What if Google ruled the World?

I have ranted before about how wonderfully Google keeps track of my mail, contacts, to-do lists, blogs, calendars, etc.  I have even wished that Google might extend its magic to the parts of my life that are less well taken care of: GCarRepairs perhaps? GPhD? GHangover?

Spanish artist Alejo Malia has taken the liberty of imagining a world where Google's presence has moved from cyber to physical, dominating our streets, and even visible to astronauts in space.

Whether these images are meant to celebrate Google's awesomely-efficient organisational tools for our everyday lives, or creepily ever-growing presence in every aspect of our existence, I'm a fan.

Decision 2011: I'm getting an iPad (2)

I have obsessed over portable cloud-ready devices that I can keep in my purse for long enough.  It is time for me to make a purchase.  And the decision is... (click play below for the drum-roll)

iPad 2!

You may be surprised to hear this (unless you read the title of this post).  I have never been a Mac junkie.  I pledged my loyalty to Microsoft long ago.  And in fact, my first impulse was to get a netbook.  But there were a couple of things holding me back from committing to the netbook.

First, the nipple.  I've said it before, but I hate touchpads.  I love trackpoints.  When I asked the guy at Best Buy if there were any netbooks with these eraser-head pointing devices he said "those things that were on the old ThinkPads?  They haven't made those for years."  First of all, he is clearly dead wrong.  Several big laptop companies still include nipples on all their normal-sized laptops (Lenovo and Dell, for example).  Second of all, the nipple is clearly the superior pointing device, as it allows manipulation of the cursor without having to lift one's fingers from the keyboard.  So that guy can go jump in a lake.

But I digress.  The point is only one netbook includes a nipple, and it is the Sony Vaio P.  The Vaio P, simply by virtue of being made by Sony, is prohibitively expensive (~$1000), especially among netbooks, which typically range from about 200-400 bucks.  Sony claims it is not a netbook, just a small laptop, but give me a break.  It's a netbook.

Sony Vaio P display at Grand Central Station

As for weight, most netbooks really aren't that light.  The smallest netbook is (sigh) the Sony Vaio P.  And guess why they can cut out so much weight?  Because by adding a nipple and getting rid of the touchpad, they could cut off all that extra stuff below the keyboard!  It all comes back to the nipple.

Before you go thinking that the Sony Vaio P would be perfect and I should just save up for one or get financing or something, the P is not perfect.  Its tiny keyboard is apparently difficult to type on, and it's tiny screen is difficult to read on. Since one of my major impetuses for purchasing something is for reading PDFs and traveling, this is a big deal.  Not to mention the fact that nipples have been linked to major finger joint problems (I've probably already done too much damage to reverse).

To be honest, my 3 year old ThinkPad is about as small and light as a laptop gets, so getting a netbook really  just seems redundant.  I would just be getting a crappier computer than I already have to shave off a little weight.  I want to shave off weight while expanding my computing capabilities, rather than replicating them.  I want something that can do things my ThinkPad can't.  Like be at my disposal on the bus instantly.  Or last 10 hours without having to be plugged in.  Or turn into a piano.  All while still letting me surf the web, read PDFs and books, Skype, blog, and take notes in class.

Let's go over a few of the iPad's downsides and why they aren't downsides at all:

No physical keyboard?  No problem! I took one out from the library last week, and it turns out I can touch type on it like a maniac! I'm not saying I'm going to write my whole dissertation on it, but if I want to bang out a chapter or two on a flight to Maryland, no biggie (yes, I can write 60 pages in 6 hours shush).

No file system?  No problem!  If you think that I'm a fan of saving data locally, you clearly have never read this blog, or talked with me for like fifteen minutes.  Pages (Apple's touch word processing program) integrates with Dropbox, as do several other common apps.  Having no files system will only accelerate my move to the cloud.

No Flash?  No problem!  I have already figured out how to play Flash on my iPod touch using something called  iOS Flash Video.  There are also several iOS web browsers out there that can play Flash, and that also allow downloads and tabbed browsing, unlike Safari.

As for the lack of USB ports, I have no excuse for Apple here.  Now what am I going to do with all my awesome food themes USB sticks???  What the heck is wrong with you Jobs????  You popularized it, now use it!!!!!

