ly/2V7Qi1r. Explorartory, so not very eye-pleasing. The sales and assets of "Brookfield Asset Management" are so much bigger than the rest. "Annaly Capital Management" has fewer assets, but achieves higher profits. "Vornado Realty Trust" also seems quite profitable. In terms of market value, "American Tower Corporation" is followed by "Prologis", "Equinix" and then "Brookfield Asset Management".
- Don't delay, do today. (Except if you expect that three months from now you won't need an extra service to deal with it.)
- In case you wonder what would be above computational budget: plotting a beautiful 2D picture of all parcels in Utah. The dataset was said to be ≈800MB, but 1.4GB later had to cancel it as it refused to finish (and no total size was indicated). Even if it arrived, it would break the slow, computational, fragile, central heart.
- Two alternative views on Fortune 500 companies (considering their revenues, profits, assets and number of employees as of 2020) bit.ly/369Hy1f (click to enlarge). The first view shows "Oracle" next to "Coca-Cola" and "Hitachi" between "Tesco" and "Carrefour". "Edeka" is next to "Starbucks" and "Berkshire Hathaway" is placed next to "Saudi Aramco" and "Apple", with "Microsoft" and "Alphabet" being close. "BP" is placed close to "Exxon Mobil" and (slightly more distant) "Royal Dutch Shell". "Allianz", "AXA" and "China Life Insurance" are very close. The second view shows clearly how different "Walmart" and few other companies are in absolute terms relative to the rest. Interesting that a group of four Chinese banks has managed to separate itself too. The strength of the relationship between revenues and employees came out as 0.587.
- Nutrients in the chocolate by "Cailler" bit.ly/36cJaaJ
- The star inside pentagon bit.ly/3q4jUuU fitted quite nicely into the computational budget.
- Should have been a bracelet bit.ly/2J0U4rj, but timeout makes it an unfinished one.
- Icon click competition bit.ly/3m6KTDU
- "In horse racing, the track always wins." Wondering what would be the best way to depict that. But then against horse races, hearing how many horses have lost their lives on that track.
- Beach umbrella low down bit.ly/2UZBOkh. A quickly coded sketch inspired by someone complaining (on TV) about the disappearance of their options (at this time of the year). Changing one variable should be sufficient to open them wider.
- Perhaps painful to have the website finished, the money paid and then wait for what could be results to show. To see an investment turn into expense. And yet, this is what happens all too often once you realize that many services are after the money, not necessarily to bring you results. As soon as the work is done, there are other clients to take money from! The work that goes after the fact to make it succesful is conveniently forgotten since it is not paid for yet. Even when trying to help with maintenance, they will constantly try to fall back to working on new websites as this pays more and takes much less time than advancing the purpose of your existing website. The result is that we have a web of beginners where it is relatively easy for any moderately sized company to pay minimally more than necessary to stand out from the crowd. Saw that WebFX has published an orientation table of how much a website truly costs in 2020 bit.ly/3q28zeP ↗. My assumption is that these are projects going after measurable results, but it could be wrong. One could overpay and still not achieve what they would like. At least, the next time the pay will not only be better/smarter, but also aim to identify the right service provider to stay with. If the long term matters, at all.
- Please, remember that during lockdown a lot more people than usual might present themselves as web designers. You owe it to yourself to be suspicious of any claims that aren't backed by concrete evidence. It is not difficult for anyone to create a brochure page and list some services. Doesn't even have to be their own. Ideally you should look for recent, complete, online web projects or—if these aren't available,—a long-term track record of public demos of their work. It is one thing to create a single project and completely another to keep creating daily over many years. This only. For a happier and safer December.
- Learned that veterinarians used dog (and other animal) registrations as a proxy to estimate the potential spending of their clients.
- Staying patient while learning new words from a video is difficult. Once one arrives which you believe describes to the greatest extent what you do bit.ly/33aLuNm, you become fairly impatient in pressing "Prt Sc" so as to avoid missing it.
- Appears as an award ceremony bit.ly/2J5xI7L ↗, where the table wasn't spared under so much imagination.
- Plants in bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden bit.ly/3pOwHlf ↗. Strong colors in November.
- "Countless billions of stars have emerged in countless billions of galaxies" (Source: "The story of Earth")
- Saw a giant on-desk folder labeled "excuses". Makes a strong point, this caricature.
- Since Google charted that the population in Fresno (CA) is growing slightly faster than that of Sacramento (CA), decided to look at the housing prices in the first city as well. The medians were somewhat lower at 178.24$/sqft (16.55$/m2). Also added Riverside (CA) to round the picture (279.10$/sqft or 25.92$/m2). Geographically, Sacramento is north-east of San Francisco (straight-line distance of 121km), Fresno is east of San Jose (198km) and Riverside is east of Los Angeles (80.24km).
- Left my old script look at housing prices in Sacramento as announced on Zillow. Out of 671 units, the median price came out as 273.56$/sqft (or $25.41$/m2). This unit is quite big for its price bit.ly/3fmOwD6 ↗ while the second bit.ly/3pWw5tA ↗ and third bit.ly/3l5lfhD ↗ look slightly better, but aren't fully furnished yet. Perhaps you'll find even better options by also looking at favorable location relative to city center and more.
- Couldn't speak clearly of your project needs against the noise of your company demolition? Better not to let the environmental acoustic speak louder.
- Saw a social group of vacant Petri dishes at lunchtime amzn.to/3nMP1cp ↗
- With a bit of forethought (rather than hindsight) one could even make the code of their own website smell well.
- A book (written about a decade ago) mentioned "Amway" for its disinfectants and I wondered, because this wouldn't be the first product my mind would come up with. In fact, I believe to have used a universal "Amway" floor cleaner once (many years ago), which even smelled well. Which product(s) would you associate this brand with? Now you could check your expectation against the current reality (their website).
- "Marriott" listed 213 hotels only in the state of New York bit.ly/2Kn8ouf ↗. Initial idea was to plot the locations of all hotels next to those of "Ritz-Carlton" (at US level), but now visible how this would take me too much time. That "Marriott" had a "Ritz-Carlton" link on its page suggested the two might be related, so visited Wikipedia, which said "Parent: Marriott International". Didn't know, so it's pointless to compare the same company to itself.
- Business and website well prepared for the most important month of the year? Good (if no important signal bells).
- "Hemorrhage is characterized by too much blood inside the skull. In ischemia, there is not enough blood... About four of every five strokes are ischemic... Hypertension is the single most important risk for both." (Source: "Stroke" by Louis R. Caplan)
- Can't offer universal fire extinguishing advice to companies in trouble, but hoped the equipment by "First Alert" and "Amerex" would have detailed specifications to ease the selection of a good unit. Not so, so no pain relief. Will have to be more cautious next time when pre-programming the hexagonal ash bin to cook its proper cigarette omelette.
- Some flight tickets appear unusually cheap now. Expensive are: the 14-day quarantine, the subsequent stay-on-rent without job in a new city, the long waiting lines, the cost of the PCR tests, the hospital stays and medicaments, the emotional toll on relatives, eventually a funeral. Another case of how expensive cheap truly is.
- Bought the expensive jewelry to show off, now concerned it doesn't even blink well in front of the cheap camera.
- Dumping an unstyled and improperly formatted "new policy" text on my screen means your online store didn't take the time to leave a positive impression that matches the quality of the other site sections. Discounting your brand in effect. Add to this the fact that you end with "during this event you will have to pay extra for people's devlivery and manual money processing" and you probably understand why more clients may choose to remain unserved this winter.
- When long-distance ship and train transport are fully booked, it seems that truck and air transport must increasingly carry the rest of the burden.
- Potentially stupid interpretation: The maximal tire load (kg) must be enough to keep the axle weight above ground (perhaps proportional to it). Considering tire max load index on Wikipedia bit.ly/2KrS7Ep ↗, and computing (2435/250)4 suggests that the heaviest truck would wear the road at a rate ≈9000x that of the most lightweight car. Doubting that the road taxes reflect this accordingly.
- Few things learned/reminded of today: String players tend to stay near the middle of the bow to avoid large angular momentum (tip). Road wear is proportional to the fourth degree of the weight per axle. Asteroid mass is proportional to the cube of the radius. Light is an electromagnetic wave. Electrons have both wave and particle nature.
- Sometimes it feels like slightly over 10g of flour per hour. Don't want to see an "essential" dependency.
- Who cares whether the bone diameter of an animal is proportional to bone length3/2? Or how much leather a cattle would produce? Nothing so empirical in my environment.
- Sockenwolle at ALDI Süd bit.ly/3pPnycc ↗. Timely and relevant. Earlier it was more common to obtain an advent calendar filled with chocobons; these days you only get the empty, decorated box and are "enabled" to put inside whatever you want (flexibility as USP). (It's clear where they might have been.)
- Black Friday is when you get paid, not when you are explained how much you are saving by direct spending. Didn't spend much ever since, but heard of the warnings issued both on German and national TV that the promotions mostly aren't. Did your analytic skills tell you otherwise?
- Difficult to correct your assumptions once electricity stops. Much better to question them as a reader.
- Few parameters of selected strollers for baby transport bit.ly/3318vCs. Most of these align for a maximal baby weight of 50lb (22.7kg) with own weight of 23lb (±10lb) (10.5kg) (almost half that of the heaviest newborn). This means that a parent with a heavy child may have to push/carry up to 73lb (33kg) or 103.5lb (47kg) in the worst case. With a normal newborn weight of 7.5lb, we can estimate that a baby weight of ≈19.36lb would be fairly common. Adding to this the most lightweight stroller here (13lb), we come at ≈32.36lb (14.7kg) for the most common (and lightly touched) case.
- You can also see a distribution of the women's bra sizes at the "Victoria's Secret" website bit.ly/391pAQd. Not understanding much here. For some reason, the As between 32 and 40 do not match the frequency of those in the B-D categories (most common between 32 and 38). According to the site, these B-Ds would correspond to the 70-75-80-85B-D sizes in Germany.
- Distribution of the shoe sizes for men boots at "Zappos" bit.ly/2KtpLd1. Here sizes containing halves (7.5, 8.5 etc.) are at least slightly less common than whole units (7, 8 etc.). The difference is even more pronounced in the size range 12-15. The largest selection offer the wholes in the range 8-13 (said to correspond to sizes 41-46 in Europe).
- Initial shot distraction bit.ly/3kR507z
- The first three got cold quite soon, but the second three retained their power, at least for a while bit.ly/3pMHRXK. Number 3 forgot to take its payload; number 6 compressed it too much.
- Elliptical definition bit.ly/3lQRpOR
- Had to look like colorful macaroni for breakfast bit.ly/3feTa67. While preparing it, it became lunchtime.
- The lines in a box bit.ly/3pLq2Iw didn't connect as desired.
- Interesting idea that the home office has to be like us, adapt and age accordingly. Could it drag us to old thought patterns if it doesn't?
- Global warming potential of gases relative to CO2 bit.ly/2IN4MB1. The original IPCC document was for some reason inaccessible to me, so keeping this as reference rather than absolute truth. Wondering whether modern refrigerants are still seen as worse than methane on this criteria. Over a 100-year period, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is said to have over 20000x the global warming potential of carbon dioxide (CO2). Here is another table bit.ly/36MmX2e ↗
- But was difficult to imagine how turtle ninja operated on the complex sewer graph without getting lost.
- The City of Phoenix and its PHX Water Service bit.ly/372LgZZ ↗ indicated (as of June 2017) that sewer mains used mostly water pipes of 8" diameter (over 20 million feet). A total of 32 different diameters (ranging 4-96") were present, but others to a much lesser extent. Wondered whether there was a rationale behind the decision. A total of 25686857 feet of pipe divided by 418312 sewer taps means that (if approximately correct) a tap is used on average every 61.40 feet (18.7m). Converting inches and feet to meter and using the cylinder volume formula for each pipe diameter, we obtain a total volume of 785523.93m3 which these pipes can buffer.
- It seems that it is not the tennis player with the most tournaments who has the most points in the ranking bit.ly/3pEskZV. Hints to focus on fewer tournaments and seek to perform much better in each.
- 120.3 million US homes and electricity consumption of 1462 billion kWh for 2018 (EIA) lead to an average of 1012.7kWh/home-month.
- Relative top surface dimensions (and DWT) of BOA barges by their number bit.ly/2UFdsME (Source: boa.no). Barges 33 and 37 seem to have especially high deadweight tonnage (max. carry weight). By these values, barge 37 can withstand (on average) ≈5.20t/m2, followed by barge 34 with 4.96t/m2 and barges 29, 30, 35, 36 with 4.48t/m2 each.
- Didn't expect to see so many operational wind turbines in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany bit.ly/32UDy2t. The total capacity of all active installations came out as 9.53TW.
- Stiftung Warentest placed "Moser Roth" (ALDI, 0.84€) at third place among 24 chocolate bars bit.ly/2IC0H35 ↗. Follows variants by "Hachez" and "Lindt". Only eight (33.3%) were FairTrade, Gepa Fair+ or UTZ certified. The nutrients of the chocolate bars by "Hachez" bit.ly/3lCq1nE show that the 66% edelbitter they tested must have had a lower salt content relative to variants with lower cocoa percentage. This "Stadtmusikantentafel" reminds me of a symbol (which I learned about, but never saw) in Bremen, Germany.
- Unmistaken about the car convoy heard at 3-4 AM. Essential sound for the vrooming statistics.
- Watched a reportage where someone gave an example how service providers were asking "How would you rate this service?" at the end. Wouldn't consider this option. But agree with the opinion that the question is putting unnecessary pressure on the client, where an alternative is to enable (but not require) this to happen on terms they find most convenient. It feels that seeking recommendation or approval is not advancing anything or helping anyone.
- Sometimes you are happy for getting the weakest notes, in order, if it pushes you hard to learn what would have taken you years otherwise. Having no regrets about the public pressure and midnight school studies of an extra language. Still got what I was looking for.
- But it's totally fine if you are on time and within budget. No need to speak.
- Planned and actual finish times and budgets for the three "Angra" nuclear power plants: 1) (1975, $320 million), (1983, $2.1 billion), 2) (1983, $1.6 billion), (2001, $10+ billion), 3) supposed to cost $1 billion; took 15 years and $2 billion for 30%. (Source: "The blood bankers") "Monster projects were more popular than schools and clinics."
- Burning engine, realistically falling plane, systems dysfunctional, nervousness in the hand, acceleration in the last moment. Kept me on thorns before the author shared such was the experience inside the flight simulator. Liked this. Also Goya's quote "The sleep of reason produces monsters".
- Lightweight chemistry, so alive and easy to move. No heavy metals or downloads.
- The fluffy cotton candy, machine-woven in front of this kid never came with sugar value. Hopefully, the 30000 genes in me have long "fogotten" the instance, mind-remind.
- "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking." - Albert Einstein. Difficult to imagine anything of greater practical importance than this.
- "Lotteries are partly successful due to unrealistic optimism." (Source: excerpt from "Nudge") Many company projects also end optimistically bad as long as there is mutual agreement on how protracted the collective failure could be. Other interesting bits: the blasting of oven smells on a walkpath to attract buyers, the general tendency to stick with our situations, gaining weight "with" our best friends, world continuously testing our self-control, flight tickets sold with separate flight insurance, purchasing both fast food and diet advice.
- "A good building is not merely attractive, it also 'works'." Wished the same was valid for software. Instead, all attractive keywords were taken.
- Can't recall a single numeric fairy tale.
- "Everyone thinks they know and really don't." Prove it for everyone.
- Waiting for the stars in the sky to arrange in a pattern. Tonight must be it.
- Happy after getting the fiver-gizmo?
- "Less is more" is here; "more is less" is elsewhere.
- Ems: Emotion is an empire.
- "Any problem can be helped with a picture." - Dan Roam
- What's your "I click" to "me being clicked" ratio?
- Epictetus' ideas on the art of living bit.ly/2H8Xs2g ↗
- Have you ever thought that a possible reason behind someone smiling 24/7 could be complacency? Dunno. Knew only I wasn't goging to be around.
- Glad if you found time to answer my question from the past week. Either way, have another good one.
- "Being wrong hurts us more than being right feels good."
- Used data by "The COVID Tracking Project" to plot the daily death increase by US state between 22.01.2020 and 14.11.2020 bit.ly/3f3dsQ0. Not perfect on the small space; omitted the numbers. Scaled to see slightly more easily recent developments. If we look specifically for upping tail ends, perhaps Illinois, Michigan, Texas would draw our attention. If we look for high absolute numbers, California, Texas and Florida would do the same. And if we look for high recent to past increases, we see states like Wisconsin and Tennessee.
- When you hear of Catalan, Alphonso, Kalamata, Gaeta, Nicoise, Arbequina, Nyon and Cerignola olives, would you know which growth location to assign to them? Thankfully giving up.
- Nutrients found in some herbs, side-by-side bit.ly/2UuRk7q. Wished to include oregano, dill, sage, thyme and others, but their data already shifted to the "SR Legacy" category. Already knew that parsley is well-balanced in many dimensions, but dandelion greens are new to me. In parsley, 5561µg of lutein and zeaxanthin were found, whereas in dandelion greens it was 13610µg. Probably useful to remember the reference value for carrots (256µg) to understand the difference.
- Programming book introduced the vampire age attribute and made me think safety. Tried to guess its value for Count Dracula, but then saw he had ≈3.23x the life experience. Clear reason for concern.
- Might have passed by a hair this time bit.ly/3puZUBC. And what happens if you continue according to this specification bit.ly/3lDrk60.
- AWEA has factsheets on wind energy generation for each US state bit.ly/3kwCqbs ↗. Somewhat slow, but liked the way they assembled a story interactively from the data.
- Saw where my country is in terms of total power plant capacity according to GitHub's "Global Power Plant Database" (last updated 9 months ago).
- Distribution of the package sizes with "General Mills" flour bit.ly/36y2PAN. The bigger the packs, the more numerous the products. While a 50lb package may seem convenient, finding enough storage space for it (where it won't call the snakes) may cause trouble. Tending towards the much smaller packs here (1-2kg), for this reason.
- Saw a deer and sleigh made of 144 and 120 LED lights accordingly (in a brochure). Winter is here and (in a bittersweet sense) pretty mobile.
- Explored the changes in domestic and international passenger counts at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in the period between January 2018 and September 2020, according to LAWA bit.ly/3lrivMl. February this year saw a strange spike given that January was already much weaker. It could be that there was a push to reopen (if we assume the data is correct). At its height, the number of domestic passengers reached almost 6 million/month.
- What's the impact of your spending on online projects? (answer next week)
- Learning about the basic nutrients in root foods (radishes, daikon radishes, carrots, beets, celery, celeriac, kohlrabi, fennel, turnip, onions, garlic and ginger) bit.ly/3luOueC. Garlic would waste the printer ink, but expected slightly more from onions. Considering how rare vitamin A seems to be here and the extreme alpha and beta carotene content in carrots, they appear as a good salad upgrade. Had no idea the sugar-rich beets could be also folate-rich. Fennel bulb, celery and carrots seem to contain the most lutein and zeaxanthin in this selection.
- Continuing on lettuces, current USDA reported market prices convey the feeling that the most expensive varieties are Romaine, Green leaf and Iceberg lettuce (unit prices of $2.04, $1.88 and $1.83) with Boston Red and Boston lettuce trading on the lower end (unit prices of $1.19 and $1.13). These values are derived from batches of 24 units. Interesting that cauliflower is reported slightly more expensive than broccoli (unit prices of 27/12 = $2.25 vs. 19/14 = $1.36). If these prices are correct, broccoli is only slightly more expensive than the cheapest lettuce varieties.
- Every choice has an opportunity cost. Buying more bus tickets means having less for burgers and vice versa. Perhaps by paying for the same bad service ten times one increases the chance to find a good, but unaffordable one.
- 2020 index of economic freedom herit.ag/3eVuwHq ↗. Using this data, it is also not difficult to seek country similarities bit.ly/3lsKNpD. Interesting that public debt (as % of GDP) was most positively linked with inflation (0.25) and most negatively with fiscal health (-0.39). Curious that government integrity seemed positively linked to GDP per capita (PPP) (0.73) bit.ly/3ksD6yv. Other scores were higher, but also more apparent (e.g. population-GDP, investment freedom-financial freedom).
- When you water new trees in the presence of the insisting, you'll be even less efficient than a power plant. But then you remind yourself of this "bottomless pit" for water and that plant growth was said to happen mostly down to 15-20cm below the surface. From the standpoint of a plant what goes below this level must feel like a loss. Could be more useful to water more regularly with very small amounts evenly spread over a large territory (still packing crops tightly and not overplanting), rather than attempt to fill the soil holes once in a while (small width-to-depth ratio).
- Customer mistook "lifecycle guarantee" for "lifetime guarantee".
- Googled "water usage in electricity generation" (l/MWh). A complement may sound as "electricity usage in water generation". In "Water use of electricity technologies: a global meta analysis", the authors wrote that water usage for conventional and unconventional oil (oil sand & oil shale) (in extraction, processing and transport) was high with 891l/MWh and 1658l/MWh accordingly. Natural gas was linked with 128l/MWh. Overall coal plant infrastructure was said to be the largest water user among all fuel-powered thermal plants. US-based, closed-loop nuclear power plants in operation were said to require 1408-3000l/MWh. In closed-loop operation, an improvement of 1% in conversion efficiency was linked with savings of 36.8l/MWh. Dry cooling can conserve water, but lowers plant efficiency.
- "Here is the before/after diagram. You still with me?"
- Building without teardown seems like a landscape problem decreasing the dynamics of change.
- "Busies himself over small things and participates in everything." Real danger here.
- "The winters run long and the water supplies run short." Didn't think of this, but took water for granted.
- Beware the latent embeddings in your brand name. Consider a watch "Tissot" and think of "TossIt". Someone could read the one and still feel inconvenient about the other without knowing why.
- Learned Dongguan's motto: "One big step every year, a new city in five."
- Complained about the 600-page programming book, unable to see:
- the 750-page statistics book
- the 1100-page cookbook
- the 1200-page physics book
- the 1200-page linear algebra book
- the 2000-page complex library API descriptions (several)
- the 2500-page math book
- the 5400-page accounting book collection
No need to read all of these, but know they exist. Gives an invaluable perspective. - "When rich, wealth to enjoy he knew not how;
When poor, to poverty he could not bow." - Liked the phrase "attainments of no ordinary capacity".
- Script counted 1498 caves bit.ly/35p4PMg ↗. Interesting whether patterns in formation can be inferred from their locations, size, elevation, rock type etc. There has to be some story (and direction) behind them even when suppressed by a very slow evolution.
- Another comparative table of berry nutrients powered by USDA bit.ly/2UiANDF. Wished to also include elderberries, mulberries boysenberries, gooseberries, goji berries, acai berries, but found no data on them. Among the six included, blackberries appeared most nutrient-rich, the common strawberries won the vitamin C category and the high-sugar grapes captured the vitamin B complex category (B1, B2, B6).
- "Vanilla is the most important flavouring in the pastry shop." (Agree. Vanilla JavaScript.) There's natural vanilla and artificial vanillin, but since mostly used in small quantities it was said to be "false economy" to go with the cheap.
- Quickly passed through a transitional room with a TV and heard "Kill them all!"
- In the same source, also saw a delicious photo with 11 apple varieties on a single page (Stayman Winesap, Mcintosh, Northern Spy, Cortland, Honeycrisp, Cameo, Gala, Golden delicious, Granny Smith, Macoun, Cox orange pippin). So looked what FoodCentral knows. Had only five entries on raw apples with skin (Fiji, Gala, Honeycrisp, Granny Smith, Red delicious), which entered my next table bit.ly/3f3SMHD. Lactose and maltose were all lower than 0.15, so these are averages there. "Granny Smith" seemed to have slightly less total sugars and slightly more protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals. But it depends, so you may seek to validate this with your own data before choosing a variety to plant. And what thrives in a given climate, may not necessarily work well in another.
- Compared the nutrients in four lettuce types bit.ly/32BiLB3. Wished to include red leaf and Iceberg, but found no data on them. ("The professional chef" placed Iceberg next to lettuces instead of cabbages.) Also helpful to see real photos as they eliminate a lot of the guesswork understanding the difference between Boston or Romaine lettuce, for instance. Until now used to think of Savoy cabbage as kale! But growing arugula at the right time might be nice.
- Noticed that "Viking" has an elegant 36" induction cooktop with 6 zones separated by LED lights bit.ly/2IsmGZG ↗. Reminds of a solar panel used in reflective mode. Wondered whether the effective area if each element was 100% of its corresponding zone. If so, that would be a very space-efficient design asking for quadratic cookware.
- So the three dots on the kitchen knife handle are called "rivets". Noticed this since two knives which didn't have them "unglued" in my hands. Specifically looking for rivets ever since.
- New book on animal diversity amzn.to/35pJmD4 ↗, which became "staff pick" at "Any New Books". Seems to be one in the same series about trees too.
- Another "Thank you!" goes to the hard workers who fixed library support for 3.9! (Only ten days ago couldn't install a single library on top of this new base.) Another minor, but stubborn issue seems to have gone now. Expecting this to save me few seconds here and there (which quickly accumulate).
- If you ever paid for this service, that enabled more of it. Thank you!
- CSS highlights remind me of a book which used nicely aligned and colored blocks to illustrate the difference between genetic sequences. Unsure how much effort this took with a regular editor though.
- If "American Dream" was a square mall (area of 280000m2, Wikipedia) and the average walk speed of someone aged 30-39 years was 1.385m/s (double-averaged, Healthline), then it would take ≈6min 36sec of non-stop, straight-line walking to reach the opposite side. A 75-year old person may need ≈7min 38sec and a 85-year old one ≈9min 23sec . If the mall has a much longer side, then times of 10mins and more become realistic. Perhaps it is possible to go on a spree to explore the available stores (looking at the windows without entering) in a time frame of 45-60 mins or so. Visiting 450 websites and spending 3mins on average (several pages) to barely look what they have would take 22hours 30mins. If each homepage loaded in 8sec on average, and no time was spent on address typing or looking around, this would also take an hour ((450*8)/(60*60)).
- A lot of mass may become waste for not meeting the growing demands. Gradual improvement means that six months later what used to be below the threshold, suddenly goes above, and the mass produced during the period and against the target is now a maintenance problem itself. Much better to aim for bigger improvements that reduce maintenance pains. Unsure how long the average consumer would be willing to pay for minor advances every six months. Avoid producing technological fatigue.
- 95gCO2/km is said to be equivalent to ≈4.1l/100km gasoline or ≈3.6l/100km diesel usage. Many already have difficulty fulfilling the criteria. But this average of 227gCO2/km really speaks of itself.
- Someone who doesn't take time to read and understand could be at a disadvantage. They won't know how to communicate, what type of work can be done for them, when to request help, what is feasible/infeasible, how to structure their project proposal, what the payment options are etc. It all adds up before working together becomes inconvenient for both sides and service has to switch to the next client on the line. On the plus side, they might know better.
- Unlike a 1:n DB table mapping, a 1:x service (1<<x< n) can't afford to serve too many clients simultaneously or easily add new capacity. Once the existing one is exhausted, clients have to wait on a queue in the same way they wait to pay their monthly bills, for an hour slot by their dentist, in front of corona testing facility or elsewhere. Which leaves the options of being a better client to ensure admittance, waiting longer or moving to another service. What makes the work different is that one can't say when the previous client will be served for sure. This depends on their problem, the interval of time in which they intend to stay in touch (could be months) and how accurately one can predict when the next window will open. A single person can only work with a single client at a time. Would be inappropriate to invite too many and then let them wait.
- If not already beta in the previous months, weeks or days, then alpha in those that follow. (Opportunities constantly disappear as much as you'd like to see them as static.)
- Programmierer von Geruch. Certain things smell from far. Especially if someone uses numerics disproportionally often. They wouldn't accept code smells as "necessary evil".
- Curious which (select) criteria one would use to choose an excavator. Looking at few "Caterpillar" instances having up to 63 properties. Turns out their total is also 63, which highlights the difficulty of making the choice.
- "Spiegel" wrote that "Alibaba" got up to 583 thousand orders per second. Online must somehow be capable, right?
- Sadly, customers avoiding "Gänse, die go" buy "Gänse to go".
- Someone forgot about the planned business (where they were) and now promises to travel the extra miles (literally) to deliver to maximal convenience. Wow service quality.
- Setting up a "most bought" plan looks attractive and sales are likely slightly more predictable. Customer segmentation followed by closest bin assignment. Whenever someone asks for an extra, the company refuses to deliver it, claiming one has to choose their bin first. They help with a predefined problem by offering a predefined, ready, unflexible solution. Solving problems of no default nature rarely goes according to plan or fixed rate. It is special work done in particular context with no compromises. This makes it relatively expensive, but also one that can't afford to leave the most important to chance. As a client you can decide which option is more suitable for you. Be aware that dummerAugust champions only one.
- So many businesses improve online now. What is yours waiting for?
- Does thought run low with me?
- Emerged from sleep with the unpopular idea that each bonbon of the diverse pool could have been wrapped and labeled with one of four different letters—A, C, G, and T. So eating them in a given order might have produced a certain genetic sequence or combination with distinct function. Sweetly-probable shareware.
- Currently reading the excerpt of "The meditations by Marcus Aurelius". What follows are some impressions. Perform every action as if it were your last. Guard for miscalculations. Many fatigue and wear themselves out at no goal. Manage all actions, words and thoughts and think of their consequences. If curiosity for discovery wears off, a small part of us dies every day. Understanding sometimes dies before us. Never throw away your legs to stand upon crutcher. Be neither slave nor a tyrant to anybody. We are atoms relative to the size of the Universe and at each moment many are resolved into their elements. Let me do what I will; my elements will be scattered. Rise early, always go the shortest way to work and exert your nature, reflecting on your actions. Avoid pleasure in all its forms—you aren't here for it. Patience when you lose. What is that keeps you here? Do unselfish acts (service of mankind). Time covers many things (actions, memory etc). The true worth of a man is measured by the objects he pursues (no over-appreciation of posessions or disturbance from loss). Practice has to fit to character. Look into your nature, cut your qualities and shape your character. Happiness has very few wants (follow happy). Even an emerald strives not to lose its color. Rub out the colors of imagination. Reach back (far) into past events and think of their causes. Dissect everything to view and understand its nature. Part diversity contributes to whole harmony. Not letting the unexamined enter the mind. Murmuring doesn't make one immortal. Pain gets the best out of you (endurance to it). We can't escape other people's faults, but we can still strive to remain kind to them. Rational means here for the advantage of each other. Avoid getting emotional and acting impulsively. Master things you seem to despair of. The prize is often insignificant and the play not worth the candle. Everything is opinion. Go off, smoothly, swallowed in eternity.
- Wordplay: shadow show, wheat in heat, floor flour, liable for reliable, are-you-sure agriculture, contest interest, posterior posture, ill will, foul soul, selfish shellfish, favour flavour, mind kind, follow hollow, lesion passion, surround sound, action traction, sobriety society, watercress progress, congress press, tiling things, retrofit benefit, expression session, banner manner, mahagony harmony, mission permission, boulevard guard, member emblem, mountain fountain, providence incidence, please grease, meditation medication, skull skill, scarce source, science scent, possession obsession, advice price, foam form, main pain, path math, rocket ticket, desert dessert, dream team, flink think, history mistery, hypnosis hypothesis, virtue tincture, deserve observe, helm overwhelm, justice juice, ground compound, governs caverns, entice mice, weeds proceeds, fear bear, (live and walking) stork stock, insist assist, murmur glamour, roof proofing, casting forecasting, inferior interior, only slowly
- Battle to/the victory.
- Strange idea to check for person names and years in monument data. Could one assemble a believable puzzle from the history behind unseen cultural objects?
- Recognized for keyword usage, rewarded for impractical, partial work.
- Sure, having no money to pay for the service. It's crisis after all. But it wasn't for the penthouse, the sports car, the private hotel/jet, the luxury villa, the expensive art, the holiday on the Maldives. So proud one can't even see where the problem is. Don't worry, selling a room from your penthouse or the carburetor of your sports car might be sufficient to find the right tone...
- Couldn't speak. Hired a group of random people supposed to make it better. Got a randomly bad result. Couldn't admit it in conversation so went to hire more... while trying to keep someone accountable for the original mistakes...
- Involvement, engagement, commitment, alignment, motivation. Show me yours first if you seek mine.
- "Take care of your employees and they'll take care of your customers." Good philosophy, but so rarely implemented.
- At least 2-3 zeros between every pair of ones in the matrix bit.ly/3kfm32P
- Wished I was able to help so many people. Unfortunately, stamina is very limited and has to be used wisely. Not for every and any purpose. On the topic of pet food, I clearly can't contribute much.
- That said, briefly remember that your web projects can't wait too.
- Participated in the planting of 2 cherries, 1 apricot and 1 peach trees (holes only). Wishing them best of luck in the years to come (no more wind, back resting now). Also went to fix the "hosting exhosted" (time) message, knowing it would be more inconvenient to deal with it in December.
- Used to think people play a whole golf game with a single club. Now learned there were woods, hybrids, irons, wedges and putters bit.ly/3nhBIAP ↗, where a player can carry a combination of up to 14 tools in their bag. All tuned for a specific task. Unclear how sustainable this is if many see only occasional use. (Reminds of keeping unused functions in code, just-in-case.) That said, "PGA Tour Superstore" currently has 1338 clubs on sale of which 393 (29.3%) belong to the brands "Callaway", "Tour Edge" and "TaylorMade".
- Looked at some key specs (engine power (hp), lift capacity (kg), shipping weight (lb), price ($)) in a list of 22 compact tractors (four series) by "John Deere" bit.ly/36gGZS3 ↗. Normalizing and dividing the product of the first two by the one of the second two, my script placed the model "3043D" (41.6hp, 944kg, 2840lb, $24558) on top. Lift capacity seems to increase with shipping weight bit.ly/38lT3Ea, perhaps also used as a counterbalance. Also appears that some models of the second and third series have the same lift capacity.
- Tried to relate road network length to total area for all US states bit.ly/3l92gn6. Initial expectation was that road density would be highest in states like California and New York. But the numerics tell a slightly different story. For instance, District of Columbia was said to have 446 miles of road spread over a terrtory of only 177km2, which placed it at the top of this rank. Connecticut has also cut many connections, which is something I missed so far. Rhode Island, New Jersey and Ohio follow. On the other side is Alaska with its 3316 miles of road over a territory of 1718000km2. Interesting that the road network in Texas also tends in this direction. But if most drivers still find it convenient and well-serving, then it might be more efficient. However, another source bit.ly/2Ikrale ↗ claimed that Texas roads were among the deadliest, citing ≈10 deaths/day. Unsure of the number of cars in this high-GDP state, since significantly more cars/km doesn't necessarily mean that the drivers themselves are less disciplined than elsewhere. They simply may have much more opportunities to crash.
- Wavy bars bit.ly/356OA6g
- Does your logistics company identify shipments which take comparably long delivery and cost more? Perhaps a scatterplot could give a hint which routes could have been more efficient.
- After trying to decide which offer looked more attractive—the mango or the "Moser Roth" choco (both priced at 0.96€)—decided it would be quicker to inspect the locations in Berlin where one could have them bit.ly/36cmndz. 10% (13 of 130) of the "ALDI Nord" stores were in the neighborhoods "Pankow" and "Neukölln".
- Amino acid content (g/16g nitrogen) in fermented soybeans (tempeh) at snapshots in time over a 72-hour period bit.ly/3l6Z6Qv. Double-checked the numbers since many of the the highest values were in the first column, while the index at the bottom was highest in the second. After 72 hours, the glucosamine rate became over 6x the original, but this is rather an exception. Was curious whether fermentation always improved the nutrients. One would need a lot more data to answer this question though.
- Interesting: one can monitor sheep health from their tablet. Or how the animal's heart rate changes after noticing a potential threat. Perhaps even design the dashboard for complete farm monitoring.
- Blue and purple snowflakes fabric at "Joann" bit.ly/3eAursv ↗. So many items in the fabric and yarn categories.
- Two things learned about farms happen to have mathematical nature. The outside environmental impact on the farm is smaller, the bigger it is. And trying to influence the soil composition after the fact is less than ideal since the quantity of the new soil will likely be negligibly small relative to the already present and also come at a much higher relative cost.
- Pumpkin work bit.ly/365Huyb
- Expect Sirius projects to take several light-years to complete. Asking to see them done by tomorrow assumes I'd be happy to inherit your lack of proper planning or mismanagement. Quite an assumption.
- Good project opportunities are far more difficult to come across (not growing on trees). Quality assurance expects these golden eggs lacking festive paint to weigh 24kg and be hidden among a small team of happy, long-ear rabbit guards.
- Savvy cats probably use open data and several open tabs to stay current on the hens in the neighborhood bit.ly/3l31Gak ↗
- A pig standing tall on two feet next to a human hanging from the ceiling with head towards the floor reminds of viewpoint inversion.
- Fearing that the strong carbon fork might break at the weakest link (the wooden handle). But steel feels as tensile as a chewing gum (needs spike straightening every 10 mins or so). Once tried to chop a stump into small pieces with a pickaxe, but missed the target and the majority of the stress was absorbed by the wooden handle, which split in two. Looked in disbelief because the trajectory of the heavy pick-head metal piece could have been different.
- Delays in days.
- Idea about balance of viewpoints in conversation: The faster one party speaks relative to another, the more they wait hearing their voice come through.
- Imagine the widths of an outside "door" and a hospital door as the mouths of joined container full of water (would be less familiar to say people walking through). Pressure applied at one mouth gets translated and felt to a measurable extent at the other (there are known equations for this). That pressure is applied at both mouths—people "swim" from home to hospital whenever ill and get released from it whenever healthy. Familiar from school. On which mouth do you think our individual influence could be more effective in keeping the water levels in balance?
- Bad practices are almost everywhere and the more one tries to get rid of them, the more firmly they seem to entrench themselves. Practices adapt to the people in power keeping them, who have an eye on movements trying to affect these. As soon as an opinion of their concern is voiced, they have the information to decide about the fututre form of operation to sustain the advantage. So pay attention for renamed and new companies either branching from old or coming up from their ashes. These constructs may be a reaction, not necessarily representing the change in mindset you would like to see. Not surprising why sentiment analysis on social networks is so prevalent. Teams of programmers are employed to track opinions and translate them into action recommendations. Everyone wants to hear your opinion on topics of direct interest for free. And then find a way to block your potential actions in advance.
- Do you feel empowered or weakened in this organization? What would be the right attributes of the type of work you want to do and the best environment to support you while doing it?
- Say "Happy day" if unhappy of pay.
- You don't want a motion sensor to toggle the outside lighting each time a cat passes by. Territoriality could mean someone is using a probabilistic amount of energy on your behalf even when you are absent. If that's not a problem, at least connect an outside temperature sensor to a heater and toggle as needed for increased fur comfort.
- The opposite is also true. If you can't trust your client, better to avoid working with them early rather than late.
- Suppose you look to order plants online. The photos look gorgeous, you get a much needed "extra" if you pay over a certain amount, you have to "rush" because the offer expires only in few hours. Perfect conditions to lure a client into the payment process early. Even when after arrival the plants themselves are a far cry from what they appeared in the photos (admittedly midst winter season). Too short, wrapped together very tightly across the stems in cheap scotch tape so they can hardly breathe, many yellow leaves, no proper labels to differentiate them, cheap-looking extra, no mention of return policy. Then you look at the address and find they came from a small, likely very poor city. It could be that someone there really needed this money, in which case this is fine. But what if someone tried to appear small whle capturing big funds for being web savvy and a good at convincing? (Creating such many-item website would definitely take me some time.) We may never know the truth. So whoever ordered the plants already learned their lesson.
- Apolitical, but was once asked why I didn't vote against a candidate. I said "I only vote for and never against" which brought some initial hesitation how to respond on the other side. After a brief moment they recouped with a long-circumference story which smoothly ended in the their original question. Smiled and didn't respond. They believed I was here to be convinced/converted. Think of for a second how many entities in life hinge on and live off subtle convincing.
- Bravely winning the battles, ingloriously losing the wars.
- Single screen with 8 tiled windows, switching what they show and trying to convince us how important the workflow is. Understandable that a 60-inch screen won't be enough to accomodate it all and still show it well. No proper sense of what's important and what isn't. What the web designer first decides about.
- Working on the web platform brings internal rewards and therefore the desire to do more of it. One is helping build the base on which future software applications and businesses can step. Yet, that platform is work-in-progress that is never finished. The participating forces of influence are plenty, struggling and all looking for a change to benefit them. Relying on building the platform first in order to build the business means you'll never get to business and starve early. Nothing honorable about that. Unless you have significant cash flow coming from a profitable business (to support the work), you'd be probably working on it full-time.
- Simple messages go further. Everyone knows what an electric car is about, what it does and where its value is. Cars and chargers tend to be very visual, easy-to-understand objects. So the message reaches a very wide audience. Now consider this compared to a company selling software for enterprise resource planning and supply chain management. The software itself is invisible and possibly focused on processes, which themselves are. To the average person, it's not clear where its immediate value lies. The message is bulky, slightly pretentious and addresses a much smaller audience able to appreciate it. What happens in many software companies is something similar: people sink in terminology conversations and documentations (sometimes in conflicts about proper wording or "better"), while missing the big picture of how their approaches are helping generate business value. More important are popular, yet contrived coding paradigms and workflows, polymorphism, open-closed principle, Observer and Flyweight patterns, BufferedReader, requestAnimationFrame instead of setInterval, XHR, YAML, Content-Disposition, yield, coroutines, lambdas, map/reduce, let instead of var, promises (async-await), no go-tos etc. Rather than the dollars they bring. Exporting the terminology is not something your clients deserve to deal with. They only want to know how it helps them solve their problems.
- According to a Netcraft survey, nginx has now bigger market share than Apache's web server bit.ly/2I6j2om ↗. Slightly below 250 million active websites and not a single one reporting problems of any kind.
- Guessing that "younger longer" starts with the "you" first.
- Missing the times raises the levels of regret. Self-reminder.
- Bookshop.org seems an interesting new initiative. Good to read about so many partnerships. At least setting up a more stable online voice.
- Sitting indifferently on the sideline. Instead of complaining about the lost book sales business, you could have invested, when the time was right, in a better online experience for your clients. One that creates more advantages for doing business with you relative to your competition. But now you have a website with small book covers and unreadable titles, making it difficult for them to buy online. You over-rely on limited number of offers in a tightly packed physical space at a good location (NYC). Probably making title search by the eye difficult, but benefitting from a personal touch with the reader. Overall, you see this doesn't go well. And convey the message it was unaffordable to improve, because clinging to the life of your business was the only right thing to do.
- Wondering how many mobile devices have "rest" software not working properly due to developer decisions to limit their support to newer devices (or where the money is). Software servers, app stores, URLs—all gone. The client bought a device hoping to use the software and now it has been deprived of useful functionality and updates. Trying to understand why this doesn't coincide with my definition of software development. Perhaps because I come from a school that has been taught early on that "it has to work no matter what". Somehow can't imagine a doctor turning off the life support of a COVID-19 patient.
- Seems to be open data about the rail network in France bit.ly/2TRY8fe ↗, in case you need it.
- Wondering about the effort it took to define the vertex 3D coordinates of the teapot primitive by hand. Several screens of numbers (freeglut_teapot_data.h). The tea itself would have long been done, but appreciation for the product comes only after its immediate use (serving warm in the cold weather).
- Progress is difficult and slightly asymmetric bit.ly/3mLGYfC
- Only slowly. Tick, tick time.
- Letter: "Dear caveman, you promised to send me a stalactite starter from the future..."
- Rushing to buy the TITAN without having good uses for it; producing lots of irrelevant content and signing papers with above-the-rest hardware specs; wondering what this has to do with "Titanic"...
- Reading a book that mentioned the "L'eggs" brand bit.ly/3kQTREF ↗. Most others were already known to me (except "Home Depot" which chose to remain "access denIed"). But may hurt to think of these profit margins and price-to-earnings ratios.
- Tick, tick time.
- Somewhat difficult to keep pushing several tons of car debt above head level. Untrained, tired, after the whey protein effect faded away, with conditionally shaky legs and a fly on the nose.
- Project shipping policies: (cheapest service, next door) || (best service, right door). Wouldn't make an uninformed choice either.
- A spline spliced with random value(s) would likely adversely impact the smoothing function.
- Trainer: "After regular excercise, to harden the musculature, continue with mathematical. In sets of twenty, if you can. You have to quack at the equation e-quake."
- "The mind (not some creatively shaped, overpriced bottle) emits the most stunning fragrance", said the genie isolated in the uppermost bottle.
- Interesting idea: Does your company use the right lubricants to mitigate the effect of the friction and wear you experience at work? Or no lubricant, maximum wear? Foolish to forget you are in it for the long-term. Accord work for four years (until broken) won't sustain your survival over the next fifty.
- By expectation, what is touched most rarely must surface-host the smallest amount of bacteria. (You'd still want to inspect the validity of this under microscope though.) Reason enough to own only the least-circulated, most-valuable banknotes.
- Sometimes you shift() a chocolate piece only to find out that the sins have spoken and you realize you can't reattach it back by unshift() or push(). But you would agree that crackng the middle only to enable the splice() operation virtually leaves the net total of this (otherwise stiff-frozen) data structure intact.
- Almost sure you would dislike seeing someone sell you "per-piece" functionality for your next project, so they can maximize their pay. You might want to avoid ending with a collection of patches from here and there.
- Device used for years, dissected, battery-exhausted, disk-removed, lid-hit, key-broken and/or pixel-dead. But priced "like new"—same as its supposed condition. Other people realized they could dissect further, selling the motherboard, display, WiFi card, CPU fan, each key plastic etc. And gain a lot more on the smallest scale. All of a sudden, there was a deficit of used, whole, untouched devices available at reasonable prices.
- Another week for valuable project runners (with a running satellite on the side to service them).
- Ran a small script to learn about the "Under Armour" store location choices. They listed a total of 184 stores in USA, which is slightly below my initial expectation. The states with most stores are Florida (18), California (14), Texas (13), Maryland (10), Pennsylvania (9) and New York (9). Ohio and Georgia have 6 stores each, but this is already noticeably less. Only 6 cities had more than one store: Orlando FL (6), Las Vegas NV (3), Sevierville TN (3), Branson MO (2), Washington PA (2) and Myrtle Beach SC (2). But the headquarters were said to be in Baltimore MD.
- Six, ten, maybe fifteen or twenty variables at a time before being overwhelmed by the visual picture of code. Good so, since you should be breaking the problem into pieces, they say. Until the pieces themselves become untrackable or spread across too many files (context switching). What I hoped for wasn't working with a collection of file state pictures, but by a brain video of memory accesses over a collection of imagination-limited count of draggable variables. Where ten or more in-video "fingers" are put over a cloud of variables and take required ones aside in real-time (or push back if no longer needed). Perhaps similar to the way a kid would test whether a puzzle piece fits. Where the mind calls variables 365, 451, 920-1050, 720 (and knows exactly what they are about by the index, without having to formulate their purpose) and drag-groups them to ensure upcoming meaningful operations (e.g. doesn't try to compare apples and pears). Where it applies some function on them to derive a new one it puts below, optionally does the same to several other collections and at the end simplifies in some way over the previous simplifications. To have a clean output about something of interest. Because for me that's where the value in the code lies. In the variables holding the data, not in all the intermediaries designed to allow access to them or intransparently minipulate ← them according to taste/minutia.
- If I flourish on the side of the mind, I'd rather have it open as widely as possible. It follows then that my biggest threat to well-being is a stiff, unflexible, unreceptive and proud mind.
- One mouth to speak, two ears to listen, billions of brain neurons to understand and appreciate.
- Wasn't aware India had so many dialects and that people feared expressing their opinion in one the other side might be unfamiliar with. To avoid being seen as different and isolated as a result. Why was it so difficult to speak together and wasn't this secondary now that corona threatens to isolate us all?
- Stretchy screens bit.ly/3eigxuN ↗ reminds of the famous clocks mo.ma/2HKqJkd ↗. Still not also 10000ppi though.
- "Understanding causality is the next challenge for machine learning" bit.ly/2TItqF7 ↗. The next previous one.
- The visual specification of this essential product bit.ly/382rTSW ↗ doesn't fully correspond to the numbers I see on the pack someone left here (x12, 90, HxW: 22 x 11.5cm, x3, 10m). Wait a second... this sheet height is... someone bought the kitchen rolls!
- Trying to code your own luck realistically is a difficult excercise bit.ly/34IoNRQ. The ideas can evolve, but the code likely not so well with them bit.ly/34ModCv. What has been cut before "train" is 370mph.
- Learned the hard way of O(n) bonplexity bit.ly/3kNvsQl. Difficult to self-isolate from the attention seekers calling you.
- Raindrop with vision functionality bit.ly/3oM0hHC. So this is what enables it to target my head so well each time.
- Noticed that Kaufland will start selling "King Star" tires next week and wrote a small script considering their numeric properties (tire width (mm), height:width aspect ratio, rim diameter, max weight (kg), max speed (km/h), price (converted to $)). Among all models, it ranked the most expensive tire first bit.ly/34JDjJ7
- "Student debt is a drag on household formation and homeownership." Fortunate to have avoided the debt aspect. Not that this didn't cost some loss of opportunity, but I find this more bearable. Can't wait for someone else to create the opportunities for me either.
- These rounded lines have a fairly simple code bit.ly/34KL5lX. On the other side, what I dislike is the certain degree of "graininess" of this plotter bit.ly/2THXn8e. Still using it quite often though, because on this machine it ends being much faster.
- "Die dunkle Seite der Schokolade" bit.ly/35U1wLY ↗. Will have to deal with the last few chocobons without choking.
- An overworked, underpaid, in-coma expert bit.ly/2Gf1mpT. To a stranger, it looks as if the intelligent glasses were on, but actually tried to pack the rests. The body language is welcoming though.
- Liked the precision and variance in this ruler bit.ly/37UEyqT. Unsuitable for pixel measures, but critical to understand along the entire length early in life. Would be interesting to see a Chinese version with truly important symbols, their meaning and rationale behind inclusion. Several depth levels may be used to show how small changes alter the meaning at each level.
- Strange voice spoke, so turned around to see what was going on bit.ly/35PUGaw
- RGB pie bit.ly/3eaAF24
- The homeless cat received a fish head and the bone cracking sound could scare away any sporadic passerby. Then thought for a second I could have been at its place.
- The sunset was nice reminding me of still being alive, but not kicking enough. Constraint concerns.
- Quick experimental figure bit.ly/31WDvmq
- Used existing open data to look at the utilization of ICU beds and ventillators in Indiana bit.ly/3mBb5WV. Slight uptick in bed usage.
- Could be a reason behind the behavior, so being neutral to the response helps. When you greet someone and they don't say anything and only pass by, this may not necessarily mean they have something against you. Once you understand that vocal cords can be removed due to cancer, you see the experience from an entirely new light.
- A school building weighting 7600t "walked" 62m in a district of Shanghai cnn.it/3mBziwp ↗
- CV entry: "Dissolved the company while solving the problem."
- Spacing between cultivated mushrooms reminded of equally spaced points.
- Depending on how often one calls "911 softwares", they might have a problem. Can't deal with so many effectively, but thanks for asking.
- Beryllium: very stiff, high melting point, high capacity to absorb heat. Also learned of the lightweight Mg-Li alloy and was already thinking of a bike frame when another source cautioned "reacts violently with water". Now will have to investigate CFRP.
- Mummy cloths in ancient Egypt (4000 BC) were reported to have been made of ramie (strong and long). Natural fiber was used back then.
- Typical properties of natural fibers bit.ly/2TxNJVF
- "Spider's thread has a tensile strength of about 700MPa, but a density of only 1.3g/cm3 giving it a specific strength that is 6x greater than steel of identical tensile strength." (Source: "Steels: Microstructure and properties") Slow forging to wrap the prey.
- Read/write speeds of 5000/4400MB are becoming increasingly accessible (not here yet).
- "Irregularities of the wheel tread excite vibrations of the wheels/rails, followed by emissions of noise (rolling noise)." One issue leads to another until the whole system rattles.
- In Queensland Citytrain fleet data bit.ly/2HHWha7, script noticed the following relations for 3-car sets: length-weight (0.98), length-seating capacity (-0.84), length-standing capacity (0.86), weight-seating capacity (-0.90), max speed-total capacity (-0.69). But inference is far too limited with only eight observations.
- Wasn't aware of the use of dispersants as a way to mitigate oil spill risks (as seen in the excerpt of "Oil spill science and technology" by Mervin Fingas). Reminds me of what is happening on the ground through the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Only that this chemical input is affecting the oceans. Agree that oil spills are very photogenic, which may cause us to insist fixing them quickly, while the long-term effects of the unseen pollutants/hazards continue to linger. In fact, the book further mentions aromatics (benzene, toluene, xylene), so while someone is working on an oil spill problem, they may get exposed to the harmful PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), which were said to make few percent of the contents of crude oil. If correctly understood, before an oil spill is eventually burned, a permission must be obtained. Sounds reasonable, considering the potential emissions from this. Another astonishing fact is that already in 2005, the ocean volume was said to hide 8500 large shipwrecks. Perhaps an entire tourism is flourishing at those depths.
- Using computer vision to count how many people passed through a door does not seem a proper use of the energy to me. Why not use a simpler, non-capturing sensor and avoid dealing with the high number of high-dimensional objects that images are? And if security is of concern, image analysis should still not happen for tasks that have nothing to do with it. Better to use the least energy for the task.
- Next year, again (if we are still alive and respectful).
- Area and population for the islands in Fiji having more than 100 inhabitants bit.ly/3msJJT0. You may know less about these. Including Viti Levu and Vanua Levu would have skewed the diagram, so they were omitted (see note). Bau Island seems to be somewhat unique, because on a small area of 0.1km2 are said to live 300 people. Three islands (Kadavu, Taveuni, Ovalau) are said to have ≈10000 people. According to Wikipedia data, 54 islands don't have inhabitants and another 68 have only a single individual.
- Area and population for the Canadian islands bigger than 1000km2 bit.ly/3kApylk. Vancouver Island and Newfoundland are said to be most populated, whereas Baffin Island, Victoria Island and Ellesmere Island are having the biggest areas.
- A numerated list of frequently asked questions and a number the reader types to get the answer of a specific one... Perhaps more accessible than mouse-only navigation, expecting a click on a carefully positioned plus icon...
- Learned that amaranth too can be sprouted. Perhaps better than pure soaking and less laborious than fermenting. Problem is, my mind is frequently elsewhere, so the few attempts to sprout anything have failed. One result became smelly, another attempt led to seeds falling apart in water... Perhaps I'll get it right one day after learning to use reminders, but for now the excitement for this option is missing (since software reminders tend to be quite CPU hungry and working all the time).
- Interesting: Researchers found that the further away one goes from a water source, the more noticeable the traces left by humans and animals become. Somewhat calming that if the filter in the treatment plant handles bacteria, plastic particles should not be able to pass through as well.
- We most frequently measure the measurable (reminder to myself). Without having the means to measure carbon monoxide, for instance, we are no longer as concerned about its concentration. Minnesota Open Data had a nice list of chemical names in their "air quality" dataset—a testimony of how much passes through us undetected. But rulers to measure length and scales to measure weight are ubiquitous.
- Idea: Assign a specific note to each "if" nesting level in a long piece of code someone wrote and see how the totality of music will play out. Can't realize it, admittedly, as not versed in any audio libraries.
- "...it needs outsiders to come in and carry out a transformation." Strange. Why not execute with the already nicely overpaid insiders? Shouldn't they deserve the money they are worth? Or you plan to attract the outsiders with a premium on top of that?
- When they realize they'll need you in the future, their gifts will be not only on time and slightly out-of-budget, but those items would be as numerous as the raindrops falling from the sky.
- Full stadiums, empty (of personnel and volunteers) hospitals. Entertainment is easy-to-access, expertise is hard/costly to acquire and develop.
- Corona lets one prove their claim they know 20 programming languages. If after self-isolation they couldn't apply this powerful arsenal of skills to a single practical application which sells well, how trustworthy were their claims from the outset? Stay away from those explaining the skills of their colleagues for their own (which is how they got to 20).
- Morning road congestion continues to increase despite corona and more feel desperate to enter the flow. To be alike. To be one of the many. To fit in rather than stand out. If they were looking desperately for skills and expertise rather than spending time around people thriving on lies and promises, how many of them would be in that situation?
- "To live really one has to let death into their life." What else finds better channels for our activities, right?
- You can have up to 2-3 "off" tones on this important musical piece today bit.ly/35Dne6N. Wing wind noise doesn't count. Image is from latest issue of the freely available Max Planck Research Magazine.
- The validity of the advice to look out for the proportions is also easy to spot in the context of landscape or interior design. Look at a photo of a small kitchen with an oversized refrigerator. Suggests that a single usage scenario (eating) is more important than washing (small sink), food preparation (small cutting area) or socialization (place for 1-2 chairs at most). Sometimes the constraints make this more obvious.
- A process is established for standardization, efficiency and profit. After some initial time and effort, employees can learn to follow or scale it. A mindset, on the other side, is much harder to reproduce consistently and is often an attribute of a single individual. Perhaps the client bought the product due to some unique line of thought that closely resembled their own thinking. Now they feel inclined to ask for more of it. Because the company has already satisfied them once, it incorrectly believes it is in a good position to do it again. But it is possible that internal struggle for influence and employee fluctuation have made the observed outcome uncertain. Perhaps only few people in the entire organization were trying to prove the mindset the client was looking for and now their voices are either unavailable or muted due to new forces or organizational strategy. So the client has to look elsewhere. Two choices show through: 1) to always seek desirable, consistent outcomes from the fewest minds and hands or 2) seek a fast, cheap, zero-defect, all-alike production from a "mindless" process. Pick one.
- There must be beauty in how it works too, not only in how it looks. When someone opens the hood, what they see in an engine should be a natural extension of what they saw about this model from a distance. In other words, count the number of visible elements the manufacturer chose to bother you with. Look how well they are organized. And think whether you could find parallels to good web design.
- Always important to answer your own questions through code first (even if this doesn't leave time to answer those of others). Of course, if you receive the right payment first, you could inverse the order.
- Had the idea to create two vertical bars (with country flags on top) representing a year and points on them for the dates of the public holidays in China and Japan in order to look for overlapping ones. But many holidays don't seem to have fixed dates. For instance, "5th day of 5th Lunisolar month" or "third Monday of July" would be difficult to set accurately.
- "The shorter vector" pattern bit.ly/3dYj5y7
- Your colors will likely be better than mine bit.ly/3jsoEWS
- One less obvious disadvantage of pie charts is that when several are placed close together, one may not immediately identify which pie portion an in-between label refers to.
- Expected that "Lindt & Sprüngli" annual report would contain large photos with small chocolate worlds. Partially so. They opted to share the addresses of the production factories to equip one for a rabbit-life time.
- Created from epitrochoid equations bit.ly/3dRBJrm
- Distance vs. visual magnitude for the brightest stars, excluding Sun bit.ly/2HxZpFs. You may recognize Sirius at the bottom left of the diagram. Canopus is not one I've heard about. Among the visible names, only Vega, Betelgeuse, Altair and Aldebaran sound somewhat familiar to me. Interesting how transferrable the bright shining concept is to human context.
- Sinusoids bit.ly/34mPEmm
- Parsed the parsley today and upon inspecion of who was getting full sun, this is what I found bit.ly/3omsgx6
- Room temperature almost reaches the desired level now, naturally. The only problem is that this happens on an open window, at night (22:00), approaching the end of October.
- Also liked this observation that raising chilled water temperature by 0.6°C can reduce refrigerator energy usage by ≈1.75% ("Air-conditioning system design manual", 2007). Even if not quite accurate or small-detail, finding such evidence-based relationships matters.
- Lowest price first selection policy is not an acceptable long-term business practice for great buildings bit.ly/35nH1Hs. Same with great software.
- Heaviest transformer among the first 500 results on "Digikey" bit.ly/3kmx1EE (Signal Transformer HPI-35, 28.6kg). Has max power of 3500VA. This means max power-to-weight of 0.1223VA/g. Only "24-100" (2400VA, 19.5kg) is slightly better 0.1230VA/g. Both datasheets refer to belfuse.com.
- "Flow with grace. Don't jump." - Jack Ganssle
- Wordplay: abonnement abandonment, fortune torture, greed indeed, rock stock, oil toil, fuel funnel, design resigns, paraffin puffin, product consumer, compound rebound, spirit sprout, manure-facture, uses excuses, sun run, squid liquid, shelve twelve
- Behavioral economics means you choose kale over ice cream due to concerns about the long-term cost bit.ly/3dL8Mxt. Then reality breakfast comes and you are no longer so sure.
- Sad to read deer are dying by eating plastic bags.
- Couldn't respect/pay well? Be gone, big one.
- Saw an article on "Tom's Hardware" bit.ly/3m5BAnh and looked for hints in the table about score, average clock, memory size, memory type and power usage of various GPUs. GeForce RTX 3090 with 24GB GDDR6X was setting a reference score of 100%. The data is quite small to say anything with certainty, but noticed that few pairs looked interesting: memory type-score (0.634), memory size-score (0.699), memory size-power (0.732), power-score (0.802). That power use is determining the score to such extent is in my opinion unfortunate. We must be cautious that faster GPUs don't become accelerators of global warming.
- Good to hear about a no-vacuum cheese policy. Fresh and high-quality products only. And if a single cheese cake was made of the milk of 20 sheep, it wouldn't feel fair/sustainable to finish it in few meals.
- Median price per gram by cheese type at "Murray's" bit.ly/3ofcu76. Didn't expect to see so many products. Types that appear more expensive (at least on the surface) are "Truffle Cheese", "Swiss & Nutty", "Gruyere", "Alpine Style" and "Brie & Creamy". On the cheaper side seem to be "Fontina & Melting", "Grilling Cheeses", "Italian Cheese", "Gouda" and "Cheddar". One could see that 1lb (453g) of "Parmigiano Reggiano" sells for $25-37, for instance. Update: Made the mistake not to check for duplicates across the categories, but this is fixed now.
- Page counts by year for the novels by Stephen King bit.ly/3obpJG5. Sadly "Insomnia" and one of the "Dark Tower" labels overlap, as well as "Dreamcatcher" and "Black House". Unsure why "The Stand" appears twice (works from 1978 and 1990). Could be a sequel or another variant, but the new page count exceeded that of "It". Have only partially read the latter, bought "Bag of Bones" and received "Dreamcatcher".
- Page counts by year for the various standalone works by Dean Koontz bit.ly/2Hlhp5Q
- The border colors of the central area lean on four function contributions bit.ly/37lj5XP
- Cities by population in Australia bit.ly/35e3nuN. Includes information about 394 locations as seen on World Population Review. Exploratory, so not clean. Interesting pattern on the north-east I wasn't aware of (almost equal spacing between moderately big cities on the shoreline). But most of the bigger cities are in the east to south-east part of the country, tending to be close to the sea. The 3th and 6th largest—Brisbane and Gold Coast,—are said to be ≈70km from each other, on a straight line. Central and north Australia look particularly city-sparse.
- Do not attempt to translateY a big chunk of multiple-screen text.
- Something is wrong if one can make and serve coffee throughout throughput (or through output).
- Week left to re-bird-day. Hoping for more composite material to strenghten the worn-off feathers so I can fly in more directions and much further without getting exhausted.
- Here are few interesting details as seen in the excerpt of "Materials science and engineering properties"' by Charles Gilmore. Firefighters wear fabric clothes made of Nomex. Oriented ultra-high molecular-weight polyethylene (OUHMWPE, sometimes seen as Spectra) is used in bullet-proof vests, kite boards, fishing lines, high-performance sails and cut-resistant gloves (regarding gardening I guess). TiNi was said to be used in stents and implants. Wouldn't easily recall PVC for use as floor tiles.
- Current median road bike prices at "Merlin Cycles", "Tweeks", "Wiggle", "Mello Velo", "Full Cycle" and "University Bicycles" (ubikes.com) appear to be ≈£2825 (94 bikes), ≈£1800 (17 bikes), 2081.65€ (53 bikes), $2199 (47 bikes), $2100 (23 bikes) and ≈$3850 (80 bikes) respectively.
- Someone took on the repetitive lettering work bit.ly/357pOBU
- dummerAugust because of trouble finding it elsewhere.
- Wished to make an entire rectangle of such rhombi, but that felt slightly too slow for my taste bit.ly/2HePiF9
- On a virus which may convert liars to truth-tellers and vice versa, where you have a single question to identify them all bit.ly/2H9AxDW ↗
- Single-loop sectors bit.ly/2IHgzkq
- Liked few ideas from the excerpt of "The gene: An intimate history" by Siddhartha Mukherjee. That our capacity to understand/manipulate the human genome alters our concept of what it means to be "human". That bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were said to share a strong genetic link. From a geometric perspective, a mother and father can be seen as two independent sides with the child being their biological hypotenuse (decoding their individual sets of instructions). The current Earth is result of natural forces which evolved over millions of years. The power needed for a change has to be proportional to the time the thing to be changed was in use. We could try to understand aspects about the future by examining relics of the past.
- Find a garden bit.ly/37fuMiH ↗. A botanical garden with fresh air for the mind and WiFi support for the electronics would be a dream.
- Cutting speeds by material type at a milling machine bit.ly/2IG9Ua7. Tried to make sense of the data in the source. A cutting tool made of carbide was said to enable an increase in cutting speed (to finish the work faster).
- Pushing the status quo into the next week sums the costs of living both. A stitch in time saves nine.
- "It will be a big event." Good only if it's able to compensate for an entire year spent in passivity.
- Put a ruler on the page of an old notebook to measure line heights. You may find they vary in 0.75-0.90cm, the lines being in hindering blue rather than unobtrusive pale gray. Paper quality seems to have been of medium importance, since a slight yellow tinge has started to overwhelm the white. The edges of the paper curled high. It feels thin and tint would likely show through. Taking two neighbor pages and approaching their lines against each other shows visible deviations. Quality has long-term repercussions which we can't easily wipe with an eraser after an over-enthusiastic single-day performance.
- "And if someone does appear to have accomplishments in a variety of domains with fungible currency, their total status should not be a sum or multiple, but merely the status of their single most impressive feat." Status (sigh). We aren't here for status or to be reduced/labeled as people who did x. So you say we shouldn't provide value if it was lower than the previous one or didn't look as impressive. Such a flawed logic.
- Only at a single place. Once.
- Not a fan of alcohol in general, but saw that "Carlsberg" was listing 688 beer products by beer type and ABV content. Gave script the task to compute the types with the lowest and highest median ABV content. Starting with the lowest, "water" and "low alcohol" had ABV of 0%, whereas "alcohol-free" had 0.5%. Next came "Radler" with median ABV of 2%. But what followed was a sharp spike to "Light Pilsner" with median ABV of 4.3%. "Pilsner" itself was represented by 121 drinks with median ABV of 4.8%. This made it the most numerous category, followed by "Pale Lager" (59 drinks, 4.6%) and "alcohol-free" (49 drinks). The highest median ABV had "Strong Pilsner" (7.0%), "Bock" (7.0%), "Stout" (6.9%) and "India Pale Ale" (6.25%). 17 other beer types fell in the tight bin of 4.5-5.5%.
- Side-by-side nutrient comparison of some more or less exotic fruits as reported by USDA bit.ly/35gwtKj. Coconut looks rich in minerals and avocado in many other nutrients. But they would also cover the fat dimensions well.
- Liked the "Agriculture, forestry and fishery statistics" report by Eurostat bit.ly/354LHC1 ↗. Information dense with lots of colorful diagrams and EU country profiles. Recommended read if you are interested about what is grown or produced in the EU. Sharing only few details referring mostly to 2018 here. The numbers in parentheses reflect EU totals. Sugar beet and potatoes are the two main crops grown in Europe. Over 1/4 of the apples within the EU were produced in Poland and over 1/2 of the oranges came from Spain. Spain and Italy produced 2/3 of all tomatoes (16.7 million tons); Spain and The Netherlands produced 2/5 of all onions (5.3 million tons); UK and Poland produced 27.8% of the carrots (5.3 million tons). Italy, Spain and France produced 29.2%, 26.0% and 24.3% of the grapes respectively (25.7 million tons). Spain and Italy produced 71.9% and 14.7% of the olives (12.9 million tons), although there was a sharp drop in Italy (-25.6%) due to disease. Of the 30.1 million tons of drinking milk, 6.8 million tons were due to UK. 46.1 million tons of whole milk were said to produce 2.4 million tons of butter. A cow in one country can give up to 3x the milk of a cow in another. Based on country data, linear regression showed that 4.5 million cows would produce ≈32.5 million tons of milk. 3/4 of Finland and Sweden were said to be forests. Most of the EU fish is catched in the north-est Atlantic. Norway produces more aquaculture products that the rest of the EU (1.3 million tons salmon) and is world-second after China. 2/3 of the farmed tuna came from Malta.
- Lo payn, no gain.
- My first contour plot appears very carpet-like bit.ly/3nRpMqo
- Saw a nice diagram of bilateral trade flow between countries.
- Founding date of some cities in China bit.ly/2IvZ32r. According to data on Wikipedia, so no guarantee of being accurate. Had the idea of trying to look for noticeable patterns of expansion. Seems that big cities like Beijing and Shanghai were among the first to appear in October 1949. Interesting that Guangzhou appeared 5 years later (1954), while Shenzhen was said to be founded in 1979. And yet, in terms of population, Wikipedia estimates Shenzhen to be slightly bigger than Guangzhou. What we see with many blue dots here (older cities) is that they are somewhat closer to the eastern shoreline, whereas red dots often tend to be around blue. Darker red shades (more recent cities) seem to have appeared around Chengdu (middle to southwest), for instance. Feel free to correct me if wrong.
- In the case of cruciferous vegetables (at least some of those mentioned on the Wikipedia's page), there seem to be no duplicate data. Included nutrient tables for watercress (which I grew once in a pot, but got too small), cauliflower, broccoli, green cabbage and red cabbage. All before and after adding kale bit.ly/373ywDF (click to enlarge). Unexpected this result. But never saw kale on sale here, I believe.
- Decided to compare the nutrients of five common seeds according to USDA FoodData Central bit.ly/2H0M1ZY. Do you see a problem? Hint: Compare the values in the first and last column. They appear to be the same. It is not clear, whether these numbers belong to chia or flax seeds. If you wish compare the original pages related to FDC IDs 784466 and 784468. Another reason to always double-check the data (and not blindly trust what you read here).
- "The dopamine system is most powerfully stimulated when the information coming in is small so it doesn't fully satisfy." Almost a shame so many business models extensively use this.
- Ever got migration migraine? Perhaps you tried to switch the service provider...
- Possibly true, although you don't normally think of it. That more expensive couches could nurture bigger potatoes. Good you reminded me of this different type of soil.
- One simple change a bakery could implement is using only extra virgin olive oil and not reusing it between different batches loaded on the same tray (sometimes for a week). Looking at the bottom side, there could be black fallow even when a bun appears well-baked. May indicate a cheap cooking oil has been heated at such a degree that it has become toxic. Despite the extra production cost, the savings clients realize on their long-term health (especially if this is a food they consume every day) can be substantial. Which means it is a good thing to do. Flour quality is important too, but you already sense my idea of "high-quality inputs, high-quality outputs", which is the inverse of "garbage in, garbage out".
- This idea to surround contruction buildings in cocoons is good. Imagine how much fine particulate matter is trapped and falls at a single place as opposed to being wind-spread through an entire city. And yet, so many construction sites seem under-equipped for such protection. Much cheaper to deal with the cause at the spot rather than battle the much more expensive effect after the fact.
- Calcite was said to be present in (sea)shells and limestone and also soluble in water. Curious how much of this mineral a healthy soil could tolerate. Corals produce minerals too, but are already in a difficult situation.
- Few takeaways from the excerpt "Sustainable food systems from agriculture to industry": The fruits with the highest production worldwide (in million tons) were said to be bananas (100), watermelons (99), apples (71), grapes (68). Vegetables: fresh vegetables (249), tomatoes (154). Milk, cheese, meat production and storage were said to be energy-intensive. Pest fighting with ozone, electrolyzed water (water+salt), hydrostatic high-pressure (said to be widely used in industry). Saw light irradiation and ultrasound mentioned too, but if correctly interpreted, the former methods were seen as preferable. Desirable low-input practice: water, nutrients, pest control, land, energy, human effort. Problem: undesirable long distance between production and consumption locations. The composting process can emit ammonia (NH3). Earthworms were labeled "ecosystem engineers" with several sizes depending on the soil depth at which they are found. Smallest ones are found at the top layer, while the largest ones burrow at 30-90cm depth. Their regeneration capacity varies with soil depth from high to limited. Which reminds me of a quote from yesterday that the largest animals are most rare.
- "This site is updating..." Why not in real-time?
- Wordplay: grocery glossary, inflation inflammation, pricey parsley, unit prune-it, lake intake, air impair, haste waste, drug drag, understating understanding, comedy remedy, spline discipline, refuse-to-confuse, lack of feedback, precipitation perspiration, evidence cadence, plant implant, meteor furore, tensor tosser, sucrose suppose, throws eyebrows, comparison prison, lifeblood likelihood, replenish fish, average coverage, largest harvest, benign sign, fraction of distraction
- Two different sources claim that glomerular filtration rate attributed to our kidneys is 180l/day.
- Do you have a weekly meal plan or engage in snacking as needed?
- Quarter-joke: Sent now, gifts have two weeks time to arrive on time for the upcoming birthday. As long as the date and shipping address were known (stone meeting a shovel). Not even half, since it's unaffordable to risk human lives for personal satisfaction. Better to have you stay healthy and safe while maximizing your lifetime value (as a potential customer).
- Another week means you could finally address your postponed projects, whether here or not.
- v5.9 has been released now too.
- Linux kernel release dates bit.ly/3lAoTR7. Does not include release candidates. Experimental, but enables one to see longer lines. Recent releases were v4.4.238, v4.9.238, v4.10.150, v4.14.200, v5.4.70 and v5.8.14. Wondering how they manage to support so many lines at the same time.
- Sounds plausible: "There can't be more antelopes than there are antelope jobs." Forgetfulness: Human jobs taking precedence over all others.
- Unintentionally found this interactive explanation of some pyramid dimensions bit.ly/36Okoyh ↗
- First time seeing the geometric mean used as an estimator: estimate = sqrt(lower boundexpected * upper boundexpected). Often used in "Guesstimation" as well.
- Excerpt of "Cell biology by the numbers" says that viruses appear to be the most abundant biological entity on Earth (≈1031 particles) or 108 viruses for every cell in our bodies. As humans, we are clearly outnumbered.
- Whenever I hear a less noisy laptop fan or a wind turbine blade, I will thank the owls now.
- Ran a small script passing through 93 "Bernat" yarns available at "Yarnspirations" and used properties like gauge (fine to coarse), weight (g), length (m), recommended needle (mm) and price ($) to inspect for interesting yarn finds. What I found is that most of these yarns were containing large percentage of either acrylic or polyester (sometimes mixed with a small percentage of nylon). But we've seen that these are synthetics and I was looking for natural yarn fiber. As such "Bernat Handicrafter Cotton Yarn (400g/14oz), Off White" bit.ly/34G9Tu3 ↗ (medium, 100% cotton, 400g, 650m, 4.5mm needle, $12.74) or "Bernat Handicrafter Cotton Ombres Yarn (340g/12oz)" bit.ly/3nvqlpz ↗ (medium, 100% cotton, 340g, 524m, 4.5mm needle, $12.74) may fulfill the requirement. If you seek value in one of the synthetic types, "BERNAT Baby Velvet Yarn, Seafoam" bit.ly/3lu2SU6 ↗ (medium, 100% polyester, 300g, 450m, $8.79) might be interesting. Another example of knitting with data.
- Sowing at staging and cropping at production sounds familiar to me.
- Foot length (mm) for various shoe sizes by gender at "Clarks" bit.ly/34CtJq1. A lot more flapping, these men (one of those small-feet plappers). Idea was to show that as the toes approach the ground, one could animate a growing shoe acccording to the size chart. Hit the display of a foot pump several times (during intensive pumping) to find out that your feet isn't as small as it temporary appears in the upper position.
- Too much orbital junk and rockets navigating through it via obstacle avoidance, says article.
- Square cards made of rotated squares bit.ly/2I2j93Y. Expanding your collection.
- A large bathing detail bit.ly/2GS0IhN. Barely fits in the basin, difficult to spin this weight by hand, particles may fall off, inefficient cleaning near the inner edge... What did I subscribe for? All functions.
- Water network in Bern, Switzerland bit.ly/3lp8VJn in case someone needs it.
- Having few takeaways from the excerpt of "Handbook of yarn production". The classification of natural fibers included flax, jute and hemp from vegetable stem, cotton from vegetable seed, wool from animal hair and silk from animal filament (silkworm). Rayon was depicted as regenerated man-made fiber, while polyamide, polyester, acrylic and polyolefine as synthetic man-made fibers. Guess, we'll develop even more appreciation for the natural in the years to come. But didn't know that cotton is susceptible to attack by 500 different insects (pesticide application), or that microorganisms in untreated wool can cause anthrax unless killed by heat. Curious that flax fiber (used in linen) was said to survive temperatures below zero (unlike other fibers) making it suitable to reinforce composite materials used in cars. Didn't know the finer Merino wool is commonly seen in Australia and New Zealand, supported by production coming from Romney, Coopworth and Perendale sheep breeds.
- Couldn't capture power usage for most of the 100 ASUS monitors, which made a similar score dfficult. But if we omit this dimension, impression makes the VA panel "ROG Swift PG43UQ" bit.ly/33Btc8I ↗ (43", 3840 x 2160 @ 144Hz, 1ms, 48W, 15.3kg). One may also consider the IPS panel "TUF GAMING VG27AQ1A" bit.ly/3iDCs02 ↗ (27", 2560 x 1440 @ 170Hz, 1ms, 35W, 5.4kg). Note that ASUS also has a 360Hz model ("ROG Swift 360Hz PG259QN"). Maximal estimated power usage across all models was said to be 700W (by a 64.5" model) and maximal weight was 15.3kg.
- Considering all 125 Acer monitors (US site) and exactly the same dimensions, we are able to see that the TN panel "XG270HU omidpx" acer.co/3lnw3bp ↗ scores first. This model is 27", with resolution of 2560 x 1440, refresh rate of 144Hz, response time of 1ms, power consumption of 27.81W and weight with stand of 3.85kg. Currently its price is set to $370. Considering only IPS models (most common, a total of 60), an interesting model might be "VG270K bmiipx" acer.co/3iBUyj5 ↗ (27", 3840 x 2160 @ 60Hz, 1ms, 31.62W, 4.76kg). Currently, it is priced at $350. Maximal power usage across all models (power on) was said to be 73W and maximal weight was 10.11kg.
- My script couldn't rank 14 monitors across 39 existing models on the LG website as they were missing at least one of the following: size (in), x resolution (px), y resolution (px), refresh rate (Hz), response time (ms), typical power consumption (W), weight with stand (kg). Across the 25 left, it seemed to like the TN panel "UltraGear 24GL600F" bit.ly/3jBgKeF ↗, which got the highest combined score. It's a 23.6", 1920 x 1080 @ 144Hz model with response time of 1ms, power usage of 30W and weight (with stand) of 3.7kg. If one prefers an IPS panel by this brand, "27UL650-W" bit.ly/3iHyaoM ↗ may become interesting (27", 3840 x 2160 @ 60Hz, 5ms, 36W, 6.2kg). What I found interesting is that typically, 144Hz models have higher power demands, but they are often paired with 4K resolution, which may be a contributing factor. If you wonder, maximal typical power usage across all models was 140W and maximal weight was 15.2kg.
- Worked with LG monitor data until the following came out about screen resolutions bit.ly/2GkZyvD. Clearly, they don't have a standard way to describe this dimension. Horizontal and vertical resolution may be divided by "x" or " x ". Refresh rate was divided by "@", " @", " @ ", "at", "/" or new line. Few models have pixel depths specified inbetween (8bit, 10bit), but most don't. Wondered why the HTML wasn't responding to my class "tech-specs" and after few minutes realized it was called "tech-spacs", but not by me.
- Didn't have much time during the day (hope you had a good one), so posting now. Some properties of the small angle grinders by "Makita" bit.ly/2F3KRfN. Don't blindly trust it, see the note.
- 311 service requests in Austin, Texas (01.01.2014 - 04.10.2020) bit.ly/2SnsVQa. They don't appear to come evenly from the whole city territory. The points are small, but they are 977593. Would have been nice to plot in color according to date created, but this would take time that is hard to justify. Wished request reason was also included in the data.
- Difficult to feed this machine fast enough with new web material bit.ly/3nfUQzN
- Triangles with two fixed and one variable point, all lying on a semicircle bit.ly/2HSdhdz
- Triangular subdivision of a pentagon (9.3kB) bit.ly/3d4IWEk
- Feels like winter unfolding may soon go out of spiral bit.ly/30w5KYq
- Color bars (2.1kB) bit.ly/2SqrjVW
- The stronger the heat, the harder the clay becomes. Working with it was said to be like playing with mud.
- Still old-fashioned. Saw a pack of six transparent glasses and measured their dimensions in pixels (instead of thinking about fractions of inches) bit.ly/2GB2941. Base and height came out as 126px and 134px accordingly, so base/height is ≈0.94. Wished for something more like ≈0.73 (min. 2/r + 1/h; 2*r + h <= 3), yet for many the ratio was 0.5 or lower (small base, tall). Hand appears to be able to hold comfortably a base diameter of up to 6.5cm, with minimal finger squeezing (handles). Which means the ideal transparent cup for me would have 6.5cm base and 8.9cm height (volume: 295.18cm3). The base diameter of the depicted cups is given as ≈8.6cm, which necessitates an additional handle, but also enables an increase in kept volume. Their height is ≈9.5cm, for a volume of ≈551.55cm3. This is 86% higher than the volume of my cup without handle, but comes against a weight of ≈61.2g (13/6 = 2.16oz). Perhaps a bit more than a skinny person wants to frequently lift.
- Population of Detroit, Michigan (1900-1918) bit.ly/30uBVro. As you can see, 18 years were sufficient to more than triple the population. Back then, hotel rooms were starting from $1 and the city had 12 library branches. Currently, Detroit Public Library lists only 6 branches, but perhaps they got much better.
- Was looking at specs of mixer trucks, but couldn't find any that satisfied me. Perhaps these come close bit.ly/3ivU6Tn ↗. Drum capacity of several models was around 10m3, but here we see that it is not fully utilized during mixing. Once operating, drum revolution is said to be up to 15rpm, the mixing process being supported by a water tank of ≈300l. Discharge happens at a rate of 0.01-0.05m3/s @ 6-8rpm. Quite interesting for a balloon-chasing kid like me. Hypothesized that if so many buildings are made of concrete, the delivery technology is likely fine-tuned.
- "You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus". A good one from Mark Twain.
- iPot music doesn't start to play until satisfying the 16GB of soil requirement.
- Price distribution by brand (as stacked bars) for the performance road bikes at "Bike Depot", Toronto bit.ly/2EVttJY. In this case, some of the cheaper bikes seem to be "Cannondale". We see red bars double somewhere around 3000 and 5000C$. "Specialized" bikes seem to be more present in the upper price segment.
