The "MIT Red Ballon Challenge" won a contest sponsored by DARPA to spot 10 red balloons placed somewhere in the continental United States. The MIT group spotted all 10 balloons within just a few hours of the balloons being launched. Other teams submitted within a few minutes of the MIT …

I wish all statistical tests could be reduced to something this easy to follow and understand: Easy statistics for AdWords A/B testing, and hamsters.

Went to Kua Bay yesterday. Beautiful azure surf and amazing 100'+ visibility. As soon as I got in the water, I saw 3 teenage ulua (jacks). Found an octopus in around 20' of water, broke an urchin and fed it to him. Went out to 50' and did some easy …

I got up this morning at 4AM to look at Mars, whose apparent size is growing and will peak in January. There are 60 arc-minutes in a degree and 60 arc-seconds in an arc-minute. Mars right now is about 10 arc-seconds in diameter. Even at 200x with my highest-quality eyepiece …

The sun sets today at 5:45PM, a minute later than it's been setting since November 16. While sunrise continues to come later until the solstice, I always think of today as when the day "starts getting longer."

Just yesterday I was wondering whether the animation was static or procedurally generated. Since the article says it's "105 frames" I guess it's static.

How one man designed the Windows 7 boot animation.

Darryl Taft interviews Luca Bolognese, Group Program Manager for languages at MS, and comes up with some interesting hints.

The lede revolves around MS' plans to make the compilers more "open" (as in an open can of beer) by providing a "compiler-as-a-service" facility. On face value, "compiler-as-a-service" doesn't make much …