The BFC Computing Weblog: Category Interesting People

Twittervision

Bill McGonigle — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:19:00 -0400

Twittervision is combines Tweets and geo coding to show a realtime display of what people are Twittering. It’s quite a beautiful thing to watch, especially the 3D view.

I guess I wasn’t aware that Twitter fed all updates to third parties, so that’s something important to be aware of - it’s not just your followers who are seeing your updates.

I’m not sure it’s actually useful, but it certainly is neat, so probably it is useful to somebody.

I wonder if Twitter will be coming up with a trademark licensing program to allow apps like this to live peacefully.

Perceptions of Technology

Bill McGonigle — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:30:00 -0500

Wow. Just go read the article now. It’s a a good learning opportunity for those of us who assume that most people have a reasonable working knowledge of technology.

An excerpt, in case that link rots:

the couple convinced numerous people that Stacey Finley was a CIA agent and with her contacts she could schedule a medical scan of the victims’ bodies by satellite imaging that would detect any hidden medical problems. The Finley’s convinced their victims that, if any medical problems were found, secret agents would administer medicine to them as they slept in exchange for payment

Could it hurt to teach kids basic physics in the 10+ years we have them captive in government schools? Apparently enough people think the answer is, ‘yes’.

The Nerd Handbook

Bill McGonigle — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:40:00 -0500

You should probaly forward this to your spouse.

Norman Borlaug receives Congressional Gold Medal

Bill McGonigle — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:52:00 -0400

I saw today that Norman Borlaug was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. You can read about who he is at those links so I won’t attempt a meager summary here.

I note it here as some may have noticed my primary server is called borlaug.bfccomputing.com and some folks might have wondered where that name came from. My other public server is named for Liviu Librescu. When it came time to re-name my severs I considered the usual suspects (Muppets, Star Wars characters, Reindeer, Mountains, etc.) but decided that those wouldn’t honor those who truly deserve it.

A society can be measured by those it choses to call ‘heroes’.

5-year old Hero

Bill McGonigle — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:14:00 -0400

Rayshun McDowell, a hero and 5-year-old boy, protected six other children outside his parents’ home from a rabid fox. He

“grabbed a rabid fox by the neck and pinned it to the ground during a family cookout, protecting six other children before his stepfather could step in.

“I wanted to protect my little brother,” said Rayshun, who battled the animal in the front yard of his home Sunday in Kingstown, a town about 50 miles west of Charlotte.

The fox bit Rayshun in the leg, but the 61-pound-boy held the animal down. Health officials later identified the fox as rabid.”

Rayshun’s parents, Shinda Linder and Ryan Thompson, are to be commended for raising such a brave child. Sam Lockridge, a county health official, advised other children to not be so brave. It’s a shame when a society can’t celebrate its heros out of some nebulous fear of litigation.

Emma’s going to be four tomorrow. I’ve tried to teach her bravery, sacrifice, and courage, but even though she fancies herself as a Wonder Woman-in-training, I’m not quite sure I’ve done as good as job as Rayshun’s parents. Hopefully I’ll teach her to shoot better than the family’s neighbor.

Do I feel Bad(?)

Bill McGonigle — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:27:00 -0400

I enjoyed the blog of Robert Lindeman (Dr. Flea) ever since doing a web search for why I couldn’t use Neosporin to clear up a case of conjunctivitis that came home from daycare (answer: you can).

In fact, I found both the above mentioned page and a link to the Dr. Flea Blog during my Google session. The Doctor, blogging anonymously, had a great blog, with a mix of medical stories, advice, humor, whining (hey, it’s a blog) and great writing. He won a Webby for Best Medical Blog recently.

I read some of the past blog entries as I had a chance, and it became very clear to me, with some additional Google searches that Flea and Dr. Lindeman were the same guy. That’s fine, I’m typically pretty good about extracting information from Google searches and figured he’s putting up there what he felt was appropriate for himself.

There was clearly some material that he could never have talked about nonymously (it’s a word now, dammit) - current fights he was having with medical establishment types, fights with ER docs and dressings-down of the same, his jingoistic support for circumcision, etc.

Over the past few months, he started talking about a malpractice case in which he was involved, and showing a bit of stress in the way he talked about the opposing council. I didn’t think it to be highly mature, but, hey, it’s a blog, that’s cool, dude.

I Googled about and found that the Mass. courts have almost nothing online, so I couldn’t find much out about what was going on, but I put in a Google News Alert for ‘lindeman malpractice’ just to see if anything came up.