- Herzblattpflanze bit.ly/3cSriTV ↗ and a prickly brain bit.ly/2HMf4kh ↗ for some contrast. With "Dehner" you cannot hope about saving much in the same way. Instead of 12445.96€, your cost would fall to 11274.84€ (9.4% savings) for a total of 876 unique plants. Looking at the price distribution for all bit.ly/2EWnlBl, the number of plants priced at 4-5€ (many likely 4.99€) seems to approach the number corresponding to the price of the most expensive item found—"Chinesische Feige 'Ginseng', in Keramik" bit.ly/36ulW06 ↗
- At "BAUHAUS", "Piardino Palmlilie" bit.ly/2GnsEdw ↗ was the most expensive room plant. Since all were preceded with the "Piardino" label, omitting it allows us to see easily that there are at least five exemplars of each of these types: Dragon trees (Drachenbaum), Ivy (Efeu), Cyclamen (Zimmer-Alpenveilchen) Flammendes Käthchen. One could therefore pick only one. All plants would cost you 940.68€; buying the cheapest uniques reduces this to 463.98€ (50.67% savings) bit.ly/3l5e8G8
- Flower squares bit.ly/34bJQKU
- Parks and libraries in Wellington, New Zealand bit.ly/3ilpzYv. Had no clue why such a large area remained unplotted. Was even thinking that this might be a water boundary. Turns out the area of Wellington City Council extends beyond the city boundary and (especially in the south-west) includes a high number of hills which aren't shown here. All combined seem to have such a large territory. Also found a boundary of the city itself, but it was only two lines to the north and east (not an enclosed area).
- The median price of 1177 desks available at "OTTO" came out as 288.95€. Here is a low-fi distribution bit.ly/2SiR4qZ. Somewhat difficult to see that the most expensive unit on the far right is a whole villa with a desk and secretary otto.me/3joRCaP ↗
- Lidl also have a "Meradiso" brand with currently 14 mattresses on offer. Script found interesting this one bit.ly/2Sd2jBs ↗ (58.19€; 7 comfort zones, 90x200 cm, 15cm height) and a "Dreamguard" visco-model bit.ly/3n9zc04 ↗ (87.29€; 7 comfort zones, 90x200 cm, 15cm height), which was said to be more breathable. Unsure how healthy their cores are, since foams are chemical products.
- Only 500€ and the entire room plant collection at Lidl-Onlineshop could be yours bit.ly/3ngry4f (greenest money ever spent). Not affiliated with them in any way, but hiding my preference so it can remain in stock.
- Could be visually appealing, functionally okay, conceptually flawed and purposefully erosive. Glad you've "made it".
- Thank you for your interest and work past month!
- Monthly incoming and outgoing flights, arriving and departing passengers in Munich, Germany bit.ly/3jluFoO. Periodicity as expected. Small knick around 2010 seems slightly unusual. The peak number of flights hasn't changed much since 2008-2009, but the number of passengers grew by a lot, suggesting an increased usage of bigger airplanes with more seats. At least until the visible corona effect in 2020.
- You never seek to get hired because you are available ("we're hiring" means they want you), but because people like you are rare ("noone else does it better than you" means they need you). Crucial test for any employer/client. Many are available, but few qualify.
- Libraries and parks in Tulsa, Oklahoma bit.ly/3cMY3lJ. According to this data and diagram, out of the 24 listed libraries, 11 appear slightly outside the council districts. This leaves 13 inside. But great that Tulsa Public Library is responsible for all of them. If correct, the central library is located to the north-west (not center) of the city. The parks dataset contained 214 locations, although it is not clear how big they are. A bikelanes dataset was not available.
- Signs of road congestion mean people may not have learned their lesson they had a whole year to learn. It's always so that the numbers are rising elsewhere, not here. And then everyone moves on time to get ahead of the pandemic until they potentially find themselves left behind.
- Vielleicht ein bißchen runtergespielt dieser Wert von 6716€/m2. Ein anderes Artikel von gestern gab eine Spanne von 6000-14000€/m2 für München an. Zusammen mit Frankfurt/Main wurden diese zwei mit der höchsten Immobilienblasengefahr ausgezeichnet. Weltweit.
- "Diese Vororte sind gut erreichbar und besonders günstig" bit.ly/2SbdWJb ↗. Vielleicht längst nicht deutlich genug. Quadratmeterpreise von 6716€/m2 (München), 3780€/m2 (Hamburg), 3425€/m2 (Berlin), 3307€/m2 (Köln) können sich nur wenige leisten. Aber wenn das Umland (mitten im Nirgendwo) attraktiv sein sollte ab 60% dieser Werte anstatt so etwas wie 20%, dann ist da etwas deutlich aus der Schiene gelaufen. Hat die Umgebung vielleicht 60% der Jobs/m2, die man in der Großstadt findet? Wie teuer ist das tägliche Pendeln zwischen den Orten und wie lange braucht man bis das Vorort teurer wird? Sind die eigentlichen Jobs in diesen Großstädten sinnstiftend und interdisziplinär oder monotonisch und eindimensional? Eignen sich die City-Jobs zur Finanzierung des Transports und mehr als langfristiges Überleben? Die Antwort auf diese Fragen ist nicht zu sehen. Es könnte doch sein, daß die Umgebung noch unattraktiver ist. Dann müsste man auf Staatsebene analysieren.
- "Droste" assortment bit.ly/3iiHjUc ↗. A nurse carries on a platter a cocoa solution on whose label she reappears. A recursively defined effect. Was looking to see something similar on the other chocolate boxes, but active search didn't help. Woudln't be a surprise if expected.
- As long as employees don't run away from cities with ultra-high rents and corporative non-salaries, everything is fine. The housing bubbles can last indefinitely without having to pop or influence the lifestyle of many. Problem is when employees realize they can become home-office-unreachable until the right terms come. Corporations will then lack the ability to manipulate them based on all-encompassing observation and influence exertion via herd mentality. Once anger can come from anywhere, it would be very difficult to treat it as "business as usual" under some common denominator.
- Or you could see the same for the live plants at "The Sill" bit.ly/30kQrBA. In this three-column layout, the script correctly passes over the indoor oasis explanation without considering it an offer. The biggest dot corresponds to the "Large ZZ plant" ($229) bit.ly/33dHiwF ↗.
- Idea: Visual exploration whether the position of an offer on a website and its price may be related. Used the men's jackets and vests page at "Patagonia" as a case in point bit.ly/349gBsg. As you can see, the two-column layout on my screen didn't reveal a definite pattern in this case. But I've seen sites where the items have been positioned on purpose, with many of the most expensive ones coming first without user-initiated sort by descending price. This isn't the case here. We see several of the most expensive items (where the biggest dot corresponds to "Grade VII Down Parka" ($899) bit.ly/3kSsQjM ↗) appearing near the bottom and more frequently on the left column. But was a bit confused about the inline <script> attached to each product bit.ly/2GgoXqb.
- Danger: 90 years without many years in the 90.
- Used two datasets on attractions and accomodation in Ireland bit.ly/36hOcTs. The number of hotels (not speaking of guesthouses or else) seems much bigger than the number of reported attractions here. Unsure how well both represent reality. Thought that the south had good attraction density (near Cork-Kinsale, it seems), but then their nature did not satisfy me, so shifted attention to the north of Ireland (not North Ireland). Some potentially interesting ones may be somewhere near Letterkenny or Donegal County.
- Still remember the importance of your projects? Fine, but only if you have me in your field of view.
- Interesting that even a well-trained, physically strong Ironman can "break" (as they said it) on a task like wood chopping. Comment: "This is crazy." Skinny, untrained me wouldn't last at all.
- Saw the excerpt of "Biohacker's handbook" and it looks promising. Learned many new things (pre-soaking to reduce inhibitors, garlic as prebiotic, aluminium foil emits in baking, red kidney beans might be toxic, boiling over frying, glasses over plastics and much more). Apart from the VOCs, PAHs, formaldehyde, acrylamide, there were sufficient number of terms to keep one busy for a while.
- Most of the properties for sale listed on "Zoopla" appear to be in South East England and London, while the ones in Channel Isles are the most expensive on average bit.ly/3ilX9Oh
- From the "Little Prince" excerpt: "When you have finished your toilet in the morning, it is time to attend to the planet's toilet with great care." Pulling out the weeds as soon as one recognizes them so they don't get the chance to explode the planet. Also liked the boa constrictor drawing reminding me of a histogram with an animal inside.
- Before encountering "penetrating with repentance" in Dickens' work, saw him mentioning Marseilles, France and as a result a diagram of the libraries in the city got created bit.ly/2G7C7pe
- A web designer has no choice but design their contact list with the necessary attention to detail.
- Some people believe a framework is here to frame the talk.
- The relatively cheap (per kg), giant watermelon disturbs the integrity of the expensive (relative to number of uses and environment) nylon bag. Knapsack said.
- Heard of the one file-one disk storage strategy once. Perhaps slightly more efficient than having to keep metadata about millions of tiny files.
- Waterbase (bit.ly/3mYcOGW ↗) is a database on water quality provided by the European Environment Agency (EEA). But it weighs 10.5GB after archive extraction and thus isn't suitable for exploration on this machine. At least not in reasonable time. But you may still find a way to arrive at interesting findings.
- Found two tables about viscosity and oxygen concentration in water with rising temperature and converted them to a diagram bit.ly/2S3wtXN. Other interesting relationships found in the excerpt were between agricultural practices and groundwater quality and between oxygen levels and ocean depth.
- "... should not only design a product for a particular context but also design the context of the product."
- Has your company been inspected for its emissions? What is the current performance of the building where you ask new employees to interview and work? Good to have them know these details without someone hiding them behind the scenes in attempt to make them active partners in potential crime. Liked the term "building passport" mentioned by BPIE and their color coded table on country progress bit.ly/30eedPQ
- You'd think the Doom bots conversed with me on a separatrix.
- Like this idea of depicting various excercise positions directly on the long excercise mat. Wondering why so few product designers came up with it so far.
- Another great week dedicated to even greater clients.
- Manufacturers should ajust durability of key switches according to expected relative frequency of key use. Otherwise the Es will either not appear or fill quarter of the screen before someone can respond.
- Image composition bit.ly/369aIhv with some imperfect image aspect ratios. Mainly to illustrate an idea. All photos were taken from Unsplash. The selfie skeleton should have been slightly less obvious, but better next time. Could imagine such a "carpet" being useful to show hotel room interiors in more interesting ways than simply a boring list of small, almost invisible square images glued together. And because it's a single image generated once, a large number of HTTP requests is not required (fast, polite).
- Expertise on leasing bit.ly/337quHO ↗
- Sunday renderings bit.ly/2GbwupO using very simple code
- Didn't know such a high curvature was possible on a building facade bit.ly/3cJSLYd. Below the image was "Pritzker Zaha Hadid". One could also trace points at regular intervals and test whether the machine could learn a function that passes through/close to them. I didn't have success (67 points), but instead saw beautiful failures (showing the internals) of several functions.
- Must use spaghetti to test out results in knot theory.
- Major energy producers by energy type (2020) bit.ly/3i1NNqz. Made this small diagram using data by IEA. Note: Values reading as absolute zeros should be considered unavailable, but included in "rest of world". Looking at the highest bars relative to the rest of the world, we perceive USA as a strong producer of nuclear electricity, wind electricity and natural gas. China appears as a very strong producer of coal and a strong producer of solar PV, wind electricity and hydroelectricity. It is also desirable to explore production per capita-m2 to even out the effect of highly variable population sizes and country areas.
- The numbers are likely no longer accurate/current, but the idea is still valid. That the production of goods we use is linked with inseparable demand for energy that we often don't think about. Some depicted requirements were: 1kg chocolate (2.5kWh), newspaper (7.5kWh), sneakers (8kWh), copy paper (500 sheets) (41kWh), notebook (1000kWh), car (30000kWh), brick house (548900kWh). The average encircled at the top of the infographic was 11kWh/day-person. Much more than what we see in the energy company's report at the end of the month.
- "Mehr Abstand bei Kälte" bit.ly/3mLuwgC ↗
- Interesting observation that in short-distance runs, taller runners have an advantage (few large steps to win), while in long-distance runs, it was said to shift to shorter runners.
- Wordplay: furnace furniture, correlation correction, equation question, drink sink, convolution evolution, contribution distribution, shave wave, truck-struck, mountain fountain, grass mass, whole guacamole, diverse universe, yell well (deep), stock shock, posession obsession, motion potion, Prost sport, Wochen-Knochenende
- "It is not even wrong" - Wolfgang Pauli
- So "just the right height" bit.ly/307xGle ↗ means they lift you only 0.166cm per dollar spent. Perhaps the thickness of a key. Is this enough to even matter? Or you could look from another perspective: the diference against casual, flat shoes. According to a sample of 289 pumps and 703 casual shoes at "Famous Footwear", their median prices came both at $50. This means one may not even have to pay extra for the high heel.
- Current utilization of the Velib bike stations in Paris, France (10:27 25.09.2020) bit.ly/2G9xtqm. Interesting how some of the dark red dots (highest utilization) seem to go along some neighborhood borders passing through the city center. Dark blues (lowest utilization) are seen at the north and north-east parts of the city. Uses the "Arrondissements" and "Vélib - Vélos et bornes - Disponibilité temps réel" datasets available at Open Data Paris bit.ly/330J3x0 ↗.
- Already lost the article (was on Bloomberg CityLab), but the biggest increase was said to be in Houston, Texas. So I thought that the existing infrastructure there must have been able to support this. Until now had no impression that this city could have a high number of bikeways. As you can see, they are dense too bit.ly/3hVoFBS
- Updated an older diagram to include the bike routes in addition to the libraries in Chicago bit.ly/3mO589X after reading that the city saw 34% increase in bike usage in July, year-over-year. The same increase in Los Angeles was 93% in May, so if you wish, you could also get a feel about the bikeways there bit.ly/3kKN6Uh
- A bracelet made of pentagons bit.ly/3mNBwK2. Smooth, flexible base; sharp to the outside.
- These are so powerful that the reflections play with the handles bit.ly/305kBJ9
- Public libraries and bike infrastructure in Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, Canada bit.ly/3iZSdj8. If the coordinates were correct, only "Sheer Harbour Public Library" does not appear to have a blue line (bike route) approaching it.
- Data about 2293 shielded inductors and 687 power converter transformers is present at "Coilcraft". Enables one to look for and report on interesting, perhaps less obvious details about these components.
- Captured the recommended system requirements of games that were seen as important in the last decade according to "PC Gamer" bit.ly/35ZQkPG ↗. And it doesn't take a scientist to understand what's going on bit.ly/32SPout. The initial idea was to create a single, approximate index and look at the overall growth over the years, but that would take a lot more time (and datasets). Even so, some numeric trends are visible. Probably why a website like "Can I run it?" (reminds of "Can I use..." for web designers bit.ly/3027c4J ↗) ranks so high for the keyword "system requirements". Gamers must feel so taxed by the cost of their hardware that they seek to validate regularly that they are still in the game.
- Don't expect to weld/solder a web project in-place if you forgot that your money was the consummable. As you know, it burns rather quickly and needs frequent updates, just like electrodes or solder. And one can't look at the smoke as an indicator of how well the job was done.
- Hobart's "IronMan™ 240 MIG Welder" is said to have a weight of 84kg. (They also have much lighter than this one.) Would unweld my arm at the joint, perhaps even so, with the wheels present. Bad only if someone forgot a weld that for some reason was brought at height that the short cable can't reach... nothing except the preference for lightweight tools that are usable an entire day without having to rest the next two.
- Followed the advice to avoid comparing apples with pears bit.ly/2EnfhJp. But broke the rule for nutritional purposes.
- Thought of finding similar parks by bitwise operations over their amenities (since having a suitable dataset used here in the past). Yet, machine yawned from boredom, so the sign was clear.
- Ideally a client should not have to stare at too many input fields or spend time thinking where they should type next. Would have spoken with regular clients to seek ways to minimize the number of input fields (ideally to one) bit.ly/2ZYXzDU. Perhaps the decision can be done in the background instead. How would we reduce uncertainty? What if the client is concerned about ordering 750 screws, but receiving 30-50 less? They can't possibly have the stamina to count that long. But with an online order they also don't see what the scales show and can't compute the expected number of screws in the pile (total weight / unit weight). Not having a diagram bit.ly/3iVGDFz means they also can't easily understand the numbers in context or see that above length of 1-3/4", prices grow slightly faster. Is there information about the maximal stress these are able to withstand? A good web designer constantly looks for details not to screw things up.
- Be aware that you don't script the page so that for some reason the scrollbar disappears. Fixes and cuts the page to the visible viewport area and makes the rest of an article inaccessible. Also ensure that elements with forced scrollbars don't have them blinking (appear-disappear) periodically, causing reflows and interfering with user focus.
- Of course, getting to speak later (after a lot has been achieved) becomes considerably more expensive. And new additions to the list come quickly.
- The pressure sensors and transducers category at "DigiKey" was also very competitive. Logged a total of 34618 sensors and looked at their operating pressure (psi), maximum pressure (psi), output (V) and unit price ($). 17765 belonged to "SSI Technology", 6940 to "Honeywell Sensing and Productivity Solutions", 4807 to "Honeywell Aerospace", 729 to "Amphenol Advanced Sensors", 699 to "TE Connectivity Measurement Specialties", 582 to "Nidec Copal Electronics", 413 to "NXP USA", 332 to "Whitman Controls" and 316 to "Cynergy 3". The list is long and not all names can be included here. The median operating pressure among the known values came out as ≈145psi, while the maximum of 20000psi belonged to a Honeywell product whose price was not given. "M3031-000005-10KPG" by "TE Connectivity" (10000psi, 20000psi max, 0.5 - 4.5V, $71.06) bit.ly/32QRhrs ↗ may be an interesting one. The first Honeywell sensor, "MLH07KPSB01D" (7000psi, 10500psi max, 0.25 - 10.25V, $126.36) bit.ly/2RNmo0X ↗ has a wider output range. They also have "MLH08KPSB01A" (8000psi, 12000psi max, 0.5 - 4.5V, $124.75). "Trafag Sensors and Controls" have this model (5000psi, 12500psi max, 0 - 10V, $90) bit.ly/2EnuPNj ↗.
- Which solar cell (among the 336 units) available at "DigiKey", could someone use in their next electronic circuit project, so that this component cost doesn't exceed $30? If very low power would suffice, "KXOB25-14X1F-TR" (30.7mW, 23 x 8 x 1.80mm, was $1.224) bit.ly/3iS0BRF ↗ might be interesting. Before going out of stock, "Voltaic Systems P124" (1.22W, 113 x 66 x 2.90mm, $14) could have been an interesting alternative for a slightly more powerful cell. Anysolar's "SM531K10L" (1.141W, 89 x 65 x 1.8mm, $18.15) bit.ly/2FVV8ur ↗ is still available and may be good as well. One could even obtain DFRobot's "FIT0600" (5W, 290 x 150 x 1.35mm, $25.15) bit.ly/3mBAy3v ↗, although the area it uses seems slightly less favorable.
- Explored daily number of trips at county level in Georgia, USA (01.01.2019 - 07.09.2020) as seen in the data by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Out of 160 captured counties in this state, Fulton County had the highest median number of trips in the entire range 0-10 miles, while Gwinett County—in the entire range 10-500 miles. New York state was represented by 63 counties, where Kings County had highest medians in the range 0-5 miles, Queens County in the range 5-25 miles, Suffolk County in the range 25-100 miles and again Kings County in the range 100-500 miles. Texas was represented by 255 counties, where it was always Harris County having the highest number of trips in the range 0-500 miles. For Washington state the same was valid for King County and for California—for Los Angeles County. In Oregon, Multnomah County was preceded only by Marion County in the range 25-100 miles.
- Didn't know a single oyster could filter 17 buckets of water/day. Thanks for sharing.
- Someone with a lack of patience would order the grown-up plants, because they believe they became in an instant. In the process, they overpay greatly (relative to seed order and time invested in plant care) to an extent that would make the slow (and steady) seed grower happy. Seems to repeat, at least in some form, in various areas of life.
- Formulated the specifics of your project over the weekend? Good. When you are ready, use the contact page to learn how to send your proposal (as a written document).
- Further exploration of the 11930 proximity sensors (in sensing distance (mm), response frequency (Hz), operating temperature range (°C), supply voltage range (V) and unit price ($)), let me find the ultrasonic "T30UXDC" by "Banner Engineering Corporation" (30cm - 3m) bit.ly/3hRgt5s ↗ with response frequency of 114kHz when the median in this dimension computed to 500Hz. For some reason my script found the combination of properties interesting even at a price of $314. Or you may also like their "S18UIA" (3-30cm, 300kHz, $285) bit.ly/3kBjs40 ↗. As soon as I left only sensing distance and price, the products of "ifm efector" came up. An example is "UGR501" (30cm - 2.2m, $236.40). If one could live with a very short sensing distance, "ams TMD26203" (30mm, $0.986) could be interesting. For very long ones, "TSPC-25P-485" by "Senix Corporation" (15.2m, $756.72) may be a good fit. "Omron Automation and Safety" was the manufacturer with most proximity sensors (4947), where "E4R-A" had a good score. "Carlo Gavazzi" (1401) and "Altech Corporation" (893) followed.
- Wrote a lengthy script to look at 1538 photodiodes at "DigiKey" considering active area, response time, spectral range and unit price. Not all could be scored, but among those, first came "PD333-3C/H0/L2" by "Everlight Electronics" with 19.6mm2 active area, 4.5*10-8 seconds response time, 400-1100nm spectral range and $0.5 price. Then comes OSRAM with "SFH 2200 A01", "SFH 2201", "BPW 34 S-Z" and then "ON Semiconductor" with " QSB34CGR" (6.5mm2, 5*10-8s, 400-1100nm, $0.345). Wished to have more time to include voltages and currents, but didn't.
- Center-out bubbles bit.ly/3iQi0Ks
- "The largest games are over 200GB, which is 3x larger than 4 years ago..." - NVIDIA. No problem. Ship them over the web.
- Citation design bit.ly/35KSwul. Comparing to the style here, this one seems to require an expert. Depending on the context, it may still not be the right one. I find it problematic when this long style is used as book content filler. Seen in "The information literacy user's guide".
- Release date vs. price without contract for the mobile phones at "O2" bit.ly/35KxoV3. The idea was to explore visually how fast prices drop over time, although this was hardly possible due to most phones being very recent. One of them, "Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 5G" was said to be released today (12GB RAM, 256GB storage, 2005€), yet the original Galaxy Fold was the most expensive (2046.08€). Interestingly, we notice four almost collinear As in the diagram, corresponding to Apple devices. Overall, Samsung phones seemed to have higher prices at the time of writing.
- Life 3.0 got updated before you could read what it was about. A minor version bump with adapted documentation.
- Max. reach vs. payload for the industrial robots by "KUKA" bit.ly/2ZNc9hF. Among these robot variants we see two which can carry up to 1300kg with a max. reach of 3.2m, exceeding the abilities of the human arm by far. But no variant has a reach of more than 4m, which indicates possible geometric limits to what is seen as practical. Robot dimensions, weight and cycle time were conditionally present in external documents, which made their collection difficult.
- Most people understood one way or another that they'd have better success on their own platform, only with those clients who specifically came for their work and didn't perceive it as shouting.
- Monopolizing the feed with content from a single source, where any offer you click contains exclamation marks on every second sentence and suggests you look at the rest and read carefully...
- Good that you could use the weekend to craft a better project proposal that doesn't get rejected next week.
- An interesting table shows that a person moving with 6.4km/h emits 100x the amount of particles as someone at rest while breathing in 5x the amount at rest (in m3/h). Perhaps reasonable to be more cautious with (recent) sportists who still don't know they are positive.
- Out of valuable products/services, out of company.
- "Very frequently, user problems have limited upside for you to solve." There it is, someone else saying it.
- "Are you serving to users or to customers?" is a curious question. Whenever possible, customers and their users only. Very rarely my own users since they tend to flock freely to all kinds of places that still happen to be free.
- Already volunteering enough of my time, so not doing the same for anyone else. Try to set the frame for my work without paying and you'll quickly seek your luck elsewhere. If you ask me to work, you'd better meet the payment criteria.
- Too many clients able to pay the $50 bill. Can't fill my contact list with their names and still expect to be able to find/remember them. Non-payers receive zero service.
- The payments weren't. Then the people offering them.
- Quick comparison of yellow and red onions in raw form according to USDA bit.ly/3c6YlDD
- It would be unfair I thought, to speak about "JYSK" mattresses without mentioning any quilt options to complement them with. To help with this, left my script sift through 91 quilts with known parameters like width (cm), length (cm), weight filling (g), total weight (g), cold/warm, warranty (years), price. If one was indifferent to warranty, then the "ROMEDAL 1450g 135x200cm warm" would do well. It's also full of duck feathers, which is likely a more natural option than those based on silicon fibers. The weight of the filling is 1.45kg relative to a total weight of 2.2kg, available at a price of 22.50€. If one insists on good warranty (e.g. 10 years), then "BRURI 1300g 135x200cm warm" might be another good option. The weight of its filling is 1.3kg relative to a total weight of 1.87kg. Contains artificial fibers, which may be more sustainable. Its sale price is currently 35€ (-50%). The median price for all products came out as 38.50€, while the maximal was 312.50€ ("KRONBORG LOFTET 1100g 200x220cm extra warm").
- Selective coloration of circle sectors bit.ly/3hNbdA5
- Functional test of 3 and 7 in 2 styles bit.ly/2RzXVMl
- Marked in red what I would exclude from a product description bit.ly/33ALgyh. Takes a lot of screen space (compare importance against the product photo) and has no relation to product quality. Including 50 colors wouldn't be practical anyway (even on the concrete product page). Also, having multi-line centered text is very difficult to read and follow.
- Could there be a subtle price difference between kitchen sink and bathroom faucets? Noticed that "Pfister" offers both. There were 94 kitchen sink and 131 bathroom faucets with known prices, whose medians came out as $279 and $226 accordingly (the averages being $300 and $278). Perhaps not that important for most consumers.
- Wordplay: probability of profitability, grinding finding, lenient client, station rotation, work fork, polar solar, dome home, exclusive conclusion, lizard hazard, cadaster disaster, plantage advantage, diminishing fishing, health wealth, she sells seashells, smart partphone, shareholder-stakemolder, diaphragm diagram, fashionable action, farm Lärm, pleasant peasant, feather to weather, power mower, tissue issue, regarding sharding, cajoled majority, honored minority, ambulance insurance, cemetery geometry, mess assessment, attic traffic, breeze freeze, breed speed, weak seaker, sneaker seaker, flower shower, aramid pyramid, insoluble solution, intense sense, elastic plastic, tasty pastry, heat meat, pure cure, invest quest, stable cable, trending heading, luck-struck, impute & compute, single signal, biscuit circuit, blame flame, shout clout, ignore snore, love olive, cricket ticket, conference interference, foldable gold, spooler cooler, account discount, embrace trace, side collide, gravel travel, carbon bonbon, fleeting meeting, savior behavior, perspiration/inspiration, brain drain
- Thought: Perhaps an ECG signal can be classified as healthy or having a specific problem without engaging an (expensive) specialist to look at it every time and apply the same decision rationale. The time saved could be used to study and challenge the common wisdom behind the rationale itself or further refine the decisions.
- "Biology Open" came out with a nice cover of scale-rotated semicircles bit.ly/35FLczX
- During MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) the patient can influence the quality of the image if not at REST. No movements (externally visible, internally invisible) or last-second requests to move content.
- Some contributor lists are so long/rich, they can be applications by themselves. Or if someone knew the kind of expertise of everyone in an entity, they could drag-and-drop names who belonged together on the next project given the requirements?
- Interesting idea: An ECG diagram showing the heart function of a person at rest may appear to hide some low-level details in the signal compared to one during excercise, where the peaks become more pronounced. The latent can be highlighted by an excercise test.
- Cure time vs. tensile shear strength for "Epoxy Heavy Duty" by "Loctite" bit.ly/3khtfvR. Uses the corresponding product data sheet. The diagram creates the false impression that y-growth doesn't change much until the fourth hour. But the three line segment slopes compute to 1180, 749 and 13.85 accordingly. After this moment though, improvements become less intense, but the certainty increases.
- cardiac output = stroke volume * heart rate. Reminded me of the terms "bore" and "stroke", the human engine.
- CVD (cardiovascular disease) is one we frequently forget about until too late. Of long-term concern.
- Puppy bit.ly/2FHb8QJ ↗
- Having half of the world work for a single brand is so plain wrong.
- Ran a script on 112 foam mattress variants available in "JYSK" and found one (90x200cm F80 Dreamzone), whose price fell from 135€ to 45€ (-66.6%). Somewhat thin though (13cm made of 3 thin layers) and dimensions wouldn't fit to replace one of size 80x190cm with slightly noisy springs. Another potentially interesting one might be "80x200cm F95 Dreamzone" (17cm, has a 1cm coconut layer), available at 88€. Prices are valid for the local market only. Strength of some relationships: mattress width-price (0.70), weight-price (0.64).
- Slowly becoming acquainted with the numeric key block and the first impression is that my hands aren't traveling as much while still getting negligibly small things done.
- The same lens is also applicable to other foods, independent of whether their category is different or the same. One only has to ensure that the same dimensions are compared (and eventually decide how to deal with missing ones). For instance, comparing iron and potassium values is nonsense.
- An excerpt of a book seen yesterday described nutrient density as nutrients/calories, which slightly differed from my previous impression of calories/g. Nutrients were said to be the quantities of vitamins, minerals, fibers and phytochemicals, while calories were formed by carbohydrates, fats and proteins. The idea was that many were eating high-fat, low-fiber foods where this ratio is low. Decided to adopt this lens on the data provided on dry beans at USDA FoodCentral and look which bean types may have a favorable combination of nutrients in a low-calorie package bit.ly/2GWDM0V. As you can see, the differences are relatively small: the highest score was only 26.9% higher than the lowest. "Light red kidney" beans came first and "Flor de Mayo" came third, but I don't think I've seen these. "Medium red" came second, which is likely still different than the "Dark red kidney" available at the store. Recognizing the types may not always be easy.
- So an increase of 33.3% in its RAM size leads to an increase of 7.6% in its final price. The ratio comes out as ≈4.4, which isn't that great, although something much smaller than five would have made the upgrade less desirable.
- In case it matters to you, HP has a special kind of high-performance icecream—a laptop with Ryzen 3700U, 12GB DDR4 2400Mhz (+$40 for 16GB) and 512GB NVMe priced at $520 (originally $770). Wished one too...
- Good ideas are finite like a stream of icecream.
- An overcapacity of buildings one pays rent on could be a drag on company performance. Yet, rushing to part with slowly accumulated real estate over time without having a good overview of its performance or understanding of its value may not be much better than being unable to afford the rent in the first place.
- Also heard that many people booked destinations in other countries only to find out that their tickets were canceled and their money was gone. Because plenty of such cases stacked, it became difficult to request compensation. If not for other reasons (corona), this is possibly enough to label international travel as "high risk" for now.
- Wouldn't easily come to the idea that if someone is giving up on expensive travel (flight ticket costs), they might have enough to afford nearby, same-country hotel rooms offered at 500€/night.
- Bath towel selection from four different sizes in the case of "Kronborg Karlstadt" at "JYSK" bit.ly/3ksmk39. With these dimensions and prices, the script chose to pick the 70 x 140cm variant.
- The one complete and paid well for could have been your project. But now it isn't.
- If you ask me, OBI's Pflanztöpfe bit.ly/2FBnXfq ↗ allow some precise data analysis. But one has to be motivated to be able to complete it.
- Canvas three-color oscillation bit.ly/3bTuO03. Well, not counting the shades.
- What's the minimal number of plates which can feed me? If it's a single plate/bowl, what would be its minimal radius if it were to hold the contents without danger of spilling them on the floor? Great to have lots of dishes in small portions, but having to wash/clean all of these plates is a high fixed cost for a still unsatisfied appetite. So one could fill fewer, bigger plates with lots of food (perhaps beautifully arranged) instead of placing many small ones on the table. The handling costs at the end will be much lower. In addition, one could avoid putting food in a large plate when a smaller one would do. No need to over-expand the total surface to clean at the end. The number of litter bin accesses (behind door under kitchen sink) one makes may also increase time loss. Better to collect all junk and throw it once rather than open-close the door each time a new junk type fills a small plate (e.g. cucumber peels). Estimating the expected junk volume upfront and using an appropriately sized container to hold it reduces the number of these back-and-forths.
- Taking out wooden souls (stumps) isn't too hard if you split the roots of the neural network and hit with a pickaxe from below, using it as a lever. Now and then you see large underground "pipes" coming out of one stump to end in another, as if they were intended for communication (better said direct memory access), but then the reward gets so much bigger that you can barely hold it in your forearms.
- Explored few aspects of the manufacturing sector in Michigan, USA bit.ly/35vqhj0. Noticed that many lightly shaded dots clustered around a 41.8-hour workweek at hourly earnings of approx. $21.5, but many dark shaded ones were around a 43.2-hour workweek at hourly earnings of $20.6. Multiplying these means that a recent employee in this sector is working 1.4 hours longer while getting almost $10 less each week. The second diagram shows that fluctuations in vehicle manufacturing in this state can be significant with coefficient of variation of 26.9%. January 2009 was the month with the lowest number of vehicles produced (≈48500).
- Saw a greyed out website showing one of those "Accept" buttons in the lower right corner. Problem is, you can't click it, because they also autoplay you a video (which doesn't seem to end) in a moderate-sized box positioned there on top. And the video's close button ("X") happens to be isolated, transparent and grey which effectively makes it indistinguishable from the background color. Effect: Someone comes and watches a video they don't know what to do with, while unable to access other content. Like a locked front door with a tiny window to look inside. When in doubt, always hire a web designer.
- 311 service requests in Winnipeg, Canada bit.ly/3k8HZx1. Unfortunately incomplete. If I had more computational power, I would have made the diagram bigger, the dots smaller, the legend better fitting and with larger dots, also including the data source. The idea was to have separate colors per request type and vary their opacity based on when the request was made (here in the period 01.01.2018 - 10.09.2020), assigning higher to more recent requests. Because it is difficult to infer the meaning of each color, I can only mention which requests were most common: neighborhood liveabiity complaint (40508), missed garbage collection (21443), potholes (16324), missed recycling collection (15104), snow removal on roads (8359), water main leak (7219), graffiti (6864). The category mosquito complaints was least represented with 260 cases.
- Properties of the chocolate bars by "Vanini" bit.ly/3hw0KZG. Found it strange that a "bio" variant was said to contain the most sugar.
- Fast fashion tears apart once meeting the excercise bike. (joke) Not having one, but can imagine equipment playing a role in feeling better during the long stay-home days.
- Dates when a single NBA player scored more than 60 points in a single game bit.ly/3igSqhr. Plenty of strong personal games were played around 1962. (Haven't been born back then.) But still better when the team wins even when its leader doesn't break records.
- Fastest tennis ball serve speeds and their tournament years bit.ly/3bOO2Up. Couldn't observe any definite pattern.
- First time seeing parallel streets that are labeled 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th Avenue. Countable, this map.
- Bi-annual AM/PM pedestrian counts at 95 locations in New York (05.2007 - 05.2019) bit.ly/3hn6nJr. The peak PM count was 2.26x the peak AM count.
- Easy overall bit.ly/3imEX7F. How design in a service manual looks like.
- Population of some cities in Lebanon bit.ly/3hlGREe. The whole country is estimated to have ≈6.8 million people.
- Population of some cities in Yemen bit.ly/3bR5Azd. The whole country is estimated to have ≈30 million people.
- I am indifferent whether I work slowly in a fast economy or quickly in a slow economy. A) True B) False
I prefer to work fast in a fast economy and slow in a slow economy. C) True D) False - How many users did this article attract per kB of content?
- "The Verge" called a mobile processor "exceptional" bit.ly/32jAb5A ↗. Happens to be the same one mentioned here on 31.07.2020.
- Left a random walker move on a 25x25 grid for 1000 steps and then gauged which cells it engaged most often bit.ly/3hjK8Ej
- Used public data to look at the performance of 67 microSD cards (Source: cameramemoryspeed.com). The list is incomplete. The high number of cards sold in reality makes a selection difficult. Few standouts here bit.ly/3k3vByb. Including pricing information could have enabled more. While the "Lexar Professional 1800x microSD UHS-II 128GB" is currently around $70 at Amazon, the 2000x model (not seen on the diagram, theoretical 300MB/s read & 260MB/s write) spikes the price to $120. But a 1000x model (same size, theoretical 150MB/s read) was seen at $35.63.
- The code of a simple "Z+" bit.ly/33hKCFQ. Me not like this.
- Different Pluto bit.ly/35oR68K. Wished to put them on a single axis, but couldn't obtain a nice result in the allotted time. To be seen as experiment only.
- "Because the oil-pipe friction increases with the pipe's surface area, transportation costs are proportional to the latter. The average cost of a pipeline declines as throughput (said to depend on volume) increases."
- Saw "economies of density" in the context of reduction in average cost as traffic volume on the route increases.
- Saw a nice equation for price elasticity of demand = (ΔQ*P) / (ΔP*Q), where P and Q are price and quatity and the deltas—their changes. Example seen: At price $10, demanded quantity was 50. At price $12, it fell to 45. So the price elasticity of demand is (-5*10) / (2*50) = -0.5
- Wordplay: expensive experience, agile age, property prosperity, Southwest sidewings, die 10x Regel: 10 Schokoriegel
- "Don't neglect YouTube. Do something everyday to become more (popular)." Never felt the need to finance Google. Or get a couple of visits in the next five days in exchange for transferring the rights of my work to them, forever. Or worse: having them bother my audience with their ads. As a rule of thumb, if I wouldn't be happy to spend much time on a media (e.g. video), I'm not bothering to create for it either.
- Some of us still haven't learned not to subscribe by listing our hardware.
- Does your global company have at least one server present on each continent? If not, I was the one waiting five seconds for your first image to show. Latency.
- "Our libraries can be simple." True, no need to keep a bookshelf you can't take with yourself once you move past the street. Many of the most important ideas are naturally repeated and available online in one form or another. What is less available are less popular ideas that actually work relative to popular ones which may not. "'What am I reading for?' is a way towards focused, useful goals, avoiding distractions." Conditionally so. The more one believes to be focused, the more likely it is they actually don't know. Because things rarely exist in isolation. And the longer you can't see them work as a whole, the less inclined you will be to keep your focus too, as it suddenly loses meaning. Therefore, reading broadly is a way to understand the context of the effort once the need for it arises and also to know how deep to go as to be able to complete the task in such a time that your motivation hasn't dropped significantly (going deep competes with going broad). The author would classify this as strange, distracting or time-wasting, yet can't remember anything else that saved me more time to date.
- So many tech incubators and accelerators. Modern words.
- USP: "The drink provides an escape." Except that you can't escape yourself.
- Was this word designed to enrich someone else?
- "We are actively working on monetization now." Had this thought long time ago. Then realized: 1) a third-party will get a passive source of income from me, the sponsor, 2) active effort will get me less than staying passive brings to someone else, 3) I'm paying per transaction once and second time via the time required to implement all complex payment processing systems (because it's never a single one) and integrate them (where?) on my website (not sustainable, especially dealing with their API and policy changes), 4) enabling third-parties (and potentially advertisers working with them) to indirectly deduce the size of my operations by tracking the number of payers and total amount received, 5) logging, privacy and potential account blocking concerns. So many headaches that monetization is not really worth it. Much better is to get paid directly (or via direct transfer to the bank you'd withdraw from) by the clients who respect you (also allowing you to ask how their day was) even if this means you won't scale as fast as via "monetization". But when the biggest reward is the quality and quantity of the meaningful work you complete and the appreciation it receives (where the monetary aspect is simply a reflection of a fact), it is not difficult to make this trade-off.
- Is the market sufficiently large? Is the location sufficiently lively? Is the production scalable enough? Is the combined activity profitable enough?
- A quick look at the seven "Impulse" body sprays bit.ly/2ZlM60K ↗ created the impression that each was having at least one ingredient not present in the other sprays. However, a tiny script proved me wrong. For most sprays this wasn't true, but for two it was. The one labeled "Musk" contained unique Amyl Cinnamal and Eugenol and the one labeled "Crush" contained unique Farnesol and Benzyl Alcohol.
- Still hard to comprehend. 5.5 million acres of burned land. When it takes me almost 5mins of non-stop walking to pass through a rectangular area of 0.5 acres.
- Do you see sandals as an item with an interesting shape (design), one improving comfort (breathability of feet), one allowing tiny stones, glass or rain to pass through (lack of protection) or one that feels a stripped-down version of a normal shoe (materiial saving), sold at almost the same price for higher profit? All combined?
- "A system is made of actions you do consistently and repeatedly over time. One-off actions are snowflakes melting on the pavement." Well said.
- Always saw gamification of user interfaces as temporary attractor. Not engaging enough.
- Drive the autopilot for 100km, stop at the nearby confisserie to buy yourself a drink and something sweet, continue forward 25km, then turn right and travel another 75km until reaching a gas station to stop and fill up the tank. Take some time to read the twenty new notifications and five emails. Promise to respond once back. Continue for 100km straight, through a labyrinth of roads, looking out for the right signs and then finally turn left and stop near the small building with the sign "web design studio". The one you chose after all. That's where the comparable service is. Good luck!
- On maximizing the number of surviving clients bit.ly/3lYLl7s
- Looks like the longer corona lasts, the higher the number of businesses looking to hire for a regular office. End of the job offer: "- home office optional". Was the business ever too?
- "This piece ($100) is only at the price of a single phone call..." Appears that this convincing person can't hang up for several hours, while still expecting someone to listen.
- If you dislike the weak push, consider a strong pull.
- Environment-related measurements at some sensors in Melbourne, Australia (15.11.2019 - 08.09.2020) bit.ly/3i9MZRb. On the surface, it's difficult to spot significant differences, especially on a small monitor. But in this case the dataset has been about "microclimate". Perhaps "arc1046" registers slightly higher wind speeds, but low ones have been cut out everywhere. Only via statistics (and not diagram-staring) we can see that median PM2.5 was highest at "arc1048" (7.0µg/m3) and lowest at "arc1050" (5.7µg/m3). whereas median PM10 was highest at both "arc1045" and "arc1048" (27.0µg/m3) and lowest at "arc1047" (24.4µg/m3). Then, of course, you seek to find where these "arc" sensors are bit.ly/3idwvb4 and notice (in highly magnified in Melbourne) that 80% of these (excluding "arc1047") are essentially on the same Grattan street, Carlton. Difficult to seek different conditions from the comfort zone of the same street.
- Going further, we can take advantage of the "notable firms" lists on Wikipedia (although these may be old and incomplete). This allows us to compare the most represented sectors in several countries and look how their profiles differ. In my case, I was interested in China, South Korea and Taiwan bit.ly/3lV4abP. Computer hardware, semiconductors and electronic equipment appear to be strong sectors in Taiwan.
- Visualized Wikipedia's data (for myself as too detailed) on ease of doing business in many countries (2006-2020) bit.ly/3h9fQnF ↗. There were a large number of line crossings around 2015, indicating high rank fluctuations. Looked for countries with strong advancements. Among them, Rwanda was at place 158 in 2007, but improved to rank 38 in 2020 (preceded by Switzerland and Slovenia). Another star was Georgia, which was at rank 100 in 2006, but advanced to rank 7 in 2020 (between USA and UK). Russia was at rank 123, but is now at rank 28. North Macedonia was once at rank 92, but improved to rank 17. Other notable risers are China (96 → 31), Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, UAE, Turkey (93 → 33), Moldova. South Korea (30 → 5) and Taiwan (61 → 15) are both striving high. Which is valuable, since we observe that the more we approach the top (e.g. New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Denmark, South Korea, USA), the more rarely ranks switched significantly during the period.
- Radar's transmit-receive reminds me of web's request-response with the important distinction that the target (server) in the second case has load capacity and the ability to decide how to proceed with the client observing higher variance in response time.
- Was thinking of creating a map to explore the density of "Sparkasse" branches in Germany. Their addresses are already accessible, so this too can't be too difficult, right? Here are the places starting with "A" bit.ly/326rVpp ↗
- Riddles bit.ly/336trXS ↗. The fishhook said: "First you eat me, then you get eaten."
- Today's wordplay: invertebrate convertible, full null, table cable, pocket socket, kicker sneaker, clock block, make cake, cook book, good food, smell tell, corrupt disrupt, quiet diet, same game, thinking king, swipe wipe, entrysenior, blue glue, yeast feast, cold mold, fish-dish-wish, scroll toll, gamma drama, reach beach, convex Rex, far star, aeroso cruiso, sock-in-stock, lotion motion, jar.jar, audible audience, condiment sediment, after laughter, fuzzy puzzle, small mall, toffee coffee, smart start, foot root, spec fiction, delicate silicate, structure rupture, pest infest, brigade renegade, valuation variation, sonata data, universal traversal, charm disarm, darm alarm, cherish-perish, qwertz quartz, rhomb comb, brush-push-flush, mission-vision-passion, utter clutter, action reaction, lion oblivion, pot despot, embarking parking, almond pond, bird rebirth, house mouse, coughffeece.
- Still seeking to hire home workers for your home office? The advantage of your own environment which gave you greater bargaining power during the hiring process has been partially lost now. (Great employees likely insisted to meet you at a neutral place anyway.) The employee's attention span is now lower and the churn rate higher than ever. A new employer (or client) might be only a click (or chat) away.
- I'd rather not be here for a product that won't be appreciated three or six months from now (not trying to develop it), but for the full complexity of this person's progress to meet arising life-long challenges. Neither a product nor a skill would describe me well. Belonging to a big, irrational corporation which pays well to advance single-mindedness has never been attractive to me. Equals a stubborn attempt to enforce blindness among those with (still) great eyesight. Therefore, whenever clients come and ask for a product/system, their requests are examined under microscope. Well possible, I'm not the right person to fulfill them.
- Unclear whether intentional, but this plant steak appears to have HTML content bit.ly/2ZbYLDn
- Looked at the handbag offers for women at four online stores ("Debenhams", "Next", "River Island" and "ASOS"). "Debenhams" had the largest selection by far (1569 handbags), followed by "Next" (1191 handbags). Relative to these numbers, the offers in the two other stores were sparse. The medan prices came out as £39 in "Debenhams", £36 in "Next", £32 in "River Island" and 35€ in "ASOS". "Next" had the most expensive handbag ("BOSS Taylor Shoulder Bag", £369) bit.ly/2Fc0mlg ↗ and also the highest coefficient of variation (92.41%).
- The most common ingredient in the 37 baby food glass jars by "Gerber" bit.ly/2DBFjsa ↗ was vitamin C (ascorbic acid) (27). followed by water (16), lemon juice concentrate (16), apples (14), carrots (11), pears (9), bananas (9). In the 38 glass jars by "HiPP" bit.ly/3lWJOyE ↗, these were water (24), carrots (21), rapeseed oil (21), milk (18), onions (16), tomatoes (14), basil (12), durum wheat (12), pepper (12), apples (9), rice starch (8), ascorbic acid (7), bananas (7), chicken (6), potatoes (6). If you wish, you could also explore the baby products by "Bebivita".
- Today's wordplay: pub publicity, butter buffer, supercomputer-commuter, slanguage, error terror, roughic graphic, field yield, abstract contract, flight blight, stewardess stress, immense immerse, voice choice, dialectic metric, illness stillness, reason season, psycho-physics, lemon melon, permutation perturbation, conjecture lecture, rhytm algorithm, vicinity infinity, brave slave, dream cream, useful fuse, tant import, eco nomy, sur price, burns returns, jogging logging, constant determinant, analysis paralysis, sensor tensor, deep sleep, neuron fleuron, community immunity.
- Still not 128MP for 128€, but noticeably going in this direction bit.ly/3lNmZgS ↗
- Could count 24 variables describing different dimensional aspects of a shark in this paper go.nature.com/2Z9Gnea ↗ (fig. 2 and table 1). Felt that the short sentence with the long meters was designed to make food of the reader, considering the photogenic "smile" bit.ly/3i3tc63 ↗
- Used the data available on new COVID-19 cases by neighborhood in London bit.ly/3gYlkkU. Unsure how accurate or current it is. Croydon seems to have registered a maximum of 82 cases on 02.04.2020. Back then cases were spike-sharp in several neighborhoods, then visibly decreased. More recently however, numbers srtarted to slowly rise again. Other neighborhoods with somewhat higher variability than usual included Ealing, Barnet and Bromley. In fact, Brent had slightly higher number of total cases than Barnet and only 60 less than Croydon.
- "Kraus" bit.ly/2GvwCRh ↗ also have many kitchen sinks, although their dimensions and prices were less accessible, increasing the difficulty of doing something similar.
- Have seen people use big kitchen sinks as storage for dirty plates they do not plan to clean soon. Either the smell became overwelming or the food dried up on the surfaces, making them difficult to scrub. Fan of neither. And one can't always feed the dishwasher with pills of lazyness.
- Script found 134 top-mount kitchen sinks at "KOHLER", having a median price of $543.20. Which model could offer the highest volume for the price relative to the rest? 'Candence 33" x 22" x 8-5/16 double equal bowl' (currently $183.20) bit.ly/3bp1E8R ↗ came out with highest score, followed by many "Verse" variants (also 33" x 22", but optionally at 9-5/16" (single-bowl) bit.ly/2QXmAKo ↗ or 9-1/4" (double-bowl), all available at $263.20. "Mayfield" (25" x 22" x 8-3/4", $239.20) bit.ly/356n0Xs ↗ appears more aesthetic, while black "Kennon" (25" x 22" x 10-5/8, $303.20) bit.ly/2ENSBm1 ↗ is said to use "Neoroc", which "Home Depot" describes as "beautiful rock-hard composite material, designed to withstand years of use".
- Maximal data transfer rates of some interfaces (USB, HDMI, DisplayPort) bit.ly/2QTmzr6 as seen on Wikipedia. No guarantee of accuracy.
- Fecal transmission hypothesis bit.ly/3561RfR ↗. Might be worth a read.
- Volume vs. weight (and price) for the backpacks by "Gregory" bit.ly/3gXC4ZD. Increasing backpack volume by two liters would be approx. equivalent to someone having to carry another SSD.
- The stakes are rising, so watch out for the pricing.
- "But where did your time go?" Went into serving you, if you haven't noticed yet. Service never masked itself as free to me.
- Wrote a mini script to explore the backpacks by "Gregory", after seeing that "Popular Science" recommended two of their models ("Maven 65" and "Amber 44"). Was curious, since the brand was new for me. So considered the numeric features of a total of 91 backpack variants. Admittedly, ranked numerically only, "Amber 65" bit.ly/3lL7SV9 ↗ comes relatively high on the list (around place 10), while "Maven 65" came at position 27 (still good overall). The top three positions, my script assigned to the "Tribute" series (70, 55 and 40). "Tribute 70" bit.ly/3buDee8 ↗ seems to have a favorable combination of dimensions (cm), rain cover weight (kg), max carry (kg), volume (l), weight (kg) and regular price (£). If you need another big model, "Wander 70" or "Stout 70" might also be worth considering. Among the small ones, "Amasa 14", "Baffin 23", "Swift 25" bit.ly/351Ob5p ↗ came out with good scores.
- Toothpicks are for between-key areas, plagued by hair & dandruff.
- Computing the total arc lengths required to draw popular cartoon heros (no shading or interaction with external objects) could shed some light on the difficulty of having them multiplied in slightly different poses (assuming animation assembly from many frames).
- A text mentioned that a longer worm may help catch bigger fish. How expected fish weight varied with worm length since 1990 could have helped develop a less bubbly intuition.
- Naive thinking from a decomposing lens: If the skateboard price is $120, which one could sound as a reasonable relationship between board and wheel (2x2) value: 70:25, 50:35, 30:45 or 20:50?
- At restaurants, the lunch menu was cheaper; at home, dinner became something to be grateful for.
- Perspective: The new airport built on the outskirts of the city wasn't noisy at first. Then many chose to relocate closer in order to work there. And suddenly it became.
- If your business is selling cookies per mail, adding a mini-toothpaste in the pack proves you were thinking at aerosol-level of detail.
- Capable is someone able to survive by selling radishes as a form of deep specialization.
- Renting expensive gallery space for an exhibition probably doesn't work that well now that people are spending more time at home. But a website highlighting virtuals and enabling the purchase of reals is a gallery that works 24/7.
- Is seeing someone else on the same team demonstrate and explain the inner workings of a technology a sufficient justification to add it to your list? When the teams get large and share a lot (what employers seek to benefit their business), suddenly everyone feels they know everything...
- Listing 30 frameworks/languages in a CV and still applying for a job could mean inability to form a business around them to live profitably. A potential red flag.
- Concerned about your path means you could be fully unafraid of the CEO decorating the corona of the tree. Because it's your path, not theirs. And it's you who walks along it every single second. Watch out for the direction in which the top branches fall first as you don't want them to make too much noise. (You absent,) let them muddle the illiquid swamp waters. Nothing to be afraid about.
- When the payments didn't pay and the companies never were, it isn't difficult to decide which will have greater negative long-term impact on your carreer. Time to eradicate the whole tree, not sparing the branch influencers. You heard you had to use the right tools for the job, after all.
- Didn't know USDA has commodity price tracking service bit.ly/3hNZ8eJ ↗, which after clicking on an item and "retail" (if available) shows the weighted average price across thousands of stores. Quite useful if accurate (daily reports on changes are in PDF format). In some rare occasions though, received the "Bad Gateway" error message ending with the publisher "Tomcat/ISAPI/isapi_redirector/1.2.46".
- Perhaps buying second-hand used to make sense. What I noticed though (in my case) is that selecting a good item was connected with quite a lot of effort on my side to pass through the offers (also irrelevant ones), to read each description carefully, question why some details were omitted or none were provided, examine photos of the severity of advertised defects and how they could affect my work, subjectively evaluate the price, look at the counter of the number of shoppers who have previously seen the offer... All of this on a platform paid by advertisers only (serving mostly their interests), where each page starts with a spinner and anyone could republish anything anytime, causing you to believe you were discovering a new item when it arrived at the top. A big time waster where many people seemingly earn their living by competing for your attention and selling often broken, yet overpriced items. When you draw the line, the cost of the time you wasted on pointless offer scanning was much higher than the gain you could have had from finding a slightly cheaper option that met your criteria. The lesson learned here could be to go where the fewest people are and seek minimum intervention during the sale process (e.g. specialized store, Amazon etc). A store which sells directly the new items, without much fuss and with the full five-year guarantee. You could save yourself a lot of time (which is money) by avoiding the penny-pinching.
- 450 pounds of corn are a lot to produce the bioethanol required to fill the tank of a SUV. Said to be enough to feed a person for a year. No wonder food price variations for the poor and deforestation (large areas required for biofuel production) were cited as issues.
- "Gasoline prices typically rise in the summer during the heavy tourist traffic." Seasonalities. Hoping that the minus prices (overstock?) have found their equilibrium again.
- "Oil is now used to make clothing, drugs, gasoline, plastic." Body-made in the heat of the day too.
- What prices do the substitutes of this service have?
- The production factors might be missing. Or the clients of the client.
- Liked this sequence: Which products to produce? How much? How? Background was profit maximization.
- Manipulating their impressions has always been big business. Like the great-looking scale with a top made of stainless steel, enabling easy surface cleaning in case of content spillage, having cheap plastic at the bottom, where it's mostly invisible. As if the bottom surface won't ever get soaked in water spilled on the table.
- Spiraled out of Ctrl and Shifted to the visual Alts (plan Z) bit.ly/3juKIQX, bit.ly/2YQQFjw
- Computational proof of relationships between binomial coefficients (since 3.8) bit.ly/3bfODhQ
- "We ship with the options test and free return if not satisfied." Wouldn't work well with me. My test would involve manual measurements, the use of scales and a meter for physical dimensions, a burn-in test to evaluate stability, noise test, heat test, specific tests for subsystem performance, some manually written software... Would the person from the postal delivery service be so kind to wait for all of this or is there an option that they come back after two days?
- "Processes that involve large changes are more prone to produce defects than precision processes involving small changes... Larger structures are weaker, because they contain more material and the number and size of defects are correspondigly greater." How wouldn't these not remind you of software?
- The assumption that a website void of advertisements must be financed by some dark forces might be faulty thinking. Why equate labor of love with a bad smell? In fact, I frequently refer to my services to keep this site ad-free. The more you pay for them, the better they become and the more work gets done. Conversely, the less you pay or require them, the less I can help on your problems and/or in more general terms.
- "Folding@Home uses your PC to help fight Covid-19" bit.ly/3gHUugT ↗
- Using HBM2 memory (instead of GDDR6), "Radeon VII" bit.ly/3b8sa6h ↗ and "Radeon Instinct MI50" bit.ly/2QA9K4M ↗ (scroll to bottom) are both claimed to have memory bandiwdth of 1TB/s. The first must be much cheaper, although Amazon currently shows only a single such card (branded XFX, $1350). Relative to that, Nvidia's GV100 cards show up at over $8000. Perhaps GB/s-$-W could give another useful lens. Power demands may be high, but delving into Seasonic product specs may enable one to stay above water level.
- Noticed Nvidia's "Jetson Nano" a bit late bit.ly/3hKY8Yw ↗
- In theory, some mobile Nvidia GPUs look quite different from others bit.ly/3gIKzYv. Also possible to distinguish some GPUs among all categories (desktop, mobile, workstation, mobile workstation) bit.ly/2EKQaA8 as seen in the same source as of today. For instance, if the data was correct, the parameters of "GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q" were core clock of 735MHz, fill rates of 70.08GP/s and 201.5GT/s, memory bandwidth of 448GB/s. The card with the maximum memory bandwidth was "Nvidia Titan V CEO edition" (1200MHz), capable of 870.4GB/s. Highest clock had "GeForce RTX 2080 Super" (1650MHz), reaching memory bandwidth of 496GB/s. "Quadro GV100" had the highest pixel and texel fill rates of 208.4GP/s and 521GT/s (said to be ≈11.9% higher than on the mentioned Titan) at a core clock of 1132MHz and memory bandwidth of 870GB/s. Among all considered GPUs, the relationship between core clock and memory bandwidth came out as 0.6136.
- Infektionsschutzmassnahmenverordnung is a sad word.
- Value vs. weight for the Euro coins bit.ly/34FXQ1o. Carrying around 20 coins of 1€ or 2€ is equivalent to having another Galaxy S20 in your pocket. Except that the value of this would be 40€ at most. The densities of the 1, 2 and 5 cent coins appear the same (≈0.001660g/mm3), while 10 and 20 cents come at ≈0.001730g/mm3. Although, 50 cents have the same yellow appearance like the previous two, their density is noticeably different (0.001775g/mm3), as if designed by a modified process. Highest densities had the 1€ and 2€ coins (0.001895 and 0.001855g/mm3).
- Good to know that the calorie content in one Oreo cookie (45cal) is equivalent to 300g green leaf lettuce.
- How many percent are the repair/maintenance costs (already) relative to the initial purchase price?
- Couldn't go beyond 60% bit.ly/2G3cnKl. If the circle passes through all triangle points, the triangle-to-circle area is slightly over 40%, side lengths untouched.
- Tried to look for patterns in the zipcodes in Chicago, Illinois bit.ly/3jsNINX. The numbers were more random than expected, but if eyes don't fail me, they appear more sequential where the region density is highest (60601 - 60607)..
- Was thinking about the maximal radius that the pedals of a bike describe while cycling and how that related to the wheel radius. Assuming that the mapping refers to some factor of movement efficiency, one might prefer a small pedal radius effectively turning a large wheel rather than a large pedal radius turning a small wheel. If in doubt, always empirically validate the hypothesis.
- Another option is to take on too much, overload your computer memory on a task and then click on Chrome to quickly net-browse something you forgot. An endless release of occupied memory follows. Has to keep you engaged at all times or you lose interest. AI tasks may sound cool, but if they take several hours/days (without responsiveness to actions), it's not an effective use of my time. I need the result to sell here and now.
- Learned that "Sam's Club" is striving to deliver within an hour of customer order in China. Not too long ago, Amazon was advertising their same-day delivery, but this seems a lot faster. Possibly a lot to be gained by selling many sea cucumbers at $8/piece. When you open the browser, its development tools, write few lines of code, hit save and refresh few times (switching windows), observe the output on the screen and think of it, you wonder where the hour went. And you failed to sell anything.
- What was clicked, what was thought was clicked and the ability to turn off the cryptic information message.
- Along the lines and under the footnotes.
- Difficult not to accept your fine bit.ly/32wMevd
- Many frameworks work in a tight frame, susceptible of cracking along the diagonals leading to the corners (you could try to predict where this is going to happen next).
- A tennis table where a dozen of Joola balls jump in all directions every second satisfies the desire for more action, but does not necessarily give a good overview where the focus falls or how well the meaning spins with the client. Apart from the ball collisions.
- It's an overkill to use Makita to slice the Chiquita or a tank to tread down the grass situation, because you couldn't afford the lawnmower. Can't tell you how many websites remind me of this.
- Haven't seen someone: 1) present a new double or triple burger by animating its layer contents falling on top of each other, 2) isolating and explaining the contents of a layer on hover (e.g. lettuce, onion, egg, beef etc.), the thickness of the top/bottom bread, any sauces or alergens used, 3) letting people select and stack their own layers in the y-order they desire, 4) letting an algorithm suggest in real-time a matching drink given the chosen ingredients during the build process (e.g. the strawberry smoothie instead of the pineapple one). Plenty of room to be creative.
- This week's end of service for client projects happens to be tomorrow. Not that you didn't already know.
- There are currently 94 soup varieties at "Progresso". If you like traditional ones, you'd still be in trouble, having to choose between 26 varieties. If you like chicken or vegetable soups, you would have 35 and 30 choices accordingly. There were 20 "light", 19 "hearty", 9 "creamy" and 6 "organic" choices. Was slightly surprised that broccoli got almost as many mentions as beans and lentils combined. Also that cheese preceded tomato with 10 vs. 9 varieties.
- Neighborhoods, parks, bike lanes and libraries in Sacramento, California bit.ly/3jmhh3k. Uses open data by the City of Sacramento and its public library. Had to omit lots of branches which were outside the boundaries of Sacramento (e.g in Antelope, Carmichael, Citrus Heights, Courtland, Elk Grove, Fair Oaks, Galt, Isleton, Orangevale, Rio Linda, Walnut Grove). Some repeating addresses were cleaned up to a single entity (e.g. Central). We see that three libraries (Central, McKinley, Ella K. McClatchy) are more reachable due to being surrounded by a denser bike lane/route network.
- Libraries in Salt Lake City, Utah bit.ly/2YUNwiH. Living in the suburbs seems to leave one at a disadvantage here. Was already thinking of morning marmalade, go-kart-accessible. "All closed until further notice" means leaving empty-handed.
- Was always the case that you could travel much further digitally/mentally than you could physically.
- Easy to flood an app store; hard to create an eager user. If the software fails to engage or add value in our lives, the time has come to put aside the devices enabling it.
- Creativity must be able to finance its hardware or it will soon be suppressed by the relative lack of it.
- With a temporary taste that an airline was sponsoring COVID-19 research in attempt to convince in the safety of flights. Couldn't be so misleading except when lots of interests are at play, right?
- Used the Fitt's law formula, the result of one additional click test, personal observation and some modeling to approximately estimate point and click performance should I choose to switch to a 8000dpi mouse. If the starting mouse was 800dpi, the new point and click time would be 30% of the old, and if it were a 1600dpi model, the new time would be 37.7% of the old or so the result. This means that an increase of 5-10x in sensor sensitivity might be bringing ≈3x performance improvement. Instead of finishing a point & click "session" in say 835ms, one might be able to do so in 315ms, equivalent to saving ≈0.5s/target. Assuming every click initiates an HTTP request taking 615ms on average bit.ly/34zrXHT ↗, we see that in theory, savings on the human factor might approach losses on the (slow) network factor. But is this significant enough to justify the purchase of a high-price item?
- Until yesterday, believed to be a relatively good mouse user (having developed the preference to type rather than click). Then clicked on the first Google-returned result on "mouse accuracy test" and repeated it today too. The result improved only on the click accuracy metric (because you learn how it works and that effortless gets you the higher score), but target efficiency remained the same at 57-58%. This is with the cheapest possible mouse, lacking a dpi setting. But it signals that the pointing speed with a slow mouse leaves to be desired (you may less easily notice time waste here). Especially with higher resolution screens, window management and arriving at click targets could become much slower. Perhaps a moderately cheap 8000dpi Logitech mouse could offer support, but then you start weighing against other possible uses and tell yourself that this too can wait.
- My math professor probably wasn't great at precisely noticing where the noise was coming from. The aula was big and relatively densely packed. However, he frequently called "Ruhe dahinten!" and the noise was gone. Not hearing this had the effect of the lecture being postponed. Being present for other reasons than the "Stoff" was seen as intrusive. And then, in no time, the exams came and the failure rate accelerated.
- profit-margin: bottom-line. How (and when) I write CSS.
- According to Ontario public library statistics about 379 libraries in 2018 bit.ly/31s5tGW ↗, Toronto Public Library had the highest number of English print titles held in Canada: 3726134. It was followed by those in Markham, Ottawa and Kitchener having 489078, 300987 and 236490 titles accordingly. Yet, even so Markham's count comes only at 13.1% of what was available in Toronto. Total annual circulation (actual) was strongest in Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton with 30555579, 11692782 and 6668020 units accordingly. (Markham and Kitchener came 5th and 9th.) The number of in-person visits to the libraries were highest in Toronto, Missisauga, Ottawa, Hamilton and Markham (351547, 108394, 83135, 75078 and 55426 accordingly).
- The most concise text contains the smallest number of excuses.
- Counties, roads and populatd places with at least one public library in Wisconsin, USA bit.ly/2CVtPzc (uses WiDNR Open Data and publiclibraries.com). It appears that road density is slightly lower in the north (also north-east of La Crosse) and higher around Milwaukee, Madison and eventually Appleton. The two cities starting with "M" are also relatively close given the overall state size. Public libraries are present in many small towns/villages, which is nice.
- Quantified: A short, self-defined Euclidean distance function (Python) uses ≈2.7x the time required by the math module's hypot function for the same result. Always use the natives as much as possible.
- Regarding men's clothing at "Boohoo": (t-shirts/vests, trousers, jeans, coats/jackets) were having median prices (in £) of (8.4, 17.5, 17.5, 19.6), with (797, 194, 187, 345) units in each category. Regarding women's clothing: (tops, skirts, dresses) were having median prices (in £) of (9.6, 12, 14.4) with (6281, 681, 3513) units in each category. No significant price difference between trousers and jeans here, but coats/jackets may be only minimally more expensive, which sounds like a good value. A man buying the median jeans or trousers is equivalent to having him acquire 2.1 t-shirts of median price. One might wonder whether there is a premium women pay for acquiring a top and skirt relative to a dress. The first allows more flexible combinations, but the combined style may look more patchy, whereas a dress seems to offer a more consistent look, lowering the chance to select an inappropriate combination. Adding the medians for tops and skirts, we get £21.6. Relative to the dress median of £14.4, we see that buying two pieces costs 50% more at this online store. Doesn't necessarily mean we should get too excited about low prices and fast fashion, when the true costs often get exported to labor and environment.
- Same for "ASOS" in the categories t-shirts/vests, jeans and coats/jackets. Median prices were 27€, 42€ and 70€, while the number of units in each category were 6911, 962 and 966 respectively.
- Looked whether there was a noticeable price difference between men's trousers and jeans at "H&M", Germany. The 240 trousers had a median price of 25€, while the 184 jeans had a median of 30€.
- "Does your ten-year old code still run?" Wouldn't bet on it, especially if it relied on requests to an external service or a rare module, which became unsupported after a shift in the core version of the language. But having a timestamp on all work here enables anyone to discover this easily.
- Heard a popular song yesterday and expressed the belief that I was hearing a single singer, skillfully altering his voice to sound like three while probably using montage to assemble the song. Couldn't prove it, but the voices appeared somewhat similar to me. Is it possible to discover details like these from pure song data (e.g. independent component analysis or else) with some level of certainty?
- Onion opinions seek to make you cry as a way to achieve a hidden goal worth thinking about.
- Overworked, exhausted, boiled, unappreciated, accused of underperformance, withstanding humiliation, milled to a flour, packed in carton, shelf-placed for visibility and convenience, sold at discount price as someone else's consummable. A story worth of its CV, the experience unlocking all future opportunities for more of it.
- The anteater found plenty of reasons to work in the theater.
- Lemon juice and olives may mix well, but their makers bit.ly/31nZlPR ↗ and bit.ly/2ElcQHl ↗ are complex wooden systems, priced at a total of ≈464€. The chips in any average toplap would shake in envy.
- Grave: "If you enter here, turn off the blitz as a means to avoid the bone pile glitz, golden."
- Combining a horizon photo and code on the same screen could mean "too much code to see the horizon".
- Choosing to sell your product through the platforms of other companies and then suing them over paying too little is a sign of immaturity and unwillingness to take full responsibility for your actions. Instead of developing an independent payment platform to decouple the cash stream and retain all clients without sharing their details with third parties, you chose an emotional overreaction, risking the future of all your employees. Can't find a good reason to support that. Have always been a proponent of independent work and value creation. Neither borrowing value from the market, nor artificially inflating it.
- Camera-based descriptions of how the sausage was made were frequently inconvenient to watch. Some minor details took it away, the attention.
- Dreamed about a windowless home where the plants were in intensive competition to conquer the holes leading to the outside in order to secure space for flourishing. But wondered where all the people were.
- Still some time left to challenge the week not to end in ellipse-eclipse.
- Too big to fail turned out to have an expiration date bit.ly/31om6Du ↗
- S0 (zero service) and S1 (basic, minimal service) to S9 (maximum service) is the lettering used in the service level agreement.
- An interesting article on recycling solar panels bit.ly/34qKd6k ↗ Didn't expect to read that some will need decomissioning so soon.
- Was so hot outside, that for a brief moment was seeing double bit.ly/2Euf2Me. But summer August is a great fruit service provider (some figs abruptly changed to brown), which fully deserves to precede the less meaningful ones.
- Before leaving for the fields, thought of sharing an interesting finding from reusing the CPU data we saw previously. Considering the lens of measured performance per base frequency (GHz) and thermal design power (TDP, W), we notice the pattern that among Intel CPUs, many Xeon server processors tend to rise. Considering only laptop CPUs, the 10th generation (e.g. "10210Y" or "1035G1") leaves a positive impression. We also see that the last two digits (the "35" above) among the more highly ranked, appear to be more random than ending on pure "00", "20" or else (e.g. "6267U", "2276G", "2687W"). This refers to the SKU, where higher numbers (assigned in order of development, e.g. revision) were said to have more features. (Also had no idea that for some 10th generation models, the number after the last "G" letter could indicate level of graphics performance, higher being better.) Somewhat less noticeable among them is that some have a pair of letters at the end (not one), forming more rare combinations ("QM", "TE", "XM", etc).
- Overspending on a potato peeler to experience the heights of the money-go-round. No, but a hint how much can be lost on the small stuff.
- Acer projectors have so many properties that a comparison matrix might offer a useful overview. You could be the one to create it.
- WG gesucht? Tried to identify rooms in Berlin that are relatively affordable, long-term-available and close to the city center. Might be useful if you plan to settle in this city or study there. Looked at ≈1900 offers on "WG-gesucht" since the start of this month and pre-selected ≈30, filtering out the ones renting for less than six months. Then found their approx. distance from city center to create a final score. Few potentially interesting ones include bit.ly/32cZIw0 ↗ (70m2, 485€), bit.ly/3hr0rA8 ↗ (50m2, 400€), bit.ly/2Ysb3XY ↗ (95m2, 790€), bit.ly/31kQNck ↗ (46m2, 440€). Or a cheaper one bit.ly/3gm6KmU ↗ (25m2, 250€), which was still bigger than the median room size of 18m2. Be aware that some may already be taken or deactivated by the time you read this. Hope it helps.
- Could a unit traveling through the assembly line be seen as a high-touch surface?
- Part number identification bit.ly/3aLobfs ↗. Every memory brand seems to have their own label convention, which makes things difficult for the casual client, who might buy a module which doesn't fit in their system (e.g. DDR3L for a DDR3 system). How much simpler it could have been if it was interactive and showed only the few important and relevant details to the actual part number. (Please, also include letters for the number of chips per module as this detail might be hidden behind a sticker/heatsink on a photo.) Could be useful, because the product description might be unavailable or come from a non-expert, who just took the module(s) out of their system and offered them on the second-hand market, leaving viewers wondering. Haven't seen this done for the few part decoders checked today. All were static examples, sometimes listing two conventions (old and new), further complicating the decoding process. Sometimes the part numbers themselves appeared to have been "simplified", including less letters or in a different order than expected by convention. Perhaps there are good reasons for these inconsistencies, but they give manufacturers the chance to improve. One could always type the letters in Google and receive plenty of results, but nothing beats the clarity of a single one. And yes, at the end, this is design too.
- Week ended for client projects. Till next one.
- "Time is tickin away
You ve gotta - live your life
Day by day
Happy or sad, good or bad,
Life is to short
You ve gotta - keep your head."
- C-Block
The time and the head. - CNN claimed that the cost attributed to the beautiful images seen on many airplanes ranges in 150-300 thousand dollars. Assumed that A321neo (37.5m length (JetBlue), 3.95m fuselage width (Airbus)) had to be painted and tried to roughly estimate the paint cost per unit area bit.ly/2QeQqtO. With my limited knowledge, came close to 250$/m2.
- Some mathematicians said they were using Japanese chalk "Hagoromo" to write on the black board. Claimed to be non-toxic and safe on Amazon amzn.to/326vVF6 ↗. Was amused that some were calculating whether they had ten years of supply once they heard the company was in trouble. Reminded me about flour and toilet paper.
- Collaborative rectangles bit.ly/3gk1m3M
- Extended to Oregon, traveling Salem-Eugene-Portland (two segments of 66 and 110 miles) raises the median house price 194→223.5→267$/sqft. Extended to Washington (state), traveling Spokane-Tacoma-Seattle (two segments of 292 and 34 miles) raises the median house price 171.5→258.3→513.5$/sqft. Extended to Massachusetts, traveling Springfield-Worcester-Lowell-Boston-Cambridge (four segments of 52, 41, 33, 3 miles) raises the median house price 121.8→177→207.4→693→878.2$/sqft.
- As someone mentioned, sometimes the smallest thing that could possibly work is beneficial with housing too. Means lower property taxes, maintenance costs (even CO2 emissions), dealing with fewer details, while tight-packing all amenities ensures you miss nothing in your lifestyle that when needed, you get more efficiently (not having to walk across several rooms). But some initial planning of the size you expect your family to grow (plus eventual capacity for say two guests), and a gauge of how much space everyone would need on average to feel comfortable (say 60m2 per family member, falling back to 40m2 per any person), gives perhaps orientation that 4-6 occupants would require at most ≈240m2, which translates into 2585sqft. You might come to the idea of packing 6 beds in a single room, but then breathing and sleep disruption issues will surface. Would you plan for 3 bedrooms of 2 beds each (or even a single twin-sized bed) or spread the beds across the rooms so that the decision when one falls asleep doesn't bother the rest? Minor, but perhaps better to have some clarity in advance. This means that the house we have seen in Denver (5 bedrooms, 3531sqft, $495000) with its two visible twin beds is perhaps intended for 5-7 occupants, which translates to an average of 46.8-65.6m2/occupant. This is quite close to our initial estimate, yet going for it with the smaller family could mean having to live with 36.5% of excess area.
- Batched salad making and plum drying. Not a fan of fruit drying though, especially when damaging and inefficient.
- Homes in Columbine, CO and Fairfield, CA appear even more expensive. Fairfield had a median of 264.75$/sqft, but this "simple" home with container appearance (still hiding lots of amenities) bit.ly/3aKgLJI ↗ came at 90$/sqft. Fairfield is said to be about ≈65min non-stop drive from Fremont, CA (distance of 45miles), where the Zillow median was already at 647.55$/sqft. Driving 14 miles (23km) from Columbine (CO) to Denver (CO), changes the medians from 218 to 330$/sqft and driving 29 miles from Denver (CO) to Boulder (CO), changes them from 330 to 470$/sqft. For instance, these homes in Denver (bit.ly/2FDeJzn, bit.ly/3gedZNR and bit.ly/325XM8w, all ↗) range in 127-155$/sqft, but due to their size, are still quite expensive.
- Pay what's required if you wish to see your problems addressed. Or learn what's needed to complete the work yourself. You may need to postpone for a while, but at least you could track anytime your years of life lost.
- Compared the overall housing affordability of three cities (El Paso (TX), Tucson (AZ) and Fayetteville (NC)) as seen in numerous Zillow offers. Median housing prices came out to be 105, 170 and 103$/sqft accordingly. Could not find photos of a likeable house in Fayetteville, but my script detected one potentially interesting offer in El Paso, TX bit.ly/3aHtmNq ↗ (60.69$/sqft) and one in Tucson, AZ bit.ly/3aGIE5h ↗ (46.15$/sqft). You may not necessarily perceive these as affordable, but they are relatively cheap for their neighborhoods.
- A simple image effect bit.ly/2Q9foul
- Hourly bike counts at three sites in Camden, UK (01.07.2015 - 17.08.2020) bit.ly/34aRIOx and how they spread over the hours of the day. It appears that July is the most active month. Although the most recent highest counts were shown (as blue dots) to be at "Pancras Road", the hourly picture reveals that during the busiest hours (08:00 and 18:00), cyclists were using the infrastructure at "Royal College Street" more often.
- "Life is a business that does not cover its costs" - Schopenhauer. To be checked whether this business had life insurance coverage.
- "So the uninformed might as well roll the dice and guess: if they are right, they look competent; if not, they look no worse than if they had been honest about their uncertainty." On the low penalty of false claims.
- Researchers found that penguin huddling is mathematically efficient bit.ly/3aBwvyu ↗
- "Reiki from another room" bit.ly/2YbIEFm ↗. Reads funny, although if they read energies, it's probably pointless to train their Zoom-based classifier.
- Interesting: A picture with colorful icecreams photographed by partially capturing Milka's head, perhaps freely walking inside the gallery. So reassuring to see the real maker.
- "OSRAM OSCONIC S 3030 GW QSLM31.EM" is a LED light with quantum dot technology, specified as 208lm/W in its datasheet (37.5lm at 0.177W) bit.ly/2PYM89E ↗. If ten such LEDs achieve 375lm at 1.77W, that could be a potential desk lamp material. Especially considering that ten units of a slightly different version (150-160lm at 178lm/W) are currently 2.59€ at Mouser.
- "Supply creates its own demand." Liked this.
- All undeniably perfect, highly competent, professional. Until bankrupt, suddenly, unapologetically, unexpectedly. Failing with no grace or self-respect. Kind of customer betrayal gone cold to the touch.
- Every service costs ("Jede Serviceleistung kostet") bit.ly/310HcHC ↗. Make sure you can afford it.
- boom ↔ doom could be a Monday morning animation. No need to switch letters, only rotateY the first between 0 and 180°. Lightest touch only. champignon ↔ champagne can be postponed to the end of the week.
- For some calculative reason, decided to educate myself about Timișoara, Romania. Then saw that Wikipedia mentioned it has a "powerful IT sector" together with Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Iași, and Brașov and that in 2013 it had the fastest Internet in the world. (Quick check at speedtest data shows that nowadays this country is a world-fifth in terms of fixed broadband speed with a download rate of 163Mbps.) So the smallest step for maximum difference (an increase of over 100Mbps) could have been something like a 600km-long, straight-line trip. Said to be the European Capital of Culture, 2021.
- Panned a world map to get a sense of the "Prologis" presence throughout the world. The search listed 508 properties in USA, 89 in Europe, 46 in China, 10 in Japan and 5 in Brazil. This sums to 658, but NASDAQ mentioned 4655 buildings (total area of ≈89.46 million m2). Unsure how such a big difference forms. Perhaps a single property accomodates several buildings. But then the average property needs to have seven buildings. Somehow it feels that not the whole story is being told to the public here.
- Ran code on the used cars at "Volkswagen Automobile Leipzig" to identify potentially interesting ones. "Volkswagen Golf GTE 1.4 l TSI" (offer 15502, 4449km, 150 PS, 1395 ccm, 1.9l/100km (combined), 43gCO2/km, 34970€) and "Volkswagen T-Roc 'United' 1.0 TSI" (offer 51HZW10873, 0km, 116 PS, 999 ccm, 5.2l/100km, 23504€) came very close to the top. Two interesting Audis were "Audi A6 Avant sport 55 TFSI" (offer SKAU477VL, 0km, 367 PS, 1984 ccm, 1.9l/100km, 44gCO2/km, 72703€) and "Audi A7 Sportback 50 TFSI" (offer SKBC405VL, 0km, 299 PS, 1984 ccm, 2.1l/100km, 48gCO2/km, 89990€). Among the cheaper cars, "Nissan Micra 0.9 IG-T N-Way Start/Stopp" (offer 15943, 14144km, 90 PS, 898 ccm, 5.1l/100km, 121gCO2/km, 11970€) may still have something to offer. Considered were 713 used cars.
- Reused the previous work to do the same for the 141 used cars at "Reisacher" bit.ly/3iJ1RWL. Might be useful if you live in Ulm and prefer the BMW brand. Here is how "BMW 520d A Limousine" (190 PS) looks like bit.ly/3h2FuLA ↗. This time, the dot sizes map between 109 and 530 PS.
- Distance traveled, horsepower and price for the used cars at "Porsche Zentrum München" bit.ly/3ay7jc3. 48 such vehicles were available on their website. Here is how "Panamera 4S" (440 PS) looks like bit.ly/31TJEio ↗. Dot sizes map between 231 and 761 PS. Note that powerful, gasoline-based cars are likely not good for the environment.
- Reminded of the maintenance problems of the non-paying, crafty, irreplaceable driver of a corporate buggy. The last bug was heavier than usual, raised the front wheels and everything poured on the ground. The driver had to restore order by shoveling tons back to the vehicle body again—the kind of work they despised seeing other people do. Didactic, this fable-dream.
- A small drawing with squares bit.ly/3kLv2dF
- Hurricanes bit.ly/2E4NGw6 ↗
- Can't imagine how someone could carry a 3.6kg guitar for the duration of an entire concert. A 5kg electric chainsaw usually starts to push me down-forward only after a couple of minutes. Also makes a lot of noise, the only difference being it doesn't have a strap (wouldn't stay attached for long anyway). But saw lots of guitars at "Musik Produktiv" and investigated their median prices by category bit.ly/3gXZYVw. What came out is that at least in this store, jazz guitars appeared slightly more expensive than heavy metal guitars (112 vs. 90 models). Most expensive tended to be the custom, aged and signature models. Having no clue what the difference between T, ST, PRS, LP, ES and SG guitars might be.
