December 28

Google Reader

My latest news feed aggregator of choice is Google Reader for the obvious reasons: platform independence as well as customization, and server based state which makes moving from one computer to another, e.g., between work and home, seamless. In recognition of this I'll change the "add to my Yahoo!" button in the sidebar to "add to Google."

posted @ 11:28 AM EST

MT iPhone Plug-in

Just for the heck of it, this entry was made from my phone. The lack of a copy-and-paste facility makes putting in links labor intensive. But what's a blog entry without a link? Also, the only way I found to scroll through the entry's text is to drag the cursor; pretty constrained. And the cursor can't be placed at the beginning of a line. Nothing is perfect.

posted @ 08:43 AM EST

December 23

The Trouble with Physics

In The Trouble with Physics Lee Smolin reveals the beauty as well as the problems of string theory, which he sees a dead end in the quest for unifying gravity and quantum mechanics. As good as the book is, I recommend taking some of Smolin's polemics with a grain of salt, as counseled in a New York Times book review. Of special value to the layman—and how many of us are there who consider ourselves well-versed in string theory—are the points regarding the status of experimental tests of current theories.

posted @ 09:22 AM EST

December 2

Upgraded to Movable Type 4.01

I upgraded this blog's software to Movable Type version 4.01; not without a few glitches, including the necessity of moving included templates from index to module. Internally there's an issue with previewing entries, due to the use of the ArchiveYears smarty, which nevertheless doesn't prevent display of the main page. Neither does it create the correct links to the monthly archives on the main page, though it does on archive pages. <sigh/>

posted @ 11:22 AM EST