Recently my friend Mike was looking for a service to sync his documents between his laptop (Linux) and his desktop (Windows). This is often a tricky problem involving a USB stick or something of that nature, but he wanted something more automatic. I told him I knew of nothing that would quite fit the bill.
Of course, my other friend Tom decided that there must be a solution out there somewhere and did some googling. He found this little gem:
getdropbox.com
I don’t really have to much need for such a program, but I decided to download it anyway. I must say it is rather nifty. After installing the program and registering it to your account, you are given a folder that represents your Dropbox. It acts just like any other folder in your filesystem except for one very important rule – in the background the Dropbox program is constantly checking for updates to the folder and updating as necessary. After syncing with the online storage, any other computers running dropbox and set up for the same account will see and automatically download changes.
But that’s not all! Since it all works by syncing remotely, you also have the option of logging in through the web interface to download files you might need without having to install the program on another computer. It also can help you undelete or roll back changes.
But wait, there’s more! Not only can you log in and get access to your files, but you can also put files into the public folder in the dropbox and share them with friends via a link. Or you can put the files in your photos folder and create a gallery that can be viewed in slideshow form.
And that’s not all! You can also invite users to share folders in your dropbox. Then any of them can make changes and everyone will be able to see the changes instantly. That’s really sweet for collaboration on a group project.
So, if you’ve ever been wishing for an easier way to keep files in sync between multiple computers or for a way to instantly share some of those files with friends without having to upload to something like flickr, look into dropbox. While it’s in beta, you’re limited to a free 2GB storage limit. They have plans to offer a paid 50GB storage limit down the line, once testing is complete.
(ELOG 4 for CS3790: Cognitive Science)
Last Tuesday we had a class discussing Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders. But… I wasn’t there. In light of this, I decided to read up on Autism and watch the video shown in class.
(The video is: The Mind of a Visual Thinker [youtube])
Temple Grandin is a fascinating person. Her talk (see video above) on visual thinking was a great look into the thought process of someone one the Autistic Spectrum. Apparently she doesn’t think in words like many people, but instead thinks completely in visual pictures. When she hears the word steeple, she doesn’t just call to mind attributes of steeples, or even a generic steeple, but actual pictures of steeples she has seen at some point.
To Grandin, the major feature tying together the various parts of the Autistic Spectrum, is that all have a different way of thinking about things from those that are not in the Autistic Spectrum. She mentions three specific ways of thinking that many in the Autistic Spectrum find themselves in. One is thinking in pictures, which is the way Grandin herself thinks. Others may think in patterns or even in sounds, but the common theme is that these people think in one way more exclusively, rather than being able to easily switch and relate the different ways of thinking.
The physiological causes of Autism have not been found, but the current theory of how the behavioral differences develop follows this model:
The idea being that the genetic and possible environmental factors lead to a difference in the way the brain develops, which affects how the person is able to think, and finally results in an observable difference in behavior. Work is currently being done to develop a model that explains exactly how this process occurs in a way that fits current evidence. (A Cognitive Model of Autism [cc.gatech.edu])
In understanding Autism Spectrum Disorders, we do important work not only in helping those with Autism survive in a world of what Grandin refers to as neurotypicals. but also in understanding how the mind in general works.
This Friday was Georgia Tech’s Annual Six Flags day. The school rents out the park and sells tickets at a discount to students. It’s a pretty sweet deal, $13 for a ticket that’d normally cost $30-$40. Plus, the lines are typically shorter than those you’d find on a normal day.
I love roller-coasters, and Six Flags has some good ones. Unfortunately, this year there were a lot of other students thinking the same thing. The lines for the Batman and Superman rides, two of the better coasters in the park, were hideously long. Like rumors of people waiting two and a half hours long. We opted not to risk waiting in those two lines for hours on end.
It probably didn’t help that the park was short a couple of rides they had previous years, but the unfortunate truth of the matter was that the park was a bit overcrowded this year as opposed to the last. There were long lines even for the rides that last year had practically no lines (mainly because people think they suck) – like the Ninja.
It wasn’t all bad though – we got in line for the Goliath relatively early, only waiting about an hour for what is arguably one of the park’s best rides. We also experienced pretty short lines for the Cyclone and the Scream Machine, two old wooden monstrosities that cause major headaches from the extreme rickety vibrations. Awesome, but also nauseating. The new metal rides are so much smoother, but they don’t give off that whole could-break-apart-and-kill-you-at-any-moment vibe.
We made our last ride of the night the Georgia Scorcher. This ride was probably my favorite, but the designer of the ride is undoubtedly the most spiteful person to walk the face of the planet. The seats are designed to hold you in by lifting you up by the groin and holding down your shoulders, so either the designer hates men or has a very kinky fetish. I’m talking major discomfort if you strap in wrong.
All in all, I’ll probably go again, but this next time I hope Six Flags has a few more rides running or Tech decides to sell a few less tickets.
Oh, and apparently everyone decides to go to Steak and Shake after Six Flags, so don’t think you’re the only one brilliant enough to come up with that idea, or you’ll be stuck waiting an hour to get your shakes.
Nothing sucks more than a math test you haven’t studied enough for. Except maybe a math test you haven’t studied enough for that starts at 8 am. We had our first combo test today. It wasn’t quite as bad as I expected it to be, but it definitely was painful.
Combinatorics is basically advanced counting. You wouldn’t expect it to be as complicated as it is. But when you start talking about strings of length 20 with 4 t’s and distinct beginning and ending letters, it gets kind of tricky.
Of course, I didn’t think it wasn’t necessarily hard, it was just too long. There wasn’t enough time to finish everything to the extent I would have liked. You can tell a test is too long when there’s not that random guy who finishes in 30 minutes and makes you feel like you’re completely retarded.
Luckily, when a test makes you feel down, there’s always a way to make it feel better – IHOP. It’s been a long time since I’ve been, and man did I need it. All the stress goes away when you bite into a fruit filled crepe. Yum, yum.
And on top of that, there’s the mid-season finale of Burn Notice, a show I’ve grown rather fond of. It may have started crappy, but today has ended pretty well.
I’ve been updating my blog a decent amount lately. To do so, I’ve been using the blogging software known as MarsEdit. WordPress comes with a web-based system for posting, but I find a desktop application to be far more effective for meeting my needs in an application.
MarsEdit meets my needs pretty well. It allows me to save drafts locally and work on them when I don’t have an internet connection. It also allows me to drag and drop pictures into my posts with no additional work. I can literally drag a picture from wikipedia and drop it into the edit box, having it come out as it did in my previous post for Cog Sci. It handles all of the uploading and resizing automagically.
MarsEdit certainly isn’t the only desktop blogging application. I’ve tried a few others before. Mainly Ecto, and a bit of Blogo. I feel MarsEdit has the cleanest, most useful interface I’ve encountered though.
It does come with the unfortunate price tag of $29, which seems a little steep for the amount of use I personally will get out of it. (Seeing as my blog only stays active about one month a year.) I’m not sure if I’ll find myself buying the full version when my trial expires, but if I don’t, I think I’ll have a hard time replacing it. Bottom line, if you need to make posts to a blog on a Mac, wish to avoid using the web interface, and are willing to pay some money, MarsEdit is definitely a worthwhile tool.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the nifty Flickr integration, which doesn’t affect me a whole lot, since I rarely post to flickr, but it can upload your images to your Flickr account before dropping them into your post.
