RSSRants -- Technology Archives
April 15, 2010
Unrelaxing Auto-Blood Pressure Machine Incident
So I go to one of those in-pharmacy automated blood pressure machines. It will auto-grip my arm, and then squeeze it and tell me my blood pressure and pulse.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2010
(Not quite) Gout Diary: THIS HURTS!
{Turns out it's an osteoarthritis of sorts, but close enough} DAY 1 – OMFG this HURTS! Toe humongous. Surrounding joints tender.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2009
Book Review: A History of Pi
One in a series of scribblings about books I've read over the past months.....
A History of Pi, by Petr Beckmann
Couldn’t quite get through all of it but it is a mostly pleasant tour for the nerdy among us, which takes us through the history of mathematics' and mankind’s quest for that famous irrational number which defines and describes the ins and outs of the circle, via the relationships among radius/diameter and circumference and area. The author’s unapologetic politics sprinkle the text with intermittent sermons against the science-retardant aspects of Communism and Christianity. It gets a bit Ayn Randishly over the top stupid at times, but the anti-totalitarian and anti-imperial ("What have the Romans ever done for math?") perspectives give the book a unifying theme that adds readability. Surprise eureka extra factoid: Archimedes WAS the military-industrial complex of his day.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2009
The Future in All Its Facebook Horror
Shamelessly poached via Jim Henley, comes this vision of the future.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2008
Transcription Software q's: "Dragon Naturally Speaking"
Although I never met a dragon, and certainly not one which speaks naturally, there is software with a related name. If anyone has thoughts, suggestions, recommendations, advice, offers, counteroffers, estoppel, promises, considerations, puns, etc. on "Dragon Naturally Speaking" or any other software where one can drone on verbally and have it automatically typed out, please share. I mean, is it reasonably time-saving, or is it like state of the art OCR namely, generating gibberish sprinkled with occasional words, but doing so in this case for the vocal chords, rather than printed text?
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:41 PM | Comments (5)
December 01, 2007
Need Gadget-Geek Info: Vinyl to Silicon
I am hinting around for a Xmas present: a device that has a turntable, a CD thing, and the necessary software so that one can transfer the contents of the old vinyl record to a CD. I saw this device in a consumer-ish outlet (did not get product name); does anyone know of the worthwhileness/reasonable pricing (USA) of such products or particular models or alternatives.? I imagine there are also legal issues of reproduction, but that's for another day.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 01:12 PM | Comments (5)
April 01, 2007
Anti-techie rant: whatever happened to the off-switch?
I've probably ranted on this subject before but I will do again, even if so. I am too mad to come up with a pun, which will please entirely too many of you. But it boils down to this: am I so old now that only a few of us remember a time when a switch existed on devices which actually turned the device OFF? Like right away. Without holding it down for a full afternoon. Like turning off a faucet. Look, it's not hard to break a circuit, ok?
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 08:06 PM | Comments (4)