- Fulfilling a 2200cal diet on a combination of fruits on the cheap bit.ly/2Fpb5sT. Turns out, consuming lots of bananas (≈2.5kg) fulfills the caloric needs at an estimated cost of $4.35/day.
- Searched Google Images for tangrams. So nice. Wondered whether the human figure in several positions is animatable.
- Median single-trip base fare vs. median cost of a monthly pass by transportation mode across transportation agencies in the US bit.ly/3kFNcgU
- Learned about an interesting metric for road intersections. The crash rate per million entering vehicles was defined as (intersection-recorded crashes in a year * 106) / (avg. 24h traffic volume from all directions * 365).
- Transit statistics by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) bit.ly/3gOPDeA ↗. For instance, you could learn about the number of active busses by year built bit.ly/30PtgQT. Most bus bodies were said to be made by "New Flyer of America" (37.7%) and "Gillig Corporation" (29.7%), while most bus engines were said to be made by "Cummins" (89.3%). 57.9% of the busses were indicated to have a capacity of 36-40 seats.
- Median price and number of men's running shoes by brand at "Foot Locker" bit.ly/3kEDCef. Interesting that "Under Armour" and "Asics" have slightly higher medians (but are more rare) than shoes by "Nike" and "Adidas". Medians of 50€ had only three brands ("Champion", "Ellesse" and "Sergio Tacchini"), although "Fila" is quite close (55€) and much more frequent.
- Remember that orders are possible through the usual channel only bit.ly/3fORn6p. No in-person conversations, no phone calls, no video sessions, no Facebook messages. Accept or not.
- Some segments of the minimum spanning tree involving 11290 cities in Germany bit.ly/2DLd2iH. The idea was to explore whether it could detect a connection between components suggesting the former separation between East and West Germany (inner German border bit.ly/30OxurO ↗). But my data about North Rhine-Westphalia seems questionable. This tells me that the big cities there are slightly more distant than the smaller ones elsewhere. Rhineland-Palatinate in particular (West) seems quite dense, perhaps followed by Schleswig-Holstein (North) and Thuringia (Central East). Yet, it could be that the data is simply incomplete or a spurious representation of reality.
- Minimum spanning tree for some of the biggest cities in the Netherlands bit.ly/3aiz34d
- The pressure bulding on the side walls of Donald Duck's skyscraper might have been non-trivial. A pile of coins can't be stacked indefinitely as this diagram suggests bit.ly/31KXxPM. They tend to travel down the sides. Hence, in order to prevent losing precious cents through side cracks in the building (while swimming inside the coin pile in exaltation), the height of the building could have been shorter (and less eye-catching), while its base wider. Might explain this interest in large warehouses among the rich.
- Would you say that a math book containing an image of a man resting on sofa and a skeleton with a hidden chopper behind its back, mentioning "soul collection" underneath, isn't going a bit too far off topic?
- Closeup of a small mosquito, which broke through the net defense bit.ly/3ionlYK. Don't even know its Latin name. Now trapped between net and window. Should I open the window and let it jump freely inside? Update: We played a bit of a long game of studying each other, but at the end, the shortest path was chosen. Net opened, blown away with mouth-made wind. Unfortunately, I believe one if its legs was somehow injured by window machinery, because it was staying very static, even when its head was visibly rotating. Interesting that on the way down its desire to fly came back again. Hope that the three birds landing on the nearby tree seconds later won't see it for a while.
- Wouldn't even know about that bit.ly/30LmM5h
- Bad headlights don't allow much to be seen at night. Preceded by daydreaming.
- Zalando got "millions" of new clients during the pandemic bit.ly/3fQC7FT ↗. EBIT doubled, net profit almost tripled. Heavily relying on their online store/website and likely putting effort into it every day. Meanwhile, other companies decided it wasn't economic to build online.
- The idea of computing sitting area per dollar for various living room sectionals wouldn't tell me how comfortable they are. Perhaps a small area of great comfort and a large area of low comfort could be available at the same price point. Perhaps greater area is not even desirable or comfort is secondary. Perhaps not all pieces of the sectional have known dimensions, but the whole is trated like a block, in which some spacing is left for accessibility. Perhaps the ergonomy leaves to be desired. The more time one spends with it in use (e.g long hours @ home office), the more likely/heartfelt/emotional potential grievances become.
- Observation: Thermal expansion of Teknoplastik polycarbonate sheet was indicated as 0.065mm/m°C.
- Wished to cool myself with a magnum. Then found it's the equivalent of 1.5l of wine. But iced wine would daze me.
- The strength of some relationships observed in the S&P 500 data: return on assets - return on invested capital (0.87), market capitalization - EBITDA (0.82), market capitalization - gross profit (0.81), enterprise value - free cash flow (0.81), return on assets - net margin (0.77), number of employees - total revenue (0.73), total assets - free cash flow (0.73), average volume (10 day) - total shares outstanding (0.67). Few inverse relationships: dividends paid - total shares outstanding (-0.73), dividends paid - enterprise value (-0.69), dividends paid - EBITDA (-0.66).
- Trophy atrophy.
- Used a tool by the "Centre for Cities" bit.ly/33HoDKo ↗ and considered population, total number of jobs, gross value added per worker, business services (%), high skilled population (%) and unemployment rate (%) for some German cities in 2011. Based on these criteria, back then Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Hannover, Nuremberg, Leipzig and Essen scored highest, in that order.
- "Works, but is a bit too slow..." Perhaps it wasn't always like this. Perhaps it was snappy and responsive once. But then it was eventually forced to deal with the equivalent of 15MB websites (no longer 15kB) and stumbled over the increased load. Over time, software complexity grows faster than the improvements in harware performance. Which makes it crucial to hire the right software engineers from the start of a project rather than having to deal with the consequences of slow, broken or irrelevant ater the fact. Not coders able to add more lines in unit time, but independent think-doers with strong focus on value and business advancement.
- Identified few places (among 29842) with a favorable combination of few dimensions (population, unemployment rate, median income, median home price, median age and climate) on living. Since these are incomplete, which of these alternatives would you say might be good choices: Tucson (Arizona), Fayetteville (North Carolina), Portland (Oregon), Tampa (Florida), Garland (Texas), Gary (Indiana), Arlington (Virginia), Rio Rancho (New Mexico), Pembroke Pines (Florida), Fremont (California), Addison township (Illinois), Charleston (West Virginia), Fairfield (California), Escondido (California), Goldsboro (North Carolina), Portage (Michigan), Galloway (New Jersey), Deerfield Beach (Florida), Burton (Michigan), Collinsville (Illinois), Glendale Heights (Illinois), Naugatuck (Connecticut), Newington (Connecticut), Searcy (Arkansas), Chillicothe (Ohio), Griffith (Indiana), Columbine (Colorado), Fort Russell (Illinois), Oelwein (Iowa), Parkway (California)? Update: One might think that some of these "less popular" places wouldn't even have the convenience of a Walmart store. Checked only until Portage (Michigan) and gave up, because all were said to have one.
- Another workweek-long window of opportunity to propose your projects is open.
- Heat storage content per volume for some common materials bit.ly/30Cwabn. Thought that the table deserved a diagram.
- Liked the way Fujitsu specified energy usage (W) of some of their devices to the second digit after the comma.
- "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master knows is the butterfly." - Richard Bach (via Robin Sharma)
- So that one day will be today. The diagram representing the current state looks overwhelming bit.ly/31tya5a even when not including all subcategories. We see how regional banks (light blue in the south-west), apparel companies (yellows in the north-west), electric utilities (blues at the center), oil and gas exploration (light greens at center-west), pharmaceuticals (reds in the south-east) seem to cluster nicely together. Somewhat unexpected was to see "Nvidia" positioned next to "Adobe" (GPU hardware and creativity software). Overall, this was the type of effect I was looking for. The median market capitalization of all S&P 500 indexed corporations came out as 23.3715 billion dollar.
- According to Wikipedia, among the 505 listed companies in the S&P 500 index, 20 happen to be in the "Health care equipment" subcategory (most of any other). There are 14 companies in "Industrial machinery", 13 in "Semiconductors" (never heard of "Qorvo" and "Skyworks Solutions"), 12 in "Application software" (same with "Synopsis" and "Tyler Tecnologies"), 11 in "Data processing and outsourced services" (the subcategory of "Visa", "Mastercard" and "Paypal"). "Oil, gas exploration and production" was also represented by 11 entities, which reminds me of the statement "data is the new oil". Was looking for symbols of relatively similar companies in order to explore potential similarities in financial performance (one day).
- Efficacy of the LED lamps by "CREE Lighting" bit.ly/30Dm5Lv. Only three models seem to exceed efficacy of 100lm/W while retaining CRI of 90 or above.
- Ran a small script through 350 digital oscilloscopes sold at "Newark" to identify units quite different from the majority bit.ly/2XBYJnw. As most good things, these turned out to be quite expensive. While many were operating in the "ns" range, few on this short list were in the "ps" range. The most expensive unit had the following characteristics: 4 channel, 8 Ghz, 20 GSPS, 200 Mpts, 53.8 ps. The median device in terms of price ($3146) had 4 channels, 200 Mhz, 2 GSPS, 1 Mpts, 1.75 ns.
- Few properties of the vehicles by "GMC" bit.ly/3idtA1t. Includes only what was found easily, in the allotted time.
- Looked at the dimming ratio for the 81 LED drivers by "Maxim Integrated". The ratios of 200, 1000 and 5000 were present in 10 products each, 20000 was iseen in five and 100000 in a single one.
- Never come, never served.
- |Animation idea: tree sucking up green leaves from the follage on the ground. #functionality #circular
- Few properties of default car model trims by "KIA" bit.ly/3klTDWn. "2020 K900 Luxury" appears three times as powerful as "2020 Rio LX", but "2020 Niro EV EX" is estimated to have ≈5.33 times its fuel-efficiency.
- Few properties of 24V batteries by "SimpliPhi Power" bit.ly/39WP8fX
- Used CBOE data and compared median trade counts and traded shares for type A, B and C shares between 03.01.2011 and 04.08.2020. According to Investopedia, type A shares are for large investors with long time horizon, type B are for small investors with long time horizon and type C are for everyone having a short time horizon. For traded volume, obtained these ratios (of medians): A/C = 2.329, A/B = 3.415 and for trade counts: A/C = 2.485, A/B = 6.156. Trading with type B shares appears to be of lowest interest. So what could be a possible explanation? Is it that small investors can't afford long-term thinking and more often turn to seeking quick gains (type C)? Could mean that the market is dominated by few big investors, intensively trading with type A shares, while the majority of small investors increasingly engages in short-term thinking (type C). The most recent visible increase in type C trade counts suggests this.
- Amazon knows the value of a great website (even more so during a pandemic). Most companies pretended websites didn't matter and found themselves caught off-guard. Or they tried to fix the bad with the any (since they knew best) and arrived at unnoticed worse.
- Four dimensions in the annual reports of "LEGO Foundation" bit.ly/2XtBhst. The area referring to the last year looks expanded. Greatest change in total equity appears to have been between 2015 and 2016.
- When 2D starts to appear tedious, you expand your knowledge about 3D primatives bit.ly/31goUB7
- One triangle scale-rotates to another bit.ly/33w4PcC
- iPhone icon has a question bit.ly/3grckFr. Still messy after the last response.
- Morning breeze maker bit.ly/33owWL2. Might unweave after few spins.
- First pcolormesh test looks useful bit.ly/2Xmkh7m. Brightness of screen regions (nits) reminds me of some colored grids. Guessing its also useful to visually compare the results of different matrix decomposition/factorization techniques bit.ly/31c8FVQ. (Always in trouble when staring at hundreds of numbers.)
- Looking at the ships of "Carnival Cruises" bit.ly/30iOLZY ↗ and "Royal Caribbean" bit.ly/2ovDULN ↗. Many engineered as dense meetspots.
- Quick and rough: Few properties of the excavators by "CAT" bit.ly/30kxBuO
- Another dreamy shape made of simple code bit.ly/2D4J9d8. Did not show the scaled versions (inside each other) as coloration became increasingly difficult.
- Neighborhoods, parks, bicycle paths and libraries in Portland, Oregon bit.ly/33faEer. Thin and thick blue lines refer to active and recommended bike segments (planned and retired were not included). The coordinates of "Gresham Library" and "Fairview-Columbia Library" were outside the boundaries and were not shown. Was also unable to find those of "Troutdale Library". Hope you like what took me several hours.
- Max. I/O pins and SRAM bytes vs. 5K pricing for the 32-bit MCUs in active production by "Microchip" bit.ly/33anjzv. The diagram includes a total of 443 microcontrollers. The strength of relationship is 0.808 and 0.853 accordingly. The maximums found here were CPU speed of 300Mhz, 640kB SRAM, 120 I/O pins, 8 UARTs. There were fewer 8-bit and 16-bit MCUs (148 and 302 accordingly).
- Another week and month are gone. Good time to reflect whether the goals were achieved on time. And if not, to determine the true cost of that additional delay.
- Made myself a visual CPU inspection tool using freely available data. Wondered about how much better an unheard model was relative to the internal one. Turns out only slightly, but it could have been used as a good heater with its TDP of over 100W. But the tiny script made an interesting finding. Present CPU was said to be only ≈30% faster than the Atom Z530 while rated at 5x the TDP (10W vs. 2W). Deeply saddened me. Overall, peeking at 2937 CPUs, script found "Ryzen 7 4800U" and ""Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U" to have some preferable characteristics. "Intel Core i5-7Y57" might still offer good base performance for an energy-efficient system, but it's a model from 2017. Among the 10th generation Intel CPUs that ranked high were "10210Y" (2019), "1060NG7" (2020), "10710U" (2019). Never heard of "1185G7" before bit.ly/30cSQyO ↗.
- Average times to create million "empty" objects holding two properties: 5475.81ns (Python) vs 2189.07ns (C++). We notice some serious overhead here. Average times to execute a function accepting two arguments and doing nothing (million times): 3436.84ns (Python) vs. 2234.89ns (C++). This means that added abstraction in Python comes at a greater cost; staying at function level, whenever possible, has clear benefits. Whether two arguments are used to initiate an object or are passed to a function is at least speedwise almost indifferent to C++ (although likely not in terms of memory usage). Moreover, we see how much the C++ timings approach the average cost of a single elementary operation (which was 2120ns)! In other words, C++ invites abstraction and so enables the creation of very complex software, easing the technological constraints on human creativity.
- "Zwei junge Menschen sterben bei Badeunfällen an der Donau" bit.ly/2EyDzzT ↗. Confirms my finding from few days ago that Danube is a fast river and swimming in the middle of it might be connected with some life risks (as we see now).
- Elementary operation timings between two integers or two floats in Python and C++ on a sample machine bit.ly/3fgVesB. At least in this test, it didn't seem to make much difference whether the numbers were integers or floats (expected the floats to be much slower). Also, division (in latest Python) was only insignificantly slower than multiplication. (You probably remember the optimizations converting division to multiplication, which may have worked much better in the past.) We also notice a bit more variability in the case of (interpreted) Python compared to (compiled) C++. Independent of variable type or operation, the average time in Python was 3249.54ns, while the average in C++ was 2120.74ns (≈34.73% faster). So if we take a dot product of two ten-dimensional vectors of integers, using 10 multiplications and 9 additions, we could potentially expect the computation time to be 10*3221.85 + 9*3181.54 = 60852.36ns in Python and 10*2115.22 + 9*2119.73 = 40229.77ns in C++. Suppose that compiling a skeleton C++ code (which does nothing) takes us estimated 2.5s. How many operations do we need to have in order to offset this initial time loss? If per single addition we save 1061.81ns, this corresponds to ≈2354470 additions. At least on this setup here, this might appear to be useful only when working on a project of above-average complexity. What we forget here is that a language is much more than its elementary operations and that things get progressively more interesting once systems are put under heavy load. For instance, having too many imports or slower memory accesses in Python can reduce or even eliminate its fast-start advantage.
- Product of three sums and sum of three products bit.ly/3hRzntk
- Five lines for five random color codes bit.ly/3jNVi6y. You may prefer four lines with few more characters bit.ly/2XbkN8q.
- All my doves flew away while waiting Dove's website to initialize the spinners. Corn food for thought.
- Even noisy images have a certain beauty bit.ly/3hLBVcz
- Parks and bike lanes in Los Angeles, California bit.ly/338h4fE. According to this source, "Griffith Park" appears to be big (17.44km2). The density of the bike lanes to the north is visibly lower than to the south. The white area next to the coastline in the west (Santa Monica Pier) seems particularly bike-friendly.
- This natural smooth sandstone pack looks nice bit.ly/3faWtJZ ↗
- Was always fascinated how artists were using simple pencil shading to create beautiful sketches bit.ly/2X9PL0B
- Somehow reminded me of the "Beats" logo bit.ly/2XnIBGf
- Breath-holding for a duration of 8mins suggests a well-trained body. My exhale moment would come much earlier. Haven't thought about the similarities between over-eating and over-breathing either. The technique of 5.5 breaths/min for 5.5l/min (inhale, then exhale, both for 5.5s) sounds interesting. (via James Nestor) Can imagine that passing through a store quickly and decisively, without a single breath is much safer than recalling the why, walking the where, hesitating the which and computing the how much, while taking 200 unnoticed breaths.
- Learned there were about 20 types of endorphins bit.ly/306GRTc ↗ released in our body (affecting our mood), yet couldn't find a table of scientific names and explanations.
- Some properties of the fishing rods by "Orvis" bit.ly/331uAl5 (as of today, 28.07.2020). Not supporting ocean resource depletion, but hoped for a numeric overview of what's available. These 457cm show to which lengths people are capable of going to put food on the table (or seek profit). The common theme among the three most expensive fishing rods is the reduced number of pieces they are made of.
- Length of the longest rivers within German territory bit.ly/2P0etvF. Rhein, Weser, Elbe, Donau (Danube), Main and Havel seem to be a lot longer than the rest. As you can see, Rhein and Donau aren't among the calmest either. Inn (coming from St. Moritz (Swiss Alps), said to reach Passau) is somewhat interesting, because despite being shorter and occupying a much smaller area, it has higher average drain rate than many others, including Weser and Main (aapproaching that of Elbe).
- Only at dummerAugust. Relentlessly brand-proud.
- Can't play poker, but this possibility to "win with the worst and lose with the best" hand sounds frustrating.
- Aimed to buy a microcontroller on a nanosalary?
- Brain: "Place the doors in a room to minimize the walkpath (avoiding a diagonal of many objects); place the windows on opposite walls to maximize airflow path (diagonal)." This machine, connecting active walking and passive cooling, uninvited.
- "By the time it reaches us, electricity has lost 85% of the potential energy of the coal used to make it." Fanned-around soot on the solar mirror.
- Impressions from today's reading: In 2012, steel casting, iron casting and electrolysis were connected with high emissions (2.4, 1.7 and 5.4tons of CO2/ton of metal produced). Hoping that today's metal production can no longer be considered a by-product. Aluminium also has very high embodied energy, even though produced in much lower quantities than steel. Cement was said to emit almost as much CO2 as steel. The weight of the average UK train has grown to 47t (how much metal is used in there?). Even when stainless steel was said to be 20x stronger, 65x stiffer and 8x denser than polystyrene, plastic teaspoons were thinner than the ones made of stainless steel (designers could have made them the other way around to limit waste). Polyurethane (plastic) is even in lycra and spandex (could be underwear). Most plastics was said to be made of oil (and thus has comparable emissions of 2-3kg CO2/kg), while requiring ≈80MJ/kg to produce. The primary unseen use of plastic was indicated to be the protection of goods in transit. Since it is very cheap, it found its way in all kinds of low-value applications (so the author). There are plastic recylcing labels in the form of triangles, made of arrows pointing against each other and a number between 1 and 7 inside. Recyclable in EU & USA are only numbers 1-3; the other types are sent to landfills or get burned. On average, 24 trees are required to make a ton of printing paper (in 2005, estimated 2.6 billion trees were lost for the purpose). Each newspaper lasts one day and then has no value (compared to a tree which might have grown over 20 years). Depending on process, making paper by recycling was said to require 18.7-20.7GJ/ton, while directly from a tree source—15.3-36GJ/ton. Even when paper gets recycled, there's still an energy cost involved. Green laser light can remove toner from paper without damaging it (enabling the more favorable paper reuse rather than recycling). Desirable: products with minimal packaging, buying only few fridges in a lifetime, having embodied energy of a car in its specification (not only emissions in use). Inertia inhibits change. The way to go through is by facing it with both eyes open.
- Used the National Register of Historic Places to find out US cities with lots of historic places of national and international significance bit.ly/39tMNbZ. The specifics about Waltham, Massachusetts and Georgetown, Texas bit.ly/2OTnO8C reveal lots of historic houses.
- Interesting this solar panel efficiency of claimed 35% at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Spectrolab delivers solar panels for the space industry bit.ly/3hBycy3 ↗. But space applications are more demanding, so the high lead relative to an efficient rooftop panel (slightly over 21%) is perhaps justified.
- Brushy heart bit.ly/3jEN54L
- Week ended, so decided to put the brave face on, but then found Delta's new in-studio recording bit.ly/3fXUaev ↗
- Solar energy production sites in Las Vegas bit.ly/2D3z3Zs
- Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4 memory has reached 4800Mhz bit.ly/2WQ3HwE ↗
- Google Trends shows that hotel and restaurant searches receive increasingly more attention than travel, flight or rent-a-car bit.ly/2EguyLO. Time of reference are the last 12 months. If you wonder, the library line passes between travel and flight, which is encouraging. Would be even more so if library titles weren't styled in "disabled" grey. But nothing against if this helps save more lives.
- Were they telling me what I was willing to hear?
- A page with stamps collected as a child (maybe at age of 12 years or so) bit.ly/3hBpdNz. Untouched for many years now. To remind me of my grandfather without whose help that album wouldn't even exist. But also of the sense of shame and guilt which went for days while thinking through what would be the most appropriate way to ask a close relative for money. Should have asked for forgiveness instead. And then this came out. Dedicated to you.
- Thankful to everyone who supports this work in one form or another. This is what enables me to continue. Knowing that it matters to you in use on a daily basis.
- Tried to estimate how long it takes to mow a lawn of one acre. Assumed ideal conditions: flat terrain, no obstacles (e.g. pond), no trees, grass of required height, continuous machine operation at full speed, no overlap between the rectangles of each back-and-forth pass, cutting blade(s) fully extending to the deck diameter. Imagined this must be a function of land area, self-propel speed and deck size. As a reference, used a model we have seen here before, having a max. speed of 9mph and deck size of 21in. Few unit conversions and a division simplify the result to ≈31.43min, which seems suspiciously low. Perhaps someone leaning towards empirical evidence has a much better perspective on the error term.
- Heard about the bottles by "HydroFlask" and saw they are determined by capacity (fl. oz), mouth diameter (in), diameter (in), height (in), weight (oz) and price ($). The "32oz Lightweight Wide Mouth Trail Series" ($49.95) bit.ly/2Eep2cz ↗ appears to stay numerically well in the group of 16 considered models. But the price-reduced "21oz Standard Mouth w/ Sport Cap" ($26.96) (or the 64oz wide mouth model) may also deserve some attention.
- tic_tac.toBackground() bit.ly/3jIoD2q
- Cable-connected phone users bit.ly/2WPooZt. In need of better, home level order.
- "Doubling the side of a cube increases its surface area by a factor of 4 and its volume by a factor of 8." Careful here. "Increases by" is a dynamic, relative verb whereas the given quantities are static and absolute. I'd rather say by 3 and by 7 if I had to preserve the verb or use "...makes the surface area and volume bigger by the factors of 4 and 8 respectively" if I had to preserve the values.
- Learned that the weight of a fish (brass) is proportional to girth2length. Had to be sure what girth means in fish context bit.ly/2D3OS2b ↗. This means one could infer how much a bigger fish could weight if the dimensions and weight of a smaller one of the same type were known. It was said that to quadruple the weight, anglers look for fish with double the girth. Also saw that the weight of an aggressive terror bird is proportional to femur circumference3, where—according to Wikipedia—femur is another word for thigh bone.
- That it's good to leave white space can be misinterpreted. Leaving 70% white space and pushing the content-rich footer below is a sign of screen space waste.
- Transport to viewport. More in unit time.
- Small eater, big mouth bit.ly/2BlHbEa. Made by another person.
- Circle segments with overlapping colors bit.ly/39jOokz. Simple code.
- If you found it difficult to track how different models of Intel integrated graphics compare, here is a Wikipedia page on the topic bit.ly/2ZQwnay ↗. From this I see that the "Iris Plus Graphics" (2019) offers bandwidth of 59.7GB/s (up to 1100Mhz), whereas the GM45-based graphics in my laptop is said to allow up to 17GB/s. Good to see how far improvements in integrated graphics have come. Edit: Aggregating the data in a single diagram bit.ly/39gjLg4, we see how 2016 and 2019 appear to have been major milestones for integrated mobile GPU bandwidth improvement. The previous impression of a non-expert might have been that all of these were created equal.
- Street congestion and business as usual once again. So strange the numbers don't mislead.
- What does this statement seek to distract me from? Could be plenty of things after more careful observation.
- Is burger consumption popular in Australia? Saw several burger brands at one place offering tower burgers with lots of meat. Would have to eat one of those in three meals in order to finish it. Even then, inner voices might have spoken first.
- The corporate miracle is that you grow on countless cheap workers (often hired and fired in batches of hundreds or thousands) and then completely lose your sense of who might have been expensive. High profits for selected few, which didn't cheapen out the company by too much, while playing satisficing games to keep the workforce around and engaged. No wonder unappreciated expertise left early. Unique, but gone. End of miracle.
- Real fruits only, no Fructis.
- Writing well and writing good code are still inextricably connected. Clarity of thought and expression has benefits for everyone on the same project. Whenever you encounter unquestioned code bumps, stop for a while and discuss the issue early. You don't want the bad practice to multiply quickly and lighten a fire in the business forest. If others disagree with you despite your warning, ask yourself whether the project outcome depended on you from the very beginning. Perhaps elsewhere it will.
- Better to have all participating variables upfront. Otherwise, you'll have to repeat the computation every time one of them changes or you encouter more. Trying to gauge construction costs on eye terms, hand-signaling how big a unit block is expected to be, is going to be highly inaccurate. Why engage in long conversations around wishful thinking?
- "I am a programmer who happens to teach." If so, why are you spending 60% of your time on teaching? (because it scales well (see the MOOCs) and gives pretty returns in short time, whereas programming takes too long to do well.) And then doing real-life projects is even harder. The sooner you realize you are a teacher, who happens to program, the sooner you will be keeping the industry clean of false claims. You can't be good at both, so pick one.
- Only finished and visible projects count. The type of work being done here is about practice, not theory. Hence, teaching is never an element of it.
- Could be another single letter animation: Wayfair ⇔ Payfair.
- Pretentions of good work didn't work well in the case of corona. As they weren't working in the case of websites, native software, programming language specification, hardware, science and so many other fields.
- Wenn jetzt nicht, wann?
- Heavy forehand to the backend means the response has to be good and pass over the web/net.
- Liked the streamer bull at "Saatchi" bit.ly/2ZOtZ4k ↗
- An article on "Spiegel" mentioned that "Stiftung Warentest" placed "L6FB64470" by "AEG" on second place in the list of best washing machines (after a much more expensive "Miele"). So spent some time preparing a table with some properties of their frontloader washng machines bit.ly/2ZNicTR. Using these dimensions, script-identified a potentially interesting 9kg model like "L9FE86495" bit&n.ly/3hl4Tj7 ↗, which seems to be the most quiet and least energy-consuming, but costs 1189€. A good trade-off model might also be "L7FE86495" (same last 5 digits, last in table, 869€). Three other 7kg-capacity models (L6FB40478, L6FB4047EP and L6FBA474) came second and were said to be more noisy and less efficient, but still relatively cheap (539€). In terms of these characteristics (and no tests in practice), the 659€, average-noise, water-efficient model ranked by "Stiftung Warentest" came out 17th among the 82 models by this company. In this data, depth (mm) and fill capacity (kg) seem to be most positively related to price (0.67 and 0.66), while energy usage (kWh) and washing noise (dBA re 1pW) most negatively related to it (-0.73 and -0.65). Remaining moisture (%) and max spin speed (rpm) were inversely related, very strongly so (-0.979). Fill capacity (kg) and water usage (l) came at 0.768; washing noise and spinning noise—at 0.796.
- Heard about DARPA, but not about IARPA. The list of research programs is long.
- A somewhat less obvious source of data is that each adapter in your home has input and output values specified. You could take the output values (voltage, currency) for all devices, 2D-visualize and annotate them to look for possible tendencies. For instance, the battery charger was said to be 4.2V, 650mA, which multiplies to 2.73W, whereas the board itself had something written in the style of "27W". Perhaps my eyes missed a tiny comma without questionng much. Another detail I noticed was how GSMs tended to 5V, whereas laptops were around 19-19.5V, even if in each category current varied more widely. The adapter of the desk lamp showed highest voltage (24V), but also lowest current (200mA).
- Chairs can be both uncomfortable and heavy. Placed an old one (thin wooden seat with thin metal legs, extended to a thin-metal lattice for the backrest) and a slightly newer one (thick wooden legs with comfortable, thick-layer, gap-free leather seat and backrest) on the scales. The weights came out as 5kg and 7kg. Hard to imagine moving these around for a while without getting tired. So the added comfort in the later model comes at a cost of 2kg more.
- Personal favorite: Using data collected between 2005 and 2015 to make predictions until 2100. Actually saw such thing once.
- A battery charger got a small fix on Sunday. It was previously dropped when part of it broke and the ability to charge the battery was lost. Turns out, a small hole opened in it in the process, allowing a tiny insect to move inside and make it its home. Apparently liked heat since it laid tiny eggs close to the contacts. Could be that once the charger was put in the socket, some eggs got melted, covering the contacts and making them non-conductive (they were brown instead of having typical Cu color). Or this could be simply an interpretation. But was reminded how once the cohesiveness of a system is lost, further failures may follow. Also changed the glue of a tiny plastic piece set to isolate part of the tiny board. The battery charged in 30mins, where previously 5hours weren't enough (device complained). Another impression: Opening the box (made in China) took 25mins, while inspection and contact cleaning took 10mins. Would have been great if the user could open it more easily, but perhaps the idea was to prevent looks inside. But yes, electronics is interesting if you are able to come to it. Not for simple surface cleaning, but to understand how circuits work in depth.
- Somewhat difficult to imagine exchanging self-grown strawberries for Karl May books. But as a child, this author kept me story-immersed for a while too.
- Was asked once about the unwillingness to own and drive a car. Responded with the question: "Where would I go?" Background thought was that the track length left behind a car is insignificantly small relative to the total road length that exists on the world map. Seen from this perspective, a car is a very ineffective vehicle. So ineffective, that you can go almost nowhere with it, even if it was affordable. A car has only meanng within an area in close proximity to where you live. This is similar to going to the local store, only on a slightly different scale. In today's globalized world, this is far from enough. I'd rather remain world-flexible rather than city-fixed. Why pay taxes, license, third-party liability insurance, fuel, repair/maintanence if this doesn't bring enough opportunities to positively impact your life?
- Saying you interviewed thousand candidates and thinking you can give universal advice to applicants may signal a bit of over-stretching. Your sample size is 0.000013% (relative to 7.6 billion people) and even if it was representative of the larger population, the observed result was likely biased and insignificant.
- Seeking state compensation for a hurdle your business encountered, which the state didn't create (but you say enforced)... A hurdle, which apparently keeps the lives of those who eventually come to you anyway... Saves the customer lifetime value instead of letting you tap into it once by potentially erasing it. Where fewer and disabled customers means even fewer sales or potential for future growth. A hurdle, which does your business a long-term favor you are blind how to appreciate or quantify. Acting with lack of postponed gratification. A bit more humble self-reliance, discipline and willingness to stay for others count. Weakened and rationalizing, but more alive/alert than ever. Adjusting in real-time, getting feedback, planning and reorganizing. For a state which can't help you enough, is one, which enslaves you enough.
- Sustainability@Home: Growing in a raised bed as high as a bunk bed must be sufficient to satisfy the Pomodoro technique's appetite for 3 tomatoes/hour. So that other people can still find affordable, fresh produce at their local store.
- Which project, if properly executed upon, would make the most difference to our business in the shortest time? Now you have a clue what to look for and where to find it.
- Would you rather work for a company where for the smallest action, everyone awaits permission (and then-assigned resources) from top management or in one where every employee is entrusted and empowered to make their own decisions within clearly set boundaries?
- Remained in default lazy state, awaiting the strong external force.
- Back in the days, heard that a candidate was told that the company does not negotiate on salary (Google). In other words, they assumed it was high enough for this position to justify treating the employee in a generic way or put it in some pre-defined bin. Younger me would have accepted this without questioning; older me would have rejected this without answering. The ability to negotiate is fundamental right of every employee (no two are alike). Never feel entitled enough to take it away from me.
- If a product requires thirty real-time seconds to make, what's the chance it promotes a fast (throw-away) culture? How much quality can be in a mass-made, tiny package, designed to last (very) long? The pursuit of low-quality quantity, at any price, has done so much harm to this world. We'll see once the bill of the effects comes.
- Remember to charge the black box companies the black box rates. Nothing less than that.
- An article seen yesterday on Nespresso coffee capsules talked about a revolution. Another one ("How Nespresso's coffee revolution got ground down" bit.ly/2ZKaxWb&ne ↗) claimed the opposite. "...you get the sense that Nespresso’s golden age has passed" sounds pity, especially when you consider where you've been to fully miss that age and experience. (When you don't drink coffee, you also don't think of capsules as pills.) Similarly to how the "Queen of the Skies" got grounded before ever getting the chance to fly with it.
- I'd rather scare few/many clients upfront rather than raise the wrong impression in a single one that whenever they arrive for my service, anything will be possible.
- Young people still seem to do the same mistake that I did as a young worker—spending their best years (while giving highest quality of effort) for the most miserable salaries. The (mediocre) corporations know how to extract from this and won't stop short of anything to achieve it. You owe to yourself a lot more and should ask for it. Not satisfice yourself with a cool-sounding title and something like 35000€/year, then pay the high German rent and taxes and enter your 40s, wondering where both your money and youth went. Make it clear that salaries aren't optional.
- "Once clients get locked in, it's very difficult for them to move elsewhere." Happened once to me while believing that staying open to communication was supposed to be good for me. Paid the telecom only and saw no value from it. No phone usage since then—all shifted in no time to in-person/online only (since many years ago). Due to corona restrictions, in-person became the next risky option and had to be discarded too. What remains is online communication aside of all social networks (since many years ago). A good example of the lies we keep telling ourselves about what will be good for us by trying to adhere to the ill societal norms.
- As the hours, so the years.
- Never heard of honey flowing down home walls when an entering bee colony is left unchecked (CNN). Would be the first to install a large containter, firmly pressed to the wall, to prevent every drip of waste. Sweet mornings may be hard to afford otherwise.
- Hyggelig road ahead bit.ly/2CUTLdR. It's a new week for your projects. If you wish me to care about the steep slopes, remember to ask for it properly.
- The ocean wave is coming for you, surfer bit.ly/2BcLH7R
- Saw a portable ASUS device passing "MIL-STD-810G" and wondered what that is. A series of military-grade tests described in a freely accessible, 1089-page document. The company uses some icons to clarify what these tests are about bit.ly/3eFAAlL. My impression is that this includes the majority, but not all possible tests.
- Paths on a dot tree bit.ly/2CJvUhi and walkers on a grid bit.ly/30r6uNs
- Custom wireframe generation for validation of harmonic proportions may simplify subsequent layout creation bit.ly/30mNQqb. No single line of HTML, CSS or JS was written upfront. No external graphic editor was touched.
- "20 Jahre Kölner Lichter: Mehr als nur ein Feuerwerk" bit.ly/3hgjWed ↗. Looks good for this time of the year. Lost interest after minute five or so, but until then saw beautiful examples and got a clue how much science goes behind making good pyrotechnic products.
- Loading the footer first is like putting a cart in front of the horse.
- Wordplay: restrict district, deal with deval, exact extract, enumeration of remuneration.
- A liar's long nose likely breaks through several face masks each day. A sharp disadvantage.
- Wondering how some cakes get beautifully continuous curves as side wall paintings. This surface is vertical, round (painting must be seamless), subjected only to manual hand algorithm. A love-form of creation.
- Not striving to be their unintentional comma, but rather their profound dot. With the lowest amount of interrupting quotation marks per day.
- Premium, plushy bath towels bit.ly/2OxR2tA. Slightly changed styles, for emphasis.
- Approximate reign longevity (in days) of Roman emperors bit.ly/3eBsSce. Since time related packages refused to create date objects from very early years (&e.g. 27 BC), I used a simplified formula (year*365 + month*30 + day) to improve my understanding. According to this, among at least 184 Roman emperors, longest in reign was Basil II (10.01.976 - 15.12.1025), followed by Theodosius II, Constantine VII, Andronikos II Palaiologos, Augustus, Justinian I, Manuel I Komnenos and Alexios I Komnenos. Other names that appear more widely known, but with much fewer days in reign: Tiberius (8213), Diocletian (7466), Marcus Aurelius (6945), Septimius Severus (6505), Theodosius I (5838), Claudius (5002), Nero (4986), Vespasian (3473), Caligula (1406), Romanos IV Diogenes (1388), Titus (809), Romulus Augustulus (308), Galba (222). Collectively, their time spans between 27 BC and 1453 AD.
- After clicking on a tab and pressing the down arrow key, I expect to scroll through the new content. Refrain from switching me to the next tab, please.
- Assuming that a standard mattress of size 200 x 80cm (taking 1.6m2 of room space) is made for a generic person, one might be able to gain some efficiencies by considering their own case. 166cm height and 46cm shoulders may suggest dimensions more like 182 x 70cm. This would correspond to 1.274m2, equivalent to 20.3% space savings.
- Here is a room plan with actual object dimensions (the space where most of my time is spent) bit.ly/2ZwpOKf. You may notice two red rectangles—one indicating my usual position, pressed between a bed (whose mattress provides a more comfortable sitting surface instead of the wooden chairs) and a desk that appears large, but is normal-sized, with an underneath expandable surface for the keyboard, also included in the rectangle dimensions. The other red rectangle close to the (partially shaded) window is the monitor. A bit far, but allows me to straighten periodically without having to look down at my feet or buy an expensive adjustable desk. The rectangle on the right of the monitor is a bookshelf, mostly with some books, dictionaries, grammars and my thought diaries. A minor problem is that it also keeps many other small things, e.g. an old adapter, glue, battery, ruler etc., which are very rarely touched, if at all, but which still come into (distracting) view. The top is where a low-power desk lamp emits from, which makes the bookshelf position adequate. Perhaps you could identify a better arrangement?
- The better information about room and object dimensions, the better the arrangements? Could you validate this assumption by visualizing several variants before attempting to move furniture (if at all)? Do you feel that a smaller room and bigger object dimensions effectively constrain your options?
- Good to see people creating tube maps out of their walk trajectories now. Suggests a heightened awareness for the surroundings to me.
- The public transit bus line passing most closely nearby is now scheduled every 20mins at peak hour. Haven't used it for years, but remember how the in-between times were 8-10mins back then. Asked myself which potential parameters could stay behind this decision. Came up with aging & decreasing population, corona fears, no developed sense of the need to protect all lives (by wearing a mask), difficulty of finding qualified drivers liking the work conditions and pay, existence of alternative transport (cars people use to travel to work), slow bus travel speeds (especially with too many cars and congestion), weak economy. Perhaps there are more.
- Too many travel agencies, too few riders sounds very similar to too many entrepreneurship associations, too few entrepreneurs. Wondering when speaking about the cool thing would be a lesser business than actually doing it.
- The advantages that mobile devices used to have are now offset by the advantages of the static, stay-at-home counterparts. The latter are often much faster, don't depend on weak batteries, rare power sockets, unreliable connections etc.
- Simple insight: If 10% of the people own 70% of the capital, it means you will be having return approaching zero from serving 90% of the population. Shocking, but true. Additionally, the fact that the status quo doesn't change means that the majority is perfectly fine with it. Fine about having nothing to pay you with.
- When you stay slow for long periods of time and it passes mostly on minutia (like loading OSes, parsing pages, using "great"ly bloated IDEs, engaging with complex GUI interfaces, executing (slow) scripts repeatedly while making adjustments etc.) you learn to appreciate the value of speed and the time it saves you. Your work is then priced accordingly to allow for such speed.
- Corsair storage on sale amzn.to/32j0lWr ↗ (it's mid-day already), perhaps suitable for employee acceleration. Liked this form factor and price, but the write speed could have been better. "970 EVO" by "Samsung" amzn.to/2WCvPDp ↗ is even cheaper and its write speed is a bit higher. In fact, for slightly more ($180), one could get twice the capacity (1TB).
- Recipe: Mandarinen-Mohntörtchen bit.ly/2OoofHF ↗ (Cakes are allowed as long as not too early in the morning. Calorie counting comes later.)
- Played with some polynomial coefficients bit.ly/2CB7vup until a consistence reminding of woven fiber came out at the end.
- All vehicle collisions in New York (01.07.2012 - 10.07.2020) bit.ly/2CapdF5. If the machine is correct, there were 2021 fatal crashes and almost 450 thousand injuries over a period of slightly over 8 years. Most collisions clustered around Lower Manhattan, but also being able to observe street level of detail is quite nice.
- Median "IKEA" desk—≈$124; median "TaoTronics" desk lamp—$46. So such a lamp costs 37.3% of the stable base it will be placed on to illuminate. To the average sedentary worker, a desk is valuable throughout most workhours, while the desk lamp is primarily useful in the late hours when it gets dark and there is still work to do. The question is: do dark workhours comprise the same percentage of the workday?
- You can propose your project at the contact page or find this kind of work elsewhere.
- Price distributions for road bikes by "Giant" and "Trek" bit.ly/305MkbX. The medians came out as $3200 and $3800 respectively ("Giant" also has models priced at over $12000). Interesting whether it is possible to say that the proportion (percentage) of bikes priced at ≈$5000 is similar for both brands.
- And probably again after you read about malicious software capturing camera photos, periodic desktop screenshots or keystrokes. How software gets a bad name when it can do so much good if properly used.
- To (un)lock the door, insert a key with the right inscribed value. The probability that someone gets the same key when they bought the same lock? (The other day the locksmith was citing intricate details of this person's locking mechanism without having seen it at all.) Useful to raise the small dose of healthy paranoia to the cubes.
- Seeing shirt sizes and explanations of what to look for in a good fit makes you wonder whether you can't use the dimensions (and symmetry) around a vertical line and curve fit to the points determined by neck, chest, waist etc. to approximate all shirt sizes (S, M, L, XL etc.) on the same space-saving diagram. Similarly to what we saw with mattress dimensions and egg sizes before. But the sleeves extend a bit too much, which may cause overfitting.
- Spent some time watching idyllic landscapes at "LandWatch". With lots of trees, greenery, rivers, lakes/ponds, signs, sometimes with a small house, a tennis court and a basketball hoop in the middle of nowhere or a strange creation (e.g. a small bridge with a boat-like structure at the end, used as a roof over an open, social dining space). The size of most parcels was huge and hard to comprehend (e.g. 640 acres). Inspiring and relaxing photos, perhaps inviting lots of investors and data analysts.
- Finding donut-making facilities in the case of "KrispyKreme" bit.ly/3etQiA1, using 361 addresses available on their "all locations" page. The script identified only 283 coordinates without manual intervention, which for our purpose is sufficient as a fast approximation. East and south-east USA appear to have good access to donut sweetness, whereas central north and perhaps some regions in the north-east may be lagging behind.
- Few notes from the excerpt of "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau: the worst is to be your own slave-driver; mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation; eating is for keeping the internal fires (as are clothing and shelter); what you cannot do, you try and find you can; luxuries of life are hindrances to the elevation of mankind; men frequently starve not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries; for many would be easier to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon (image wounded); men want not something to do with, but something to do or rather something to be; in the long run, men hit only what they aim at, so better to fail immediately and aim at something high; our houses often imprison rather than house us; don't play life or study it merely, earnestly live it from beginning to end (variation: live, don't read about living, ending in huge debt); discover satellites, not to what vagabond you are a satellite yourself; the swiftest traveler goes afoot; keep at it to arrive faster, at no time and for nothing; there's no point in spending a life digging dirt; live simply, eat only the crops you raised and raise no more than you eat.
- Weight and price for the road bikes by "Trek" bit.ly/2Ox4oXb. As you can see, the most expensive bikes cost more than $12000, one of them weighting 6.68kg. But there are perhaps few that offer a good trade-off between weight and price (if you can still afford a bike from this brand). Two models with highest scores on this appeared to be "2020 Émonda SL 6 Disc" ($3150, 8.18kg) and "2020 Émonda ALR 5" ($2000, 9.04kg). Also included "2021 Domane AL 2" ($880, 9.57kg) as a popular base model, whose score (3.64) gave it the 9th position out of 67 bikes. Note: The 95 results in the category include lots of framesets, which were not considered.
- Weights by series for the road bikes by "CUBE" bit.ly/307duPF
- IRENA wrote that the cost of energy generation from PV has become lower than the cost of energy generation from coal. You can also learn about the gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE) of some fuels bit.ly/2CoVSqe. Or become aware that rainforests in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are increasingly replaced for palm trees and the production of palm oil.
- Wished to see another product and then something went wrong bit.ly/2OiNVWd ↗
- Interesting idea to make tea from the lawns' weed (Unkraut) bit.ly/2ZXHqO2 ↗. No, but made me smile.
- Speaking of drums, this would require 36 spin-cycles bit.ly/2Wc6cJj ↗
- So the colorants may need color protectors. But then also saw a fabric conditioner containing solvent, softener, freshness provider, stabilizer, pH adjuster and chelating agent. Maybe more types exist elsewhere. Must read input code carefully to avoid getting out invisibly modified, drum-filled garbage.
- Felt a bit weak and gulped the ingredient lists of the 15 "Powerade" energy drinks. Most common findings: Water, High fructose corn syrup, Calcium Disodium EDTA (color protector) (15), Niacinamide, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Cyanocobalamin (for vitamins B3, B6 and B12) (14), Electrolytes (13), Natural flavors (12), Ascorbic acid and Modified food starch (8), Glycerol ester of rosin (7). Apparently, a GMO product in diverse range of colors.
- "Specialized" describes few dimensions of bike geometry bit.ly/2OfCQ8q. Liked the interactive highlights clarifying their meaning. Biggest fear remains having to full-stretch at wheelbase level so as to keep both wheels connected.
- Price distribution of the single hole faucets by "Grohe" bit.ly/2ZYEj8x
- Enterprise value of some corporations as reported by "Yahoo Finance" (11.07.2020) bit.ly/3fkyBEu. Unsure how current or accuracte this information is. For instance, an article seen yesterday claimed that "NVIDIA" is now bigger than "Intel", but "Yahoo Finance" still reports it the other way around. Tried to make sense of these large numbers, hoping to get some orientation.
- Relative population for some of the biggest cities in The Netherlands bit.ly/321zTk1. Hope you like this somewhat noisy diagram. Now noticed that it's end of the week. But do not despair, these skills are available next week too. Have a nice weekend.
- Intentionally keeping the website short and ending with "Visit us" is far away from the times.
- Prevalence of individual tools in 42 multi-tool products by "Leatherman" bit.ly/3gO5hXr. As you can see, the first two (bottle opener and needlenose pliers) are present in almost 70% of all examined multi-tools. Can opener is also very close to the top, underlining the importance of eating aids. The length of the most common ruler is 19cm.
- Noticed sugary sundaes and cakes at "Dairy Queen" and wondered how their ingredients differ. There were six units of both. The initial impression was that the sundaes have much less ingredients than the good-looking cakes. But the difference could be smaller than one thinks, since many cake ingredients were repeated in the descriptions when used perhaps for different parts of the cake. For instance, sugar received 39 mentions, which corresponds to an average of 6-7 times/cake. But this is still a single ingredient. Similarly with salt, water, corn syrup, soy lecithin (emulsifier) etc. Overall the cake ingredients are more diverse. While the preservative Potassium Sorbate is mentioned at least six times among the cake ingredients, it appears only three times among the sundae ingredients. Dextrin, Soy Lecithin, Disodium Phosphate, Sodium Alginate and Xanthan Gum are mostly absent in the sundaes. But there are few that are common not only inside, but also between the categories: Sugar, Vitamin A Palmitate, Carrageenan, Polysorbate 80, Guar Gum, Artificial Flavor, Whey and Corn Syrup. Surprisingly much in common even when in different form or concentration.
- Glad you stored the majority of the low-hanging fruit in your freezer. That way, if you ever needed better performance from a newcomer, you wouldn't have to ask them to climb higher and carry the full risk of falling down from the tree. Because, if they broke a hand or leg for nothing and the neighborhood heard the aches and laughed at their naivety, they wouldn't come back again.
- string location = "shoe" reads fluent, but can't tie the usefulness of this creation.
- Location A is preferable over location Z. The latter is not in their region, they say.
- In retrospect it makes sense, although someone had to say it. Science scales much worse than production. Can't blame that the person who said it, went to production (and made a lot, per year). In science every question demands different skills and approach; in production, you create something innovative once and push out so many units of it until the level of risk gets low. Good science is very slow, good production is very fast. Not a coincidence that fast-food, fast-fashion, fast-hardware and fast-anything brands have made trillions and are among the largest on earth. They promoted a life of abundance and constant comparison; their ultra-rich did anything for fame and influence. All while neglecting science for decades and consistently speaking it small or irrelevant. Now corona came and these very same people are looking for the next generation of "stupid scientists" who will be eager enough to study-ruin their entire lives on the cheap, so they, the "high net worth" individuals can breathe. Hardly imaginable.
- Among 17 daily hair care products by "head & shoulders" bit.ly/2CngP4E ↗, the most common ingredients were: Methylisothiazolinone, Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Sodium Chloride and Dimethicone (17), Fragrance and Pyrithione Zinc (for the anti-dandruff effect) (16), Water, Sodium Xylenesulfonate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Glycol Distearate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate and Sodium Benzoate (15), Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride, Zinc Carbonate and Magnesium Carbonate Hydroxide (14), Menthol (11). Color additives like Blue 1 (11), Yellow 5 (7) and Red 33 (5) were also present.
- By convention, unconversational, until convinced.
- Looked for common ingredients in 12 lipsticks by "Maybelline", without considering the "may contain" lists. Alumina and Parfum/Fragrance were present in all of them, followed by Aluminium Hydroxide and Dimethicone (11), Silica and Benzyl Alcohol (10), Synthetic Fluorphlogopite (9), Tin Oxide, Calcium Aluminium Borosilicate and Calcium Sodium Borosilicate (8), Limonene (7), Isododecane and Pentaerythrityl Tetra-Di-T-Butyl Hydroxyhydrocinnamate (6).
- Saw a photo with a dinosaur head showing from the top of a car and two giant nails coming out of its side windows. The head—in visibly good mood. No trace from the driver. Not a scene from a film, but apparently real-life, near museum (if one isn't too scared to look at the small label in the background).
- Saw plenty of bridges with nice designs today (here is one bit.ly/31Yd5BA ↗), but this one melts shoes, possibly to aid social distancing bit.ly/2AGmjY3
- Mid-Wednesday shades for you: bit.ly/3f5Ukjk and bit.ly/328ZVC3
- Average number of Walmart superstores per km2 in most US states bit.ly/38zngxP. Highest density appears to be on the east coast. First came Washington D.C. (0.01694) (3 superstores within 177km2), followed by Georgia (0.00220), Rhode Island (0.00159), New Jersey (0.00150), Florida (0.00136), Ohio (0.00119), Delaware (0.00116), Tennessee (0.00107). Fixed a mistake about New York (was using city area instead of state area) and it took a mid-ranking position with 0.00056 stores/km2. Does this coincide with your own observations?
- Three parameters of Walmart performance (2014 - 2020) bit.ly/2O4dmL2. The diagram is based on information obtained from their annual reports.
- Seek a simple website with hundreds of integrated details at a simple price? Won't get one here.
- "Audemars Piguet" claim 250-350 parts integrated into many of their watches. Why as common product as a watch with simple, minimalist face may not be obtained at a simple price...
- Some properties of the hardside luggage by "Samsonite" bit.ly/31PIeXZ. Based only on these incomplete criteria, the running script referred to the following potentially good carry-on spinners: "Fiero" bit.ly/3dZ6ysI ↗, "Black Label Lite-Shock" bit.ly/3gv136M ↗ and "Black Label Cosmolite 3.0" bit.ly/3f7WbEu ↗. The first is heavy, but inexpensive, while the opposite is valid for the other two. Across medium-sized luggage spinners, "Carbon 2" bit.ly/31RcTUS ↗, "Supra DLX" bit.ly/2Cah2Z0 ↗, "Omni PC" bit.ly/2ZKaMiK ↗ and even "On Air 3" models might be interesting. Across large-sized luggage, "Carbon 2", "Supra DLX", "Pivot" and the much more beautiful "NeoPulse" bit.ly/2VR77Pf ↗ and "Novaire" bit.ly/3gp1DTA ↗ models bubble up. In the extra-large hardside spinner category, one might consider "Novaire" bit.ly/3gp1DTA ↗, "S'Cure" bit.ly/3f4bRIB ↗, "NeoPulse" bit.ly/2VR77Pf ↗ and "Black Label Lite-Shock" bit.ly/31P0bFX ↗ (last one made with CURV).
- Some properties of the hardcase luggage by "Travelite" bit.ly/3iCUXmu. Good appearances have "Motion" & "Vector" (size M) and "Motion" & "Air Base" (size L). Be aware that depending on used material, these series may differ in durability.
- Often felt that many plants were already space-constrained at the point of sale, motivating the look at the pot sizes. Perhaps there was a desire to sell them quckly in the smallest possible (often low-quality plastic) pots in order to drive up the unit profit margins. Yet, when you recognize the need for a bigger pot to actually let that plant grow better and look more beautiful inside the living room, the cost of the pot will be incurred twice.
- Explored few characteristics (plant height, pot diameter and price) of 766 room plants available at "OBI" to determine potentially interesting ones bit.ly/3izyZ41. The most common pot diameters appear to be 12cm and 21cm. You can also see how pot diameter tends to change with plant height (albeit on a relatively small sample). The median price was 12.67€, while the maximum reached 68.23€. Based on this data, here are the links for those apearing in the short selection: Katzengras bit.ly/2VPEIZI ↗, Goldfruchtpalme (45-55cm) bit.ly/3gygAm6 ↗, Dieffenbachie "Tropic Snow" bit.ly/2BFut3a ↗, Drachenbaum 3 Stämmchen bit.ly/2ObLsgt ↗, Zimmer-Efeu "Wonder" bit.ly/31ME0jB ↗, Balsamapfel "Princess" bit.ly/2ZF62el ↗. Hope you enjoy it.
- IKEA had 70 sliding wardrobes and 16 wardrobe combinations with known dimensions bit.ly/3dYzmBz ↗. Wondered which ones were offering maximal storage volume for the price. For the wardrobes, this came out to be "PAX, 200x66x236 cm (WxDxH)" at 345€ bit.ly/2BEXFYd ↗, followed by "PAX, 200x66x201 cm" at 295€. For the wardrobe combinations, this was "PAX/MEHAMN/AULI, 200x66x236 cm" at 485€ bit.ly/2VNEemS ↗, followed by "PAX/MEHAMN/AULI, 200x66x201 cm" at 420€. Also noticed that one of the more expensive combinations was 300cm wide bit.ly/31NCwpy ↗, but this wasn't sufficient to overcome the average. Your mix of criteria may also include design, material and finish quality or even delivery times and ease of montage.
- Sample path through some attractions in Paris, France bit.ly/2VMQxjq. Given the coordinates found, the blue line represents the shortest path between "Fondation Louis Vuitton" and "Parc de la Villette". Unfortunately, this line doesn't pass through all interesting points (in red) (would make it a bit longer). But some simplification improves coverage bit.ly/38xBnUq.
- Brain: "PayWayMo reveals some hidden, rolling expectations..." Of you falling asleep behind the steering wheel? Brain: "Be reminded that turning off some critical devices is preceded by the message: 'Shotting down the target audience...'" With that speed, your codons would be fully decoded until you finished. Brain: "My clock frequency is much better than your click frequency."
- Jeder Kopf braucht täglich frisches, gesundes Kopfsalat aus Ideen und eine sinnvolle Ausführung solange der Vorrat reicht.
- Learned that warehouse operation involves tradeoffs between storage capacity and speed of retrieval, speed and accuracy, low inventory and availability, efficiency and responsiveness. And that it is impacted by seasonality. Perhaps why some companies are proactive in making the seasons switch so rapidly.
- Did your web designer show you a progress bar of your money transfer speed last week? This kind of eye-opening, interactive demo.
- Brain: "You'd know where you were if your navi didn't leave for Garmin-Partenkirchen." I hear you described yourself as Party-Kuchen. Brain: "And I hear you prefer some pomegranade juice splattered on your clean shirt to help you swallow." Who'd give the helping hand for that?
- Season average prices of cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli in the USA (1970 - 2019) bit.ly/3iwlZw7. The overall trend is slightly discouraging. According to USDA Economic Research Service, in 2009 broccoli reached a price of 875$/ton for the first time. Seven years later (2016), cauliflower price temporarily spiked to 990$/ton. The edible recursive structures seek infinite.
- Fat content in some fat-rich products bit.ly/2VJgNuY. The source is the same as in the previous bit, except that the page has changed to 242. However, I'd be cautious about trusting this data, since it is based on a study made in 1994. Additional disadvantage is the low level of precision. But perhaps serves to give some orientation.
- Nutrient composition of the milk of some species bit.ly/2NR3qV0. For humans, the blue somehow dominates. None of the included milks had fiber.
- Happy weekend and till next week!
- Some sources of anthocyanins: blueberries, cherries, raspberries, red cabbage, red plums, rhubarb. Perhaps you are aware of more.
- Always found "for dummies" slightly impolite, whereas "for pedestrians" appears to have some playful tinge that I like. Your preference may vary. But still shows why anguage matters so much.
- Whenever you see a screen having bright fireworks of colors, ask yourself whether you'd buy the device if the screen was plain black. Eye-opening how they nudge you to buy more. And then some more. Additionally, look carefully at the product descriptions. If they say "n GB of memory (soldered)" and stop there, it remains unclear whether an additional memory slot exists, and if so what speed and capacity it supports. Remember that good design answers more questions than it evokes.
- How many weeds grew on your unsupervised website last week? I thought I've cut a rose bush some two months ago and today it was already a third of the original height. Disorder grows so fast. Ensure it doesn't conquer your web presence.
- Prefer whole grains over refined grains. The data according to Wheat Flour Institute on vitamin B1, B2, B3 (all in mg), iron (mg) and fiber (g) content: white flour (0.07, 0.06, 1.0, 0.9, 0.3), whole wheat flour (0.66, 0.14, 5.2, 4.3, 2.8). Not a small difference, at first sight.
- Sphere-packing the soil grains when stepping over is a form of optimization unsupportive of plant growth.
- "Civilization of disposable people" is well-said and true. Acceptance-tested on all things cheap, then affirmed with the testers themselves.
- Net income to total net sales for "Apple" (2015-2019) bit.ly/3iozH48. The ratio improved again in 2018 after reaching its highest value in 2015 (during the period). It is possible that this year we see many annual reports that are more difficult to understand or put in context.
- This means a lighting strike can deliver current ≈10 million times the required amount to kill a human being. Would make my dear rest-on-cable birds fly at random.
- Wasn't aware of it, but a source said that wind turbines were susceptible to being hit by lighting strikes (up to 200kA), which preferred the highest point in a given area. Because height and elevated location of the turbines are often chosen to take advantage of larger swept areas and higher wind speeds, this could strike through the equation involving the enticing cubic wind speed factor. Except when good protection is available.
- A good viral campaign doesn't end you by tomorrow/the end of the week.
- Lesson learned from Clayton tunnel accident: If one has several trains competing for access to the same tunnel line at approximately the same time and two communication points at tunnel ends, it is safer for the trains to acquire a mutex on the resource. Otherwise three may get inside, with some operators wondering whether they should proceed or not.
- A philosopher is someone who hypothesizes and is therefore afraid of the abilities of Schrödinger's cat.
- Surrounded by "friends" on a round table, keep an eye on easy access to two forks to be able to eat (dining philosopher's problem). Unfortunately, eating and wearing a mask are mutually exclusive.
- Pointless to seek answers at the back of the book of life.
- The error messages were interpreted by the guidance system as flight data (Ariane 5).
- Skull-full has to lead to skillful.
- Baseball has this interesting batting average metric, often mentioned in other areas of life as well. Currently, we are after the home runs. But apart from this, the rest of the terminology can quickly defeat a non-expert, despite the large amounts of data.
- Any page you visit on this domain must say "0 trackers found". If not, email me a screenshot and I'll try to fix the issue. Also don't forget to demand the same elsewhere. The web isn't a patform for socialization of user data.
- The third-party dependency had more than enough time to start breaking the response.
- To protect themselves against herbivores, plants are capable of gathering information about the attackers (100+ types of pattern recognition receptors) and releasing specific chemicals (total known so far: 200000) in response. Curious whether BASF has such a rich product palette.
- Highly impressed by the temperature tolerance of evergreen conifers [-40°C, 40°C] (or even [-90°C, 52°C]) and arctic alpine dwarfs shrubs [-30°C, 48°C] (or even [-70°C, 54°C]). The values describe 50% damage after 2h of cold or 30min of heat. Some presumably stable houses might crack under such conditions.
- Smallest number of edge crossings between team members' paths
- More effective to brainstorm than tweetstorm (Twitter-Gewitter).
- Learned that they removed the deep learning literature on the flights. Perhaps represents a potential attack surface.
- Yes/No specifications are as if you were asked to answer a series of closed questions. Possible, but not exactly conductive to a conversation. A missed opportunity.
- Someone pointed out that companies weren't looking for external data analysts as these might be able to uncover some of their embarrassing practices. An interesting perspective.
- If the round-robot, vacuum cleaner slides and fouls all expensive porcelain vases on the floor, it too must be given the red card.
- "Stainless mug SM-ED30" bit.ly/31pyzXK ↗ would also stay nice on a table.
- If you frequently start your days thirsty, you are probably already having and carrying a water container. If not, "Nalgene" currently has 148 bottle variants you can choose from. Which one? Ran a script to seek those with good volume for the price bit.ly/3gbZD0D. Then liked the design of "Gray bottle with blue cap" (48.0oz, 13.25$, 3.623oz/$) bit.ly/38aCOaY ↗. Two other nice ones were "Tuxedo blue bottle with blue cap" or "Pink bottle with pink cap" bit.ly/2NFeSmM ↗ (both 30.0oz, 7.5$, 4oz/$). 48oz is ≈1.5l, while 30oz is ≈1l.
- Hint: Use one of underscore, dash or camel case, but never mix all three styles on the same page.
- Or view some properties of the air purifiers by "Blueair" bit.ly/31oBGiB. According to the company, the "Pro XL" model is suitable for rooms up to 110m2, while "AHAM Verifide" indicates only up to 65m2. Could the latter refer to an older revision of the same model? Hopefully, the data itself doesn't need to pass through a HEPA filter (as it is then undesirable to touch it with bare hands).
- If you have a few minutes of time, you could see a table with some properties of the "Mazda" cars bit.ly/31qSaae. It appeared that the same engine could be reused across different models, which is interesting. Additionally, it was visible how all-wheel drive slightly reduced fuel economy relative to front-wheel drive.
- Consumer Reports had two fine details on ergonomics to share: “Using a trackball greatly reduces the need to move the hand, wrist, or arm to move the cursor. The mouse can be placed in a position that is comfortable—and not moved again.” and "The ideal working posture is one in which as many of the body's joints as possible are in a neutral position." bit.ly/38cEXDg ↗. Never tried a trackball, but not the first time hearing positives about it. Noticed that the two tested trackball variants were found slightly less efficient. Apart from that, the joints knew it, but frequently seem to forget acting on the effortless theme.
- Little's Law bit.ly/2BJJOzC ↗
- R.I.P. Milton Glaser
- Some properties of the routers by "NETGEAR" bit.ly/3eFEiwg. The authors of a recent paper by "Fraunhofer" liked their frequency of security updates relative to other brands, so this gave me a chance to look at their routers. Among those with known prices, my script found AC1600 (R6330) ($80) and AX1800 (RAX20) ($150) potentially interesting. Assuming that "AX" refers to the latest WiFi standard, the latter could be more future-proof. But we see that it's difficult to find a fast-speed solution (1.2Gbps) on the common 2.4Ghz channel costing less than $400.
- Some properties of the mice by "Logitech" bit.ly/2BctMye. Contains a note. Gaming mice models start with "G" and have two properties (max. acceleration and max. speed) which were unavailable for the rest. Perhaps "M500s Advanced Corded Mouse" ($30) represents a good tradeoff between features and price. G203 (+$10) doubles the max. resolution to half of the maximum reached by the best Logitech models (8000dpi vs. 16000dpi). MX518 ($60) seems to be the cheapest one, offering this highest resolution (although it appears sold out on Amazon). Noticed that "Razer Basilisk" claims even 20000dpi, with max. acceleration of 50G and max. speed of 650 inches/s. No clue how important these characteristics could be for the average programmer who rarely has the time for a game.
- Land area vs. population and total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases by US state (as of today) bit.ly/2CzJzHA. Didn't expect that Florida and New York might be relatively close in terms of land area and total population.
- Nutrients in the cakes by "Coppenrath & Wiese" bit.ly/31fYQrq. This time the column order is slightly different, but the tastes make this more bearable. "Hot chocolate brownie" is the most caloric variant here.
- The cat foods by "9Lives" bit.ly/2YyMhFU ↗ make you wonder where you spent your only one.
- Volume to price (Qt/$) for the unsold cooling bags at "Igloo" bit.ly/2B2LRPk. The first one (ReCOOL, 16Qt) is said to be biodegradeable, which is interesting. The second is a much bigger one: "Quick and Cool 150 Qt Cooler" bit.ly/3fYOksS ↗. If you wonder, 150 quarts are said to be 142 liters.
- Interesting to see a printer (Kyocera TASkalfa Pro 15000c) having more RAM than an enty level laptop (4.5GB). If a programmer writes a 1000-page long book, they could theoretically obtain nine full copies in an hour (9000pages A4 continuous / 150ppm).
- engagement - encagement
- Savvy businesses invested in digital growth from the start, adding another leg of support to their business operations when the times were good. Others assumed digital was either a Facebook ad or a worthless distraction, and continued operating as usual, neglecting their potential point of failure. Now the situation has changed: those with already weakened physical businesses have started to understand the importance of joining the digital ranks. But coming late, several years behind their competitors, to catch up with them is not going to be cheap. If they haven't already closed. Why the right decisions made at the right time matter a lot.
- Tried to compare housing prices in Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds as seen on the "RightMove" platform bit.ly/3i2Q7Pt. Slightly unexpected to see Leeds differ so much. Would you say that such a difference might be due to a mistake or what the search algorithm decided to leave out?
- "Focused" eating away the time of "creative", someone pointed out.
- "Generally, diseases transmitted by viral agents such as influenza, measles, rubella, chicken pox confer immunity against reinfection, while diseases transmitted by bacteria such as tuberculosis, meningitis, gonorrhea confer no immunity against reinfection." (Source: "Mathematical models in epidemiology") This is new to me, although I'd still be concerned with the particularities, especally if extreme/boundary cases show up.
- Always assumed that only metals were suitable for use as cutting tools. But now read about ceramics like titanium carbide, tungsten carbide, titanium nitride and boron nitride used for the same. Another assumption shattered into pieces.
- Point of interest coverage bit.ly/3etePWZ. Uses an older trick shared by Chris Coyier in "How SVG line animation works".
- The critical software system and the money briefcase must have the same neat order. No folded/worn-out/torn banknotes or poured coins rolling in all directions.
- Polishing the round ball. Liked this.
- Tried to visualize every school in Berlin where OpenStreetMap could return its geocoordinates (given the address) bit.ly/3doYykD. 778 out of 893 is not exactly great (87.1% discovery rate), but saved a lot of time in manual typing, copy-pasting and stuck key triple-pressing. Dealing with the kindergartens (2727) would have been even more difficult and request-intensive, so decided to go with the schools instead. Reused the former style, untouched.
- The extended 7 P's of marketing: product, price, place, promotion, people, process, physical evidence. Wished the first word at position minus one was "scientific". Purpose can be added too.
- Wouldn't necessarily think of correlation as a prediction mechanism (in case one of the values remains uknown). But an interesting use.
- Interesting classification of some musical instruments bit.ly/3eqa7ZX. Was not aware that so many hydrids exist.
- Some properties of the vehicles by "Hyundai" bit.ly/37OkS5I. Quite happy to be able to finish this despite the many missing values. At first sight, "Palisade" (SUV) seems to be the most powerful vehicle (295ps), while "Ioniq Hybrid" is among the more eco-friendly (79g/km CO2 emissions), perhaps together with purely electric variants. However, the real highlights behind the table are the high number of models (30) and the high variability (lots of color nuances), suggesting a strong culture of experimentation. The idea for this came after reading the Initial Quality Study report by J.D. Power.
- Prices and weights for the road bikes at "fahrrad.de" bit.ly/2BnZOXU. Labeled four models of potential interest without recommending anything. At an added cost of 400€ (649€ → 1049€) one can reduce weight by 1.47kg. Paying 1570€ more (1049€ → 2619€) allows further weight reduction of 1.44kg and then 6380€ more (2619€ → 8999€) reduce weight by only 0.57kg. "VOTEC VRC Elite Carbon Road" bit.ly/2YkLW9V ↗ (2619€, 6.96kg) stays well relative to the rest here. Another bike more similar to "Trek Domane AL 2" (649€, 9.87kg), which hasn't been included in the diagram is "Cube Axial WS" bit.ly/2Ndmeh8 ↗ (749€, 9.5kg), which is women-only.
- Public libraries in Stuttgart, Germany bit.ly/3ekIDoJ. East and west of "Stadtteilbibliothek Degerloch", the situation looks a bit sparse, but otherwise the 19 libraries (not including "Fahrbibliothek", located close to "Ost") seem reasonably well distributed.
- The closest equivalent to sales/m2-employee in the retail store would be sales/... in the web store. Sometimes the thinking is more useful than being exact.
- Distributions of backpack prices by brand at "INTERSPORT" bit.ly/3diTi1U. Includes only brands with more than ten products on sale. "Fjällräven" backpacks have the highest median price here. But if we are looking at the ratio volume_liter:price_euro, "McKinley MAKE CT 75+10 Vario" comes second (0.850) (optically better-looking than the first). If you prefer other brands, "Vaude Astrum EVO 75+10 XL" (0.500), "Jack Wolfskin KALARI TRAIL 36" (0.456), "The North Face Borealis Classic 29" (0.402) or "Deuter Aviant Access 55" (0.367) bit.ly/3elbE3w ↗ may serve you well too. The scores in range [0.5, 0.85] were occupied primarily by "McKinley" products as far as my script could tell (at least among the 335 items with directly known volume and no extra page visits). Good to learn about few new brands!
- Distributions of laminate, parquet and floor tile prices at "Hornbach" bit.ly/2YS6VzL. Parquet looks most expensive with a median of almost 44€/m2.
- After Einstein, sleepwalking.
- Their salaries were always explained higher than the industry average (statistical significance), yet in real terms you could barely survive or thrive (practical importance). So all their conversations ended on time and within budget.
- Economies of sale is when you don't insist selling to those who wouldn't benefit from your product/service (or who don't appreciate it enough). You sell no wrong product to the right person and no right product to the wrong person. That simple.
- Obtaining the maximum of well-being by the minimum of consumption sounds like a waste-reduction mechanism.
- First test of the lmplot function bit.ly/2AJIRas. Looks beautiful, yet there are minor details that bother. The default points are slightly too big for my taste and I couldn't see an easy way to change this. The function creates a separate window (at least here), not using the default axis or keeping the default figure size (notice its extra size attribute). This means that calling it three times created three separate windows (+ an empty one) instead of three color-differentiated functions in the same window. The parameter list is overwhelming and discouraging. Expects the data to come from a data frame (external dependency). Probably won't deal with such beauty again if it taxes me so much.
- Didn't know that few successive iterations of truncated SVD can be used to converge to an estimation of missing user ratings for specific items (provided there weren't too many). An attempt to infer about the latent from the known.
- Specific energy of various materials used as fuels bit.ly/2Bp705N
- Quickly recorded capacitance, voltage, diameter and height for 37 electrolytic radial capacitors by various manufacturers. Supported voltage was slightly more connected to height than to diameter (0.156 vs. 0.035), although both values were practically too low to say anything for sure. The hypothesis was that capacitance must be related to volume and here the value of 0.843 didn't disappoint. Voltage and capacitance were slightly inversely related (-0.312).
- Created a small ZIP archive bit.ly/2UWDsn2 with eight large diagrams comparing daily mean temperature, average rainfall/precipitation, average relative humidity and mean monthly sunshine hours for selected cities around the world, based on the historical climate data Wikipedia provided about them. So many interesting results that it's impossible to explain them briefly. You can also see one kernel density diagram about temperature and sunshine hours for Paris, Seoul and Tokyo bit.ly/2AOnPay.
- Three simple ways to obtain the area of an equilateral triangle bit.ly/2V9vc3t
- The bird doesn't seek a quantity discount when it lays down a single egg. It cares desperately about it as if it was the only hope for survival it has left. Not losing sight of it, hatching for uncomfortably long time, in a narrow nest, beaten by the strong winds at height, testing the cohesiveness of its feathers, finding itself often slightly adjusting, but then quickly returning to initial hatching state. No matter what. Such an inspiring creature.
- Not good at lifting heavy objects, so looked at the offers by "Toyota Forklifts" for some help and numeric perspective bit.ly/2B9YR5g. Didn't expect to see a forklift capable of handling a load of 125000lbs (≈56700kg). However, we notice how the maximal lift speed decreases as the load gets heavier and vice versa (-0.63). The maximal gradeability at full load is also reduced as the load capacity increases (-0.26). The variability in load capacity looks much higher than in lift speed.
- Rail stations by number of rail tracks passing through them bit.ly/2N2J2jx. May no longer be current, considering that the data came from Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the diagram is too colorful, but wished to see the relationships more easily. The 4-5 rail stations in Paris that ranked high on the list would have been more difficult to notice otherwise. "Grand Central Terminal" in New York was said to have almost twice the number of rail tracks seen at Munich Hbf.
- The washing machine and the dishwasher both wash (common functionality), but behave differently depending on context (spin clothes, sprinkle dishes/utensils). We can't wash without supervision in a single, universal way, hence two machines are needed (no cost or space savings). We might think that each object we put in our homes provides a function at the cost of the space it takes (assuming no function is free). An improvement is then an object, which can handle more functions or input types without taking extra space. If functionality expands to fill the space provided, we can decide between including more functions or becoming more aware of the unused ones and pruning the space they take on time. Otherwise, multiplying the extra stuff will quickly bring disorder to the home software.
- If you have sufficient transaction data about customer purchases, an idea you could try is to visualize the products as a graph and vary the edge widths according to frequency of co-occurence in each transaction. May enable you to observe existing connections or discover unexpected paths (combinations of products bought together). More useful results will require lots of data. You can also use this to track the evolution of customer purchase habits over time.
- Interesting parallel that the area of a convex polygon is the sum of the areas of the triangles formed between each side and its centroid bit.ly/2V4b9U3, while the volume of a polyhedron is the sum of the volumes of the pyramids formed between each face and its centroid.
- Computing forces on joints in trusses seems to have some interesting applications. The few lessons I had in school, which might have tried to explain the process, appeared too abstract for a distracted mind to comprehend.
- Sinc at the entrance of the "Fry's" electronics store in Sunnyvale, CA bit.ly/2Asn0nO ↗. If it has math functions/signs/symbols and no entrance fee, I enter it (although the cost of this might unfold to a full oscilloscope-equivalent). Also liked the improvised store pyramid in San Jose bit.ly/2B9cQbs ↗. The importance of architecture.
- DC conductivities of conductors, semiconductors and insulators (at 25℃) bit.ly/2ULaG8P. The difference between silver and copper is given to be smaller than the one between copper and gold.
- Another good week dedicated to deserving clients.
- Might be good for the breakfast starting this week: Honey Bunches of Oats by "Post" bit.ly/3d3kscI ↗ or the granola bars by "Made Good" bit.ly/3e31bts ↗. At least the package designs look inviting.
- Counted a total of 220 scheduled arrivals at Heathrow Airport for today. A very low number relative to previous probes. But we also have to account that today is Sunday. On Monday (15.06.2020), 246 flights are expected to arrive, which is a minimal increase. On both days, arrivals from Chicago and Amsterdam are most frequent.
- Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) provides travel times and speeds for many routes (as collections of road segments) in a single XML feed bit.ly/30DqA96 ↗ if you are willing to do something interesting with it.
- First you do the do nots, then they call you from the store, glazed (joke).
- Thinking whether economic state may influence driver aggressiveness.
- "Businesses fail every day, but government programs don't (funded regardless of effectiveness)" sounds like a key insight in "Popular economics".
- Number of trips by distance traveled on different days for citizens of 8 selected US counties (01.01.2020 - 30.05.2020) bit.ly/2YsWLFM. According to this source, Los Angeles County was visibly active, having more 10-25 mile trips than other counties were having very short ones (<1 mile). Also, its less-than-a-mile trips were 2-3x those in the other counties mentioned here.
- "In the past, lumber companies have vanished when the resources of raw material became exhausted." On the web, we have the opposite. Too much resource and the prevalent thinking you can allow yourself to be quite lax with it. The results have been visible to many, to the same detrimental effect. But there are still millions, maybe even billions of websites, which never updated after initial build. A lot like the man who shaved and explained they wouldn't have to touch sharp razors again in order to look good. Problem solved.
- Wayfair's website is too slow, especially after clicking on the "furniture" category. Some numbers to put things in perspective: 598 HTTP requests, 5.2MB transferred (17.9MB resources), finish time of 1.9min (almost half the time to boil some eggs). After showing a dozen or so images, the machine started doing something expensive in the background and didn't update for five more seconds. When they started to lose me. Noticed that all categories were flat rather than hierarchically organized, with an image next to each. If correctly (machine-)counted, 197 category images with a total of 1578712 pixels were loaded in my case. Before viewing a single concrete product. The impression was rounded with an ASCII logo inside the code and another one in my console, so that I learn they are Boston-based. The web is hard, really.
- Screens are edgy and sharp bit.ly/3f7RPwx
- "Potential is a possibility, a promise; performance is something already proven, something you can build upon. We don't need a list of potentials, but a list of performers." - Fredmund Malik
- If you find that your business still performs below its potential, you could actively seek out some much needed contributions.
- Some characteristics of "Ferrari" car models made after 2010 bit.ly/3hcMO7F. Hopefully without mistakes. In terms of acceleration, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, "SF90 Stradale" appears different from the rest. At only 111.6cm height, the two "LaFerrari" models and "FXX k" will cause the driver to bend most while getting inside. For these cars, overall displacement is positively related with combined fuel consumption and combined CO2 emissions (0.80 and 0.82). Maximal power output seems most positively connected to the overall width of the car (0.80) and most negatively to acceleration, especially the one in the range 0-200km/h (-0.85). Height and acceleration 0-100km/h came at 0.74, while fuel consumption and fuel tank capacity at 0.71.
- Number of floors versus height for the tallest buildings in New York bit.ly/30nVrqe. Among those taller than 350m, Empire State Building appears visibly older. A small table includes data found about the World Trade Centers only bit.ly/2Unuzme, where it looks as if they were numbered in order of decreasing height (but there is likely a lot more to it).
- Historic pedestrian counts at five selected locations in Melbourne, Australia (01.05.2009 - 31.05.2020) bit.ly/37gyBSD. Made me aware of the Princes Bridge over the Yarra River and the large Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. Also visible how the start of April seemed a reluctant time for pedestrians there, but their counts have slightly picked up again until the end of May. But at Town Hall this still corresponds to about a third of the usual counts.
- Nutrients in some fish products by "followfood" bit.ly/30mkZUI. Good to see most of these certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). There were many other fish product categories which were not included. Black halibut looks particularly high in fat here.
- Looking at PM2.5 air pollution at St. Johannplatz in Basel, Switzerland (Source: Open BS, Lufthygieneamt beider Basel, "Luftqualität Station St. Johannplatz" bit.ly/2zbCwn8 ↗ & "Smart Climate Feinstaubmessungen", bit.ly/2Yc4nMC ↗) (2000-today), we compute a median value of 9.4895µg/m3. But considering only the days this year so far, we come at 8.782µg/m3. At 01:30 PM today, the meter has recorded 2.6µg/m3. Continuous improvement even at already low levels (compared to other cities). Considering the second dataset for the period 06.11.2019-08.06.2020, "TS Hochbergstrasse 162" had the smallest median of 5.0µg/m3. "Erlenparkweg 55", "Grenzacherstrasse" and "Rennweg 89" all came next at 5.2µg/m3. Highest median value had "Feldbergstrasse" (7.2µg/m3).
- "HMM Algeciras", the biggest container ship in the world is said to be 400m long and 61m wide (≈6 acres), capable of carrying 23964 standard containers. A camera captured it in Hamburg bit.ly/2MFmZ24 ↗
- Exporting furniture to the outside, placing the desk near a tree and positioning the screen so that tree branches seem to be coming out of it is an interesting setup. Apart from the potential for strong sunlight and/or rain.
- Fish arrangements made obvious bit.ly/3eYYXeE ↗
- Reminds me of someone who said that warehouses will be the new restaurants during the outbreak. Sounded reasonable at first since everyone would need (often essential) items delivered to their door (not acting aggressively when they aren't the right ones). But there are other important considerations too. What a warehouse holds are the produced items of an entity; if the latter is temporarily operating at reduced capacity, the low warehouse utilization and long-term suppressed inflow could encourage the closure of more (esp. expensively leased) units assuming the existing near-optimal count was suitable for the high production levels. Increasing supply midst decreasing demand is not much better relative to the closed restaurant in the long term. Understanding the many obvious and not so obvious interconnections affecting warehouse operation may come with some benefits over its immediate construction.
- Found interesting data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics containing relative importance factor assignments for various categories considered in the formation of the consumer price index (CPI) as of March 2020. After discarding the special aggregate indexes and categories with varying time base, the categories with no factors assigned, the ones having inconcrete "other" labels and rearranging the rest, the following diagram was obtained bit.ly/2BBo096. As you can see, shelter was the most important factor by a wide margin, followed by rent of primary residence (notice the sqrt scale). But we also see that "electricity" and "hospital and related services" are placed next to each other (2.412 vs. 2.411), that "women's apparel" gets a factor of 1.009, while men's apparel receives only 0.594, that fresh fruits are considered a tick more important than fresh vegetables (0.534 vs. 0.506), that "beef and veal" precede "pork" and "fish and seafood" (0.455 vs. 0.314 vs. 0.267), that "cakes, cupcakes and cookies" precede "coffee" (0.177 vs. 0.172), that tomatoes precede potatoes and apples (0.086 vs. 0.081 vs. 0.073). Perhaps not perfect, but still a valuable perspective.
