April 2013
1 post
FocusTwist to Bring Lytro-style Refocus-able... →
June 2012
6 posts
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UVA BOV fires our President
What really upsets me about this morning’s email is the blatantly artificial tone of the message. Some dipshit PR firm was involved. See the token Jefferson quote—-a desperate stretch for an ounce of gravitas. The main complaint: NO INFORMATION! The type of statement that just creates hundreds of new questions.
As a UVA faculty member, I hope to drill down on this. Figure out...
May 2012
7 posts
Overcoming iCal + Google 2-factor Login Bug
After you signup for Google 2-factor login, mac iCal will stop working. It will prompt you for your password, and neither your main password nor an application-specific password that you have configured will not work.
The solution is to ignore the prompt that pops up for password, go into Preferences → Accounts → Edit Account. The “Mail, Contact, and Calendars” dialogue will...
“Mnay ppoele wuold aerge taht splleing is oetrervad. As long as the frist and...”
– It would be really nice if this were true. If I ever write a novel, I will use this trick.
April 2012
12 posts
“God is what happens when humanity is connected.”
– See this incredible story of Jim Gilliam (“The Internet is my religion”). Lung Cancer, fixed. Then blood cancer, fixed. Then Lung transplant. Faith in the power of connecting people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-4WKle-GQwk
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Flixel v cinemagram
It’s instagram vs hipstamatic again. Flixel is down and doesn’t work today. Probably server problems. But the app does video stabilization which is key to making a good flix. Cgram doesn’t do that, but has better filters and auto reverses the video clip. They will both borrow from each other and make a nice little artifact.
Facebook+Instagram Queen's Pawn Opening
Makes mostly sense to me. The deal is cash+stock. Lets say 50M in cash so that the Instagrammarians can buy the Italia 458s they have been lusting, and the rest in stock. That is, PRE-IPO facebook stock. As long as the board is fine with it, I imagine that Zuck just prints more shares (ie, he dilutes everyone by ~1-1.5% based on the astronomical valuation in filing rumors). You cannot do...
Romo robot
The romo is a robot whose brain is your iphone. You control it via another iphone or ipod touch (which automatically pairs with it if both devices are on the same wifi network) or from a webbrowser. Our friends at Romotive sent us one of these little guys and it is a super-cool idea.
On the control iphone, you can see the robot’s “view” from either the front or back camera...
March 2012
15 posts
Spin from Etna
Here is a Spin that I took from the top of Mt.Etna in Sicily. We made one of the last cable cars up; people were skiiing down in March. Pictured are my colleagues Andrej, Vipul Goyal, and Alon Rosen. As a matter of coincidence, Vipul has bunny ears.
iPhone 4s in Italy
As I tweeted earlier, it was incredibly easy to setup my iphone (unlocked) in Italy. Walked into WIND store, asked for a microSIM which cost me 10E (but comes with 5E credit), and added a 9E dataplan for a total of 14E. I later added 6E of calling credit for a total trip outlay of 20E. The rate to the US was roughly 12c/min. It took roughly 15min before the system recognized the phone (I was...
Taormina for the TCC 2012 conference
I’ve spent 19hrs doing CHO-IAD-FCU-CTA and then a bus to Taormina on the island of Sicily for the 2012 Theory of Cryptography Conference. I am presenting a paper of mine, “Computing on Authenticated Data” tomorrow morning (the kickoff talk for the conference!) Its the first time I open a conference—-this talk has to be awesome since so many people attend it. Food here:...
“If you haven’t missed a flight, you are spending too much time in...”
– Silvio Micali, my PhD advisor…I recall as I prepare for my trip to Sicily tomorrow 