Quantum Physics for Dogs

Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad Orzel has been discussing quantum physics with his dog.  Also see the earlier discussion.

Cat out of the Bag

One of the funniest things over the past few weeks has been the results of the attempts by the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACS LA) to suppress the publication of the number that unlocks the copy protection on HD-DVD disks.  They sent out letters to various web companies demanding that they take down pages containing the number.  Google received one of these letters, their reaction was apparently to post a copy of the letter at the Chilling Effects web-site and to leave the page that the letter explicitly complains about untouched.  Indeed, entering the number into Google search returns "about 1,670,000" hits.  But the most interesting reaction was at the user-driven news site Digg.  Initially they started to comply with the AACSLA demands, but then the users started posting and 'digging' (ie: voting for) lots of news items mentioning the number.  Eventually, the Digg front page was filled with such items and founder Kevin Rose chose to give up and just let them stand, apparently preferring to face litigation rather than commit commercial suicide.  He must be left wondering at the power of the monster he has created.

Time Management

This video of a talk by Thomas A. Limoncelli contains some nice ideas for time management.  Although nominally addressed at computer system administrators, most of the ideas will be of interest to anyone working in a technical job.  I particularly like his explanation of how to deal with tasks according to how difficult they are and how frequently they have to be done:

• Easy and rare: perform the task manually.
• Easy and frequent: write a program to automate it.
• Hard and rare: document how to do the task.
• Hard and frequent: install a ready-made solution (purchase one or download a free one).

However, I suspect that the usual time management paradox applies: those who most need to watch the video are least likely to have the time to watch it.

Blue Tit Nest

Last Friday afternoon, I was crossing the bridge over the dual carriageway near Farnborough North station, when I saw noticed a blue tit disappear into a gap in the tubular metal hand-rail.  After a few seconds it came out again and flew off.  then another blue tit with some grass in its beak flew in and disappeared into the hand-rail.  I would have thought that this was a rather exposed place for them to build a nest, but not many people walk over that bridge, so they might succeed.

Excuse

I was late home today.  I wandered into a bookshop and had to read my way out.