- Why someone issues a warning that you'll leave their website after clicking on "Shop", remains a mystery to me. If one section should always and unconditionally work, this is the shop.
- Couldn't solve life's maze on paper, they ask me about the algorithm in 3D bit.ly/3f0dwi8 ↗
- A hypothesis whose p-value is still subject to rigorous checks could be that one starts to become good at coffee the moment they are able to cite the alphanumeric sequence of the machine model which made it.
- Was looking for the can radius and height in attempt to gauge how many palettes of my own height these variants could engage bit.ly/3eTkhly ↗. Found no geometritional info except a recital of recipes, which may come handy on lonely/slow days bit.ly/30iDedw ↗
- How does it feel to have worked with great people whose business is no longer around? In your opinion, did this have some effect on the industry? Has it become richer/poorer for it and why? Were you able to find another alternative you equally enjoy doing business with? Have you become more conscious where your monetary votes go on a regular basis? Which businesses would you support next week while they still exist?
- Sounds like the name of a browser's Javascript engine, but is meant to serve thirsty people (perhaps on Sunday afternoon). What is it? While you take some time to think, here are the nutrients of the plant- and fruit-based juices by "V8" bit.ly/30iaZMc. There are many, but had to omit "Orange pineapple" (energy) from the table as the data looked as if collected by a different method. Zero fats, cholesterol and added sugars all look good. "Strawberry banana" for calcium (maybe also energy), "Carrot mango" for vitamin A and "V8 essential antioxidants" for vitamin C. Three variants for those on a low-calorie diet.
- They never asked me for a lower price either. Neither a discount store, nor acting as one. Also quite flexible about accepting which clients to work with. They probably came to the same realization.
- Thanks to open data, you can see the distribution of the hourly wages for different professions in Seattle bit.ly/30eQwYt. Also included a random sample with size only 5% of the original data to highlight that (in case the dataset was uncomfortably large to directly work with) it still gives a reasonably good estimate without wasting too much memory.
- The way the locust problem in East Africa was described hints about a large multiplicator in relatively short time, affecting lots of people. Was wondering what happened with the birds and other species which could potentially feed on these finger-big crop-eaters.
- So strange to hear of someone's desire to have their container flowing on the ocean and around the world for indefinite time as part of their corona business relief plan. The environment being sold to the money here.
- A "Houzz" report listed sinks among the most common upgrades in US kitchens, so decided to take a look at the price distribution for the single-bowl sinks by "KOHLER" bit.ly/2AN4tlz. As you can see, the median is very close to $700. With an average hourly wage approaching $30 and income tax of say 20%, it would take the average person ≈30hours of work (less than 4 workdays) to be able to afford a sink at the given price point.
- I stick to the programming languages with highest monetary pay per unit effort, not with the ones offering the biggest truck of smelly features which happen to sound cool. In fact, the less features, the better, since my attention is scarce. And those long hours of reading comprehension could have been greatly improved if the language desginers weren't biased, knew what they spoke about and weren't actively promoting syntax hell.
- Had the idea of finding pairs of five US cities enclosing similar geographic areas. Turned out to be too slow here, so canceled the effort early. Not hard to understand why when you seek better results and deal with thousand cities.
- For plant classification, the DOM tree needs to be eight deeply rooted levels, containing classes like "kingdom", "division", "class", "order", "family", "genus", "species", "variety". However, we both know that from today's perspective, an accurate and correct representation wouldn't turn that soil without great effort.
- Clients, plants and understanding what makes them tick. So we could grow bigger clients without having to shower them.
- Didn't know that the lumber needed to construct a 2500ft2 house would kill a forest having an area of ≈3acres (a square with side of 110m). Other interesting bits in "Gaia's garden" included the combination of patience with thoughtful observation rather than thoughtless action; seeking the least change having the greatest effect (finding leverage points); the connections and interactions between garden elements and biodiversity to create a sustainable food web; natural function stacking, where each element performs several functions and each function is served by multiple elements; building the smallest thing that works (we also have this in software); the planting topologies used to ensure plants get more sunlight and are easily human-accessible while minimizing walkpath compaction area; the radiating growth zones around the house center in order of decreasing plant usage frequency and more.
- The standing desks by "Fully" are optically nice bit.ly/2AIxWNx ↗, but wouldn't know what to tell an imaginary boss to justify such purchase. Despite coming in touch with a table on a daily basis, where a good-looking one might improve subjective well-being, I'd still prefer to stand up periodically to reduce back strain rather than adjust the desk to financially back-breaking heights.
- eaper alternatives which won't break your back the financial way.
- Net generated energy (MW) at 430 wind plants in the USA (2016) bit.ly/2AzRjsm. Wikipedia claims that the capacity of the "Highland Wind Energy Center" in Iowa is 501.4MW bit.ly/36WXpz4 ↗. "On average, each megawatt of installed wind energy can power 300 American houses." (Source: "Wind tubine technology")
- Properties of the "EPYC" server processors by "AMD" bit.ly/2Xu2jjY. The theoretical memory bandwidth achieved by the second generation CPUs is said to be 20% higher compared to the first. Even an 8-core CPU like 7262 has the same memory bandwidth that is advertised for the 64-core models (204.80GB/s). Wikipedia indirectly gave me the idea with its historic CPU power dissipation list bit.ly/2AzqXGO ↗
- Properties of the car tires by "Bridgestone" bit.ly/3cxY0IG. According to the company, the touring, all-season tires "Quiettrack" and "Serenity Plus" (both belonging to "Turanza" series) offer great overall performance and extensive warranty at a reasonable price. Assuming that "Other" means not belonging to a series.
- Engine size vs. price for the motorcycles at "New York Motorcycle" bit.ly/3duqvYN. Also includes some calculations.
- Looking at these plants bit.ly/2MmruP5 ↗, my decision variables would be expected average flower survival time, watering need frequency and intensity, light need duration and intensity, overall flower beauty, vigorousness, plant level of detail (leaves and blossom shapes), color uniqueness/intensity/mix, smell, size and material of the flowerpot, price. Perhaps you'll come up with the additionals missed.
- "Join to get a cookie" sounds tempting. How you get out of cookies in no time, losing the chance to dip them in honey as well. With lots of followers, but no clients. Such a sad outcome.
- Nutrients in the cottage cheese and probiotic products by "Good Culture" bit.ly/3dG6LSt. Didn't expect to see cottage cheese having a good amount of protein (10.56-12.73%). "Sour cream" quickly catched the eye with its relatively high amounts of fat and cholesterol. Looking further, "Nancy's" cottage cheese also claims 12.73% protein.
- Has already been done? Finished and complete? Or brittle and falling apart?
- "NXP Semiconductor" is not far from Eimsbüttel, which is interesting. Here is also a map of the libraries in this city bit.ly/30je6ns ↗
- Relative neighborhood populations in Hamburg, Germany (31.12.2017) bit.ly/2ZZolwn. Done very quickly, so may contain mistakes in the form of wrong coordinates. And if you were patient enough (same resource, page 270) you would have deserved an even nicer map bit.ly/2zRSxio
- When one explores the behavior of various ice cream fats (coconut, palm kernel, butterfat, peanut, sunflower and palm fats) with varying temperature, the final taste obtains a nice analytic flavour.
- Nutrients of the Napoli range by "Joe's Ice Cream" bit.ly/3cmf1FD. Now wondering whether sorbets are more lightweight in general or only in this particular case.
- Annual production and prices of some precious and industrial metals bit.ly/2XHSHRi. The latest production data would be more accurate, but perhaps come with a hefty price tag.
- Dimensions of the cars by "Toyota" (2020 models) bit.ly/3exlf6W. "Tundra" seems especially big relative to the rest. "86", "GR Supra", "Yaris" (also "Hatchback") and "Corolla" (in this order) have the smallest frontal cross-section area.
- The weeks are short and professionals are hard to come across...
- That overwelding can be costly and underwelding makes the product not strong enough to fulfill the job shows that welding must happen with exactly the right intensity. Not over-designed, like good software.
- Tensile strength of some materials according to Wikipedia bit.ly/2AmDQ78. Appears that concrete doesn't support too heavy loads then and may be susceptible to cracks. Wondered whether a formula found in "Metals and how to weld them" (max_supported_load (lb) = tensile_strength (psi) * cross_sectional_area (in2)), would be transferrable to a a 60cm long, 1cm thick, 2MPa concrete plate. If so, computation leaves me skeptical that it should be able to withstand a maximal load of 1223kg (under perfect conditions, incl. ambient temperature). Also learned about two positive relationships (tensile strengh and hardness, thermal conductivity and toughness) and two organizations (SAE & AISI).
- How would you visualize the problems along a supply chain? Which nodes are affected due to which other nodes and to what extent? Are there patterns/clusters of strongly affected nodes in close physical proximity? What can be done to reduce/eliminate the bottlenecks and which other suppliers might be helpful? Would you collaborate with competitors if this were to make the chain stronger and be beneficial to many?
- Overreliance on combinatorics is insufficient to implement you AABB while listening ABBA.
- The decision to visualize circle packing in terms of sliced oranges and limes easily shifts this fallible thinking towards guessing expected juice volume per circle area and fruit type. But a good reminder that each primitive is very likely ripe with meaning.
- In case you wondered: the "chisel" didn't work as expected as it was a small piece of metal not passing well enough through the rocks (nothing more than a perforated cheese at microlevel). Or when it went around them, it was hard to pull out again. The clay that came out was then partially step on before it was brought out, getting part of the same mass again. So not much progress today except slightly widening the hole, further hits with the pickaxe (on a newly discovered giant) and some minor effects of using it as a lever. Slowly going deeper into the hole.
- Properties of the thermos products by "Stanley" bit.ly/3db4PAW. If my script had to pick one of these travel mugs, that would be the 16oz trigger-action ($23) and in the case of a bottle, that would be the 32oz (indicated as 1.0qt on their site, $35). Also imagined a thermos with an integrated thermostat controlled by rotating the round cap at the top, informing the user on a mini-display when the current temperature deviates from the desired one...
- Looked for interesting patterns in the spread of population over the territory of Russia (using known data) bit.ly/3cg88Wn ↗. A slightly unexpected level of concentration.
- Pointless to try swinging a large instrument inside a narrow hole. Came to the idea of chisel and hammer, but will test tomorrow how that works.
- Given the strong rain we had, mind-wandered for the greenhouse protection low.es/36KnaSX ↗. Minimal surface-to-volume and price; maximal transparency and weatherproofness.
- After making salads, the primary task of the web designer remains sensible content generation. For the foreseeable future.
- Are you using at least one thermal mass in your home? To give you an analogy with a website: when a user clicks on an interactive element, an overlay may appear/disappear at once with no delay or with a smooth/pleasing animation (e.g. over 0.3s). This idea, turns out, is transferrable to heat transfer in a house—we could convert electrical energy into heat and immediately dissipate it through the room's boundaries or we could store it in a thermal mass, which then slowly releases it over time, effectively keeping warmth longer. While it would be impractical to install an entire swimming pool at the center of the living room to store excess solar energy in water, was thinking whether a moderately thick aluminium plate over the cooking range might have some effect. Perhaps you have better ideas. Any positive experience with effective applications?
- Having no access to "HomeDepot" (site unavailable here), but from what I've seen at "Lowe's", US-wide, attic-suitable R-49 fiberglass insulation by "Owens Corning" (said to be formaldehyde-free) was relatively costly (60 x 120cm → ≈$85). Perhaps cheaper options exist. Might give you an orientation about the cost factor when you consider the total attic floor area.
- At least this diagram bit.ly/2X9q14U shows directly why it may be unwise to treat floor, walls and attic of a house room the same when it comes to insulation. Lowest R-value insulation for the walls, middle for the floor and highest for the attic (windows use U-value = 1/R-value). But then we arrive at the broad topic of construction material toxicity (HFCs in polyurethanes, well-insulating fiberglass with cancer-warnings and formaldehyde emission etc.) and decide it would be best to stop here.
- According to a long and open NREL publication, this is how a miniature of the refrigerant world looks like bit.ly/2yDISeO. R-22 was said to be most common (also used in Teflon), but pushed for a phase-out, while the reliance on R-600a in Europe, Asia and Africa might be flammable. HFO-1234ze was said to be much better (at least not HFC), but then also shown in the concerns circle. Honeywell was said to have lots of patents for it, but I couldn't find a concrete refrigerator model using it. What I've seen most often in relatively new models (if indicated at all) was R-600a. Anyway, hoping that the toxicity reaching so many households yearns for a minimum in a way that satisfies both producers and consumers.
- It appears that the 90° angle, internal for a single step on a staircase is mirrored in the 180°-rotated and scaled (by the number of steps) giant step determined by the total length and height of the staircase. Real-world transforms.
- Wirecutter on using comparison tables nyti.ms/2XE9AMX ↗. Liked the idea of listing and weighting in the order of perceived importance. With too many features, it becomes difficult to assign weights manually. Having a function which auto-assigns them based on their rank has its disadvantages too. Often found that it was faster to code and easier to analyze when tings were kept simple with all dimensions being independent and almost equally important. Including all of them is often undesirable or unfeasible.
- Reading on pig economics bit.ly/2XE0Fex ↗ as a non-meater. If a pig produces on average 210lbs / 24weeks = 8.75lbs of meat per week and store price is $3.2/lb, this means value creation of $28/week (or $4/day) for each animal during the entire growth period. However, the article doesn't quantify the costs of initial investment in land & machines, feeding, transportation, health protection of all animals & workers and environmental damage.
- An electric bike priced at 2900€ (said to be the best model, bit.ly/2X5DN8n ↗) may not be worth its cost. Assuming one drives it with constant 20km/h, the battery holding 55km would be empty after ≈2.75h. In that time, a cyclist with a regular bike pedaling slowly with an average speed of 8km/h would leave behind a distance of 22km. The electric bike goes 2.5x the distance while being 3.0x as heavy and ≈3.4x as expensive. It saves time while also taking some to ensure it is always fully charged. If one earns 30€/h on average, a price difference of 2100€ would be paid back only after 70 saved hours in cycling during prime time. In the above scenario, the savings are ≈4h/charge. Assuming a regular workday of 8h, this is equivalent to 1.33h of prime time. This makes an electric bike economically viable if a moderate earner intends to drive it for at least 3000km (or a low earner for 9000km), spread over the product's useful time. If the moderate earner keeps it for 3 years, he/she has to engage it for more than 1000km/year. Assuming 250 business days/year (when the bike is most likely to be used) and minimal utilization during holidays (unlikely), the distance to this person's job location must be at least 2km (accounting for both directions). For the low earner instead, it must be at least 6km. Is this person likely to cycle more than 12km/workday? An imperfect estimate meant for orientation only.
- Looking only at the product images, how easy is it to differentiate that they are about tea leaves and not about tobacco or cannabis? Always ensure you aren't leaving anything to open interpretation. (You could put the packaging with a well-visible tea type label nearby and photo-capture both.)
- Directly referring to a Facebook page and having nothing else on a website is new to me. Much more frequent is to see the other way around. Another site owner who couldn't understand the value of keeping their business independent and thriving, not just alive. Hesitating between both worlds, we often live in neither.
- "Cranberry Sourdough Loaf" bit.ly/2TJ7IRK ↗. So fresh its internals show up.
- Fullscreen red background in Chrome: "The site ahead contains malware". Good to know what not to visit.
- GardenWorks plant database bit.ly/2Aa0lvO ↗
- To be fair, couldn't find much difference between the prices in such product categories like "sale", "clearance", "%" and "affordable price" (on the same page). Wasn't sure where to look first, since they were all sending the same message in a different way. Appeared as stickers sprinkled around to make people click more and keep them engaged. Savvy users would have gone directly to "new" instead, enjoying similarly expensive.
- Clicked on a newly discovered, interesting product and found it impossible to return back from the expanded view, because at the wrong time a menu appeared to cover the close button bit.ly/3emhwZR. Problems like these are plenty and remain almost invisible to the inattentive.
- Doing it cheap required the expensive rework anyway. Better to start with expensive so you can save this waste.
- A company in need employs only good payers indeed.
- Average energy in unit weight (cal/g) for the poutines at "New York Fries (NYF)" (nutritional info, 26.05.2020) bit.ly/3eiUTph
- Historical changes in size and rated power for wind turbine installations (1985 - 2010) bit.ly/2X4TKvu. May have to be expanded with 2015 and 2020.
- Saw a photo of a beautiful lineup of wind turbines at "Middlegrunden" wind farm. While noticing how the blades of each one were asychronous at distance, missed the detail that the closest one was coming for my head.
- Educating myself about home standby generators. A 22000W "Generac" model at Lowe's is said to weigh 233kg, so picking it wouldn't be a task for bare hands. It costs $5047 anyway. But a cheaper 7500W model by the same company weighs 127kg and costs $1999. This purchase price doesn't reflect long term operating cost, which means that simply computing W/$ wouldn't be expressive enough. Considering other features like dimensions (in x 3), engine displacement (cm3) and fuel consumption (1/2 NG) for 15 different models, the smallest generator among all (7500W) still appears interesting, followed by one of 10000W ($2717) and one at 25000W ($8897). The last is said to have lower fuel consumption than the 13000W models and ≈1.92x that of the 7500W model.
- Happy new week of productive collaborations.
- "Do ostriches really bury their heads in the sand?" bit.ly/2A4fPl6 ↗ The lion may know best.
- Maximal planned city-wide speed of 30km/h in Brussels (starting 2021) would practically discourage drivers and restrict cyclists to the shortest distances only. Perhaps it's better not to travel, then not to use electricity and so on. Downgrading life until it's gone.
- Which interesting insights did you obtain by defining the constraints of the fitness function on this exercise-Sunday?
- "Do, not study." Liked this, but also the beauty in the mistake.
- Would this software be a fine mop for the floor cleaner? If so, fix the software development practice.
- You multiply what matters to you. If you seek more Reddit comments/opinions, the platform will give you more. If you seek more followers, a platform will find a way to recommend you to an expanded circle of people. If you seek to rent an electric bike or scooter, you will expand the transportation sharing economy. If you seek agricultural subsidies, you also indirectly expand potential fraud. If you seek renewable energy, you expand the number of wind and solar companies until market and land saturation. If you seek to live off advertising, you encourage attention fragmentation and zero value creation. And so on (the list is long). Find what matters to you and expand this rather than wait for someone else to determine it for you. Remember that the upside for the marketers, persuaders and influencers of your life is infinite. Contribute to the world you'd want to find yourself living in.
- The only clients that matter are those being served at the moment and those staying long enough (and recent) in the conversation loop to matter. Most clients will fail on one of these (especially on recency) and will naturally have to move elsewhere. Then there's no going back.
- Creating a digital storefront at Facebook makes your company a subsidiary. In other words, you no longer have one. Prefer acting independently and avoid having client conversations on third-party platforms, which can affect your profitability. Any client that can't find an independent way to come to you is no client and shouldn't be served. No need to rely on their worthless recommendations either.
- 24th of May is the day of slavonic alphabet here. Tracking calendars and awareness for holidays has always been this person's weakness. Yet, the importance of education has no parallel, which makes this day among the most important in the whole year. A reminder to acknowledge all educators and the intellectual striving to become better with each day. That said, a book I saw today indirectly touched upon one reason why so many children were missing from school. They didn't have an easy way to clean their clothes and didn't want to feel ashamed because of it. So the schools started offering complementary clothes-washing services and found that attendance rates dramatically improved. Can you imagine hearing anything better on this day than using deep understanding/education to improve education?
- Fully understand you if you are wasting time on thinking how to color your own shapes bit.ly/2Tz3kVn
- Texas, from the same perspective bit.ly/2WVr6wO. Had no idea there were so many dense cities around Dallas (Savannah, Frisco, Plano, Garland, Irving, Fort Worth, Grand Prairie). On the path between Austin and San Antonio can be seen slightly closer and bigger circles than on the one between Austin and Houston (at least a perception). Cameron Park CDP in the south was said to be the most dense.
- The same for the state of Colorado bit.ly/2XBC5uP. Had to add some distance between the labels of Denver and Aurora. Led me to unintentionally discover "Cherry Creek Shopping Center" in Denver. (Good that Dinosaur (CO) is too far to be seen there.)
- Population densities (people/km2) in different cities in the state of Washington, USA bit.ly/2WT8mOA. This pattern was what I was looking for. Noticed that several cities with the same name existed in Iowa and the subtle difference between Vancouver, WA and Vancouver, CA.
- Two materials you may not have heard about: aramid fiber replacing steel wires in radial tires for lower weight and greater durability and pearlite used in the ropes (3-4GPa) of the longest single-span suspension bridge with between-tower spacing of 1.9km—Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge in Japan.
- Free the crystals of impurities.
- "For a company like UPS, a reduction of one mile per day per driver would equal savings of as much as $50 million a year in fuel." Reminds me of another statement seen recently about the potential savings in the case of slightly more fuel-efficient airplanes. Such scales quickly make small gains appear mind-boggling.
- Even answering increasingly difficult multiple-choice questions would have made the stay-at-home time more interesting to many. No jokers, no hints from an audience. For the sake of learning, not becoming a millionaire. (Enriching the many, not some.) Unfortunately, the second aspect was deemed more important, so the shows mostly disappeared.
- It took 1.6min to load 12.2MB of AlfaRomeo content bit.ly/2zjMxyD ↗. When drinking alcohol before starting to design retains your license afterwards.
- The non-payment industry has been consistently the biggest one and it also knows the effect of no virus. Fortunately, if most employees left their unpaid jobs next week, the huge, obese and corrupt corporations would become severely ill in no time. Remember, no need to give them any explanations in the same way they considered you a pawn.
- "The best places for civil engineers 2020" bit.ly/2TqDQcO ↗. ASCE considers Houston to offer the best opportunities. Another source also includes it high on the list of cities for software engineers bit.ly/2XaC9RG ↗ with diagrams highlighting high real earnings, number of jobs and lower rents. Berlin ranked high in affordability and real earnings for 2019, although I'd probably skip it.
- Which was a bigger mess—the software or the app stores hosting it? Has saturation been followed by abstinence?
- When you started with tens/hundreds of billions, losing some on what they call a website didn't seem like a big deal. A tiny experiment after all. We'll see how many times you'll be able to repeat it while showing zero respect for the discipline of web design.
- Do you know the price of everything and the value of nothing?
- "Buy your car online or by phone call". Some people truly believe their products are icecream-like.
- Dynamic nutrition calculators inform well as long as there aren't too many foods one can choose from and the nutrient label is clearly visible. Saves a website from having to load and show one on each separate page (although this may be a requirement), but introduces the inconvenience of having to scroll through potentially long lists and click on the right options. Difficult not to appreciate the compact visual design arising from the adherence to the DRY principle.
- Properties of the car/truck batteries by "Odyssey Battery bit.ly/2TrzaDD. My script preferred anything starting with "PC925" in the name (the first batteries listed under extreme series) and then the two having "31-925" in their name (last batteries in the performance series). Very close to the last two were also "49-950" and "65-PC1750T".
- The Corvette Z06 Coupes look nice at first. Accommodating a 6.2l, 650hp engine in 1600kg curb weight is quite an achievement (even more so when seen at $60000, bit.ly/2WNZ3Qb ↗). But these 17 miles per gallon (estimated ≈13.8l/100km) make the car appear a bit fuel-hungry. At a gallon price of $2.23 (EIA), the asked price converted in terms of fuel would still be enough to drive estimated 736412km (under constant ideal conditions). But on a non-US ground, this distance would be much shorter. The fuel needed to drive this car for 200000km would cost slightly over $26000 here (at current low prices). The CO2 emissions wouldn't be negligible too.
- So a washing machine with a load capacity of 10kg actually exists bit.ly/36impjN. Spinning twice as rarely as one handling only 5kg could be a distinct advantage provided one has at least twice the material it needs to work with. Also liked the dimensionality of the specifications.
- Brief look at "GP Recyko" rechargeable battery types from a mAh/g perspective bit.ly/2Zkslrg. The highest capacity AA model comes at a value, which is 23.3% higher than that of the highest capacity AAA model.
- Approximation of a square wave via a sum of sine waves bit.ly/2Th8ANi. You probably already know this.
- Densities of some fibers used in textiles bit.ly/2TjChNP
- "Traditionally, the most desirable cotton (Gossypium spp.) is said to be as white as snow, as strong as steel, as fine as silk and as long as wool." In other words, cost-effective in keeping the woolves away and safe.
- Looked at which supercomputers on the Top500 list achieve good peak performance relative to the number of cores they use and the power they draw (floor area and total cost were absent). Of interest appear to be some of the newer additions to the list: IBM's "MareNostrum P9 CTE" at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain (rank 494), PEZY Computing "NA-1" in Japan (rank 420), IBM's "Satori" in Holyoke, Massachusetts (rank 373), Dell EMC's "Wilkes-2" at the University of Cambridge, UK (rank 468), Huawei Technologies at Telecom Company China (rank 486), Sugon's "Era-AI" at the Chinese Academy of Science (rank 446), Inspur's TS1000 at Central China Normal University (rank 389), Huawei G5500 at Chinese Bank A (rank 378), Fujitsu "A64FX prototype" at Fujitsu Numazu Plant in Japan (rank 159), Sugon TC6000 at "Cloud Company", China (rank 416). Found floor areas and power usage for "Tianhe-2" (720m2, 17.6MW) and "Titan" at Oak Ridge (371m2, 8MW), so they come at ≈24444W/m2 and ≈21563W/m2 respectively. If I were to multiply this laptop to cover 1m2 area, I'd be using slightly less than 300W (for 12 slow cores and no network). And if I used a reasonable height of 1.8m for stacking such units leaving some 15% spacing in-between, I'd be already using 24190W. "Tianhe-2" would fit 4333 powerful cores in this height, while my stack would contain only 1051 (disconnected) weak cores.
- Noticed that among the 64411 examined Zener diodes at "DigiKey", "Voltage - Zener (Nom) (Vz)" was strongly linked with the voltage Vr in "Current - Reverse Leakage @ Vr" (e.g. 5µA @ 1V) (0.978). The first was also somewhat linked with "Impedance (Max) (Zzt)" (0.536, diagram bit.ly/2zN22ze), whereas the impedance itself was somewhat linked with the second (0.527). The maximal operating temperature was weakly related with the max. Vf in "Voltage - Forward (Vf) (Max) @ If" (e.g. 1.5V @ 200mA) (0.370), whereas the unit price was weakly related with this current If (0.214).
- The toroidal power transformers by "Triad Magnetics" bit.ly/2WFKQEx ↗ reach 88-90% efficiency.
- "The rectangle of given perimeter having the greatest area is square." ("Aha! Solutions") Also liked the problems with the stacked circles inside an isosceles triangle and the area of a shaded Sierpinski-like subdivided triangle.
- Which of the following is causal: A) turning the steering wheel turns the tires, B) smoking causes lung cancer and C) mixing cement, sand and water (right proportions) produces concrete. A), B) or All), but unclear why unless each situation arose by personal setup and manipulation.
- Interesting this story of emperor penguins hesitating to dive due to fear of seals waiting to consume them underwater. To ensure the group remains protected, they wait for a single individual to test the situation. If noone wants to be the first, they were said to push each other at the boundary to force the falling of someone else (as seen in "The selfish gene").
- Sometimes it feels the sandclock of your life is sunsetting.
- And if you wish even more rings, you could look at nearby "Zales" in the same shopping center. Had so many rings that this machine was overwhelmed and rendered obsolete. Hard work under tight constraints isn't always possible.
- WSDOT indicated high travel times towards Southcenter bit.ly/2yT19Fh ↗. which indirectly led me to another shopping center and its stores. Web there, found that "Helzberg Diamonds" was new to me, so went to see what they were about. Spent some time looking at ring creations and computed that the median price (after price drops) of the 1303 jewelry pieces was $600 (a cent less). The most expensive ring is almost $7000 bit.ly/2Z7aF1Y ↗ (also see the distribution bit.ly/3dLNGO0). Given it is 1 1/2 ct., one may come to the idea of finding one which is relatively cheap for its carat content. But if one were also to avoid the numerous 1/10 ct. variants (like this one bit.ly/2Tcdqv9 ↗), anything "lab grown" and requires the ring to have a gold base and a diamond on top (there were moissanite and other gem rings too bit.ly/3dOsTJQ ↗), then bit.ly/3dX8JO1 (1 1/2 ct., $1199, (41.6% drop)), bit.ly/3bDmK1E (2 1/4 ct., $1999), bit.ly/2z2wtRS (5/8 ct., $649 (50% drop)) and bit.ly/3cDim3P (1 1/7 ct., $1299 (23% drop)) were found to be potentially interesting. But if you thought of jewelry as being intransferrable to the afterlife, your value of it was perhaps limited to the point you became slightly inattentive.
- Properties of the 383 rheostats by "Ohmite" bit.ly/2zNhk6P. Diameter and power look especially well-connected (0.97). The ranges: diameter (0.515 - 12), resistance (0.5 - 50000Ω), power (7.5 - 1000W), voltage (305 - 1600V). Now we easily see why these components are said to be suited for high-voltage applications.
- Looked at data about 51 accelerometers by "Analog Devices" after reading how they find various uses—from detecting when to load balance a washing machine (for walk prevention) to gesture detection on mobile devices and noise cancellation of car radios (after vibrating phone detection). The models had up to three axes where it seemed that their count was inversely related to Vs+ min (-0.73), which in itself seemed somewhat related to price (0.66). The accelerometer range (1.2g - 500g) may influence Vs+ max (0.63), but its relation to price was much weaker (0.21) in this data bit.ly/3fUnG4Y ↗.
- Recreated a book cover shape in 3D bit.ly/3cMWlA1, but the result didn't rotate to the same beauty at all times.
- Next week, again. Have a nice weekend.
- Interesting how many women would be able to hold a ≈4kg drill for 30min without letting it down. If the design deliberately excludes certain groups by promoting the heavier, bulky tools, there isn't much to wonder why more people aren't entering certain professions. It's the job of tool designers to extend the accessibility, usability and utility to more people instead of loading them with baggage. Great design always finds a way to enable.
- Properties of the (road) compactors by "Hamm", owned by "Wirtgen Group" bit.ly/3bAdJpS. Has a nice top-to-bottom color transition for "max. operating weight" (first column). Good to see how all these machines compare in selected dimensions. One could complement this table with one about the road pavers by "Vögele".
- Are you already tapping the cost overrun budget and still finding it must be more than enough? Good so.
- If after doing yourself 90% of your project you realize you were missing pieces of the puzzle and request me to complete the last 10%, this will cost you the most (if you get me to agree). So that in the future you don't come to the idea of starting projects without me and then speaking in terms of "just", "simple" or "small". Also don't bother to speak if you can do everything yourself.
- If an electric range has three unique circular heating elements (6" @ 1800W, 8" @ 2500W, 11" @ 3700W) as seen in a real GE model, then the largest unit computes to have the smallest heat flux bit.ly/3fL2HSl ↗ of 60.34kW/m2, the middle unit has one of 77.09kW/m2 and the smallest 6" element achieves the highest heat flux of 98.67kW/m2. If this is correct, the smallest unit has a 63.5% higher value than the largest one.
- Used the digest of education statistics bit.ly/3cxT9be ↗ and two tables on Wikipedia bit.ly/2WyP7tH to try estimatating which US states might have the least and most crowded libraries if readers were to behave the same. Among the least crowded could be the libraries in Wyoming, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Delaware. District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York came out 7th, 10th, 12th and 25th respectively. Most crowded might be Hawaii, California, Florida, Texas, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Washington. Does this somewhat agree with your own impression?
- What's the perks-to-peaks ratio at this place? What makes a payment or perk so?
- If someone asks a question in the context of language A, you can't let self-interested people respond by speaking nonsense about their languages B, C and D in the same thread. Would be irresponsible to do so. Noone can be "right" about anything there.
- Didn't know that microwaves can get so expensive. The six units by "Cafe Appliances" averaged to $1062. So you'd better drop an average laptop than one of these 35 kg devices.
- Samsung lists a 32GB SODIMM module for laptops (at 3200Mbps), which must be quite nice if you have to deal with lots of data.
- Do your plants already feel uncomfortable in this hot weather? You may offer some water relief, except when your garden still doesn't have the necessary pipe and pump installation. Took a brief numeric look at the water pumps sold at "Praktiker" bit.ly/2yVVRsl to try improving our understanding of the important properties and the ranges in which they vary. Considering only the first 3 columns and price, "Einhell GC-WW 6036" feels appealing.
- What percentage of your total expenses last year were linked to your web projects? Probably how much they mattered to you.
- That the lion would starve if it ate only mice is a valuable idea. It doesn't waste time to chase small prey since only big chunks of meat can keep it alive. (Better to have too much food than too little.) Aiming for the quick $15 project feels a lot like catching mice. So the question "Is this client large enough to support my ambitions?" is a great one showing the thoughtful time spent in teeth sharpening. Neither going after, nor acting small. Clients which feel threatened or recognize themselves as too small will naturally fade out of view.
- The cat looked at the fishbone diagram and thought there wasn't much left that could be worth the effort.
- Which details did this hotel use to improve your satisfaction of the stay? List them. (Heard of a hotel room which had a piano inside. Perhaps to attract guests with affinity for good music.)
- The graphical user interface (GUI) is customer-facing too. How important is that?
- If you came here to look for a discount, you didn't guess correctly.
- I'd prefer to read an average-quality article, where the author is fully aware of it and uses no images over one written in pretentious tone, where the author is claiming expertise (unfounded) while using funny and completely out-of-place images. Any time of the day. Step over the rules of web design on your own risk.
- Which problem could have been solved here for you if you chose to share it today and what would be the right compensation for leaving it behind?
- Which data visualizations here did you like most, least and why?
- Are you aware of your manufacturing defect rate or do you rush to mass-produce in the hope the profits would make it irrelevant? When and where do these defects occur along the chain?
- A big, circular window, equipped with clock arrows has extended functionality, is easy to read and saves space. Allows sunshine to paint a stretched shadow clock between two connecting walls, reminding us of Salvador Dali's work.
- According to Albert Einstein, the aim of science is to comprehend as much as possible using the minimum number of concepts and relations. When we look at many papers, it feels they are all about endless concepts and some minor (if any useful) conclusion. Good to know his definition since it hints how we could strive for better.
- "Studies often have low power, because sample sizes are small for the situation." Would have slipped on the ice of seeking more power by sicking the whole situation.
- There are often several ways to achieve the same, yet someone who isn't aware may insist on the correctness of their first idea and reject others that sound strange or later. The net result is that precious means for validation are either not used or get lost.
- Currently thinking of medical prescriptions in terms of set cover and whether this can be used to infer something about the prevalence of diseases if it was known which medicaments cluster around which disease.
- Turns out even pencil quality can vary. The old one had hexagonal profile, ugly dark red color (worn off along one sharp edge), slippery handle, washy line, no brand logo or known origin. The new one came pre-sharpened, had rounded triangular profile, visible wood fibers moving in parallel towards the sharp tip, felt very light in the hand, with thin/crisp line (for now), with small, grey, reflective hexagons intended to improve grip (with label "a6" between them), where different center-joined triangles switched color depending on the angle of light, had nice snow-white color (reminds me of piano lack), two mini horsemen with spears fighting next to the brand name (Faber Castell, both in uniform grey too, at pencil's end), the lines of a barcode and the label "Germany" below them (where the logo is, but on another face, perfectly length-aligned). Small details matter.
- Does your home office room have a CO2 sensor? If so, have you found any measurable before/after effect of introducing plants there (relative change, all other things being equal)? Are there specific plants you found to be better absorbers than others? Asking, because a book on healthy buildings described us as indoor animals, mentioned Legionnaires' disease as a possible result of staying in closed space for too long and quantified increases in mortality rates and hospital admissions of 7% and over 4% for each 10µg/m3 of long-term PM2.5 exposure.
- In case you seek to realize your latest project here, you can expect to receive a simple, one-page questionnaire. Sending it back filled allows you to learn whether our collaboration will be possible.
- Selectively and uniquely serving your online (and some offline) needs since 2009. (Feel welcome to look around for days if you doubt the claim.) In case this kind of work matters enough to you, you are welcome. Otherwise, find another service that suits you better.
- Vehicle deicing subsystem acting as a heater may serve double duty: removes the current mountain of snow/ice and ensures one is less likely to build up in the future (global warming).
- Image 2 is a strong reason to avoid video conferencing bit.ly/2yAXM5I ↗. But there might be another one: putting a mask on your face in public means noone would notice you unshaved. During a video call you have to look good, which is high-cost relative to the short time an individual (never a group) will be speaking with you. The high cost of shaving foams and blades means this is not economically justified.
- Price distributions for the dresses at "Nordstrom" and "MaxMara" bit.ly/2WiUZqD. Considers all 109 pages with dresses at "Nordstrom" and another 186 dresses at "MaxMara". The median prices came out as $158 and $745 respectively.
- The recipe of the week series by "ALDI" ("Rezept der Woche", bit.ly/3duCCVr ↗) dates back to March 2014 and already contains 455 recipes (in German, according to my script). Clicking to expand each month requires a stubborn individual, but there is a way to see the entire variety and get inspired at once bit.ly/35L9VAS. Mostly about Gebratenes, Würziges und Salat.
- Too many numbers to look at once, but made a diagram to improve my understanding of car insurance cost in different US states, according to an article in "BusinessInsider" bit.ly/2LqOWdD. Car insurance in Michigan appeared to be so much more expensive that it triggered the sense of having made a mistake. But the article noted that a "no-fault law requiring unlimited coverage for personal injury protection" makes the costs high in this state.
- The pressure cookers by "Fissler" and "WMF" look nice. Was not aware of the brands, but an article informed me. "WMF Perfect RDS" (190€) may be able to feed teams of people with its 8.5l capacity, provided they felt confident enough to meet.
- Happy weekend and better projects next week.
- No idea how many transparent storage containers need to be present before starting to feel disorganized. In the kitchen code.
- The requirement for a puzzle pizza might be to detach the pieces in the order of expected improvement in taste. Not to seek the shortest path/time to stomach.
- "Consumers don't think how they feel, say what they think or do what they say." - David Ogilvy. Nothing to anticipate if unable to formulate and require. Sadly, the advertising industry has been among the most useless; many businesses burned a lot on its straw, which won't be forgotten anytime soon (ethics).
- Retrieving content from an external URL is an important functionality in almost any programming language. If that content doesn't arrive, the software depending on it won't work. If for years this function worked correctly, was extensively used by many and then someone came and altered it to their taste without bothering to update the documentation, what led you to believe you were using the right language in the first place?
- Month number "114" could be either 11 or 4 (but not both). The first looks more probable (2 chars correct out of 3), but this doesn't mean the second is impossible. How should one interpret it? Doesn't take a lot of time to fix newly introduced inaccuracies, but much longer to fix the impression afterwards.
- Complacency is when you rely on thousands of programmers (including acquihired ones) to shape your software and then explain new ones how little their work does relative to the overall accomplishments (so they should expect to be paid in this proportion). Already has astronomic consequences/impact.
- Owning the servers and expecting someone to come and rent them or use the cloud is very different from having to be creative every day (software). Unfortunately, at present, society puts a bigger emphasis on the first and belittles/minimizes the second. So it fully deserves what it gets.
- Noticed that in diagram schematics, at least two chasis by "Gigabyte" had their PSU position at the bottom left (when looking at the cross-section), which differs from the top left I had in the generic chasis of a desktop machine many years ago. Considering how heavy the PSU part can be (and that hot air rises), it appears logical to put it at the bottom, while at the same time using fans to send airflow front-to-back directly over the motherboard. Another innovation is their 8TB Gen4 SSD, combining several SSD devices to reach 15000MB/s read and write speeds. This is ≈26.8x the read rate we have seen in a "MX500" SSD by "Crucial".
- When mice get names bit.ly/2yzLtq7, ensure your cheese is stored at a safe place.
- Once heard that many restaurants were making low profits on food and high profits on alcohol. This got me thinking about the potential ratio even if further from the truth. Perhaps the health cost of spending time in groups while making alcohol consumption feel as norm rather than exception has affected countless lives without much questioning. Yet, even norms can change quite fast once more people become aware what "precondition" means and what it has been associated with.
- Difficult to imagine who needs an old, 3.5kg shovel made of thick, hard-to-grab wooden handle and corroded metal blade when a new "Fiskars" one is already as light as 1.22kg. And it is still likely not made of the best materials (material science), but designed for the average user, high velocity of sales and profit. Haven't seen such carbon-made tool; curious whether the weight decrease might be worth the added price when one considers the effects on the back as quantified costs from a long-term perspective. Efficiency of operation while digging and cleaning weeds is another aspect. The large shovel leaves the user with less energy to take a big portion of soil (having a very low ratio of soil-to-tool weight), while a lightweight shovel can lift a lot of soil at once relative to its own weight. Perhaps made easier by a blade of larger surface area. A common operation like hole digging doesn't have to exhaust one only after a couple of hours of dragging around some heavy instrument. And if the factor of tool weight decrease enables a corresponding increase in the number of holes completed, then this might have a visible effect on every garden. A mathematical gardener with long-term thinking may choose different tools than what the industry is boosting.
- The trend might be already going on for a while, but nice to hear about a 32" 4K monitor consuming 31W of power at 50% brightness. Finally inches are starting to grow faster than wattage and this for moderately big screens.
- More grass per pass bit.ly/2yxMsXS ↗. The machines looked good, some were said to chop wood (but couldn't carry water). Made a table about those by "Toro" bit.ly/3dp8b2O, which allows us to see a maximal cutting width of 76cm enabled by engines up to 223cc. Visible how all "Super Recyclers" receive the maximal warranty of 5 years. Also liked the advice to push aside the small wood pieces to prolong cutting blade life, not to mow on a wet grass and alternate cutting directions (north-south, followed by east-west) to achieve a geometrically interesting checkerboard pattern in the garden.
- Would probably use a lot more bytes if I had to re-create the "Lyft" logo bit.ly/35BXNlL in SVG. Looks good, but manual vertex pushing has always been too time-consuming for me. Perhaps it was created in a graphic editor and exported from there, but then the output code feels good to use only a single path element. What I learned here is that an "M" definition can follow a "Z", as if one starts anew. Until now assumed that after "Z" nothing can follow.
- "Thinking makes it so" sounds like the bias2 term.
- A similar table for the road bike tires by "Vittoria" bit.ly/3b3IvaJ. Script liked the properties of "Pista" most, while "Corsa" was ranked 5th among the 17 tire series (one was excluded due to n/a pricing). But how the tire feels on the road will be likely more important than pure numbers.
- Properties of the road bike tire series by "Schwalbe" bit.ly/2SCY1UD. Looks like only "Durano Plus" gets maximal scores in three of the five measures. Wondered why the best rolling tire had such a low durability relative to the rest. Perhaps "Pro One TLE" and "Pro One Tube Type" offer a better balance.
- Dataset shows that San Francisco Public Library cares about 36 public trees (three olive trees, two ornamental pears, one ornamental cherry among others). A lesser known function of public libraries, but a sensible one considering where the paper for their physical book inventories comes from.
- Looking at an electric, self-propelled lawn mower by "Ego" bit.ly/3c75mn3 ↗. Liked the photo showing the blades from below, being surprised how big the effective circular cutting area can be. A 7.5Ah Li battery is said to last for 60 min, but this doesn't orient me how much distance the mower can walk in that time before stopping. Also having some trouble to imagine how much 2 bushels of grass capacity could be due to lack of previous experience. So this is how the lawns of the neighbors became so attractive.
- Capacity vs. price for the SSD models and series by "Crucial" bit.ly/2SEL6kO. The line fits are imperfect given how few observations are available about each series, but were shown here to ease the finding of connections. Also liked how fast their website was, which suggests this may extend to (if not already hosted on) their devices. Based on capacity, read and write speeds, years of warranty and price, my script showed preference for "P1 1TB" ($105), followed by the P2 and P1 devices with 500GB capacity each. Yet, not everyone has an NVMe PCIe interface.
- Haven't read anything Carl Sagan before. He said that "science carries us toward an understanding of how the world is rather than how we wish it to be." Recently relevant too. But admits that the findings may not be comprehensible or satisfying. Especially liked the phrase "revealing deep wonders", which makes me question how much of this we have lost in the rush to ship and accomplish.
- "J. Crew" and "Madewell" stores in the USA bit.ly/2ze5umg. An article claimed that the numbers of "J. Crew" stores, factory stores and "Madewell" stores were (182, 170, 140), while my script found (180, 170, 141), but this is reasonably close, so the claim must be valid. What I noticed is that independent of brand (belonging to the same company), the stores were often at different locations, but still somewhat close together (blues and reds), while the factory stores (greens) were much more dispersed and often more distant from the regular stores. (There are occasional dots in Canada too.) Hope that they pass through chapter 11 and continue to serve those who like their products (someone gave me the idea for some sweater work in the past).
- This LEGO use is still hard to forget 17 years later bit.ly/2YvRCOz ↗
- A mini letter table bit.ly/3c3Wkar. Three letters instead of one bit.ly/2WtgbJx ↗ may also align well.
- If in doubt, evaluate their thrust (and stay away from direction).
- To avoid creating the wrong associations, do not show a strong man drinking something from a black flacon next to a partially shown car.
- Using half of a watermelon as a plate filled with delicious things doesn't leave anyone with much choice except finding that their head approximates the surface quite well. Might be differential geometry.
- New brand discovery: berries by "Wish Farms" bit.ly/35uY7mv ↗. Saw these mentioned in a Costco's parfait recipe, where they were overwhelming their containers, dropping on the table.
- New brand discovery: backpacks by "High Sierra" bit.ly/2SOwmjJ ↗
- Never let an airplane dominate your CO2 emissions diagram bit.ly/2Wnq7nV (via ETH Zürich)
- Combined information from several sources (Geekbench, PassMark, Intel, local store) to estimate performance per price-TDP for some tested laptops bit.ly/2Wn7BvV. The result is both incomplete and imperfect, but here to illustrate a point. Among these models, the fastest tested machines were having the "9750H" CPU, but their prices were also much higher relative to the improvement in performance.
- Tried to learn more about the said to be more sustainable lyocell / tencel in clothing we have today. Saw such pair of socks priced at $15-20 and if memory doesn't fail me, "Allbirds" shoes were also using it. Wikipedia claims it was developed by a "failed" company with its creator later being publicly recognized and awarded by the AATCC association.
- Branch associations and global organizations are very useful, under-appreciated and -utilized sources of information, capable of expanding our worldview, showing undiscovered connections, enhancing our understanding about issues and potential ways to overcome some of the obstacles we face. Cannot remember how many small ideas in my work were indirectly inspired by them. If they didn't openly publish content, these wouldn't have been possible. My whole gratitude to all organizations and associations for their efforts in transparency.
- A single article discussed problems in data collection / analysis / visualization, high number of software dependencies (85) and web shareability / accessibility issues in connection with some US healthcare operations bit.ly/3b38NJT ↗. Difficult not to make your blood boiling. Associated earlier that sites like "Citylab" might be usefully expanded to describe the new city realities from more perspectives to address different groups of people by enabling them to see what is being done by the associations they see themselves (even if indirectly) belonging to.
- Do you throw away half of your clothes in less than a year (to buy new ones)? Can't know the answer, but hoping for some silent confirmations. Had no clue that so much plastic fibers were present in clothing. Those in polyester (possibly elsewhere too) were said to break down during washing and decompose into microplastics, later reaching the oceans at a rate of 50 billion plastic bottles/year (equivalent). Fast consumption relying on cheap turns out to be expensive. But the idea to indicate the percentage of organic material on each piece sounds reasonable.
- Needed to balance the bitterness with a dose of visually good humor bit.ly/2KTKJ1N ↗ after someone explained how several times in the past we never developed a vaccine (e.g. HIV, dengue). But we might live with the hope for some time.
- The other day saw something curious never seen before: a future flight to London was almost 1/6 of the regular fare asked for other popular destinations in Europe. Wondered which factors might help explain this high spread, but couldn't come up with (m)any. An article from today informed me that UK had only 1/3 of the usual workers from Europe's poorest nations to work in the fields/collect food. They were already asking British citizens (including former engineers) to help fill the vacant spots. For some reason, poor people were no longer willing to enrich themselves. The article also reminded me of the high number of Covid-19 cases in the country, which might have been the culprit. So the explanation behind the price could have been "to lure more poor workers". But as we know well, cheap can be very expensive.
- "Clients don't want to pay much for a website, but they don't want it to look cheap either." See the bit below. Wishing them all the best while enjoying their time, doing the work themselves and advancing the craft for everyone.
- "Better homes & gardens" magazine wrote that it takes 5-13 years of patience and care for a self-grown avocado tree to bear its first fruit. The average of these is probably what it takes to become good at web design. But if you had to rely on any of these two only, you might have died hungry long before their points of becoming useful. Perhaps the best time to plant such tree is when someone gets a child, so that at least it has something to play with once it grows up. Also liked the better chocolate cakes section (although the recipes send an impression of immediate results the first time).
- Do you show a visibly inferior choice in order to encourage the acceptance of the one you want visitors to make?
- Again arriving at the impression that the work of some businesses is often channeled towards impressing the audience how successful (which is attractive) they are. By proclaiming themselves as "best" in web design (while their code is full of triple underscores), creating the impression of being large (hundreds of footer links), owning hundreds of store branches, spending a lot on advertising, paying Google to rank first, financing inefficient/on-hope operations by piles of debt, overpaying for negative performance and so on. Then their established/stable and beloved businesses need a state bailout after admitting to have been only an inch away from bankruptcy. Why is this acceptable?
- Remembering these ten, square, individually wrapped Schmelzkäse slices that were so widespread in Germany (still available). Couldn't sense much difference between the variants as they all tasted like gum to me. Was curious to see their nutrients, but found only the fat content (28-35%). Being quite cheap, they still felt better than nothing to a cash-strapped student like me. Sometimes I paired them with thin, machine-sliced salami to make a small burger. Such a cheap lifestyle might have led to expensive, hard-to-alleviate health effects later. All in the name of staying in a country for the privilege to study paired with the flaw of working hard for below market rates. Glad that I didn't subscribe to such a life for a regretful period.
- Was the outcome worth it or was it lost in the sample variance?
- Preserve as much important data as possible to avoid threatening your business while providing your designer/developer with the bare minimum required to complete work of the necessary quality and utility. Difficult to imagine this being an easy balancing act when data supplies the oxygen for so many projects. What I would do is select someone with prior accomplishments I like and look at the extent to which they are receptive for my data without actively asking for it. Ideally, they would be hesitant to accept it until they feel it allows them to make a good point in line with their nature and desired trajectory.
- Unsure why some meat processing factories (USA, Germany) spread Covid-19 so easily among their workers, often said to be from poor countries or minorities. Is the workforce considered "non-essential" and thus asked to work unprotected? Or was the hygiene low by default even before the illness came? Consumers can also act on what they are willing to support.
- "Which are the last five papers you have read?" is not a good proxy to infer about someone's interests. Anyone who went through lots of papers knows that their titles didn't matter much. Important were the concepts (often sprinkled around) and how useful they were relative to some context (and task) of interest. Oftentimes the papers refer to very different contexts and are of limited practical use. Some are intentionally focused on a tiny niche, where expertise can be claimed, yet don't truly enhance our understanding as long as we come from a different background. Writing for the sake of publishing and arriving at some critical, recognizable number of publications is very different from writing to inform and create meaning. To be fair, I didn't read much papers lately as I found them increasingly ineffective as a way of teaching myself new practical skills (law of diminishing returns). But a career starter could learn a lot by exposing themselves to these different ideas as a way to come up with useful ones on their own.
- Duck tape bit.ly/2WeYbCu ↗ made me smile. First thought was that ducks were let go in different directions in order to span it while the user was running after them to work with it. At least the edge was harder to lose.
- "What brings out the best in you?" is a good question. In my case this might be working on the right things, where there is no conflict with inner motivation. Where the work feels meaningful and its impact can be felt directly. Where the skills are a good match for the complexity of the requirement/situation. Where learning and growth are embedded in obstacles. Where relational/non-standard thinking leads to new insights or deeper understanding about worlds. Your answer may vary.
- The notion that everyone needs more referrals might be a reason why we are constantly busy serving average customers rather than spending all of our time on few of the best ones. Once someone realizes the difference, they refrain from asking for referrals, but instead subject them to their permission.
- Did your company achieve its sales goal for the last week? Is it satisfied with its online presence?
- Was looking for a way to do simple calculation (like averaging) from the command line yesterday without having to start the GUI calculator (takes ≈2-3s) or a browser, but couldn't find how. Found today when not actively looking. Example: echo "scale=1;(18 + 39.8) / 2" | bc, which results in 28.9. "scale=1" sets the number of decimal places (equivalent to num.toFixed(1) in JS) "bc" seems convenient; hope it helps someone.
- "Your curiosity doesn't come cheap." Still, much cheaper than losing direction and ending in a suffocating and abusive situation. Curiosity is the freedom to be able to discern why certain things matter to you more than what the common wisdom is saying should matter to you.
- "From a distance, most things look beautiful", wrote Haruki Murakami. Nearby, they are often unnoticeable once you see them everyday, at least until the point you don't.
- If you were tracing a frontal photo of a strange-looking building for preserved proportions between pairs of different elements, you might be entering geometric flow.
- Saw a photo of the beautifully-structured Pont du Gard in France. Initially couldn't trust my eyes why someone might want to build "recursive" arcs getting smaller with height, imagining that something needed to pass below them. Then learned it was a three-level water delivery system, the actual over-arc transport direction being parallel to (or crossing over) the initial expectation.
- New clue: Digital camera owners think in terms of a good selfie, book owners in terms of a good shelfie (possibly acting as an accordeon-expando).
- Are interior coffee tables to serve only coffee? Probably not, otherwise it would be a very restricted use case. Would be a bit too much to look at thin, nicely decorated legs stressed under the weight of a giant coffee machine.
- ER diagrams, class diagrams, floor plans, data sheets. Everyone collects something different. "There must be voltage in the interior." Good that you found a way to combine the last two in search of the finer things amzn.to/2SFwhyL ↗. Which may not remain in stock for long.
- In this model, it appears that social distancing is linked with level set #3 bit.ly/2SmDgfO
- I still remember how much respect I had for the writings of Joel (on software), the Joel test, the deep blog posts on important topics, the various pieces of useful advice. Kept it for quite long until he mentioned publicly that every company should own the software its developers write on their free time. How come, I thought? Any expression of creativity outside the borders of your tiny company is my own and belongs to me. What kind of rights do you think you have over it? A direct illustration how fast I can lose the respect for a person after a single statement. Of course, you probably wouldn't mention Joel in front of me now.
- Unimpressed by Google Meet becoming free (note it in your diary). Should have never been created (or at least not support 100 people). Social distancing and video conferencing aren't a beauty contest or a setting, convenient for mass extraction of personalized information (including recordings of speech) in order to sell goods to someone's cat. Leverages the same depression instrument which Facebook invented and perfected (making people suffer through easy comparisons with others). Designed to share information with third parties so they can pre-sift you in advance of a connection, based on some questionable criteria. This tramping on people has to end. If in doubt, never make yourself easily comparable and refuse video chats with random people/colleagues when this capture of publicity isn't preceded by the right (proportional to the number of participants) financial parameters. At an event, when someone is giving a public speech, they are always getting paid for it (quite well), also depending on the size and social status/interests of the audience. No point to harm yourself by doing free video conferencing (even internally). If your employer has another opinion or attempts to force you into their way of operation, promptly cut the connection with everyone there.
- Possible that one wouldn't put the fastest CPU in an old mainboard or the slowest CPU in the latest mainboard (supporting this socket) in the same way that one wouldn't create great building architecture and enhance it with tasteless interior design or have an ordinary, old architecture (potentially growing mold) backed by a very expensive interior. This balance/trade-off between the inside and outside is an interesting association. The visual disconnect in the interior done by a piecemeal approach can thus extend in one between the boundaries.
- Some properties of the air coolers by "Thermaltake" bit.ly/35j5woN. "FrioOCK Snow Edition" achieves the maximal air flow of 121 cfm, but has half the expected lifetime of "Frio Extreme".
- Is your company renting, buying or abandoning office space now? How does it decide on the when, what, where and how much? Are you exploring promising actions with high positive present/future impact on all stakeholders?
- "Annie's Heirloom Seeds" bit.ly/35l1JaE ↗ has a nice catalog with food one might try growing (in case of having some space and will left). Much better to know how it came, how long it took and whether it tastes better when it's your own. Also minimizes dependence on local stores and protects their stock from depletion for the most vulnerable groups. Broccoli, celeriac, onions... lots of nature-inspired beauty there. If you wish, you could also take the data lens, given number of days required to grow, number of seeds and package price, but I doubt this will bring you much enjoyment.
- "The Big Apple Menu" is tori-rich bit.ly/2WqEJ63 ↗
- The most colorful, artful mask looks most modern, but is it best for you? Fear the beautifully dysfunctional in all areas of life.
- To achieve similar results elsewhere, you could try platforms like Freelancer, Upwork, use WordPress, pay random experts or engage with large groups of people on Facebook and Twitter. Wouldn't mind at all.
- Some attractions and libraries in Cologne, Germany bit.ly/3d5n5eN'. In case of correct coordinates, the central library attraction must be somewhere closer to "Schnütgen" museum and "Weltstadthaus" than to the popular cathedral.
- Found the specifications of the car models by "Volkswagen". Script counted at least 30 numeric dimensions which is fine (more data). The problem was that several pages were full of errors, giant background images got loaded and the "Technical" tab was consistently using 50% of the CPU. Couldn't do much without strong nerves. A separate article shared some facts about the plant in Wolfsburg, Germany: it has an area of ≈6.5 million m2 and is able to produce 3500 cars/day. When I was concerned about a single website.
- One of the things I see repeatedly mentioned about soil is that it becomes best when mixed from several, pairwise-distant locations. Having hundreds of stores concentrated at a single location and zero elsewhere does not appear as too much diversification and potentially exposes a company to hundreds of store closures should they discover a critical microelement in their soil missing. (It's what plant death is often attributed to.) Yet, this "unbalanced" pattern is easily spotted again and again. But, perhaps a strange perspective.
- Theoretically, it must be possible to look at a photo of a leaf and classify (with some degree of accuracy) from which tree it fell or to look at a photo of a beautiful clam and estimate in which sea or location it could have been found. But in practice, enough observations are often missing or take years to generate. So the nice, decorative white-brown clam someone gave me will likely remain of unknown origin to me.
- Supply voltage vs. operating temperature for the temperature sensors at "DigiKey" bit.ly/2yO6LQL. Actual rectangles, many of which seem to overlap mostly in the range 1.4-3.6V and -40-125°C.
- Script looked at 993 products in the backpack category at "Walmart" and came up with few suggestions offering good volume for the price. But had to discard some, which either had no information on volume, were not backpacks (e.g. rain coats, duffels, messenger bags etc.) or had patchy designs with too many pieces sticking out. The first few with somewhat acceptable design were "LYUMO 60L Outdoor Sports Backpack" ($20.19, ≈3l/$) bit.ly/2yNueS6 ↗, "Ozark Trail 35L Unisex Stuffable Hiking Backpack" ($14.00) bit.ly/2KJbZQc ↗ and the olive-colored "Stansport Daypack 30L" ($18.29) bit.ly/2W4bTIp ↗.
- A nice animation about furniture placement bit.ly/2zykqvq ↗
- Good visual design means you don't create the impression of having four independent parameter values when only two are uncorrelated (kW/hp and cm3/in3 for chainsaws). No word on noise level, expected hours of fail-free operation, ergonomy evaluation or ease of maintenance (whether you'd break your tools on the fix). "For unprofessional use only" sounds like a convenient excuse.
- Had the idea to include some features of the 74 electric ranges by "GE Appliances" bit.ly/2Yjo1rP ↗ in a tidy table, but this would require more time than initially thought (since some content becomes available only after click). Noticed that some heating elements were having up to three zones, which would make radius comparisons less meaningful. Additionally, the cheapest model was slightly more voluminous, yet with lower total capacity (5.0 vs. up to 6.6ft3) and less powerful heating elements (max. of 2400W vs 3700W). Might still be acceptable considering it costs only a sixth of the asking price of the more powerful range.
- The biggest bottleneck for the useful work of fast machines are slow, uncreative clients. Used to being/feeling as one of those too.
- Unsure where I would be on the colorful wheel of emotions right now bit.ly/2yRdARi (saw it in a paper). Good to see such frameworks in aid of emotion awareness although far from thinking they capture all possible dimensions/nuances.
- Capacity vs. price for top and front load washers by "GE Appliances" bit.ly/2KFei7a. Visible how top load washers tend to have lower prices here. However, a source insists that top load washers clean better and use resources (energy, water) more sparingly.
- Public transport stops by number of passing lines in Stuttgart, Germany bit.ly/3bIxjRH. We can sense spots with greater connectivity despite not seeing the lines themselves.
- Could be that after the book was written, San Francisco is no longer among the few cities with adaptive parking prices reflecting current demand. Other cities also learn fast, yet drivers who are less willing to touch their cars (social distancing) may either keep the parking prices up for the wrong reason or park their cars at cheaper locations and thus lower the prices at the more attractive ones (lower occupancy rate). The downside of variable prices is that people cannot easily plan their monthly parking costs. But this model allows the revenue from parkings to flow into other local public services (trees, sidewalks etc.) and was said to have already been practiced in cities like Pasadena, Austin, St. Louis, Ventura and Washington D.C. Free parking was also mentioned to require city subsidies which can get costly. Cars tend to remain static during 95% of their lifetime using a lot of land meanwhile (total requirements being often difficult to estimate). Personal parking preferences (e.g. to go down closest to the destination) can create many scattered parking spaces around an area, indicating an overall pattern of no plan. (And often the cars remain static during 95% of their lifetime.) Paying attention to the ratio of parking area to building area (if kept reasonably small) was said to be beneficial during the planning phase. Also liked the relationship triples (car, road, parking space), (plane, sky, airport), (ship, ocean, seaport) and (train, track, station), indicating the presence of the same problem in different contexts. But agree that peripheral spots could benefit more from buildings rather than parking spaces, considering the large number of specialists a building is able to engage.
- Tried to position the libraries in Sydney inside the city boundaries bit.ly/2yRDT9Z. Not sure whether all coordinates came out correct. It appears that "Ultimo Library" and the (said to be new) "Darling Square Library" are quite close to each other. Many libraries are located to the north, while the southwest region doesn't seem to have even one.
- Remember that you have another week to engage me with your projects. Don't squander it.
- European countries with highest crop yield by crop type (2018) bit.ly/2VDw2WK. For more information, visit the original source. Be aware that not all European countries have been included (only the bigger ones). Country selection involved looking at historic diagrams for each crop type. The order in the sequences matters. They are about yield efficiency (eg. hg/ha), not total production. Might help if unsure which crop to grow.
- Share of cropland in various European countries (1961 - 2017) bit.ly/2Y8lVLg. An exploratory diagram, not designed to be beautiful. Netherlands had the highest share of cropland in 2017, which came slightly unexpected. Greece and Italy have seen a tremendous improvement over the years, so they were the only two other countries with share of over 40%. Malta and Romania came at a tie, while Portugal remained very steady over the years, followed by Spain, which has steadily grown its share (≈2x) over the period.
- Here are again the libraries in Calgary, Canada, but this time with city boundary bit.ly/2yGlGwi. Uses the same source of open data.
- Sunday joke: An angry, smart trolley with an ultrasound sensor and contextual peeping haste could make us all responsible noise generators.
- Interesting cue that luxury Jaguar/Land Rover, made in Great Britain, are owned by Tata Motors, India.
- I think there are already at least a couple of sources making the mistake to equate an aging society with slowdown in economic activity. If a doctor expected you to live for ten more days, would you live smaller or larger?
- This mentality of "good-enough product, fast-enough delivery" has nothing exceptional in it. A poor way to meet the demands of the 21st century. Suppresses and represses global innovation.
- Hiding the description of a very expensive property (e.g. 50x the average) among all other properties on the same website potentially sends the message that the sale doesn't matter much, is equally valuable or addressing the same general audience. Otherwise the property owner would have understood the importance of not acting cheap by saving pennies on a website which could have captured all aspects and story behind their subject while minimizing the distractions to potential buyers.
- Looked at photos of land in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Very large plots sell for more than 15€/m2. Heard that places like this were interesting to the wealthy looking to escape from coronavirus. Unsure whether Wi-Fi signal, grocery stores (and many other conveniences) are available though. Might give a temporary and false sense of security.
- Disturbance in a grid bit.ly/3bzKp3K
- Picked few roses bit.ly/3bzwpac from the garden bit.ly/2KAs36I ↗
- Picked randomly 30 words and checked their explanations in the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries to estimate, which one might be more succinct overall bit.ly/2VVmIwb. A shorter explanation isn't always a better one, but is more difficult to craft. As is shorter code.
- Using logistic regression to predict whether an image contains a wolf or a husky dog sounds interesting. Perhaps better than feeling (off the meat) from first hand.
- What concerns me now is that not being able to work at scale could mean that a new, scalable problem (e.g. pest on crops, another disease, fighting cancer, lack of medical staff, lack of jobs for everyone, loss in productivity, poverty and banking for the poor, improvements in technology) could deepen our problems before the current virus situation has been resolved.
- Volume by price for the upright and chest freezers by "Frigidaire" bit.ly/2VUoy0i. In this case, it seems that chest freezers have small price advantage relative to uprights whenever their volumes are approximately the same. No need to dedicate a garage for them though.
- The short excerpt of "The art of noticing: 131 ways..." contained few interesting ideas. That songbirds have predetermined search image which helps them spot their prey of choice (specific type of beetle) (consciously directed attention). Looking at chimneys (being curious how things were made) raises the gaze, which boosts the mood once more light enters the eye. Previous viewpoints or situations can color how we see other objects/things in the next context. Museum visits encourage observational research.
- Woolworth's brochure had a pictogram about a trolley function unknown to me bit.ly/3cJuOP8. Also came across some previously unseen products like "Nice & Natural" protein bars, "Kellogg's NutriGrain", "Danone YoPro" and "Bega" peanut butter.
- Reminded myself that some medical equipment probably uses some form of embedded software. But not an expert to know more about the topic.
- Heard that an end user could end by using it.
- Paper says blueberries are rich in anthocyanine bit.ly/3eME1YT ↗
- "Teaming with microbes" states that good garden soil contains 30-50% sand, 30-50% silt, 20-30% clay with 5-10% organic matter. Liked that they describe a simple way to estimate these quantities in a soil probe. Also learned that healthy soil relies on a large and diverse community of microorganisms to control for potential pathogens causing plant diseases. Bacteria decompose organic matter, break down pollutants, toxins and are even able to "consume" oil spilled in the ocean. But the most abundant life form on Earth (archaea) was said to be also present in deeper soil, where bacteria starts to gradually decline. Archaea can live in deep rocks, withstand high (volcanic hot springs) and low temperatures or other unfriendly environments (salt lakes etc.). Some of them can use light and assimilate CO2, but often the result of their metabolism is methane, found to have an even greater impact on global warming. 10-25% of the methane in the atmosphere was said to be associated with their activity. Decomposing matter in flooded rice fields was given as an example for a large source of archaea.
- Interesting to see the water footprint of some foods, again according to FAO: hamburger (2400l), glass of milk (200l), 1 egg (135l), apple (70l), slice of bread (40l), potato (25l).
- Never heard of (cancer-associated) aflatoxin produced by fungi growing in improperly stored cereals.
- According to Fineli, a Finish food composition database bit.ly/2zjd5Qh ↗, pumpkin seeds come out as richest source of protein after various soy products, with almost 10g more than peanuts (35.1g vs. 25.6g) and also preceding hemp seed without hull (33.0g), pulled oats (30.0g), white sesame seed without hull (24.6g), sunflower seed (24.3g), almonds (24.1g), chia seed (22.9g), pistachios (21.4g) and cashew nuts (20.0g). The low values of walnuts (15.2g) and green pea (5.6g) surprise a bit.
- Saw the excerpt of "There's no planet B", which contained more curious facts than expected. These tightly packed broiler chickens and farmed fish treated with antibiotics to prevent disease (so they can come on a plate) somehow reminds me of tightly packed humans waiting for a vaccine. Strange that what we did to other living creatures comes back in some form that we must apply on ourselves. Didn't know that rice-growing could be GHG/methane-intensive; will have to continue looking for details. Other valuable ideas: local food may not be the most sustainable, since transport makes a relatively small component of the food's total GHG footprint (cited was an average of 6%, where food growing practices can dominate), although fast delivery by airplane can significantly increase this relative to a slower delivery by boat. The question whether the product on focus would have survived boat delivery from its cited country of origin (to understand the likelihood it was shipped on a plane) is a useful one. Harvest and storage were mentioned as where the majority of food waste happens, so it helps to know where more responsible action is needed.
- Human computer charted image-rich networks at night and finished with the question: "Find me the best combination of cheap, second-hand, style-matching, diverse (bed, desk, chair etc.), multi-purpose, closely-located, most recently unused, aesthetic and in good condition, light in transport furniture."
- Energy dispensed by charging stations in Boulder, Colorado (01.01.2018 - 31.03.2020) bit.ly/3aqQcY0. Slightly increasing tendency for stronger use of electric vehicles. Median charging time was ≈90 mins. Approx. 152.05MWh were dispensed on all vehicles during the period, of which 16.78MWh fell on this year, until the end of March.
- The shelf life of a product is probably a slider, where the handle is a state indicating time elapsed since fresh (left) and time left until spoilage (right).
- Robert Koch bit.ly/2Y0FhSa ↗ is said to have isolated anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera. The excerpt of a book which came into view mentioned he showed the cause and proof of anthrax under his microscope in 1876 after the disease was already affecting the herds of farmers. It appears he invested his own resources to acquire the expensive instrumental support.
- Liked this sentence that potato chips and micro chips slightly differ in preparation.
- Listened to Rachmaninoff after a pointer by KAIST researchers bit.ly/3alUpw1 ↗. Directly actionable and also enjoyable.
- The American Lung Association has published city rankings on air pollution bit.ly/2VIEKle ↗
- The donuts by "Entenmann's" look inviting bit.ly/3eHPSrs ↗, but couldn't see nutritional information
- Went to look a kind of tomato sauce by "Springfield" and encountered an entire product gamma bit.ly/3ey2xNv ↗
- Wondered whether most home shopping networks are privately-owned, considering how much a TV minute costs and how long their ads run (sometimes for 20 mins). Listening to the same words expressed differently again and again in support of the same product is a psychological burden in itself. Anything said often enough still doesn't make a truth. Taking advantage of these unique situation and channel with newborne intensity raises the question when one could feel internally satisfied and externally respected about the way of earning their living. Perhaps the role of TV could have been one of organizing channels by topic and running courses to advance interested audiences in each field while linking to an optional online feedback component. Better to maximize educational reach than home shopping.
- Ran few queries: Rail ticket Helsinki - Tampere (160km on a straight line) is said to cost 14.40€ (vr.fi), while Berlin - Magdeburg (156km on a straight line) is said to cost 22.50€ (ordinary: 33.10€ at DB). Inclined to think there is more than network density and track cost behind this price difference.
- This "unwilling to relocate, but open to it" might be a learned behavior. Perhaps people experienced how it was to feel worthless in another country and are no longer willing to tolerate it on their back until the right conditions are met. Good to see this new self-awareness and the absence of impulsive decisions. Will move those in need of workers for long.
- Good to see John Steinbeck reminding of the sweet, irresistible traps. In real life, associations might range from Oreos over diamond bracelets to room rents in desirable city-neighborhoods.
- Baggage of life is said to include the suitcase of guilt, the backpack of doubt, the trunk of fear... in terms of volume over surface area, must feel like a caravan on the back. Unless collecting enough 24/7 data, wouldn't be able to validate this statement that "sheep can't sleep" (without a shepherd). But sounds like a warning signal for the less wary.
- "Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." - Stephen Hawking
- Two ears and one mouth is a mirror-visible ratio. As if someone wanted to instill in us the idea to listen twice more than we speak.
- How high are your marketing costs as percentage of your total revenue? Many companies that are no longer weren't meticulous in tracking this when access to high amounts of capital was easier.
- Good Easter bread was probably perfected over the whole year. Hard to do it once in a home setting and expect miraculous results. Same with the web presence or any other undertaking. Do or do not, there's no try.
- Suppose you bought a platform bed for "Leesa Hybrid TwinXL" mattress for $549, the mattress itself for $934 and "Brooklinen Luxe Core Sheet" set ($116.10) to protect it (total: ≈$1600). As usual, you see that the bed sheet doesn't wrap the whole mattress, but only a couple of its faces (say top + the two longest sides). The mattress has dimensions of 38" x 80" x 11". You estimate that the bed sheet is covering only 55.3% of the total mattress surface area. A complete cover would protect the whole value, so you pretend that the partial cover protects partial value. This means, the bed sheet costs you 22.4% of the covered mattress value, but if you think in absolute terms relating bed sheet price to mattress price, you might see only 12.4%. Seems that bed sheets are slightly more expensive than the perception about them. What about the platform bed supporting directly only the mattress bottom? In this case, the bottom surface area computes to ≈35% of the total, corresponding to a mattress value of $327.26. This means the platform bed costs ≈168% of the supported mattress area value. Yet, the perception about it is that it costs only 58.77% ((549/934)*100). Perhaps a questionable viewpoint, but one that might be worth sharing.
- Suppose you are a bus driver operating a vehicle with capacity of 28 seats and 60 standing people (at estimated average utilization of 40%), making 15km-long trips a 45mins each (followed by a short pause of 10mins). You work 22 days in a month and you get paid $580 for the job. This means, you receive half a cent per kilometer-passenger-day. Perhaps not what you expected.
- Unfortunate that wood-headed eggs are likely to win most often.
- Didn't know that "Gap" is owned by "Macy's". Also saw that "VF Corporation" owns "Eagle Creek", "Eastpak", "The North Face", "Timberland" and "Vans" among others. That's quite a lot of choice sponsoring the same conglomerate.
- Suppose you are responsible for cleaning 20 hotel rooms (other people finish the rest) having an average quadrature of 35m2 for 22 days a month and receive a salary of $300. This means, you are being paid slightly less than 2 cents per room-m2-day. Clearly, you deserve much better.
- Saw someone's advice to open a shop with "Shopify" in the current situation. Based on their pricing, this would cost you $360/year (in the most basic plan or $3600/year in the most expensive) in case you see your business around only for a year. If you plan to stay in business for at least 5-10 years, that cost jumps to $1800-3600 (up to $18000-36000). For a promise you'll be making sales which noone can guarantee you. And if a rush of people decides to subscribe for the same service, you get a degraded experience as a bonus as well (centralized hosting). If I was a new business, I'd probably prefer paying a great web designer once to create the most suitable solution for my needs and call it done. If several years later an improvement is needed, I can call them again. Perhaps much cheaper than getting overpriced basics which don't serve me well enough or expect me to adhere to the business-on-rent model. But I might be old-fashioned to prefer full ownership of the situation.
- Suppose you teach 7 classes of 30 children for 22 days a month and receive a salary of $400. This means, you are being paid slightly less than 9 cents per face-meeting-hour. Refuse to advance in a teaching career that isn't worthy. Honorable profession, but you have bills to pay.
- Stay happy and until next week.
- Current perception is that Amazon loads 3-5x the content in the same time as Kmart does. This 4-5s spinner during which nothing happens is a major drawback, perhaps losing customers. Also the inability to properly price certain tech items is a weakness others are likely already exploiting.
- Hard to use it when you actively refuse it.
- If you are not in the gastronomy, but must cook for yourself, would you spend three hours in the kitchen, knowing that it would take you only 20-30 minutes to consume the food? In this case, simple math tells you that the ratio of food preparation/consumption times comes at 600-900%. Perhaps not something to look for when you have so many other tasks for the day. I ask myself what my threshold of pain is (percentage) and then try to select foods which would not exhaust me mentally, so that I won't do anything the next time (on this recurring problem). Probably a more balanced approach is better for the long term anyway. But this works for me mostly because I wouldn't describe myself as a "foodie". I eat to live, not live (the time) to eat.
- "Gram Cafe & Pancakes" bit.ly/2yjgM8i ↗ seems good at satisfying visual senses. You could strive for this too, although it is very difficult to make it work when you have only few products where their quality varies as much as the work of the people who helped create them.
- Like other things in life, online sales are either growing or declining. Hard to imagine they stay fixed when your competitors don't.
- Visited "Cookie Mixx" and "TWG Tea" and wondered why noone offered the combined taste. Could also be cookie-juice or another combination. Can't remember to have seen this at a single place.
- Can you count the number of times margins and paddings appear on a page? Can you find a structure which would help minimize their count while preserving the existing layout?
- Brain: "RAID controllers order the cockroach bodies in a certain way." No way!
- Used two of Wikipedia's rich lists on nuclear reactors and nuclear power stations (including discontinued ones) and saw a total of 1013 listed nuclear plant net capacities, the median of which computed to exactly 1000MW (maximum was 7965MW). Thought what would be required to mimic the median net capacity by solar panels and took the characteristics of the efficient 410W "LG Neon 2 Commercial" bit.ly/3bhyIhZ ↗ to make an estimate. Somewhat discouraging though, because the nuclear plant capacity would be equivalent to slightly over 2.439 million such solar panels (imagine the cost). Their total weight would be 49512.2 tons (imagine the number of required trips to transport with your max. capacity vehicle) and if we were to place them tightly packed and flat on the ground, that would take a field area of 5.055km2 (computes as likely to cover the total area of the largest "Rungrado 1st of May" stadium ≈25 times). Or if we take the most powerful "Vestas"-listed wind turbines (V162-5.6 MW), this would be ≈180 of them. All solar/wind installations must work at full capacity (what "net" means), yet weather conditions are variable. All this for a single nuclear power plant.
- Used (potentially inaccurate) information from various sources to determine range to battery capacity (km/kWh) for some electric vehicles bit.ly/3aek361, after reading that good efficiencies exceed 6.7 km/kWh, while less good ones vary around 3.0 km/kWh. Some vehicles with good ratios have ranges that are 60% shorter than the current maximums, while being only 13.3% more efficient.
- Not easy to focus on this for too long bit.ly/3a9rOKh
- Wouldn't easily come to the idea that Belgium could have a lot of castles bit.ly/34DKl0m ↗. Thankful to the author of the book excerpt that gave me the hint. According to Wikipedia, script-counted 922 castles over an area of 30689km2 means that on average a castle can be seen every 33.28km2 or if the area was a square, every ≈5.76km. (Average is not quite meaningful here, but plotting all coordinates to examine density would take much longer.) Castle-made chocolate eggs would be a really good attraction.
- Quick idea: fingerprint examination under a colored magnifier bit.ly/3bgXM8T
- So the reason for rain puddles is that raindrops expand once they hit the ground bit.ly/3abg5uH. But these waves must be affecting each other.
- Today's figure looks continuous bit.ly/2XGEdmC
- Paying more and more frequently allows you to work more and more frequently with dummerAugust.
- Out of 1.42 million records about car parking data by the City of Melbourne, Australia (for the first 3 months of the year, bit.ly/3bddnq9 ↗), the median duration of vehicle stay computed to 13 minutes, but remembered that the website about open data in Sydney had an entry about free 15-minute parking. Has Melbourne implemented the same policy? Wondered what happens if someone has to move every 15 minutes; perhaps this contributes for increased mobility during virus times (for the case where people aren't self-isolating at home). What prevents shifting a car to a nearby spot to take advantage of another 15 minutes of free parking or is the idea that people would not like to feel location-bound for too long?
- Event listener: onmousemove, tell me which other highly-accelerated, screen-disobedient mice move in my screen direction and seek to appear there.
- "Meyer Werft" lists 205 ships, with photos and specifications bit.ly/3ahjPex ↗. Perhaps material for a demo you might have. Update: Here is the spurious table I obtained bit.ly/2Vfa4Jz. Shows that "Costa Smeralda" and "Mein Schiff 1" are the biggest ships with 6554 and 5894 passengers accordingly. "Allure of the Seas" can accomodate the most crew—2200 people. The fastest ships happen to be "Stena Discovery", "Stena Explorer" and "Stena Voyager" with 40 knots each.
- "Fincantieri Group", the 4th largest shipbuilder in the world (largest in Europe), also making cruise ships (according to Wikipedia), is based in Trieste, North Italy. I remember reading about passengers getting Covid-19 on several cruise ships in open sea (far from Europe) and to my surprise on one of the following days the news claimed that the illness was detected precisely in North Italy. Couldn't stop asking myself why there and not at any other place in Europe. By that time, there were still no restrictions on flights, so a passenger on a flight could have transmitted it too. But flights were arriving in Europe all over the place, so why there? Cruise ships on the other hand were perhaps arriving at much fewer locations and at the coast only. Perhaps a luxury cruise ship owned by an Italian company returned home bringing an ill passenger on board.
- Saw a slightly old book about the shipbuilding industry, where Japan was said to be the leading nation, but the author noticed that the growth rate of South Korea was such that they would likely surpass this country. In Europe, Poland and Croatia were said to be the best shipbuilders at the time. Current Wikipedia lists South Korea in front of China, but couldn't find how shipbuilding in Europe has evolved. The few listed companies residing in Europe do not give me a clue of the overall picture. Perhaps Germany has many small shipbuilders which collectively build the most?
- Saw a very cheap "Y5 (2019)" smartphone and wondered how it compares with the other Huawei models bit.ly/34Dy8bS. From the table, we see it has the smallest display size and resolution, memory capacities, front/rear camera resolutions and battery capacity. The "P40" model on the other side already has a 50MP rear camera.
- Quick check: Cu has ≈1.70x the thermal conductivity of Al (ThoughtCo + EngineeringToolbox), while its current price was indicated as ≈3.45x that of Al (MarketsInsider). The statement in the book still appears valid even when some time may have passed since publication.
- In ten years (2008-2018), China's share of the world total in crude steel production changed from 38.1% to 51.3% (Source: US Steel fact sheet). So one country produces more than the rest of the world.
- Xylella is killing olive trees in Europe bbc.in/2wCOPrn ↗, which is also expected to cost billions.
- Another idea is that with each new concrete product resulting from another generation in technology, different manufacturing problems arise. Perhaps by the time an individual component is improved to perform at the highest level, the time cost has become significant and there are already plenty of slower component systems using the same architecture, making them a lot more economical to use from a systems perspective. (Think about abundance of chemical elements if you wish.) We have repeatedly seen how the base (often mass-produced) products (sometimes used in reference comparisons), have already acquired price advantages which cast a shadow over the performance increases obtained by further improvements of individual components.
