Assemble Me

Google: Stop the Google Groups Spam!

2008-04-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

DATA: Sheesh, I'm starting to get dozens of spam messages a day now that have nothing but a link to a Google Group. Anyone else out there in the cloud dealing with this? Google, please crack down on the Google Spam Groups!

Modeling the Brain

2007-11-28T12:18:00.000-08:00

INFO SCIENCE: Technology Review reports:

An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone. Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammal's brain, appears to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade.

The article's visualization is fascinating and gives me renewed respect for the people trying to reverse engineer the brain.

Representing Scale in Concrete, Understandable Terms

2007-03-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

DATA:
Over on Ask Edward Tufte there's an interesting thread about "representing scale in concrete, understandable terms." It's a great read.

Something I was told twenty-five years ago (when RAM was a dollar a byte) was that the Bible was 5Mb as unformatted text. There are a million seconds in (roughly) eleven-and-a-half days, and a terabyte of seconds in something around 32,000 years.

However, a good-quality large art book (ignoring file compression) could have half-a-gigabyte of illustrations, and a collection of maps as image files easily larger, so a terabyte would be somewhere around the fine art section of a big-city bookstore, or a reasonably sized personal library in a private house that included maps or illustrated books. "Library of Congress" may only be good guide if you leave out formatting and illustrations.

A terabyte is not big at all. If I could contain all the information I know about one other person in one byte, and their information about me similarly, then two people's knowledge of each other equals two bytes. Three people's knowledge is six bytes (factorial 3). By the time you reach fifteen people you are past a terabyte.

If, rather than a byte, you take a terabyte as the information you know of any person - one percent of a brainful say (estimates of the number of information connections in the brain vary from say a hundred terabytes to a terabyte squared) - and say six billion people on earth each knowing one hundred other people, then a terabyte is to the sum of human knowledge as a single atom is to the square of the number of atoms in the known universe - give or take a few.

UPDATE: After re-reading the last two paragraphs, I realized that the author made a mistake in his math. So, I submitted this post to the thread, but it may not appear since it is moderated.

Response to How big is a phone book, and other ways of illustrating size
Earlier in this thread, Martin Ternouth noted:

"A terabyte is not big at all. If I could contain all the information I know about one other person in one byte, and their information about me similarly, then two people's knowledge of each other equals two bytes. Three people's knowledge is six bytes (factorial 3). By the time you reach fifteen people you are past a terabyte."

However, this isn't the case. If we visualized this example as a graph, each person would be a node, and known information about other people would be an edge between two nodes.

In the provided example, a complete graph (in other words, a connection between each node on the graph -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_graph) of 15 nodes, would not be 15! bytes (over a terabyte) as the author states, but would simply be 15(15-1), or 210 bytes. The author appears to have assumed this number would grow at a factorial rate since his example of three nodes satisfies this equation: 3! = 3(3-1), however at 15 this is not the case: 15! > 15(15-1).

Google Speaks: Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population

2007-02-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

DATA: Those ubergeeks at Google (can't we go a day without saying or typing Google anymore?) released an interesting paper on observed hard drive failures in their data centers. It's called, aptly enough, Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. While it doesn't name names and point out which brands are the best and worst -- it does provide a lot of interesting analysis on when the drive is most likely to fail along with the optimal operating performance. Give it a look.

Strange Maps -- Is there a blog about everything yet?

2007-02-16T06:45:00.000-08:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: I just found a great new blog called Strange Maps. The title says it all -- give it a look!

Astute readers may notice that I've been deeplinking images on my last few posts. For shame! I know -- it's a nasty practice. Unfortunately I'm sans-Photoshop on this computer and I haven't been able to move the images over and format them correctly. I'm going to try and revisit soon from my home computer and update the links.

2000 Years and the Spread of Religion

2007-02-14T14:20:00.000-08:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: This isn't a perfect visualization -- but it's an interesting attempt at showing the spread of today's religions over Eurasia. I'd love to see a more comprehensive look animated as well some day. Kudos again to Wikipedia.

The US Interstate Highway System Map by Chris Yates

2007-02-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: Well, here I am, back from the dead. :-)

Work, work, work and some of my projects (a new source code community wiki, a place to buy historical stock quote data en masse (still being built), and a place for historical price data for consumer goods (still in the early stages)) have been keeping me from blogging for almost a year.

BUT, here I am, to show you a great new map of the US Interstate system. Enjoy!

New World Birth Rate Metrics

2006-04-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: Reuters has some illustrative visualizations on birth rates and population growth.

