Congratulations to MSL 9 Aug 2012 | 07:06 pm

Lots of terror 26 Jun 2012 | 10:08 pm

We have a lot of terror at work. Also, the same scriptwriters and actors...

Sometimes the magic box in my hand doesn't work 21 May 2012 | 12:25 pm

Ironically, my iPhone has a tough time getting a GPS connection when I walk around Caltech. At one point, Runkeeper let me know I had just walked a 3-minute mile. My plotted route shows all sorts of f...

Testing out Conquirere 0.1 27 Jan 2012 | 08:13 pm

From Planet KDE, I saw a new KDE application mentioned, called Conquiere. Conquirere allows you to add bibliographic data such as journals, books, proceedings papers, articles and many more to Nepomu...

Credit Card Rewards for 2011 22 Jan 2012 | 05:04 pm

Like I did last January, I just finished tallying all of our credit card rewards for the previous year. I do that mainly out of academic curiosity, but also to have evidence to justify our approach to...

Thank You, American Express 24 Dec 2011 | 03:38 pm

American Express just ran a promotion called The Gift Chain. I saw it referenced on several of the financial blogs that I read. Most of them noted that American Express was giving statement credits an...

Credit Card Benefits 10 Oct 2011 | 03:04 pm

For all the bad raps that credit card get, I think it's worth noting when they really provide extra benefits. I've had two such incidents within the past year. First, I bought my wife a charm last ye...

SQL or RDF? Thoughts on Tellico's Next Backend 10 Aug 2011 | 04:37 pm

One of the main goals of Tellico's development has been to be a simple application. I wanted to be able to keep track of my books without having to configure an SQL database, or create a schema, or wo...

MSL Mission Animation 4 Jun 2011 | 04:10 pm

The Mars Science Laboratory will launch late this year, sometime around the end of November, or early December. It's the largest rover that JPL has ever sent to Mars, and also the most expensive. Just...

Photo Collection From Endeavour STS-134 4 Jun 2011 | 04:04 pm

The Atlantic's In Focus page has a photo collection from Endeavour's last flight, STS-134. The photos are amazing. I particularly love the ones of the Shuttle in space, with the long-exposure of the e...