thoughts on philosophy and science

The economy and the housing crash is on everybody's mind these days and it's getting plenty of media coverage. I couple of weeks ago Bush published his draft FY2009 budget and I had a question. Is it possible for the government to provide free housing for all of its citizens?

As a promise to a friend, I said I would publish my goal list for last year as an example of well.... goal setting. I explained that by merely writing a goal down, for me at least, they have a way of coming to life and coming true. I get a strange courage when I see them on paper (computer screen), because they become real to me. (I wonder if this works for grander goals, like 'start a business', or 'make $1m this year', 'conquer small African country and name after myeslf'.)

The problem most people have is making the choice of what gadgets to carry with them. Already carrying an mp3 player and a cell phone is cumbersome. That is a compromise of what you could be carrying, thus there is a push towards greater integration of function into devices.

The best solution, functionally, is a laptop. It is the general, all purpose, everything available platform. But it's cumbersome, too. And it doesn't make for a good cell phone and is not as portable as a cell phone (concealability, culture trend, cost, etc.)

Introduction
I originally wrote this in college, a couple of years ago. I wrote how solid state drives would improve computer performance and wanted to update this article now that multi-core processors and solid state harddrives (SSD) have become a reality.

Just some notes I made on green living. Not particularly interesting, but I wanted to keep them so I might as well publish.

Goal: No impact living, which means living in an environment without having any impact, positive or negative. This also means energy and oil independence and foreign independence. This has the benefit of reducing pollution and smog, mitigating global warming, reducing habitat destruction and creating a more robust economy.

Solution: Reduce energy usage, waste, consumption, be a selective consumer, and use only renewable resources.

Introduction
After completing my research on real devices, I was ready to tackle power systems. I chose to start at the top and work my way down to the details. This article discusses power systems from a top level view and then explains how to design a power distribution network. We don't consider power system design, feedback or control here. The focus will be on the power distribution network. Almost everything I talk about here I learned from my colleagues.

If you think you have your finances in order, think again. I am the best money handler I know and "Personal Finance for Dummies" still taught me a few things! It is an excellent book on personal finance, planning, insurance and investment planning.

Using this book I put together an equation which summarizes the inflow and outflow of money. It's not difficult to understand and for me helped me visualize how to best spend my money.

Most books on electronics theory treat the subject of passives in the following way:

Our Constitution is a pretty good one. It helped form the first (modern) free nation on earth and set an example for the rest of the world. It rewrote the book on government and put free men on the map. But, our Constitution could use an update. Why you say? It turns out that 200 years of this democratic republic has revealed a few flaws unforeseeable by our founding fathers. Many countries in Europe and Latin America have learned from our mistakes and have implemented changes in their own democracies.

Engadget reviewed perhaps the craziest keyboard ever created. A keyboard the likes of which have never been seen before. The keyboard of keyboards, the Optimus Maximus. Featured here as well, this bad boy features a built in display in every key, a couple USB ports, an SD card and a very clean look. The key displays are of course programmable and feature a frame rate of 10fps.