Tuesday, May 12, 2015

10 Thoughts for May 19, 2015

  1. Yes, Gunnars really work. There are times when my eyes will be extremely irritated, with difficulty looking at bright lights. When I put on the Gunnars, the light becomes less intense as my eyes immediately feel the difference; over the course of an hour, my eyes return to normal and I can take the glasses off. The only problem: The yellowish tint makes color-critical work impossible.
  2. Read this cover letter, from former USC linebacker Hayes Pullard. He was among four draft-eligible players who were asked, and agreed, to write cover letters to NFL teams. I find his letter to be the best of the four, and that's not just because I graduated from USC.
  3. I replaced my battery on my phone. It was a moderately simple or moderately complex task, depending on your confidence. You do need to pay attention to the tools and methods employed in the YouTube videos demonstrating the process. Now, my phone seems to last significantly longer, and I haven't had any odd shutdowns. :D  For the time being, I'm avoiding wireless charging, as I suspect that the excessive heat may have severely degraded my battery.
  4. So, scientists have discovered that the ebola virus can survive for a long time, outside of a host. In hospital conditions, it survived for 11 days on Tyvek (the stuff they make those bunny suits out of). Hmm...I recall mentioning something similar several months ago. By the way, I find it a bit amusing and distressing, that these scientists apparently don't know whether temperature plays a role. In that same study I had previously cited, it was shown that colder temperatures increased the survivability of ebola. Oh well.
  5. Did you know that you don't need a smart watch to use Google Fit? All you do is install the app on your Android phone, and carry your phone with you. Once you've entered your information in the Google Fit website, it'll track how many calories you've burned...or you can keep it relatively anonymous and have it simply track your mileage. I have a goal of 2 hours of walking / biking every day, but today will be the first time I'll have met this goal, in the three weeks since I started using Google Fit.
  6. I watched the season ending episode for Castle. While ABC has officially renewed the show for an 8th season, I have to say that if they hadn't renewed, the season finale could have easily worked as a series finale. It had enough ambiguity as to the future of Rick and Kate as to allow viewers to draw their own conclusions, yet giving enough bread crumbs to realize that their future was bright.
  7. If you search for "inu", Google returns images of Shibas. I'm sure that they must know that inu is the Japanese word for dog, but Americans must be expecting Shibas. You see, if you search Google for "犬" which is pronounced "inu", you get a mix of dogs with some Shibas. The west is apparently confused about what Shiba Inu means, because many people will reference them as "Shiba Inu dogs", which is like saying "Shetland Sheepdog dogs". Just a tiny, amusing quirk.
  8. You know what's interesting about the biker gang brawl in Waco, TX? The tone of fear in the media and the police, of the white biker gang violence. When it comes to Latino and African-American gangs, the tone is entirely different, focused on the anger against the culture that created these gangs. Go ahead and listen to how the news and the police react.
  9. Apparently many Americans are dumb enough to address @POTUS on Twitter with threats of violence and use of vulgarity, not realizing that this stuff is both monitored and automatically archived. Threats of violence is not protected speech.
  10. Google Music has joined the Material Design club. My only complaint is that they leave a lot of white space if you stretch it out full screen on a desktop monitor. It looks fine on a 12" tablet, but overly capacious on the 24" screen. Scalable design, it appears, has limits to its scalability and visual aesthetic.
Now, off to the drawing board.

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