Anyone seen my old site?? Gone missing

An online "life", who has the time to do enough meaningful things to make for a relatively authentic online life? I am trying to consolidate all my outdated, unused and uninteresting online presences...this being one of them

Latest topic interest

Given the status of things at work (aka hectic), and the fact that I am only slightly behind in EDUC 629, I feel the need to dig into yet another topic. Today, I am focused on yet another geeky topic in the evolutionary computation domain. Bioinspired algorithms are pretty cool and interesting and in fact, caused me to finally understand the true meaning of the word "ethology". Embarrassed to admit, I never really did get what that meant.

SO, I am now drilling into the topic of "kin selection" which has so many humorous sidebars that I am struggling to not start out making cracks about it...

Researching Research

While listening to the Notre Dame vs Michigan football game, it occurred to me...how does an independent person do good quality academic research? How do you get funding and how can you get collaborators who will help you debate your concepts. I guess 75 to 100 years ago, individual's with a keen interest in an area could really (with some effort) do research and publish that research.

Surfing the massive volume that is NSF.gov, also confirms my thinking that it is pretty much impossible for a private, unaffiliated person to get funding for research. Meaning that it is pretty likely that the nature of research is driven by what institutions want to achieve (given in its their staff)...

I think that would make a great paper...the Evolution of Research from Individual to Institutional, I wonder if I would be able to get it published though?

Testing your reQall

A few colleagues and I were working on a paper on user-centered design and I found that one of the gurus of UCD or HCI for that matter, Donald Norman, was involved with this new startup called reQall.com. It appears that reQall (that is how they spell the name, not my bad typing) allows a person to record their todos and reminders through their iPhone and it will keep you on track with reminders via different communication channels. Kind of the "virtual nag", somehow that appeals to me although I am sure it has the propensity to become incredibly annoying. So, I signed up and I will download the iPhone app (probably will cost me some of my precious iTunes Christmas money, but its all in the name of science).

Only time and utility will tell...oops as I am writing this Entourage tells me there is a reminder for the following tasks...

Okay, so perhaps it is already annoying...

Efficiency in evolution?

As a fan of the subtle, yet incredibly powerful workings of the evolutionary process, I was interest to read the latest on the dog v. cat evolution in terms of who is the better hunter and how they evolved to be.  Cats are apparently better hunters but less efficient at it is the upshot, humans even better a running after prey (okay, who does this?  unless of course you are talking about some long lost tribe in the Amazon or Saturday night at the singles bar...)  Nonetheless, you can find the interesting info on this at MSNBC of all places.

I think its pretty ironic that humans are most efficient for running after prey but most likely to sit in front of the big screen TV with a bag of Doritos in their hand.  Puts a whole new meaning on the seven deadly wastes (or should that be waster?)

I am considering that this research indicates that evolution and therefore problem solving techniques such as the evolutionary process, support the notion of "useful inefficiency" as the winning condition.  Perhaps stealth and its effectiveness easily makes up for the inefficiency of the cats hunting biomechanics.  Pretty much another example of systems engineering where if you look at the behavior of one of the components of the system, you could draw an incorrect conclusion unless you look at the total system in operation.

Post Falls, from the restaurant

Post Falls, Idaho