Pop quiz. Biggest pensions in the world + flat population growth =

A. European economic crisis.
B. No worries d00d! Das no problem.
C. European economic crisis.

Monday Morning Coffee Visual Aids

2006-04-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: Two new visualizations for you this morning:

Cabspotting: An animated map showing the location and speed of San Franciscan cabs.
World Population TreeMap: Another treemap -- this one using (I think) Treemap 4.0 in a Java Applet.

New York City charts

2006-04-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: Here are some charts I created for the New York City Demographics page on Wikipedia. For your viewing pleasure.

Key:

New York City
The Bronx
Brooklyn
Manhattan
Queens
Staten Island

~~Percentage~~ EDIT: Rate of New York City borough population growth, decade over decade.

New York City population, total and by borough, from 1900 to 2000. Figures in millions.

New York City population, total and by borough, from 1790 to 1890. Figures in millions.

New York City borough population from 1790 to 2000. Figures in millions.

New York City population, total and by borough, from 1790 to 2000. Figures in millions.

Scatterplot of Religion and Crime Shows Slight Correlation

2006-04-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

DATA: Check out this great paper called Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies. It shows that religion doesn't have the effect on a nation that many people suspect it has.

Specifically, it looks at crime rates v. religiosity and finds that, at best, the relationship is random and, at worst, religion has the effect of increasing crime rates. (Correlation does not imply causation though. It could be random, or perhaps people turn to religion when the streets around them are crime ridden?)

Soda, Pop, or Coke?

2005-08-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: The debate continues.

More Economic Issues

2005-08-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

DATA:Here's an interesting peice from Morgan Stanley about the current issues brewing in the economy. Again, it's the same things I posted on last time.

Energy prices up

National / Personal debt and Trade Deficit up

Real Estate bubble

Savings null

Here's the kicker paragraph from the article:

Just prior to the two oil price spikes of the 1970s, discretionary spending by US households had also gone to excess. The GDP share of consumer durables and residential construction -- the latter being a proxy for the discretionary demand for shelter -- was running at peak levels of around 14.5%. In the aftermath of those two earlier energy shocks, discretionary spending collapsed -- with the combined share of consumer durables and homebuilding falling to 11.5% in the mid-1970s and 10.5% in the early 1980s. These were the most severe consumer-led recessions on record in the United States. In the current expansion, discretionary household spending has moved into a similar zone of excess. The combined share of consumer durables and residential construction has averaged 14.3% of GDP over the past year -- virtually identical to peak shares hit just before the two energy-shock-induced consumption collapses of the 1970s. In other words, just as the energy shocks of the 1970s hit US households at a point when their spending behavior had gone to excess, the same is the case in the present climate. Yet unlike those earlier periods, today’s asset-dependent, overly-indebted American consumer is lacking any semblance of a backstop of income-based saving to shore up the downside. It would be one thing if American consumers were committed to defending modest lifestyles. It is another thing altogether in today’s era of excess -- there is much more room and greater urgency for consolidation.

The only investment Dan and I have in non-cash assets right now is investment in international bonds (Templeton Global Income Fund) because I just have a bad feeling about economy as a whole right now.

When is this government really, really going to get serious about energy policy? And, no, the latest pork-fest energy bill doesn't count.

Krugman: Doom & Gloom (But I agree this time)

2005-08-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

DATA: So, I'm not an economist.

However, I've been reading more and more about the housing bubble. And I've seen it play out in real life; none of my friends are looking to buy houses, we all understand that they are overpriced. Today, I read a very interesting article by the good ol' bear Krugman, called Safe as Houses.

I used to live next door to a Russian émigré. One day he asked me to explain something that puzzled him about his new country. "This place seems very rich," he said, "but I never see anyone making anything. How does the country earn its money?"

The answer, these days, is that we make a living by selling each other houses. Since December 2000 employment in U.S. manufacturing has fallen 17 percent, but membership in the National Association of Realtors has risen 58 percent.

I've thought for sometime, even back in Seattle, that housing prices were unsustainable. Now that I'm in New York, I know they are. (Living in a city with a per-capita income of $22,402 but where the average apartment closing price is now $1,300,000.00 will do that to a person.) Meanwhile savings rates have fallen to zero, interest only mortgages are proliferating, and the twin deficits are rising.

Despite my generally bullish take on the US economy and future in general, I think it may be time to switch into hedge-mode and short a few housing related stocks.

