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Updates from James RSS

  • James 1:44 am on November 19, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:

    Testing out the new layout.

     
    • prologue 10:44 pm on November 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Ah~ It looks so much nicer… ^-^
      Good work~

      • James 11:06 pm on November 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks! We’re working on making the menus work more naturally, because I think it’s a downside of the new layout.

  • James 12:20 am on November 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Broad Institute, Hilbert, ,

    Just took a look at http://blog.notdot.net/2009/11/Damn-Cool-Algorithms-Spatial-indexing-with-Quadtrees-and-Hilbert-Curves . Their discussion of Hilbert gives a nice taste for why someone might care about Hilbert curves.

    It reminded me of a recent paper published by Eric Lander and colleagues regarding the folding of the human genome. Long story short, it is a real-life Hilbert curve. The upside to this is that Hilbert curves untangle very easily, allowing for relatively easy access to deeply buried regions. ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5950/289 ) Perhaps most importantly,it made for an attractive cover on Science Magazine.

     
  • James 11:47 am on November 8, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: click, clicking, computer, defective, Dell, hard drive, harddrive, Seagate

    Being in desperate need of a new laptop, I was lucky to get some funding to purchase a new Dell Studio 15 with an i7 720, 8GB RAM, and a 500GB Seagate HD. So far, the system has run like a dream, and I plan to post speed tests and some informal battery life tests for those of you wondering about Intel’s new i7. First, though, I need to figure out if my hard drive is faulty.

    The feature of the hard drive that gives me pause is a soft clicking that comes from it approximately once every second (though not always). The click is not associated with the normal, hushed ‘grind’ of disk i/o. By not associated, I mean that it occurs both during and not during disk i/o. The click does stop on occasion, but I have not been able to identify what causes it to stop, or to start again. The clicking is kind of annoying, but it would be tolerable if I were sure that it didn’t portend hard drive failure in the near future.

    I then ran two tools to try to ensure that the drive was intact. I ran smartctl and discovered that the disk had a very high seek_error_rate (1,353,126), but I have read (in the Google pdf about their experience with hard drive failures) that a certain manufacturer, presumably Seagate, always racks up a high count certain errors such as this, and they are not diagnostic. Importantly, reallocated_sector_ct is zero. Next, I ran SeaTools and performed both a short drive self test (DST) and a long DST. Both of these showed no errors.

    Finally, I recorded a video with my my iPhone seated on the front left portion of my laptop, where the hard drive is located and where the sounds emanate from. Does anyone have experience with the kind of clicking that can be heard in this video?

    dell-1557-seagate-500gb-clicking

     
    • jshi10 3:41 pm on November 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      I have. However, the laptop I had was far from new. Furthermore, after using it for a year (and after a year of being unable to detect the source), I simply bought a new laptop. If you have some warranty, I would suggest getting a replacement. You don’t want to end up with a crashed drive or a faulty laptop

      • James 3:55 pm on November 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks for the suggestion. I got in touch with Dell and they’re shipping me a new HD.

        • Klaften Zhaange 10:20 pm on November 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply

          Well, seeing that this issue may have been resolved… congrats on the new laptop. :P

          • James 6:12 am on November 9, 2009 Permalink | Reply

            Thanks :-) The old one was figuratively killing my ability to work on this site!

            (Note that I said figuratively there on purpose, to combat the annoying trend of saying “literally” when in no uncertain way is said thing not at all literal.)

    • James 7:18 am on November 9, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      I will offer up one quick gripe: the touchpad keys are extremely small, and the touchpad extends all the way to the keys. Now that Dell has gestures, this means that if my thumb glances the edge of the keypad while clicking a button, a gesture happens.

  • James 9:51 am on October 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: New York Times, nyt, typo

    NYT Typos:

    The acquisitions, the result of billions of dollars spent by large companies snapping up smaller ones, has created a new Internet core of “hyper giants,” a coin termed by the report.

    For the rest of us, there are terms to coin. For the NYT, there are coins to term.

    http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/10/13/13readwriteweb-google-accounts-for-6-of-all-internet-traff-90323.html

     
  • James 10:59 am on September 25, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: AT&T, , MMS

    MMS over iPhone is now enabled! To get it working, do the following:
    1) Attach your iPhone to your computer.
    2) Open iTunes, navigate to your iPhone, and check for Updates.
    3) Install the (tiny) update.
    4) After your phone finishes syncing, turn it off then turn it back on.

    Now go to your photo roll, click an image, and go to the menu in the bottom lefthand corner that you’d use to send the photo via email. You’ll see a new option - MMS. Click that, and choose a friend to send the photo to.

     
    • James 6:58 pm on September 28, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Of course, 3.1 still disables tethering so I’m still not happy with Apple/AT&T at the moment.

  • James 8:43 am on September 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: hacked, hijack, malware

    Just got forwarded to protection-check07.com while I was reading an article on the New York Times. I thought it might be a malware issue, but it appears that it’s actually coming *from* ads on the NYT site: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1481195

     
  • James 4:25 pm on September 12, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:

    Do college counselors matter? Does Duke really reject more than half of all valedictorians who apply? To address those questions, here is a thoughtful book excerpt published by NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112020715

     
  • James 12:01 am on July 9, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: cell, google, google voice, phone, sms, text message, voice

    Just got Google Voice. The service actually rocks. They start by giving you a new phone number from the ~1 million that they bought in May 2009. No, there are no 212 numbers available, but there are still some catchy phrases left (URO-LOGY, anyone?).

    The service will transcribe your voicemail and then organize voicemail transcripts and text messages. You can also send text messages and make calls from your new phone number via the website.

    I’m not sure that I’m willing to ask all of my contacts to update my phone number in their phones, but if you’re just getting started in college, now is a good time to pick up a Google Voice account.

     
  • James 5:25 pm on July 3, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , rankings

    On the Boltbus, working on a college rankings system.

     
  • James 4:39 pm on July 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:

    Happy 4th of July!