I had the pleasure of being a part of the NBTC 2006 conference last year, and one of the best speakers that came was the CEO of Infusion developement, Greg Brill. He’s very smart, humorous and well spoken. Once in a while he takes some time out of running his company to write in his own blog. I have yet to read one of his blogs that hasn’t provided me with a new perspective on things.
His latest entry has to do with two different mindsets, admins and executives. He states that to an admin personality carrying out tasks…
a non-important variable becomes somehow immutable and is given priority above what is actually much more important. So now the bigger goal contorts around the need to realize a much more minor goal. It is the willingness to challenge assumptions and prioritize intuitively that is the hallmark of an Executive mindset.
It’s a very interesting view and he illustrates his points with examples while providing reasons for why one is better than the other. Give the rest of it a read here. I promise you won’t be dissapointed.
With green sources of energy on everyone’s mind, fascinating ideas keep popping up. One that’s been around for a while, but is only now becoming commercialized is the use of wave energy, the natural motion of the ocean, to produce energy. We had talked about this in our Design for the Environment class so I thought it’d be cool to find out some more information on it.
Essentially it is a semi-submerged structure composed of cylindrical sections linked by hinged joints. The wave-induced motion of these joints is resisted by hydraulic rams. These pump oil through hydraulic motors which drive generators to produce electricity. Power from all the joints is fed down a single umbilical cable to a junction on the sea bed. Several devices can be connected together and linked to shore through a single seabed cable.
Being installed to the north of Portugal, this 8 million euro project will have an installed capacity of 2.25MW, and is expected to meet the average electricity demand of more than 1,500 households. The three machines are currently undergoing final assembly prior to installation later this year.
Human ingenuity is amazing!
For more information and the original article, go here.
Well, finally starting to recover from last night’s celebrations and general debauchery. I’ve uploaded all the pics to my gallery, you can access it by clicking here or by the “Iron Ring Celebration” link on the right side under Photo Gallery.
It was a great time all around with some great memories. I really enjoyed spending the time with my Dad and Peter (Dad’s friend who gave me the ring) for dinner on the Danforth too. Damn good food, beer and some hilarious philosophical-religious conversations.
I think the craziest thing that happened yesterday though happened before all the drinking. While all of us students were waiting in the pre-ceremony room for the ordeal to begin, one of my best friends who I lived at St. Mike’s with in my first two years of university, comes up to me and says “Mike, does the guy who’s giving you your ring have a last name of Kapodistrious?” (which is Peter’s last name) so I reply “Yes, yes it is. Why?” At which point Mark starts laughing and then tells me that Peter’s son, Theo, is the singer for the band he’s in!
What was cool was that Mark was telling me that before the iron ring day people had asked him if anyone was going to give him his ring and his reply was “Well the only engineer I know is the dad of the singer of my band” but he didn’t end up asking Peter for the honour. So then at the ceremony after Peter had performed the ritual of the passing on of the ring for me, he saw Mark and gave him his! Thought that was pretty damn cool and coincidental. Small world I tell you , small world.
With the end of term fast approaching, projects crushing your will to live, and your personal hygene going right out the window…sometimes you just need a break from it all, a way to let go and leave all your worries behind.
That’s where peekvid.com comes into play! With over a gazillion hours of tv shows, movies, cartoons, anime and comedy at your disposal, you’ll never again have to venture away from the soothing, irradiating glow of your monitor. You’ll be able to kick back, relax, and fail life while laughing your ass off to anything from Animaniacs to Xena: The Warrior Princess!
Not only is sleeping naked more comfortable, but it’s good for your health too. Increasing your level of comfort makes it easier for you to relax and sleep, so you get a better night’s kip. The resulting deeper, longer sleep makes it easier for your body to regenerate and repair itself, and build up your energy for the day ahead.
Sexual benefits
If you sleep with a partner, being naked heightens the level of intimacy between you and you are likely to have sex more often. You may also feel closer to your partner as a result of sleeping naked with them.
Work and lifestyle benefits
If you find yourself tired in the morning or during the day even though you’ve had at-least eight hours sleep, you may only be sleeping lightly for that period of time. As mentioned earlier, sleeping naked allows your body to relax more immediately, and you are more likely to fall into a deeper sleep more quickly and wake up refreshed.
So there you have it ladies and gentlemen, start sleeping naked like me!
I found this to be really friggin cool. The prof doesn’t explain how this exactly works but if I had to hazard a guess it’d have to do something with the water pulling off ions as passes through the small can creating some sort of net charge which then gets transferred to the larger cans. A very unscientific/unspecific/probably wrong explanation, you got anything better?
So I’m supposed to be studying and instead my mind keeps drifting to this Europe trip coming up. I keep remembering about how to make sure I don’t have anything in my back pockets or in easily accessible zippers on my backpack and it gets me thinking…there must be some way to verify all these dire warnings of pick-pocketers
So what I think I’m going to do is buy a crappy (empty) wallet and some of those clown handkerchiefs that you tie together and end up being about 10 feet long yet compress into virtually no space. I’ll then attach one end to the wallet and the other I’ll stuff in the bottom of the back-pocket of my jeans with the wallet on top of it. Then when people go to pick pocket me (if it is as bad as everyone claims) hilarity will ensue! I’ll then keep some sort of counter on this here electronic word recording device and see how many times I actually get pick-pocketed.
I wonder what other things like this would be fun to play…