Another Op-ed piece ties the economy to Bush's slowly falling approval ratings:

[P]eople are feeling insecure because they understand that today's economy is built on shaky fundamentals. Average Americans may not sit around fretting about America's outsized budget and trade deficits, and its unprecedented foreign indebtedness. But many of them - as buyers, borrowers and employees - are concerned about the increasingly bubbly housing sector.

The economy's shortcomings are nowhere more obvious than in the job market. Nearly four years into an economic expansion, job growth is still substantially slower than in previous recoveries. Wages for 80 percent of the work force are barely keeping pace with inflation, and aid for the workers hurt by global trade is paltry. Because Mr. Bush fails to acknowledge the lackluster job and wage growth, he fails to respond appropriately. The administration's insistence that the economy is getting better all the time - a stance that is based on statistical aggregates that are often divorced from individuals' actual experience - only intensifies the anxiety that people feel.

Best to Worst: 6 1&9 7 4 E J&Z L 5 Q 2 3 V F A D R M B W C N

2005-08-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

DATA: Straphangers just released their latest NYC Subway reportcard. I guess I've got a good mix with my commute using the R or the V (two of the shitty lines) and sometimes the N or the W (even worse), however I always transfer to the 6 at 59th Street or 51st Street, which gives me a taste of the good life every morn' on the city's best train.

Gothamist has a good conspiracy theory:

N riders aren't surprised their line sucks; Gothamist likes how one person the Post interviewed was "sweating profusely" as he waited for a train, because we've noticed that many N stations (Times Square, Herald Square, Union Square) are like saunas. If Gothamist were a conspiracy buff, we'd say the 6 is the best line because Mayor Bloomberg usually takes it from his townhouse, but we're not anything like that. But perhaps we'll change our nickname for the N from the "Never" to the "Nasty" train.

Changing Demos: Minority Majorities (Take that, logic!)

2005-08-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: A quick visualization from the USCB and the AP:

Worldometers.info

2005-08-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

INFO SCIENCE: Check out this cute little page of "live" earth stats. It'd be fun to take the calculations for this site and change the meters so that they look like an odometer (complete with rolling and all).

• The data is somewhat correct for 2003-2004 years and most of the times for 2005 too.
• Requires JavaScript
• Uses your computer's clock, so if you are curious how much we will have HIV-infected in 2050 then just change your system time to 2050. Please note that it will just calculate values based on current statistics.
• Please note that we're unable to "track" recent events like earthquake or war fatalities, since there are no available to public statistic about such events.

Be sure to check out a few of the doom statistics, like "topsoil erosion from farmlands (metric tons) this year" and "topsoil erosion from farmlands (metric tons) this year."

And what's up with "lightning strikes to earth this year" being so high? Can that be correct?

Julius' Stream of Consciousness

2005-08-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

INFO SCIENCE: The New York Times is running an interesting article about Southwest Airline's Ding, a Windows only notification program that alerts you when Southwest has reduced ticket prices for your local airport. It's an interesting idea, but flawed. Why would I want to use their system, when they could just IM or SMS me instead? To me, this would be greatly preferred. In fact, I would give JetBlue and Southwest my IM information right now for New York / Seattle ticks. Why hasn't anyone done this? It could be applicable to all sorts of areas that bargain hunters (like me) frequent.

In other news, check out Bush's report card, also in the times. It's full of good info, but suffers from a poor ink to info ratio; what's up with those dots and wavy lines?

In personal news, I have a strong urge right now to dump IT for a few years. I'm doing DBA stuff, and I'm bored out of my mind. I'm juggling some options, like doing some civil service work while looking into graduate school. But who knows right now, having come to a crossroads in my life and living in an awesome city has really opened up my eyes to some completely different work options. I could use some time away from the whole hypercompetitive, superacronymified IT field. Or maybe I'm just lazy from soaking up too many xrays while out on the road driving across country. :-P

iRenaissance

2005-07-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

ASSEMBLEME: Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3.

Yikes, it's been a while since I've updated. Things have been pretty hectic since arriving in the city. My first priority was getting some immediate income; so now I'm working as a contract DBA at a finance firm. It's pretty tight! I work with some great people (all non-techy accountants and admins) and they buy us lunch daily. It's not a career-job, it's just a job-job, so to work on a long range goal I'm doing a training course on C# (should be easy since I <3 Java) which will earn me a MCAD and/or MCSD, depending on what courses I take. Why more school when I just graduated? Well, I've noticed out here that .NET is everywhere, especially in big finance firms. And since my goal is to escape IT support and weasle my way in to IT development, I'm working on getting a few more acronyms added to my batbelt.