- Sounds reasonable to prefer system over component optimization. The other day, reading that at comparable price Al conducts heat better than Cu, I was thinking that price is an inseparable element of a system, hence choosing Al might be a step closer to system optimization thinking. But this could be only validated if all components and parameters of the system they will be used to build are known in advance. Selecting Cu immediately only because it is widely known that it is a better conductor and using it to cool a CPU at a frequency the client asked for (very high), feels more like design for extremities or component optimization. The price of this then gets exported to the end user and this is perceived to be fine. My first thought when I heard that Apple was decreasing the speed of their mobile phones in order to prolong their battery life was that they are actively using system optimization. Perhaps during the development phase they found that a 15% decrease in CPU speed increases battery life by 30% (no clue about the exact numbers), so as designers they tried to ship the most system-balanced performance to the end user. Then clients came and complained about their CPU speed, forgetting that they are asking the company to engage in component optimization. But having the best individual components (where one choice affects other components) rarely means you extract the best system performance. Perhaps instead of aiming for the fastest copper-cooled CPU on an older architecture one could put the slowest CPU that could work on the latest architecture and cool it on less expensive terms, bringing higher value to the end user overall. Seen on relative terms, the (synthetic, not real-use) speed difference between two CPUs having the same architecture, but different frequency (say 2.8 Ghz and 3.8Ghz) may be close to 35%, but if this brings down the cooling cost by 150% where it makes a significant fraction of the overall system cost, then it may be wise to seek the trade-off which best tunes the system, not the component.
- Used to say that we can't travel to another country, but arrive in one which best reflects our way of thinking. The mindset is much harder to change than location and becomes the primary reason why keeping and deserving our place isn't as simple as it seems. Some people laughed at me for expressing this and traveled to their country of choice, feeling too proud to ever say a word again. In a sense, the importance of location has now decreased further while the one of mindset, skill and attitude have grown a lot. Not surprised of the news how many people have returned back again; some still treat me like garbage for carrying their negative sentiment and believing that a random person like me owes them something apart from the right to keep a bad tone for no reason. Not so.
- Aiming to go on "culinary adventures" is like someone pretentiously admitting they live to eat rather than eat to live. A way to do better is to be concerned about the specifics which remain after the end of this modern, follower-alluring lifestyle of mediocrity.
- Possible to have easier time attracting clients by offering something valuable and scarce rather than by aiming to attach them to a well-fitting chain.
- "Zara takes only 4-5 weeks to design a new collection and then about a week to manufacture it. Its competitors need an average of 6 months to design a new collection and another 3 weeks to manufacture it." (Source: "Retailing in the 21st Century") Good, speed makes a big difference for profitability, but it feels wrong to place the latter in front of important principles about humane attitude.
- Wondering about the recent price trend for fresh potatoes in Canada (during these Corona times) after seeing this last statistical state as of the start of February, 2020 bit.ly/2xpwbDP. Does this agree with your own perception? Reminds me how easy it is to consider some basic foods as a given, when even they are not. Could have taken products in the mining industry (oils, ores etc.), which also showed a lot of variability overall, but my tiny diagram could fit some essentials at most.
- Which three neighbor countries have the most close and which have the most distant centers (shortest/longest triangle perimeters)?
- Unfortunate that "Fiscal Monitor" showed such significant price deviations for carbon emissions between countries. Unexpected. Opens opportunities for arbitrage and since health is everyone's concern, the result is a tolerated zero sum game.
- Using City of Pittsburgh traffic count data (via WPRDC), identified few high traffic locations. The first is the entrance to a parking place next to "Frick Park" (perhaps a beautiful one), when you come from "Biddle Avenue" and cross the bigger "South Braddock Avenue". (Not too far from the parking is a library as a minor detail.) Then the crossing of "Liberty Avenue" and "21st Street" came a close second. Around this place are a lot of eateries, shopping centers and apparel stores (also another library). Third (at least among the places with reported data) was "Baum Boulevard", not too far from "MedExpress" and the hospital "UPMC Shadyside". This result considers the period between 28.07.2017 and 12.03.2020.
- Not understanding this economics of selling fictive tickets (heard about records). Any idea how it works and why someone would feel internally impeded to sell fictive services?
- Mean annual sunshine hours for selected cities in the USA bit.ly/2yX4KSf. Wikipedia placed Yuma (Arizona) in front of Phoenix (Arizona) and Las Vegas (Nevada). For solar installations, land prices may also play a role.
- If you wish, you could summon another project to consume more of my work this week. But check the accuracy of the clock hands, should it be able to reach me.
- It's already late, so here is a ghost coming to take you bit.ly/34t4eHo. Don't import it in your dreams though.
- If a regular news page takes ≈140MB RAM, while Chrome without plugins describes itself having a memory footprint of 161MB RAM, then populating a new tab is already very similar to opening another browser in terms of memory behavior. Easy to forget that the website is far from being a single page, is likely not chronologically ordered or supportive of immediate search into past content so as to minimize the potentially repetitive and costly memory loads/unloads.
- Tried to find interesting relationships among some of the properties (standard atomic weight, atomic number, melting point (K), density (near room temp., g/cm3), heat of fusion (kJ/mol), heat of vaporization (kJ/mol), molar heat capacity (J/(mol·K), van der Waals radius (pm), speed of sound (thin rod, m/s), thermal expansion (µm/(m·K)), thermal conductivity (W/(m·K)), electrical resistivity (nΩ·m), magnetic susceptibility (cm3/mol), Young modulus (GPa), Mohs hardness) of the 118 chemical elements as seen on Wikipedia. Atomic number seems to have direct effect on standard atomic weight, but this might have been school material. Both may be somewhat related to density near room temperature (0.66). In my data (may be erroneous), melting point appears more strongly associated with heat of vaporization than to heat of fusion (0.91 vs. 0.81). Mohs hardness seems to affect melting point (0.86). Young modulus has some potentially stronger effect on heat of fusion than on melting point (0.87 vs. 0.75). It may also affect speed of sound (thin rod) (0.77). You can also see a t-SNE of the periodic elements based on these properties bit.ly/3ef2RQS, but be aware of potential mistakes. The machine places silver (Ag), gold (Au) and copper (Cu) close (bottom left), but that americium (Am) is placed next to iodine (I) and bromine (Br) (bottom right) is unlikely. Argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe) are all noble gases, which also appear relatively close. Lightweight magnesium (Mg) and aluminium (Al) are close, but titanium (Ti) is far away and closer to vanadium (V) than to them here. A couple of days ago learned that iron (Fe), cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni) are used to make superalloys, so it wasn't surprising to see them close too.
- BBC has best bread recipes bbc.in/2XsVYFR& ↗ in case you got plenty of flour and don't know what to do with it.
- Libraries in Bristol, UK bit.ly/2JYl5sg. You can also see their phone numbers.
- Total oil production in Texas (barrels, includes crude oil and condensates) bit.ly/2JZnEKl. The result for January 2020 was said to be preliminary, but the same period in 2019 was relatively productive.
- Was busy disintegrating tree branches into parts for a while. But felt good to be physically tired once again, so that the right kind of thinking could strike back.
- Never heard about the "Honor" brand, which lists 37 smartphones on their website. Every time "Honor" came into view, assumed it was a model name and moved on.
- Injecting a long sequence of "\u0438"-like characters in a property (looking as if designed to be JSON parsed) for each of the hundreds of product elements on the page tells you directly why your page is closer to unnecessary bloat than you might think. The cheapest solution that could possibly work has its permanent and recurring price.
- Finishing this week of service by showing a simple image of what "Seat" is doing (a mini application) to ease the comparison of its car variants bit.ly/3b2DWOs
- Libraries in Phoenix, Arizona bit.ly/2Vg65uQ. A small gap seems uncovered in the north.
- Putting a mask under a microscope couldn't be an interesting blog post at all.
- Heard that more people are thinking about opening online stores now. Imagine what would happen if they all picked the same most convenient defaults.
- What I like about the periodic table on Wikipedia is that it has direct references to each element listing its physical, atomic and other properties. Lots of dimensions. Guessing that machine learning can be used to learn a lot about these elements and find potentially interesting relationships. Yet, abundance is also important, because depleted elements may have become prohibitively expensive, in which case learning about them won't help much or be actionable.
- The topic of lightweight web design also deserves a lot of attention. Once you see certain practices, you might think that fast typists are given preference over thinkers and byte-crafters.
- "Lightweight materials" by Campbell is a good book, the excerpt of which became my focus after morning-wondering how easy it would be to differentiate between two aluminium alloys in a photo of car (e.g. between Al 5182 and Al 6009 in Audi A8). Had no answer, but learned a lot more about aluminium alloys. Magnesium was given as ≈40% more lightweight than aluminium (which is ≈35% the weight of steel), although Al was said to be easier to form. Titanium (≈74% the weight of steel) is not only lightweight too, but was said to have very good corrosion resistance (also used in human implants in the disabled). In the form of TiO2 film, it can cover magnesium to fix its corrosion problems. (Mixing Ti and Nb creates a superconductor.) Plastic was also said to be lightweight, but not very heat-tolerant (if your laptop exhaust fan melted the spokes on the side of the body, you already know). There are wrought and cast Al types, but the properties of the second were said to be less consistent. Several Al alloy series characterized by different mixing elements exist. If I understood correctly, the lower series (1xxx/3xxx) tend to be less strong and easily workable, 4xxx has middle strength, while 2xxx/7xxx/8xxx series have highest strength (heat-treatable, difficult to weld). The very high-strength Al 2xxx were said to be used in aircraft fuselage; Al 2029 in the cryogenic fuel tank of space stations. Beverage cans with their Al 3004 (and sometimes Al 3104) contribute to making this the most used alloy type. Al 5xxx are strong, tough and very important in public construction (buildings, bridges etc.); Al 6xxx are both high-strength and allow flexibility in creating forms by extrusion (good for the car industry); Al 7xxx are used in aircrafts and wing structures. Al 7475 was said to be very strong and fracture-tough, but like many other in the series has poor corrosion resistance (coatings?). Aluminium mixed with lithium (one variant of the 8xxx series) was said to be very tough airframe material, where Al 8090 is superelastic and Al 8091 reduces weight and increases stiffness compared to the 2xxx/7xxx series. Al 8017 was said to be used in conductors. 2xxx/7xxxx series are either hard to weld or susceptible to weld cracking, so either mechanical fasteners or weldable variants like Al 2319 or Al 7004, 7005, 7039 are used. Reflects personal understanding which may be wrong. Interesting that the more expensive end products tend toward using higher series.
- If someone gave you a list of all the foods they dislike, could you train a classifier to determine which of the recipes (based on their ingredients) they might potentially like? Remember to not cook at random, if possible, but address everyone's senses/desires in a healthy way.
- Checked "ASDA" website after learning it is owned by Walmart. They hide this quite well, but wondered whether I could find "cues" there. Indeed, "Walmart" is mentioned only once on their main page (in li.menu-item-advertisting having a data-group property containing key-value pair "Name":"AMCV_walmartasda%40AdobeOrg"). Then went to the ASDA-own "George" clothing brand and saw a script directly referencing "walmart.com" there. Always be on the lookout who you are actually supporting with your money. Shows how you can take several websites and inspect them for hidden relationships.
- In case your corporation made the mistake to pay juicy sums to consultancies for Covid-19 advice while explaining employees how they have to live a life of restraint, wait for the word to spread out.
- High system cost (solar, wind)—easy finding of installation professionals. Low system cost (web, simple software)—missing candidates.
- The World Trade Organization (WTO) said that trade costs are higher in services than in manufacturing or agriculture. Good point to start accounting for them in your pricing as well. They continue that technological progress leads to a decline in importance of face-to-face interactions, thus reducing these costs. Would be hard to bother with the wrong faces anyway. With the term "digital divide", they describe the effect that—independent of country of origin,—big companies have easier time selling online than small ones.
- "Structural lumber in a building may be borate-treated to protect against termites." Perhaps there are other ways too, but good to know.
- "Fashionopolis" described cases of how clothing gets made and the picture isn't beautiful. Mass worker exploitation in factories, collapsing floors killing people, overtimes and night shifts (effects including rape and unwanted pregnancies), locked doors in high-heat, no-water environments, "wage theft" (paying much below minimum wage) and more. But many companies listed in the book were good at extracting a lot of value out of having a large number of subcontractors producing at very low cost and selling the clothes at high in-store prices. In 2014, there were 14 garments/person-year for everyone on the planet, so you can imagine the kind of profits made by actively stimulating a throwaway culture. On average a clothing piece was said to be worn 7 times before being thrown away, but the environmental cost of making it was said to often exceed its price.
- Interesting that after the collapse of the bridge in Genoa, Italy, satellites were able to capture mm-change movements in its structure over time. Didn't know that such extremely high resolution was possible by something removed so far out of sight.
- Second time hearing about Dyneema in a span of three days. Perhaps not a coincidence. This time the context is that it can replace Kevlar in bulletproof clothing. Said to have tensile strength of 3000 MPa (≈3.33x that of high-strength steel).
- Liked the metric kg-chloride/lane-km, which may have implications in structural corrosion. The idea of introducing bacteria into a material that "consumes" the CO2 it emits, also sounds interesting. And NIST has developed an atomic camera (square side of 1.6mm) packed with 1024 sensors detecting individual photos in search for dark matter.
- Explain the cat that it can take a big hammer and hit hard this thick glass separating both of you if it wants to catch you. Then wait its body to start vibrating after sensing the glass-like carbon.
- Saw a book on chocolate, learned about "Barry Callebaut" in it, watched their do-it-yourself nutrition bar videos, clicked on a link which led me to the lifebars... explains why I am not making much progress on life. Clients paying with "gold" coins, which peel off to reveal a chocolate core can't improve my life either.
- Heard that the software of a law firm has been hacked several times, so they now consider returning to analog. Not dealing with software anymore. Whoever they paid, probably took the money and moved on.
- "... were chronically underfinanced for years." Punched your ticket for present under-performance.
- Only an hour awake and already twice fooled: 1) Mutex is a complex simplex and 2) Raiden must have come out of a Faraday cage.
- The Directory of London Businesses currently has 262222 entries bit.ly/3aJymjY. Tried to filter by keywords like "software" or "web", but found only names never heard before.
- Libraries in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania bit.ly/2Ri3RKa. The coordinates may be approximate.
- Max. rated power for wind turbines by "Enercon" bit.ly/3bQ4mTy
- The Wind Turbine Database looks good (after click on "Launch") bit.ly/3dVqJJb ↗, but the rich map translated into slow interaction here. Good to see so much information on turbines at a single place. Not sure whether Europe has some equivalent of this.
- Guessing that one could create a table of green/red (available/unavailable) boxes corresponding to the individual tools available in each "Leatherman" multi-tool bit.ly/2Re67lN ↗. Simply looking at a label like "14 tools" does not tell much, but design has great explanatory power. Additionally, one may try to determine which tools affect the multi-price most.
- Tried to identify potentially interesting top freezer refrigerators by "GE Appliances" bit.ly/2UM9p1Y. Knew about "General Electric", but had no idea that they were also making (many different types of) appliances. Interesting that in this case refrigerators having total capacities between 16.6-17.5ft3 and 21.93 were found less attractive by my script. In this data, freezer capacity appears more tightly linked to net weight than fresh food capacity. Also noticed minor errors on the product pages, which contributed to a noticeable slowdown in performance. Perhaps they will be fixed soon.
- "The charger for the DiamondClean electric toothbrush is a regular rinsing glass, which sits atop a metal inductive charging base. When done brushing, the user simply places the toothbrush in the glass, which automatically begins charging." (Source: "Understanding industrial design") Can't imagine a better decision than having the context provide the missing piece of functionality without asserting itself.
- Some properties of the rear load garbage trucks by "HEIL" bit.ly/2yvpZdy. Hope there isn't a mistake in the claim that the model "PT1000" has the same gross weight in the 13yd3 and 16yd3 variants. "Powertrack Commercial Plus (32yd3)" ranked first. Interesting was that "Commercial Plus (27yd3)" preceded "Commercial (32yd3)" and that "Commercial (27yd3)" preceded "Commercial Plus (25yd3)". What I noticed was that it wasn't easy to come at specifications of garbage trucks. Perhaps the sector is not considered "cool" enough and thus this kind of work doesn't receive much attention.
- Clueless about the accuracy of the claim of "34 million diabetics" (≈10.3% of the US population), but even so it sounds sufficiently scary to me. That's only 3-4 million less than the entire population of Canada.
- Idling "NordicTrack C1650" comes at 0.0284kW/kg, which can't be enough to properly exercise you, right? (Sunday joke)
- A quick check of "Jaguar" car models revealed only one having power-to-weight ratio higher than 0.20kW/kg. "2021 F-Type R Coupe" is said to achieve 0.2460kW/kg (575hp, 3843lb), which is 9.8% lower than the highest value we have seen as reported by "Porsche". According to Wikipedia, "Tesla Model S Performance" (794hp, 4960lb) comes at 0.2631 (6.5% higher), while other sources hint at "2020 Kia Stinger GT-Line 4dr All-wheel" at 0.1105 (122% lower) and "Trabant 601" at only 0.0315 (680% lower).
- "The average Walmart store is 180000sqft." So if it was a square, it would have a side of ≈130m. Spacing people 4.3m apart sounds more reasonable than a more chaotic scene in a small store where many don't even pay attention of their neighbors as long as the right goods are in their eyesight. A maximum of 900 such squares (one per shopper) still doesn't mean that certain squares won't be visited more often. That's only the spatial dimension, but a temporal one exists too. A shopper going to the same square where an infected person was only ten minutes ago (even if no longer there) could potentially still be exposed to a moderate risk of infection. And spacing shoppers apart in time could become problematic if there are too many waiting in line outside the store (where no infrastructure exists to support a crowd that is spaced out so well to prevent infections there). If stores have maximized their inside and minimized their outside areas, suddenly expecting more people to stay on a smaller area outside still presents a risk. Perhaps a ticketing system could be appropriate so that at least people who arrive by car can stay in there until their turn comes without having to fear jumps on the queue by those who come later. Thoughts only.
- Learned about "Sfoglini" pasta bit.ly/3bR12rm ↗ and their hemp radiators and rye trumpets.
- Used a simple search query to subjectively evaluate the search experience at American, Delta, Southwest, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue and Virgin Atlantic. Southwest Airlines seems to offer a polished experience with good usability, speed of response and overall visual design. Only minor objection was that a newcomer might use a slightly better explanations of certain labels. American Airlines comes the closest second, also being relatively fast and especially good at structure and order. The icons describing the amenities of each flight are a nice touch, although it should be tested whether a user can infer their meaning at that size at all times. Delta Airlines found a slightly cheaper fare for my chosen destination (than American), but it was not as fast, loaded extra needless images and used mini popup windows to input source and destination airports (bad). Additionally, the clickable area of the search hints could have been bigger. After search, the back button should continue to work well, if possible, please. Alaska Airlines and Virgin Atlantic both make the same mistake: In case they can't find a flight, they give up with a message and stop trying to be helpful. The much better response would have been to seek and provide alternatives (and quickly). Virgin Atlantic uses a very similar form to Delta (with the popups), inheriting their mistake. In addition, instead of loading the result page, they show a loading label once (on an empty page), followed by a FOUC of the accepted payment methods, followed by a spinner and then by the actual result. JetBlue's search form has received some visual attention, but the input fields suggest that clicking on any of the box labels should focus them, which doesn't happen (expectation not met). The click on "Search flights" takes 2-3s to initiate, since the button label switches to a spinner before the new page gets loaded (pointless). But the real downside then is the visual design of the results, which appear too close together, regions of which are marked with dark blue, almost randomly. This makes the layout feel like a patchwork, in which the text content becomes especially difficult to read.
- Behavioral differences during the Covid-19 outbreak in some countries and regions bit.ly/3aF9Jot. Considers trends in mobility to public buildings, grocery stores, parks, transit stations, workplaces and residential stays. You can read about this in the reports themselves. Notice that this data is only for 29.03.2020, so it represents a snapshot in time (relative to a base date) rather than a dynamic picture. That said, there are some minor details to notice. For instance, we see how different Italy is from the rest of the countries on the diagram. People there seem particularly stressed, and we notice some dramatic changes in behavior, especially in Aosta and Molise. Sardinia and Calabria also appear particularly affected, even when increases in residential mobility there were somewhat lower. Given the number of regions in the UK, it wouldn't be easy to make them all legible. The two regions at the bottom of the UK diagram appear as outliers, but the data about them is somewhat questionable since discrete in at least one dimension. At the north we see Wokingham and West Lothian, which appear most distant from most regions. Either their data is spurious too or their citizens feel stressed in a different way than most. Overall, we see a relatively large cloud in the UK, which suggests higher variance in behavior compared to the one between the German regions, for instance. The cloud about USA is also interesting, suggesting different behavior in Nebraska, South Dakota and maybe Ohio. If we look at the data, we see that park mobility there has increased (not decreased) with 109%, 126% and 117% accordingly (with mostly minor changes in the other dimensions). Citizens there seem to feel relatively calm about the outbreak. The cloud about the Netherlands is fairly homogeneous, but this doesn't mean particularly similar to the one of Italy, for instance. Median reduction of retail and recreation mobility there came out as 67.5% (where in many other countries it is much higher) and the residential movements haven't increased noticeably. Might be a sign that daily life continues as usual, which already has an expression in the form of over 15 thousand infections (at least according to Covid-19 tracker) for a population size of slightly over 17 million. in Switzerland, we see that the regions Neuchatel and Basel-Landschaft already feel very different about the outbreak than other regions. Residential mobility there has increased with 28% and 23% accordingly, which is probably not due to some random effect.
- Numbers published in a book effectively say that the Sun is ≈28.571 million times heavier than the Moon (light vs. dark) while an ocean liner is as heavy as ≈14000 elephants. Typist himself being 1.08% of the elephant weight.
- Quick exploratory (so less than beautiful) diagram of the markets in Munich, Germany bit.ly/3bTAdmF. "Olympiazentrum" must be among the bigger ones. (Source: muenchen.de, Kommunalreferat , "Märkte in München", bit.ly/2GOzHtd ↗)
- Out of 2235 housing offers in Houston, TX on "Trulia" the median came out as $164.71/ft2, which is much lower than the $258/ft2 we have seen for Chicago, IL. This answers (at least approximately) the original question. Also remembered that there is perhaps a way to validate this against at least one other source. For instance, RedFin market insights had the values of $181/ft2 and $114/ft2 for Chicago and Houston accordingly. Trulia result shows the second price being 56.6% of the first, while RedFin claims it to be 58.7%. Still quite close for the minimal time investment.
- Power vs. curb weight for the car models by "Porsche" bit.ly/3dPLDJJ. The variant with the highest ratio of the two appears to be Porsche 911 Turbo S with its 0.2703kW/kg. Compare this with Ducati Superleggera V4 (motorcycle, 1.0974), Eurocopter EC725 Caracal (helicopter, 0.3332), 2020 GMC Sierra 1500 (truck, 0.1103), 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 (truck, 0.0973), John Deere 9470RX (tractor, 0.0148), Mercedes-Benz Citaro 12m (city bus, 0.0115) and Oasis of the Seas (cruise ship, 0.0002). You may wish to compare thrust-to-weight ratio for some airplanes and share some results.
- Can't know whether beta-carotene content in two equally looking peaches can vary 40x (Source: "Whole"), but this only underscores the need for high variety in foods and food sources. Reading behind the lines, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that we can't feed a complex system as the human body by something much less complex as a handful of food choices on a daily basis (often repetitive). Perhaps this is a way to ensure basic physiological functions, but does not aid in highest human performance. Similarly to the way minimum pay keeps one above the poverty level, but doesn't necessarily aid their self-actualization.
- Visual observation of the differences in egg sizes and their labels in the case of USA, Canada and Europe, according to Wikipedia bit.ly/2USSf1i. Looks like the minimum weights of the large (L) eggs in Europe are on par with extra large (XL) in USA/Canada and the XLs in Europe are slightly heavier (possibly bigger) than the jumbos in North America. No need to overcook the eggs at 100°C, a book says, when they are supposed to coagulate at 73°C. Have to take one of these degree-accurate induction cooktops and test the +/- capability in search of this cloudy white.
- "Swept by thoughts, flooded by feelings" are two threats in a single sentence.
- "Carrefour" translates as "crossroads". Had the feeling it must mean something, but never knew exactly.
- "When you stop early, you leave the best applicant undiscovered. When you stop late you hold out for a better applicant who doesn't exist." And when you don't start you know that the best won't come to you unless you beg them to consider you, and—in the process,—not count your cents for fear of receiving the prompt and only rejection.
- Wallace Wattles on the science of getting rich bit.ly/345SjyM
- Why spectate the unspectacular?
- Whether Dolby Atmos needs "Zeit zum Atmen" is questionable, but some associations make it feel so. Has to be a non-stop runner.
- Collecting operational data for a facility is much more about the "here & now" than an "open" dataset that hasn't been updated for more than three months (some are more than ten years old). All data has an expiration date; relying on input that isn't timely or relevant implies we are getting the wrong estimate. Possible action: limit work with datasets older than three months.
- Consumer Reports tester of Porsche 914 in 1970: "A good start, but then something went wrong." (Noticed an underinflated tire on a turn.) Admittedly, the title "914 - little car out of control" was an attention grabber.
- Heard about the social strategy of being a very kind client until one can copy the service approximately, then becoming very rude and unapologetic. Strategy (one of the many), which could fail spectacularly if you picked the wrong person to apply it to.
- If you want me to be available for your problems, consider how good your project proposals and behavior are.
- Suppose you transport fragile material by truck from point A to point B. This isn't the typical material, hence the only truck you have isn't having the same dimensions (so the material is loose) and it also isn't loaded well. Additionally, you have no means to fasten the material to some reference point to keep it stable throughout the entire trip. And you realize that the quality of driving might determine whether it arrives in useful state or breaks along the way. Every rapid acceleration, braking, turn or pothole could displace the material or hit it against one of the truck's walls. You decide that one way to determine how good a trip was is to track how much the material has moved (or was accelerated) by attaching a sensor to some reference point (center of material), periodically capturing coordinates relative to the truck. Then, at the end of the trip, you sum all distances from the initial to the end point (aiming for minimal) to find how safely the material was delivered (relative to delivery time). But this is different from summing the distances relative to an ideal central point at which the material should have been at all times.
- Wondering how it feels to live in a skyscraper, look through the window and wonder how is it possible that you still aren't falling down there. Guessing that most people somehow get used to it.
- Had an idea to compare housing prices in Chicago and Houston on "Trulia" by fitting lines to each set of samples. Before I could finish with Chicago, access was cut off with the claim I was acting like a robot. Wasn't even loading any images or scripts, so won't continue. Among the 3694 offers I found, the median price was ≈$258/ft2, where one offer bit.ly/2UMujwo ↗ had very large area (56200 sqft, if not a mistake) at only $3/sqft. My assumption is that this is a rental, not sales price, but then have no clue why it appears when "Buy" was explicitly selected above the search form on the main page. Another option is that the floor area is only 56.2 sqft while still on sale. Yet, since some offers appear strange, one cannot immediately say how well the script did and whether they weren't intentionally included to mislead it. And data we haven't validated by ourselves is much harder to trace for accuracy.
- Used the available information in an article to create a diagram of how some sports cars rank by horsepower bit.ly/3dLqnVG
- List of equipment by "Caterpillar" bit.ly/2w8ROHY ↗. Most models have extensive descriptions with plenty of properties, enabling you to do interesting work with the data. For instance, the "off-highway trucks" category had a model whose displacement was 78.1l against a standard fuel tank of 2082l. Never thought that such numbers were possible.
- Dislike the practice of shuffling the text on a page (to make it unreadable) after some period of inactivity and then having to wait 10s until it restores again. Even a simple excerpt convinces me not to bother with this mindset.
- Hypotenuses in rectangular triangles bit.ly/3bGydOl, but without the square root labels.
- Mind, uninvited, tries to convince that speaker and leaky faucet are associated. Even stranger things have happened while reading, but should try to conserve these conversations for now.
- Have completely forgotten about LU and QR decompositions. Hard to interpret what they show me anyway.
- Using data from BusinessInsider and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, estimated that the cost of an Airbus A380 is paid back after approximately 1615 flights at full capacity, where each of the 800 passengers pays the average US domestic air fare (as of Q3 2019). With one fully booked flight/day, this will take ≈4.42 years. Figuratively speaking, the airplane seat is 44.56x as expensive as the seat of a $50000 car designed for four passengers.
- Interesting idea to combine rice and beans in a single canned product bit.ly/2X16NyN ↗
- Pretending to be walking in "Assiniboine Park & Forest". Not really, but you can see a diagram of the road network and parks in Winnipeg, Canada bit.ly/2WTjyv5
- Cycle paths and bike stations in Milan, Italy bit.ly/2JnveOy. Nice to see such a high number of stations.
- Here is what "Rapunzel" believes for the case of going nuts bit.ly/2WTmFDq
- Prices of laptops with Intel CPUs at "Umart", Australia bit.ly/39rywer. Highest variability seems to be with the machines having the "9750H" CPU. So I thought, perhaps there was an opportunity to obtain a relatively good model for the price. The most expensive with this CPU was a "Gigabyte Aero" model with 1TB SSD and an RTX 2080 GPU (AUD5199), but then noticed that the same-CPU "Acer Nitro" model with 512GB SSD and GTX 1650 GPU costs only 28.8% of that price (AUD1499 or ≈$925). Perhaps you are aware of other, even cheaper, local options.
- Also made a similar table for the beans and pulses bit.ly/2UJYAMv. Slightly modifying the criteria, "Green split peas", "Organic red split lentils", "Black turtle beans" and "Whole green lentils" ranked highest. But "Organic Black Beluga lentils" at rank six had the highest dietary fiber content of 30g. Highest ranked among the grains and seeds bit.ly/2w0DHEw were "Organic raw buckwheat", "Linseed", "Bourghal wheat (cracked)", "Organic wheat grain" and "Sunflower seeds". Slightly below we see "Organic couscous", "Organic rye grain", "Organic spelt grain" and "Organic polenta". Also noticed the "superfoods" category, but intuition discouraged me from considering them from the same perspective.
- Nutrients in the nut-based products at "The Source Bulk Foods" bit.ly/2wJ1ZTG. In this case, using a simple ranking criteria like (protein * energy) / (% saturated fat * price), grouping all products by nut type and finding the medians revealed the following order of preference: peanut, walnut, almond, hazelnut, pine nut, pistachio, cashew, pecan, brazil nut, macadamia. (Beyond hazelnut the scores drop visibly.) For instance, peanuts were much cheaper than the energy-rich, fatty and expensive macadamia. The first peanut product that isn't roasted was "Australian raw peanuts in shell". The first walnut product was "Australian walnut meal", but it is finely gound (may be useful in decoraion, baking etc.). If you prefer whole walnuts, "Australian insecticide free walnuts" also came relatively high on the list, but slightly below "Raw insecticide free Australian almonds". Also nice to learn that raw variants are said to be less durable than roasted ones and are thus better stored in a refrigerator.
- Interesting list of shoe brands bit.ly/2UuikVH ↗
- Nutrients in the coffees and hot drinks by "Gloria Jean's Coffee" bit.ly/2QSWloR
- "'Sushi parasites' have increased 283-fold in past 40 years" bit.ly/2UGmA32 ↗
- Making these bit.ly/3byOLI1 made me appreciate the humble snail, which in a sense never seems to leave its house. Once you approach it, knock on its door or seek to socialize, it hides. Meticulous threat detection prioritizing safety.
- Didn't know that decreasing bone mass with age leads to an exponential increase in hip fractures. A single fall on the floor could demand a costly many-day-stay hospital care. Can't know, but was said to be more expensive than 25 different injury types. So keep your balance.
- Wouldn't easily come to the idea that New Year fireworks could raise particulate matter 17x relative to the base level or that NO2 concentration at pickup and dropoff times (school children) could increase a lot (Source: EPA). Also liked that photo with the flying bird where in the background there was a giant chimney with lots of smoke coming out of it, as if the bird was flying towards the top to make itself a picture of how bad the emissive situation might be.
- Happy weekend and until next week (clients).
- Some properties of the bathroom exhaust fans by "Delta Breez" bit.ly/2QSNCTU. Would have been even nicer if pricing could also be taken in account. But even so, it appears that the "Signature" series and particularly the variable-speed variants "SIG80-110" could be good performers. Energy efficiency of 15.4 cfm/W and loudness of less than 0.3 Sone could make any bathroom a more peaceful place.
- R-values of some insulating materials according to Wikipedia and energy.gov bit.ly/3by107U. A book on building performance mentioned that the walls of one building were made of R-20 material, which exceeded by far the highest value I ever heard about. So the next-natural step was to create the diagram and see what's going on. According to energy.gov, it seems that fiberglass batts of varying thickness offer good insulation (median of R-21). At least here, rigid polyurethanes also seem to cluster, but they do not exceed R-8 and silica aerogel gets to R-10.3.
- Assigning major human achievements to the resources they helped deplete sounds like an interesting bipartite graph. Perhaps giant, but since you like free, you will surely be able to complete and share it.
- Unused buildings/machines became an even greater problem. Wouldn't be able to foresee this several years ago.
- Acute care hospitals in Massachusetts by number of available beds bit.ly/2WInmPK. Good to see such information made public.
- Also tried to depict the 73 libraries in Los Angeles, California bit.ly/33Lk3IY, but had to hide some labels to preserve clarity. Be aware that some of these coordinates may be inaccurate.
- Libraries in Chicago, Illinois bit.ly/2UiWDb2. The 81 locations are so well-distributed across the city territory that I am suddenly thinking about peanut butter.
- New York Public Library (NYPL) locations bit.ly/2xpPEUm. The script found a total of 92, most of which seem to be in the neighborhoods of "Manhattan" and "Bronx". Listing their names and phones would take a lot of time. Perhaps there is another service specifically for "Brooklyn" and "Queens", but so far I am not aware of it.
- Comparison of different trims by car model at "Star Toyota", New York bit.ly/2WHn37D. For around half the models, trim choice does not seem to affect fuel economy (mpg) much.
- Unsure how good the ratings are, made a small diagram learning about few properties of the best sedan cars as seen on "Kelly Blue Book" bit.ly/2QIksXf. Among these models, two hybrid cars had highest fuel economy (mpg), followed by the non-hybrid "2020 Lexus ES". The "Ghost" and "Phantom" models by "Rolls Royce" had the highest horsepower, but also the lowest fuel economy.
- "Chicken parmigiana with chips" (4995kJ) enables the intake of ≈60% of daily energy (enough for 14h 24m) from a single (say 30m) meal including nothing else. One must only want this enough. May not win the competition, but still leave a lasting impression on the belly of any non-foodie.
- Packaging an exclusive pen in regular-sized suitcase, showing a map when open, goes beyond my definition for space waste. Also found this to be a screen-related issue a while back, when I was still writing blog posts.
- Heard about the importance of pumping air in your happiness to keep it inflated. An interesting concept/parallel.
- Properties of most projectors by "Epson" bit.ly/2UeAuKA. Couldn't score them all due to some missing data, but in relative comparison, the more expensive models "EB-L400U" and "EB-L510U" leave some positive first impression. Do you think that weight (kg) and color light output (lm) might be related with energy use (W) here? Is it possible that weight (kg) is related to price (€)? Why could depth (mm) eventually matter more for loudspeaker output (W) than width (mm) or height (mm)?
- Approximate locations bit.ly/3afnavj and total number of catalog items, visits and borrowed materials at the libraries in Leipzig, Germany (2001-2017) bit.ly/2vLShzC. If the data is correct, then the number of borrowed materials saw a sharp decline despite the increased number of visits after 2009.
- Number of animals and number of visitors of the zoo in Leipzig, Germany (2001- 2017) bit.ly/3aeu83z (Source: Stadt Leipzig, "Kultur und Sport / Zoo Leipzig (Jahreszahlen)"). Assuming that the zeros mean "n/a", since it is very hard to attract lots of visitors with zero animals. In 2017, the number of animals approached 5000 (highest), but the number of visitors fell back to a level seen in 2008.
- 'Properties of some air purifiers by "Honeywell" bit.ly/3doJhkI. In case you feel that staying home must happen within a cleaner environment. Treat "some" as all-but-one (as of today) here. Notice that some models didn't have weight specified, so the script couldn't consider them. Among the rest, "HPA300" looks particularly interesting for larger rooms, while "HHT270W", "HPA160" and "HPA060" are more suitable for smaller rooms.
- If it wasn't Sunday, brain would probably try to convince me that CaSiO3 was a brand.
- Was thinking whether finding good flower arrangements could be subject to computation, assuming that different cichlids may not necessarily like to be in the same aquarium. Do you think that given enough data, there is a way to make arrangements more beautiful?
- Haven't seen such sunset so far. Sun appeared saturated red on the horizon, while sky around it was blue as if it wasn't shining. At bottom left and bottom right of it (where it ended in the ground) were strange green spots, which seemed to vary in intensity over time. Lasted only 2-3 mins, but other people saw this effect too.
- Someone asked about a script to help with IKEA office chair selection. Mine was challenged by missing/spurious data bit.ly/3dm8Oei even when it suggested that most of the models (123) actually looked more as stylized variants. As you can see, they also didn't have seat thickness or weight specified, which are probably important for anyone who has to sit long hours or need to periodically pull the chair aside to stand up. "Tested for (lbs)" and "max. load" actually seem to be the same (243 lbs (≈110kg) is common), which is simply inconsistent labeling. Given these limitations, it is not justified to proceed cleaning up the table or define a scoring function. The decision to ask about everyone's preferences instead was likely a better one.
- Liked these CSS-powered textual rollercoasters by Michelle Barker bit.ly/2QADZJh ↗
- Week-end practice of self-isolation instead of beach/barbecue. Missing only a treadmill for operating mode diversity. Where jogging & logging equipments intersect.
- Fineness does not seem to affect packing ratio here bit.ly/39c5vDk
- Glanced through the excerpt of "Fundamentals of building construction: Materials and methods", where the authors claim that woods like black locust, black walnut, cedar and redwood are decay-resistant while Alaska yellow/Eastern/Western cedar and redwood are termite-resistant (also see page 3-22 of "Wood handbook" for more). They also mentioned the existence of ultra-low emitting formaldehyde wood, which possibly meant that most regular wood doesn't meet this high standard. Then came to this paper bit.ly/3a8rlZO ↗, where the authors found that increasing either temperature or relative humidity increased formaldehyde emissions up to 31x by going from 30% relative humidity at 25°C to 100% relative humidity at 35°C. (Wary of some possible chance for this to apply to normal wood too.) Construction is a topic I still have to learn a lot about, but it probably goes hand-in-hand with the topic of sustainable materials.
- "Immediate neighbors of iron in the periodic table, cobalt and nickel, are also magnetic." Distance/similarity measures over periodic tables.
- Inequality of: income, wage, wealth, education, gender, age, profession, opportunity, origin, religion, race, status... If they wish to discriminate you on any of these, wish them good luck.
- Again last day to send your project proposal (take the time for a good formulation). If not, next week is a week too.
- Teaspoon - 5ml; tablespoon - 15ml. Can pull (and have to clean) only one now. But this estimated number of two trillion observable galaxies completely defeats the perceptions.
- Can't outrun a cheetah. Eventually could if I was a cheetah too. Hence, someone said that a complex problem requires a solution which matches that problem in its complexity. Some healthy skepticism that a nano-scale problem could be resolved by a big injection containing vaccine (it works at another scale). Perhaps nanotechnology advances are needed. Perhaps the reason we suffer is that we don't understand how this nano-world works (now and in the future). Perhaps the "vaccine" is also some kind of a nano-particle using wind as medium itself until it meets corona and asks how its day was.
- If someone took 2400cal yesterday (10MJ) and weighted 60kg, would their specific internal energy be 0.166MJ/kg? How would a mouse or an elephant compare to that?
- Learned that the light-gathering power of telescopes or the time it takes to collect the photons required for a good image is: illumination ~ (aperture diameter of mirror / focal length)2.
- Boeing 777-300 traveling with 900km/h must have ≈1610x the kinetic energy of "Queens Mary 2" traveling with 33 knots. The sentence about the 60-70 servants dedicated to every living person was also quite memorable.
- Found this frame of reference of thinking in terms of energies (in different settings) useful and quickly archived it in its own bit bit.ly/2x9a9oc. Expecting that the complete book would have been even more engaging.
- At the beginning, the machine is used to stimulate and drive the mind, but at the end it is always the mind that has to drive the machine. Where the limitations start to show up, as it turns out, it is quite a bicycle to pedal.
- Mental worlds are so beautiful and clean. Only what we imagine/think about. But physical distractions stand on their way.
- Cause precedes effect; imagination precedes realization. Agatha Christie imagined stories in which Hercule Poirot was seeking causes for certain events. Would a deeply concentrated reader pulling a sheet of paper from below the book, with a Bayesian network drawn on it, perform better than someone who was making himself a more direct picture of the situation? As a young person, didn't understand the "whys" and had to accept them as they came.
- Libraries in Antwerp, Belgium bit.ly/2TYpcKp and in The Hague, the Netherlands bit.ly/2vAeL6E
- "It takes 3600l of paint to cover the 3100m2 exterior of Airbus 380 (up to 853 passengers; operating empty weight of 277 tons). The paint is five layers thick and weighs 650kg when dry." So this is where the beautiful plumage comes from.
- Driverless car, tubeless bike tires, brushless motor, mirrorless camera, serverless company, fanless hardware, wireless communication, barrierless access, frictionless purchase, cashierless store, flameless candles, meatless food, timeless work. Less is more (except with serverless since the opposite means greater flexibility and improvements in the quality of work).
- "A scientist discovers what already exists. An engineer creates that never was." - von Karman. Who does both?
- Learned that reaction rate is proportional to the product of the concentrations of chemical substances, which is not something I remember to have heard in school.
- Stories which took a year to develop, but were forgotten in three months, were likely not a good use of time.
- "The value of an idea lies in the using of it." - Thomas A. Edison. Could also be a software idea, I suppose.
- What is the chance that if someone uses nutrient supplements, they also give some to their plants as well? What is the chance that if someone cheated at the exam, they would be interested in cracking the coding interview?
- If correct, 30kB of RNA length doesn't appear to be size which is hard to manage if you consider that the main page here is slightly below 100kB (yet HTML containing spaces is only 3.8kB). Another reason to check every letter and edit pedantically until it is in the right state.
- Made a small diagram with the relative sizes of many cities in Iran and labeled the ones having more than 400000 people, according to a source bit.ly/2Wk4k1O
- Theoretically, nothing stops anyone to pay you with corona-money, which was my initial assumption I have long forgotten since. But a doctor reminded me of it, going further to say that using a bank card also isn't safe as long as one needs to type PIN code by pressing some possibly contaminated buttons. Thought about the benefit of offering online forms to clients to enable them to make bank transfers without having to appear in an office and do paper work (improving transaction ease so that more businesses can survive). The problems with this would be increased online tracking and security breaches.
- PubChem says that thorium dioxide is used in a broad range of industrial applications and at the same time considered carcinogen. Possibly explains why in TRI its use also seemed to change well together with at least six other pollutants.
- Looking at EPA Toxic Release Database (TRI) and considering total on- and offsite disposal or other releases for the period 2010-2018, it appears that the highest absolute increases are in the categories lead, manganese, copper and nitrate compounds. Lead, zinc, arsenic and barium compounds were also among the most variable. The first non-compounds that come into view are asbestos (friable), manganese, ammonia, methanol, copper, styrene, hydrogen cyanide, sodium nitrite, n-hexane, chromium. Yet, the highest relative increases appear in xylidine, direct blue 218, methyl isothiocyanate, diflubenzuron, tetrachloro-2-fluoroethane, triphenylin hydroxide, thorium dioxide, isodrin, diglycidyl resorcinol ether, linuron, benfluralin, nitrapyrin, metribuzin and others. Hard to read and not start pulling your hair.
- Taking away flow from elsewhere and channeling it towards the food stores probably exposes them at greater risk even if many people choose to stay home and visit them only infrequently. It could be that passing through the cashier who beeps their products they get it without even realizing. Reproduction at the need-to-eat point in time would be another form of perfect camouflage.
- Interesting layout with extensive use of diagonals bit.ly/2w1t707 ↗. Wished the boxes were equal-height to avoid disturbances in the diagonal on subsequent rows.
- Heard of some broken supply chain graphs. Which closest-to-old partner nodes (according to multiple dimensions, not just geo-coordinates) could an affected node borrow edges from and is it beneficial to do so from a long-term perspective? What needs to happen to improve future path resilience?
- Were you standing against array_chunk("making reasons up", 1)?
- Do you balance mass distribution in addition to heat distribution during laptop design? Could otherwise mean that certain heavier sides hit the ground faster in case of negligent handling. Cracking the case on a side or edge wouldn't make for a good experience; damping the hit over the entire surface may lead to a more favorable outcome. Drop on a trampoline repeatedly and record with a camera to see the part most often touching the surface first. Then, perhaps update the design. Less surprises (and internals) for the user to see.
- Saw a beautiful sunburst chart which seemed to use lots of data. Haven't created one so far. Also Sankey and chord diagrams too.
- Now saw three different sources regarding thermal conductivity of copper relative to aluminium. The first provided values which estimate that copper had 91% higher conductivty, the second led to 7-66% higher (avg-max, but min could also be lower!) and the numbers in the third source led to 67% higher. Even when different, two of the sources appear to be somewhat close. Always important to check with several whenever possible.
- The assortment of "Fruteiro Do Brazil" bit.ly/39U6OYC ↗ comes with some interesting nutritional values. Haven't seen those for acerola or guava elsewhere, for instance. You can also see the corresponding table bit.ly/2TS835h. Few things we notice is that mango seems to offer a lot of energy relative to other fruits, acerola is said to be very rich in vitamin C, açaí and acerola have high oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) and lime is indicated as much more acidic than other fruits.
- Price distributions by digital camera brand for the offers at "Jessops" (14.03.2020) bit.ly/2w5LYH6. Only the "Instax" brand was not included as these cameras were cheapest and plentiful, making the amplitudes of the other Gaussians less visible. Other relatively cheap brands with many model alternatives were "Ricoh" and "Pentax". But starting from £2250, we see how models by "Sony" and "Nikon" become more prevalent.
- Used to see blankets from polyethylene priced at ≈7€. Now learned that there are several subtypes like low-, medium- and high-density polyethylene. The label didn't say to which type the product belonged. It was a roll, but the layers felt thin on touch and the total weight must have been around 800g. Further reading the book, you come to the cost of production of the various polyethylene types, where the authors suggest 1.9€/kg for HDPE. Suppose there were blanket finishing touches like coloration/pattern design. Would it make sense to have them significantly more expensive than the actual material itself? If not, then one could sense what kind of margins are made on such sales, after accounting for the fact that sometimes the actual product value can be higher than the material value (e.g. when it keeps you warm).
- Packaging was said to be the main user of thermoplastics with its 33-48% of total quantity used, which is higher than expected. As long as consumption is needed, it may never become a problem—a perfect camouflage.
- Mixers are other interesting devices to learn about. Saw the 150+ models by "KitchenAid", had trouble with pages loading too slowly and decided not to proceed exploring. But if you wish, you could manually browse or run your own script.
- Noticed that "Good Housekeeping" had interesting data on steam irons and made a quick table from it bit.ly/2w9QZhQ. The cheapest iron got their highest score. Here is also what "Tefal" has to say on the topic bit.ly/3aYL12n. With their irons, it appears, higher power might be associated with higher continuous steam output. Didn't notice before how much energy steam irons could use relative to other devices like cooktops or heaters, for instance.
- Has someone prevented you from selling powerful computers to researchers? No. Instead, your company chose to advertise and sell very expensive machines to gamers and in the process promote gaming while making research harder. Therefore, having no understanding that you are now asking gamers to donate their powerful machines towards researching Covid-19. Expected to see your company paying for this research with part of the profits it made (to acknowledge and correct its mistake), not by instructing regular gamers to pay the price again.
- The closest thing to "panic" for me would be to live together with a chemicist using me as an experimental rabbit to test their latest ideas while hiding what they did to me or claiming it is great for my health, so there's no point in discussing it. Silently pushing self-made bouillons in soups or vitamins in drinks, pre-processing rooms with silver-based sprays or fragrances. Making soaps smelling like a fruit-processing factory. Creating rubber to patch their tire. Making a screen and surface cleaner. Washing powder for whiter clothes and toothpaste for whiter teeth. Fertilizers for the plants (must be good for them). Special water filters. Constantly producing gaseous by-products that I'll have to breathe later without even noticing. Biggest fear.
- "Please support your local restaurants during this turbulent time." bit.ly/2TPQvGX ↗. To be fair, I don't know where this comes from. I see restaurants as belonging to the experience industry, which tends to make big profits by explaining people "they must have been there" and that "experiences are much more memorable than objects". In addition, this industry is characterized by strong recommendations of all kinds of visits (see Yelp). If you noticed hotel room or dinner prices in the last couple of years, you knew that their profit margins can't be as thin as explained here. Asking people to donate additionally to preserve restaurants is like rewarding businesses for not having done their fair share of work to prepare for a possible long-term downturn. And so I find asking for such support unacceptable. There are plenty of other industry branches who likely need it more.
- Past workweek's life passed through the thin throat of the sand clock. Turn over and speak again in the next if you appreciate it more.
- Take the vitamins, they say. But I don't know neither what is inside (many substances appear as chemicals to me) nor whether it was obtained by processes that are healthy (exactly for me) or whether the combination of all extracts doesn't come with side effects. So I try to think differently. Vegetables and fruits anyway. But I look at my hand and see things that appear as veins (some veins get clogged or may burst, even in the brain). And then notice my dehydration. So there are some fluids circulating in a closed system, in which the heart plays the role of a pump. It must be then possible to stay hydrated and exercise to improve this fluid circulation. (Not having an exercise bike or fitness band to sense some data and find the right time to stop.) What happens with fluids in the same body, where one part is at a higher level and one at lower? Perhaps the one at the higher level would run towards the low level until both get equal. Then I must assume that having a pillow under my head may possibly take away fluids from my head, as stupid as this sounds. Setting head directly at the bedsheet feels well-rested in the morning. But then that circulation is happening also during the day. Imagine the immense effort by the heart to compensate for a height difference of 1.60-1.80m, 16 hours/day, 365 days/year. Have you seen someone who can pump consistently water from a well without getting tired? Is the reach at the top level always at top level (may affect clarity of thought)? Then by assumption these fluids probably become less effective at both oxidation and reach over time. Yet, exercise may be able to improve both or reduce potentially clogged areas. Seems like a simple immune stimulator I could actually use.
- Reminded myself to feel lucky to be in an industry which doesn't require constant contact and where great amounts of work can be accomplished from a distance. All that is needed is someone to explain (online) what they need to have and after their work is complete, they either receive it as an attachment or they and their clients see and use it online. Website, diagram, research, whatever. So flexible and free of dependencies (e.g. waiting on someone's work) that one can hardly complain.
- Some other interesting facts I learned: steels and composites are used in buildings/bridges and automotive (compete for uses), but in the first case they are used together with concrete, while in the second—with glasses and plastics. Silica are used in glasses (e.g. device screens) and optical fibers, but they can also be reduced to silicon. Amorphous silicon is used in solar cells and PV modules. Diamond is characterized by its very strong covalent bonds. Other materials with such bonds are silicon carbide, silicon nitride and boron nitride, the common theme being their high melting points and high-temperature applications. Ceramics doesn't tend to conduct heat well, can be used in heat-resistant materials or sometimes in high-load applications. Mirror substrates from glass-ceramics are said to be used in large telescopes like Chandra and Hubble.
- "Carbon-fiber reinforced plastic is a composite." (Said to be used in the fuselage and wings of Boeing 787.) "Plastics contain adhesives that enhance the properties of polymers." "Concrete and fiberglass are composites." (Bicycles, golf clubs, tennis rackets, aircrafts and spaceships are all made of composites.) Was already asking myself where polymers, fiberglass and carbon nanotubes would fall in this last diagram.
- Material ages and their approximate duration (until 2020) bit.ly/3aVSlMe. According to this, it seems that we are still living in the combined age of steel, light alloys, plastics and composites.
- Selling your principles for money also means you got infected. Unwilling to get that one either.
- Also asking myself questions like: What interest does this person from company X have to tell me to inject "independent" code on my website and tell me it would be better for the web if everyone did it? Are they willing to convert you into a sponsor of their analytics efforts?
- One of the things I look at is not making a website I work on a carrier for third-party brand popularity. No need to spread someone else's virus on each HTTP request. Twitter card, Apple icon, Facebook OpenGraph, Microsoft IE=Edge and all their social buttons and trackers never got a chance. Clean means clean.
- Proper brand names: Fitbit by Google. YouTube by Google. Kaggle by Google. Indeed, a small world we live in.
- Inability to engage in philosophical design or see the point in it must have worked against me.
- You probably remember when I said that "TCL" was not providing active power consumption for their TVs. Taking my words back, since they have updated their website and specifications. Gives you the chance to do something interesting with this information if you are exploring their models. Their 75" 4K TV (U75C7006) was said to have an average power usage of 204W (max. of 250W), which is a very respectable value (for such size), especially compared to the others we have seen previously here.
- "Es ist ein Fehler aufgetreten." bit.ly/2Q9sJTY. Leider weiss ich nicht woran das liegt. XPT doesn't tell me much and the advice to search inside these two "logs" directories on a foreign machine doesn't seem serious. Not interested in what third parties have to tell me either. This is between you and your user.
- Don't know what a "disposable worker" is. Such phrase doesn't exist in my dictionary. Don't excuse yourself for being a top manager if I catch you using it.
- Suppose your company has 55 employees and insists that each of them is able to operate a new type of machine. You have only one instructor, who tells you that he can teach only one person at a time in order to guarantee skills that will be sufficient for the expected workload. Yet, he informs you that the learning is then transferrable. If he were to train all employees, he would need 55 periods, so you ask yourself what you could do. At step one, he teaches the first employee, but then this employee is free and empowered to teach someone else. So at step two, the instructor teaches one more employee, and the already knowledgeable employee teaches a third person. At step three, the instructor teaches a fourth employee, but the first, second and third teach one new employee each (for a total of 7). At step four, the instructor teaches an 8th employee, but the first seven teach one new employee each (for a total of 15). Then you order and type the sequence 1, 3, 7, 15 into the "Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences" (OEIS), which gives you f(n) = 2n - 1. So you seek n, such that f(n) = 55. Taking log2 56 ≈ 5.80. By empowering the employees themselves, you'd need only 6 periods to train everyone.
- Suppose somewhere in the air inside your house was a Covid-19 virion. Would you keep the air minimally dynamic or run full-speed air circulation hoping that the HEPA filter would be fine enough to catch it (but if not expose yourself to a higher risk of gettng it)? Would you minimize your own movements or insist cleaning every corner of the house?
- Imagine you were an undetected person carrying corona virus. You breathe in O2 (and eventually corona) and breathe out CO2. Is there anything that would prevent you from breathing out corona as well? If not, then spread of the virus could eventually be presented as some function of CO2 spread. Which is already a climate problem. In other words, the more and longer humanity breaths out, the faster the virus can spread and the higher the infection rate becomes. We may "fan" towards an increasingly contaminated volume and get infected from there. Hope to be wrong on this. #breathe-entropy
- Letting urgent anti-virus dominate resource usage (not wrong) could mean a weakened "immune system" for other important problems in the future (dangerous). Long-term horizon seeks perseverance.
- A camera-equipped, mobile Earth Rover to detect corona (or future viruses) on surfaces and spray just-enough of the right disinfectant would be nice-to-have. Build once, detect everywhere. Recurring infections may otherwise plague city life and remain a consistent burden on healthcare. May not work: volume in circulation probably exceeds total combined surface area of all objects, which means that even after a surface has been cleaned, a whiff of wind could potentially transmit the virus back to it from somewhere in the volume. Thoughts.
- The more inputs a final product needs, the more opportunities to halt production once one of these becomes unavailable or a machine used along the one-piece-flow chain malfunctions. At least the post title on dependencies still seems accurate. But whether the circumstances have changed enough to make (production) robots desirable still remains unclear. They probably come with their own economics, limitations in functionality and practicality. We probably need much more advanced units than robots capable of making/serving coffee or caring about kids.
- Using the word "onboarding" in front of me makes me wonder whether you are building some kind of conveyor in which you expect me to be one of the moving pieces having no personality. If so, you will quickly learn (similarly to those before you) that it takes a certain amount of skill to respect me.
- Highly recognizable to have an architecturally well-designed museum about design. Probably won't be close to an oil station.
- If they want you to style 1000 unique elements, include 200 small images on the page (with proper src, descriptive alts and optimization), create a set of 30 unique, consistent icons of size 10px x 10px, integrate well with the 10 existing scripts they had, stop for a while and ask yourself what they are paying you for touching a single resource (a fixed cost you have). You might be surprised to find that they are taking full advantage of you just because you chose to stay silent.
- Soil doesn't like to be treated like buildings. An investor might seek to invest in land based solely on price per unit area relative to the neighborhood. If they plan to build a house on the plot, this information could be supportive of a reasonably good decision. But if they only plan to grow crops, it may not matter much that the plot is slightly/much cheaper if it was previously burdened by large amounts of agricultural contaminants (pesticides/herbicides) which will be felt for years to come. The slightly more expensive plot with cleaner, non-compacted, temporarily unused soil might be a better long-term investment if one also considers the health cost perspective.
- Which haircut would be most distinguishably-likeable per dollar spent?
- Geometrically, which means could have highest effect on production capacity in your factory?
- Is it possible for an engine to be loud (at certain rpm) while not consuming much fuel and silently consuming a lot? Thoughts on correspondence/discrepancy...
- Gulping so much ketchup in the tech industry is truly exhausting.
- The stand being 45% of the screen weight seems a bit much to me. Otherwise it's certainly great to have a 27" monitor work at 240Hz. Has someone examined system power usage in the range 60-240Hz? Perhaps a diagram explains this somewhere. Is it justified from an energy perspective to go all the way up and if not, where would you place the label "sweet spot"?
- Switch to a large directory with plenty of files full of code. Press and keep the down arrow until the selection starts moving. Then press Enter and look how far past this spot the selection will move until the file gets loaded. Room for improvement.
- The joint probability of two independent events is the product of their individual probabilities. First time seeing this from a "transfer" perspective. Perhaps a maker of a complex product who does well in many independent subcomponents is multiplying (instead of having linear growth in) its competitive advantage. Since the most complex products have the highest number of independent pieces, it must follow that their potential competitive advantage multiplier can be highest. Whether company A could then be easily remade more B-like is asking someone to use a healthy dose of skepticism.
- A default state of "no" until a strong external force wakes you up, telling you they have a situation there. Physics.
- Corona should also make you ask yourself serious questions about the invisible (if you haven't already). Perhaps every person you meet and speak with spreads some (mostly considered harmless until) germs to you in some way. Would you therefore want to meet a young child on the playground or the CEO of an international company, who traveled the world ten times and spoke at the largest conferences, went to the popular football games, cruises and walked in the most densely populated cities? Hypothesize what these droplets might contain and behave accordingly in your communication. Whether you would choose to communicate with fewer people and expect higher payments to start or risk meeting many who don't pay well, the decision is yours to make.
- 1000 people is still a third of the number of passengers on a cruise ship. If you promote this, ensure you have enough tests.
- These questionable limits of 1000 or even 250 people per event make me wonder whether someone took the time to find out the number of communication/transmission channels in such groups. Would certainly make them pull their hair and quickly realize why many teams have 4-5 people in a room. Some money which wouldn't be possible to collect seems to be the real problem here.
- In case your company can't achieve the results it wants and seeks someone else to provide them, feel free to propose your project and hope it will be accepted.
- But the stay-home time is quite suitable for picking up books on topics you find interesting, seeking ideas and implementing them in code. Reading books is slow at the start, but gets faster over time, with practice. The more often you see the same words, the faster your brain recognizes them. But content has to be information-dense and for this you will probably avoid online videos. The act of reading by yourself is more direct than having to rely on a teacher to convey the meaning in the best possible way. Sometimes not the information, but the explanation of it becomes an obstacle to understanding. Since many topics are finite, yet on their own not immediately practical, you may choose to read broadly, but then deeply in a small area of intense interest. This helped me come up with many different ideas and I am sure it will do the same for you as well. Grateful for all sources of inspiration, universally. Enjoy your growth effort and the tinkering itself, not just the end result.
- One could get fabulous flight and hotel deals now, hurry up, they say. Can't understand how such people can exist, which are ready to sacrifice human lives for their own selfish interests. Self-awareness of digging at the lowest levels could help a lot.
- Looked whether I have missed some potentially interesting titles on "The Pragmatic Bookshelf", but script loaded with custom keywords found only a couple, of which only one had an online excerpt.
- "The software present in modern vehicles (with self-driving capability) already exceeds gigabyte in size." Assuming this is only code, not any image/video captures used as input data. Seems quite complex, which explains why they consistently seek programmers to dive into it. Not me.
- Interesting, although I have yet to see how well/fast it works in practice. If someone types "purple sweater" in the searchbox, translate the word "purple" into an (r, g, b) tuple and compare its distance/similarity to an (r, g, b) tuple used as index in the products DB table. Expecting this to work well, although I'd have trouble coming up with the idea to construct a 3D index. The advantage of this is that it may capture small color nuances better than a pure match against (or search for) the keyword "purple".
- Of course, you can pay Amazon and Google for computational power and refrain from owning your own server. Will be your most expensive decision and the one they like most (making you dependent for a lifetime). If you already chose this, do not complain of your "utilities" in front of me. Won't listen.
- 60000 training and 10000 test images does not sound as material I'd be interested to touch. Would also be concerned how these were acquired and the potential number of copyrights they break. But if you wish, go ahead and run your many-core machine to obtain something you could label as "insight" inside your paper.
- I feel like I'd need to attach an external power plant to mobilize a lazy CPU with peak usage of 400W. Especially if it should be working most of the time. Compare this with the claim that the SSD Samsung 883 DCT is achieving 260-320MB/Ws in read and 140-148MB/Ws in write mode. Only a couple of watts saturate the interface.
- If possible, you could switch to a less powerful machine whenever you experience decreased need for superfast computation or can't utilize the existing capacity well. No need to waste 4-8x more watts in idle mode if all you intend to do is basic browsing, low-res video watching, reading or small-scale coding. Also helps the environment. Small tasks for small computers, big tasks for big computers.
- Thankful for not living in Germany. With a 400g Rührkuchen priced at 1.19€, I'd quickly become a diabetic.
- Had no clue that DDR4-5000 is already available bit.ly/38C3Wyh ↗
- Libraries in Lyon, France bit.ly/2xjyEPH. So many which is nice. But the bike network data was somewhat incomplete. You can also access data about recent bike availability at these bike stands and use it in your own applications.
- Classic collection by "Ubanstems" bit.ly/2xgioil ↗ has some beautiful flowers for the right occasion and person.
- "Today's beach conditions: Pollution is unlikely. Enjoy your swim!" bit.ly/2TGOBH6 ↗. Ocean temperature of 24°C at this time of the year would be uncommon here.
- So much of the value of a technology is derived by customer demand that even wide adoption by developers may not necessarily help it survive. Clients can make or break any technology, given how often they've seen "cool", but ultimately not truly helpful.
- Interesting to learn about a performance penalty arising from mixing operations between floats and doubles. Until now assumed that since they were both representing floating point numbers, they were behaving similarly behind the scenes. Perhaps a "minor" detail, but we know that these have the tendency to add up. Also liked the example where a = b * 2.5 was said to load an expensive floating point library (on a microcontroller that didn't have one), whereas a = b * (5 / 2) didn't require external calls.
- x*x*x*x*x*x*x*x = ((x**2)**2)**2 is said to be an optimization and it seems to scale rather quickly.
- Growth mindset doesn't thrive/work well together with non-payment mindset. Then both become fixed.
- Nutrients in the "bio organic" biscuit variety by "Gullon" bit.ly/2PWxZtV. Haven't seen this one previously.
- The median price of the 58 skateboards at "Element" is $55. "Timberland" has median shoe prices of $115 for men and $90 for women, while the medians for "Wolverine" are $190 and $52.50 respectively.
- The value of the service diminishes as the number of sponsors increases and the size of the sponsorship packages depends on the media audience. These two separate statements almost led me suppose that the larger the audience, the lower quality of service it gets. Have never seen an instance of "parasite marketing" (promoting without event organizer consent or paid sponsorship), but it sounds as a great injustice to me.
- Expected that "stadium naming rights" is some kind of lump sum paid once for the privilege of brand visibility. Instead, it gets paid on an annual basis (may cost millions of dollars), because otherwise the name gets changed next year.
- Do you have a reservation system to plan and manage demand?
- Saw that "Statista" had stadium sizes and ticket prices for the German Bundesliga season 2019/2020. If we assume that the biggest stadium of "Borussia Dortmund" is utilized to 50% of its existing capacity and consider the ticket price of 219€ for a standing place (said to be ≈3.5x less than the most expensive tickets), we obtain that playing at closed doors would cost this club 8.90 million euro in lost revenue per single game. Many companies would quickly fold at such rate and frequency of losses.
- "Blue light having the smallest wavelengths is scattered the most, so the sky lit by the sun appears blue." What's left now is to figure out why the grass is green and the soil is brown. But liked Rayleigh's formula with λ4 in the denominator.
- "What do you want to become when you grow up?" "Everything." (via Debbie Millman) Exactly how it must feel.
- Wavelengths, frequencies and energies of electromagnetic radiations bit.ly/2wwZzr4. Found the data as a table and visualized it to learn the relative positions of the different radiation types. The smaller the wavelength and the higher the frequency, the higher the radiation energy.
- Interesting to see different floor load requirements based on a type of building and its holdings. Values vary: 2kN/m2 for bedrooms, 3kN/m2 for offices/reading rooms, 4kN/m2 for retail shops, 5-10kN/m2 for warehouses/factories (depending on load), 4-7.5kN/m2 for garages, 5kN/m2 for stairs (built for overcrowding), 3-5kN/m2 for balconies and 10kN/m2 for large libraries. Might explain why I heard cracking sounds while walking in a library or two. Can your software withstand high load?
- Saw six mini compass arrows pointing in different directions and referring to cost, time, quality, safety, scope and function. Above, the title: "the six dials of project value". In my work found that whenever scope was well-defined, at least 2-3 of the first tended to naturally fall into place.
- "Attention to detail" and "nuance" have perhaps something in common, although as a designer one wouldn't immediately think from a behavioral perspective.
- Learned that Otis was the inventor of the elevator and remembered that I saw concrete products with this name. Here is a table with some properties of the "OTIS" lifts bit.ly/2VRdNxm. "SkyRise" is obviously much faster than the rest, which reminded me of stirred internals on some rare occasions. Eyes wouldn't notice it easily, but there seems to be a potential relationship between top speed (m/s) and max. rise (m). The higher their rise, the higher top speed these lifts tends to have. Might indicate that people dislike spending too much time inside (since these are S and v). Partially understandable to anyone who was pressed against many other people or had difficulties breathing.
- IMF data from 2019 published in Wikipedia's "List of countries by GDP (nominal)" shows that USA, EU, China, Japan and India were responsible for 71.4% of the World GDP. The downside of having a virus that paralyzes them can be significant.
- Nutrients of some "HiPP Organic" products at "Mirrisons" bit.ly/2PQhgZt. The baby needs care as well.
- Which of the 95 dry dog foods or 72 dry cat foods by "Purina" would your pet prefer and for which reasons? Do you have a good understanding how the nutrients found in both categories vary in general or do you assume there is no difference and give cat food to your dog and dog food to your cat? Can you write a script which learns the details and uses other background information to make your pet happier?
- What was previously the <blink> tag has become a five-second, high-speed video showing where they clicked, what kind of window opened, how draggable the handles on the split-screen were and how nicely the loader pops-up and animates. Give me substance.
- Quite convenient to express the need for software publicly and ask someone to open-source it so you can use it for free. Without ever having to commit precious seconds or cents towards seeing it developed. If you can't appreciate other people's work, the way you used public space will be your liability once you truly discover that indeed, you need someone to service you.
- First come, first served. Didn't come, not served.
- Sounds interesting to have 80 software subscriptions and complain of the need to regularly pay for them. Or that you feel in the dark about price changes when you can't easily identify where and when they occur.
- "Executives are given subordinates; they have to earn followers." - John W. Gardner
- Properties of the motorcycles by "Ducati" bit.ly/3avKMve. Also included are three e-bikes, but they do not seem to be too powerful relative to the rest. Even "Scrambler Sixty2" has 121.2x the power by only 7.6x the weight (although the two are very different technologies).
- Another form broken by the wrong use of JavaScript. Certain that whoever wrote it, claimed to be proficient in at least ten programming languages.
- Glanced through the report "Environmental noise in Europe - 2020" by the European Environmental Agency (EEA). Made impression that 113 million people on the continent are exposed to road traffic noise levels exceeding 55dB. The WHO recommendation for night-day noise levels by transport mode was said to be below 45-53dB for roads, 44-54dB for rail and 40-45dB for air. Also wouldn't easily come to the ideas that birds close to a nearby road might have trouble hearing their predators (Sweden's Trafikverket is implementing special measures on that) or that air noise might cause reading impairment in children. One way to reduce rail noise was said to be by keeping the rail tracks smooth. Also liked how Denmark found another purpose for its waste, non-recyclable fiberglass material left after the installment of wind turbines—they used it to create noise barriers around the road and measured a 6-7dB improvement. 7800 recycled tires/km sounds less practical to me, especially if they come with their specific smell.
- First time noticing this requirement for electric cars to emit artificial noise. (At low speeds they are said to be relatively silent, which confuses pedestrians expecting to hear them approaching.) Perhaps the equivalent of using the modern framework that wasn't needed. But I'd think of reducing the noise of fossil-fueled cars first. If it reaches the same level, then the noise of an electric car won't be masked once they approach a citizen at the same time.
- Hoping that "digital" made traders on the pit floor reluctant to shout, gesture and lip-read. So much energy wasted to signal price & volume.
- The "hanging cable" problem bit.ly/2vBEf3i ↗
- Made a small diagram to explain myself the known voting results in the USA (as of 04.03.2020) bit.ly/2VJg9ys. Many places still appear unresolved, exactly as the source claimed.
- Finding stops with many intersecting lines in Amsterdam bit.ly/2VIak4f. "Centraal Station", "Waterlooplein" and "Dam" seem to be among the most lively. Led me learn about Royal Palace and the daily flea market near Amstel river.
- Fresh fruit arrangements by "edible" bit.ly/3cuBSA8 ↗. Interesting idea which seems to be inspired by flower bouquets. Haven't seen it before, but wonder how easy it is to make the pieces stay together and protect the overall aesthetic from potential grab-threats.
- Wondering: Can a strong wind storm overturn a camping caravan? Haven't seen anything similar, but if it can demolish buildings (e.g. some in Nashville), then the caravan must be an even easier target. Perhaps the camper doesn't necessarily buy from a safety viewpoint. Increased convenience/flexibility may be come with somewhat reduced safety.
- Going to the cheap places where lots of people gather may become expensive for your health. Penny-pinching thoughts.
- Estimate how much you are going to need. If you instinctively buy two packs with 6 flours, each weighting 2kg and you know that one bread uses 280g (while also using another type of flour), you will have enough material for 24/0.280 ≈ 86 breads. Do you expect each member of your family to eat an equal portion of that?
- House prices and floor areas in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Seattle, Washington D.C. and New York City bit.ly/39jJNOH. New York seems to have the biggest properties on sale overall. San Francisco has the highest median prices, followed by Los Angeles, which also has the highest median floor areas among the offers in these cities on "Zillow".
- You probably remember the three cities from today's triangle. Used data available on "Zillow" to create KDE over their housing prices and floor areas bit.ly/2wjTtKq. Enjoy.
- Cistern material optimization bit.ly/2VCOhvD. Perhaps you can spot a mistake here.
- Тhat fluid in motion has distribution of velocity over its mass is something which only careful observation of its dynamics is likely able to uncover.
- Normalized biweekly income left (after taxes and expenses) to population density for some US cities bit.ly/39fReGv. Used two existing sources to create this diagram. Among the 19 listed cities, those with most favorable ratios were Nashville (Tennessee), Tulsa (Oklahoma), San Jose (California) and Birmingham (Alabama). While Bridgeport (Connecticut) was said to have the highest biweekly income left, its population density is relatively high, so it comes 5th in the third diagram. Three of these five form an interesting (appearing almost right) triangle.
- From "2018 renewable energy data book": Global hydropower, wind and solar PV generation capacities were 1.2TW, 564GW and 480.6GW respectively (for this year). Solar seems to gradually catch-up with wind.
- Saw NREL's eagle spanning over several wardrobes (assuming modern clothes inside). Written below is "SGI 8600".
- Specific strength (strength-to-weight ratio) for some materials bit.ly/2uJDmp9. Interesting that pine wood (American eastern white) comes with higher value than some aluminium and magnesium alloys. Carbon-based materials (especially graphene) stand out with visibly higher specific strength.
- Dimmable lights efficacy bit.ly/3atsZFh
- Adding value allows you to subtract payments while not feeling terrible about it.
- Just-in-time and just-after-payment web manufacturing gives some good results.
- Price distributions for new and used cars at "PlazaHonda", Brooklyn, New York bit.ly/2Tdxldu. Shows a small shift.
- A short excerpt of the potentially interesting second-hand "Porsche" cars at "Gocar", Belgium, which my script found among the 903 available cars bit.ly/2VBzLEu. One of these looks quite old.
- Went through what was visible about the "Food fix" book. 12 plant and 5 animal sources of food does not seem too diversified to me. Disliked that the seeds are intentionally kept to ease the chemical sales. Yearly desertification equivalent to the territory of North Korea exceeded expectations, but liked the idea of using grass-fed (not corn-fed) animals to regenerate the soil (enriching it with gut bacteria), even though scaling this may be quite hard to practice. Didn't think that fertilizer production may emit 100x more methane than producers claim. By reported use of 200 million tons of fertilizers and methane said to have 20x the impact of a CO2, a factor of 400 billion (relative to unit CO2/ton emissions) arises. Disliked the dumping of chemicals in seas/rivers, growing fish-dead zones and "mercury-laden" tuna and halibut.
- Unsure why anyone would want to place a giant mirror on the TV-opposite wall. For an extra display? Only one + the football/F1 acoustics would be sufficient to irritate me.
- The 100th offer at "Foxtons" when you select "rent" and search "London" came at £1500/month, which is exactly as stated in a recent article. Let's hope that the inability to afford own place and the need to co-live with several other people won't easily fan the corona flames.
- You can also see the overall price distribution showing that the previously mentioned car is not among the most cheap/expensive. If one found more time to explore the new cars, they could compare their distribution against this one. Possible to see is also how price changes with mileage for the used cars. No clue whether "Mazda RX-7 Turbo 3dr" (2017, 146800km, £14995) at "Pentraeth Automotive" could be good. Appears as an easy to spot outlier here.
- Wrote a mini script to look across 45 pages with a total of 3152 used Mazda cars and help identify potentially interesting ones bit.ly/2Tp44M7. Don't know whether a mileage given as "1km" means that the car is new, yet sold as second-hand one. This is interesting and you will have to ask the seller to find out. For instance "Coventry Mazda" sells "Mazda6 2.2d Sport Nav+ 4dr" (2019, 1km, £21390), which script believes to be a good offer. Overall, "Brindley - Wolverhampton" in the UK seems like a good place to look for second hand offers by this car maker. Hope it helps.
- Perhaps "recently returned from" is no longer the determining factor. Perhaps someone without mask was ill on a previous flight and left corona virus on the seat handle (hepathitis B can survive on surfaces for good amount of time). And the same airplane got then reused for several more flights without being properly cleaned. When you know how often public transport gets cleaned (think of buses), ask yourself how probable this scenario is. And since airplanes are spaces optimized for high people density (linked with easier virus spread), it is possible that airplane interior is now a spread factor. The fluid speed is fastest through the thinnest pipe.
- Tried to find at least one representative of each category at "nuts.com" to see whether any nutrient differences will become apparent bit.ly/38aLNHD. Had to check extra that I didn't mistakenly type a wrong value in the case with "organic black soybeans", but this didn't seem to be the case (if the data is correct). None of the nuts seem to have cholesterol and their sodium amount is either very low or absent. "Raw macadamia nuts" seem to have the highest fat content and therefore give the most energy (cal). "Unsweetened coconut chips" are rich in saturated fat, which is not surprising. "Raw brazil nuts" turn out to have a very high amount of dietary fiber (64.29g), which is interesting. Most protein among the observations in this short list have "Organic soy beans" (35.71g), with peanuts and almonds approaching 25g and 20g respectively.
- Sometimes it's not the most attractive design which is right. You aren't here to be attractive, but to accomplish a task effectively while shipping a high-quality product. So when hardware vendors show their pages with blinking lights and colorful hardware, it is left to wonder whether they are here to appeal to visual senses or convince anyone in the real-time performance of their products (not shown at all). Similarly, the beautiful orange, blue and green cakes may use a lot of dye with the sole purpose to attract curious eyes, but are they necessarily healthier than the products without artificial colors? Good design works without much fanfare and fireworks.
- Flightradar24 shows a lot of flights in real-time. Although the page may not win a contest for its aesthetics, its information is likely useful to a lot of people.
- Available again next week (for client projects). Meanwhile, if you wish, do the work yourself.
- Polyhedra/geometry is even in the invisible.
- The argument that because survival rates of young and old people are quite different, the virus doesn't hurt the first group much might be a weak one. Sometimes immune systems get weaker so that a second virus could finish them. Also, this self-compression ability could mean that a virus remains latent/unnoticed for a long time until it becomes beneficial to activate and kill.
- If you kept seeing white swans sufficiently often in your life, would you conclude that black ones don't exist?
- What if the mask is "ineffective" because the virus enters through your eyes? Interesting to learn that some viruses have this ability, although coronaviruses were not listed to be among them. Probably can't hurt to at least think of such protection and the probability of being infected this way from this new variant.
- Okay, IoT may be too cheap to detect it. Can't think in terms of Angströms, but find nanometers more relateable. If virus size is approx. as big as a single transistor in our most advanced CPUs, detection can occur only with optics of highest sensitivity (which may cost $100000+). This is simply not scalable, at least not in the sense IoT works. My mistake. Viruses are said to be able to persist for a long time (sometimes years) and have the ability to mutate. Also didn't like that coronavirus was said to have the longest genome of any RNA virus. Possibly makes it more complex to analyze and decipher how it operates (assuming a subsequence maps to a function). And virus RNA has higher variance than the one of plants or animals. Additionally, if the virus genome can minimize its size over time (perhaps compress), I understand this as a form of self-optimization. All this doesn't sound good. Still remembering when Bill Gates spoke about the threat of viruses and how some people were quick to laugh. If you never saw a breath-taking multi-dimensional sequence, you probably have no clue what you are laughing at.
- New rhino in Denver zoo looks cute.
- What about implementing a simple button with a label "In quarantine"? Doesn't say anything whether someone is ill or not, only that someone around them is. No sensitive information gets shared. Enables to track the rate of change in the spread of the virus (and also the approximate times it gets detected). Unfortunately, many social networks already did everything possible to lose their users, so I don't expect this to give a good overview of the real situation. Wherever advertising went, nothing thrived. But perhaps an idea nevertheless (wearables etc.). If you were a health agency, what kind of specialists would you use to seek understanding of the disease? I was thinking about the graph edges yesterday (network analyst), since it gets transmitted by air (assuming masks wouldn't be so popular otherwise). We already have PM2.5 sensors for fine particle detection, so I wondered whether we were missing something specific about air attributes. If such sensor is available (hardware sensor designer), deploying mini devices and collecting IoT data in real-time could reveal which spaces are safe and which aren't (data scientist). Perhaps much cheaper for the broader economy than abandoning/locking entire cities, factories and costly infrastructure that was built over decades. So far we have used isolation for (an ounce of) prevention, but perhaps very little networked IoT (What you can't measure, you can't improve.) and we are already thinking about an expensive-to-develop, test and produce-at-scale vaccine (the pound of cure). No clue what I'm speaking about.
- Only 168 of the 222 watches by "Vacheron Constantin" had known prices, the median of which came out as 29550 CHF (max: 94000 CHF). This might appear extremely expensive at first. But then you view it from another perspective—that of the average annual salary for different professions in Switzerland bit.ly/37Zmt7m ↗. Considering these numbers, it comes at 92000 CHF. This means that it is quite possible for the average worker to afford such luxury watch in less than a year. But if the high price led you to reject this possibility from the start, your mind was perhaps not open enough to receive it. Not saying you should be buying one, but that the way you frame everything happening in your life matters a lot.
- Someone made a map of the breweries in Germany bit.ly/2T6iYrI ↗, which was exactly what I was looking for. Density seems to be especially high to the north of Nürnberg, which is interesting. When I was in Ulm, I used to work for a short time in "Brauerei Gold Ochsen", which partially helped me better concentrate on my studies (on which I still failed). After realizing that I was giving Germany much more than receiving, while feeling disrespected, the right time has come to leave. To this day I don't regret it. Yet, it also made me review my way of working with German companies. Those who can't meet a special rigorous criteria will not be able to see their problems solved.
- From "corp" to "corpse", the distance might be shorter than you think.
- In NYC subway system, it seems that three stations on "Queens Boulevard" line ("Steinway St", "Lexington Av-53rd St" and "36th St") and three on "6 Avenue" line ("York St", "Smith-9th St", "Church Av") may require more walking (from entrance to station). Perhaps you know from experience whether this is true.
- "Topf: 1363 Ergebnisse" at "OBI". All appear inviting and looking for new plants, although brick-brown color is not exactly my taste.
- Better to tell me you won't load due to my region rather than keep me waiting on an eternal spinner. The second I remember even more vividly (and note your brand name).
- Coffees at "LaColombe" bit.ly/380lt2T ↗. Not a coffee drinker, but liked the taste descriptions of the type "sweet, fruity, nutty" or "bright, citrusy, tangy".
- Nutrients of the fish products by "Bumble Bee" bit.ly/2PoSsYg. Hard to notice visible patterns here. "Gourmet Brisling Wild Sardines" seem to be more caloric than usual and the canned solid white albacore (tuna) appears richer in protein.
- Nutrients in the canned fish and meat products by "Brunswick" bit.ly/39aJPIN. First thing we notice is that the only two meats at the end (Vienna sausages) have the most saturated fat per 100g. The sardines are slightly lighter on it, while having higher Omega-3 content (up to 2.36g), a good amount of protein and calcium, but also a bit more cholesterol. Richest in Omega-6 here is "Flaked tuna with smoke flavour". We also notice how chunked tuna and some mackerel variants are said to be richer in protein (up to 24g).
- Wouldn't expect information about a single book on "Barnes & Noble" to be over 10kB of supporting code, not including the image. At least what "edit HTML" told me. Despite showing only 20 books by default, they still transfer 2.3MB of compressed content (over 6.6MB of resources). Lots of scripts, so finish time with monitoring console open became 59.43s bit.ly/2PnwTHy.
- Public transport stops in Calgary, Canada bit.ly/2Tg6FHT
- "Funded emergency shelters daily occupancy AB" bit.ly/2TbmXAA ↗ shows that the biggest shelter in Alberta is "River Front" in Calgary with capacity for 850 people. But two others dedicated to short-term support (capacity of 270 people) and winter emergencies (120 funded places) carry the same name.
- Don't know how people stare at certain stock price charts all day. Look as if generated by an old software, which probably worked fine initially and for this reason was never changed.
