Portable Emergency Food
I carry a backpack with me most places, and in it I keep a few things I always want to have with me. One of the more important things is a few food-bars. When people are hungry they don't think well...
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Free Raisins CD: Live Summer 2012
The Free Raisins now have a CD: Live Summer 2012. We recorded it live, and edited dance-length sets down to be a better fit for a CD. We're also having a CD-release dance, Sunday February 24th at the...
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Express Escalator
Consider a case where you have long escalators, with at least one spare. This example, Porter Square in Cambridge MA, has three escalators in parallel: While in general we probably run escalators at a...
View ArticleDeciding to Organize
One sophomore fall afternoon I was walking with a group of friends to the dining hall. I asked why we didn't have more contra dances on campus and someone said "that would just be more work for the...
View ArticleIs driving really safer than flying?
In the discussion on yesterday's post on transportation safety we started looking at this claim that "general aviation" (small planes) is much less safe than airlines and that even airlines are a bit...
View ArticleWhere to put things in a kitchen
If I'm in someone else's kitchen and need a fork I open the drawer that looks like it should be the silverware drawer. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I look through a few more. The occupants of the a...
View ArticleAnnealing
Flexible and pliable in youth, rigid and set in age. When an organization is founded it usually has a purpose and little else. The founders have some ideas about how to run it, but try many things....
View ArticleUnlinking Stereo Channels
I have a bunch of stereo channels represented as (volume, pan) and want to convert back and forth between this representation and (volume_left, volume_right). All values are between 0 and 1. I want to...
View ArticleBisexuality
We treat sexual orientation as categorical in a way that we don't treat other mate preferences. If Pat is most strongly attracted to mid-30s atheist Greek-American men who are witty and good swing...
View ArticleTransportation: Safety in Numbers
Safety is a social dynamic. When something sufficiently bad happens people get upset and try to prevent it happening again. Every mode of transportation can be run in many ways, primarily trading off...
View ArticleVSL1818 Web Remote
The AudioBox VSL1818 mixer officially only supports an ipad as a remote control, but now you can use anything with a web browser. Demo video: The code is on github. The VSL1818 audio interface...
View Articlengx_pagespeed coming along
ngx_pagespeed, my port of mod_pagespeed to Nginx that I've been working on for a couple months, is getting to where someone adventurous could start using it. It's now on for jefftk.com [1] and I...
View ArticleVSL Remote Protocol: Step 1
I've been working on reverse engineering the protocol for the vsl1818 remote so I can build an android/web client. Here's what I've learned so far. When you turn on the remote it starts broadcasting...
View ArticleMore Cryonics Probability Estimates
My main issue with cryonics, freezing brains for future revival, is that I don't think it's likely to work. There are a lot of steps that all need to go correctly if you're going to be revived. People...
View ArticleRCT of ads for BIDA
It's really hard to know what works with advertising for contra dances. We put out ads via many channels (plus there's lots of people talking to each other and bringing friends) and then some number...
View ArticleOpting Out Of Debt
A quaker friend invited me to a strike debt event: This event is for everyone with debt, who hates debt, who understands enslavement by debt and wants to end it. To prepare for this meeting,...
View ArticleAudiobox vsl1818 Remote Control
My new mixer supports remote control. There's an ipad app that lets you make any adjustment you'd like from anywhere in the room. You do need wifi, but you're already using the vsl1818 with a laptop...
View ArticleMedical Specialization
While most doctors go to medical school and get an MD [1] before specializing on some aspect of medicine, in some subfields people commonly specialize earlier and have an alternate school. Dentists...
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