tingilinde

snow leopard

I've been running it for a few days on my iMac and am mostly happy - this is well worth the $29.

Ars has an in-depth review.

chalkboard++

(apologies to  Bjarne)

There are many times when you want to put a simple sketch into a presentation or even a book.  Exact accuracy and fooling around with R or some other tool just isn't worth it and the results are often not that great.

I've been a fan of the OmniGroup for years - OmniGraffle just rules.   Now they have OmniGraph Sketcher. $30 and highly recommended!!

literally the yellow pages

The yellow pages finds relevancy with a necessary iPhone application .. have2p

snip

• Automatically detects your current location to find restrooms in the local area
• Scan helpful tips noted by others, like whether the restroom is for patrons only, if it has a changing table, and how clean it is
• An urgency detector senses when you (and the phone) are shaking and starts a fresh search for nearby restrooms
• Use restroom ratings for when you actually have a choice
• See restrooms on a map
• Add new restrooms to share with others
• Find other places nearby with expanded search capabilities
• Avoid businesses that have been flagged for having no public restrooms – saving you precious time

its free ... at the iTunes store

training pilots to deal with icing

Brian notes an interesting simulator --- also frightening stuff

cars and automotive software complexity

I have no way of verifying a number like 100 million lines of code in a car (how much of that is replicated), but it is clear there is a lot of complexity, not to mention reliability issues.

snip

The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010, will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems.

And Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in 2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its avionics and onboard support systems.

These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, “it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code,” says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars. All that software executes on 70 to 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the body of your car.

Alfred Katzenbach, the director of information technology management at Daimler, has reportedly said that the radio and navigation system in the current S-class Mercedes-Benz requires over 20 million lines of code alone and that the car contains nearly as many ECUs as the new Airbus A380 (excluding the plane’s in-flight entertainment system). Software in cars is only going to grow in both amount and complexity. Late last year, the business research firm Frost & Sullivan estimated that cars will require 200 million to 300 million lines of software code in the near future.

snaptell

Neat iPhone app.  Take a photo of a book or CD cover and get reviews, prices and online stores.  It doesn't have the store selection I favor, but it works well in store lighting and poorly positioned covers.  The price is right - free

the best free browser based image editor

SUMO Paint is impressive as these things go.

The price is right and it may be good enough for you.  I like it better than Adobe's Photoshop Express.  

Both pale compared to real Photoshop, but PS is spendy and few use its power.

get organized!

A few years ago I tried a somewhat buggy beta of a nice idea for organizing pdfs - Papers.  At the time the focus was on biology and I forgot about it until last Summer when a biophysics friend started raving about it - claiming it was now possible to find things in his office.  

Today Barb notes a NY Times article that plugs the software.  I notice that it now supports some of the repositories I frequent - particularly arXiv.  It is probably time to take a deeper look - it might be just the thing for the book I'm working on ... more later.

Here is the developer site.

warm in mesa - opps

I should call Corinne and see if she is surviving the heat wave.

MyWeather is probably the best weather app for the iPhone, but you can see it still has a way to go...

iphone games

I haven't really fallen for anything yet - here is a resource if you are looking for announcements and more information than appears in the apps store.

aquaforest is cute - I wouldn't pay for it, but still cute