Just posted a new article on my History of Computing site: Biorhythmic calculators. I have three of these wondrous devices, mechanical servants to a debunked theory. They use three different design approaches to achieve the same goal, and their mechanisms are therefore composed of the same functional components implemented in completely different ways. Go take … Read more
I’ve blogged before about headup, Semantinet’s semantic search add-on for Firefox. Well, the creative folks at Semantinet are forever doing new things (one reason I like working there, despite the traffic jams between Jerusalem and Herzliya :-), and the latest is the headup publisher’s widget. This tool uses the same semantic search technology in a … Read more
Tonight I had a dream where I was going through some boring paperwork at some public office and the guy behind me in line asked me if I knew what Twitter is all about. Ever helpful, I took out my Nokia smartphone and showed him how I tweet. I don’t remember what I posted, and … Read more
Yes – after a long time saying I draw my line at “real” blogging, I’ve taken the plunge and set up on Twitter. And guess what? It looks like it’s gonna be a good move in many ways. The “what can you possibly say in 140 characters” objection I’ve already taken care of when I … Read more
We live in an age of throw away technology, and for me, the silver lining of this has always been to take old products apart before trashing them. It’s fun, and it’s instructive to see how computers, home electronics, even the occasional appliance are built inside. And of course, you may bring to light gems … Read more
New on my Possibly Interesting site: a weird superhero comic spoof that I drew when I was studying Mathematics in College. It follows closely the style of 60’s Superman comics, but it takes place entirely in the domain of geometrical figures (and no, at that time I hadn’t yet read Abbott’s Flatland). Lost for years, … Read more
I was checking some French using Google translator, and discovered that – contrary to my French teacher’s insistence back in high school – “La langue Francaise” means “English language”! Of course one doesn’t expect perfection from machine translation, but this was different than the usual silly mistakes: a translation program ought to know the meaning … Read more
Last year I posted about FameLab, the science communication competition organized by the British Council in the Jerusalem Science Museum. Well, here it comes again, and today I’m a judge again. Like before, we get treated to a group of fine young students presenting diverse scientific subjects in only 3 (yes, three!) minutes each. Fascinating! … Read more
Yesterday I was at a meet of the Israel Innovation Forum hosted at IBM, and over coffee I notice this guy whose name tag reads David Shay Wikipedia At first I thought he must be one of the few people who actually work at Wikipedia as employees; but he assured me there are only 15 … Read more
My loyal readers know that in addition to this blog I maintain Nathan’s Possibly Interesting Web Site, where I share my history of computing collection, software, and various articles. I built it some years ago as a personal web site, and am happy to have it as just that. However, now that I am starting … Read more
