Some fun mathematical puzzles
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The Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness
Steve and David Let’s try a simple experiment. Imagine that you’re an admissions officer at a competitive college, and you’re evaluating the following two applicants: ... Read more
How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth Godin
What do the economics of publishing look like… really? (Photo: thinkpanama) (Special thanks to my agent, Steve Hanselman, and my anonymous sources within the world’s biggest publishing houses) Print is dead! This has become a popular headline, and a great way to get quoted, as Nicholas Negroponte has shown. Iconic…
How to use time travel to improve your life.
I’ve discovered a way to bring a new perspective to your life. To explain it, I have to tell a little story. Driving home Friday night, I was remembering a time years ago, when my daughter Lauren (now…
How to Solve Hard Problem Sets Without Staying Up All Night
I Have all the Time in the World… Last weekend, I sat down for a cup of coffee with Jake from College Chronicles fame. We ... Read more
Required Reading (for pythonistas)
At work, we have a wiki page that’s called Required Reading. Named after that oh-so-lovely tradition in high school or college of having books that you needed to read over the summer before you sta...
The secret to 4 letter domains: include one (and only one) digit
In our last experiment we attempted attempted to estimate the proportion of pronounceable 5, 6 and 7-letter domains that are already regist...
Things I Learned Eating On $1 A Day For A Month
Learn what 10 lessons one writer took away from eating on $1 a day for a month, and use the real-world insights to plan your own food budget challenge.
So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.
A guide to surviving graduate school, from the perspective of what I wished I had known at the start but had to learn the hard way instead.
Help find missing kids by putting them on your 404 page
@Brian, thanks for catching that. You can try visiting a missing page on my website. eg: http://bluesmoon.info/foobar I'll update the post.
Me vs Backspace: my war against a rogue character
A while ago, I began receiving reports from various people in IRC that I was prepending a garbage ascii character to some of my messages. I found this very odd. The complaints didn’t stop. It became a running joke. Eventually, playful mockery. It is a bit demeaning to hang out in programmer corners and not have any…