It's okay iPad, I forgive you.  Did I mention it comes in white?

Community Garden: Destroying the Junkie Den

We've been talking with our landlord for some time about the possibility of taming our backyard, and things are finally coming together.  The man who manages the property just to the west has experience in agroecology and the likes, and we have agreed to make a community garden shared between the two properties, in an old dog kennel that was previously occupied by a tangled nest of cyclone fencing and ivy that served as a den for a group of junkies.  Today marked Stage 1 of the project: clearing out the kennel and hauling out foliage.

The old dog kennel, about 3/4 of the way through clearing out the nest.

One of our first tasks was to figure out where the property line is between us and the Valero next door.

A lovely view to our Valero neighbors.

My landlord downloaded a metal-detecting app on his Droid and amused us all by trying to find the survey stake by running his phone over the ground for several minutes before giving up. A real metal detector managed to pick up about ten screws of various sizes, but no survey stake yet. No treasures either (sigh).

Yup, there's an app for that!  No guarantee it works though.

 Today we focused effort on getting rid of the nesting materials, clearing out nail studded boards and salvaging coiled lengths of chicken wire from invasive foliage.  Luckily the man who owns the property next door cleared out the syringes several months ago, so we a had slightly less disgusting mess to contend with.

Look at this mess.

Our friend from Astrocamp days yanking old-growth redwood boards off of the dog-kennel foundation.

This morning when we ripped out an old tree, it revealed a lovely view to the Valero bathroom, so we've been brainstorming ways to get our privacy back in a nice way.  We're thinking of putting up the old chicken wire and then growing Asian Jasmine up it.  Aromatic, drought-resistant and fast-growing: sounds perfect.

View to the Valero bathroom.

The destruction of the tree also devastated a volunteer Calla Lily, so the flowers ended up in our living room in an old pickle jar.

So pretty!  They grow like weeds around here.

Meanwhile my little garden is loving the weeks of heavy rain followed by long stretches of sunshine.

My excitement for saving the seeds from my food will hopefully pay off now that we have a vegetable garden, as they never seem very happy in these tiny little pots.  This came from a butternut squash we had for dinner.

The orchid our ex-neighbor gave us is about to bloom!

The euphorbia is super-pumped about the sunny weather.  I love gopher-proof plants!

So goes Stage 1 of the community garden project.  We're hoping to get seeds in the ground in the next few weeks, so we can start harvesting in late Spring.  Fresh vegetables! Every day!  I can't wait.

Things to do with your books now that you have a Kindle

I don't have an e-reader, but I assume you, my sophisticated, cloud-ready reader, probably do.  So what do you do with all those piles of books sitting around?  You can hoard them, as I do, ignoring your boyfriend's pleas to downsize.  Or you can get creative, like these folks:

Juniper Books Christmas tree from Museum Muse.

Headboard from Instructables, featured on Ohdeedoh.

Desk from Delft University of Technology, featured on PhDAZZLE.

Reader's table from This Into That.

Book page vases from Country Living

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Beautiful photographs of observatories

Astronomers build their observatories in the most remote places in the world, often high above the heat and lights of civilization, where the air is still and clear. Consequently, a tour of world observatories would bring you to some of the most beautiful vistas on Earth, from glittering European mountain peaks, to tropical paradises. Here are some of my favorite scavenged photos of observatory domes from around the world.

My hometown observatory, Griffith, looking down over the sprawl of Los Angeles.

Sphinx Observatory perched high in the Alps.

The dome of the 36-inch at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton in California, framed by what look like Mariposa lilies.  Taken by Laurie Hatch.

Another photograph of Lick, the 120 inch dome, by the talented Laurie Hatch.

Mauna Kea (White Mountain) Observatory, Hawaii, HI.  Those are the two Kecks in the center, and I think the one on the left is Gemini.

Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork, Ireland.  See the dome peeking up out of that castle tower?

El Caracol, also known as "The Observatory," at Chichen Itza, Mexico.  Thought to have been used by the Mayans to observe the cosmos.

Support the Miracles of Modern Science (MOMS)!!!!!!

