Entries Tagged 'Cool shit' ↓

There’s an in-crowd in the skeptic community.  I’m not in it.  That’s one of my main feelings on my return home from TAM London.

The speakers were all interesting and had great messages.

But, the flavor of the event was more seminar than meeting.  Meaning, there wasn’t a lot of interaction with the big guns in the field.  Sure, there was plenty of book signing and hand shaking.  No one I saw refused a photo request.  But, there were also no small group sessions where we that are closer to the grass roots of the skeptic movement could pick the minds and experience of the speakers or even the other delegates about any particular topics.

That would be my suggestion for next year.  The seminars are always interesting, but without some more direct interaction, they are no more informative than watching the event on the DVD.  Plan for this.  Perhaps publish a schedule of events that delegates could sign up to attend on a first come basis when they pay for their entry to the event.  I’d reserve a portion of the seats at these small group sessions for people that pay at the door, so they have a crack at some of them.

More from my notes on TAM London in the coming days.

I usually don’t hold much stock in psychometrics.  As an exercise in that management course I took in London a couple weeks ago, we touched on various tools.  One that I remembered taking nearly twenty years ago at the USAF NCO Academy at Keesler AFB, MS, was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

While the instructor was talking, I took an online MBTI test.  I am still an INTJ.  My strengths of preferences were 11%, 25%, 50%, and 78%, respectively.  There are books written on interpreting those results.

It turns out I am in a group making up between 1 and 2 percent of people.  [un-referenced claim follows] Of the INTJ’s, 37% of them are measured to be in the top 2% of the population in IQ (as am I).  Now you may bow down before me.  Ow.  Hurt myself patting my own back for my cleverness.

What I ran into yesterday was the INTJ Central website.  Their Compleat Idiot’s Guide to the INTJ is absolutely brilliant!

I was reading it late at night and nearly woke up my wife so she could read it, too.  The accuracy is stunning and specific.  Anyone who knows me will agree, I don’t doubt.

When I find the same thing measured twice, and confirmed by other similar measures, it makes me take more notice of it.  There is a lot to read about on this subject, so I’ve got something new to entertain me for a while.

I’m away for the week, attending a management course in London.  After the first day, I am disappointed to report I have learned nothing new.

The hotel, at GBP 150 a night, can’t even give wifi internet access.  Money grubbing bastards.

So, I’m next door at the British Library, using their free wifi.  What a great library.  I think.  I didn’t bring anything with my address on it so I can’t actually get a library card to get into the fucking library.  Crap!

A woo report:  The hotel I’m staying in, Novotel St. Pancras, has no floor 13.  Actually, they do, they just call it floor 14.  What the hell?  Does this superstition still carry such weight?

I ought to accidentally break one of their mirrors to give them some real bad luck.

I was cleaning out my home directory and forgot I had this stuff.  It’s a collection of Java based slide rules (Java code by Eric Ross and Stefan Vorkoetter, used by permission).  I also have a decent collection of slide rules and not so long ago used my flagship rule, a Kueffel and Esser Decilon, to do two years of differential and integral calculus.

I haven’t had to use the calculus for three years, though.  I couldn’t integrate a problem today if my life depended on it.  That concerns me.  It cost a lot of time and effort to get that knowledge into my head.

I can’t be the only one to experience this.  What did you do about it?

A Romanian colleague at work brought a little microscope in to show it to me.  I offered to clean it up and overhaul it.

The cleanup operation went smoothly.  I was able to disassemble the eyepiece cell and clean the lens very well.  It is about the size of a split pea.  How someone can make a proper lens that small is a mystery to me.  There was no way to disassemble the objectives without destroying them, so I just cleaned them in place.  They came out pretty well.

The body and hardware was pretty easy to clean and re-lubricate.  It works very smoothly now.  I had no slides to actually try out the optics, but I was able to look through a cleaning paper and see the microfibers very well at 100x using only the reflected light from an open window next to the table.

I couldn’t find this exact scope on the internet, so this is the first one (probably not).  I return it to it’s owner on Monday, so I thought I’d get some pictures of it before I gave it back.  I hope she enjoys it.

Update (March 4):  With more people searching, we are getting very confident this is the only example of this exact Eikow model on the internet.  Also, the owner is very pleased with the results of my overhaul, both cosmetically and functionally.  I am glad it will be put to use.

Now, I have to get one of my own.  I’m finding all sorts of small stuff I’d like to examine and have no microscope to do it.  I also want one for my two boys’ education over the next 17 years.  Any suggestions?