- One of the things they teach you in software engineering is to refrain from using the word "product" to label something that doesn't have a proper documentation. Instead, what it has are 300 clickable pages listed in no logical order, without clarity or good sense of purpose, editable at any time. The API is allowed to dominate/overwhelm, while the practical use cases are kept at minimum and mentioned as secondary. By doing this you show two things: 1) you have no clue how to use the web as a medium and 2) your understanding of what comprises a good software product is spurious. Sadly, more such "products" are coming from multi-billion dollar corporations lately, which (concerns me) may set a bad example for others to follow. No, you don't have a product in the same way the words you say don't have much weight unless appearing in the written contract. Create a proper documentation (especially if it has to be used by many thousands of people) and then call it a product in front of me. Would have been hard for my tear-apart teacher to give you such a mild response.
- Company culture could also mean that if a single individual of your company shows disrespect in any form, your entire company goes. A double-edged sword.
- If you paid properly, the chance to hear about your software in the news would have been lower. But you might disagree (in fact you are invited to), of course. Unfortunately, paying properly without working with the right people is still insufficient and only inflates what you will have to pay in the future.
- This white radio looks nice bit.ly/2HRQEml ↗. No clue whether it captures speech from web design/programming conferences.
- Took a quick look at "The economics of solar power in Canada" bit.ly/37ZOyv7 ↗ to try to identify places with good median annual electricity generation (MWh) from solar panels. Among the top 50 locations most were reported in Ontario (26) and Alberta (16). Showing a clear diagram is impossible, but we can see 5 clusters: (Scudder, Klondyke, St. Joachim, Elmstead, Stoney Point, Prairie Siding, Grande Pointe), (Gosport, Victoria, Carman and slightly further apart Moons Caverns, Wilmer, Perth Road, Desert Lake, Bedford and Scotch Point), (Snowville, Wikwemikong, Key River, Collins Inlet and Beaverstone Bay), (Lyleton, Minton, Goodwater, Halbrite) and the biggest cluster (Aetna, Leavitt, Spring Coulee, New Dayton, Stirling, Pincher, Brocket, Lethbridge, Coaldale, Diamond City, Barnwell). Each of these had 42 observations among a total of slightly over 900000.
- Made a small pile of spheres bit.ly/2HTgGFT. Once shading was added, camera adjustment became really hard and I didn't even use max detail.
- Didn't realize that if you inscribe equal-height prisms in a triangular pyramid and then "tap" on one of its side faces, the top vertex could move away so as to expand a staircase to the second floor. Math worlds.
- This week too is great for working towards work avoidance.
- If you felt proud while saying "... traveled to x countries last year", watch "National Geographic", because where you've been physically interests me exactly one iota before seeing where you've been mentally. In fact, the latter is a common reason why conversations between us won't happen.
- The turning radius of a car is important to catch the iguana outside the road without having to inform it of your intention via yellow light first. A cheetah would even run sideways for that.
- "... blue 1, ascorbic acid (to protect taste), calcium disodium (to protect color)." Anything else to make the product optically cool and marketable at the expense of the ill consumer?
- Another easy-to-squander chance to leave an impression with your project this week. But if you choose to miss it, perhaps the work wasn't that important.
- Also tried to learn about coconut milk by "So Delicious" bit.ly/38Rpp7e
- Nutrients in the almond milk by "Silk" bit.ly/2T9MJXd. Does not include the other types of milk in this kingdom of variety: soy milk, oat milk, silk protein (10g in 240ml), coconut milk, cashew milk, silk DHA omega-3, lattes, dairy-free yogurt alternatives and shelf-stable bit.ly/37Ue30U ↗. But if you wish, you could create your own tables, accepting that available attributes between types may vary.
- A "Chalo" bag looks like a yellow ticket on which is written "Final destination: SEA (Seattle)". Bulbed this idea easily.
- Heart box by "Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory" bit.ly/3c4dHYO. Likely having whole-year relevance, but ten-day endurance.
- Common keywords and their years of occurrence in the novel titles by Agatha Christie bit.ly/2T7GJhH. Tried to look for patterns in a minor aspect of her work. Seems that she was especially preoccupied with the topics of "murder" and "death" between 1934 and 1939 (age 44-49), but it is easy to see how the former covered her entire work life.
- Solar energy production in Calgary, Canada bit.ly/2SRNzJ6 (Source: City of Calgary Open Data, bit.ly/2vaaNkJ ↗). Counted 11 sites here. Interesting that among the top 3 producers are two water treatment plants. Perhaps the facilities are built in a way which facilitates the installation of many solar panels. The three biggest seem to be "Bearspaw Water Treatment Plant" (median production of 54.738kWh/day, might be a 6kW system), "Whitehorn Multi-Service Centre" (50.678kWh/day) and "Glenmore Water Treatment Plant" (30.579kWh/day). June-July appear to have been most productive for most sites.
- Could there be a difference of housing prices by city district? Perhaps a case for a beautiful choropleth.
- The freshness at "Wegmans" has its own price tag. After converting oz. to kg, the 32 oz. strawberry family pack comes cheapest at $7.76/kg (organic ones at $10.93/kg), while the cheapest blueberries can be found at $13.76/kg (the 18 oz. family pack).
- "Grower's selection blueberries (250g)" at "ASDA" are currently available at £7.60/kg, which is almost like a strawberry price elsewhere. And I liked the way how I could sort by price in the "fruit → berries and cherries" category.
- Goals against, goals scored and points for the teams in 1. Bundesliga (22.02.2020) bit.ly/2HJPid9. Used a Google page to construct the diagram. Unfortunately not all teams have played an equal number of games, the difference being up to one. Interesting how teams with good defense gained a lot of points even if their attack wasn't as effective as that of the top 3 performers. You can also see how goals scored and goals received change with club rank bit.ly/2ur1g8K.
- Tried to understand how prevalent the keyword "10th Gen" is among the Costco's laptop inventory bit.ly/2VoLAOv and it seems that around a third of all models already meet this description. While they start from $399, by adding $100 more one could get the same CPU (1005G1, 1.2-3.4Ghz, 4MB cache) with 2x the RAM (8GB) and 4x the SSD size (512GB). And if one adds $30 more ($530), they even get a better CPU (1035G1, 1.0-3.6Ghz, 6MB cache (+50%)) with 12GB RAM (+50%) and 512GB SSD bit.ly/38PVywb ↗. Nice.
- Clusters of numbers bit.ly/2Pfvcvs
- Diagonal size vs. power consumption for 4K TVs by "Philips" bit.ly/2SNsRu0
- "Redmere Farms Mushrooms (380g)" at "Tesco" are only £2.16/kg. Would be hard to find such a price here. However, seeing the other options, one may want to pay a bit more for an organic product, if possible. In this case, "Tesco Organic White Mushrooms (290g)" (£3.13/kg) may appear interesting. As expected, "Tesco Finest Wild Mushrooms (100g)" sound as rare finds and their corresponding price is the most expensive (£20.00/kg).
- We also need bio washing detergents. Get rid of those chemicals. As a rule of thumb, if someone wouldn't apply one on their body instead of liquid soap, then something is wrong. You expect a weak effect after thorough wash? Then think how frequently it gets applied and whether it accumulates inside the body. In case you consider it a detergent day.
- An impressive amount of work must have been done to design 144 maps for bus/rail routes in Los Angeles. Here is how a single line (bus 55/355) looks like bit.ly/32iFD71
- Quick demonstration of finding products (in this case berries) in Tesco's fresh food item catalog bit.ly/2v5ACCC. At the time of writing, there were 3971 items. Noticed that switching to "berry" revealed several milk types, which was not what I was looking for. The prices are in UK pounds. One of the fruits looks fairly interesting here.
- Nutrients in the bars by "Lärabar" bit.ly/2T6ZnpN. Saw these in the same brochure. Since the values were extrapolated from smaller amounts, it is reasonable to interpret the zeros as "somewhere close to zero". Kids seem to get special sugary treatment here. The most common ingredients in these 40 products were dates (34), almonds (26), sea salt (17), cachews (14). cane sugar (9), apples (9) and cinnamon (8).
- Missing the keys from the libraries sometimes. Especially those with rich scientific inventories and programming books.
- Of course, doing more interesting research than looking at nutrition tables is much better, but you need to have the resources for it as it isn't cheap.
- Nutrients in the "Clif" and "Luna" bars by "CLIF Bar & Company" bit.ly/38O2cTp. They have so many products (this is only a small excerpt) that it is hard to enlist them without making table colors less expressive. Decided to include only the bars. The first thing we notice is that "Luna" bars are $1.10 (41.8%) more expensive per 100g ($3.73 vs. $2.63) if this matters to you. The median "Luna" will give you 13.3% more energy likely because of its higher fat content, but it also has only 60.7% of the total sugar seen in "Clif". "Lunas" alre also said to be lower in calcium, phosphorus and magnesium. If we look at all products, we can easily see that "Builders" series contain the most protein (29.4g at a price of $2.93/100g), while "Luna Protein" comes a close second (26.7g protein in 100g at $3.98/100g). The latter can have on average ≈30% more iron and 57.5% less magnesium. A total of 79 products were considered, excluding the product mixes available on their website.
- Peanuts, almonds and pistachios sounds like a good combination bit.ly/38MEver
- Unsure what kind of business exists at "1500BLK Delaware Ave" in Santa Monica. Open Data shows relatively high median water usage of ≈426l/day (over 75 monthly probes) (≈2.2x the rate of the next-biggest user), but GMaps does not indicate the place with a label. However, it is not too far from a wide-area polygon whose purpose has been described as "disposal and recycling". Could dealing with junk be quite water-intensive?
- Made a diagram with the count vs. median two-year growth (2016-2018) by sector for the 100 fastest growing companies in Calofornia (according to "Inc.") bit.ly/2SPexBr. Interesting to see (in this small selection) that many companies are in "software", but their growth is even lower than the one in "advertising & marketing". On the other hand, "media" and "travel & hospitality" are less well represented, but seem to enjoy extreme growth. Among the top locations for these companies were San Francisco (12), Los Angeles (8), Santa Monica (6), Irvine (6), San Diego (5), San Jose (4), Oakland (3).
- Guess its a laptop where the keyboard frequency dominates the screen frequency bit.ly/2SIXlgG. You probably felt it if your keystrokes started to appear one by one in your code editor.
- Prepare to map 2D images to cube faces bit.ly/2SL9y4t
- Noticed an interesting pattern in San Jose: Many "Capitol" car houses next to each other. Zoom level allowed me to capture at most six, although I found nine. Below you can see the median prices for the vehicles sold at each bit.ly/2uSC3Ew
- A simple "cars in traffic" animation bit.ly/2vM8KDF. No JS usage.
- Hint: Don't put "nutritional" among your menu links with the intent to spread a PDF document. Might be the only link which works differently where you want to ensure consistency. This is done surprisingly often.
- Nutrients in the smoothies and juices by "Jamba" bit.ly/2Pd3Nuq. Used only integers due to limited screen space. Only three juices were available. It seems that if one is looking for lots of microelements, "acai super-antioxidant" and "orange-c booster" appear to be the best options. Some potentially interesting relationships specific to this data: coppper-vitamin K (0.98), vitamin D-vitamin B12 (0.98), zinc-vitamin B6 (0.98), protein-cholesterol (0.91), niacin-vitamin A (0.90), dietary fibers-vitamin A (0.88), calcium-phosphorus (0.59).
- Nutrients in the pretzels by "Auntie Anne's" bit.ly/38PIO8Q
- Noticed that "Uniqlo" is having cashmere sweaters on sale in case this matters to you.
- Google Translate translated a dutch article claiming an average monthly rent of 1290€ in Amsterdam. Good that I never went to seek out the truth empirically.
- Looked at the planned arrivals for tomorrow at Zürich Airport (20.02.2020). 13 flights are expected to come from London Heathrow, 11 from Berlin, 10s from London City and Frankfurt, 9s from Düsseldorf, Vienna and Paris, 8s from Amsterdam, Madrid and Munich, 7s from Hamburg and Geneva. Wait, no 6s?
- Body composting for sustainable death bit.ly/2ubuvMy ↗. "Smells good", while not there to sense it, might be how success looks like.
- The website of Melbourne Airport showed a virus warning message and I wondered to what extent airport operations might have been affected. Had no base for comparison, but remembered the previous flight arrival counts at Heathrow Airport, which were captured on 07.12.2019 (or shortly before the outbreak). Compared these arrivals for selected destinations against today's arrivals bit.ly/2V4A0Ia. As you can see, flights from Beijing and Shanghai seem to have been somewhat reduced. On the other side, those from the already top arriving locations increased further: New York (129 → 139), Amsterdam (61 → 86), Edinburgh (59 → 78), Dublin (52 → 57).
- Couldn't find weight of the two "Model Y" variants as well as weight and cargo for roadster at Tesla's website. So script did not consider them from an elementary numeric perspective. But it believes that if cargo is not important, "Model 3 Long Range" might be interesting. If cargo is, it shows a clear preference for "Model X Performance" over the second "Model S Performance" (at 5% increase in price, 21.7% decrease in range and 11% increase in weight, one gets a 210% increase in cargo capacity). Attributes considered: speed (mph), acceleration (s) (0-60mph), range (km), weight (kg), cargo (liters), price ($).
- Explored few properties of the F1 racing circuits bit.ly/37FhgRQ. The longest circuit seems to be the one in Belgium with its 7.004km. (Only you know whether this is bikeable.) Most races seem to be designed for a total distance of about 305-310km.
- Of course, you can see more once you start paying the right amounts for the service you require.
- Torque vs. output for different truck series by "SCANIA" bit.ly/2HAbq9S. Added some jitter to avoid perceiving overlapping circles as single units. Considers only "Euro 6" engines.
- Noticed that Apple makes its "Buy" buttons so small that they become hardly clickable bit.ly/3bNRuy8. Unfortunately, certain design rules are universally valid, even for Apple.
- "Data suggests which variables should be considered important within the model". "Modeling in healthcare" clearly signifies the connection between data analysis and mathematical modeling.
- "Pieces of mathematics have objective features that explain how much control we have over them." - Timothy Gowers. Appreciate this insight, since it wouldn't be easy to come to it by myself.
- Sweater prices by gender at "Bloomingdale's" bit.ly/2SxQZAG. Another violinplot, although one side of it is fairly hard to see. Turns out, there are 8 times as many sweaters for women as there are for men, but the median price for the latter group is ≈25% higher. Cut out from the top as the thin line goes to around 5000.
- Interesting matrix on rotation around three angles bit.ly/2V0QzEG. Might have seen a variant of it on StackOverflow as well.
- Or you could power yourself with the protein bars by "RXBar" bit.ly/2SQ2Vg9. 12 bars x 52g for $26 means that 100g will cost you $4.16. What I like about these is that they are made of very few ingredients (median of 7 vs. 16 for those by "Quest"). The most common in the 17 bars were found to be dates (17), natural flavors (15), cashews (13), egg whites (13) almonds (11), chocolate (10), sea salt (8), cocoa (7). The less common ones were peanuts, raspberries, cinnamon, mint, pecans, strawberries, cranberries, hazelnuts, coconut, coffee, blueberries, lemon, bananas, walnuts, apples, cherries. Looks great if the description fully resembles reality. Protein content is said to be 23% (instead of the previous 33%), but maybe it is possible to live with that.
- Here is a densely packed protein bar table to power your next week bit.ly/2HrvLyh. Enabled by "Quest Nutrition". Since most of these are 60g in packs of 12 at $25, the cost of 100g comes at almost $3.50. Common ingredients are soluble corn fiber (26), milk & whey protein isolates (each 26 times), water (25), almonds (23), stevia (21), erythritol (19), sunflower lecithin (15), sea salt (14), baking soda (12), xanthan gum (10), sucralose (10), palm kernel oil (9). Have no idea what erythritol is; first time seeing it included in the carbohydrates category.
- Road bike price distribution by brand at "Wheelworld" bit.ly/32anGrn
- Pizza prices by pie size at "Pizza Bella Ristorante" bit.ly/2Hz5Rs9. Once again, the largest seems to offer most value for the money.
- Clicked on an element, or thought so, but because another transparent one was having a very wide padding and was sitting on top, it got activated first, sending me to the wrong place.
- Ran a script on the used trucks at "Milea" (mileatruck.com), considering truck age, mileage and price. Among these "2014 Hino 195H with 19' refrigerated body" (46115km @ $38000) was seen as most interesting, whereas the most expensive "2015 Volvo VNL" (43032km @ $55000) came third. But this says nothing about build quality. Never heard of "Hino" before, but 12 of the 19 models were by this brand.
- Prices by type of razor for the products at "The Art of Shaving" bit.ly/3bAkUzI. Didn't expect to see that straight razors could be more expensive than electric shavers.
- Alcohol content in bottled beers at "Valhalla Hell's Kitchen" bit.ly/2vDLIOW
- These fabrics look nice bit.ly/2uP6BXA. Tencel is also mentioned.
- First time seeing barcodes below every product and wondering about their importance to the buyer. Gives the page good structure. Yet, if you remember, design was both about what to include and what to exclude (choices).
- On first read missed that "networkx" has algorithms for graph coloring, min-cut functionality and ability to use predefined vertex positions ("pos" attribute of the draw_networkx method). Also that "scikit-learn" has bin discretizer, label encoder and kd-tree allowing directly kernel density estimation and point queries in a radius. Reminded me of the spatial cKDTree in "scipy", but the latter doesn't have the kernel density method. Used "seaborn" KDE plot a couple of times, but due to lots of data the wait wasn't very enjoyable.
- Coverage can be perfect too since anyone can say "it wasn't me".
- Wondering how easy it is for three authors of a book to find each others' mistakes (if they even read their work). Do 20 mediocre authors of a book make for a good one? Some publishers are betting on that and I fear the possible devastating effect on their publishing houses.
- "Deployed systems typically contain many moving parts..." Perhaps one should charge by the part then. Otherwise the project enables opportunists to claim that since it is a single, cohesively-simple unit, its price should be cheap independent of how many parts it has or how many hours went into it. Wrong. Single disliked project proposal and out you are.
- Saw a small reportage on the extent of human suffering in Syria and realized how little I knew about this country. Made a small diagram of the city locations and relative population sizes (according to WorldPopulationReview) bit.ly/2SHatBQ. As you can see, there is a fictive line passing through 9 of the biggest 15 cities.
- You have to be concrete with the properties of this concrete.
- "Like all good mathematics, good applied mathematics is original and imaginative in the invention and use of its concepts and in its tentative modeling constructions." - Weyl. Also liked his phrase "imaginative mathematical flexibility", which could be relevant even in this decade.
- Ran a small script on the refrigerators at "Wayfair" looking for big total capacity at small unit price. Second among the results came their "President's Day Deal", a 17.6 cu. ft. model by "Samsung" bit.ly/37t7cv7, which is now shown to be out of stock. After that comes a 8.8 cu. ft. model by "Summit Appliance" bit.ly/2SIG99P, which many reviewers seem to be happy with. And then a bit more expensive is a 18 cu. ft. model by "Daewoo" bit.ly/2ONByCc. No clue how good these might be. Interesting that the slope of the fitted line informs us that 1 cu. ft. of additional capacity might be connected with a price increase of ≈$100 bit.ly/2SJZMhN.
- Better to avoid blurring content on hover to show it is clickable. Especially with is a series of slides, which cover a third of the screen. Whenever someone uses the keys to scroll, they will wonder why some slides selectively become unreadable... before noticing the cursor.
- When you break a heart and know that speaking with "in the meantime" tone would be seen as rude bit.ly/2HmRt6y, why are you designing your page this way? Have you double-checked whether you allow yourself to speak for others what they love? Despite understanding what the page is about, its design feels so much out of place.
- When you make the machines for gamers cheap, science becomes expensive.
- "Lazy image loading" somehow speaks directly to a lazy programmer like me.
- Looked through 44 "Danone Activia" products bit.ly/31OtWVd before noticing that the values captured refered to different serving sizes. Won't be able to provide a table this time (you could fix my mistake), but only list some common ingredients found: kosher gelatin & modified food starch (both 44 times), water (40), cane sugar (33), agar agar (32), vitamin D3 (28), calcium lactate (25), milk calcium (20), strawberries (19), sodium citrate (18), cultured grade A reduced fat milk (18), lactic acid (17), carragenan (17), malic acid (16), modified corn starch (16), xanthan gum (14).
- Any idea what soups made with "MAGGI" might contain? Here is the table bit.ly/2uucaKZ of what is said to be left once the original product is cooked. As you can see, many values approach zeros, which means that without adding more ingredients, the soup won't be very nutritious. Additionally, we can see that iodised salt, yeast extract, sugar, potato starch, palm fat, sunflower oil, parsley and turmeric are the most mentioned among all ingredients.
- Haven't verified it until now, but it works as expected: if you have a normal and a masked matrix of the same shape and place any operator between them, the result is a masked matrix as well (numpy). However, unsure whether there is a way to swap only the masked locations between them (the masked becoming normal and vice versa). Or undesirable?
- "International" has so many trucks bit.ly/2SCV99s, that it is hard to know how they differ. Perhaps you could find the best type of visualization to aid better understanding of anyone who is exploring truck options.
- San Francisco used dynamic pricing to regulate occupancy rates and reduce the amount of cruising (driving to seek a parking place), the yearly cost of which was estimated at two round trips to the moon, according to "Access" magazine.
- Interesting clusters bloom.bg/31NEcgt. Guess this means that as a software programmer, one is more likely to want to switch into research, information retrieval or web development rather than seek a carreer as a car dealer or wedding planner. Realized that in one form or another, I have also worked on things that were close and avoided work with long inter-cluster distance.
- Not drinking coffee or able to distinguish which one is latte, mocha, cappucino or espresso. To me they all look and feel the same, although I wondered (without tasting) how they differ and what this means for a regular drinker. Here is a table of the ingredients as they were described on the "Starbucks" page bit.ly/3byofze. Took this brand, because it was the first I could think of and they also have many coffee variants (data). "Espresso" and "Espresso con Panna" were scaled to 16 fl oz from 1.5 fl oz, so you can expect to see some imperfections. The same is valid for "Espresso Macchiato", but it serves to tell us, perhaps, that these three espressos are much richer in caffeine (1500mg) than the rest. If one is looking for coffee with the least amount of caffeine, there are five "decaf" variants with 25-30mg only (finally learned what this word means). "Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha" seems to be the most caloric with its 510cal (and 72g sugar). Wouldn't consume this on a daily basis if I was afraid of diabetes. Also nice to see how the calorie-colors of the many lattes tend to be lighter than those of the many mochas.
- "Mercedes-Benz" does not seem to specify car weight in the same way TCL doest not specify "on" power usage of their TVs (only "stand-by"). Reluctant to share the inconvenient, but this is precisely what a buyer should be looking for, since it gives a clue of the degree of transparency they can expect during service. At least, Mercedes specifies acceleration and horsepower (likely connected with force), so one may be able to indirectly infer something approximate about mass. But as Steve Krug would say, "don't make me think".
- Some properties of 10th generation desktop and mobile CPUs by "Intel" bit.ly/2tL2hbc. The desktop CPUs have a TDP rated at 11x that of mobile CPUs, but they have 10-18 cores as opposed to 2-6 cores and base frequencies that can be more than 3x higher.
- To clarify, I prefer not to consume fish/meat unless having no other choice. Such material is used for purely exploratory reasons with the intent to inform, not to decide or promote consumption that is harmful for the environment.
- Nutrients in the fresh fish at "Nordsee" bit.ly/2SzEKCI. Tried to work with data about minimally processed food. Preserved the original labels (in German) in the upper diagram. Wikipedia said that "Matjes" was actually a type of herring, so I treated it like one for the bottom diagram, where it came before salmon (Lachs) and shrimp (Garnelle) types. If you look at the previous Gaussians ("John West"), you may see the same pattern for the first two, which is interesting.
- Script went through 83 HP laser printers bit.ly/2ONI8ZA, looking for relatively speedy devices for the price (ppm/$). First five models that came out: "HP LaserJet Pro M102w Printer" (23ppm, $90), "HP LaserJet Pro M15w Printer" (19ppm, $90), "HP LaserJet Pro M203dw Printer", "HP LaserJet Pro M118dw" & "HP LaserJet Pro MFP M148dw" (multi-functional) were all at (30ppm, $130). All had "Energy Star" labels. In case you wonder, the median speed was 40ppm, while "HP LaserJet Enterprise MFP M633fh" had the maximal speed of 75ppm (at a cost of $3300). This means that at 2.7% of that price, one could buy 30.6% of the speed.
- Creating a PDF with a code screenshot from a black-background editor is asking the printer to spill a bucket of ink for something small.
- "Naked statistics" claimed that gambling and insurance are two industries winning by proper application of probability theory. Another great book I may not read in full.
- True, one could have drawn parallel coordinates for each nutri-dimension (or whatever), connecting the medians for each group (e.g. fish type) if they weren't too many. Didn't come to the idea myself this time (book again). Getting rusty, this thinking.
- Nutrients in the protein bars by "Rise Bar" bit.ly/39s5Kun. The machine illustrates well that there is practically no benefit in buying the "mini" bars. $3.89 per 100g is not exactly cheap for protein bars. While these contain up to 33.3% protein, they also come with slightly more sugar than the bars by "Nature Valley". And the high sugar content can be a downside of protein bars. Either "Almond Honey" or "Lemon Cashew" could give you the maximum of 142.85g protein (at a side effect of 92.8g sugar and cost of $16.66) on a 2000cal protein bar diet.
- "Non-fat Plain Greenk Yougurt" by "Chobani" is said to have 14g protein in 80cal and 150g content. That would be 350g of protein in a full-day, milk-only diet provided one could drink a total amount of 3.75kg milk. Hardly advisable.
- "San Remo" also has so many spaghetti of the long type that I didn't even know they could be made from spelt or brown rice.
- Nutrients in the peanut butter spreads by "Sanitarium" bit.ly/2uxgJny. Said to contain approx. 30% protein, or more than the protein bars in the previous bit. But this is said to be accompanied with 2530kJ of energy (smallest value possible). If you make the same calculation, assuming a full-day diet on peanut butter, you would get 99.22g of protein, which is slightly less. But this hints that peanuts may be high-protein food (if you consider that they were also used in some of the protein bars). You will have to find a lot more data to improve on confidence. This company also has "Marmite" spread, which is said to contain a lot more microelements, but where protein level is at 58% of the max. peanut butters value.
- Nutrients in the protein bars by "Nature Valley" bit.ly/2HcNf10. As indicated, the diagram accounts for the fact that bar sizes are usually 40g except for the XL variants (60g). And then the protein values become homogenous, independent of variant. According to company claims, you can expect 25% protein in each product with ≈475cal in 100g. This means that if someone were on a regular 2000cal diet, eating protein bars only, they would be getting ≈105.25g of protein. Perhaps underscores how "packed" these bars are if I may say so. And then, if you wish, you could run a script over their ingredients to seek out details that help to explain this.
- Nutrients in the "Arnott's Vita-weat" crackers available at "Woolworths" bit.ly/2SeY6hu
- Remember, your projects could be the next on my queue.
- Nutrients in the canned fish products by "John West" bit.ly/2OEZtDG. Many products containing tuna are said to have a lot more protein than other fish types. Slightly surprised and having no clue about the reason, but if this is claimed repeatedly, there must be some chance it holds. You can also see Gaussians of the energy (kJ) in 100g product for most fish types (except for scallops, crabmeat and oysters, which had only one sample and were taken away to clean up the diagram) bit.ly/2Scm50A. Note that "salmon" includes all types (also red and pink). We see some chance that salmon is less caloric than sardines. Mackerel products were high-calorie relative to the rest, with small lead over herrings. Mussels might be even more caloric than that, although with only two samples it is really hard to say. Perhaps you have tried them before and already have an opinion. You can also see medians for some fish types if the samples were at least five bit.ly/2Szc0tN.
- "Popular Mechanics" practically addressed the question I had some time ago about useful tools and I made a short list to be able to see the bigger picture bit.ly/2uvLCJb. Some of these tools appear interesting, yet it is unclear how often one would use them. Their collective cost is around $2350, which means that people have to spend a good amount of their lifetime working towards obtaining them. Apart from the times required to understand how to use them, to acquire the expertise to do it effectively, to find the best possible uses for them, to create a product they can sell. After all, a tool has to bring returns that ideally more than cover the initial investment. Otherwise the tool makers, not the tool users, will be reaping the highest returns.
- Script found 27-inch "HP EliteDisplay E273" reduced to $150 today (down from $260) amzn.to/2H7n5N9
- A company announced it has a new office and proceeded to show its location on a map. Central pin among all visible businesses (plenty of them) in the neighborhood. Guess this is how you solve the location problem.
- 22-core is less colorful, but can accelerate the multi-texturing fill rate needed for the colorful eerie of 3DMark 2001.
- Nutrients in the colorful chocolate bars by "Galler" bit.ly/39hIrmZ. They tried to create a Pantone palette assigning colors to each of the 22 products bit.ly/2vjCszG. Here too, "soy lecithin" is present and used as emulsifier (42 mentions), while "cocoa butter" is a close second (39 mentions) and sugar too is common (the "Cointreau" variant approaches 52%). Some other ingredients used relatively often are "whole milk powder" (26), "polydextrose" as bulking agent (19), "isomalt" as anti-caking agent (19), dextrin (19), inulin (19), eggs and wheat (gluten) (19).
- Nutrients in the chocolate tablets by "Pierre Marcolini" bit.ly/2Uwrkdc. Among the most frequent ingredients were "cocoa butter" (present in all 12 variants), "cocoa beans", "soy lecitin without GMO" and "sugar" present in all but one variant. In the most expensive flavour, a single Euro could buy you 5.72g of this Belgium chocolate. Also liked the gradient look of the (likely freshly made) boxes with Valentine's hearts (25 pieces possibly intended for 25 people).
- Spaghetti goes well with tomato sauce, beans too. So someone came to the idea to combine them all in a single dish, which is thinking that I like. Perhaps there are other interesting dishes which can be derived by merging two independent sides against a common ingredient, even if it seems illogical at first. Would you test a particular variant this weekend?
- One dress at Amazon reminded me of an image seen a couple of days ago where a dress "trail" left behind a woman was depicted as if it were an egg in a frying pan. Can't deny that some people are quite creative.
- The same wouldn't be easily applicable to the dresses available at "Anthropologie", since they weren't described by material (no way to filter on that as well), but it was then mentioned on each specific product page. Assuming that they have at least "mini", "midi" and "maxi" descriptions, one could look for a cheap, good-looking, "maxi" dress, made of good material by a rarely mentioned designer. Hard to meet all criteria together, but then noticed that good-looking didn't collaborate well with cheap. But there were a couple of options around $160-170 (median among the 484 dress prices computed to $150 even when some "Marchesa Notte" variants approached $1200), which are distinctive in their own right: "Kelli Halter Maxi Dress" ($170, viscose) bit.ly/3brxX6L, "Serela Pleated Midi Dress" ($160, polyester) and "Tina Flounced Midi Dress" ($158, viscose). If you wish, you could also look for "Cloth & Stone Herringbone Wrap Midi Dress" ($148, rayon, with belt) or "Cloth & Stone Striped Tee Dress" ($128, viscose+silk, long sleeve). Of course your scripts and eyes will notice different details or that better options exist elsewhere.
- Had a new idea: look for rare keywords used in sweater descriptions and specifically for fabrics/styles. Then check whether any of them are on sale/promotion. Used the offers at "Tristan" for my case bit.ly/2H41QMh. As you can see, there are 3 merino wool sweaters (fine fabric), originally priced at $110, two of which are currently at $61 (45% off). Perhaps leaves you with a sense of how you could plan your next purchase/gift.
- Nutrients in the spreads by "Becel" bit.ly/3bf3F73. Be cautious about the zeros here, since they were extrapolated from a 10g serving size. For most products, 8 of these 10g were said to be fat (80%), so it is hard to imagine the connection to a healthy heart (their logo is a heart). At least, the "Light" and "Pro Activ" variants are halving this amount.
- Not a good practice to put important data floating next to an element at the same nesting level, but having no own. If someone wants to access it, they have to access the parent, which also means dealing with all regular elements at that level. Inconvenient and costs extra time. Noticed that it is a common practice in promotions to strike through a price having its own element and then append the new one next to it without much care.
- Performance scores by all-season car tyre series according to "Pirelli" bit.ly/3bkj9qa. May not be such a good idea to use "Cinturato" tires in sport races.
- Nutrients in the chocolate blocks by "Thorntons" bit.ly/37biqUV. They also had two towers made of these blocks, but someone likely finished them since they were inaccessible to me.
- Nutrients in the "Sensations" snacks by "Walkers" bit.ly/3738GfH
- Still not the seventh day bit.ly/3bj9DUq
- Wikipedia says that Japan is divided into 47 prefectures bit.ly/2S7n8iv. There is also a colorful map I liked.
- Partial rings complete wholes bit.ly/2vQyVZE
- Nutrients in the milk products by "a2" bit.ly/2H4RY4I. In other words, 240ml whole milk produced by "a2" contains as much protein as ≈150g spaghetti "Barilla".
- Could different spaghetti types have different nutritional values and if so how much do they differ? Tried to find an approximate answer within the long-shaped product palette by "Barilla" bit.ly/3bgBxQJ. As you can see, most values are quite close. "Whole grain" versions seem to have many high values (dietary fiber, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin) in addition to those mentioned in the side note. For most variants, only 2oz. (≈56g) is said to satisfy 50% of daily folate needs, which is nice. "Red Lentil Spaghetti" seems quote high in protein (13g is equivalent to ≈23%).
- Nutrients in Tesco's own chocolate bars bit.ly/31B1dDh. Liked the package design, so it was natural to consider the details. Only 340g of the "whole nut milk chocolate" could cover the needs of a 2000kcal diet. Be aware that relative to the rest, the first two dark chocolates are lower in carbohydrates (including sugars), but higher in total fat (including saturates).
- Pizza price points for 3 different sizes at "Flippers Pizzeria" (as of 06.02.2020) bit.ly/2H0It6O. Easy to see how a large "Margherita" or "Bianca" comes cheaper than the medium sizes of many other variants.
- Beware how you label your product categories when you look for consistency. For example, you list "Burgers", "Veggie + Chicken", "Hot dogs", "Fries + Rings", "Shakes + Custard" and then finish with "Kids". Something is out of tune here.
- If you are at "Olive Garden" thinking of getting the most energy per dollar spent from the "Traditional Favourites" group, you may not come around "Chicken Alfredo" (95.35 cal/$) or "Five Cheese Ziti al Forno" (88.46 cal/$). On the opposite end is "Creamy Mushroom Ravioli" (57.28 cal/$).
- Relative mattress sizes as indicated at "MattressFirm" bit.ly/2ugrRFw
- Nutrients of the products by "Franz Bakery" bit.ly/2SmEOFN. Mentioned it once, but didn't take the time to explore the numeric perspective. Interesting that the gluten-free category has more cholesterol than usual or that the stuffing category has more sodium and carbohydrates. The calorie content in "Frosted Party Animals" (sweets) is 3.63x that in "Keto" (premium bread). Overall, among the most frequently mentioned ingredients is water, although niacin, salt and sugar follow up close. Other two ingredients that appear more frequently than "enriched unbleached wheat flour" are thiamin mononitrate and ascorbic acid, whereas calcium sulfate is on par and amonium sulfate & calcium propionate are mentioned 20% less frequently. Additionally, among the sweets category (and nowhere else) we see palm oil as the third most frequent ingredient, only behind water and sugar. However, this says nothing about the amounts in which they occur. Also notice that I did not inclide information about four donuts, which had their values stored in images and were thus much harder to access. It deserves to mention that the only reason this was possible is the fast server response combined with their lightweight design.
- Wants to convince me that after you eat salmon and then inhale cigarette smoke, you get smoked salmon. But is bad at solving such equations.
- Nutrients in the bakery products by "Starbucks" bit.ly/2v8Aou2. Looks like 400g of "White Chocolate Cookie Crème" would be enough to fulfill a 2000 calorie diet. Usually terrible at tracking upcoming holidays, so good to see "Valentine Cake Pop" refreshing my memory.
- "Top Pot" is palindromatic, I thought. Before noticing the doughnuts.
- Like how "Burgermaster" nutrition table was accessible HTML bit.ly/2GVhfyx as opposed to the inaccessible PDF you see at most places (although "grass-fed beef" still leaves me wonder). Okay, "MOD Pizza" also does the same, but wondered why their result was slow. Checking the code revealed they use nested divs having three classes of moderate length to represent individual table cells and then put a inside. This is done 12 times per product, for a total of 198 products. Not hard to imagine why.
- PwC: "Slowbalization is the new trend." Especially when you consider that death may come hidden behind beautiful descriptions.
- If you forget yourself while working all the time, your pet will suffer. "Petco" offers some food to help bit.ly/2Uu3QFq. Also learned that it is a good idea to brush the teeth of your dog, even if you don't find time for your own.
- Continuous gradient inside pentagon (no SVG) bit.ly/2GYklla
- Max. mass density per price for the new DHL package prices at "Deutsche Post" bit.ly/36XJrLK. If one looks to send more weight per unit volume, "Pluspäckchen" seems preferable over "Päckchen", especially the "S" size. But for most people dimensions and weight are of equal concern. In this case "Pluspäckchen M" has its advantages (even over "Paket 2kg", since it can hold 5x the weight). But it can't compete with the value that the packages of 31.5kg, 10kg and 5kg provide. The 5kg and 10kg versions come at approx. 40% and 60% of the value offered by the largest package. While "Pluspäckchen M" comes at ≈20%, you quickly notice that paying only 50 cent more to obtain the 5kg package (7.49€) improves the value you get by 100%, while the 50% improvement in going from 40% to 60% will cost you 3€ extra. An indirect advantage of a slightly bigger package is that perhaps it could be sent less frequently, reducing waste and environmental impact.
- Looked for a quick and approximate view of some parameter relationships for the first 4000 through-hole resistors at "DigiKey" bit.ly/2Sl7jmZ. They are far too many to explore in reasonable time. One resistor was said to be 1 GOhm, which exceeded my expectations. The first diagram (resistance vs. power) shows that power changes stepwise and at bigger steps compared to resistance. Many units were seemingly having resistance in the range 10 - 106 Ohms and were rated at 10≈-0.6W (or 0.25W). But we also see two units with power of 150W and one of 140W despite their low resistances of 1, 4.7 and 10 Ohms accordingly. The second diagram shows that prices seem to increase with resistor power, but also signals that highest price variability might be among the low/lowest power units.
- Some properties of the CPU coolers by "CoolerMaster" bit.ly/2vS0n9B. If we were indifferent to socket type, max air pressure, warranty and price (unknown), the script would lead our attention to "A30", "HYPER 212 BLACK EDITION" and "A71C", in this order. Perhaps one could even test the hypothesis whether the addition of RGB lights to the cooler significantly impacts its power consumption.
- Do you investigate how your store promotions compare to those made at other stores? You might believe in their effectiveness, but they may still appear as regular prices to a shopper at a nearby store. And since promotions change often, it means you have to adjust often to what you learn about the market or risk becoming irrelevant. For instance, once a shopper notices a red label "70% price reduction", but sees no change in end price relative to the last week, trustworthiness is gone. With tricks it'll be harder to engage anyone in the future.
- Almost 60000 Zener diodes are available at DigiKey. But you said how proud you were to immediately order n Raspberry Pis, before anyone else. Out of all customers who bought, how many made a profit or fully solved the problems they initially planned to solve? If the pieces are still lying around unused, they caught you in a net n times. Companies know that big money is spent on the small things, so they continue to push more (Did you buy n Pi cases as well?). Using different marketing tricks to make you believe that owning the 96Mhz microcontroller for $15 will make you a computational hero. Irrespective that this speed isn't enough to flip the page of a book (even a 1.3Ghz Intel CPU would stay engaged 3-4s on a scanned one). Can't even close the cycle on a complete use case. I'd be very cautious which "mini" things I buy and whose promises I follow. The web often works the same—people get caught in the mini promises and then pay maxi.
- Compared the search experience at "Skyscanner" and "Google Flights" for the same destination and date. Response time on the first site was 15s (after all the spinning and partial load waiting to complete), while the second was done in 2s (includes the animation). Seems like Google is now eating this lunch too, thanks to the big gap they noticed on the marketplace.
- MSI has an interesting cooling solution for one of their 5Ghz laptops: looks as pipe spirals around the fans bit.ly/2Sl15Uc. Wondering how much this affects cost, weight and space budget relative to the (perhaps linear) performance increase.
- "Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers." - Bernard Haisch
- Digging deeper into a hole bit.ly/37W7dJ3. With discrete sparks.
- Learned about the heat/weight and heat/volume ratios, since aircraft fuels must be high-energy. Interesting is that heat release per unit of weight for hydrogen was said to be 2.8x that of kerosene.
- "Only ≈100 got built." Scarcity.
- Guess one does not have to be in montage to appreciate it bit.ly/36OrH5r
- There's an exact equation for the arc of "Victoria Falls Bridge". Mathematics is everywhere.
- Nutrients in the yogurts by "Müllеr" bit.ly/2Sg9IPS. "Müllеrlight" variants appear lighter than the corners, rices, blisses and quarks.
- Nutrients in the "Cheerios" cereals by "Nestle" bit.ly/392QGDy. Good to see some vitamin and mineral values at least partially present.
- Don't show a button with a "website" label, if you plan to activate it five seconds after the click, while you extract some usage information in the background. The last thing you want is someone dealing with delayed opening of fifteen additional tabs.
probiotic- Looked at some of the properties of the antennas at "Antennas Direct" bit.ly/36P3YSG. My script found two models interesting: "ClearStream ECLIPSE® amplified indoor HDTV antenna" (second on the list, although the third came close) and (under some circumstances) "ClearStream 4MAX® UHF/VHF indoor/outdoor HDTV antenna with 20" mast". The last is among the most expensive.
- Approximate US ports max container TEU capacities in 2016 bit.ly/2uXK6iG. Four ports (Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles, Long Beach), the last three of which are in California, had the same max TEU capacity of 17859.
- Looked into Federal Maritime Administration's data on "US flag privately owned fleet" and plotted gross tons (which according to Wikipedia is only a function of ship volume) against deadweight tons (max carry weight) for the ships present there. The strength of the relationship came out as 0.76. Looking at ship type level, the median deadweight-to-gross ratio was highest for dry bulk ships (1.75), although there were only five of them. Tankers came out to be a close second with 1.64 (63 ships), although one of them kept the max value of 1.842. Containerships and general cargo weren''t among the highest performers on this metric with their 1.13 and 1.05 accordingly. The 28 Ro-Ro ships bit.ly/2RQVC8T ↗ even came at a median of 0.37 (max of 0.71).
- Major and minor road lengths by region in Great Britain (2012 - 2019) bit.ly/2OhhRCI. The yearly changes did not seem to affect the relative picture much (so we need a better view to capture the finer details). Scotland appears to have a long major road network, but if you sum all regions in England, it will have ≈30% of that length (10838km vs. 35997km in 2019). When we boxplot standard deviations from the mean bit.ly/36OlVAD, we see that Wales did comparatively well in additions of major roads (during the period), while London showed some good work on minor road additions. Interesting is the region Yorkshire and the Humber, where we see high median, but where at period end, the total minor road length saw a net decrease of 119km relative to period start.
- Nutrients in the cookies by "Leibniz" bit.ly/2uQXTI6. The calorie content in 456g Butterkeks is enough to fulfill the 2000kcal diet.
- Library accessibility by bikeways in Toronto, Canada bit.ly/2GMqUam. The bike racks appear highly concentrated in case the data about them is complete. The bikeways slightly increase in density as one approaches the coastline. The 100 unique library addresses are almost uniformly spread over the territory, which is exactly what I expected to see, although some seem to be slightly easier to access by bike.
- Latent talent bit.ly/37NTO5L
- Wondered what led to the high traffic counts on "Sepulveda Blvd" in Los Angeles. Turns out, this is a place likely used by many people to park their cars bit.ly/2RN9UqU (and sooner or later all cars park). Since this map fragment is zoomed out to the point that business names are left out, my assumption is that these eight parkings on a single street are rather large. Not shown, but on the other side of the yellow street in the north-west is a large hospital, itself having additional parking places. One of the highest counts (although from several years ago) were at the crossing with "Lincoln Blvd", although I couldn't find the exact location. Another thing that impressed me were the street counts and street management bit.ly/2uWHp0M
- Product, place and time bit.ly/3920A8b
- "On average, a 747 uses 3300 gallons of fuel per hour in the air, while a smaller 727 uses 1300 gallons per hour." Sounds a lot, so the pumps are likely much wider than those at gas stations. Perhaps dedicated load vehicles are used to prevent the possibility of having a 50kg worker disappear under the pump weight.
- Thinking of removing an old demo. The dataset it relied upon disappeared and the maintainers did not respond to my question for several days (still good for having left a contact point though). Would be irresponsible to continue keeping a page throwing errors all the time. The good thing is that nothing lasts forever and that there is a lot of power in this "use it or lose it" principle.
- Liked the idea of having knight's tour drawn as a graph (as seen in a book by Béla Bollobás). However, straight line connections in this case do not reflect well the reality that each move goes through several fields on the blocky 8x8 chess board (the knight can move in two possible ways to reach an end point, which collectively describe a 3x2 rectangle, rotate-able at 90° multiples). Wondering how the overlaps of the paths would look like once every potential move is drawn at low opacity. My assumption is that the edges connecting the central fields would show the strongest shaded highlights, but if you wish you could write real code to validate this and explore relative differences as one moves from the center to the edge of the board.
- While producing the same sequences, you might come with the idea of using the shorter, cleaner Cartesian product code provided by "itertools" instead of the space-shifting, double-loop version (each over one sequence). But there seem to be performance reasons to avoid this bit.ly/36JBhGC. Shorter and cleaner may not necessarily be faster. But since you notice that the functions of their elapsed times cross bit.ly/2S5up0X, you may come to the idea that using itertools may still be preferable when the number of iterations is relatively small. But how would one quantify "small"? You return the index of the iteration at which the flip occurs and see "Up to iteration 49895 itertools.product was faster than the double loop." in your console. Seems that 50000 could be a good threshold for switching the behavior of your algorithm. But to be sure, verify this in your own evironment.
- Which comes first during imagination—mind of screen? Did you imagine it because the screen produced it?
- In terms of degradation speed, how many bricks falls off the building every year?
- Painted some code-generated figures to finish the day bit.ly/2UaW6YI. Color choices could have been better.
- Donut bit.ly/315Kfge. While creating it, noticed that I couldn't fill over a transparent line no matter what, even after setting opacity to one. After making the lines fills themselves, I saw the expected behavior with the drawback that then fine-tuning the shadows became difficult.
- Soil types at different soil depths in Melbourne, Australia bit.ly/2S26U8Z. Tried to look for patterns of soil variation across territory and depth. Unfortunately, had to make the data points quite small to be able to distinguish whether "111" is effectively "1" and "11" or vice versa. The consequence is much reduced legibility. The most distinctive pattern I see is the trail in the north-west. At depth of 0-400m, most locations there have soil of type "loam" (11), whereas at depth 700-1000m many of them change to "medium clay" (14). Interesting is also that at this deepest level, the clusters on the east and center-north also start to show many "14s" (medium clay), while three close points on the west change to "sandy clay loam" (16). The middle layer between 400-700m depth has six times "6" (light clay/sandy clay) in the south-east.
- Comparison of three "on-the-plane" distance functions bit.ly/38L7miC
- Liked the animation of Boyle's Law bit.ly/38UxZSb ↗, which I have long forgotten since school. High volume is connected with low pressure and low volume with high pressure.
- Also liked an example on economic order quantity bit.ly/2vx19bS, which became the next bit.
- "Since a typical carbon atom has a diameter of 0.33nm, there are about 3 million layers of graphene in 1mm of graphite." The old-fashioned pencil in daily use suddenly looks as a high-tech instrument. Other properties I liked: thin, strong, lightweight, good heat & electric conductance, impenetrable for the smallest of gas atoms.
- Could you quickly create a table with the features of the Netgear WiFi routers bit.ly/2tZVJpo ↗
- You may hear that there is a right tool for each (of the many bit.ly/36EPzbs ↗) jobs. Yet, which one could be most versatile relative to the number of diverse use cases and the total value (relative to tool and consumable prices) you expect it to bring, once you think through the possibilities? Is this something you would model or rather buy all tools to then find out as you move (with the suitcase) what they might be good for?
- Statistics shows improvement in the monthly unemployment rate in the UK (01.04.2009 - 01.11.2019) bit.ly/2RET3Xr. The "North East" region seems be slightly lagging behind the trend.
- How big is your portfolio of digital assets?
- Most trees in Liège (Belgium) are said to be of the type bit.ly/2uJiiys ↗. Is this consistent with your own observations? Initial idea was to compare KDE diagrams for the various species, but was somewhat sceptical about the completeness of the data.
- Saw an article listing jobs with high fatality rates and made a quick diagram bit.ly/37xsbhk. Since I didn't know exactly what a logging worker does, included the corresponding explanation as well.
- Folded stripes bit.ly/36wWJP7
- RGB lines in circle bit.ly/2RD5gvH and a pie in the dreamy style bit.ly/38K0Vwj
- Recchiuti chocolate bars seem to have irregularly sized pieces bit.ly/37zUBaz ↗. Lots of gift ideas on their site as well.
- You likely agree that software is not very Instagram-able and not pretentious, but still moving many aspects of our world. Software, which insists to post itself would quickly become a security risk.
- Denny's nutrition table contains a lot of desserts bit.ly/2Rya59p. Look even nicer on their website.
- If you approach your online project as a three-day activity, it is possible that it stays current for only so long.
- If you wish to initiate a project on a firm base, this week (relative to the previous one) is your next-best chance. I hope that by wasting it, you can still feel good about yourself.
- Used Wkipedia's planetary data to look for possible relationships between the features bit.ly/36B7lMK, although it is insufficient and spurious. Is it possible for mean planetary radius (km) to affect escape velocity (km/s) or sidereal rotation period (days) to influence surface pressure (Pa)? Machine also finished dimensionality reduction (although after imputation with averages), placing Earth and Mars relatively close bit.ly/3aNNKfF (but also likely due to the low observation count). Note that this data doesn't include atmosphere composition (gas volumes).
- Someone mentioned that "La Casa Gelato" was a celebrated sweet shop in Vancouver. By the time of my first web visit, they've already set a Guiness World Record for most gelato flavours in the world (blog claims 238). It's how fast things happen when you don't pay attention to them. Would be nice to see all flavours on a single page.
- You can also see a similar table with some features of the tennis rackets by "Babolat" bit.ly/315dCzi. It includes also models made for juniors/kids, but these are easy to spot. The model "Drive G 115" appears relatively lightweight, with a large head size. Here, length seems to be connected with balance point and also have some effect on flexibility and weight.
- Tennis racket technology can be sophisticated bit.ly/2TWT2Q1 ↗. Also made a small table with some facts about the tennis racquets by "HEAD" bit.ly/30VrKLc. With its 230g, "Instinct PWR" seems different from other racquets. Despite its much bigger dimensions, it is only about 50% heavier than an ordinary mobile phone.
- Codified a simple idea about expected value bit.ly/2tKxYBL. A reminder to quantify and compute with probabilities.
- Such a great usability improvement. Hinting someone that they have "Caps Lock" turned on while typing the invisible password. Will likely see this more often in the future.
- Wrote a small script to show the C/C++ books published by "Apress" bit.ly/38DpVFi. The category was said to have 852 books bit.ly/38F4Uu0 ↗, but the code returned only 62 titles containing "C" or "C++". So nice to be able to reduce the noise quite a bit.
- Libraries in Liège, Belgium bit.ly/30WKN8b. Probably doesn't surprise anyone.
- "Consumers in Seattle and DC spend the most in restaurants" bit.ly/2GrSsln ↗. When we look at the following overplotted diagram bit.ly/2RuRQBy, this information remains rather hidden.
- Enjoyed the well-written article "The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets" bit.ly/2O0kFUG ↗. Lots of interesting details and insights, served in a thoughtful way. Easily kept me interested to the end.
- The concept behind cross-validation bit.ly/36rd3AL. The idea came from a book, which used 3x the space to show 3 frames, where an online CSS animation feels more natural. Unfortunately, the context demands it to be stepwise and not smooth.
- The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey lists five airports. But when you look at the shops present on the first two ("John F. Kennedy" & "Newark Liberty"), you notice that many of these businesses either don't have websites or at least they aren't easily findable. Instead, among the top search results about the given brand names one sees mostly/many TripAdvisor, Yelp, Facebook and Amazon pages. Expected to see slightly better than a random startup in a small village.
- Shoes at "RENO": 1362 for men and 3120 for women. Far exceeds what a regular seeker could glance through in a reasonable time.
- If you have specific requirements, that's is fine. But be aware that I have my own. Better chances of success if you approach me with a win-win mindset.
- Path through some attractions in Washington, D.C. bit.ly/36mouJT. Unfortunately, labeling involved making trade-offs to fit in the limited screen space. District of Columbia seems to have lots of historic sites, whose background might be interesting to learn about. Some locations (e.g. "Watergate Complex", "Japanese American Memorial" etc.) also had interesting topology when seen from above. The row of foreign embassies was also longer than expected.
- Sample path through some attractions in Barcelona, Spain bit.ly/3aH8eXy. Couldn't find city boundary data to include in the plot. Wished the algorithm stopped at a more interesting place than "Camp Nou". Thought about using road contours for direct edge-road correspondence observation, but this wasn't possible either.
- Tried to create a density picture to understand the university landscape in the United Kingdom bit.ly/36owrhJ. You may find it messy or superficial.
- Finding the biggest files in a large directory tree bit.ly/36qtBc0. The directory system can be analyzed from a data perspective to support traversal decisions. Perhaps you know better, in which case I would be the educated.
- Currently looking at the design of several car pages and any available specifications. Lack of consistency to the point that each looks as if made by a different designer. It is hard to use data which appears at several different places (or not at all) each time. Still remembering the pain I went through to manually collect and verify the integrity of different kinds of labels and values in car datasets. Without manual reorganization and cleaning, machine use would be close to impossible.
- Injuries and fatalities in traffic accidents in Nashville, Tennessee (01.01.2020 - 21.01.2020) bit.ly/2Roff83. The two fatalities are shown in red and the 603 injuries—in yellow. One report from "Old Hickory Blvd & White Swans CRSG" listed 7 injuries in a single accident. There were two other accidents with six injuries each.
- Second time noticing a page using some form of blur/shadow that extends over the edges of the Chrome interface. For instance, slightly/partially clouding DevTools tabs or bookmarks bar. Can't imagine when a page should have higher precendce than the interface.
- Minimal diagram of the 140 neighborhoods in Toronto, Canada bit.ly/2urCapM (84.6kB). Consider making this interactive (SVG). With a total of 43723 point coordinates, even if you decided to use only rounded 3-digit integers (on average), losing accuracy, you would have 8 characters per point (including the " " separator) for a total size of 341.5kB (excluding supportive code and JS behavior to enable bidirectional polygon-label highlights). With compression, you could perhaps reduce the downloadable size to ≈113kB, yet it would still exceed that of the image, especially if you increase the numeric accuracy. You might think that canvas won't create this on-page numeric pollution. But you'll have to store each polygon somewhere in memory (or find a way to simplify the shape) to determine when the mouse is inside, which adds a nontrivial amount of computation.
- Code exceeds graphics area here bit.ly/3awLbyx. Not an SVG expert, but I think the weights on this scale could be swapped here.
- Monthly retail sales index of computer and telecommunication equipment in Singapore, Singapore (01.01.1993 - 01.11.2019) bit.ly/2GfF7fJ
- Wasn't sure whether to trust my eyes bit.ly/3awKPrz
- Power usage of two Samsung QLED TVs with varying screen sizes bit.ly/2ReEgSR. One model has 4K and one has 8K resolution. The biggest model can increase its typical power usage with 125%.
- First 3D surface this morning bit.ly/2RhkMgD
- "Quick, hands-on learning guide on mastering Python development: Cookbook" is still not available. This is what happens when you start exploring keywords in tech book titles.
- Parking place utilization in Basel, Switzerland bit.ly/2tubWTH. May be slow.
- Had no clue that Cologne has so many neighborhoods. Colorized the 30 with the biggest area, according to machine, which looked nice, but then it appeared that the labels were incorrect relative to Google Maps. To avoid severe mistakes, omitted the labels, but if you wish, you could try to guess them bit.ly/2TKDDlE
- Libraries in Atlanta, Georgia bit.ly/38pOC8d. According to the source website, several are closed for renovation. Hopefully this information is recent and accurate.
- Nutrients in "CORNY" bars bit.ly/2Rxj49O. Seems like the "Corny Free" labeled variants are the least caloric, while "Corny Big Cranberry" is said to have to lowest fat content.
- Your weekly brochure is 168MB?
- 93% off an executive chair bit.ly/3aq4bi0 ↗. Because you deserve it.
- Need new scented candles and like "Yankee Candle"? There seem to be few potentially interesting finds currently on sale bit.ly/30Awkyv. Notice that the ones available for $2.75 have been $11.00. In other words, you could get them at 25% of the original price.
- You could continue with the alternative "Frigidaire" units, but their specs aren't structured well and are often hidden behind closed-by-default category expandos, requiring lots of clicks. Would take me a lot of time and effort to convert the chaotic into a useful structure.
- And if you need another good performer, while appreciating the value of good work and the pains it reduces/eliminates, consider speaking with me or use the contact form.
- Some features of the window air conditioners by "LG" bit.ly/36cMM96. The combined score do not include information from the missing columns. The model "LW2217IVSM" bit.ly/2sLOMaY ↗ seems to be a good performer. But you may not necessarily like the look of these devices. And you probably remember why air conditioners are better used sparingly.
- Max VCE saturation vs. max power for active PNP bipolar transistors at "DigiKey" bit.ly/2uZF2KM. Don't know whether the same spot would characterize the NPN transistors as well. Machine paints a more concentrated one, but over a wider domain, which means that dispersion is more pronounced in the NPN case. Don't know why or whether this could be valid in general or is an embedded preference in this specific data.
- "Results per page: 500" might be inadequate in certain situations. Imagine you present more than 22000 electronic chips. Once they were 5000, the strategy of showing 500 worked well. But then their number increased significantly. This means a minimum of 44 clicks are needed to access all content. How you could improve? Have an option showing 10-12.5% of all items (in at most 8-10 clicks). In this case, that would be 2200 items/page, which despite appearing a lot at first and having the potential to slow down the browser, is quite doable by a great designer. Because nothing is slower than asking the user to hit a target button 34 extra times and wait for the corresponding HTTP requests.
- Some features of home WiFi routers by "TP-Link" bit.ly/2GgJ6cd. Quite spurious. Best intention was to also include reception sensitivity (dBm), but noticed that several different methods were used and the results between them were possibly incomparable. So this column was omitted.
- Never heard of "Targus", but they also have plenty of laptop backpacks bit.ly/2TFoYrU ↗
- Finished reading an article about affordable cities (in USA) for programmers and made a small diagram of what was mentioned in it bit.ly/367vhaf. While the median rent in Newark, New Jersey was said to be 2.13x the one in Huntsville, Alabama, the number of open jobs at entry and mid levels were 10.08x and 9.11x respectively. This shows that you could try to attract programmers with low rents, but only up to a point. In the long term, not many people will be willing to bear the high cost of technology catch-up (despite the low rent), when progress is happening faster elsewhere. Although we should be aware that the job numbers don't tell much about job quality or salaries.
- Supercapacitor prices by brand at "Mouser Electronics" bit.ly/2TJJmbg. Circle areas reflect minimum order prices. The maximum voltage rating the script found was 48 V (by capacitance of 165F), while the max capacitance came to be 4000F (@ 2.5 V). The two highest-capacitance units by "Nichicon" had prices of ≈300€ for 25 pieces (unit price of 11.76€). While the "AVX" units at 3000F appear cheaper on the diagram, their per-unit price approaches 50€ (in a min. order of 20). Considered were only brands "Mouser" selected as "most popular". The legend circles were left variable-sized for simplicity. You could also explore length vs. diameter for these parts.
- These days one could ask themselves how they make these hotels with so many rooms. Hopefully, the tight packing leaves some space at least for a bathroom in each unit. Can't even see the corridor's end. The red carpet makes one feel a special guest, but the floor coverage could have been better. Slightly surrealistic these room numbers bit.ly/2RpGIF2
- Realized I haven't asked a good question about the AMD dataset. Which is more strongly related to TDP: number of cores, base/turbo clock or cache sizes? Based on the data I had, to my surprise, the answer was L1 cache, then threads, number of cores & L2 cache (same level), L3 cache and max boost clock as distant last (with moderate 0.5). In this order. Announced base clock had practically no influence on announced TDP values.
- You think you have a single right move to make at each step considering your best options and your wish to remain flexible. Until one day the length of the decision vector gradually starts to converge to bit.ly/38k8byC.
- Triangle subdivision bit.ly/3am2ulN
- Meeting bit.ly/2NDt5Bc. I think one is a bit cool and one is mildly surprised.
- Vertical stripes bit.ly/2R6cnMK
- Can fix any potential software mistake I've made or adjust to changes in a foreign data structure. But can't fix a source that no longer outputs current data, for some reason. "Most popular books by branch" by Edmonton Public Library is one such dataset. They started publishing data in 2015, but noticed today that the demo using it stopped working. The last data seen is from 05.04.2019, yet the source claims it was last updated on 13.01.2020. Another detail about the data is that its size is suspiciously close to 10 million bytes (10MB). Could it be some quota problem where a writer's attempt to append to the existing file succeeds, but the change never shows in practice?
- Used CEE's "Residential dishwasher qualifying product list" to identify dishwashers that are economic in their water and energy use (in terms of gallons/cycle and kWh/year). (This does not consider the actual washing quality though.) The top 25 models (out of 721) that meet this criteria are mostly products from "Fisher & Paykel" bit.ly/3akMYXj, where we can see three using only 1.64 gallons (≈6.2l) per cycle. A super-efficient 0.5gpm faucet aerator at full utilization would exceed this in 3min 17sec and it wouldn't be easy for a user to wash more items in that time. A relatively efficient showerhead using 7.6l/min would exceed this in 49sec.
- Some features of the kitchen faucets by "MOEN" bit.ly/2syQk7Y. Price ranges in $350-773, but liked the smooth design and the sensing capability allowing touchless use. Three of these features do not differentiate well. If you wish, you could do the same for the 548 "Delta" kitchen sink faucets and see what can be found there.
- "Pine Street" and "Pike Street" comprise two of the streets with the highest paid parking occupancy in Seattle (Source: Seattle Department of Transportation, "Paid parking occupancy (last 30 days)", bit.ly/2R42aAD, 3.5GB). Apart from the edit distance of one, another commonality between the two is that they are quite long, parallel to each other (also following the same kink) bit.ly/3alNQLp, starting around many eateries (like "Momiji Restaurant" bit.ly/375Ael8 ↗) and moving in direction Elliott Bay until almost reaching Seattle Aquarium. "Pike Street" is then closer to the nearby Seattle Art Museum.
- Features of the desktop processors by "AMD" bit.ly/2G0HVgM. Also includes the "Threadripper" series.
- Square-cut circles bit.ly/2RDOrQ7
- They don't seem to use a lot of material or effort to create music notes nowadays bit.ly/2Tt4Zg6
- Sharpening spirals is similar to sharpening pencils bit.ly/2QZDRUi (or bit.ly/2RwvbnA). You could even "load" the color inside if you wished so.
- Started with a carpet in mind, but this is what came out of my creatively constrained brain today bit.ly/3723tpd. Perhaps you know better ways of dramatically reducing the number of used elements. In this case I didn't consider it priority.
- "What was your total household income before taxes last year? (residents of Boulder, Colorado were asked)" bit.ly/2szsnNY. Great opportunity to test my knowledge of working with patches. Thoroughly enjoyed the irregularity of the bins at the end.
- "Generation priced out" looks like an interesting book as far as the excerpt goes. It even mentions the bonus word "gentrification".
- Agree with the statement that Mississippi seems most affordable bit.ly/2Rl77ny, as long as the data is correct. However, "most affordable" and "best quality of life" are often different.
- "Waterstones" visual design is nice and it's great to see another viewpoint on bestselling books.
- Specific services cost very specific amounts.
- Managed to find the coordinates of only 72 out of the 98 "ALDI Süd" branches near Munich, Germany (no manual work). It seems that the more you go to the north bit.ly/3adIvpf (up to Allershausen), the less frequent the stores become. Among these, "Schwanthalerstraße 14, 80336 München-Ludwigsvorstadt" seems to be closest to the geographical center. Noticed that ALDI indicated its distance from the center to be 0.92km, whereas my script came at 0.97km. For "Rosenheimer Straße 30" they claimed 1.40km, while my script came at 1.30km. Not expecting the coordinates obtained to be extremely accurate, so accepting my result as aproximate.
- Berlin Mitte, 19m2, 290€/month (340 with utilities), no end date specified, WiFi bit.ly/2TqFps5 ↗ also looks poentially interesting. Possible to find such offers once you start filtering by city district.
- Apparently, some person in need could sleep in Berlin one week (bit.ly/30onVhk ↗ or bit.ly/2Rmf0sL ↗) or one month (bit.ly/3aep4wD ↗ or bit.ly/2tqlA9w ↗) for just 1€, thanks to some good people. But you have to be extremely careful with such offers too. Currently also looking for other locations (on wg-gesucht), which could potentially help someone find accomodation. This offer in Berlin Mitte bit.ly/3616MLQ ↗ is just 20€ (+50€ Kaution) for 20 days. Or 6 days for 19€ (hopefully not per day) bit.ly/2QYa9yX ↗, otherwise you could find several in the range 14-20€/day. This student room is 245€/month bit.ly/2Rnqzjl ↗ and has no leaving date indicated, which might be interesting to someone looking to avoid future searches. Also saw a 37m2 in Berlin-Mitte for 550€. The possibilities are almost endless (well 1601 in the last week, all attributes specified).
- The function of your page is to work. Not to detect user-installed plugins to decide whether to serve the content or not. Bad development practice bit.ly/2tlhfEA. Actually, its not a practice, but a mindset.
- You could also see some rental offers in Austin bit.ly/381RF6q. At that price "1616 Headway Cir" bit.ly/2uNftfP ↗ is a true outlier. Everything else my machine found was at least twice as expensive. Hope it helps.
- The second-cheapest office space in Houston that I could find on LoopNet is available for sale at 28.10$/sqft bit.ly/2u0kem4 ↗. The first was immediately near an airport, so it was dismissed on purpose. Also tried to find office space which could be interesting for starters in this city. Found one which is only 0.90$/sf-yr bit.ly/370Hf6U ↗, but its purpose is already predetermined for food production. There are also two other options bit.ly/30o9GsO ↗ (warehouse) and bit.ly/378uJlG ↗ (building). The second looks much better at 4$/sf-yr. And the last option presenting here (due to limited space) is bit.ly/2uSFsmf ↗ at 5$/sf-yr. You can also see the locations of these places bit.ly/3afIm4w.
- Do you still look for office space or has it been long taken away? If so, what is the chance to find a dedicated, stable place to work when the rent pushes you to debt? Work is done by collecting the rent now, not by doing actual work. Always refuse working when the payment is laughable relative to the rent. Always reject customers and companies who don't meet your criteria.
- Made myself a small page to improve the lens I have on Amazon promotions. Other people are already doing something similar for job offers. And if the fastest applicant gets the job, noone has the right to complain that they couldn't find the most capable. Think, does this company hire quickly, but fire slowly? If so, don't bother to enter.
- Used an informative article on Popular Mechanics to create a diagram describing some parameters of different lawn mowers bit.ly/2TqHJz6. Also enjoyed the explanation of system behavior at the end.
- Cases of theft from people by borough and month in the last two years in London bit.ly/2TpcBjD. Westminster seems most affected. If interested, you could also look at some other criteria in the given data source.
- Learned about "Hans im Glück" and created a nutrient table about their burgers bit.ly/3aer9J5. Noticed that some variants were greyed out at the time of writing, so they were not included. First time seing fat come after carbohydrates, but this doesn't change the facts. Included different bread variants only for the first two burgers.
- Nice visualization on leading cancer cases and deaths, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bit.ly/30kvdmb ↗. In 2016, lung cancer was by far the deadliest cancer type.
- Regarding copies, I saw a video on hypothesis testing on Coursera a couple of days ago, where someone demonstrated and executed code in a live session. The problem was that I already saw the same code copied on a separate page by a different author. But the gaps in the thinking in this long post were more than obvious. Apparently, someone wanted to be seen as the canonical expert in the field, whatever the means to achieve it.
- Apparently, someone has copied some of my work, which made Google see many of my pages as duplicates, not indexing them for not having "canonical". This won't make me go back to each of them to fix the issue individually. Won't slow down my work output; instead I'll produce even more content, because that's the only thing that's canonical. Come to copy my work every fifteen minutes.
- You could plot locations and availability of bikes in the "Nextbike" (Lower Austria) system bit.ly/35UTGQi. Finished more than enough such demos before, so this one will be left to you.
- Do you see a common theme between piles of junk due to consumption, land/soil pollution (chemicals), ocean/river junk, air pollution (PM) and space junk and do they appear to be the same problem in a different form? Fortune would happily plane-sweep this sphere with a fine sieve. Has the problem been researched what happens with the efficiency of plant/tree photosynthesis when the leaves are covered by a mm-thick layer of dust?
- Most checked-out books (all-time) at the New York Public Library (NYPL) n.pr/2FYmKMt ↗
- The problem with car websites having overly beautiful main pages is that not much effort has been spent on the ones at the deeper levels. The ones that must be more detailed, innovative, demonstrate the need for the product and show the experiences of real people while using it and the problems they are able to solve. Pages that don't simply show a beautiful photo in a grid and where findability and accessibility of information aren't an afterthought. Where specifications aren't hidden behind "build your own" buttons and every visitor starts from a clearly defined base version and works to adjust it to their taste from there (and in doing so learn only what they have to). Where should someone start from when you give them six different engine options (with their power, emissions, mpg, displacement, extra cost etc.) at step one? Could eliminate even a dedicated reading machine.
- Brain's delusion of the day: "Plumbing is to let water cool down the electrons flowing through the wires of this electronic circuit." In constant conflict here.
- Looking at set-circles, thought they were resembling companies in a given industry with some activity overlap, wondering about the intersection-to-union relationship between the areas and hoping for a very small value.
- Given these (x, y) points bit.ly/2Tv81AD, could you infer an approximate function by which they were generated? Ok, gave you more than enough time for the task. The answer was 3x2 + 7x + 11. Could you come up with good code to enable you to answer such questions more easily in the future?
- Not even a remote chance to plot "plan de voirie", which came with a 2.2GB dataset.
- Try not to let data analytics conquer your website bit.ly/2tgdfFx. Only a small excerpt of the actual code is shown here.
- Might have been too quick about this, since it is not obvious whether statsmodels accounts for the fact that the two series have different lengths. Attempted to ensure equal lengths by random sampling both series to 25% of the smaller length (sample size came out to be 25), doing this 1000 times and averaging all p-values at the end. This time the result was different: 0.3054. But noticed that the larger the samples, the more it approached the previous one. Taking samples of size 51 led to p-value of 0.162, samples of 85 led to 0.051 and (maximal) samples of 102 resulted in 0.0255. Perhaps the bigger samples increase our confidence, but didn't expect this to happen so rapidly. But when using sampling with replacement, the lowest p-value becomes 0.0622.
- Spent some time trying to understand the concept of statistical significance in the case of men and female sweater prices (at GAP), data about which we have already seen here. The p-value came out to be 0.0049 (good that I don't have to manually check z-tables), which indicates a real difference without necessarily having to visualize it on a violinplot (to save some time). Expecting to also use one-sided tests in the future, but still having a lot to learn.
- If I had to choose, it would be the second memory card bit.ly/2QMu8jX. Any idea why?
- Oftentimes I prefer static over primitive or hard-to-maintain interactive.
- Also noticed that during this intensive use of Google Search, my mouse cursor was frequently "stunned" after the search results appeared on the page. This caused it to skip screen space and made me miss the right locations in my code several times. Not a well-polished experience. Can't imagine how such IR could work on much slower, embedded hardware, for instance.
- Now one could go and ask more specific questions like: "Could the Duke Department of Mathematics have published interesting papers recently?" I'm sure you'll have much better ideas than me.
- Tutition fees at various universities and colleges in USA (as seen by Google) bit.ly/2NgTEvA. No guarantee of accuracy or pretention of completeness—better seen as approximate. Only the highest top 200 (out of 677) are shown. Noticed some minor details while creating it. Organizations with specialty words in their title (like "law", "medicine" etc.) often seemed to charge a premium. Colleges often had lower tuition fees, many were even among the lowest. Several locations in Puerto Rico came out with the lowest tuition fees.
- What would you do on a machine with 256GB memory to fully utilize its capacity?
- As always, if you wish specific work completed, use the contact form to propose your project. Your payments will eventually be used for more interesting work/experiments, whiich may not appear otherwise.
- Saw a crane on the horizon and realized that I don't know much about these creatures. This led to the next bit: "Some properties of fast-erecting and top-slewing cranes by LIEBHERR" bit.ly/2QKcNbs. Hope you also find it informative as it was for me. The model "4000 HC 100" is said to have max. lifting capacity of 100000kg, which is an amazing technological achievement. Perhaps you know of even better ones. Also liked the detailed geometric dimensions in the "Mammoet" crane datasheets.
- Tried to find out how Corsair memory timings vary with memory frequency and capacity (for three series of modules), but didn't like the result much bit.ly/30b08kO. Speeds and capacities rarely overlapped to make a direct comparison. Only for capacity of 32GB and frequency of 2666Mhz we see how the last timing (e.g. the 36 in 15-15-15-36) of "Value Select" memory is considerably higher than of "Dominator" and "Vengeance LPX" modules. Sometimes more than two different timings were available for some "Vengeance LPX" with the same total capacity and frequency. "Value Select" was most present in lower frequencies, while the timings of "Dominator" modules increased visibly with increasing frequency.
- Like the idea behind "CeX" in UK, but unaware whether it exists in such form and scale elsewhere. What I've seen were mostly stores focused on new items, having few second-hand offers extra. The prices of the used ones were often relatively high to justify their ownership. But when the mechanism works well, it could serve as a waste limiter. The real challenge might be in finding the items.
- Wondering whether anyone reads long chocolate bar manuscripts bit.ly/2sekvRR. Admittedly, looked extra for the keyword "conclusion" (whether to proceed or not).
- Nutrients of the desserts at "McDonald's" in Malta bit.ly/2QF5S3e
- Learned that offline rents in retail have reached 468$/m2 at mall locations. Sadly, many retailers disappeared before fully realizing their online potential. They might have seen good platforms as too expensive.
- If you made the movie grid I asked you about, would you be able to reuse the image covers to automatically group the films by genre (action, adventure, comedy, drama, horror etc.)? Would you seek for specific details in each image or rather train on many correct labels? Finding a novel lens on past work might appear faster than the effort to discover what could be recently valuable.
- When you build a website, you probably don't want to see its popularity diffused over too many irrelevant links/options.
- Noticed that the handle @dummeraugust ranks quite highly in Google, even though it was never used to tweet anything. Doesn't belong to me. I don't participate on social networks (due to widespread disrespect and manipulation). The link on photo.net also shouldn't be present. Many years ago used this service, but then realized that I didn't need it anymore. Tried to delete my account only to find out that they didn't provide this functionality by default. (Imagine my disappointment as software developer.) Other people complained of the same. Not only is this information lingering in Google index more than ten years later, but now it also ranks high.
- Bike maker: "If you build it, the speed will come." No difference with software.
- Skier times at the competition in Zagreb, Croatia (04.01.2020) bit.ly/2FvjyHT. Realized that in the summer I might not have enough chances for such work. Also great to see Eurosport tracking the accurate times where they would have been otherwise forgotten.
- One thing that warehouses seek to minimize is cost/m2-year. Do you think that Atlanta is still among the top performers or that London, Heathrow has managed to improve? Also saw a diagram with a distribution center in the middle and several fulfillment centers and warehouses satellite-attached to it. Not sure whether this setup always describes the relationships appropriately.
- Highway length (km) by state in India bit.ly/2uoD3zk
- Learned that truck drivers try to minimize cost/ton-km (A), but are often treated with disrespect and kept personally responsible in case of stolen or spoiled goods during rest or road accident (likelihood increases by truck overload done to satisfy A). So it practically helps if they are good mechanics as well. Reminded myself that loading/unloading unknown goods with a cigarette and lighter in the hand presents a direct danger.
- Between 06.11.2010 and 07.01.2020, there were over 4 million (4074376) service requests (311) on the territory of Calgary, Canada. Here you can see their distribution, with some numbers for the most frequent locations bit.ly/39P0Icx (Source: data.calgary.ca, "Monthly 311 service requests", bit.ly/2FCEQmF, 1.1GB size). Took a good amount of time to crystallize.
- Locations of the smart trash containers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania bit.ly/2sQiyeK
- Again: "You can speed up your 3D graphics today". Thank you very much, but this contradicts all logical sense... 20 minutes later bit.ly/2FsAVJl
- Brain speaks: "Night is a zero sun game." Zero self-attention.
- You may also want to take a look at the paper "The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness" which claims that the sky over many places has become brighter than usual, making it impossible for many people to see the Milky Way. Researchers found that in Singapore, the eyes cannot easily adapt to night vision, indicating it as most affected place in the world. Eye-opening to see east USA and large portions of Europe experiencing the brighter shades. The Europe map showed most problematic territories to be in Italy and Germany as a whole, but if I understood correctly, the highest brightness ratios relative to normal sky were found to be in Belgium, the Netherlands and a small area around Madrid. Also contains a world map and detailed country-level information.
- Wikipedia: "In this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are also light. Like all types of EM radiation, visible light propagates as waves." Sound is a wave too and it can cause noise pollution, so there is no theoretical reason why light shouldn't be able too.
- "Nobody has time to clean up, but everyone has time to search." Whenever possible, they would also ask a full-time machine to do the searches. Getting to root causes is hard.
- "We don’t often think about the fact that light can also be a pollutant" bit.ly/36zVHCG. The big advertisement lightboards on the photo can easily convince me. But excessive lighting is almost everywhere and in my opinion, dangerous to eyesight at the very least. For instance, I saw a recent photo made inside a US store, where the ceiling had extreme number of lights, probably spaced every 20cm over a large area. Hopefully low-lumen, but even so, it was hard to imagine waste of such magnitude. Wondered how shopping felt there when the low-lying products have to get more than sufficient flux in order to appear bright and be sold. The article mentioned using curtains to prevent light from spilling to the outside, which reminded me of someone who actually used the ceilings during the day, because they complained that outside lighting was unreliable and didn't spread through the space uniformly. So they pulled the curtains and installed a dedicated lighting system for better light homogeneity which was on all the time.
- Very much prefer a crisp/clear text with a sloppy link anchor (that saves me many kilobytes and enables deeper content) rather than a sloppy text with a clear anchor, SEO-designed to impress search engines. You can gauge which of the two has greater total weight on your pages.
- Imagine what could have happened with the help of many cores. The best is far ahead.
- If you look carefully, you might see a value of 0.33 in the "ON power consumption (W)" column. Thought that perhaps my script incorrectly interpreted some character sequence and went to see the corresponding product page bit.ly/2T0RG6n. While this might look as a small oversight, overall they have done great work on the specifications (even providing Excel files as an alternative format).
- Features of the "iiyama" monitors bit.ly/303UWzd. This is what my script managed to capture without having to manually go to each product page to seek verification of the results. As you can see, their latest 43" model is so big, that it dominates the first few columns (and also the weight category with its 12.5kg). The slowest response time among all models seems to be 6ms, which is amazing. They added more products since the last time I checked (also improving their website), so now my previous work is updated accordingly, considering a lot more features.
- Which worker do you prefer to have—a dedicated, resilient, problem-hardened one, working on a single-core machine or the know-it-all, octa-core gamer, listing all CV technologies as needed? The second group would often claim to be n times more productive than the first.
- CNN just painted in my console bit.ly/39LZgaW. The screws on my mouth weakened to explain that this should happen as rarely as possible, on any website. If you wish this message to be seen (rather than remain hidden to most), put it directly in a descriptive feedback page section, but don't incur the cost of console output to every newcoming visitor. Paradoxically, this is a way to make it faster, which you asked for (glad to help). Think of more obvious ways to increase approachability.
- Remember that solving your problem may require speaking with a professional. This isn't cheap, but at the end you get what you pay for.
- Ran a script to score "Delsey" suitcases sold at Galeria Kaufhof, since they were too many (112), and it wasn't easy to select potentially interesting candidates. The script sieved only 98 of them having all of article number, width, height, depth (cm x 3), weight (kg), volume (l) and price (€) specified. At the end, it ranked several backpacks at the top positions, like "Delsey Esplanade Rucksack 47 cm Laptopfach" bit.ly/36s7B1n ↗ or "Delsey Parvis Plus Rucksack 40 cm Laptopfach" bit.ly/2tDlICi ↗. Among the suitcases, the highest ranked I can see are "Delsey 4-Rollen Trolley Passage +, 55 cm, 2,6 kg, 44 l" bit.ly/2FrwL4j ↗ and "Delsey Belfort Plus 4-Rollen Kabinentrolley 55 cm" bit.ly/2sUdYMn ↗. "Delsey ABS-3446 4-Rollen Trolley 66 cm" bit.ly/2ZYTEFD ↗ also looks nice and is quite spacious for its price (currently 76€). But it could be that my script has shown some affinity for products on promotion, where a less biased result would have been nicer.
- You could be a packenger today bit.ly/2QwQmqj ↗. Someone advised not to use clever labels, but this one describes the system nicely.
- Not waiting for inspiration to strike, but would be nice if I could pass some of it to you as a client.
- Operating revenue vs. operating expenditures (totals) for city libraries in Utah, USA bit.ly/2tA7HWg. Tried to filter out county level library information (names containing "county"), but unsure how successful this was, since the labels may not strictly follow this pattern. According to the diagram, we see no obvious deviations from the straight diagonal line, which means that most libraries in this state are good at balancing their operating revenues and expenditures. The five with highest budgets seem to be "Salt Lake City Public Library", "Provo City Library", "Orem Public Library", "Logan Library" and "Murray Public Library". The data contains a lot more information, which you may find interesting.
- Nutrients of the tacos, tostadas and burritos at "Del Taco" bit.ly/2tEtwnG
- Nutrients of the burgers by "Habit Burger" bit.ly/36x6MUW. Normalized to 100g, "Portabella" has 217% the energy (cal) content of "Lettuce Wrap".
- Screen size vs. power usage for the "nearly bezel-less" Samsung Q950R TVs bit.ly/35siOO7. Looking at this, 1kW no longer seems impossible. Also interesting to learn about another model by another company which on command hides itself in a box to simplify the interior.
- Seattle and Boston are both said to use "New Flyer" electric buses to reduce emissions, which may or may not be a coincidence. Someone mentioned the advanced transit system in Seattle, so I wondered which bus models were in use there. If you are interested in the technical details, take a look at the corresponding brochures.