Well, a couple days ago it did. Somehow, the opposing council found out about his blog and though she apparently didn’t have a great case, shoved it in his face, and presumably intended to show the jury some of the things he said mocking the jurors. They settled the case next day. He deleted his blog immediately from BlogSpot. Worst of all, he’ll never get a chance to prove in court that it wasn’t his fault (if it wasn’t).

So, why would I feel bad? As he added a few stories here and there with more and more personal details I was really tempted to send him a mail saying, “hey, dude, these n stories are giving away too much of your personal info - you should take them down until the trial is over.” I didn’t send the mail. I even started to send one one time and something came up and I didn’t compile the list of URL’s. It wasn’t in my face (it might still be in my Drafts folder) so I didn’t complete it.

If I had sent the mail, would it have made any difference? Would he have listened? Would it have made a difference in a world with Google cache? Would the lawyer not have been smart enough to figure out the Google cache? Should he be blogging anonymously like that?

I don’t know the answers to those questions. I don’t lose any sleep over it, but I’m at least compelled to write this blog entry to put some closure on it. At the same time that I would have liked to have helped the guy, I do not support mandatory motorcycle helmet laws (the point of which is to protect a brain that is functioning so poorly it’s not even trying to prevent the cracking of the skull it’s in. –Jerry Seinfeld) and I don’t think his was functioning so poorly as to be unaware of the potential risks (even though he did go to the wrong Ivy ;) ).

Here are some things I think I do know:

Dr. Lindeman is a bright and talented guy.
The medical advice given on the blog seemed spot-on. It would have improved his legitimate website.
The gossip also gave his readers insight, though he could not have said it on a professional blog.
This case is going to have a chilling effect on other anonymous medical bloggers.
If it were not for Dr. Flea I probably would have accepted an X-ray, hospital admission, and IV antibiotics a couple weeks ago when I put a nail in my hand with a framing nailer. I got out with a tetinus shot and $9 antibiotics and it’s healed perfectly, thank you very much.
I’m glad I’ve been commenting and blogging as bill_mcgonigle forever - it removes the temptation to put too big of a foot in your mouth.
I have no malpractice insurance.

If I were him, would I be mad at me (the real me, not the hypothetical me - ah, hell, you know what I mean)? Hmmm, maybe. But I’d still really like to have lunch with him someday and would love to read his next blog. Hey, Doc, drop me a line and I’ll setup a Typo blog on your domain pro bono - it’s the least I can do for your saving me untold thousands in unnecessary healthcare utilization.

Suzy Smith - 1940-2007

Bill McGonigle — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:44:00 -0400

On Monday I went to a memorial service for Suzy Smith, a friend and former co-worker. Suzy and I chatted over e-mail regularly, mostly about new Mac products, but more recently about some treatments in clinical trials for curing metastatic lung cancer.

Suzy was a Mac fanatic, an appellation she’d happily accept. It was really quite a curious memorial service with so many stories about her love of the Mac, and it wasn’t just because the Chapel was half-full of IT department workers. There’s something interesting about it beyond Suzy - I can’t imagine a similar scenario where you could replace Mac with Windows or even Linux and get so many warm smiles from a group. Suzy would have had lots of reasons to explain why this was true. If I were faster thinking, I would have sent a bouquet of flowers stuffed inside a Compact Mac case (alas, I think of these things too late).

Tonight I had the sad duty of deleting Suzy from my Buddy list and her vCard from my Address Book. But it’s an OSX Address Book, so she’d be OK with it.

Her family asked callers to the reception to take a ring from Suzy’s vast collection. I picked one out for Emma with flowers, in three kinds of gold, and we’ll have that remembrence of her for many years to come. Her sister said they didn’t know what to do with a hundred rings. I reassured her that what they chose to do was great, making a hundred people happy, something Suzy would have liked maybe even more than a new iLife release.

Photo: two coworkers decided, independently, to make 6-colored Apple cookies for the reception.

Indexed - Fun with Math

Bill McGonigle — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:15:00 -0500

Jessica Hagy has a blog called Indexed where she posts philosophical ideas as images drawn on index cards using set theory, Venn diagrams, and the like. Witty, clever, original, and frequently profound. We’re All Going to Hell is among her most popular. Tell your favorite math teacher!

Paraglider Rides Thunderstorm to 32,000 ft

Bill McGonigle — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 13:42:00 -0500

Ewa Wisnerska, paraglider, got caught in one of Australia’s notorious thunderstorm updrafts, spiraled up to 32,000 ft, was pelted with hail, encased in ice, lost consciousness from the low oxygen, and returned safely to Earth fifty miles from where she started. Her trip was logged by her GPS device. She intends to complete the competition she’s attending.