mikero.com

How to Keep Your Secrets Safe

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:10:56 +0000

If you want to know a little more about what theoretical cryptography is all about, Anna Lysyanskaya has written a nice article in Scientific American.

The website lives

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:16:57 +0000

You may have noticed that the website was down this weekend. Apparently my account didn't survive some kind of billing system migration, and Bad Things ensued. Now things are back to normal, ~~mostly~~. If you sent email to my mikero.com email recently, it may have bounced. If so, it should now be safe to resend it; if not, that mail should be trickling into my mailbox today.

The skinny on politics

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:14:05 +0000

I thought nothing in life was more frustrating than trying to find pants with a 29" waist. But this moronic article from WSJ just pushes me over the edge.

In a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?

They're right. Clearly anyone under 200 pounds is not to be trusted.

Update: journalism at its finest.

You know you’re a nerd when…

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:06:48 +0000

.... you immortalize your nerdiness with a math/science tattoo. There are great math tattoos on the site, especially ones involving everyone's favorite irrationals π, φ, and e. But the one that is closest to my branch of nerdiness is probably the Y combinator from the λ calculus.
This tattoo also highlights functional programming, and it even references everyone's favorite number sequence, but I think it is a little too wordy. I'd personally be more inclined to have a succinct tattoo. The award for cleverness goes to the continued fraction expression for φ, whose infinite repetition works well in a wrap-around arm tat.

So what nerdy tattoo would you get? If you can think of something cool enough, maybe I'll get one too someday.

Last Lecture

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:59:26 +0000

No, not my last lecture of the summer (that's coming up next week)... this last lecture:

The lecturer in question, Randy Pausch, died today. Read his wikipedia biography for more information about his story and the significance of this video. As a tribute to his life, you can take 75 minutes of your time to watch his now-famous lecture and be inspired. It is worth it.

Two Leaves in a Pod

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:06:49 +0000

Score one for Google reader and its recommendations feature. It recently recommended Mike Moats' Tiny Landscapes blog, which is quite nice. It's nice to see someone who is even more obsessed with taking pictures of leaves than I am.

Also, he is much better at it than me. So anyway, if you like that I take lots of pictures of leaves and can't get enough, or if you can't stand my pictures and want a second opinion, check out Mike's photography.

Iceland Portfolio Begins

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:53:47 +0000

I'm home safely from Iceland, and I'm now starting the long process of getting my many pictures ready to post. There should be enough material to keep the photoblog very active for the next ~3 months at a reasonable pace. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I loved taking them. I fully realize that in the long run, these Iceland pictures will set your expectations exceedingly high for future landscape photography from me, probably higher than central Illinois can consistently deliver. I guess this just means I'll have to go back to Iceland again soon.

I can't think of anything more creative than to post pictures relatively chronologically. So today we're starting with my first experience with the midnight sun in Reykjavik. Expect to soon see glaciers, waterfalls, geysers, black sand beaches, mountains, rock formations, etc.

A postcard from Iceland

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:40:55 +0000

Hi everyone, wish you were here!

I just happened to visit the most beautiful spot on the planet today. I thought you would like to know.

New Look

Sat, 03 May 2008 04:33:20 +0000

You may notice a new look for mikero.com. I recently saw a website that used a blog software theme called Vostok, and really liked how it looked, so I essentially stole all of its good ideas and adapted it for my site (and since it was GPL-licensed, I don't have to be ashamed to admit it). Then I made a lighter version of the theme since the dark one might be a bit of a downer for some people. I've only tested things out in Firefox, so hopefully it looks ok in your browser too.

This also gave me a chance to roll out the logo that I doodled in my notebook last year. I like it! I just realized I haven't posted any pictures in 6 weeks, so hopefully I can do something about that next.

Addendum: if you were having trouble with the stylesheet not loading, either try loading the site again (I have changed the style-switcher javascript, hopefully for the better) or click the "light" or "dark" links at the top of the page to set a correct cookie.

Astronomy Pictures

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:35:36 +0000

Everyone should look at this collection of images from the Cassini mission to Saturn. That link will take you to the highlights, but elsewhere on the site you can see basically every picture taken from Cassini, as well as Voyager and Gallileo. Most of the good ones are available in very high resolution, and would look very nice printed out in a large format and hanging on your wall (I assume all the images are public domain -- the JPL pictures from Mars are).

My favorite is in Saturn's shadow (especially the 2nd one on that page). The amazing part about this image is that Earth is visible as a tiny dot through the rings. Some other nice ones are on the final frontier, the other side of Iapteus, ring world, odd world, classic appeal.

You can also get all the pictures from the Mars rover. Most of them are pretty stark Marsy landscapes, but some of the panoramas are pretty nice, like this one of Victoria crater.

Late addition: Finally, check out all the Hubble telescope images that are fit to print. They actually encourage you to print them out yourself.