Dave Naffziger's Blog

Interesting:

• Medical Disorders caused by Astrological Sign? - No, of course not. But, if you look at tons of illnesses you’ll eventually draw correlations that are drawn from results in the anomalous 5% (or 1%) that suggest a non-existent correlation. Basically, if you cast a statistical dragnet make sure to follow it up with a real experiment.
• Miniature Military Robots - The US’ technical advantage in warfare has been focused on large metal on metal conflicts, and has not provided the tactical advantages needed in guerilla combat. That’s beginning to change - this article details a number of approaches that are being taken to provide technological superiority at the tactical level.
• Hearing Aids Boost Memory - Hopefully I’m far from losing my hearing, but this study fascinated me. People with hearing aids had better memory than those without. The theory is that the brain devotes less effort to signal processing and more to retention, which has all sorts of interesting implications.

Cool:

• Photo of a natural fractal. It’s called Romanesco Cauliflower, and looks like a CG generated fractal. I had to find lots of backup photos before I believed it was real.
• Light Socket Tesla Globe (via John). It screws into a lightbulb socket. I have no idea where to put one of these, but I ordered one anyway. The same site also sells this cool looking phosphor-coated bead hourglass. I was tempted, but think it might be one of those things that looks cooler in Skymall.

Useful:

• Joel on Customer Service - A must-read customer service article.
• Excel keyboard shortcuts - The suggestions in the post are quite pedestrian, but the commenters really showcase some great tips.
• Regex tester - We used regular expressions heavily at Quova, and they are extremely powerful tools for extracting value from semi-formatted data. They are also a bitch to get right - this online tool makes testing regular expressions super quick.