Market Sentiment

Comedy video explains how the market converts the tens of thousands lent to an unemployed black man in a string vest in Alabama to the more respectable Bear Sterns high grade structured credit enhanced leverage fund.

Principle of Least Surprise

Andrew Koenig has a post on surprises in designs:

[In APL,] a surprising result comes from three applications of the principle of least surprise:

1) It should be possible to have an array with no dimensions, and a zero-dimensional array should be the same thing as a scalar.

2) The size of an array should be a vector with one element for each dimension of the array.

3) When you do arithmetic on a scalar and a vector, the result has the same size as the vector.

Choosing the least surprising behavior in these three contexts causes the surprising behavior that the average of a scalar sum(v)/size(v) is an empty vector.

Life changing tech items -- wishlist

Google RSS, with feeds to technorati, gizmodo, techmeme and a few other early adopter sites. Thumbing through these in your free time will show you all of the upcoming tech trends and why they will change your life.

• GPS
• pandora.com ---> internet radio
• slingbox http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/slingbox.htm/printable
• at&t edge card for nationwide high speed internet access
• A good DSLR camera.
• Satellite radio
• zappos.com ---> shoe store
• cellphone bluetooth headset
• Anti-TP-Delamination spray (two ply)
• http://www.harmankardon.com/drive-1/
• Amco citrus squeezers
• NetVibes as your RSS reader
• ohdontforget.com to send those text msgs instead of using a phone
• https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=en
• Sonos Music System makes MP3s available in any room with speakers
• Roomba
• Speakman shower head, screw off the back and knock out the flow regulator
• upconverting DVD player from 480p (standard) to 720p/1080i (high def)
• flickr.com, to quickly organize and store digital photos

Get TVersity (free software) and and one of PS3 / XBox 360 / any uPnP media player. Rip all your DVDs to hard drive (AutoGK) and you can now flix though them like a video jukebox on your TV. You can also watch internet video feeds, for example Youtube, on your TV.