- A real-world fuel economy (mpg) improvement of 29.5% over a period of 15 years (from 19.6 to 25.4 between 2003 and 2018), according to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, does not look too convincing. That fuel economy was ranked at place 20 among the purchase decisions is somewhat unfortunate bit.ly/2sUjAGl. Not sure when the survey was made, but hoping about a shift with current perceptions.
- Another interesting concept in the excerpt of the Callister book was that of linear and planar densities (in the context of atoms). Made me think of the number of bus stops in a given total line length and the number of points enclosed in a given convex hull area.
- "Materials that are opaque in the macroscopic domain may become transparent on the nanoscale; some solids become liquids; chemically stable materials become combustible and electrical insulators become conductors." The microworld has its own rules.
- First time hearing of optimal buoy placement to detect illegally fishing ships. Given how much fish population has declined, this is a much needed measure.
- Don't tell me "This thinking is wrong (= they likely won't succeed with this stack of technologies), but since the industry requires them and I have bills to pay, I have to ensure they are present on my CV." Would be extremely hard to hire someone without principles or stance they won't be willing to hold until their last breath.
- Another instance of "stopped reading immediately" was a paper which claimed that over the past several years, deep learning has become "a worthy player"... Over time and with experience you too will start to discover early signs (the equivalent of "code smells") of the avoidable.
- Saw someone call the XHR API "ugly" yesterday only to go and provide a full-blown "beautiful" solution in Angular. Stopped reading immediately as you have to understand programming really well before you ever write books about it.
- Much written, little said.
- If you claimed that employee training can't be tied directly to profit and that the success of educational initiatives is hard to quantify (so it isn't wise to provide them), you might have subscribed for a rough decade based on what you have already sown to date.
- We need better software more than ever before. And not one designed to fill the app stores, serve the advertisements or prove capability of the same hired-and-rehired adversarial examples.
- The best is far ahead.
- Can't know the problems in your context, but always trying to understand them as much as possible before identifying structure and proceeding with approach.
- One thing to avoid is maximizing the shortest path (among fragile obstacles) between entry and exit for your in-store customers. Takes too much time and the long walk in this poor-air environement (since everything is hermetically closed to not leak customers) could mean that some older people may not make it to the outiside.
- This could be your project's week.
- The moment you stop learning and advancing is when your skills start to decline. Your abilities are a long-term investment precisely in the same way that your website quality is. You have to know where your priorities are.
- Removed the demo "Seeking promotions" as all original sources were gone. But you could easily implement your own search including only sources and items you care about.
- Feature relationships for the 32-bit microcontrollers by "Microchip" bit.ly/2QMGOWV. Didn't include "Min. temperature" as it always started from -40℃. Memory sizes and even pin counts seem to influence pricing more strongly than max. CPU speed (Mhz). Now we could go further and implement microcontroller selection criteria. Or first view the extent to which this could be beneficial bit.ly/36teejX
- Visited a website about yachts and noticed that it loaded 13MB of content while the scripts locked the CPU. Exclusivity must be felt in a memorable way, I guess.
- Features of the "Völkl" racing and piste skis bit.ly/2MTHZmr. Initial idea was to also include the freeride, freestyle and touring ski types, but a closer look revealed that their 0-10 features were different, making the models hard to compare. Hope you find this overview useful if you aren't already skiing. Update: Interesting that weight seems to stay in a well-pronounced inverse relationship to ease of handling. Tip width is positively connected with tail width, which is not surprising. Other strong positive relationships might be present between length and weight and between hard snow performance and skier level.
- Quickly found only 70 of the 101 Wegman's store locations bit.ly/36qfCUn. Among these, the area of presence seems to span from Medford (somewhere near Boston) to Erie (east-west) and from Rochester to Raleigh (north-south). The branch closest to the centroid is located in Williamsport.
- Which crop gives you the highest yield-nutrition per square meter-price-growth days-pick time? (thinking only)
- Features of the "Timbuk2" backpacks bit.ly/2SPFkxO. Once again, duffels get the highest scores, but if you are like me, you shy away from them. "Especial Medio" has "laptop" in its title, which is a clear advantage, but I liked the compact look of "Clark Commuter Backpack" despite the fact that it happens to be the heaviest.
- If you had to list the quantitative features you believe are most important for the selection of an operational amplifier, voltage regulator or Zener diode (without looking at specs/data sheets), which ones would you think of first? Could help in developing a lens that is different from gut feeling.
- Are you already rationalizing/justifying the decisions you've made a couple of days ago?
- I'm a robot. Click to fix me.
- "Happy New Year" hasn't arrived to my console yet, but big chunks of site code reach me almost daily, raising questions about what should be possible in production. Starts to become annoying when you type some code and a late/periodic XHR request prints its result prior to your code execution. You would agree that a mixture of several lines with different purposes is not an aesthetic piece to look at.
- CRI vs. typical efficacy for LUXEON TX series LEDs bit.ly/2QKUqC7. Noticed that a similar curve can be observed for other LED series as well, which indicates a possible trade-off.
- If I had to seek warm weather in USA and couldn't afford Honolulu (Hawaii) or Miami/Tampa/Orlando, I'd shift attention to Phoenix, Corpus Christi, New Orleans, Houston/San Antonio. Would probably think twice about Denver, Detroit, Chicago or Boston. But if I also had to consider temperature variability throughout the year, I'd rather look at the whole diagram bit.ly/37ru2ns. Honolulu, San Francisco, San Diego and Miami show very small variations, while Minneapolis and Saint Paul do the opposite. The distance between the last two on a straight line is said to be ≈13.2km.
- Here is another diagram of the same if you prefer a wider context bit.ly/2FjsHmt. Some cities with slightly cooler climate relative to others in the same country are Colorado Springs, Minneapolis and Milwaukee in USA, Kiruna in Sweden, Ballarat in Australia, Harbin in China and Srinagar in India. At least among the ones that were present in the service. Also interesting to notice that cities in Brazil and Australia have slightly lower temperatures in the middle of the year and higher at the start/end. Current temperature in Sydney (where the fires are) is 22℃, while in Darwin (Northern Territory) it is 29℃.
- The current temperature in Berlin is said to be 2℃, while in Munich—one degree below zero.
- Also made a similar diagram for some cities in Germany bit.ly/2rKc9kv. The profiles look fairly similar in shape, although they have a small vertical shift. According to this (limited) data, Freiburg (south-west) has the warmest weather throughout the year, with a median (of these averages) of 10.98℃, while Oberstdorf (southmost) had the coolest with its 7.03℃. Other cities on the warmer spectrum were Essen (9.75℃), Stuttgart (9.7℃), Frankfurt/Main (9.65℃), Köln (9.65℃). Berlin was slightly behind Trier with its 9.3℃, but still preceding Munich by one degree Celsius. Since it is located to the north, my assumption was that the temperatures would be lower there relative to the south-east, but this is not what the data shows.
- Mean daily average temperatures in several cities in Canada bit.ly/2Fe4CxI. Only two of them had values above zero during all months of the year: Vancouver and Victoria (both in British Columbia). Although Toronto, Ontario had the highest peak temperature, it only had the third-highest median after these (a difference of slightly more than a half degree Celsius). Iqaluit in Nunavut has a very different profile as a much colder place relative to the rest. Most similar to it appears to be Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.
- If you type "DB ICE Netz 2020" in Google, you'll find a nice PDF page of the (fast train) rail network in Germany. Liked how the lines went parallel to each other, revealing patterns in the degree of connectivity across the country.
- Nutrients of the ready-made cakes by "Dr. Oetker" bit.ly/2QeePjJ. Used to enjoy precisely these "Schoko/Marmor Rührkuchen" a lot (but from a different brand).
- Nutrients in the spaghetti products by "Honig" bit.ly/2thwqym. First assumption of "Spaghetti mit Honig" didn't hold. "Vezelrijk" means "rich in fiber" (first new word for the year).
- Spreading calendar months over polyhedral faces is another creative idea bit.ly/2SL8iyO ↗
- sun of the new year and decade is already here! Wishing you health, warmth in the heart, wisdom and better opportunities to unfold yourself and lift those around you. Sure that everything else that is good will follow from there. Einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr!
- Did your Netflix image grid contain most of the following titles bit.ly/2u0YEO6? If so, good that you went beyond the design and considered the data perspective as well.
- Enjoyed this infographic by Domo Inc. about how much data was generated every minute in 2019 bit.ly/39psdcF ↗. If you were to compare with v5, for instance, Google searches/min must have increased by 24.6%, while the number of Skype calls/min have increased by 50.3% over the same three-year period. Netflix users streamed 694444 hours of video instead of the initial 69444 hours. If one of the digits wasn't a mistake, the new rate was ≈10x the old.
- Tried to fix an old laptop having display problems (visible stripe on the right) and keyboard problems (some keys appearing to be always pressed due to unintentional Coca-Cola spillover) by connecting to external monitor and external keyboard. Still couldn't fix the unrecognized printer and the fan "going too loud" either on sleep or shutdown (none of which ever finish).
- Unless you can convince me of doing something else (which you probably can't), I am going on a long walk in the cold weather to obtain my next ideary (since current one reached 0% life). Meanwhile, while you wait for me, you could implement two ideas: creating a grid of selected Netflix movie covers to show what people missed (they were previously available, now it seems only after sign-in) or one of (winter) plants seen on the website of the Royal Horticultural Society bit.ly/39jvKcp ↗. Once I return, I'd be glad to take a look at your creation. (Not attempting this myself to avoid performance disappointment.)
- Great visual design has enormous explanatory power bit.ly/37lUTRK. Here: Canon Powershot G11 manual.
- "A half-dollar CPU that needs a twenty-dollar UART is no bargain" - Jack Ganssle
- Until 22.12.2019, San Francisco Police Department reported so many theft cases that you thought in terms of one in every 12.80 minutes on average. Update: In the week 22-29.12.2019, there were 790 new cases, which means one in every 12.75 minutes on average. A slightly higher rate, but the amortization period is also much shorter, so there may be some bias in this thinking.
- What came through about land prices in Seattle bit.ly/362Z3xI. No city boundary included as I couldn't easily come to it. You would probably agree that the number of offers is relatively small; perhaps there is a website dedicated specifically to land, but currently I am unaware of it.
- Extensive specification on Mercedes-Benz buses (see "facts & figures" for each vehicle) bit.ly/2F4I42h. Perhaps you could create a feature matrix to aid our understanding about the differences? And if this is not enough, you could also look at Iveco buses.
- Used information from two articles to create a diagram of the volumes (in millions of liters) of some of the biggest acquariums in the world bit.ly/2F3LGl7
- Had no idea that the rail route Paris-Marseille can be traveled with 750km/h (excerpt of a book). Paris-Amsterdam and Madrid-Seville were indicated as 515 and 471km/h respectively. At a cost of 25000-30000€/km it is not hard to understand why progress elsewhere in Europe might seem slow. High-speed rail was said to be most economical where the traffic volumes are high. The 80-90dB(A) noise aspect is a downside, but that Intercity Train was said to need ≈1/8 of the energy consumption of a passenger aircraft (500km flight, in terms of MJ/seat-km) is a rather interesting upside. No word wasted about the organisms landing on the windshield.
- Having zero experience in this domain bit.ly/367LltE, but liked the variety of shapes/etiquettes and the fact that it was an "Independent" article. Getting ideas like these was my original intent with the "beverages".
- Remember that if you have significant work (meeting the requirements), you can always propose your own project. Otherwise I can't offer you personalized service or more than bits.
- Diagram of some housing prices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania bit.ly/39lETRN. Excited about this since it is the first time using a new approach. It scales relatively well and could work for any city, provided there is enough data. Zillow restricts the number of results by default, which didn't allow us to obtain a richer picture. But even so, the patterns that come through are nice. In this case, houses on the north-east of Philadelphia appear cheaper than those on the north-west, many of which by themselves are cheaper than those in the southern area. The median house price came out as $275000.
- Returning to old bits now and then to make changes the way a craftsman wouldn't be completely satisfied with their object for not meeting some internal criteria. But also balancing with the need to touch things as rarely as possible.
- As a beverage company, a single software mistake on your website could leave your customer base unable to access anything your brand has to offer. Saw this on the websites of two well-known brands recently. After selecting date, month and year, the first form led to an empty page and the second claimed that I don't have the necessary age to continue (despite being much older than 18). Speechless about the inability to handle such a simple functionality.
- Liked FooDB and the idea of exploring the chemical compounds (and their amount) present in common foods.
- Which do you prefer: being proud of the work you do throughout the entire year or read about in in the annual report? Feel the disconnect?
- Slow CPUs and cars have something in common—they reach the destination last.
- Associativity at (uninvited) play: stakeholders and shakeworlders
- Diagram of brand value vs. brand value change for the most valuable brands in 2019, according to Interbrand bit.ly/2PXnyqA. Seems like Visa and MasterCard did quite well. Also created an approximate line fit to the data points by averaging a high number of linear and non-linear models (first time doing this due to its complexity and time requirements) bit.ly/352FcNO. This line seems a bit counterintuitive, but it may show that overall, bigger companies have a slightly easier time growing.
- Properties of "GoodYear" tyres (Australia) bit.ly/2SrYklH. This carrying capacity of 3350kg might be good to carry any heavy mistakes and accumulated baggage into the next year. A reminder that they don't disappear/resolve themselves.
- Properties of refrigerators by "AEG" bit.ly/37brvh3
- Design and devil are in the details bit.ly/34YcZHO ↗
- Necessary yearly living wage by US state bit.ly/2ZmoXtU. Uses a new article and reuses an old demo by changing its context.
- Made a simple effect on what appears to be a miniature snowman figure bit.ly/2ERuQFR. Also used dedicated code to generate two layer masks and apply them to the image bit.ly/2t4Y8OA. The first tried to pack random irregular rectangles, leaving around 5% of uncovered image area, while the second picked specific pixels, which were then post-processed with colorization.
- Blue-green swirl bit.ly/2QlNVFp. Slightly blocky due to my unwillingness to edit the hex representations of too many colors.
- Reminds me of origami bit.ly/378ZEOq
- Vertical tune bit.ly/2MsXhy4. Couldn't come up with a better name.
- Walkable shapes that led my eye wandering bit.ly/2MqUfL0. Is there a way to switch from one ring to another without jumping at some point?
- Here, take some "Star Wars" cards bit.ly/2SjNJcB and play nice today. Don't even know what these are for, but saw that they all had four numeric features (no table this time) and an ID number. None of the ten repeated itself, which is nice. But this doesn't help in estimatating how many there could be. A careful observer would only spot that the highest ID appears to be 44. But also saw an example of someone estimating the number of unseen snails in a garden, so this too must be possible then (even in the absence of IDs). Yet, at least one collector (not one myself) would have to show me their cards to make this possible.
- Properties of the "Pringles" products bit.ly/2MnFiZU. Many of these look so similar, perhaps cut on the same machine. "Reduced fat" variants make immediate impression.
- Even food can be produced at several different places before it reaches the audience, which is alarming.
- Nutrients of the "Farmer's Snack" nuts bit.ly/2sicz1I. After normalizing all prices to refer to 100g, it seems that all almonds with origin different from Mallorca have highest protein-to-price ratios. But if you also include kernels and dried fruits bit.ly/2sfwheF, you will see that the almonds are preceded by the sunflower seeds and the pumpkin seeds from Styria, Austria. You also clearly see that the first two categories are richer in total fat, while the last is richer in sugars. This picture could look different elsewhere though.
- "Haribo" product properties bit.ly/373RdE4. Not sure whether the difference is so pronounced, but the "Berries" variant bit.ly/2EMZU9R ↗ is said to contain ≈75g sugar in 100g content. Real berries are much harder to resist.
- Didn't know that letting the customer willingly share data is called "zero party" data. Perhaps to indicate the difference to one collected to be sold to third parties. Good to see someone describing your own approach to it.
- Properties of "Kellogg's Special K" cereals bit.ly/373dUZ2. Saw a photo of someone holding a pack of these and reminded myself of the idea to use oats as smoothie thickeners (remember the blenders?). However, the author of the book was against added sugar in general. This doesn't exclude the possibility to have other useful nutrients in this product though.
- "...few graduate students can commit 8 or 10 years of their life to a doctoral program, in search of something new under the sun, while they moonlight to remain solvent." Very well said. "Build it and they will come" is a variation on this. You'd rather build only what they paid for in advance.
- Funny thought for the start of the new week: If you still have resources which will evaporate if unused until the end of the year, you could start buying lots of random gifts you have no immediate good use for, you could throw these resources through the chimney to accelerate the fireplace and make Santa's cold go away or transfer them on time/within budget wherever they are going to have a much greater impact.
- Woudln't be easy for any human being to stand out midst the work of an algorithm creating hundreds of faces with small variations and putting them online. What I saw yesterday convinced me that the chance to find real people online has started to decrease rapidly.
- Possible that you already missed over 350 chances to work with me on your project-problems this year. In case you saw the possibilities and were still intentional, unimpressed or unwilling to engage, I wish you a prolific year 2020.
- Sixty-nine bit.ly/2MlTPoV
- "Die Schüler trennen den Müll, und dann kommen die Lehrer und schmeißen alles in eine Tonne." Had me laughing for a while.
- Looked at an interior photo of a hotel room, where a big TV was placed on a dedicated long, but shallow-depth table. Had the table been exactly the same length, an eventual change in TV screen size would have led to the need for another table. Shows how important it is to anticipate/plan for the changes in advance.
- Flipped a fish twice and centered its code on the extended body bit.ly/373JTIS. Original can be seen on Pixabay bit.ly/2SdQQmp ↗
- Don't worry, there's a always a way forward bit.ly/2ZdQ0ra
- One of the rare cases when you remind yourself of functions and the ability to generate 3D data before projecting it to 2D bit.ly/2tJhjxV. A free book, which showed how beaituful these patterns can get, inspired this experiment.
- Men's jacket and coat prices at "C&A" and "H&M" bit.ly/2rmNXVi. My initial expectation that "H&M would have the lower median price turned out to be wrong. "C&A" has a lot more items on sale (370 vs. 177) in this category.
- Made a tree with 121 lights (112) bit.ly/38ZfQUt, although I didn't spend time to count them. Regularity was important.
- If during the year you didn't solve at least one optimization problem (mentally) every (couple of) day(s), at least during the holidays you'll have the chance to compensate with a couple per hour: how many different kinds of foods to produce and which gifts to buy in order to fit within a constrained budget, how many units of each sweet thing to consume in order to keep your sugar and calorie intake in check, how much time to bake everything to be ready for the soon to be there guests, how many of them to invite when you don't have everything in a matching style (chair, knife etc.), how far apart the Christmas lights must be in order not to make the tree brighter than it needs to be, the optimal distance to keep it away from expected glary screens, the best device to use to quickly preheat the room to a comfortable temperature, the spacing required to fit everyone, everything and the unexpected, the impression and mood you'd like the interior design to leave with its color and pattern combinations. Parhaps you have plenty of other ideas you can't wait to implement.
- On the impact of CO2 on cognitive ability bit.ly/2s9wIaj ↗
- "Vitamix" blenders bit.ly/2ENdCt7. Noticed that several sources praised how well these devices work, but the number of descriptive properties could have been higher. For instance, container volume (m3), noise level (dB), energy consumption (W), motor guarantee (years), operating modes are only some which were not included. Although dimensions leave some sense about the volume, they are still not the same. Turns out that Amazon offers "5200" at $270 today instead of the regular $395.
- Didn't know that 8 / 2 * (2 + 2) has such a potential to divide people between 16 and 1. Perhaps both answers are wrong, because they leave interpretation open and disregard the proper use of parentheses. Both (8 / 2) * (2 + 2) or 8 / (2 * (2 + 2)) are correct and a good mathematician will always defend against misrepresenting their idea in the same way an author would choose words that don't make the meaning of their sentence ambiguous. You have to know exactly what you want to represent before you write it, which makes the above case rare. When in doubt of operation precedence, always use parentheses.
- Imagine the kind of pump required to deliver water in a building to someone who is 250m above ground. Paper: "booster stations have considerable energy consumption". Seems to be in line with the previous findings from several datasets on energy efficiency, which you have already seen here.
- Interesting case with the sold-out "Rolex" watches in Munich. The author expected that these were gifted to landlords in order to secure rooms, but also that some could be replicas since "whoever has the money to buy it, probably doesn't have a rent problem". Nice to see that logic and reasoning apply to gifts as well.
- "World's air pollution: Real-time air quality index" bit.ly/372YDrr ↗. Very informative; must have been a tremendous effort to create something like this. There is also a country-level air pollution ranking.
- One could think of a "curly" minimum spanning tree (or an equivalent complex path) and its total segment length in terms of the number of "straightened" lines describing the graph's diameter. Thank you for this useful "combs your Saturday hair" metaphor.
- Bus routes and stops in Charlotte, North Carolina bit.ly/34FcjqH
- Some properties of digital cameras by "Nikon" bit.ly/36Vb7ky. Considering all of them, according to my script, of interest could be "Z 50", "Z 7", "Z 6", "D7500", "D850" and "D500" (in that order). The first three are all mirrorless, while the next three are DSLR, yet the script didn't know that. Also quite happy to be able to complete a similar table for the "Sony" cameras bit.ly/2PIlgvu, although it is more likely to contain inaccuracies. According to it, among the cameras that had all values specified, the slightly modified script pointed to "RX0", "⍺7", "RX100", "⍺7R", "RX1R", "RX1R II", "⍺7 II", "RX100 III" (in that order). You can also see the relationship between weight and price for all of these cameras bit.ly/34NVoTe.
- Try to ensure zero variance in cookie shape in home settings without a specialized cookie cutter, enabled on "as needed" basis upon smartphone command activating a WiFi-enabled smart plug. Not that I have any of these for just-in-time holiday manufacturing, but the opportunity to reduce waste midst unsure expected consumption patterns sounds tempting. Until you remember that the festive feeling shouldn't be driven purely by the thoughts about food and digestion.
- Suppose your users have an average height of 180cm and you want to determine the height at which to place a machine button (e.g coffee machine) to be both easy to see and activate. If you subtract the total height of head and neck (say 36cm), that button would fall to arm's height, where it can be pushed by a hand horizontal relative to the ground. But you know that the average can be misleading, where you are sure that people in a wheelchair will want to use the machine too. What is the height difference between a standing person and one in a wheelchair? If you subtract thigh height (say 42cm) and account that the wheelchair pedals are slightly above ground (say 15cm), you'd come to a button height of 180 - 36 - 42 + 15 or ≈117cm and 180 - 36 or ≈144cm for the case of the standing person. But you found that the average height of a 6-year old is 115.5cm and assume that some parents could ask their child to go get some coffee. If you think in terms of human proportions, you might expect the child to have a head + neck height of (115.5 / 180) * 36 ≈23cm and thigh height of (115.5 / 180) * 42 ≈27cm. So you have 115.5 - 23 - 27 + 15 = 80.5cm for the child in wheelchair (I've seen one recently and also another one which stared at it in disbelief) and 115.5 - 23 = 92.5cm for the standing child. You might think that the differences between these four groups of people are significant and that to satisfy all groups, it is enough to take the average of these heights (117 + 144 + 80.5 + 92.5) / 4 = 108.5cm. But this resulting height is only accessible for the standing child (and even then with some effort), while it excludes the child in the wheelchair. The maximal height which a 6-year old child in a wheelchair would be able to reach (if it could touch the top of its head) would be 80.5 + 23 = 103.5cm. This means that a height of 102.5cm would likely enable most stakeholders to get their coffee. But we can't simply average the height of the average person (180 / 2 = 90cm) or average the extremes at both ends (e.g. (210 + 80.5) / 2 = 145.25cm) to come to a meaningful result. Note that this is a very coarse thinking, so your own may vary.
- Property comparison of "Setra" vehicles bit.ly/2tsFd0n. Looks like the model "TopClass S 531 DT" has the most seats (83). Did not see CO2 values, but liked the simplicity and speed of their website.
- Don't know why a video ad showing a command line with a working script finishing with a yes/no question created such a strange feeling in me. As if the code watched itself in response to what the viewer ran.
- "... a world of goods, which consumes itself" is an interesting description.
- "Tracking geolocation is the Holy Grail of advertisting, the complete picture that connects all our interests and online activity with our real-world actions" - "New York Times" on surveillance. That too good to be true can't ever turn bad into an entity-threatening experience is an assumption I wouldn't bet on. Sometimes it's better not to collect data with high potential for misuse rather than risk to experience a well-deserved company demise. Times change and with them the understanding about what's right/wrong. What allowed you to extract a lot of personal gain may turn out to be your biggest liability and you could be kept responsible for years. Which oil extraction process, introducing severe leaks into an ocean of public importance wouldn't lead to a company demise? I'd be concerned if it didn't, because that would send the message that "anything is possible". As the article states, geolocation data can be used both to improve public transport operation and to serve targeted ads after being silently sold to advertisers. As a result, future transport surveys may not find good support. You can't enable the good by keeping the door open for the bad. "The greatest trick technology companies ever played was persuading society to surveil itself." This is what caring about networking, followers, clicks, views and funny pictures leads to. But also screen flipping—the mobile advertising ID used to track user activity across several mobile apps reminds me a lot about the web trackers capturing user activity across websites. Didn't know that the same equivalent exists on native apps.
- If you were serious about studying German and wanted to be on the safe side, owning the entire collection of 84 colorful "Duden" dictionaries, you would have to pay 1588.04€ if asking about a discount would make you feel uncomfortable. This excludes any arising shipping costs.
- Gifts carry the most value when made by someone who knows you really well and has learned over time how you tick and what makes you happy. Someone who you deeply appreciate and often spend time with. Once you start asking anyone to make you gifts, you invite the possibility to receive objects of no meaning. As if someone tried to play darts and instead of hitting the center of the target, popped a nearby balloon on first attempt and finished the porcelain service on second. I'd rather not see that, so this year you won't have me ask for any gift at all. Good for you too since it won't make you feel uncomfortable. What I hope instead is to be able to continue creating the type of high quality work that was typical for early dummerAugust. And not deviate/retreat from that internal criteria. Perhaps the biggest gift of all.
- "YouTube is a treadmill. If you stop for a second, you're dead." If YouTube keeps you busy (and burned out), then someone is probably earning well from your effort. Better to create your own personal tube and filter out every single client who doesn't appreciate it. You'd fix your burnout in no time.
- Complete intransparency is what enables the upper etages to walk away with disproportionate rewards while most other employees are suffering. Impossible for me to be an active employee-supporter of such management style.
- By the way, AmazonBasics offers you motor oil, Prime Video shows you ads to watch boxing matches and a source informs you that one of their goals is to sell pills soon (because healthcare is such a profitable space). Apart from selling everything, hosting everything (hardware infrastructure also used to "rent" computation), owning a food chain (Whole Foods), a package delivery company and doing cosmos work. Noone knows anymore what Amazon (and the likes) stand for.
- You probably wouldn't complain of the short holiday sales season if you had an experienced 24/7 website salesman offering everyone a great shopping experience. Doing this tells me that you probably have some online work to do.
- Perhaps your children wouldn't be interested in the "Kinder" egg nutritional table, but they are your greatest clients after all and know that you won't disappoint. Or "Disneyland" next time.
- Would you suppose that some of the properties of motor oils may be relatively similar? Here are their ranges in the case of "Valvoline" engine oils for passenger cars bit.ly/34yyDCo. If you wish, you could do something similar for the oils by "Mobil 1". Or in case of having no interest for the topic, perhaps you remember the distant, high-priority project you were willing to initiate, but never knew how.
- List of countries by average elevation bit.ly/35zYzyP. The impulse for the diagram came after reading an article explaining how the Netherlands is already preparing for floods. Since I didn't knew that their location was susceptible to sea level rise, this prompted me to look further. As you can see, this country has the 4th lowest average elevation (of 30m) only after The Maldives (1.8m), Singapore (15m) and Qatar (28m). Denmark is also not much higher (34m). Since these are averages, there may be affected regions even at higher national elevations. Possible that people who visited the Maldives more recently, have already been exposed to the effects. Looked for medians, but couldnt find any.
- Something came exactly at the right time to partially illustrate one of the previous points bit.ly/34z1KW4
- Language can shape our (speed of) thought, but we often don't realize it. It's important to select one which is conductive to our learning and growth, not one which we find the most convenient. Consider the words "attraction" and "Sehenswürdigkeit". Both say the same, but one is much easier to pronounce and read than the other. Now consider full sentences: "After a long walk the tired man sat under a tree." and "Nach einem langen Spaziergang setzte sich der müde Mann unter einen Baum." Both say the same, yet the length varies from 49 to 73 characters. You take significantly longer time to read and understand the second. In addition, it may use more letters (ä, ö, ü, ß) and alternates lower and uppercase, which makes it more tiring to follow. You could compare any sentence you'd like, but you'll notice the difference once you start reading entire books. Those written in German tend to be longer and overall say less, especially when you are looking at equivalent material. I didn't always think this way. In fact I studied German 11 years before I spent almost five on German ground and I still read many articles on a daily basis. But whenever I have a choice, I'd rather have the same material in English. At a certain point, I started to realize that simply using a "slower" language might be promoting slower thinking. In the same way they say that slow movements are associated with an old age. Whenever the material exists only in one language, it's understandable that the lack of choice makes you thankful that you are still able to understand it. But like everything else, language and words are a choice we make on a daily basis. Suppose you take a book containing code in English and explanations in German. The constant switches between the two will be enough to slow you down. While variable and function names may be written in German, you have to ask yourself how practical this is in broader settings, since this language is not universally known by anyone who is going to read your code. (In general, this is valid for lingo/terminology as well.) If we look at Chinese, we'll notice that only a couple of symbols are sufficient to convey the meaning of entire phrases, maybe even sentences. This means that a skilled person, distinguishing their most subtle visual differences could potentially study much faster in Chinese than in English. Illustrates the tradeoff here: a simple alphabet may require longer letter sequences, while a complex one allows for greater economy of expression. At the end, the most important is the meaning conveyed by the used bandwidth, not the diameter of the pipe or the speed of the flow. And in the same way you use a "faster" language, you can choose "faster" words or reduce the number of potentially unclear expressions.
- Stronger cores have easier time attracting the necessary enhancements. We can't build much on a weak foundation. It is easier for an economy to have a strong core, relying primarily on its own labor than it is to have a weak core and rely on a large number of imported workers for further growth. The weaker core means that additions have a much greater impact, effectively making it weaker. In the same way we cannot compare a cohesive team, which gelled over several years and projects with one having a weak core of random individuals.
- The right stimuli in the right sequence. Possibly describes how and why most of my ideas ever came. Whenever I messed up the sequence or couldn't extend it with high-quality input materials, my work suffered as a consequence. I know that some people dislike stimulation and actively avoid it, relying more on their own thoughts and creativity instead. Not that I didn't try this as well. But found that most of the time my thoughts do not produce anything unique/extraordinary, dragging with itself the need to rely on a combination of many ideas from a variety of sources. But overstimulation rarely helped either. Sometimes only the absence of a piece or two of the puzzle was enough to leave me blind for the possibility.
- Not only the speed of making an impact, but the kind of impact which is made matters. Suppose that plenty of investors pump money in the same company over many years. Now, a startup comes, sees an opportunity and a market for it and attempts to improve the status quo. Is there at least a good chance to succeed? We might think that in order for this to happen, its momentum must be consistently higher than that of the big company. We could think of market capitalization as something which gives "mass" to both companies. Suppose that the startup has one of $50000 and the big company one of $250 million. A difference of 5000 times. Since momentum is mass multiplied by velocity (passive and active components), it follows that the velocity of the startup must be at least 5000 times higher to compensate the disadvantage on the mass dimension. To achieve this is extraordinary hard. And it means that a large company, which is not doing much, still has the chance to fare much better than a startup of highly motivated individuals pushing hard to come forward. Simply because the difference between them has been made insurmountable by purely capitalistic forces and investment decisions. In other words, the bigger and more accelerating the inequality, the less likely it is to see non-trivial changes in the company composition or new market leaders. And the greater the weight of any previous decisions. You might compare this with the idea of the expanding universe: the more time passes, the more distant and isolated the individual elements become. While still there, their bonding and gravity likely get weaker. In a sense, uncontrolled investments and subsidies might be inflating/expanding the corporate universe.
- An input field can be made half as tall as a mouse cursor, but this is rarely a good idea from a usability perspective. The slightest mouse move could lead to a click missing the target. Problematic is only when this persists for several years on a high-traffic website, where noone seems to care about making changes. Wouldn't hypothesize that they haven't seen it or attempted to fix it. Perhaps this state hardened itself over time for other than technological reasons.
- Could you give me a 2020 reason to use a social network like Facebook or Twitter? Haven't touched them in the last ten years or so and never felt that I missed somethng. What's the current percentage of respectful and deep conversations one could expect to have there? What's the openness-to-closeness ratio (number of accessible/number of inaccessible people)? How high are the envy and depression factors, the SNR ratio (message value vs. prevalence of ads)? Is someone tagging you on a photo, where you would have preferred not to appear at all? How many trackers are spying and sending your data to third parties? How many are playing the numbers game and treating you like a single unit? Are these networks used to manipulate public opinion?
- "Lebkuchen Schmidt" ↗ bit.ly/2M3yKzy has such a large variety of products that finding nutritional info will stun your machine for a while. Noticed some minor details. Sugar content is high in "Dominoes with Marzipan" (54.2g), "Dominoes" (49.2g), "Weihnachts-Fruchtgummi" (43.0g), while "Kaiserlein" and "Elisen Suitcase 2018" have slightly less—36.6g and 36.5g. Carbohydrates are highest in their "Dürer-Bread" (71.4g). For lots of fiber, check out "Cashew-Chocolate-Dream" (10.9g). The least fiber was found in "Joghurt-Zitronen-Küchlein" (1.3g). Two cookie types had the highest protein content: "Almond-Pistacchio" (13.4g) and "Hazelnut-Pumpkin" (13.2g) (both were said to be very low in salt). "Pastry Hazelnuts Cacao" would give you the most energy/fat (2435kJ/43.4g). But "Käsegebäck Gouda-Edamer" is also not lagging much behind with its 36.9g. If you seek the lowest amounts, "White Gingerbread Cookies" (1431kJ/2.9g) might appear interesting to you. All teaser-values refer to 100g content.
- Unsure what kind of growth a conglomerate listing 150+ owned brands expects to see. Is there anything left to acquire?
- If you change the logo of the brand on your main page, spend some time to ensure that no unchecked popups exist, which contain the old logo. Because these "windows of opportunity" might come with their own dynamic, acting as separate websites.
- Can't simply type code in the same way I can't simply push pieces. Every push and every piece of code need to have the necessary meaning. Nothing more, nothing less. If for some reason you don't appreciate my work, code or feedback, feel free to look elsewhere. Never giving second chances.
- "Our favorite bikes and cycling gear of 2019" bit.ly/36ERIV5 ↗. Once again, great design matters, but has its price.
- You can overplot a lot of data on a single diagram and make it look very beautiful. Now ask about the interpretability of the result. Is the meaning clear after spending resources to compute for so long? How valuable is to present this diagram online when it can't have a sensible explanation?
- Remember: The worst chess players also win and do so quite often. By losing the position and eventual outcome, but playing to win on time. Or by blocking the game from the start, so that moves become meaningless, refusing to accept a draw and then simply pushing pieces (while you think how to unblock the game) to win on time. Shows the lack of self-respect many people have for themselves, the lack of respect for the other side and the great lengths they are willing to go. When this gets transferred to corporate settings, the results become highly visible, rather quickly.
- Instead of creating a beautiful animated GIF of a sample web page, where practically almost every element on it constantly moves in some direction, why don't you create the real page and prove that these interactions are actually feasible on the client machine without slowing it to a crawl? And that they are meaningful and desired by your end user? Because you know this would fail. Much easier to fake up something quickly to amuse the unsuspecting audience and cause it to believe you are a professional.
- What kind of flowers are you growing on your footer link garden?
- Looked at the BULLS brochure and thought that someone like me might unconsciously step on 1 to get to 2 bit.ly/2LX4czm. Not sure whether this can be considered an affordance.
- Which other inexpensive university (like X) offers the chance to study exactly one of the subjects A, B, or C, while the rest are similar? A working demo might have had some practical, but unfortunately no monetary value. Which is why lazy me wasn't willing to put in the extra effort yesterday. Perhaps you will find a way to monetize it.
- Might sound strange, but somewhere around 2003 I actually liked this Squoquo demoscene bit.ly/2YUaXHx ↗ and the scary clown in it. Loading took some time, but since it was more enjoyable than web animation at that time, it was fine. A demoscene from this year would probably ask me for a machine upgrade first.
- You were perhaps aware of the prices ending in 9s, but were you aware how often manufacturers preserve the package size and price while silently reducing the content, expecting people to continue to grab mindlessly and out of habit? Ths minor detail feels a lot like cheating to me. The air-filled pack also deviates stronger from the perfect packing, so without even knowing, they lose me from one additional perspective.
- It seems that Vimeo moved to paid plans, so the "Creative Mornings" talks ceased to be accessible from this desk. It is either a one-time problem or a state not from yesterday.
- The cheapest seats are farthest from the scene as are the cheapest websites farthest from the truth.
- Simple bar chart depicting the prices of various Gillette razors bit.ly/2tgOqZz. From here it was natural to continue with the electric shavers by "Philips" bit.ly/2PsHtgZ. We see that starting with the 5th series, prices get much higher, but the 5100 model happens to stand out having a 1.66-2.5x lower price than the rest in the group. If we continue with some electric shavers by "Braun" bit.ly/35qfxzJ, we might see that sellers on Amazon try to make you insensitive to the model by pushing too many of them at the same price of $40.
- Forgetting to look at the small letters in the contract may not immediately affect your holidays... but at a later point you may find that spontaneity was a bad decision-maker.
- Haven't seen total combined length (m) to be indicated on a spaghetti package. Perhaps someone follows strict dietary guidelines, with a meter in the hand (not having an expensive scale) and needs to know the expected number of servings.
- Out of curiosity, computed the time required for a point on a 66 inch long tread to move from start to end at a maximum speed of 12 mph. If correct, it must be 0.3125s, which is very fast. By the time you think through it, you'd be back at the starting line.
- "Wir freuen uns auf Eure Bestellungen!" Except that you can't say this with software, because it is never available à la carte. Nothing obvious exists to be ordered upfront.
- Internal organization matters (as in software) bit.ly/2RUaS5i. Here: a page from a freely available brochure on light fire trucks by "Magirus".
- Properties of treadmills by "Sole", "TRUE", "LifeSpan" and "Spirit" bit.ly/2rMDQcx. And if you followed the bits, you already know something about the "NordicTrack" products as well. Couldn't include the treadmills by "ProForm", since their website is inaccessible from my country. Overall, I liked none on the designs I saw and suppose that they are losing potential sales. Being great at producing sports machines doesn't necessarily mean being great at presenting them.
- Thought it must be some surrealistic object before I saw the description that it was "Walt Disney Concert Hall" in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry. Appeared on one of the "photos of the year" at Associated Press.
- "GIGABYTE AORUS NVMe Gen4 M.2 (2TB)" (now $409 at Amazon) is said to have a theoretical read/write performance of 5000/4400MB/s. CHIP already recommended it. Seems like a great capacity and speed for the price. Much better than a spinning hard drive with its 60-75MB/s and also better than the 3500MB/s we've seen 4 months ago.
- Never leave a script with an insufficient supervision bit.ly/35wA6ux
- Lots of Christmas recipes from ALDI UK bit.ly/2LP4CrB ↗
- While walking, noticed that a black crow standing on a metal fence was watching me. It looked 1:1 with the one I saw in an article few days ago, claiming that new hints suggest that after primates, crows could be one of the most intelligent animals. So I wondered whether it knew something I didn't (there weren't other birds around, for instance). You'd think so too after seeing what kind of self-made tools it is able to construct and insert in a wooden branch to suck the small living organisms from there.
- Do you think that a bigger national park will have to attract more visitors? Decided to look into this, considering Wikipedia's entry on national parks. Created a simple area-vs-visitors scatterplot bit.ly/36z6tZl and computed the correlation which came to be -0.1036. Could mean that people aren't simply interested in visiting a large area, but hope to be excited by the impressions available there. As you can see "Great Smoky Mountains" and "Grand Canyon" stand apart, getting the most visitors. Places like "Gates of the Arctic" and "Wrangell–St. Elias", while being vast, receive comparatively few visitors. And the "Gateway Arc" in Missouri stands out by being located on a very small area, but attracting a large number of visitors. It also takes tbe first place by normalied number of visitors per normalized area. Other national parks that follow in this criteria are "Hot Springs" in Arkansas, "Indiana Dunes" in Indiana, "Bryce Canyon" in Utah, "Acadia" in Maine and "Cuyahoga Valley" in Ohio.
- Learned that LVMH, Kering and Richemont were competing in the jewelry business and thought I could look whether their prices do so too. What I didn't relize was that these were "cap" companies, effectively owning tens of brands. Since it was unclear how to proceed and where to look further, today's idea failed. But finding that competition increasingly shifts from individual brands to cap companies is a troubling trend. You don't need to read the cap-Walmart book to straighten your hair about that.
- Nutrients in the "My/Mo Mochi" ice cream flavors bit.ly/2LT8rfe
- Libraries, parks and streets in Charleston, South Carolina bit.ly/36yR2k4. Richer than expected. "West Ashley Library" appears to be somewhere close to the start of the longest green alley in the city.
- Some properties of the oscilloscopes by "Tektronix" bit.ly/2RQjNom and "SIGLENT" bit.ly/2PiBAT9
- Running out of logic gates? Jameco brings you some relief bit.ly/35gxFfq. Always nice to have someone else make the decisions for you.
- Nomos watch prices as of today bit.ly/38zO5Bo. Looked for patterns across the families. Colored the bars instead of the labels as I believe that this makes things slightly easier to follow. The "Lux" and "Lambda" families interleave at the top and are much more expensive relative to the rest, by a wide margin. Then follow two "Metro", two "Zürich" and two "Tangente" models. Also gave you the reference numbers, since there were a couple of models with the same labels, but different identification. Who knows, one of these could be someone's gift for the holidays. Time is precious.
- One of the last days in this year to make a good use of these skills. Or you could speak again the next year or whenever your project gains in importance.
- Made a small diagram with the known criteria ranks for the top 50 Inc. surge cities 2020 bit.ly/2YJKigE. Spurious data, but there is always something interesting to be found in it if you look long enough.
- With the quadratic growth in size of modern TVs, we'll be watching climate change arrive sooner. Imagine what it could be like to convince many households that status comes from owning a 98" screen with a power consumption of 1102W. Only three hours of watching every day would exceed the daily CO2 contribution of an air conditioner and this throughout the entire year, not only when the weather was too hot/cold. Making this more affordable over time means multiplying the effect by the number of such devices in operation. Remember that your products are also a contract with the environment; being dramatically inefficient with it in order to quickly scale your revenue is not the right way to go. Yet, if they help replace other, even more inefficient technologies, this could still have a positive effect overall. For instance, if a digital cinema projector is said to use 7000-10400W, but it can be made redundant by one extra-large TV, then movie projections could come with a reduced footprint.
- Sadly, when you disable images, you are stunned that the page still actively plays MP4 videos. Perhaps an extra hint to have a "Video" section in the settings, also addressing the MP4, WebM and OGV video formats. Native is native, but only until a moment of disturbance.
- Sensor areas of various camera sensor formats bit.ly/34ddXjj
- Properties of B&W, letter paper, Xerox laser printers bit.ly/36tIBqe. The script showed preference for "XEROX B210" (cheap, acceptable performance), "PHASER 3610" (mid-range with good properties) and "VERSALINK B600/B610" (fastest, relatively expensive), in that order. If you have to look at printer diagnostics often and wonder why only few percent of toner are left, it may be time to re-examine the system efficiency.
- If you wish, expand your worldview with theirs and overwrite your software with the update.
- The street fossils were once in the rent-a-car party.
- A random walk over the map of several countries means that you take the product of your "source" amount and the currency exchange rates along the entire path to arrive to the amount in your "destination" currency. You could visualize this by having a matrix of exchange rates and a line path connecting the centers of the cells applicable to your route. Expect to be worse off than the day before if you are not doing it for (only great) business opportunities.
- Year completed vs. length (m) for the world's longest bridges bit.ly/38qyRil. According to Wikipedia, 2010 seems to have been a particularly good year for large bridge projects.
- Not understanding much, created a small table of the properties known about the 16 and 20nm XILINX FPGA models bit.ly/38v16fy. It seems that we could omit the "GTM 58.00Gb/s tranceivers" column as it is not very expressive here.
- I'd have a trouble to deliver even a 30 pound package, let alone one which is 5x heavier. But since post employees would be especially busy around the holidays, you could take away some of their effort if you could deliver the package in-person. This way you know it will arrive at the right time and have a chance to leave a much better impression.
- Assemble the hexadecimal color by visiting each symbol once bit.ly/2sYcUqm
- And listen to your heart.
- Which client would you prefer to serve on Xmas—one owning a giant Christmas tree, which is sporadically and poorly decorated or one with a smaller tree, but high total value of the joy-items put on it (toys, garlands, lights, figures, messages etc.). You could use decoration value per unit of cone volume as an estimate. At least to smile, look how to improve your own arrangements and item distribution or pick a stray choco-figure. By discussing the usability of its packaging and the accessibility of the nearby message, hidden behind the spines. And while at it, you would perhaps remember how shiny diamond-equipped trees could be.
- A minitower with relative quarter revenues of "Alphabet" between 2005 and 2019 bit.ly/2shZi8Z. This is with values found on the web, which may be inaccurate. Very high increases in the last three years.
- Using land to grow crops (producers) is different from using it to build parking places (rent seekers). Since the second tends to be more profitable than the first, capping the soil is the natural consequence, where the rent seekers will have to satisfy themselves with less food, partially due to their own greed. Laws of nature.
- If you are planning to buy a book gift for the holidays, take some time to review the text and decide whether you like it. Is it on a topic that the other persion finds interesting? Is it useful and teaching new skills? Is it creatively stimulating and driving practicality beyond its focus area? Whenever possible, prefer a book that goes deep on a topic; we have plenty which are shallow on too many dimensions. Avoid books stuffed with too many clever keywords, lacking substance or using funny pictures (unless the other person is a child). Also units which finish on a round number of pages (say 400, 500 etc.), break your flow (e.g. alternating text-image, text-image), books where subsequent chapters appear too unrelated and where a "train of thought" is impossible. Look for the rare, not necessarily the popular (artificially inflated stars). You can review texts in Google Books, the local library, the bookstore or any other way you find convenient. And don't assume that because it is written, it is necessarily true.
- Quick diagram of the libraries in Edinburgh, Scotland bit.ly/2PA7cCG
- "Sometimes the slowest changes prove most difficult to stop." Good point. Perhaps most recognizable in climate change, sea level rise, deforestation, (you also claim) topsoil erosion etc. Definitely liked the "enough to fill a pickup truck for every family, each year" analogy.
- Didn't know that the easy to install containers come with some security implications. Wouldn't come to the idea to convert the environment to a software soup anyway.
- If you allowed your employer not to pay you during the entire year, that potential small extra for the holidays probably won't make them.
- A good event likely experiences a minimal drop in the number of attendees between the good and bad times. But with most events, this drop tends to be sharp.
- If you wished you could plot all restaurants in a given city and color the points depending on whether they offer Chinese, Thai, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mexican kitchen (or else) and look for the patterns. But it likely has been done hundreds of times before and is thus no longer valuable. Working with a client instead, directly tells you what is valuable, here and now. The sound of monetary voting does not tolerate assumptions or misconceptions.
- Have you ever asked yourself and if so, do you have a good explanation why the sweater for a small child isn't x times cheaper than the same one, designed for an adult, given that x is the proportion of the respective material surface areas? (Perhaps you wouldn't come to the idea to buy an adult sweater and cut-repurpose-decorate it to dress your child.)
- You might think that the price you see next to a product in the store has been printed with white text on a red background and carefully placed inside a rectangular plastic case by someone on a daily basis. But this is a fallacy; once you are not looking, the old price animates itself to disappear towards the bottom while the new one comes on top. On that same "plastic" case. Happens quickly and is almost unnoticeable. What you are left to believe is that they are still living in the analog era (putting paper in plastics everywhere), while they out-smarted and out-automated you, carefully puppeteering the prices from an invisible background. Perhaps an installed camera was there to capture when you weren't looking.
- Found this chemical composition comparison of Inconel 740/740H superalloys bit.ly/33ZUKBE. Didn't realize that so many elements can participate in a mix. This is perhaps the widest spectrum I've seen so far. You can imagine what kind of trouble it could be to source them and always ensure that they are in the right proportions and amounts for the task at hand (apart from the complexity of the production process). But the highly weldable Inconel 718 was said to account for ≈35% (might have changed since the time of writing) of the worldwide superalloy production. Nickel-based superalloys were said to be used in turbine blades.
- Don't know how they make these crescents, which look very nice and full on the outside, but are almost entirely hollow inside (apart from the small quantity of choco cream; unsure if Nutella). They get almost flat once you bite, but then grow like a sponge to restore (the rest of) the original shape. Marvellous. Wondering why heart prevents me from serving a client this way.
- Using data on the web and computing (city bike network (km) / country road network (km)) / ((population city / population country) / (area city (km2) / area country (km2))) for Amsterdam, Munich, London, Melbourne and Paris gave me values of 1.0000, 0.2110, 0.1204, 0.0198 and 0.0119 respectively. But this says nothing about the quality of the infrastructure.
- Spent some time looking at road bikes at bikes.com.au. The median of the 156 models came to be ≈$2175 (after conversion to USD), with the cheapest model being "2019 Avanti Giro F1 Womens" ($360) and the most expensive being "2019 Focus Paralane² 9.9 E-Road" ($9520). The latter had a battery capacity of 7Ah, although it wasn't indicated into how many kilometers of continuous cycling this translates (for a given cyclist weight, median speed, pavement type and condition, road inclination).
- Empirical test of three methods for gift packing (video) bit.ly/2rgGt6j ↗. Nice to see how using a square of paper avoids "crater" holes.
- Saw discounted merino sweaters at Amazon today ($14). Upon second check, they seem to be gone. This is how fast things are happening now with algorithms at play. (Not that I would have been able to buy one as a non-US citizen anyway.)
- "Coway" is another brand with stylish air purifier products I never heard about, so I looked at some of their properties bit.ly/2qy6IVp. For some reason, my script had stronger feelings about the "CAPTAIN" model.
- Two beautiful thoughts by John Dewey: "Dogmatism is fatal to the spirit of wonder" and "Truly general principles tend to apply themselves".
- Pressed Ctrl+U on the main page of the Chicago Public Library, after seing it was 4.9MB. One huge SVG block (91.2kB of value sequences) had a "display: none" set, so I wondered how it was used. Neither removing the rule, nor copying it in a separate file revealed anything more than a blank screen. Then I saw that the classes said something of icons, so I thought that JS might have been used to pick the right ones as needed while at the same time protecting the artwork from curious eyes. Either way, only this invisible element weighs as much as my entire front page.
- "The shock wave moves at the average of the speeds on either side of the shock" and "With a density of 1/4, the signal needs to stay green three times as long as it is red for the traffic to clear" are beautiful statements if you persist through the mathematical reasoning behind the latest article in the AMS feature column bit.ly/2DUp8mn ↗
- If you seek my services, you know how to find me.
- Hourly number of scheduled arrivals (and originating airports) at Heathrow Airport, London (Saturday, 07.12.2019) bit.ly/2rnCKDR. We can't say that in the late hours today the airport will push its operation to full capacity. But even so, it will end with 2024 flights, 129 of which come from New York. Yes, on a single day, where departures have not been included. Not surprised that Heathrow has served 80 million passengers last year (≈16% more than the Frankfurt Airport).
- The current brochure goes further than expected. Nutella size has grown to 1kg, likely motivated by the holidays, since the packaging has a picture of a happy bear and penguin standing side-by-side. The new price point has become 6€. Assuming a child with a calorie need of 1500 cal/day is the consumer, it can by fully satisfied for 3.6 days (although you'd prefer not to test).
- Nutrient comparison in Nutella and Hanuta (100g servings) bit.ly/2PzHu1t as indicated on their websites. In case you looked to have a sweet Saturday with a cocoa-hazelnut coated wafer.
- Nutrients of the burgers and desserts at "Hungry Jack's", Australia bit.ly/369bFTx. Unfortunately, the serving sizes of these items are different, so it is not obvious how their values would compare per 100g. But at least for the two most caloric items in each category, we see that "Grill Masters Ultimate Smoky BBQ Angus" (5610kJ) is 444g, while the "Storm M&M's Minis" (2700kJ) is 309g. The burger therefore offers 44.6% more energy than the dessert (per 100g).
- Estimated calorie needs by age, sex and physical activity level (health.gov) bit.ly/3682AKQ. Of course, these serve as orientation only. Thought that it was slightly insufficient for good understanding to have only table values and no good intuition when and how the distribution changes. It seems that the maximum calorie intake for active women (2200 cal) is kept over 7 years, while the maximum for active men (2800 cal) is kept over 10 years. This means that a single "Zinger Stacker Combo" (4190kJ / 4.184 ≈ 1000 cal) contains as much energy to feed a woman for half a day. Assuming a sedentary man and a sedentary woman both live to 100 years and considering their daily calorie needs, we come at total calorie requirements of 75190000 cal for a man and 59787000 cal for a woman. The man would then require 25.76% more calories than the woman, if both strictly adhered to the estimation.
- Energy content of the KFC burgers in Australia bit.ly/2PfS0uq. "Zinger Stacker Combo" has 2.515x the energy content of "Original Fillet Burger".
- Wikipedia has good orientation tables on the energy density of various storage types bit.ly/365Sgmz ↗
- If you can't here, you can somewhere else.
- Locations and counts of the most common tree species in Ottawa, Canada bit.ly/364lP83. A simple idea to take the ratio of normalized tree counts to normalized convex hull area in which these counts occur, for each of the 30 species, leads us see that "Acer saccharum" and "Acer platanoides" are significantly different than the rest, with values of 1.027 and 1.002. The next highest value is 0.71, while the lowest is assigned to "Populus tremuloides" (0.076). We also notice that after applying this criterion, the specie "Prunus virginiana 'schubert'" switches from 27th place (in tree counts rank) to 22nd place (normalized rank), indicating that (due to its higher concentration on smaller area) it may need a greater degree of protection.
- Old violinplot to new context: "Non-discounted sweater prices by gender at Everlane" bit.ly/2rlFQbx. Noticed two interesting things—sweaters are listed as the first product category on offer (which is nice) and discounted items tend to be pushed towards the end of the page. This means that someone who isn't browsing/scrolling far enough, won't be able to see them. Always nice when scripts reveal you such little details.
- "Book of the month" club lists all month's almonds (said to be good for the brain) bit.ly/2PnbUnw ↗. In one of these, an author compared a hair color with that of a Tirolean chocolate and I thought that I needed a better frame of reference. So I looked around for a brand meeting the description, but found only products, which seem to be sold in Japan. No luck here, but the list is full of ideas and possibly useful whenever one seeks a temporary shift in perspective.
- Properties of 177 oscilloscopes by "Keysight Technologies" bit.ly/38asSht. Quite happy about this, despite omitting communication analyzers, handheld, modular and discontinued units. Wanted to have a good overview, because labels like "DSOX1204G" don't mean much to a beginner. Additionally, if someone is selling a second-hand model, it can be very hard to know how its abilities relate to the height of the times, in which case this table may become useful. As you can see, some properties of some models were unavailable on the source website. Also the price range of these devices is astonishing—some cost as little as several hundred dollars, while three models are listed at slightly above half a million dollar.
- It seems that the new Google results page looks bad with images disabled bit.ly/2LpgNLg. Noticed this while working on something. Perhaps they are already in the process of fixing the issue.
- Price vs. score for the top 100 wines at "WineSpectator" bit.ly/2DPeIo2. Assuming you drink alcohol once a year.
- Good if a CyberMonkey like you found a deeply discounted designer/developer on that specific day. Means you won't be needlessly bothering me or asking for bananas at the height of the holidays.
- An indirect thought I had is that such air purifiers might be an additional reason people find to stay behind closed doors. The outside world is rich in pollutants, emitted from a variety of sources beyond our control. A health-conscious person may decide to avoid public spaces most of the time if they already have access to a much cleaner environment. To a certain degree, this inhibits normal communication and subjects some in-person conversations to invitation. And I think that part of the reason people go to parks, for instance, is to be able to walk and breathe clean air while speaking with as many people as possible. If it feels that this isn't the case, what remains are the purely digital conversations.
- Consumer Reports recommended "BlueAir Blue Pure 211+" ($300) bit.ly/2Yf5Am1, where its CADR triple (smoke, dust, pollen) = (350, 350, 350). This is ≈2.06x the filtering capacity of "Sense" at almost the same price. It is said to weigh only 6kg (compared to 11kg), has dimensions of only 513 x 330 x 330mm and energy consumption starting at 30W. Must be a new model, which wasn't available on the page I looked at.
- Some properties of air purifiers by "BlueAir" bit.ly/388RSp5. If you doubt any of these values, you could obtain the JSON file bit.ly/3822MND and compare it against the data on the source site. This table doesn't include the models having "cabin" in their name (made for cars, not rooms), since they contain data about smoke, gases and formaldehyde instead of smoke, dust and pollen. If we were interested in pure dust filtering capability and nothing else, we could notice that by switching from "Sense" to the "Pro L" model, we improve it 6.29x while paying only 4.06x the price.
- California Air Resources Board has so many certified air purifiers (and their manufacturers) at a single place bit.ly/2DIltb3 that my machine gets slow. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) has another list of verified devices bit.ly/2rdb2JY. Came to this after seing the AHAM Verifide sticker with some smoke, dust and pollen values.
- Learned about an exclusively industrial city (Vernon, California), with a very high level of expenditure per capita, where the median in 2003-2016 is much higher than the expenditures in San Francisco ($9319), Palo Alto ($6134), Santa Clara ($4591), Long Beach ($4111), Los Angeles ($3542), Oakland ($3166), Sunnyvale ($1962), Sacramento ($1839), or San Diego ($1777). Sand City, Irwindale and Colma also precede San Francisco. Common for these three cities and Vernon is that their population is said to be very low. (Source: California State Controller's Office, "City expenditures per capita", bit.ly/2YdDt6s ↗)
- Model year vs. purchase price for the vehicles in California's state fleet bit.ly/35ZFFkQ
- Do the product brochures on your site flip fast and smooth? Are you relying on existing software f this functionality? Can a designer do better?
- Looked at the airplane-level variance in enplaned passengers traveling from Europe to San Francisco International Airport (SFO) (07.2013 - 06.2019) bit.ly/369tKRJ ↗. Since each airline had passenger numbers of different scale, I divided them by the maximums and then took the variances. Some recognizable airlines were "British Airways" (1st, lowest variance), "Lufthansa German Airlines" (3rd), "Virgin Atlantic" (4th), "Thomas Cook Airlines" (10th). Data was available for a total of 24 airlines.
- Sure, you can automate website generation, hire people who work for free or build entire online stores which sell once a year. Go ahead.
- So happy not to be playing on the dimension "cool, but useless".
- Unsure from where this assumption comes that the last month of the year must be great for Coca-Cola sales (stacked palettes with a holiday roof). Learned that the average German consumes 36.6 liters/year, but this one sin't touching my lips. Your German chances to be sitting next to me and enjoying Coca-Cola while promoting its taste to me are particularly slim.
- Which actvities brought you more satisfied customers lately? Which were a waste of resources?
- Company X hiring "across the board" could be a modern way of saying "we don't know what we are doing". Remember that employees aren't apples you buy by the ton at the local store.
- Even some influential people mentioned the negative effect of air conditioners on the environment. The winter is here and with it the intrinsic need for heating. Or perhaps, the use of a convenient electric blanket at night. Yet, convenience somestimes comes expensive. Perhaps three blouse-layers would suffice.
- Reducing a function with its derivative at each step/period (subsequent evaluation with x = 100) bit.ly/2DI1ZTQ. Felt uneasy to be awaken by an idea that scared even subconscious mind which generated it. Why? Because of how it interpreted this graph, trying to convince that 1 means "exists" and 0 means "doesn't exist". Only that it noted that the world is some extremely complex function much bigger than 1, which is consistently reduced in some way by the rate of change in human influence. The visible curve could be then showing nothing more than the loss at each step/period. A warning sign that (as it seems here) the starts might be connected with the highest losses. Not sure whether this has anything to do with disappearing animals or else. Perhaps if most is lost, not much remains to be saved.
- Baumol effect: industries with smaller increases in productivity exhibit larger increases in prices.
- Unsure what causes "cost disease" either. Not having an explanation, only a personal view.
- Tried to estimate unrolled toilet paper volume in a Milde 30-roll mega pack bit.ly/2qcaByX. Sceptical about the other two numbers (since tree types, sizes and paper densities vary). Would you rather think of 15-20 such packs/tree? With 20 packs, assuming usage of 100 rolls/person-year, we are led to a personal footprint of a tree every 6 years (independent of other paper uses). The moment we acknowledge that a tree may need 15 years to grow tall is when it becomes obvious how unsustainable this usage pattern is.
- "Folgers" coffees by taste class bit.ly/2P8rAum. Three variants of "Folgers Flavors®" (example bit.ly/2RcsoB7 ↗) had no classes speciified. The idea came after wondering how one might approach selecting the right canister. But not a coffee enthusiast myself to know whether this helps.
- Certain things would never appear as ideas to me. Like having an expandable plot, dedicated to cutting things, having a hole on it, through which any waste can pass straight to the underlying bin. It's quite slow to cut something, take the waste, open the cabinet door with the bin, throw it inside and close the door. Then you notice another small piece of waste you missed and have to repeat the complete procedure. Placing a tall dish drying rack behind and above the kitchen sink is another one. It makes sense to have the water fall at a single place which is already installed and available everywhere rather than use a separate location and a water tray which fills periodically and may host bacteria.
- Bike routes and libraries in Edmonton, Canada bit.ly/37X9KDy. Here, there isn't a clear indication of each path type (off-street shared-use paved or unpaved, shared use lane side-by-side, peak hour bus taxi bike lane, contra-flow bike lane etc.) to avoid having a diagram which is too colorful. Apart from this, we have to look very carefully to identify a library that isn't at least close to a bike path. The distribution of the libraries across the city is also nice. Some regions (on the north-east, west, south-east) remain empty, but from this view it is hard to tell why.
- A Cyber Monday digital camera (SLR) reduced at 222€ (previously said to be 429€) might appear alluring at first. Until you run a small script, which finds that someone ranked it at place 163 among 373 models. If you find yourself acting impulsively just because it is "the last day", think of how beneficial this could be to a large corporate entity aiming to extract your last cents. What if the discounted products you see were the same as the ones noone was willing to buy throughout the year? You probably don't want to collect more stuff if you wouldn't feel great while using it.
- If you don't have important projects this week that you need help with, you could spend some time to let an advent calendar software evaluate your data (like this one bit.ly/2Lei7Rh ↗)
- Dot diagram containing the values of two functions in two variables, evaluated at specific points on a grid bit.ly/2DzMLjE. Uses beautiful sympy for the function evaluations.
- Nutrients of some edible products by "Schneekoppe" bit.ly/2r2CHNC. Surprised that chia seeds differ so much from the rest, particularly on the fat dimension.
- Alphabet spiral bit.ly/35R44ZF
- The traveling salesman sells any month of the year and any day of the week as if his life depended on it, not expecting client and money to arrive at the table... unless travel is not an option.
- Still remembering a simple act of kindness in a possibly one of the many books on Starbucks. Four people in a row refused to accept their coffee, so it can be given to the next person waiting in line. Once the process went, people on the chain felt that they have to participate as well, no matter what. An infectious action, showing the inner goodness of complete strangers. The way it was told deeply touched me, still remembering this moment many years later. Was there anything extraordinary that a business/client did lately that you probably won't forget for a long time?
- Didn't expect that order in a warehouse had properties in common with the where to store, how to retrieve problem.
- Thank you for picking up some interest last month bit.ly/35OlJRR. Remember to propose your projects in this one if you seek to make this work more contextually useful to your business.
- If they don't pay you dual, explain that you'll likely revert to primal behavior and suggest the equivalence behind some definitions.
- During a walk in the park, the person and the dog both describe curves, despite varying their speed, movement directions and distance from each other (connected to a band). Hence, a dog, which strives to keep a minimal Fréchet distance from its owner while balancing the joy of exploration and exploitation, must intuitively know how to be a good one.
- A 9kB RGB triangle bit.ly/2OEPS0m. Probably 3kB/side.
- A simply shaded Venn diagram bit.ly/2OYxbnf
- Which of your shops do you expect to attract more customers for the holidays? Do you expect this to translate into improved profit per floor area? Is there anything you can do to improve the performance of the unprofitable location or would it cost you more to keep them long-term?
- Simple dispersion effect bit.ly/2rKorZH
- Median hourly number of bike counts by location and quarter in Essen, Germany (2019): bit.ly/2sxc1Fc. Cycling in Q1 was particularly weak.
- Streets and streetlights, bike network, parks and libraries in Ottawa, Canada bit.ly/33BPUKx. Took me a while to generate. Some libraries appear distant from the bike network (is this the case?). At least most seem well lit by streetlights, independent of location. A small area of the city is responsible for hosting most libraries and green spaces.
- Came to interesting data about median salaries by region for software engineers and designers in Canada (2019) bit.ly/2OypvZS. There was data about previous years too (for many professions), but I didn't look into it. The region "Windsor-Sarnia" shows a very high maximum, and high minimum of 34.33, which is almost at the level of Nova Scotia's median. But its median is average and much behind Ottawa, Calgary and Alberta, for instance. However, we notice that many median values are the same, which signals that the method of study did not have sufficient fidelity to capture more subtle differences.
- Nutrients (and their correlations) of "Iglo" gourmet fillets bit.ly/2Y5OHtJ. We know that higher fat content is associated with more energy, but it is somewhat more difficult to see that (at least here) the negative relationship between protein and sugar seems to be similarly strong to the one between vitamin B12 and fiber (but view with a healthy dose of suspicion).
- Made you a small biscuit with the nutrients found in "Leibniz" biscuits bit.ly/35OMcik
- Things I wish I could do: Loading large datasets without wasting unreasonable amount of time, using computer vision approaches with more than a couple of images, gathering enough data to be able to use a deep learning library (on something else than insufficient hardware), generating data with a magic wand instead of keyboard-typing, dealing with less verbose web code. And most of all, developing greater imaginative capacity, ability to deal better with complexity and to generate/execute towards million-dollar ideas in less time.
- Cities by population in Brazil bit.ly/2OZRhx9. Not perfect, but relatively quick; beware of the possibility of inaccurate or approximate coordinates. This country is expected to have population of slightly over 210 million people. As you can see, the shoreline is particularly important to its economy.
- Construction years of some of the largest church buildings bit.ly/2R5ARWH. Can't verify any of these years, so I see them as approximate. There are two notes as well. The "Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls" in Rome was said to exist since 4th-5th century, but only the rebuilt years were more concrete (which I used in the diagram). For "Westminster Abbey" I had to use 1850 instead of "18th century". (Source: Wikipedia, "List of largest church buildings", bit.ly/2OUcQ2l) What is interesting is that several churches appear almost as old or older than "Notre Dame de Paris", so we cannot exclude the possibility that some of them may also require good maintenance to avoid unfortunate events.
- "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand." - a Chinese proverb
- "Avoid choosing easily accessible/easy to compute metrics if they aren't the right ones." Open data tends to fall in this category—easily accessible and easy to compute with. But this doesn't necessarily make it valuable or useful within your own context. Just because it is easy to find and access, doesn't mean it is supportive of your goals. Very often it supports someone else's, which makes this quote a nice reminder.
- Suppose you paid a solopreneur a $250 ticket (+ $60/day room) to come and look at a serious issue your company was having. If they helped you save $500+ on day three, was the ticket worth it? Would it have been better not to invite them and fight the issue for a week (with a team of five)?
- I also find web design much more non-linear compared to data analysis or mathematical modeling. You change the layout a bit, then find that it s not quite right, then update the next rule. Then you see something else displaced and fret about fixing it immediately, but so as to look well on several browsers... You walk down the HTML tree to carefully specify semantic tags and attributes conductive to functionality. Then you traverse that (often several levels deep) tree again to ensure all these elements have the right, non-competing styles and that the result is aesthetically pleasing. Then you think of the interaction patterns and write scripts responding to user activity on the page, often manipulating both the elements and styles you defined in the previous step, but now also seeking ways to do this as lightly as possible, while still achieving your functional goals. And if such an exhausting activity brings only a mediocre reward, I'd be interested to do it as rarely as possible. My pursuit of data analysis and (to some extent) mathematical modeling have taught me that work can be much more linearly defined and once you see a problem, you know immediately where you are and what it takes to continue from there. You don't have to look at many other small details you already completed, because after each additional step they don't inherit a new meaning. Data analysis enables one to learn quickly about the environment and eventually adapt to it in new ways. It enables a much broader view than one focused simply on staring at (often uncreative) code all day. It is also useful during web design, because you can verify which work artefacts awake sufficient interest (above some critical threshold) in order to know where to invest your future effort. But it can help you understand so much more. Mathematical modeling is a useful complement, becase it can make you see the world differently (from other lenses) or become more critical of the data itself. It can help you seek explanations of the things or processes you don't understand through those you already do. The last two are broad enough to compensate for a petty client willing to waste your time on an badly specified, unpromising web project.
- Sometimes, to build for the web, you have to go to sufficient number of places on the very same web to learn how things get done. Extremely slow, workflow-interfering, distracting. Then someone comes, asks you to build a website for them and wonders why it took you so long or was so expensive. Because it is. You have to think of hundreds of small details (not to mention how they fit together) and often touch them individually (painfully slow). If you believe that web design is some simple copy-paste work, a basic routine activity or an automation candidate, I am not inclined to meet you.
- Memory access consumes a lot more energy (>100x) than complex addition, a slide says. Since we know that data movement is more expensive than computation, we are becoming increasingly aware of the option to compute directly where the data resides. Sensors are one area where this is already applied. What can be slower than relying on expensive I/O for extensive and broadly-reaching data analysis? Network access—the websites we visit every day to learn, collect data, connect or whatever reason.
- Paid almost 55€ to extend domain and hosting to the next year and be able to continue to serve you and upload valuable content online. Hope you appreciate this too.
- Couldn't pay well for my work this year? Not hearing of you in the next either.
- "Obtaining pixel-level annotation is very expensive." Wouldn't even come at the idea unless it was fine not to sleep in the next few weeks and constantly feel dizzy. Exactly what happened while creating the dictionary noone noticed.
- Can you identify good real estate in a given radius around a place of interest or do you prefer to walk around, make yourself a picture of the situation and buy based on intuition rather than data? What would be the investment's payback period?
- Do you like olives more than olive oil? Weight and price for the olives at "Belazu" bit.ly/2OtpupV
- Relative feature comparison of Toyota Tacoma and Tundra (2020 models) bit.ly/2QZ6Fg7. Perhaps what was hard with 42 models, was possible for two (where they define the whole truck category). Differences especially in fuel tank, towing capacity, payload and rear leg room (apart from the prices) quickly come into view. "Tundra SRS" is also the only one with a seating capacity of 6 (+20%), but this is partially compensated by the smaller default fuel tank (optionally expandable to regular size). For some reason, Toyota didn't specify horsepower, speed or acceleration and since they were not considered here, the scores on the left are incomplete (but slightly better than nothing).
- Timing is everything. It could have been a great product if it was available several years ago, but today it is a failure. You can't neglect the time value of product and money.
- When you are not careful, you copy the mistakes introduced in other programming languages to the one you actively influence and then wonder why the industry is shrinking rather than growing.
- Do you buy more oil than water? You might be neglecting one of the vehicles.
- 42 car models * 3 variants per model * 23 features per variant would ask me to verify the correctness of 2898 numbers. The data might look interesting bit.ly/2rCcl4N, but the effort is non-trivial.
- Would you tick the checkbox labeled "client" (enables full-screen warning <blink>)?
- What kind of material was the payment package made of and did it arrive on time? Perhaps it was a newspaper wrapping with irregularly bound ropes, staples here and there to connect the sides and a sparely used, low-quality, non-stick tape as finishing (over the rope). And if it had such presence, how convincing/valuable could its contents potentially be? Add a stamp, return and look elsewhere.
- If you have already used "text-overflow: ellipsis" in CSS, you know what the next demo is about: selective hiding of paragraph texts bit.ly/2Djt7IP. (The "text_len" variable can be safely removed.) Similarly, you could hide texts at sentence or even word level, without breaking a single word.
- Quick visualization: "Prices of Casper bed sheets by model and bed size" bit.ly/35G3SfK. The "winter" color scheme was somewhat helpful here.
- Cake art at "Anges de Sucre" bit.ly/37GLzsJ ↗. 150 items at a total cost of only £17044.
- Some tabs are so luxury that you are happy to see them close on the sixth click of the small "x".
- How long will it take to write the software? bit.ly/35AHh48 ↗
- Tokyo is the city with the most Michelin-starred restaurants in the world. There is a simple, but informative page listing 464 locations bit.ly/2Opo4wy ↗.
- Perhaps you didn't know that the popularity of the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is linked to the statement that it includes all alphabet letters (which makes it ideal to convince designers in font quality and pricing). It's your right to try to refute it via code bit.ly/2snVjbd if you have no problem accepting failure. However, a small "inefficiency" is that "o" and "e" have to appear 4 and 3 times respectively.
- Haven't seen a delivery service for bikes before bit.ly/2qPmMlG. One could then push the bike in advance to a place they plan to appear and then claim how much effort it took to arrive there.
- You have to be careful with labels. I read this one bit.ly/2XPZqsl as "can vacuum your pets", which is not the impression you want to leave.
- Blue hardcase luggage from SwissGear bit.ly/37J5IhZ ↗, which my script seemed to like most (among 26 "non-set" models). The page which led me to it, had it at the end of the product list, with a label "online exclusive".
- Would a plastic which looks like a metal surface be cool to the touch?
- But an idea you could borrow is to have "online exclusive" products if you fear that your website may lose popularity among your (would-be) clients.
- Whatever you do, don't include some of the previously seen products in later portions of the same page. Instead of using this bad practice to make you appear selling more of them, consider creating new ones. Much better use of your time.
- Saying that sending terrabytes of data coming from many oil wells to the cloud of a tech empire (because of being unable to process them yourself) and claiming that "you only pay for the resources you actually use", makes me question your business acumen. You shared the operational ins/outs of a company worth many billions of dollars by actively looking for the cheap. In that case, you shouldn't be scared too much when someone else learns of your work and finds the best means to go after you. Sometimes, being cheap is how you lose your most expensive competitive advantage. What if you spun off a startup from your company to dedicate it specifically to this task (if you dislike dealing with other small companies so much)?
- Bias: tech giants are leaders in everything, small companies are best at nothing.
- The "one day, maybe" action list assumes you'll be living tomorrow.
- The expectation that you should be developing useful products for disrespectful people all the time might be circulating in the air. But it is also one that could demotivate you to persist when your effort would truly matter. Stamina isn't infinite and you can develop only so many untouched products. It helps then to have the customer before you start the product, to understand and validate the need and how (well) your contribution could fit in. And if noone came to ask for help, perhaps noone needed anything anyway.
- If you were a math teacher and a student came to you with a request to solve 25 "easy" tasks by Friday to receive a small amount of compensation, would you agree? Some people probably will. They believe that their work is only worth to the degree/value of their performance and accept this as a challenge/opportunity to prove their skills. But other teachers would refuse, recognizing that they wouldn't be solving a problem at all. Accepting to help would be more like a band aid, since the next time this student will have the same problem, facing a more difficult task. These teachers perceive task solving as an additional activity, not a primary one. They teach people to think and be able to solve the most difficult tasks themselves. It bothers them that someone seeks to come to the end without having spent enough effort on the means. And because of thinking differently, they decline.
- Not speaking with too many people to "broaden horizons". Perhaps their horizons work for them, but not for me. And instead of listening how important Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, Spark, React or some other fancy technology is, I'd rather create with the ones which work well for me and which I have found irreplaceable over time. Another interesting comment on HackerNews is that at a startup you need to know the problem you are solving and exactly how you are going to do it in order to avoid chasing a "bandwagon of glory" as an entrepreneur. This thinking is slightly limiting and doesn't provide one with the sense of freedom one needs to find their own path. It is charted on a daily basis, even by seemingly mundane "non-decisions" as to stay with the present employer ("false security"). Another comment is that sometimes your project is poorly defined, you don't fully believe in it and this causes feelings of meaninglessness/purposelessness and regret of not using time/energy better. This is a valid concern, but it is you who have to unstuck yourself from that situation and realize that noone else will come to fix your life. By finding better uses of your time, better projects and better clients. This is a long learning process, which happens fastest when you aren't protected from it. Another one is that one of the nicest things in a big company is how easy it is to switch teams. Sceptic here. You don't enter a company to switch positions to one which may be less well defined as this would mean you didn't think through and doggedly adhere to your career path. Every time you do it, you incur knowledge spillover. You've spend long years to obtain your experience and now many teams are seeking to benefit from it, as quickly as possible. Kindly apologize or you'll risk becoming irrelevant once you share everything—so many times faster as the number of people you share your knowledge with. Making people replaceable is the preferred mode of operation of many companies, because this gives them the largest benefit and profits. So they want you to share as openly as possible, perhaps even promote you to a place where "you could have a bigger impact", while tracking every step you make to learn from you as much as possible. Therefore, be paid only for the application of your skills, never for teachng them. The latter is an added responsibility and since it reduces your future ability to work, you have to request a very high additional compensation for it today, in case you even accept.
- Which company can offer you a deeper discount for the holidays? An already established one, which sells high volume of goods, has low operating costs and low transaction risk or the small individual offering you personalized service, depending on every cent to even keep it available? The deeper discounts you seek, the more likely you are to support the biggest companies and thus contribute to sustaining the status quo.
- Didn't know that some stores sell appliances in bundles (refrigerator, oven, dishwasher) and have many such offers, as if these devices were a pack of fruits one obtains at the local store. Some companies don't know the size of their inventory and the number of warehouses they have.
- Do you care about the seat or the experience, about the form or the function, about status or utility of ownership, about leaving good first impressions with as many people as possible or contributing maximal substance per time (even if this makes you appear strange), continuously, every single day?
- The problem with relying on a single project, a single client, a single technology or single "tunnel-vision" thought and delving deeply into them, when the world competes to make them irrelevant, is that on several occasions you may find yourself starting from zero.
- Adding weight to balance against spinning is understandable. But a 92kg washing machine, accepting load of 8kg, using 48l of water for a two-hour "60° cotton" program (0.4l/min) has an interesting useful-to-total weight ratio. Perhaps it is not filled and emptied infinitely many times. 48 is divisible by 6, 8 and 12, so assume that it operates in 8 batches with 6l each (and 1l = 1kg). Since water has only supporting role, we assign a coefficient of 0.5 in front of it, in the useful part. Then we have (8 + 0.5*6) / (92 + 8 + 6), which means that in this scenario the ratio varies in [0, 0.1037]. Is this more than acceptable?
- Does recharging take several times longer than max. operating time?
- "Second Avenue at E7 St." seems popular among cyclists in New York. Google Maps shows many eateries in a good radius around the place, so I wondered whether part of this traffic could be attributed to food delivery. Will never know. And whether the place has become much more lively relative to 2015, for instance.
- Fitted a curve to the TVs listed on Consumer Reports bit.ly/2OLeUJN. Initially used linear regression, but prices seemed to grow exponentially, so it felt inappropriate. Neither a 3rd degree (cubic), nor a 5th degree polynomial did well, but the 4th degree one seemed to capture the points on the bottom left relatively well. The plot tells me that above 50", TVs become progressveily more expensive. For instance, if we assume that a 50" TV is offered on Black Friday at $260 (mean & median of 8 models were $252 and $265), then picking a 85" TV at $2600 (where the curve leads) means that a 2.89x increase in view area (50" → 85", assuming 16:9 aspect ratios) is accompanied by a 10x increase in price.
- But perhaps you like real things more than an extracted essence. Real money rather than its smell.
- Can you describe easily how a perfume feels like or you can't find the right words'? Here is an assignment of some perfumes to their corresponding notes bit.ly/2KWhpYD (as listed on Fragrantica). Of course, these are neither all perfumes nor all notes. The full list of notes introduced in perfumes barely fits on a single screen bit.ly/2Dh8b5h. But in this small selection of 47 perfumes, we notice that some notes are much more frequent: "Musk" (present in 44.68% of all perfumes), "Bergamot" (34.04%), "Vetiver" (29.79%), "Amber" (25.53%), "Patchouli" (25.53%), "Jasmine" (23.40%), "Cedar" (21.28%), "Sandalwood" (19.15%), "Orange Blossom" (17.02%), "Ambergris" & "Mandarin Orange" (14.89%). Then come "Basil", "Lemon", "Neroli", "Oakmoss", "Vanilla", "Lavender", "Grapefruit", "Rose" and "Leather" with 12.77%. But as you can see, some of these are more present as top notes rather than base ones.
- And the equivalent for Stockholm, Sweden bit.ly/2KViaBe (might be distorted).
- The equivalent for Helsinki, Finland bit.ly/2QRJtQF. You might have chosen to visit only some of the attractions. For instance, go straight from 14 to 20 instead of making an extra turn. Or stopping at 33 instead of continuing to the end if that would save you a lot of traveling time.
- Tried to construct a path through some of the attractions in Oslo, Norway bit.ly/2OIKisv. Not perfect; only what the script saw.
- AnandTech says that AMD has launched 24 and 32 core processors bit.ly/37KVDB8 ↗. Guess that the performance on these is much better than on (my) single core. Max power usage of 286W in case one manages to get to get 3970X to 100% CPU utilization is perhaps a small price to pay considering the number of man-hours saved. The question is whether this hardware will push manually-written software to extinction.
- Liked this interactive diagram of the cost of rent in Germany bit.ly/34jKXY0 ↗. The current range is 3.93-17&euro/m2.
- "As the skater's arms are drawn inwards, reducing their distance to the rotation axis, the speed of rotation increases so as to maintain constant angular momentum." - William Lowrie
- Scatterplot matrix with some features of the 4099 discovered exoplanets bit.ly/33ntY5X (Source: Exoplanet Catalog, 25.11.2019). Note that "HD 100546 b" was considered an outlier with its planet mass of 1.427296e30 kg and removed in order to make most other masses more visible. We see that most discovered exoplanets are less than 10000 light years away from Earth, have a median mass of 4.903012e25 kg (≈8.21x Earth), stellar magnitude between 10 and 16, and were discovered more recently (nice to see the rate of discovery accelerating). Some of the exoplanets with the biggest masses and some of the most distant ones (in terms of light years) were also discovered more recently.
- Remember that payments are exactly as optional as your company.
- Next simple demo: "Approximate salaries of various people" bit.ly/2OflZDx. Character-level visualization.
- Did your company optimize its recommender system for the shopping days? Don't expect much help from me here. Selected projects only.
- Do you show the team working behind the company, is it one that changes often or does it depend on temporary, outside workers? Perhaps on unpaid workers?
