iLearnium.com

A blog written by Andrew Parker. If I?m interested in something, I write about it here. Musings, ramblings, and other half-baked thoughts produced on a whim. Contact me via Email or Twitter. I have had a couple jobs.

• Bowie?s Live at Santa Monica (1972) album has been in...

  
  
  Bowie?s Live at Santa Monica (1972) album has been in heavy rotation all year for me. Good way to start the morning.

  
  

• "Indeed, humans are remarkably attuned to relative position and status. As the economists David..."

  ?Indeed, humans are remarkably attuned to relative position and status. As the economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick demonstrated in a study at Harvard, many people would prefer to receive an annual salary of $50,000 when others are making $25,000 than to earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000.?
  
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  Why We?re Still Happy - NYT

  I?ve seen the story of this study brought forward many times in the last few months in...

• "Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even..."

  ?Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up??
  
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  William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

  This is a great quote from Faulkner?s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. The whole speech is only three paragraphs, it?s worth a read.  Though this quote is a bit...

• Digg Has Dug Into Twitter

  Digg Has Dug Into Twitter:

  Twitter reports on their blog that pretty much every topic on Digg now has a cooresponding Twitter account (created by Digg).  There are a couple important discoveries in this announcement:

  1. The emergence of the need for namespaces in Twitter. Digg?s namespace happens to be digg_* (where * is an object in the namespace).  This makes me want to go register andrewparker_* for a bunch of relevant objects.
  2. Twitter usage is starting...

  3. Yesterday there was a tweetup (a meetup organized via Twitter)...

     
     
     Yesterday there was a tweetup (a meetup organized via Twitter) at Shake Shack for a snowball fight.  Here?s a video from the event in which I am warmly welcomed. I apparently do not have any regard for the neutrality and defenselessness of videographers. Charlie?s got a nice aggregation of...

  4. I had trouble sleeping last night. I couldn?t turn off my...

     
     
     I had trouble sleeping last night. I couldn?t turn off my brain for some reason.  So, I got up eventually and decided to listen to music until I felt tired again.  I put on Low?s album Secret Name. The best track on that album is ?Starfire,? which I?ve now posted for your auditory pleasure.  It?s appropriate music for a sleepless night or a rainy day.

     

  5. Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa

     Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa: Instead of ?genetic programming,? this is more appropriately described as ?supervised machine learning.? But, it?s very interesting nonetheless.

     
     

  6. Friction and Perceived Value

     Image via Wikipedia

     The online sample sale market is wild to me.  It?s a group of ecommerce sites (such as Gilt Group, Ideeli, Editors? Closet) that intentionally make it difficult to enter and browse.

     On these sites you cannot simply sign up.  You have to be invited...

  7. This is Squarepusher?s ?Hello Meow? off the...

     
     
     

     This is Squarepusher?s ?Hello Meow? off the album Hello Everything. Hello Everything is the best album to buy if you?ve never heard Squarepusher (the band is really just one guy: Tom Jenkinson) before and enjoy this song because Hello Everything as the perfect summary album for Tom?s entire career.  This song ?Hello Meow? is closer to Tom?s earlier works, such as hard normal daddy.  But, there?s some stuff on this...

  8. Data Asset Example

     One common characteristic of a great web service is a data asset that increases the effectiveness of your service as it grows.  As I was Christmas shopping today, I found a great, simple example.

     On Amazon, maybe people create wishlists of the things they want but can?t/shouldn?t buy.  This explicit gesture of saying ?I want this someday? is then aggregated and spit back out in the form of generic gift guides.  Amazon looks at which...