Click here to support an amazing band that I just randomly discovered on the internet. They're called the Miracles of Modern Science.  Okay fine, I'll admit it, the members started out playing at my eating club at college, and I know them, and I am particularly fond of the violinist.  But they make seriously awesome music (rock with no guitars!) and they need support to produce their first real album.  The website this is through, Kickstarter, is a brilliant idea.  You can pledge money through Amazon (any dollar amount), but your credit card doesn't get charged unless the project gets fully funded.  And you get rewarded for pledging different amounts.  I would be happy to pay 25 bucks for a kick-ass CD (which is the reward for a $25 pledge).  So anyhow, go to Kickstarter now and pledge a few bucks for the MOMS. WNYC called their music "Exuberant chamber pop that waxes and wanes with elaborate, rocky energy.” How can you say no to that???

Real Sexy Scientists Prefer Socks: A Belated Halloween Post

I did another Google image search, this time for "scientist" themed Halloween costumes.  Unsurprisingly, the majority of masqueraders were "mad," and male. The first page of results revealed only three females dressed as scientists:




Surprised by the amount of leg they're showing around toxic chemicals?  I doubt it.  Needless to say, the male majority of the results were not as sexy:


Although some were pretty adorable:


There are a variety of costumes that represent real professions: firefighters, cops, soldiers...  Granted, women have managed to make all of these costumes "sexy."  God forbid a woman dress up for Halloween and not be wearing thigh high boots:

Can you really fight fires in that?  Whatever.  I get it.  It's a day where you're allowed to dress provocatively without being unfairly labeled. In college, I was a "sexy train" one year.

I defy you to find a sexier train.  But let's talk about the non-sexy costumes. Why aren't any of them accompanied by a stereotypical psychological state, like "mad?"  Nobody dresses up as a "sad cop," or an "impatient soldier."  In fact, most of the fake men-in-uniform seem to be perfectly normal human beings:

Just once, I would like to see someone dressed as a perfectly rational scientist, his or her hand on the shoulder of another perfectly rational scientist, as they work together in the collaborative human effort we call "science."  Also just once, I would like to see a fake scientist who can be sexy without having to wear garters into the imaginary lab, because real sexy scientists tend to prefer socks.

Just for reminiscing's sake, and to prove that I didn't always just sit around and complain about stereotypes all day, here is the full group of "sexy women in uniform" from 2006:

Seemingly boring life forms doing amazing things

Wasp-killing fig trees: I already knew wasps were awesome, because they're social insects, duh.  But vengeful fig trees?  I never imagined the awesomeness.

Mating slugs: One of the grossest things in the world racks up some cool points with a surprisingly graceful XXX display.  Go banana slugs!

Mind controlling fungus: I've been fascinated by this phenomenon ever since my first visit to Los Angeles's Museum of Jurassic Technology, where they have a victimized ant on display.  Maybe if I introduce some of this into our apartment I could train it to lead the ants away from the kitchen?

A little something from each of my three favorite kingdoms.  What other seemingly boring life forms are secretly super awesome?

See-through fish! You can see its eyes and nose inside of its head!

Cloud update: WHEN IS THE SPEEDBOOK COMING????

I have not ranted about the cloud in a while.  That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it a lot. In fact, I've been checking the Google Chrome project blog at least once a week looking for updates about the arrival of Google branded netbooks with Chrome OS installed.  They promised Fall 2010!!!  October is here, and still no word.

I have a feeling they felt like they needed to step up their game after the arrival of the iPad, and are scrambling to be as awesome as Apple, but the iPad does not meet my needs.  I want a small netbook, something that fits in a purse rather than a backpack, but I need a keyboard and stand up screen on the go.  I do a lot of word processing, which is just about the only thing that iPad sucks at.  Oh, that and running multiple programs at a time.  Oh, and running FLASH.  COME ON.

