Here’s an amusing sentence I ran across this morning: The code was simplified in 2003 and is harder to understand. Maybe the author is being sarcastic, but I doubt it. I believe he means something like this: In 2003, the…
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Contact info
Here are a few ways you can contact me. mail@johndcook.com @JohnDCook The Endeavour johndcook1 Endeavour Selections Profile Profile
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You and your research
I’ve read Richard Hamming’s essay You and Your Research a couple times and took it to heart. But I didn’t know until this morning that there is a video of Hamming giving his talk. Hat tip to Nuit Blanche. As…
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Lighten up and be logical
I had a little fun on Twitter this morning. From @UnixToolTip I said Some of the best programmers use Emacs. Therefore, if you use Emacs, you’ll be a great programmer. #cargocultlogic and from @CompSciFact I said Some of the best…
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Endeavour Selections on Facebook
I started Endeavour Selections on Facebook a little over a year ago for people who want to read the non-technical posts here but who are not so interested in math or computing. The page didn’t take off, so I stopped…
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Four hours of concentration
As I’ve blogged about before, and mentioned again in my previous post, the great mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré put in two hours of work in the morning and two in the evening. Apparently this is a common pattern. Cal…
Increasing your chances of entering flow
I recently ran across a tip from Mark Hepburn that caught my eye. The content of the tip isn’t important here but rather his justification of the tip: It sounds trivial, but it can really help keep you in the…
Interpreting the interpreter
The latest Hanselminutes podcast is an interesting conversation with Jenny Lay-Flurrie. Jenny is deaf and has an interpreter, Belinda, present during the interview. Jenny speaks perfectly well in a beautiful British accent, but Belinda is there to help listen for…
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Mathematical card trick
Here’s a fun card trick that only depends on math. Want to offer your explanation? HT: Twenty two words Update: Colm Mulcahy informed me that this trick is Jim Steinmeyer’s “Nine Card Speller.” Thanks for the reference. Related post: You…
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Twitter accounts
Last January there were 100,000 followers across all of my daily tip Twitter accounts. A year later there are now about 200,000 followers. Here are a few similar Twitter accounts that other people run. SciProgramming, a new account for scientific…
Cancer center ash tray
In the 1950′s, the gift shop at MD Anderson Cancer Center (then MD Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute) sold ashtrays bearing the institutional seal. This from a time when doctors advertised cigarettes. Related post: The campaign to get women to…
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Rifle-shaped wine bottle
Ever since I posted a photo of an odd wine bottle four years ago, I’ve periodically had people leave comments or send me email about odd wine bottles! Here’s the latest, an Italian wine bottle shaped like a riffle: Here’s…
Five years to overnight success
The first post here was January 9, 2008, five years ago today. Since then I’ve written over 1900 posts, about one a day. Not many people read anything here until May 2009 when the post Plain Python got a few…
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Disciplina praesidium civitatis
The title of this post is the motto of The University of Texas. I’m pretty familiar with that motto, having received degrees and paychecks from UT. I only recently learned the motto’s context, a statement by Mirabeau Lamar, second president…
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Extreme change is easier
This last week I ran across a TED video about a couple who had a house full of stuff and $18,000 in debt. They sold all their stuff except what could fit in a couple bags and went backpacking in…