My second priority was getting a living situation set up with my boyfriend and my good friend, Sam. Well, it was a hellish experience (wtf is UP with realestate nowadays!?!) and I can't wait for the bubble to burst, but it's done now -- we found a nice place in Astoria -- and I'm not moving for a long time.

Oh yeah, in my .NET certification course, one of my classmates' name is Osama. Ha! Not a popular name in New York. My instructor just got it out in the open and asked him right away if he gets much gruff over his name. "NO! Well, yes! But I've always been Osama. I love my name," was his response -- he seems like a great guy.

Deutsche lieben das Firefox!

2005-06-07T11:19:00.000-07:00

INFO VISUALIZATION: Well, my move date looks to be June 18th-ish. I've been busy with school and family and moving and work, but that'll all come to an end soon, w00t.

Anyway, here is an interesting visualization of firefox penetration in Europe (in French). Go das deutschland, ja!

I'd love to see one of these by US state...

Moving & Job Hunting

2005-05-11T09:36:00.000-07:00

ASSEMBLEME: Posting will be very infrequent over the course of the next month or two. My plate is completely full right now with moving to New York and finding a job.

If you live in the Seattle area, you can come by and visit me and my fellow former iSchoolers at our Capstone Presentation event. A lot of interesting projects were developed earlier this year and it'll be interesting to see them all one last time.

May 17
Informatics Capstone Presentation
6:30-7:15 -- Kane Hall, room 210
7:15-8:30 -- Kane Hall, Walker Ames Room

Demand, Prices Up

2005-04-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

DATA: The Big Picture, one of my new favorite blogs, has an interesting post showing the price of Oil and Copper in relation to increased Chinese demand. (I read this as a causation relationship, but it may just be correlation.)

In any case, the era of cheap energy spurting from the ground will be drawing to a close very soon. I hope we're prepared.

Paper Haters

2005-04-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

DATA: An interesting article by the C. S. Monitor suggests that young people wouldn't subscribe to a newspaper even if it was free. Ouch.

According to the Washington City Paper, an alternative weekly, a recent internal Washington Post study found that many young people would refuse free subscriptions because they don't want bulky newspapers cluttering up their homes.

Younger people are used to news content on the Internet, which allows them to pick from lists of headlines instead of flipping through pages to find stories that interest them, says Adam Penenberg, assistant professor in the business and economic reporting program at New York University. "They customize their news-gathering experience in a way a single paper publication could never do," Mr. Penenberg wrote in a Wired News column last year. "And their hands never get dirty from newsprint."

Environmental Heresies

2005-04-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

DATA: Be sure to check out Tech Review's Environmental Heresies
By Stewart Brand. It's a great article about how environmentalism is changing and must continue to change. The article says that environmentalists must embrace technology (like GM foods and Nuclear power) that they have so far opposed -- which to me makes perfect sense. I've always considered myself an environmentalist, and have always supported advancing these technologies. To me, anything that is a step away from oil is a step in the right direction.

That’s great news for environmentalists (or it will be when finally noticed), but they need to recognize what caused the turnaround. The world population growth rate actually peaked at 2 percent way back in 1968, the very year my old teacher Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. The world’s women didn’t suddenly have fewer kids because of his book, though. They had fewer kids because they moved to town.

Cities are population sinks-always have been. Although more children are an asset in the countryside, they’re a liability in the city. A global tipping point in urbanization is what stopped the population explosion. As of this year, 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities, with 61 percent expected by 2030. In 1800 it was 3 percent; in 1900 it was 14 percent.

The environmentalist aesthetic is to love villages and despise cities. My mind got changed on the subject a few years ago by an Indian acquaintance who told me that in Indian villages the women obeyed their husbands and family elders, pounded grain, and sang. But, the acquaintance explained, when Indian women immigrated to cities, they got jobs, started businesses, and demanded their children be educated. They became more independent, as they became less fundamentalist in their religious beliefs. Urbanization is the most massive and sudden shift of humanity in its history. Environmentalists will be rewarded if they welcome it and get out in front of it. In every single region in the world, including the U.S., small towns and rural areas are emptying out. The trees and wildlife are returning. Now is the time to put in place permanent protection for those rural environments. Meanwhile, the global population of illegal urban squatters—which Robert Neuwirth’s book Shadow Cities already estimates at a billion—is growing fast. Environmentalists could help ensure that the new dominant human habitat is humane and has a reduced footprint of overall environmental impact.

Moving + New Job > Blogging

2005-04-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

ASSEMBLEME: I'll be posting less frequently for at least a month, and quite possibly up to three. Moving across the country and finding a new job is going to be eating up a fair amount of my time. ;-)