Rumors are that Google quietly copyrighted the name "Speedbook" recently, which implies that they are working on their own hardware for the Chrome OS platform.  The phone they made for Android was kind of a bust, but I think this might be an emptier corner of the market.  I am already salivating.  Who knows if I'll be able to afford a Speedbook (although Google has promised cheapness), but it's always nice to have something to aspire to.  Mostly I'm tired of lugging around backpacks.  Backpacks are difficult to make look good, as discussed eloquently by Glitter-and-Spandex at PhDazzle, a blog about PhD fashion and living.  How awesome would it be to have a super-speedy cloud-based computer in your purse?  Not only is it small and convenient, but you don't have to worry about damage (except the expense), because everything is in the cloud!  No setup, no cluttered desktop, no additional anti-virus software necessary, or expensive Microsoft suites.

Of course, speaking of expensive MS software suites, I still haven't found a replacement for OneNote.  Google notes just doesn't do it for me, nor does Evernote.  I like the tab layout of OneNote, and all the customization options.  OneNote is the one thing holding me back from jumping head first into the Cloud revolution (oh yes, I said revolution).

I did find a nice PowerPoint replacement however.  I also found several online LaTeX editors!  My favorites were ScribTeX and MonkeyTex.  The problem with these is that I like to use several files to keep large projects organized, with one main tex file that calls each chapter individually, and neither of these cloud programs were able to do that for me.  Maybe I was doing something wrong?

I experimented with Cloud desktops, but it doesn't really fit into the way I do things.  They are all trying to too hard to look like a traditional Windows or OS GUI, and I don't think that's necessary.  My computer desktop is completely empty, in fact, except for the Recycling Bin, a result of my hatred of clutter and the awesomeness of the Windows 7 search function.  And as I've mentioned before, although I use Google docs more often because of the convenient integration with Gmail, Adobe Buzzword is a great online Word replacement.  If I didn't have Word on my computer, I would use Buzzword over getting Open Office, as I like the GUI better.

Google, I'm getting impatient here.  Tell me more about this Speedbook thing, first of all.  And then, improve Google Notes so that I can have a cloud OneNote without buying Office 2010!  Which completely undermines the point of cloud computing by requiring the purchase of a huge offline software suite.  Oh, and it would be awesome if you could make it compatible with old OneNote files, just like Google docs is compatible with MS Word files.  Thanks!

A new name for this blog?

It turns out that ZBlog is not a unique name, nor do I think it expresses what this blog is about.  Of course, I haven't even really decided what this blog is about...science mostly, with a sprinkle of education, society, epistemology, and my own opinions.  A while ago, I decided I needed to think of a better name for the blog, but I'm just plain stumped.

This blog, by Chris Garrett, has suggestions for coming up with a good blog name.  He has actually posted on it several times.  One thing to avoid, he says, is using "blog" in the title.  Well, my current title not only has the word "blog," it only adds one extra letter!  His tips are as follows:

A good name is

1. Readable
2. Pronounceable
3. Spellable
4. Memorable
5. Concise
6. Unique

This all sounds good to me, but a bit vague and obvious. What I really need is a burst of creativity.  Any suggestions? I need help here.

She Blinded Me with Science

I used to love this song, but the video makes me rethink its message. In the end "Mr. Dolby rejects Science and things Scientific." Note the use of capitals, implying that Science itself is some kind whole and separate entity. And not just any entity, but a villain! Mr. Dolby, the science of sexuality is truly incredible. Do not throw the doctor into the river just because you struggle to understand! He doesn't deserve it! I think that if you two sang together about science a little more, you might find it a little less blinding and a little more, ummm, sexy.

On another note, the women in this video all fit the "sexy scientist" stereotype, while the men are all somewhat "mad." Surprised?

A closet workspace for the doctoral student?

I have been thinking a lot about workspaces recently, with the imminent arrival of my boyfriend and his computer in my studio.  For while, I was considering investing in a cloffice.  In other words, I was thinking about putting my desk inside my closet.  Just in case you were wondering, cloffice is not a word I made up.  There are entire sections of design blogs dedicated to the cloffice.  The New Yorker even wrote about one.  Here is a great one, from Apartment Therapy.

Check out this cloffice, from two fellow graduate students with a blog about making their lives a little more glam while pursuing a PhD.  The girls at PhDAZZLE make cloffices sound hip, but I think I'll stick with what I've got for now.

Click here to check out PhDAZZLE.