How to be More Effective Approximate reading time: 8 minutes (while eating an apple). A friend recently asked me for advice on time-management, she having noticed that I seem to get quite a lot done in a typical week without killing myself. In this post I’ll share a few time-management tips and tricks that work for me. Many of these come from trying and testing different methods I’ve come across, most notably in books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 4-Hour Work Week; others are common sense approaches which most people fail to use consistently. Before we get into it, I should note that the term “time-management” is a bit of a misnomer. On to the tips… 1. Prioritization is of the utmost importance. I like to sit down at least once a quarter and figure out my priorities and goals. I can’t emphasize the importance of prioritizing enough. 2. Since I’ve started prioritizing and setting goals, I’ve found that I’m much more self-assured and able to make good decisions quickly. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
2012 Year in Review: Top 10 searches When the year began so many months ago, there was no telling what would capture our attention and lead us running for the Internet. Now, we know. We know that royalty never goes out of style. We know celebrity breakups and makeups never get old. 1. 2. iPhone 5: Here’s a surprise: People who love the internet also love the latest tech gadgets. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Get Started with CalDAV - Google Calendar Help Sync Google Calendar with Apple's iCal Apple iCal 3.x and up (on Mac OS X v10.5+) support CalDAV sync. To set up CalDAV support for Google Calendar in Apple's iCal, follow these steps: Open Apple iCal, go to Preferences and then the Accounts tab. You won't be able to invite or email guests to Google Calendar events within iCal if your address is not in your Address Book. Your Google Calendar will now appear in iCal's list of calendars, and changes you make to your Google Calendar in iCal will be reflected when you sign in to Google Calendar. Event information will automatically refresh every five minutes. Calendars that are checked but disabled have already been added to iCal - you can remove them from within iCal. Syncing additional calendars By default, any calendars that appear in My calendars on the web, as well as the Contacts’ birthdays and events calendar, will be synced. These settings will apply to any device you sync using CalDAV, such as your iPhone or other iOS device.
Yahoo Buzz Index Gesture Control System Uses Sound Alone Sound waving: SoundWave uses the Doppler effect and the microphone and speakers in your computer to sense and interpret gestures. When you learned about the Doppler Effect in high school physics class—the wave frequency shift that occurs when the source of the wave is moving, easily illustrated by a passing ambulance—you probably didn’t envision it helping control your computer one day. But that’s exactly what a group of researchers are doing at Microsoft Research, the software giant’s Redmond, Washington-based lab. Gesture control is becoming increasingly common and is even built into some TVs. While other motion-sensing technologies such as Microsoft’s own Kinect device use cameras to sense and interpret movement and gestures, SoundWave does this using only sound—thanks to the Doppler Effect, some clever software, and the built-in speakers and microphone on a laptop. The researchers quickly determined that this could be useful for gesture sensing.
Hazard (computer architecture) In CPU design, Hazards are problems with the instruction pipeline in central processing unit (CPU) microarchitectures when the next instruction cannot execute in the following clock cycle, and can potentially lead to incorrect computation results. There are typically three types of hazards: data hazardsstructural hazardscontrol hazards (branching hazards) Data hazards occur when instructions that exhibit data dependence modify data in different stages of a pipeline. read after write (RAW), a true dependencywrite after read (WAR), an anti-dependencywrite after write (WAW), an output dependency Consider two instructions i1 and i2, with i1 occurring before i2 in program order. (i2 tries to read a source before i1 writes to it) A read after write (RAW) data hazard refers to a situation where an instruction refers to a result that has not yet been calculated or retrieved. For example: i1. i1. i1. We must delay the WB (Write Back) of i2 until the execution of i1. Instruction 0: Register 1 = 6
Wire the Relay The reed relay is hooked in parallel with the selected LED and switches 5VDC from the USB connection to the vibra-tactile motor. Prepare four 24 guage hookup wires (Pic 2). Different colored wires help to make the description clearer. If you use all the same color, be sure to keep clear which is which when you hook them up later. The wire lengths are not critical, but the suggested lengths are sufficient. Each wire needs to have 1/8" of insulation stripped from both ends. The wires are: 3" long red wire. 3" long yellow wire. 6" long black wire. 2" long orange wire. The relay has four connections which I have labelled in the diagram (Pic 1). Solder one end of the 3" yellow wire to connection 1. Solder the 1/4" end of the 3" red wire to both connection 2 and connection 3. Solder the 2" orange wire to connection 4 (Pic 3). Wrap two 3" lengths of electrical tape around the relay to hold the black wire in place and insulate the relay connections (Pic 4).
Software The Software necessary includes the Puzzlebox Brainstorms BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) package which provides a GUI and visual feedback to the user and issues control commands to the Arduino hardware. Also required is the standard drivers and software included with the Emotiv EEG headset as well as an Aurduino Sketch which is a simple program written by us for an Arduino. An optional Python-based backend control script can operate independently of the Puzzlebox Brainstorms GUI (see Step 7) and will translate keypresses entered on the keyboard into commands sent to the Arduino, which is connected to the interface circuit. And a suitable Python interpreter can be found here: There are two programs from Emotiv which we will use for this project: Emotiv Control Panel and EmoKey. We were running the Microsoft Windows operating system because that is the most supported operating system by the Emotiv software at this time.
Future - Health - Q Sensor: The data of our emotions People are good at hiding their emotions. But now a device aims to make them visible for all to see. Adam Shaw checks out the Q Sensor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a wireless sensor, which measures electricity conducted through the skin. It can detect whether people are bored, stressed or excited and can be used in market research, therapy or science It is also being tested by autistic volunteers – it can read their feelings, where words fail to communicate their emotions. It’s helping those with seizures and autism better understand and manage their behaviour. In fact anywhere there’s emotion; there could be an application for this kind of sensor – helping people across the globe better understand themselves.
10 Puzzle Websites to Sharpen Your Programming Skills - StumbleUpon Solving programming puzzles is a fun way to develop your logical and problem solving abilities. Also, when you’re familiarizing yourself with a new programming language, solving puzzles for that language can help speed up the learning process. Here are the top 10 popular programming puzzle sites that will help test your thinking and improve your programming, problem solving, and logical thinking skills. 1. Programming Praxis is a blog that includes a range of interesting problems with solutions usually available in several different programming languages. 2. CodeKata is a blog of programming puzzles written by Dave Thomas, who’s most famous for the groundbreaking book, Pragmatic Programmer. 3. TopCoder is an active programming community of developers who love to solve puzzles. 4. 5. Facebook has a collection of very challenging programming puzzles that–should you manage to solve them–could result in you getting a job at Facebook! 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 99 Prolog Problems * Bonus: Mind Cipher