ideonexus

Category: Geeking Out

  • Science Fiction Versus Fantasy – Uncensored

    This is the uncensored version of my Science Fiction VS Fantasy piece I wrote for the Science Creative Quarterly several years ago. I’ve also written much more extensively on this topic in the past. This is the abbreviated version with 10% more snark: I Fanboy: Hey gang! Did you read The Sword of Shanara? The…

  • Computer Science in Tron Legacy

    Tron and Tron Legacy I attended the Experiments with the Imagination session at Science Online 2011, where we discussed what made good versus bad inclusion of science in fiction. Interesting points were made, such as audience members being able to excuse bad science for kick-ass portrayals of scientists, like in the movie 2012, and a…

  • “Kill Your Darlings” is a Programming Principle Too

    Proce55ing Source Code Credit: Niels Heidenreich In his book On Writing Stephen King argued that to be a good writer, you must be able to “Kill your darlings,” where, for the sake of keeping the prose moving, you must cut out the non-essential parts, no matter how well-written: Mostly when I think of pacing, I…

  • Breakout of Slide Presentation Linearity with Prezi

    Mxplx Prezi Screenshot At Science Online 2011 I was introduced to the Prezi Presentation Paradigm by Stacy Baker of Extreme Biology. After getting past a surprisingly mild learning curve, I was able to produce the following presentation mixing a Prezi presentation with desktop video capture: Keeping in mind this is not the best example of…

  • Generating Grids, Hexmaps, and Image Markups with JavaScript

    Corrosion Mapping, Hotspots Highlighted (Not an Actual Report Image) One application I had the honor of working with in my time with the Coast Guard was a Corrosion Mapping tool used by Engineers to track the wear and tear on aircraft parts over their lifetime. Using an Active X control, users would bring up a…

  • Social Network Mapping Fun with NodeXL and Science Online 2011

    Social Networking Results for #scio11 Hash Tag on Twitter (Click to Enlarge) The above image is just one graph of the many tweets related to the Science Online 2011 Unconference. I generated the above graph using the open-source free software NodeXL, a Microsoft Excel plugin that harvests social networking data from common online sources and…

  • Introducing mxplx: A Citation-Management Tool for Researchers and Active Readers

    The Memetic Ecosystem Within Mxplx I’m a big reader, and a lot of what I read inspires the posts for ideonexus. I love it when I find a brilliant insight in a text and can slap it down as a blockquote or relate it to other citations I’ve come across in the past. I’m tickled…

  • Advice to an IT Graduate

    Will Code JAVA for Food (Even with Eclipse) Credit: cismet_geeks A newly-minted graduate in software development recently wrote me after finding my resume online, seeking career advice on how to succeed in the IT professional world. These were my personal thoughts; maybe other readers will have additional insights to add in the comments section: Dedicate…

  • Cloud Computing’s Real Strength

    cloud passing by Credit: Diego Sevilla Ruiz “Cloud Computing will revolutionize IT!” Really? What’s Cloud Computing? “Instead of people installing software on their local computers, future applications will run on host computers!” So Cloud Computing is just a funny name for a client/server Mainframe Architecture? “But it’s not running on a Mainframe! It’s running in…

  • Entropy for Information Systems

    Entropy is a fairly easy concept to define, the measure of disorder in a closed system, and a rather difficult concept to grasp, but one that furnishes us with wonderful insights into the way the world around us operates. The amount of entropy in the Universe is ever-increasing, the energy concentrated in our sun is…

  • Three Methods for Providing a Print View of a Web Page

    Web developers put content online to be consumed, but we have little control over the mediums consuming it. Web pages are rendered on mobile phones, printers, televisions, and their semantic content consumed by a variety of bots, each with their own requirements and best-practices for layout. Here I’ll outline three commons solutions to providing a…

  • Google Aquires the Semantic Web, or Why Metaweb Matters

    Isaac Asimov Entry on Freebase With Google’s aquisition of Metaweb the searchopolis takes a stake in the seemingly-forever-emerging Semantic Web, a concept with endlessly verbose standards and few demonstrable applications for all it promises. I yawned when I read of Google’s move, remembering a few years ago when I explored Freebase, Metaweb’s semantic database. I…