tingilinde

regionalisms

When I first traveled East for grad school I had no idea "pop" was called "soda" or that other names existed.  I was at Stony Brook and someone asked "where's the soda machine"?  Somehow I thought they must have a speech impediment and answered "I didn't know Stony Brook has a Home Economics dept" ..   Of course they thought I must be crazy..

here is a map of regionalisms with the pop/soda boundary and much more

Tom points out the boundary for kitty/catty corner runs through NJ...

It should be noted the data set for these maps came from an Internet survey done about a decade ago.  It was able to cover many words,  but is of questionable accuracy.  The gold standard is DARE - the Dictionary of American Regional English.  A digital edition is due out this year.

 

 

projection grid for bike riders

A neat scheme, although the range may be limited ..  project a grid from your bike onto the road to spot road surface irregularities at night.

(hat tip to Alan)

 

brilliant english simplicity

of course you have to be a good driver - all about controlling a machine

there's kit for that

Kit plus an app..  Inexpensive biosensing with a smarphone at the University of Illinois. 

snip

...

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a cradle and app for the iPhone that uses the phone’s built-in camera and processing power as a biosensor to detect toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other molecules.

Having such sensitive biosensing capabilities in the field could enable on-the-spot tracking of groundwater contamination, combine the phone’s GPS data with biosensing data to map the spread of pathogens, or provide immediate and inexpensive medical diagnostic tests in field clinics or contaminant checks in the food processing and distribution chain.

...

 

a cup or two of art

some latte art from Kazuki Yamamoto. Follow him on twitter - a few of his creations here.

(a tip of the hat to Jirou)

four round circles

fire in the sky

One of those amazing photos from APOD

 

 

dynamic visualization

Bret Victor's new tool.  Very promising stuff .. illustrator for data visaulization

Drawing Dynamic Visualizations from Bret Victor on Vimeo.

Hat tip to Lynn

early naca/nasa photos

A nice repository of historic photos from the past of American aviation and space research.

properly in black and white

when its really raining -- beyond cats and dogs...

frogs, female trolls, and shoemaker's apprentices

curious idioms from around the world..