- Reading parking space occupancy sensors in Los Angeles, California bit.ly/35oQKvo. If correct, the locations are around the marker you see on the left. Vacant and occupied spaces are given in green and red respectively. (Source: LADOT Parking Meters Division - LA ExpressPark)
- Didn't know that some birds used plastic found in the sea to build up their nests (Helgoland). As a result their chickens were said to die, because of being unable to come out of it.
- "Trading systems prioritize speed at the expense of price and volume." Perhaps they find it better to be slightly wrong and adapt fast to the changes rather than wait a year to make a single right decision out of feat it might go wrong. Meanwhile the market has moved elsewhere and they have to wonder how they slept through the opportunities. Although... you can't introduce a bug into a system without making the system aware of it and adjust to the bug accordingly. (Could be reduced willingness to trade, for instance.)
- Wondering how a camera with 3000fps manages to capture a flying insect. It's memory system must be exceptionally fast to finish on-time for the next sequence. Especially with high-resolution images and even if it stores only the difference between frames.
- Deutschlands schönste Weihnachtsmärkte bit.ly/2rhbPJF ↗
- "The rooster's crow is highly correlated with the sunrise, yet it does not cause it." - Judea Pearl. Made me smile.
- "Where the radius of curvature of a wing is lowest, around the nose of the wing, the fluid flow is accelerated to its highest velocity and the pressure of the fluid drops to its minimum." Towards the rear of the wing, all three variables move to their opposites in the range [low, high]. (Source: "Explanation and discovery in aerodynamics" by Gordon McCabe.)
- Jitter triangle bit.ly/34cbzKw
- Which would you prefer: a cheap, low-quality, five-star product made popular by artificial reviews or an unpopular, high-quality product noone ever heard about? Believe it or not, your choice matters every day.
- No retail without retain.
- "When it snows in Copenhagen, bike lanes are typically plowed first." Liked the fact that cold winter days don't stop people from biking—they dress up in warmer clothes.
- Didn't have the whole book "The ride of a lifetime" to read, but liked the features, which Robert Iger mentioned about Disneyland in Shanghai: 963 acres, 14000 construction workers, $6 billion cost, 18 years completion time. Hard to imagine things of such scale. (Disneyland Orlando was said to employ 70000 people.) When hearing about Shanghai and high acreage, my first association was with the reserved space for the Tesla Gigafactory there. But you know a lot more about this city, so your associations may vary.
- Functional ventillator bit.ly/35quSjh
- New website - New Year isn't a trouble-free relationship. Don't wait for the last moment.
- The phrase I needed yesterday was "early warning system".
- Weekly hydro reservoir levels for Norway, Sweden and Finland at "Nord Pool" in the last year bit.ly/2pGxoCO. A similar pattern, but the scales are different. The 16th week this year marked the lowest points. This means the end of April. So I wondered whether the depletion rate could be connected with low average outside temperatures unitl then. Looking at a separate page informed me that cold starts at Nov-Dec.
- Toxic assets are rarely holdable, but dissolve the hand attempting to grasp them.
- Noticed the paper title "The TV is smart and full of trackers", which once again made me happy not to be using this device.
- Only you, the clent, are paying my salary. Noone else. Correspondingly, I have to expect it to matter.
- The popularity of an event to which only few people went is questionable. Perhaps the topics weren't that interesting or people felt that the learning value didn't match well their ticket price. Perhaps the price was too high to be able to allow many experts to come (from far) and speak for 30 minutes each. Perhaps the networking effect had a fleeting nature, noone cared about catering (whole day event) or it was simply a reaction towards everyone insisting on marketing their own companies or point of view. Whatever the reason, you could learn about potential weaknesses and improve the event experience next time. Or perhaps, you could organize the event in the park next time (doesn't sound cool in winter) if you necessarily seek to make it more inclusive.
- Does inventory management increase in importance at the end of the year? How big will be the differences between actual and expected this time?
- "Efficient algorithms for control of appliances..." Possibly help in making them run mostly on the lowest electricity rate (night), the direct benefit seen as the fraction of day-to-night rates. Hopefully not in making them grow legs to walk around the space and feel as equal inhabitants, epowered to speak by opening doors and running microwaves.
- A robot arm which is moving describes some trajectory (in 3D), where we have seen (in the smartphone owner identity verification case) how easy it is to compare two trajectories. This means that it may be possible to predict the moment the robot may start to deviate from the ideal trajectory and make a sound when it needs recalibration.
- You have parents, a child and four possible locations in different regions/cities where they could send it to school. Needless to say, the parents want the best for their child and are ready to switch locations (but expect to travel back at least once monthly to see relatives) if this could enable their child to be better prepared for the future. You have the coordinates for each location (to estimate back-and-forth travel costs), each of the parent's salaries at their current (one of the four) location, their expected salaries at each of the other locations, population, median salary and cost of living in each location, school ratings and opinions from people (already at these places) on teaching quality and the expected cost of education. Write a script which makes the decision whether to stay or leave (and if so for which destination).
- Curious that apparel expenses are said to be correlated with job applications (0.92). Never saw this on real data, so I cannot possible confirm whether it seems plausible or not. The idea is that people frequently buy clothes to look well in interviews and then eventually on the daily job. And if the new clothes aren't bought, the assumption is that the demand for interviews has weakened. Also, if the jobs are no longer paying well, this could cause more people to avoid the apparel stores.
- Interesting idea to use solar irradiation data for planning where to park a car, so that it is left on the sunniest spots in winter and coolest ones in summer. (Several other factors like walking distance from destination, parking cost, traffic congestion could also affect the choice.)
- Libraries and bicycle network in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania bit.ly/2KEAi2c. With few exceptions, most libraries lie very close to a bike path, although northeast, northwest and south areas of the city show some potential for bike travel expansion.
- Some libraries in the triangle Nürnberg-Fürth-Erlangen bit.ly/2Xyxqck. Perhaps there are more in Erlangen, but I wasn't able to easily find them. Also tried to type "Nürnberg + Fürth + Erlangen" in Google Maps, hoping that it would mark the entire territory, but this didn't work.
- Winners of the 20th German Cartoon Awards bit.ly/339xAbi. Restored my smile, these viewpoints.
- An idea from yesterday: Quantify median flight speed for each air carrier, making flights from a chosen airport and look whether it differs significantly (as a hint for better airplanes or more qualified pilots) or is limited by several flight synchronization mechanisms. Variables needed: carrier name, destination (for trip distance), start time, stop time. Trip distance is a request to a separate application, while stop time is a request to a separate airport (for a view when the same flight number arrives there). This has to be done for all flights from the origin airport (one request there), perhaps accounting for time differences as well. Not a simple task; having to deal with lots of external resources (especially the n destination airports) would be slow and discouraging.
- If your payment couldn't attract, you gave up all hopes for a conversation.
- John Deere tractors are said to have sensors to understand how the equipment is being used, to predict and diagnose breakdowns. You can only improve what you measure.
- Thank you for reminding me how a point doesn't have to appear as one, but can have a corresponding image, which is nicely interpretable in t-SNE context bit.ly/2QI9Fxn
- Or you could try plantage chocolate at "Schwarzenbach" bit.ly/35oBOxd if you don't expect to receive significantly more grams per franc there.
- Swiss chocolate bars at "Max Chocolatier" bit.ly/2XtY1aH. The wide selection and personalization options mentioned on the front page are in coherence with the approaching holidays. What surprised me was the low purchasing power of the Swiss franc here. The exchange rate was 6.3g of chocolate for a single franc (1 CHF ≈ 1 USD). Apart from that, this is the first time I see someone going the extra mile to explain the ingredients of each praline type inside an asorti box. Maximal care for the details.
- Picked bus number 15 and GVB showed me a nice path of its Amsterdam route bit.ly/2OsaJTf
- Does the showcase cost more than the products presented on it?
- Around end of the year, are all rooms in your hotel equally booked or is there a preference for specific days, room types (single, double etc.), room exposure (e.g. south facing) or amenities? Noticed the other day that the flight fare for a requested destination was 469 units, but after selecting departure on 24.12 and arrival on 31.12, it fell down to 168 units (less then 36% of the original). It could be that when everyone celebrates, noone wants to travel.
- Do you spend enough time on facility location or find it easier to expand capacity and deal with the mounting debt on the go?
- If we follow the recommendation that your corporation should be providing women protection in WCs, and assume your company has 30% women (among 1000 employees), your total yearly cost may vary in $4000-8000 bit.ly/347dPmi and that if you buy at Amazon end user prices (unlikely). Couldn't be such an issue for a company this size, could it?
- Found this in a brochure bit.ly/2KBjbhC, but it's a great example how one person's complaint is another person's design material. Another question is whether the result will suit all tastes.
- Süddeutsche Zeitung has an interesting (paid) story, about a thick wooden door donated from New York to the synagogue in Halle (price: 13000€ bit.ly/2QwRLxd ↗), which should have helped to protect 51 people during the attack on 09.10.2019. High quality material tends to be worth its price, even if we may not see it so in advance.
- Do you like Vivani chocolates? Here is a table of nutritional values bit.ly/2OpGNac. Interesting to see that in the case of fine bitter chocolate, a steady increase in cacao content also increases the amount of saturated fat.
- Changes in vehicle attributes by model year (EPA) and progress on real-world CO2 emissions bit.ly/2Oq7J9Y. We seem to have made quite an improvement in these attributes especially between 1979 and 1980 (and to a lesser extent between 2008 and 2009), but then between 1981 and 2008 progress has become more incremental. Between 2009 and 2011 we attempted to side-step in a different direction. The area below the curve in the second case tells us that there is still a long way to go. Also interesting that improvements in CO2 emissions seem to follow the same curve independent of vehicle type bit.ly/35beZNw. In one of the appendices of the report, we can also see emission information for some car models bit.ly/2Owpswb.
- Come back early and often to find how that work could have helped you yesterday.
- Scientists used AI and IBM Watson to discover an old stick figure in Nazca Lines, Peru bit.ly/2XqOMrA ↗
- Features of some NVIDIA graphics cards (series 10 and 20) bit.ly/32XJHYT. Since NVIDIA has not specified performance in the same way as AMD, comparisons are not possible (and what matters is real-world performance anyway). We can only see that "Radeon Pro WX 9100" has a memory bandwidth of 484Gb/s, while "Titan RTX" reaches 672Gb/s. Many of these cards are likely good companions in the training of neural networks or at least helping those who can afford them.
- Features of Radeon WX graphics cards by AMD bit.ly/2Olv4ti. Came to them after seeing that Apple has integrated one in a laptop. Most mobile graphics cards didn't have TDP specified, so they were excluded in the performance per watt ranking. Ideally, you would also want to consider the current prices. Some cards were also said to support OpenGL 4.6, but since this was made ambiguous (also said to support 4.5), I decided to assume safer defaults.
- Water your flowers with a rainbow bit.ly/2Qxi3iQ. Might have slightly misplaced the hose here, but the puddle below asked me to respect its privacy. While looking for rainbow colors at Google Images, noticed that there were several heart shapes subtly showing from behind the clouds. The flower is a manually crop-scaled image from Pixabay.
- This page just unplugged me bit.ly/33Z7QQj and the view was less generic, excluding the "403" part.
- Had no idea that Kensington also make backpacks. The median price comes at $69.99 bit.ly/2CX7Kwx
- Doesn't a large "workstation" table in the ⊓-shape need some padlock from behind? You probably dream of placing ⊔, so that six people can't leave until the work gets done.
- Enjoyed the variation in the designs of the NOVUS staplers bit.ly/2r67p84 ↗, without knowing that one could staple up to 200 paper sheets at once.
- Noticed that the beautiful "Aurora Borealis" by LUSH contains eight different types of dyes (among other chemical substances). Sometimes beautiful things now come at a cost later.
- Burger nutrients at Shake Shack bit.ly/2XxeYRC and correlations among their features bit.ly/2NZta2D. Notable positive relationships seem to exist between total fat and energy (0.991), cholesterol and protein (0.982), cholesterol and saturated fat (0.980). A hint of a weak-to-moderate negative relationship exists between fiber and trans fat (-0.430). Valid for this (small) data only.
- Chick-fil-A weighted product preference bit.ly/2CQtL0b. Interesting that based on rough nutrient information and price, grilled products tended to the bottom of the list.
- Noticed that "Atlanta" and "Orlando" follow a similar pattern. Both start and end with the same vowel and are seven letters long (a prime number). Could you think of other cities that join their company?
- Thank you for your interest in this work. Really appreciate that you find it valuable. The fastest way to see more attention and results from me is by ensuring your project has the right parameters and a description which could fit in a proposal.
- Ran a small script on the specifications of Dyson upright and canister vacuum cleaners, which currently ranked "Dyson Ball Multi Floor Origin vacuum" bit.ly/2r8emFF ↗ at the top spot. Was a bit sceptical how durable it might be (since it is one of the cheapest models), but script tells me that the difference between a $300 and a $600 model is bigger than the difference of 270AW and 306AW in suction power (among other things). Now looking at what it can find about stick vacuums (where the maximal suction power I've seen was 115AW). Update: Here "Cyclone V10 Animal" ($400) bit.ly/37goA7w ↗ came first. This is a mid-range price between "V7 Fluffy" ($200) and "V11 Torque Drive" ($700). Also saw that the same model is among the recommended in "Stick vacuum deals" category on Consumer Reports bit.ly/37fKFTV ↗. Didn't compare stick vacuums to the other two types, because their parameters differed. For instance, upright and canister vacuums had cord length, maximum reach and suction power specified, while only few stick vacuums had suction power and in place of the first two parameters, they had maximum run time and charge time instead (understandable since cordless).
- Comparison of Essentia mattress prces by model and size bit.ly/2NUQcYn
- You already paid your domain and hosting for the next year, right? Otherwise, platforms like Facebook will be happy to acquire your data for free.
- Made a diagram of magnetic permeability of selected materials bit.ly/35fxQY2. Superconductors do not appear to have a value since log(0) is undefined (and if we replaced it with a very small number it would become very small skewing the diagram). Among the mateirals on the list, highest permeability has Metglas 2714A, whereas ferrite from nickel zinc and ferrite from manganese zinc (in that order) seem to have the widest permeability ranges.
- Would have been nice to see more universities being more open about the number of enrolled students in each study program. Could enable interesting visualizations.
- "It's easy to make something. Surprise and value are more difficult to produce." - excerpt from the "The creativity code" (The element of surprise makes us take notice and follow new directions.) Sometimes we have to break out of a system to find insights. The book discusses AlphaGo extensively, which I disliked (not a fan of games, never played Go). But liked the insight that chess is destructive while Go is constructive. WIth game progress, complexity of chess decreases, while that of Go increases.
- "It's in the third appendix of the footnote of this obscure 19-century paper...'" Made me laugh. But curious that eigenvectors could represent neutrinos moving through matter bit.ly/2OiJTNj ↗. "...each eigenvector of a Hermitian matrix in terms of the matrix’s eigenvalues and those of the 'minor matrix'".
- There is no need to explicitly show me the clickable areas (with a smooth animation) on each page turn. If you insist, you can have a subtle hover effect (perhaps setting only border color) around the element under the cursor.
- Who do I got to be? What do you want from me? Enough bit.ly/2Oj7wFj ↗
- Sweater prices by gender at Nordstrom bit.ly/37bzImd. Didn't expect to see that.
- Camera tracked lion and it yawned at a different time today? Reason to wonder about its biological rhytm (while inspecting for traces of previous researchers).
- Do you find something in common between a hellicopter and a wind turbine or other things designed for different uses?
- If you were to plot the exact locations of traffic lights and then only animated the colors of the points showing their real-time states (green, yellow, red), would the end result be a "wave" of colors moving in a specific direction or resemble more random blinking? Does the distance between the lights affect the speed of activation? Perhaps at one crossroad someone has to wait 40s for green, while at another only 25s, creating the effect that they have to enqueue in front of both lights. Is it possible to set the waiting times to be multiples of each other, so that at least over time they periodically align?
- Woke up by an idea involving a different type of high dimensionality object—that of a mixed junk ball. Dream included a circular platform gradually accepting junk from a large tube (over it), applying vibration and using a high-resolution camera on top in combination with a neural network classifier and some robotic push to transfer each piece of junk to its appropriate destination channel (width designed for junk size in the 95th percentile) ending with a truck at the end (all ordered in circle around the platform). Don't know what this means. Separated is perhaps lower complexity, enabling more efficient handling and recycling so as to minimize material loss.
- Library accessibility by bike transport in Amsterdam, The Netherlands bit.ly/357A4sg. As expected (since the city is known for its bike network), the coverage is very good, which makes most libraries easily accessible. In case you ever need to work with this coordinate system, it is called "RD/NAP Amersfoort RD new".
- "...and if you can afford to wait, electronics usually becomes 27% cheaper on 27th of December" (Adobe Analytics). Interesting numeric coincidence, but this is still unlikely to make it interesting for me. Can't be penny-wise to invest my time in writing cheap software and then be pound-foolish on hardware. Better to wait until 3th of January for discounted "Nürnberger Lebkuchen" instead. Much more affordable, despite the fact that people may look strange as if I came a couple of days too late. Of course, not getting the fast hardware means reduced software output and reduced intellectual input/curiosity, but the coin always has two sides.
- Each app must have only a single main() method bit.ly/2XmPXbr. Wait, by pigeonhole principle, assuming complete execution of all statements, this rule wouldn't hold.
- Average price ($) by meal type at different "Sarabeth's" locations in New York (16.11.2019) bit.ly/2Ks2s0l. Required a numeric brunch on my side. The alignment was perfect for "Central Park South" (probably your choice as well). Only "Upper East Side" had late brunch, which made coloration less meaningful.
- When someone clicks on your breakfast, lunch and dinner menus and and each time this downloads a file like "7b09bb_aa69c3316304456495d4448a9ff6ae51.pdf" on their machine, how would they know which file belongs to which menu? What if they had more "unnamed" files in that directory? A good designer would never leave the labels to chance. And if you wonder, here is a possible naming scheme: "lunch_menu_at_{name of eatery}_on_{date}.pdf".
- If you are on a slow machne using Google Maps, pan the screen a bit and note how this feels. Then switch from "Map" to "Terrain" (main menu) and try the same.
- Taco, nacho, churo, burrito, empanada, enchilada, queso, quesadilla, guacamole? Would have a trouble at such place.
- Hitachi has a microscope with 3000000x magnification bit.ly/2Og1TaT ↗
- Found a table in another paper from an open journal and thought of making an interactive demo (select menu highlighting a point on a map). But then recognized from past experience that such effort isn't minor and that it rarely pays off. Therefore, you can directly see what it is about—the administrative centers of various provinces in China bit.ly/2XjYGLJ. Certain that the details wouldn't fit in my memory, so having such reference is nice. Update: Made a non-interactive map instead (much faster) of the cities with population over a million, which are also administrative centers (information from table) bit.ly/2qmH6dZ. Unfortunately, it's a lot of information on a tiny screen area, so it's not very readable. Was also thinking of the fictive lines formed between Beijing/Tianjin - Wuhan - Guangzhou/Dongguan/Shenzhen and Shanghai - Wuhan - Chengdu/Chongqing. This means that Wuhan has geographically convenient location, allowing relatively fast access to any of these cities (but perhaps only in the presence of fast transport lines). If you notice any mistakes, feel free to correct me.
- "To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient soutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." - Henri Poincaré. "Economy of thought and economy of effort... is a source of beauty as well as a practical advantage."
- Thought that the main use of mulching was to keep pests away. But a paper had a lot to teach me. It protects the soil from direct sunlight, water evaporation and erosion. It preserves temperature (insulates against heat & cold) and humidity (saving water), improves aeration and nutrient availability (by lowering soil pH), slowly dissolves to increase the available nutrients. Useful in dry areas; recommended depth of 4-8cm. Sounds interesting.
- Facts and figures about the Port of Zeebrugge bit.ly/2CIPBm6 ↗. Nice that these aren't pure numbers only, but combined with thoughtful visualization.
- Few details about port operations I didn't know: 75-80% of exchanged goods volume happens by sea; many ports have problems with dredged sediments; port cranes picking containers can use a lot of electricity (six cranes were said to use 12000-13000kW/s, incurring costs of 180.27€/s). Yes, per second. Another paper mentioned a max. allowed peak consumption of 80000kWh at container terminals (influenced by reefers). Disruptions in the work of the ports in Bremerhaven and Rotterdam were estimated by another paper to cost 771.5 million dollars/week and 682.2 million dollars/week respectively. The larger the ships (for improved economies of scale), the smaller the number of ports able to handle them (need for infrastructure modernization).
- If you went for the cheap solution previously, perhaps you are trying to correct your mistake on Freelancer now.
- Without a great project proposal, you had the opportunity to do the work yourself. Hope you enjoyed the time.
- Is it possible to identify the type of tree which has been cut from its trunk texture? Or its importance for the forest from the maintained trunk humidity?
- Classification of heartbeats from an ECG (electrocardiogram) seems to be an interesting use of data analysis. Could this identify starting signs of arrhytmia?
- Interesting idea: creating a choropleth with regions colored according to the number of times people have searched for a particular disease online.
- Libraries in Kentucky, USA bit.ly/2CM44O5. 204 on a tight territory is not bad.
- Never heard of the ratio leaf area:total plant weight. Was a bit confused of its logical meaning and didn't suppose it could be seen as some development metric. Perhaps useful only across plants of the same type. What if I thought in extremes here? Initially the plant would be a seed, thus having no leaves and some minimal weight, which we can assume to be a number much bigger relative to zero. This ratio would be zero. What if the plant was a giant tree instead? Its total leaf area would be harder to determine, but we notice a cue. Leaves tend to fill a volume determined by the tree crown, the moment they find free space to grow, assuming no shortage of sun and water. This means that the leaf surface area to volume in the crown is a number which grows over time. The tree weight increases perhaps linearly, the leaf area likely quadratically and the the tree crown grows cubically, but only up to some equilibrium point. This means that the leaf area:weight ratio is likely to be highest for the giant tree. So any number between this minimal (zero) and maximal ratios must then indicate a growing plant. The heaviest parts are the tree trunk and the branches. But considering a single branch only, we know that it grows linearly and so does the number of leaves on it. A single branch can hold many leaves, each having a specific leaf area. So, in miniature (of this recursive structure), we observe the same.
- Library visitors (all branches) in Santa Clarita, California (01.07.2018 - 01.06.2019) bit.ly/2OgbrTt. 70000 monthly visitors for a population of slightly over 210000 (Google, 2017) exceeded expectations. Must be a city of readers.
- Do you optimize the packaging or do you leave room for things to rattle inside?
- Complex network bit.ly/2NLy0QF. I think only the forest of control towers is missing.
- Is your factory IoT-equipped and if so what do the readings reveal? Do you have to write code on a per-case basis to understand this, or does the information arrive on your smartphone?
- Read an article today which reminded me of a song by MetallicA called "Master of puppets". In other words, the master first recruits and sends the puppets to condition you. They claim to be completely independent creatures meaning to be around for your own good, supporting your progress (while exploiting you). If you don't recognize this, great, the goals of their master have been subtly achieved, through careful convincing and the absence of much drama. In case you rise to reject them all, you may face the anger of their master, which may come out of the shadows to reveal his true face. (However, he likely wouldn't if the loss in the knitted system is minor.) But I am sure, you will be more than prepared to face your reality. If not, you will hear the same from the next puppet claiming that noone is supporting them in the background. They are just doing their work, that previous (million-dollar) link to their master has long been broken. Fully independent now and there for a radical change (only not against the master). Unbelievable.
- Can you ask which of two cities has a better nightlife when you were afraid of the shadows? (idea came in the middle of the paper "Cities of a feather flock together"). Remember how Alice was told that one of the birds was "mustard" in hope she wouldn't notice? The actual lesson could have been to always be aware who you are dealing with.
- If only being influential could guarantee being right every single time...
- When the cost of new software is cents and the cost of new hardware increasingly many thousands of dollars, we are moving towards a future with no software. Additionally, when someone writes a piece on software and gets six comments and another writes a piece on hardware and gets 63 comments (see AnandTech), you can gauge that interest in software is quickly fading. Or perhaps you noticed somehow that years ago, popular GitHub libraries were getting ≈550 stars/day, while that number has fallen to 200-250 stars/day since then (not considering the few outliers here). At least from personal observation.
- hen and how does a marker on Google Maps expire? Some markers are still present, but the businesses are n/a.
- Any idea of the percentage of skyscrapers acting as observatories and the percentage of visits dedicated to this specific task?
- Couldn't offer help to anyone who was unwilling to seek it or appreciate it enough.
- Does it make a difference when you load your car with fuel? Everyone knows that gasoline prices can vary from one day to the next. The challenge is then to identify the times when noone else would be going to the tank station. Friday is perhaps not such a day since people fill the tanks for the weekend. What about Monday? Early risers may choose to quickly prepare their car for the workweek. Morninng and evening hours when most people make their longest movements are also frequently most convenient for them to incidentally pass through the tank station. Saturday is a sligtly better choice than Friday, but there are people who plan to travel on Sunday too. What about Sunday night? Sounds good in case the stations aren't closed. But will the price difference justify the extra movement for that specific goal?
- Does it make a difference to your purse whether you go to a restaurant for lunch or dinner? Decided to look into this idea in the case of today's "Crave Fishbar" menu. The median prices were comparable—$17 for lunch and $16.5 for dinner. But when we took averages, the situation slightly changed: $18.04 for lunch and $19.57 for dinner. The second is slightly more perceivable and also noticeable on the distributions bit.ly/3553vvb. Can we find a reasonable explanation for this reality? Well, lunches tend to be in the middle of the day, where people interrupt their work to make a pause. Yet, they may choose to eat in a hurry if under time pressure. Or they may not find the right companion if the other side (or several people) are busy. The lunch may not happen at the restaurant if it is not close enough, if people carry their own food (dietary reasons) or use a convenient third-party delivery service. Dinners on the other side are usually after work, when obligations are less pressing. This means that they can be visited by more people compared to lunches. Since dinners are at peak visitor hours, it is reasonable to assume that the price of the menu items will be higher. It enables restaurant managers to regulate and meet the increased demand.
- Noticed that the strawberry cheesecake bit.ly/374QPG7 ↗ in the "Junior's" bakery menu was available in four different diameter sizes (6", 7", 8", and 10"), meant for 6, 8, 12 and 20 servings and was initially sceptical whether the prices ($24.95, $36.00, $51.95, $83.95) were set to encourage overconsumption. Considering only diameters and prices, the answer would have been negative. But then we notice that 6" is for 6 servings and 10" is for 20 servings and it feels a big difference that a diameter increase of only 4" leads to 3.33x the servings. Perhaps the cake height could vary. Assuming that servings have standard size/weight in all cases and integrating them into a simple formula, all points align on an almost perfect line. Much better.
- Wave period, wave height and water temperature for six beaches in Chicago, Illinois (30.08.2013 - 11.09.2019) bit.ly/2pjQwGG. Dot color describes water temperature. In four of the cases, we notice an interesting pattern. Above wave period of 7, wave height remains either low (most common) or reaches levels that are among the highest. In-between values become more rare. However, Calumet Beach and Ohio Street Beach do not register such middle gaps. Is it possible for them to be close neighbors?
- By the way, an article claimed that Germany saw two chain crashes recently, involving 19 and 18 cars respectively. In the second case (Bayern), it reported about 29 injuries. But it could be that speed was only a contributing factor here.
- The Netherlands has introduced a speed limit (100km/h) on its highways as a measure to reduce harmful emissions. Thiis sounds reasonable. If you remember, we have seen a dataset where sports cars were having visibly higher emission rates, second only to powerful machines (perhaps a truck can be seen to belong in this category, where the article mentioned there were many in NLD). It would be even better if we had more sources which confirmed this independently. But since the possibility is there, we have to assume that unbounded acceleration could exacerbate the level of emissions. The dataset didn't include many electric vehicles, but we know that the contribution of the majority of gasoline cars on the road is higher than the gains achieved from a very efficient minority. And until the scale weights change, this rule sets a positive example, which can be implemented rather quickly. On the other side, routes having no speed limits may effectively incentivize drivers to emit more. And if someone could reach the new, lower speed with a less powerful engine, this is a win for everyone. Think of the vastly different engines on the roads—some being too powerful, others much less so. If a speed limit was equally easy to reach by everyone, there would be much less need to overtake other cars, improving road safety. But we could think in reverse too. Having equal speed limit for all cars, why do they need to be so different in their tech specs? Can't we have a single efficient engine designed specifically for its top speed task and multiply it in cars of different looks as many times as required to achieve the greatest emission savings at scale? Why design for (over-)capacity that will largely remain unused? Who knows, perhaps companies like Uber or Lyft could be the first to promote uniform fleets.
- Seattle's "2018 building energy benchmarking" (updated on 28.10.2019, bit.ly/2O64Uuo ↗) enables us to see that only six buildings have source EUIs above 1500 (the rest being below 1200), with two of the highest values attributed to data centers (on 2020 5TH AVE and 4310 12TH AVE NE) having 2965.3 and 2683.9 respectively. After that follow UW Physics Astronomy Building (1963.3), Westin Building Exchange Office (1747.9), Washington State Convention Center (1640.4) and Port of Seattle, terminal 18 (campus) (1572.2). High numbers, but if a lot of value is created at these locations, this may still be better than having buildings with average values, which simply waste energy.
- Remember how rare you are bit.ly/2CFJnn4 ↗
- Slightly altered the structure of the
Löwen Mövenpick icecreams page (locally) so as to fit all flavors on a single teaser screen bit.ly/2CQLHI9. While getting a sorted (not asorti) list of flavor names, script noticed three duplicates. Perhaps a small oversight, which the untrained eye is unlikely to notice. If you prefer even more flavors, also look at Dreyer's (another Nestle brand). - Relationships in the World Metro Database bit.ly/2qKqbC2. Strongest positive relationships were found between network length and number of stations (0.92), number of stations and number of lines (0.917), network length and daily ridership (0.800) (or ridership per km), average line length and stations per line (0.791), number of lines and daily ridership (0.790), daily ridership and population (0.700), number of stations and population (0.595).
- Electricity generation at the solar WPCF plant in Las Vegas, Nevada bit.ly/33GHUZH. The pattern seems periodic, varying between ≈250-820 thousand kWh. Among all sites, this one had the highest solar energy production.
- Found a good explanation why certain cakes tend to twelve pieces—to be suitable for groups up to six (but hopefully not exactly five) members. If you don't know how many will come in advance, some flexibility by design could be nice to have.
- The total duration of a phone call can be used as an indicator of the strength of a relationship. Raises the question, perhaps, why someone still haven't bought the same product as their satisfied friend. And to what extent peer pressure can "nudge".
- "A shop is 'favourite' if a user bought more than 75% of the items there." Do you have a favourite web designer/software developer who is working on more than 75% of your projects? Would you say that closest/most available and favourite are the same?
- Not that intelligent myself, but assuming that if someone sees the same trajectory in a given day, knows the direction in which a person is moving and the two points where they stay longest and most frequently return to, they have the notion where "home" and "work" might be for that user. Additionally, if the trajectory of movement passes through a local store, where they make a credit card purchase, their financial status could be inferred or a purchase history constructed. Data, which is freely/conveniently provided and so useful to those corporations.
- On one dataset (CenceMe) only three latitude-longitude pairs captured by GPS were sufficient to identify 100% of the users, while on two others (GeoLife and CabSpotting) five points were enough to identify 95% of the users. Additionally, when the capturing fidelity was increased to 5 digits after the comma (corresponding to a physical area of 1.11m by 0.96m) , only two points were enough.
- "Knowing only four points in space and time allows to uniquely reidentify a user with 95% probability." How many points did you send via your combined smartphone and smartwatch usage today? "Specific people were reidentified in supposedly anonymized medical records or movie preference databases... The number of possible research questions on mobile phone datasets is gigantic." Your actions, habits, movements, acquintances are used for traffic monitoring, disease outbreak prevention, health estimation... "Individuals appear to have highly predictable movements. As population we act and react in a remarkably synchronized way." Not strange then that you have to enable geolocation capturing before you can do anything meaningful with the device.
- Are you having noodles today (optionally potatoes later) while leaving the meat and alcohol for Sunday? Or is perhaps noone around on the weekened to track your consumption habits and tell you what a bad choice you make?
- "We lift any weight" is a good value proposition from the Port of Vienna. Wish I could handle 25kg for more than two minutes in a side-by-side comparison against a browser sweating at a 25MB page.
- Interesting diagrams in Climate Transparency's "Brown to green" report for 2019, which I could have used yesterday. Energy intensity of ≈450gCO2/kWh for G20 countries in 2018 seems to be approximately the median. Aviation and transport (except aviation) emissions of approximate 0.525 tons (UK, 2016) and 1.8 tons (UK, 2018) of CO2/capita repectively send an interesting signal. The first number is equivalent to driving ≈5250km with the modern car in a year, which doesn't appear exceptionally high. Further, approx. 0.75 tons and 5.15 tons of CO2/capita for USA (2016 and 2018) lead to the same thought that, overall, we are still producing most of the emissions on the ground. By a wide margin and despite the calls to significantly reduce the number of flights and their distance.
- Free WiFi locations by provider in New York City bit.ly/34MxoQH. Learned about "Spectrum" and "Altice USA", which have over 200 installations each. It seems that few tiny spots still remain unclaimed.
- Another reason is that the median US company is said to pay a software engineer ≈$170000 (backed by data), while at a top German company you could hardly expect more than 100000€ (if at all), or the equivalent of slightly more than $110000 (large percentage of which would be a tax). Payment isn't everythng, but still crucial for improvement and if your growth opportunities are limited and competitors are constantly more resourceful than you, you are setting yourself up for a costly failure. Another aspect is that countries like China are already ahead of Germany in many areas, which makes economic stability in the latter questionable in the long-term.
- Good explanation why software developers aren't top priority for the German economy bit.ly/33wGFMt. Unfortunately, few of them would agree to breathe the exhaust. Better to make a circle around this country.
- Things you can't ask me to do: freelance, consult, speak (conferences), teach. Do yourself a favor not to discuss any of these. Not seeking additional professions.
- Do you take measures to balance utilization in the presence of several projects which are asked to be finished at the same time? Unless you have several workers, you have to postpone some at the expense of others.
- Always missed the context about CO2 emissions and specifically where we started. Saw that some newer cars were specified with below 100g/km, but couldn't relate this number to anything from the past. Thanks to a paper bit.ly/34OyknI, we see that in the 90s, average car emissions in Greece were ≈220g/km. The direction is right, we only need to increase the speed. Interesting is too that we could use the environmental cost of electricity generation there to estimate that a new car would release as much CO2 per km as a 8W LED bulb running for 17.5 hours.
- Didn't know that dyes are present in so many products: textiles, food, paper, plastics, packaging, lasers, household products, cosmetics, detergents. A paper was concerned with their toxicity, but I did not understand much of it.
- Learned that in 17 years, my country has increased the bright areas at night by only 10% comparing to China's 226% (in absolute terms). Explains why "we're making progress" (not only on this front) remains so unpopular with me.
- Interesting that the travel times in London by heavy rain and heavy snow were found to increase by 6% and 11.4% respectively.
- The good news is that these skills are now widely available, so it shouldn't be a problem to find alternatives/replacements.
- If you couldn't respect during the good times, during the bad I took that opportunity away from you.
- Some pay billions in advertising budgets to Google and Facebook and then claim they can't afford a project from you. No chance to ever start a conversation.
- Not sure, but think I've noticed it on schematics more than once (Beijing, elsewhere), so my question: Is there a particular advantage to organize a road network to have some major arteries as concentric circles around the city center? I suppose that this allows the city to expand more evenly in all directions, without having some districts disproportionately disadvantaged. But curious whether you know of some more mathematical reasons explaining why this must be good for drivers as well.
- Tried to look for patterns in the flight times for some frequent sources and destimations at the Munich Airport (MUC) (08.11.2019) bit.ly/33qNGyl
- Suppose you invested a lot of effort to bike many kilometers (as a good exercise), but at the end you got tired and your speed decreased. Wouldn't you feel demotivated to see someone on an electric bike passing you by, not even making the slightest effort? How often do you encounter a similar situation in life?
- Did you have to clean up a lot after the work they did for you?
- Ordered the pizza today, but couldn't order the web designer/programmer for that project? Such a bad joke you have.
- Didn't expect to see so many ice rinks in Montréal. Skating must have a strong tradition there (not sure about nearby cities since I haven't seen enough data). Then we remember hockey and other sports, which partially explains this state.
- Liked the nutritional data at "Tim Hortons" and wondered whether there is some perceivable numeric difference between a donut and a muffin. Left with no stamina to explore this, but if you wish, you could look into it and share your findings in a simple bit.
- "A growth-promoting gene from Chinook salmon put into fertilized Atlantic salmon eggs makes them grow like a trout would, reaching the market weight of 2-3kg in 18-24 months rather than in 3 years." - Vaclav Smil in "Growth: from microorganisms to megacities". Profits above all. It was not mentioned whether this product was marked as containing GMO or not.
- Culture fit. Heard this many times. In other words, a company already established its non-payment structure and feels threatened when an outsider tells them about the market price of the value they provide, when the company has long forgotten what it meant to pay for it. This enables them to quickly discard the candidate by the rule that "they don't fit the culture". Sounds like a generic excuse and one that ends the dialogue for doubts about the good sense of self-worth of the would-be colleagues.
- "It's now easier than ever to be an entrepreneur (when you can outsource work to others)." Correct. You only need to start a Twitter account and claim that you already know ten programming languages and have at least ten years of experience. Didn't matter that you started them yesterday. Noone is going to question your words. Outsourcing gives you the ability to work with more such people and since this is great, what could possibly go wrong?
- Wthout a well-paying project, no service.
- Most popular cities for Pizza Hut locations in the UK bit.ly/36BvCDL. Would you say that Nottingham is relatively hut-rich when you walk around?
- As a visitor, when you walk inside a restaurant having a model of a polar bear, you recognize soon what is on the daily menu. The variety is meant for a good nutritional balance.
- "Capitalism has worn off." Nope, it finally starts for you.
- Another useful lesson from a diagram: if a point has to be placed at a location where someone has died, it can take the shape of a small cross. Much more descriptive.
- Smartphone after-swipe background change bit.ly/34F9Q01. Liked the idea and it seems to adapt well to a context. The color areas are also void of symmetry, which is nice.
- You earned my five stars for today bit.ly/34E5s1o. First time taking an OS window and using its borders to verify whether the lines were truly horizontal. Easiest tool to grab; cheap and abundant resource; case-sufficient.
- A fleeting thought, but is it possible (in theory) for fracking to pass through a Chernozem soil surface layer, some ancient city ruins, a layer of useful minerals and a flow of groundwater before some oil is finally discovered? Reaching one after destroying four (in this case) must be highly inefficient. Wikipedia says something about potential impacts bit.ly/2PSfJ5L and FracFocus lists some chemicals, optionally used as additives bit.ly/2NOsgEG ↗.
- Is there a maximal number of flights a passenger-transporting machine is allowed to make before it is phased out? Or is it repeatedly repaired and kept operational for as long as possible? On a product lifetime scale, are 30000 flights closer to the equivalent of a car with a mileage of 30000km or one with 300000km? Don't know, seeking a frame of reference only.
- "What is The Coca-Cola Company's position on GMOs?" bit.ly/2pMEd5U ↗. What about more responsibility?
- A beautiful photo grid of animal variety at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden bit.ly/2NjF4DY ↗
- Realizing you can be only as fast as your slowest client would make you look more carefully who you work with.
- The event → thought → feeling seems like a worthy sequence to pay attention to. (Tells me that thoughts must precede feelings.) Could the advice to stay focused on the goals in order to minimize the interference of anxiety in life be a useful one?
- "The tough trees can grow in denial and withstand far worse conditions." Allows you to select the problem you want to have—broken software or broken chainsaws.
- In case you can't pay enough to www-workers, you might need to hire for the wood wide web. What's ineresting about it is that trees turn out to be very cmmunicative too, supporting each other in moments of pain, planning reproduction despite severe weather and postponing the growing of fruits until they ensure that most animals won't be around to pick them. Or so a source, at least.
- American Heart Association says that if these signs are present bit.ly/36FDVhA ↗, you shoud call for medical help.
- Annual mortality cases by cause in USA bit.ly/2CjG30w. Couldn't come to the surprise from reading the excerpt, but even so some facts have been useful. Not sure whether my LDL cholesterol levels fall between 50-70mg/dL (for a total below 150mg/dL), but it was alarming that the average American was said to have a total of 200mg/dL. Clogged arteries and reduced blood flow to the brain can have severe consequences.
- Simple arithmetic: if it takes a student five years to become a specialist in their field (say in computer science) and your company finds a way to fully exhaust (and consistently underpay) beginners within 3 years on the job (leading to their burnout), eagerly seekinng for the next fresh candidate to continue with, you have programmed your way for not finding future employees. You consume much faster than the system is able to produce. Sooner or later you will have to deal with the consequences (and think of the ethics) of this behavior.
- Sadly, the numeric pad is not available on all machines. Since JS can detect the difference between digits below the F-keys and digits on the numpad, one could potentially explore ways to use the pad matrix to resize windows. 2, 4, 6 and 8 even have arrows on them and it is also intuitive to see how they could affect the left, right, top and bottom positions of a rectangular window. If one were to press "6" (right arrow), they could indicate that they want to operate on the right side of the window. "5" can then be used as controller. For instance, six followed by five could mean shrink the window by x% of available screen width, while five followed by six could mean "take this window and expand it to the right" by the same amount. Five followed by 2 (bottom) could mean expand window to bottom by y% of available screen height, while two followed by five would be the same in reverse. Further, window manipulations like five followed by three become possible. Or the equivalent of someone taking the mouse and dragging the tiny bottom-right corner of the window. In case of improper window alignment leading to off-screen portions, the "0" (zero) on the numpad could be used to align the current window on focus to the top-left corner of the screen (0, 0) while preserving the existing dimensions. These are only initial thoughts, but you get the idea. Mouse-only window resizing is a potential accessibility issue.
- Window resizing should be easier for older people who managed to hide half of the browser window on the right of their screen when no after-tabs draggable area can be seen and when the spacing between the opened tabs and window border is so tiny that it is hardly visible to them. Is there a chance that something is an issue if you have to explain it twice?
- Thought about another ratio this morning, trying to brainstorm where the locations with lowest number of free to imprisoned people would be (no idea). Now the quote makes me believe that it is lower than physically observable and I don't know how to account for this fact.
- Avoid pesticides in your code or it may grow in uncontrolled ways.
- "You are so preoccupied with controlling your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations that you don't even know you are living." Do you know the alternative? It is working for a multi-billionaire boss being great at convincing that as someone poor "you should be ready" to go to extreme lengths to improve your life, while meanwhile they greatly benefit from that, using your extra effort and constant accusations of poor performance to crush your mentality. So what? In this case, you only lose your spirit and creativity, becoming noone—a pawn in someone's hands,—while in the latter you remain aware of not living a life according to the rules others have set-up for you. But somehow you remain aware that you derive your meaning of life through the work you do and you find that your genuine, unsuppressed contributions should be the sole reason for your existence. You are aware of a life not ived, but refuse to part with your future chances (big difference). And if as a writer you are telling me that the first is better than the second, why didn't you become a scientist to prove it?
- "Grab their attention by the throat", a convincing book tells me.
- Parks and libraries in Birmingham, Alabama bit.ly/32ge24K. This is the best label positioning I came up with due to parts of the city looking as satellites.
- Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park (21.11.2019 - 05.01.2020) bit.ly/2NJtvoy ↗
- Time for Dinah, but already ate (salads take so long to prepare). Good too that they don't have to include specially-sourced ornamental feathers.
- Combined open and other publicly known data to plot the locations of some recommended restaurants in Atlanta bit.ly/2NireC5. Unfortunately, only two out of the six "hot" restaurants (33%) appeared inside the city limits, if the coordinates were correct.
- Alice tried to catch a rabbit going down a rabbit hole and fell slowly through an endless well in an empty room with many locked doors and a key, which didn't fit in any. But behind the curtain was another one, which could be unlocked... and so she always managed to find a way out of the riddles until one day the white rabbit was in the position of justice and her hasty words were used against her, leading to the loss of her head. Under stress, she found that her sister woke her up, which herself tried to imagine how she might have felt, falling into her own sequence of thoughts about how her future children would feel... A recurrence in different forms. The deeper meaning might explain why I wasn't able to derive much from the book as a kid (which, let's face it, was at times intentional). Perhaps it is also suitable for grown-up kids, which have forgotten how it felt to wonder and seek applications for what appears unreasonable in the present context, but suddenly making sense in the next. But if you have a good basic understanding that lessons start with 10 hours/day and lessen by an hour/day, while you get the chance to learn about ambition, distraction, uglification and derision, you are ready for it.
- Didn't know that Ceconomy is the mother company of MediaMarkt and Saturn (Source: Spiegel). Same owner. Reminds me of at least one such pair of other companies (Kaufland and Lidl). It's clear why this is done: diversification reduces risks even at the cost of lying customers under a false identity. Some long time ago, I expressed the opinion that I find it important to include labels like "a {name of parent} company", which remained unnoticed. Every time an identity branches out is made a conscious attempt to mislead the customer. With this accepted practice, the best thing you can do is to question everything and everyone.
- Another week for great clients and projects (only). After you connect, we'll see the extent of description fit.
- Onshore wind turbines by "Siemens Gamesa" bit.ly/34x7ekV
- It is perhaps better to build stronger bases which could hold future turbines once the original ones reach the end of their life. Hubs are said to be reusable, and if they are a good fit for the new rotor, they could be retained, partially reducing installation costs. But if the base won't be able to sustain the new weight, the hub replacement costs must be included as well.
- In the "Future of wind" report, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) acknowledges that wind power generation will play an important role for reaching a future with clean energy and low environmental impact. They believe wind output would contribute more than that of solar, although you might have seen other claims elsewhere. By 2050, they project wind to generate a third of the total global electricity. Since onshore wind is characterized by lower (and better) LCOE than offshore wind (0.06$/kWh vs. 0.13$/kWh) (and already comparable to fossil fuel's 0.05-0.17$/kWh), they expect that onshore wind installation will increase tenfold until 2050 (relative to 2018). You can see the installation costs in some countries for 2018 bit.ly/2WBMq8Q. The trend is towards installing larger, more powerfull turbines. What did not previously ocur to me was that they will not only require higher hubs and rotors with larger diameter, but also significantly more stable/wider foundations to carry the increased weight (considering only y-axis is not enough). Further, the amount of materials required—as shown in the case of the sample 50MW wind plant,—can be astonishing. 22386 tonnes of concrete cannot be assumed to come at zero emission cost. Other useful details included "offshore wind needs grid connection to shore" and the existince of floating platforms (for water depths exceeding 60m). Wind turbine suppliers with highest market share in 2018 were Vestas (20.3%), Goldwind (13.8%), Siemens Gamesa (12.3%), GE Renewable Energy (10%), Envision (8.4%), Enercon (5.5%).
- Sheltered and unsheltered homeless people counts by council district in Los Angeles, California bit.ly/2NdoiXb. The curve is hypothetical, but even so, it may describe the add-up potential of inaction. Other cities may have a similar problem.
- A reminder to look for the symmetry in the design of electronic circuits.
- Assume for a second that the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture is responsible for the rapid decline of birds and insects. If this is true, what leads us to believe that this process hasn't already started with humans as well? What is harmful to them must be highly probable to be harmful to us as well?
- Locations with ancient sites in Germany bit.ly/329K3eN. Used information available on Wikipedia. The initial idea was to seek clusters of related sites, but you would probably agree that it is hard to find proper clusters for something which appears as one long line. For me, this is an interesting and unexpected pattern, so I am curious whether it continues at the eastern border of The Netherlands as well. (Update: Now I see that "Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum" is in nearby Nijmegen). I was in Xanten (Colonia Ulpia Traiana) a long time ago and found this large area quite impressive. Unfortunately, I've heard later that the place was severely flooded, so I don't know about the degree to which it was damaged (hopefully not).
- Out of 959 rings at "Guldfynd", the median came at 3498 Swedish kronor, which Google reported to be $365.75. Or approximately 56% of the price of the Adidas sneakers I saw today on an Australian website (not AUD either). Trying to understand value in perspective.
- Made a simple diagram of the cities in Colombia having more than 50000 people (labeling them if having 350000+) bit.ly/325HaLP. Noticed a small point overlap and it turned out that the distance from Medellin to Bello was reported to be only 9km. Also interesting is how below a fictive diagonal line, big cities become increasingly harder to detect.
- Woolworth's latest brochure has a nice composition of picture frames on sale, but it is easy to find that the large set of three frames has the most value bit.ly/2oEHXpr
- Samsonite carry-ons ranked by internal volume (in3) divided by price ($) and weight (lbs) bit.ly/2WCvKhE. Totes and duffels (which I dislike most) are exactly the ones this system wants me to know about. Also can't imagine to roll/carry an inflexible underseater as a primary daily luggage, unless no better options exist. But the Omni PC 20" Spinner bit.ly/2NarTFB ↗ is the first, which starts to sound reasonable and it feels reassuring to see so many positive reviews about it. Your favourite choice may vary, depending on what you are looking for.
- Could the difference between juice and smoothie be reflected in a different nutrient composition? Hard to generalize, but we could look at a concrete example in the case of the "Tank" drinks bit.ly/2qga7r8. If my eyes don't fail me, most drinks with higher reported sugar content tend to fall consistently in the "smoothie" category. Not sure why this is so, but it looks interesting here.
- Smartphone prices at "Saturn" and "MediaMarkt" bit.ly/2WK3dXH. Note that this doesn't tell you how the price of a given model would compare across the stores. Some models which are available in one may not be available in the other. The most expensive models were 2100€ at both stores. Both websites were using the same "sticky" prices, the design of which involves several spans for each digit (including the point and cents) of the price. This uses the browser caching effectively, but makes pages heavier, having to download more content. Offer layout also had many elements in common bit.ly/2N82ooh. Both websites showed text in small letters at the end of each page and used the same "Einverstanden" button on an overlay positioned at its bottom to make users accept cookies. Both websites were slow: Saturn had lots of warnings and few errors, while MediaMarkt was image-heavy, which took a lot of processing time. It could be that there were memory leaks with both, since browsing after a given number of pages became progressively slower to the point where subsequent pages (with only few offers) started to take minutes. You might think that all of these are pure coincidences. It could also be that the long-term competition (using each others know-how) has made them increasingly alike.
- Nutrients in Philadelphia spreads bit.ly/2plX6fT. The Milka variant skews the data here (compared to it, 7.2g of sugar does not appear much, but still more than all other variants), "Lightest" looks promising and "Original", which could be the default choice for many, actually is said to contain a lot of fat.
- You might have seen tables with wide legs, but different orientations bit.ly/2qdIU8u. Could it make a difference in terms of stability which one you choose and why? Would you consider this a case where extending things to infinity could simplify the thinking?
- Isn't it inspiring what type of messages you could deliver despite the quadratic chocolatic complexity? bit.ly/2pwmHCN ↗
- "La Cucina" also has a large tea variety bit.ly/2qfnZCk ↗ that goes beyond the ordinary.
- Thank you for your repeat visits last month! And if you have projects, which you believe to be mutually beneficial, feel free to speak about them.
- "Dine in" and "Take out" are very intuitive labels, which is a mark of good design. We could only ask ourselves why we aren't seeing many similar ones.
- Prices by tea type at "Demmers Teehaus" bit.ly/2JHBmlk. Green tea had the highest heights, while "best choice" seemed to offer the most value. Black and green teas were most common with 76 and 55 variants respectively.
- Sweatshirt prices by gender at NewYorker bit.ly/2N43ilG, ZARA bit.ly/2WvoRib, GAP bit.ly/325LRFI and Icebreaker bit.ly/339vA3N
- Interesting idea to paint stairs in white and have some regularity of black fractions. From the viewpoint of someone at the lowest end, it looks like a piano, whose realism would be determined only by whether it is making real sounds under command of hasty walkers. But a musical rule stating that once you have passed through the uppermost stairs, it becomes much harder to return to the previous note, could make for suboptimal pieces.
- "Fissler Souspreme Multi Pot" received an iF Design Award 2019, which made me discover the page listing design-excellent products, which were awarded over a timespan of 66 years bit.ly/2C3HmAG ↗. Currently looking at the 50 degree warm jacket.
- Pullover prices by gender at BRAX bit.ly/2JEzlGJ
- Tried to make myself a picture of today's operations at the Tokyo's Narita and Haneda airports bit.ly/2C2vVsZ and more specifically how they differ. As you can see "Narita International Airport" was slightly stronger in international flights, while "Haneda International Airport" was much stronger in domestic flights. Not sure whether this is valid only for today or over a longer timespan. Seoul, Shanghai and Hong Kong are among the top international airports, while Sapporo and Fukuoka are the most popular domestic ones.
- "Castle fine art" has beautiful brochures which are almost fine art in themselves bit.ly/2PvVAlY ↗. Some paintings were highly realistic, while others were looking after my skin.
- Nouri healthy balls look nice bit.ly/2PGs2Cl ↗
- In general, if you are paid for a large project, it is unwise to bother the client with small details. But this doesn't mean that they can be neglected.
- Parcel centroids in Santa Clara, California bit.ly/2WvZcpx (Source: County of Santa Clara, "Parcels", bit.ly/2pkebXD ↗, 574.6MB GeoJSON file). Also attempted KDE on these points, which after a long computation gave a distorted and unsatisfying result, since few points likely had erroneous coordinates. Here we see that the smallest parcels tend to be concentrated in the north-west of the county.
- Believe it or not, Internet is also part of the web design service if you still haven't hired the designer to work full time in-residence for you, but only need them for a project, preferably from a distance and without having to care about employee formalities (like stable contract, vacation time, health insurance etc.). Because if it's missing, you have automatically cut the branch on which you were trying to sit. A web designer which can't learn the necessary documentation to do your work or download/upload and share data with you, wouldn't be of much use to your company. It's in your interest to consider the basic cost of service and integrate it into your project proposal. Or get an employee in-residence.
- Junk remains junk no matter how you seek to promote or hide-and-show it again later. Doesn't matter whether you labeled the week "crazy", the offers "ridiculously cheap" or "seductive" or claimed that 100 people were watching just two hours before all offers expire (according to a visible countdown). Doesn't matter that you've put the modern Joker face on those TVs or that you stuck the "sold" label to some items to simulate buyer interest. Junk remains junk no matter how or when you sell it. How many "crazy" weeks can you afford to sell it at presumably "lower" prices, before your tricks become transparent to the audience?
- Always discuss your project and work with a real designer in front of you, day after day. Pay a premium for quality service and don't seek to discriminate. Otherwise you may find yourself working face-to-webcam with some assertive "I can has it too", which then goes to employ an entire chain of people behind your back, where the last leaf gets exploited for five dollar. You'll be sponsoring the chain while getting the $5 work. Making the right choices daily ensures that there will still be professionals around by the time you desperately need them. Not only "fake" designers or programmers.
- When you read "minimize the sum of distances of agents to the nearest facility", do you think of hospitals first?
- The World Energy Council's report about the "Energy Trilemma Index 2019" bit.ly/2WqGlMn ↗ has graphic elements which remind me of some work from yesterday. The domain is different, but the information is again valuable. If you wish, you could draw your own triangles. I find that pure ranks do not tell me exactly about the background findings which led to their formation (or any subsequent changes since last update). But it feels nice to have some approximate, overall view.
- Noticed a bug, which could be in a window manager. If I double-click on an image, but the pointer for some reason enters in drag mode, then the image viewer pops up with the loaded image and at that moment I release the cursor (effectively dropping the icon over the opened image), a growing sequence of windows expands in my taskbar until all memory is eventually exhausted and the machine needs to be restarted. Sometimes I notice this early, being able to close the parent window and in doing so all its children it has spawned, but other times I feel less lucky (taskbar is floating, so not always visible). The question is whether this is critical enough to be "addressable".
- The unfortunate consequence of producing many parts of a complex system at several different factories around the world is that in case of repeated system failure, it is often unclear who is responsible.
- Please, don't use the console as a logger in production. Be aware that none of your clients wants to know about the internal workings of your application. What matters to them is that it can be used without any problems.
- Multiplication of Gaussians is said to be used in the Kalman filter, so you can see a diagram illustrating the idea bit.ly/2Jz9CQ5
- The mythical man completes projects on a monthly schedule.
- A text indirectly gave me an idea whose single-file experiment ended with three shapes bit.ly/349XAV1. The last one may have a hidden semantic.
- Proximity of the libraries in Dortmund to bus and bike stations bit.ly/2prrqpl. Uses the same source, but with three different datasets. The spacing between the libraries which are not in the city center seems almost equal, which is nice.
- Some years later, realized that this country isn't for me due to being and feeling "noone" there and due to the general lack of respect. Felt used, partially abused and reflected that it was the right time to leave. To this day, if someone connected with me, they had zero chance to show their disrespect twice.
- Total visits of the Center for Art and Creativity "Dortmunder U" (2013-2017) bit.ly/2oxbO3e. The only time I visited it, part of the building was still under construction, but there was an exhibition inside. There were lots of kids too, which was nice. I remember a demo of a spinner spreading paint on square sheets of paper, which were then ordered on the floor. The composition looked quite nice and I left impressed.
- Made a picture of the number of pubs, hotels and restaurants in different constituencies in Ireland (as of 03.06.2017) bit.ly/32XtxQj. "Kerry County" seemed to be rich in all three, while "Tipperary County" had mostly a large number of pubs only. Interesting whether popular pub locations have higher rates of people with alcohol consumption problems.
- Jewelry specialist "Tiffany & Co" probably hired some web designer at below market rate bit.ly/2q1Wbkq. If I could count properly, this paragraph is 20 nesting levels below the <main> tag. Wished to find the median ring price, but will leave the task to their designer.
- Collected and codified all observations on divisibility I could find in a book excerpt bit.ly/2NmE9S2. So enjoyable to learn about the method of multiplying by 11 and task solving using extreme cases and backwards thinking. Hope to find it and read it entirely, if possible. Guess, tomorrow is also a day.
- If in case of strong winds, trees near electric wires may fall over and cause fire, there must be a way to map-highlight the locations with greatest risk (close proximity, tall tree, old wire etc.) and then selectively introduce contextual measures to improve safety there.
- Do you offer on-the-fly recommendation? Suppose a buyer placed few items in their shopping cart, but haven't found the time to pay for them yet. You identified that one or few more items could be related to them, based on a possible task they might be used to accomplish. Would you suggest these two items next to the rest or rather keep the experience tidy and fast?
- If you see health as an asset, it might not be such a great deal you get from someone willing to pay you to destroy it.
- Enjoyed the excerpt from "Millions, billions, zillions: Defending yourself in a world of too many numbers" by Brian Kernighan. The full version would be a pleasure.
- Parks and libraries in Nashville, Tennessee bit.ly/2NgAhCg. High concentration of libraries near the center, lower in the suburbs.
- First laptop I see with 10th generation Intel CPU (1035G1, 1.00-3.60Ghz, 6MB cache, 10nm lithography, 15W TDP) bit.ly/32WIOkg ↗. Looks very good for the price of 400$ and Intel's page shows support for DDR4-3200/LPDDR4-3733 in case the integrated DDR4-2666 feels slow at some point. Perhaps even better models exist. But test for potential issues, before you decide to accelerate your teams (making them more productive).
- I'd refrain of saying that an external professional is 4x more costly and "high-maintenance" compared to internal employees. Otherwise it is well possible that you surround yourself with a team of four underpayed & overworked individuals, having to seek results that way.
- Suppose you want to program a "thunder" graphic, observing that you can take an equilateral triangle, discard its right side and repeat the rest connecting top vertices with right ones. Then on the right of this triangle, you take the middle point of the side you previously discarded and use this to extend another (rotated) triangle, this time with missing left side, connecting left with bottom vertices. At the end you connect both lines at the most stretched places, adding small parallel extensions where needed to preserve the pattern, also colorizing the shape. A naive programmer would look at the task and insist to draw all lines separately across the entire perimeter of this thick zig-zag shape. The number of required elementary operations wouldn't matter much. Someone else might come and think that this is a single shape and has to be treated like one, choosing to draw the same with several, very thick lines going through the center of the shape. This way, instead of using 17 lines, they will achieve the same effect with seven.
- Next week is another chance to convince yourself that these services are "need-to-have" rather than "nice-to-have".
- Currently, Zillow lists 543 room offers in Toronto where the median monthly rent computes to $1933 (or C$2525). But there is still a good chance to come to one in the bin $1500-1623. Similarly, out of 472 offers in Boston, the median comes at $2067, with a good chance to see one in the bin $1632-1689. Standard deviations are 894.84 for Toronto and 810.46 for Boston.
- Had to feel more like one bit.ly/2PknvVI
- Celebrating birthday with a small diagram of the bike counts at one selected location in Toronto, Canada bit.ly/369G2dv (the other three locations had much shorter time intervals of data collection). Eastbound traffic seems to have increased almost 50% over a 25-year period.
- Used data from "DeFazio's Pizzeria" bit.ly/2PmRKM0 ↗ and tried to estimate which ingredients could contribute to the pizza prices to the highest extent. Few which the script pointed to were "homemade vegan Parmesan cheese", "vegan Mozzarella", "garlic", "homemade Bolognese sauce", "fresh basil", "Calamati olives" and "Mozarella cheese". In all cases the bigger pizza offered better area per unit price.
- "A note on disk drag dynamics" starts with an empirical observation of HDD power usage, said to depend on platters * rpm2.8 * diameter4.6 (no dependence on capacity (GB)). Laptop disks were said to have smaller diameter, spin at lower speeds and have one or few platters (standing in full constrast to server HDDs). This means that makers tune on all parts of the equation and possibly even more variables. The equation for SSD drives will look differently in the absence of moving parts and presence of electricity-controlled capacity.
- Enjoyed the Jorge-Meeks 6-noid (looking as six tubes radially coming out from a center, hopefully not hiding a boom box in there) and another surface, which appeared as four connected cups. So I thought that fluid bottling can then be reduced to a two-step process: 1) fill the fluid once in the first surface (let it spread to all) and 2) lower a multi-component guillotine to make cuts at equial distances and plug the holes.
- Pitty that your website allows itself ten seconds to show its first image. Such performance is inacceptable and also bad for your business.
- What is your first association when you hear about "algorithmic fairness"?
- Do you have a plausible explanation why South Africa has a quite different uncertainty profile than most other countries (1996-2019)? (Source: "World Uncertainty Index (WUI)", bit.ly/32RDD56 ↗)
- Saw an excerpt from "Applied deep learning with PyTorch" and it is very well written, also nicely illustrating concepts concepts like ReLU, max pooling and convolution. Unfortunately, machine forbids runs of deep learning related code and asks me for a non-optional upgrade instead. Something else I found nice to learn about today were the causal algorithms in CDT, which are said to pair well with PyTorch. Never tried those either.
- Also contained a parallel worth mentioning: that quality often matters more than quantity. Foods created with speed in mind are brought to market with all kinds of contaminants, which then make many people sick and raise their healthcare costs more sharply than the savings they accumulate from getting cheap, junk food. Food produced with care on the other side, puts the environment and standards first and observes movements through the entire value chain until the product reaches the customer in the right condition. Scalable, for-profit production is not allowed to interfere with the interests of the clients, independent of their count. Quality food is produced more slowly, but offers better nutritious and health benefits while limiting the negative side effects. These contrasts remind a lot about the way our software is created. As a client, do you prefer sofware made of spaghetti code, having bad smells or one which is clean, organized and correct? Think which one you are supporting more frequently with your votes.
- "The information in food can literally upgrade or downgrade your biological software with every bite." - Mark Hyman, MD. Said so nicely.
- Did not expect that what appears as a small curling stone could weight ≈18kg. Adding to this a running/contact surface with diameter of only 13cm (Wikipedia) and pushing the stone from a sliding position partially explains the delicate handling I've seen.
- A goalkeeper and diagonal coverage bit.ly/2PgVcrm
- "Cost of living city ranking" by Mercer for 2019 bit.ly/2BGZ0ds ↗
- The total number of LED lightbulbs from Philips was much higher than expected bit.ly/2PfTdDJ. Ranking by the same criteria (luminous flux/wattage), we see that five units (seem to be filament lightbulbs) come with 200lm/W, which is impressive. But the next start at ≈145lm/W, which is a wide margin, raising the question how such difference became possible. The first diagram shows a linear relationship (positive correlation of 0.943), but we also notice three visible steps, indicating that concrete luminous flux levels may have been used as a benchmark before product release (where in these cases wattage was slightly more flexible). Such levels are 400, 450 and 470 lumens (low brightness), 800 and 806 lumens (average brightness) and 1521 lumens (high brightness). For some reason, 1500lm was almost 3x more rare than 1521lm. Ideally, we wouldn't have seen any steps, but a more randomized picture. One where matching the exact brightness of existing incadescent lightbulbs wouldn't be an absolute goal. This leaves a small gap in the range 1100-1500lm, which might indicate a future opportunity.
- Streets, parks and libraries in Durham, North Carolina bit.ly/33W6PIj. This is what I could construct, unsure about the recency of the data. You can also see the number of visitors by library branch between 01.07.2013 and 01.06.2014 bit.ly/32LfJYO
- Noticed that "Cree" had some lights with up to 190lm/W in its XLamp portfolio, which exceeded the highest 155lm/W seen on the Energy Star website. But these numbers were achieved under some ideal (binning) conditions, so I wondered whether they were still performing better. Computed max light output (lm) / max power (W) for all models, which had both specified bit.ly/32LDSyK. As you can see, some XLamps are close to the slightly lower efficacy. In practice, high CRI would also play a role in deciding which one to use for your task.
- Another subtle factor that fires you as a company is the overinvestment in infrastructure and underinvestment in your employees. You can't tell me that because you need to invest millions in your infrastructure, someone like me should be working extra long, unpaid hours. Fired!
- Interesting that beyond a certain level, rising temperatures cause a decrease in solar panel output. It was found that above 25°C, solar module voltage can decrease by 0.5%/°C. Hence, at higher locations with concentration of cooler air, performance may improve.
- "We hire for spikes, not well-rounded people." So you can swap them every 2 years, without having to be kept responsible. Fortunately, it's not that hard for any potential employee to see why you have to be fired on the spot.
- Scientific visualization bit.ly/3626zsY ↗ at NCSA
- Using three <source> elements (plus one <img>) inside a <picture> element for every hotel room photo on the page is not so great. Especially when all source elements have the same srcset (long URLs), but a varying media attribute (making style part of the HTML). On the website of a luxury hotel we should strive for better.
- "Hydrogen a culprit in capacity loss of sodium-ion batteries" bit.ly/2N5VLS7 ↗ The phrase "presence of impurities" might be triggering a neurochemical reaction in me due to some associations with quality of code.
- Coordinates, phones and opening hours of the library branches in Denver, Colorado bit.ly/2BH5TeB (Source: Denver Public Library, "Locations & Hours", bit.ly/31DWtvb ↗). 26 branches, mainly located in the south-west, could mean lots of reading material. City boundary coordinates were missing, which raised some questions about accuracy, but the coordinates are approximate anyway. The most consistent opening times seem to be on Friday and Saturday.
- Parcels in (most of) Denver, Colorado (low resolution) bit.ly/2BCZgu1. You can see the line intersections as indicated by mapshaper. Patience-tested me, but also saved machine from some file pollution.
- Seeing a photo of Tesla Gigafactory from above gave me the idea to estimate its area in terms of number of cars that have parked in front of it (using pixel areas). The earth.com photo from 08.09.2017 gave ≈6833.78 cars, but latest Google Earth photo (also showing the expansions since then), gives hints about ≈29452.25 cars (or 30000 if you round it). Included were only the white, closed areas without the open parkings.
- Another day for your projects, but only if you come with a reasonable proposal.
- Assumed that 900W is a lot for a 8K (7680 x 4320) 85" TV, so decided to verify this against a simple 1920 x 1080, 24" monitor using only 17.5W power. Divided the product of total number of pixels and screen area (in2) (assuming both were having the 16:9 aspect ratio) by power usage. And it turned out that the TV had ≈3.9x higher score. Mammoth usage—"yes". But does it come with its own efficiencies? At the surface, the answer seems to be another "yes".
- Can you recognize the parcels in Los Angeles as well? bit.ly/2pJV4Wq (4011 x 6000 pixels, 4.1MB). To improve visibility, the map would have needed to be even bigger. Now, nothing stands in the way of using a thick, red marker to highlight your (affordable) strategic positions.
- Parcels in Boston, Massachusetts bit.ly/2Wbk2KM (10376 x 7500 pixels, 4.2MB). (Source: Analyze Boston, Boston Maps, "Parcels 2018" from 17.06.2019, bit.ly/31z3aPa ↗). Again zoom for details. The label was omitted due to the very large image size (but filename is still descriptive).
- Parcels in Vancouver, Canada bit.ly/2pNj62P (5000 x 4541 pixels, 2.2MB). Zoom in to see the finer details.
- Public art in Vancouver: Everything matters, but nothing is important bit.ly/2JddoOD ↗
- "For some weird reason, people normally expect better services from private companies than from their own governments." Perhaps for reasons of responsiveness and care. In a complex entity, a decision has to wait for approval, moving through a a long chain of stakeholders.
- Preceding an open dataset with a diagram is not a good idea. Avoid putting your cart in front of my horse. An alternative is to have a separate page where you share all your findings and not only some lines or bars.
- CNBC and Nasdaq have lots of interesting data, which allows you to learn more about companies you don't know, if you are ready to spend the time to extract it.
- Number of divorce cases by year and marriage duration in Salzburg, Austria (1985-2014) bit.ly/2P8zeXn. Did not include the graphs for durations exceeding 10 years, as they were aggregated over five-year intervals and were thus incomparable. If you wish, you can view them separately bit.ly/2PcMvhF. Here you probably see how the first 2-4 years have been quite important for most people and how after long-lasting marriages fewer partners were willing to divorce.
- Library accessibility via bike transport in Salzburg, Austria bit.ly/35WOxZp. Please, note the numeric format of the axes. It is not the usual WGS84, so I cannot confirm whether the axes are properly oriented or have to be swapped.
- Also wanted to do the same for Colgate toothpastes, but product ingredients were missing in all descriptions.
- Common ingredients in 21 "Head & Shoulders" shampoos bit.ly/33SdH9z. Only four seemed to be present in all variants on the given page: "Methylisothiazolinone", "Methylchloroisothia-zolinone", "Sodium Chloride" and "Dimethicone". Personally, I have trouble pronouncing the first two.
- Temperature against viscosity for water bit.ly/2pEU1qS. Saw that ketchup has relatively high viscosity, which helps explain why shaking the tube feels energy taxing when you consider potential energy gain. Also found an interesting formula to calculate the viscosity of a blend of two fluids when their individual viscosities are known bit.ly/35QrfUS
- Mass-to-charge ratio is another one I wouldn't normally think about (particle context). From a geometric perspective, mass and velocity are easy to visualize on paper (size & vector length), but a property intrinsic to a dot is not so intuitive to identify.
- Amusing association: each time someone presses the camera shutter, the camera bottom opens and drops another dead AA battery (cartridge case). Burst mode would be stuttering without a fast enough reload mechanism. In this case, specific capacity (mAh/g) may be more important if you have to carry a heavy, battery-full backpack, which by itself looks like a big battery.
- "We have no reason to believe 5G is safe" bit.ly/2MWXrNG ↗. Millimeter wave radiation with increased risk of cancer, genetic damage, learning/memory deficits doesn't sound good. Personally, I'd be happier with a slightly slower Internet if my health wouldn't be compromised. Could current wireless tech also be harmful, to a lesser extent? At least cables seem to limit the affected area. "802.11 wireless networking: The definitive guide" mentions that running cables is time-consuming, expensive and may require construction (capacity expansion via switches). Compared with this, WiFi is more flexile, especially with older buildings and can be deployed extremely rapidly (likely enabling higher profits). Wireless signals penetrate walls (also behaving unpredictably), cover large areas and account for fast-moving clients. Curious that one of the first uses of WiFi was for package tracking in logistics.
- True. You could obtain a pay cut not only through salary reduction, but also via increased responsibilities, which were not part of the initial contract. The second is a more indirect form, but still one you don't have to agree with.
- Suppose you were looking for a new room and found one of size x m2. The landlord didn't specify its built year, so you went to the place to make yourself a picture of the situation. You estimate that the building has six floors with three identical apartments each. Given that you have city data about the buildings (like the one we've seen about Chicago), could you predict the potential room condition without having to look inside or have the landlord present? Would you then ask to see it (if you expected it to be a good one) or would you wait to see data from the noise sensors first, being wary that someone else might come to take it faster?
- Not in hope of clients having problems. Much happier when they don't, since it would save me quite some time not having to look into hairy, "easy to deal with" details. And it's nicer to meet positive people, independent of whether they were clients or not.
- Event schedules are such a great place for design to leave no room for wrong interpretations.
- "Every business has 3 stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders." You missed the customers of your customers. But you may not have shareholders and only rely on few employees, which leaves you very focused on the other two.
- "Magic has to be verified with cold, hard numbers." Agree. Strange, seems the calculator found legs to hide somewhere.
- Quick demonstration of the long tail in swimming bit.ly/2o2Ofim (FINA rankings for men and women). You really can't afford to remain unknown.
- Consistent button labels: "like", "follow", "subscribe"...
- You might be tempted to look for high-conductivity, induction core, copper cookware, until you find that a set of ten units is priced at $1400. Great things tend to have high prices, but great clients know why. Happy and productive new week!
- Construction years of the buildings in Chicago having an area of less than 6000 square feet bit.ly/2J6UFUO (Source: Chicago Data Portal, City of Chicago, "Building footprints (current)", bit.ly/2oOx191 ↗). Not sure whether these are all buildings (391782) or a representative selection. The median area computed to 1354 square feet. One building had an area larger than 6 million square feet (1000x more, can you guess where it is?), but the highest density was at the lower end. You can also see the building conditions by construction year bit.ly/35QL0f3, where the most sound buildings were built in the years 2006 and 1925 (14772 and 12196 respectively). The distant 1889 is particularly problematic due to its association with 114 uninhabitable and another 1100 buildings needing major repair.
- Sunday data jam for your pleasure: "D'Arbo jam nutrients'" bit.ly/2MzRzet. You can expect 929-984kJ energy per 100g product, without being exposed to saturated fats. But notice that 52-56% of the content is sugar.
- The end of the month is another opportunity to look at the monthly sales, revenue and profit graphs to validate operational direction.
- Now and then seeing ideas, which remind me of Salvador Dali's "melted" clocks. This is also how the iceberg of the available time tends to melt.
- Still haven't seen real-time KDE on 2D road transport in a given region. Computationally expensive, but the moving blobs could reveal interesting time-dependent patterns.
- One week left to birthday. Time passes so quickly. Assuming that you no longer have the necessary tiime for that one.
- "Retirement is a need, not a want." Precisely. So I make sure clients cover that too, not only the risks of burnout and eyesight loss.
- SIAM published a nice list of job titles for people with applied math or computer science skills bit.ly/2J3Q1Ht. Feels somewhat incomplete, but stills highlights the enormous potential for growth.
- Floor area of the Royal Parks in London, UK bit.ly/32FiMC9. With its 2500 acres, "Richmond Park" seems to be the largest.
- Mixing rosehips in a blender turned out not to be such a great idea (if you proceeded despite my warnings).
- Ran a small script through the noise data for Eindhoven, The Netherlands (≈197MB data) and here are its findings bit.ly/2P1qfat. You could also visualize the locations if you wish—this has been omitted due to time constraints. Indicated three "Rondwege", which had the highest median noise levels.
- Some insect speeds according to National Geographic bit.ly/2BniLqr. These ants in Sahara may soon have to face competition from Bloodhound. Can these enter nostrils unnoticed?
- Liked the way Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) indicates the overall system status bit.ly/2MqOQ6P. Currently some minor delays on the blue line. Noticed that several transit authorities (also Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority etc.) are offering freely downloadable transit maps, which is great.
- While you are moving in a hall and speaking, a moving robot ahead of you could be filming your YouTube video.
- Toroidal transformers have toroidal core. The simplest toroid core is the torus. Some bakeries have tori (doughnuts) on offer. Doughnuts are edible. It does not follow that transformers are edible.
- Streets, parks and trees in Sioux Falls, South Dakota bit.ly/2J0ySOB. Main streets seem to follow a square pattern, even if they span outside the city boundary. There are over 69000 listed trees (in brown, green was used for parks), where a higher density can be seen in what appears to be the city center.
- You probably remember the book series, where "The fast hand" was representative of the sample. A difference in reaction time between milliseconds and seconds could make the difference between life and death. Think about this the next time you publish another 20 second website.
- Do you use data analysis to identify the (human) nodes where it would be most efficient to apply a limited number of vaccines to prevent the spread of a disease?
- Do you use data analysis to select the best components for your electronic circuits?
- Take a look at the variables in your code. They have some limited lifetime (a good practice being reducing it), beyond which the program knows nothing about them. A variable is essentially a small piece of data. But we insist storing regular data far beyond its original purpose (to help solve a concrete problem), which enables the possibility that it is sold, acquired (ater company acquisition), stolen, used in targeted campaigns or bound with completely unrelated information for knowledge extraction. A less glamourous, but fair alternative is to collect only data the client wants to provide, for a limited time—say 2 weeks or for the duration of the project,—and only act on it within that timeframe. After the time is over or the client confirms that keeping it further is of no use, it can be garbage collected. This way noone else gets to it without their consent.
- Surveillance capitalism deeply affects our collective future (apart from creating market inefficiencies). Clients who feel betrayed no longer consume, and when they are fearful of touching more products, there is no longer a chance that some of them become successful on the market or that new, fast-growth companies appear. Producers will then tend to postpone or cancel their products/investments. A feedback loop.
- Perhaps I didn't fully understand the science behind it, but why would someone integrate compressed JS code in a separate iframe? This science lab page was more than 1.5MB and took ≈20s to load (script-heavy). For having 11 static images with some short descriptions, this isn't exactly lightweight. Unsure what percentage of the scripts never trigger with an inactive user.
- If asking you about your problem encourages you to tell me about your tech stack, your project proposal was rejected.
- If you are a client requiring exclusive service from me and paying well for it, that's fine. If you were looking for additions to compete against your current stack of cheap professionals, that's not me. You are looking for someone else.
- Beauty-ops, gigs, toks and coins promise a "quick and minimally harmful rise in status". If you belong to the believers, of course.
- "productivity = KLOC/person-month". No need to read that book further. But plenty of such "experts" exist.
- If a service like Fiverr (5er) was called 5000er, I might have participated. Until then, no free lunch from me.
- Imagine electricity had "time to recharge".
- Thought of buildings made of arc etages bit.ly/33HH0M5. After becoming aware of the termite and flood risks, paid extra attention to strenghten the bases. With such shapes, it is slightly less clear how to optimize total floor area to building volume, so that stretched hands don't touch the ceiling. Initial idea was to increase curvature bottom-up while keeping each pair of arc points attached to the bottom floor, but that would exceed the allotted time.
- Fibers (in textiles) have high length:thickness ratio. Learned that kapok fiber is considered the lightest natural fiber (from a fruit tree), which is also water-repelling, but not as strong as cotton.
- Size ranges of different microscopy techniques bit.ly/2MPnOF4. If I understand correctly, wide angle X-ray scattering appears to be the most sensitive, while scanning electron microscopy is among the three with the widest range, perhaps a sign of versatility in application. But I could be wrong.
- Chewing at a sword-long baguette while walking down the central street... the sense of decency would yell at me.
- With a $10 pizza and a $10/hour employee cost, the weekly application of the two-pizza rule (in a team of five for half an hour) costs a company $468/person-year. The equivalent of 10 good books, which every employee could have read or a subscription to one or more libraries. And if after subscription someone read 30 books/year and discovered 3 good ideas in each on average, where only 20% of them are practical/implementable, and where they find the time to realize only 25% of the ideas on this short list, that would be 4.5 demos/person-year.
- Days ago wondered whether it was possible to compute the length of a single curve participating in the double helix by using a double integral in connection with the the arc length formula.
- Wrote a small script to look at the pattern in the placement of the supporting boards for a sample roof bit.ly/33BYLw9
- Interesting observations about the Golden Ratio bit.ly/2Bf78Sd ↗
- Interesting architectural idea—to have "people" engraved in pillars, using their heads to support the upper floor.
- Could never serve a non-paying company. Canceled the conversations instead, for a lifetime.
- Out of the 756 bikes at bike-discount.de, only 35 met my criteria to have a price between 800€ and 1000€. The minimal price was 99.83€ (a bike for small girls), the median was 2116.64€ and the most expensive was 9074.62€ ("Aerium C:68 SLT 1X12 LOW carbon´n´red"). These prices do not appear "discount" to me.
- Saw some nice photos in "Goodbye things: The new Japanese minimalism". Especially liked the one with a single tiny mattress and blanket in the center of the room. Most expensive possessions wouldn't make me happier either. Who needs that $3000 ring or the $100000 car? It takes a certain inner strength to be able to let go of everything extra. Everyone is different and will leave different things, while preserving others. But without a balanced view, we could easily go to extremes during this decluttering and find ourselves more miserable later. This excerpt also created an uninvited association in me. First, we've heard that Japanese people are known for their longevity. Second, we see that the culture of minimalism is important to many people there, perhaps more so than elsewhere. Third, we've seen that the more items exist in a closed space, the more likely it is that more of them could emit harmful, invisible gases (remember formaldehyde?). The question then is whether minimalism can reduce pollutants so much as to increase longevity. Perhaps nothing more than a stupid hypothesis.
- When you make fullscreenshots, do you find yourself obligued to clean up the extra you don't need similarly to when you remove textbook fluff or excess code? Being disorganized here could easily cost you hundreds of megabytes or fill up your hard drive to the point your machine refuses to complete elementary operations.
- "Contain the problems before they have the chance to spread" seems like a useful advice, but one that can be misused too. Suppose that an entire course is aware that a lecturer is only wasting their time, not teaching them the skills to succeed in real life. The lecturer might be great at containing the attempts to be criticized in order not to lose their position. From their perspective, the problem doesn't see the chance to spread. However, once these students start entering the industry, it starts spreading like wildfire.
- If you make yourself irreplaceable, you are no longer seen as an employee with a 3-year expiration date. You plan for a busy life of 30 years and know that any short-term, unpaid overcommitment would work against you. Instead of waiting to be replaced, you start replacing yourself every single day. And you charge for the privilege of having others pick your brain whenever that's convenient for them, not you.
- If a small sofa costs $200 (inconvenient, only one seat), a medium one costs $400 (more convenient, 2 seats), a wise seller could offer a big one at $500 (most convenient, 3 seats). And since the last has the best space:price ratio, they will be pushing for more sales at the highest, conveniently rounded price point, potentially achieving higher profitability. Business brain told so last night.
- Which truck (vehicle selection) should pass when (congestion avoidance) through which routes (path optimization) to load which stores (vehicle-stores assignment)?
- Repeating the idea in C = (1-t)*A + t*B many times allows one to realize an inverted tree of mixings, eventually ending in a root.