Left or Right Brain Video

They say that if you see the dancer in this video spinning clockwise, you're right-brained. Counter-clockwise, left-brained. Supposedly, more people will see counter-clockwise.

Which way (clockwise or counter-clockwise) do you see the dancer spinning?
I assure you, you can see her spinning the other way just by questioning your perception.



I saw clockwise, at first and was very frustrated that I couldn't see the other rotation.
If you get to this point, look in the "comments" section of this post for a couple of hints.

3 Things to remember about human nature

1. People are not malicious by default
2. People are self-centered, whether they behave as such or not
3. People are retaliatory

Items 2 and 3 can reinforce each other a vicious circle that would appear to contradict item 1. But this wouldn’t happen if everyone always remembered the 3 things. Then they could make a conscious effort to break the cycle.

I think this applies at the personal level and group level, regardless of culture, location, age, religion, etc.

No one is out to get you(#1), and if they are it’s probably because they think you did them wrong in some way (#2-3).

Please interpret this advise beyond face value.

Get Google Chrome

Do it now.


My Favorite Features:
1. The COMPLETELY integrated download manager.
2. Fast rendering from Webkit and V8.
3. Tabs run in separate processes (for graceful crashes & security)
4. Application Windows & Shortcuts.
5. The "New Tab" Window
6. The omni address bar
7. Task manager (especially the extra info for "nerds")
8. Search site-specific engines from the omni bar
9. Drag tabs out of and in to the main window.

*UPDATE
My Annoyances:
1. I miss my google toolbar with all my bookmarks (ironic, huh?)
2. Hulu audio doesn't work

Story Behind "Where the Hell is Matt?"

I really hope I get to travel like this.

length =~ 1hour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVcwqQlwnmY

What you can do with a pile of neurons

There's research like this going on at UM too.

Misc M$ Stuff

Two pieces of news today, both about Micro$oft.
1. Apparently users can be tricked into saying that Vista is better than XP when they're told that they're using some new Windows version code-named Mojave. So I guess this means that Vista's negative image is entirely fabricated and that it really is the best thing since sliced bread. Not really. These machines were probably specifically built for the purpose of the test and they are not necessarily representative of the problems that Joe User (myself included) experienced when using it. Sure it has some "wow" features, but incompatibility, usability & stability issues trump all that (especially when running resource-intensive research algs). Vista is crap, no PR stunt is going to fix that.

2. On a brighter note, I've finally gotten around to trying Micro$oft WorldWide Telescope and it really is cool! It definitely beats the Google Sky feature in Google Earth (for now). I really like the Office 2007-esque fluent interface that changes options based on the region of the sky you are viewing. I'm shocked I'm not forced to pay a subscription for the service. Download it from the link above, or the one in the sidebar. Stay tuned... Google Sky is being ported as a pure web service too, and it looks promising.

AI Infects the IPod

A company has developed an app/plugin for the IPod that analyzes the songs you skip to avoid the songs you don't want to hear (thus, playing the songs you do want to hear) at the moment.
From the article:

Instead of a random shuffle, our ’smart shuffle’ uses some cool machine learning to analyze what music you want to hear based on the songs you skip and the ones you don’t. Within just a few skips, we can play the songs that fit your current mood and activity. Whether you’re working out, walking in the park or road-tripping with your friends, our new Instinctiv Shuffle will be able to understand what you want to hear within just a few skips

I have seen it work, and the most interesting part is that it doesn't bog down the IPod, yet doesn't require any song preprocessing either. So it must be analyzing song attributes and building its database in the background.
hmm, I wonder how it works...