Solar Power Harvesting using Magnification – A Conceptual Design

Yesterday, a good friend of mine sent me a link to an interesting TED Talk (Bjarke Ingels: Hedonistic sustainability). My friend attends classes at a prominent art academy in downtown San Fran and she is currently enrolled in a course called Sustainable Design (and they got to watch the video during class).

While I was watching the TED Talk video, I couldn’t help but mockup up a product design with the goal of increasing the amount solar energy that can be gathered from our massive sun.

Instead of focusing on the efficiency of the solar cells (exclusively), my designs takes an approach that includes a rotating convex magnifying glass:

Server in a File Cabinet – An Experimental Project

This project only took about two or three hours of real labor (not counting the few hours of time I spent contemplating how I was going to execute the idea).

     
three computers inside cabinet

     
three computers inside cabinet - zoomed (notice separators are pieces cut from Valentine's chocolates box)

     
the metal I removed from the cabinet to allow CPUs to fit

     
the workspace

Google Chrome Bug in the Bookmarks Bar

Hey Google Chrome Devs, wouldjamind fixing the bug in the bookmarks bar?

It’s been biting me for a while now.

Story is, I refer to, sort, and add bookmarks religiously in order to categorize/organize my [mostly very] important web-based resources. To give you an idea, I keep my exported bookmarks file saved in many backup locations (in case they ever fall off my Chrome browser; get deleted somehow) and I update these backups at least monthly.

The problem I am having with the bookmarks bar is that it’s nearly impossible to consistently move around/organize folders and bookmarks (using drag and drop).

The screenshots below tell it all:

The drag and drop bug is present in the bookmark manager as well. The issue is the same but occurs with less frequency – so I am able to accomplish the action after some trial and error (whereas with the bookmarks bar the issue cannot be circumnavigated).

The IRONY of SOPA

I was watching a recently-released (in theaters) feature film the other day online. Since I never break the law, I was watching this at a friend’s house on her computer. At one point early in the film, some text appeared as an overlay while film was playing.

Possibly, it was a hidden element embedded in the digital film strip (that only appears when people record movies in-theater with a camcorder) – which made me wonder (thinking to myself, if this were the case), why wouldn’t the studios also insert a unique specifier-encoding along with this that indicates the theater name/location too (minimally)? Otherwise, what is the point? Well, I get the point – but where is the opportunity for recourse?

The irony is in the image itself. As I watch a streaming online movie (for free), a message appears telling me ‘not to duplicate’.

Honestly, why? Because I would never even consider the notion of duplicating the film. Why would I? When I can just sit back and watch – giving myself a badge for 100% compliance.

Google’s Failing Grade – Chrome-based Chinese-to-English Translator

Being listed on Alexa Top 500 means something – or so I figure every time I hear it being used again in an article as a benchmark.

It’s been months, and maybe even a year now, since my last visit to Alexa. The list has certainly evolved and shuffled since my last time seeing it:

There would be no point for my having mentioned Alexa, had it not led to my discovery of two precarious websites resting amongst US-based powerhouse tech companies.

The two sites I notices that stuck out in the top 20 were:

#12: Taobao.com    (Direct url: http://www.taobao.com/index_global.php)

#17: Sina.com    (Direct url: http://www.sina.com.cn/)

What does a Top-ranked Chinese Site look like?

So naturally, I had to explore a bit. I visited Taobao first and noticed (what appeared to me as) a completely jumbled page covered in Chinese writing. Using Google’s Always-Most-Recent Chrome Browser, I accepted when prompted for a Chinese-to-English Page Translator:

During this interaction, I thought to myself, what a wonderful service and technology this has become – And one my children will likely almost-completely take for granted.

Before any translations are accepted (on the Chrome toolbar-dropdown) it looks like this:

After proceeding with the Translate option the page looks like this:

It was hard on the eyes. And for a website globally ranked in the top 20, I questioned why Google’s Chrome-to-Translate technologies wasn’t able to translate a site many consider, “the Amazon of China”.

After Leaving Taobao, I returned to the top rankings list. I found Sina, which is currently ranked at #17. This is when something not-at-all-pretty was uncovered (after again accepting Translate):

I assure you I was set to 100% (default) zoom in my browser settings. Here is a closer look:

Just to be sure, I translated the Japan-based version of Yahoo (aka Yahoo! Japan):

And it looks dramatically better.

The Challenge Exists Especially with Images

I am aware the Chinese language is one of the toughest for any algo to consistantly crack. And it may also have a lot to do with the image-based media displayed throughout such China-based pages.

examples of main slideshow (middle of homepage; taken from Taobao.com):

I just wanted to bring this up. And maybe the guys at Google can think further into this problem. It is a pretty big problem when you think into the underlying contexts (in the sense of limiting access to shared information; business politics) and maybe the guys at Google can think into it a bit more.

…or maybe they already have and they “know what they’re doing.”

Note: I left out QQ.com, which is #11 on the Alexa Global List. So that there would be one high-ranked gem leftover for readers yet to discover.

The Monty Hall Problem

The Monty Hall problem is one that you may be familiar with already (and you probably do not even know it).

Some of you may remember this scene in a recent movie:

The problem has been debated by statisticians for decades.

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My take on the Monty Hall problem:

You are on a game show and the host asks you to pick from three doors (one door has a car behind it). You pick door #1. The host opens door #3 (which uncovers a goat behind it) and offers you the option to change your choice from door #1 to door #2.

At the beginning you had a 33% of guessing the door that hides a car behind it. After the host opened door #3 (and showed you the goat) only two possibilities remain: door #1 and door #2. That’s a 50% chance that either door has a car behind it. When the host asks if you would like to change your choice to door #2, a new game has officially begun.

Bayes’ theorem, as it applies to the Monty Hall problem is still appicable. Accept now, where the denominator is computed using the law of total probability as the marginal probability as seen here:

is inapplicable.

Why? Because the marginal probability cannot be measured yet in this new game (and is unnecessary because the solution will be presented by the host after affirming choosing door #1 or door #2).

…in other words, switching your choice to door #2 will give you the same odds (50%) as keeping your original choice.

In the first game there were three doors. In this new game there are only two doors.

If you consider this game as a new one, then switching your original choice from door #1 to door #2 (as encouraged by Vos Savant) now seems arbitrary.