Posts

November 21, 2012

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Your computer caught a lethal virus, or more likely you hit a dodgy download site and gave the virus to your computer yourself. Either way, you may be scuppered if you cannot even boot the PC…it needs digital CPR. The solution: Create a rescue CD, boot into a safe environment, and rid your PC of [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkCPR for PCs

November 20, 2012

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10:20 PM | Curiosity's Mars discovery called 'one for history books'

!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????Curiosity's Mars discovery called 'one for history books'

November 17, 2012

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9:51 PM | Under pressure, even scientists say things exist for a purpose

Promiscuous teleology is the natty term given to the tendency many people have to see purpose in the world around them. Teleology just means an explaining things in terms of goals or function, and it's not always wrong. It's perfectly correct, for example, to say that children wear mittens to keep their hands warm. But whenever you hear someone say something like "The sun shines on us to keep us warm", or "Plants make oxygen for us to breath", that's promiscuous teleology. These kinds of […]

November 13, 2012

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10:18 PM | Influential Data in Multilevel Regression: What are your strategies?

The application of multilevel regression models has become common practice in the field of social sciences. Multilevel regression models take into account that observations on individual respondents are nested within higher-level groups such as schools, classrooms, states, and countries. In ...

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6:55 PM | Cut the cr

I use a Google Chrome extension that replaces mentions of select words with items from a photostream. The default in this plugin, unpolitic.me, is to show pix of kittehs, but I have it set to show guitars instead. It works to keep you sane during election campaigns when you’re using Facebook and Twitter and so [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkCut the cr

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9:51 AM | On digital embarrassment

I’ve got a new book out. In case you hadn’t noticed. Deceived Wisdom (UK amazon, Kindle, ePub). I gave a dedicated copy to my parents when they visited Sunday (yes, one between two!). Other friends have told me they bought a copy, which is nice and I’m very grateful for that. Lots of online friends [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkOn digital embarrassment

November 10, 2012

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10:01 PM | Hare Krishna devotees are prone to jump to conclusions

Suppose I were to tell you that I had a jar, hidden behind a screen, filled either with 85 red and 15 blue marbles, or with 15 red and 85 blue marbles. Now suppose I take out a marble at random and show it to you, before putting it back in the jar. If that marble was red, would you feel confident in saying that there were 85 red marbles in the jar? What about if I pulled out another red, and another red? And what about if I then pulled out a blue marble? This is the game that Michelle Lim […]

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5:49 PM | Discovering video game music

ClassicFM has a great post in which the radio station has selected some of the best musical scores from video games pointing out that they’re often every bit as exciting as the best movie soundtracks: Call Of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, Halo 4 cited. Video Game Music – Discover – Classic FM. Related Posts:Music Video GenomeStream [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkDiscovering video game music

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5:37 PM | Paypal and DropBox mashed for bloggers

WordPress users with files to sell stored in their Dropbox cloud could use this neat little plugin PalDrop to allow users to make fast and easy payment for those files. Essentially, it hooks your Paypal email to your Dropbox account and enables and allows you to accept payment before visitors can access specific files. WordPress [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkPaypal and DropBox mashed for bloggers

November 09, 2012

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3:42 PM | Announcing the uMotif Parkinson’s Tracker

Apologies that the site has been a bit quiet. We have been busy on a new project. A smartphone app for tracking Parkinson’s disease. A year ago I gave a talk about the Boozerlyzer at the European Quantified Self conference. … Continue reading →

November 06, 2012

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7:20 AM | Faces, faces everywhere

Of all the many human irrationalities, our hyperactive drive to pick out faces in the world around us is one of the most fun. There are whole blogs devoted to it. Like most abilities, this one varies across individuals. Which lead Tapani Reiki and colleagues, from the University of Helsinki, to wonder whether it is connected to beliefs about the world, in particular paranormal and religious beliefs. So they recruited 47 people (40% students) who were either strong believers or strong […]

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5:16 AM | Toxicity of drugs

This diagram illustrates the legal classification of drugs has very little to do with how lethal they are. DEA Drug Schedules (2004) | TruthTheory.

November 04, 2012

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3:12 PM | Buddy can you spare a dime bag?

Psychopharmacologist Ethan Perlstein wants your help to build his own meth lab. He needs $25,000 to get started and has turned to the internet to help him out. Using the science crowdsourcing site Rocket Hub he and his lab colleagues … Continue reading →

November 03, 2012

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9:42 AM | Review: Western Digital MyNet N900 Central

Western Digital sent us their latest media device for review: the MyNet N900 Central. This slick black box is a dual-band wireless router with a built in 1 terabyte hard drive (a 2 TB model is available). Connect it with a standard network cable to your cable or ADSL modem, run the setup from the [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkReview: Western Digital MyNet N900 Central

October 31, 2012

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3:42 PM | Create a 3D cover for your ebook

Ever wondered what a digital book would look like? Well, 3D package is a 3D-box graphic generator that lets you upload a front, back and side and then automatically generates a 3D box from those images with the option to make it look like a book, a DVD or CD case or software packaging. You [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkCreate a 3D cover for your ebook

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10:56 AM | ProCog – Transparent Search Engine

ProCog is a transparent search engine focused on content and search optimization. Get all the data used by a search engine for ranking and indexing so you can trust the results. Apparently, they have spidered and indexed 1 billion pages so far. What is transparent search: “Since the first engine appeared in the early 90′s, [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkProCog – Transparent Search Engine

October 30, 2012

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4:48 PM | SafeGmail Chrome plugin encrypts GMail

Send private e-mails through gmail. Easy to use PGP Pretty Good Privacy like encryption to Gmail. Works with any recipient. Send private e-mails through Gmail. Relies on a Q&A type password and you obviously have to find a way to share that in advance with your correspondent (presumably not via email). SafeGmail. Related Posts:Opt out [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkSafeGmail Chrome plugin encrypts GMail

October 28, 2012

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2:19 PM | Your password was revealed

The top three passwords used on the internet are still bizarrely, "password," "123456," and "12345678," and remain unchanged from last year’s list. New entries to the list now include "welcome, " "jesus," "ninja," "mustang, " and "password1." (did those who originally used just password somehow think that adding a 1 would make them safe. I [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkYour password was revealed

October 26, 2012

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6:56 AM | Get rid of American politics

If you use social media and are bored stiff by all the political shenanigans stateside, then this Chrome extension is for you, it removes the politics from your Facebook and Twitter feeds permanently – by replacing the bickering about Barack and the Mitt malarkey with cats and stuff. It wouldn’t be so bad if “Mitt” [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkGet rid of American politics

October 25, 2012

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12:27 PM | Constitución en Facebook

Icelanders Approve Crowdsourced Constitution.

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9:01 AM | Stay off Facebook, unless you need to use it

Facebook Nanny is a Google Chrome browser extension that only lets you access Facebook if you have pending notifications (which for some people may be all the time) or you need to use the site to chat to someone. This kind of app should be squashed, it’s a procrastinator’s nightmare come to true… Facebook Nanny. [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkStay off Facebook, unless you need to use it

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7:23 AM | News about your famous friends

Connect Newsle to your Facebook, Linkedin and email account and it will trawl the news to finds articles about you, your friends and colleagues, and anyone else you care about and notify almost immediately. The system is catching the “real” news mentions about your friends and contacts as opposed to just their twitter updates and [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkNews about your famous friends

October 23, 2012

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8:00 PM | Software piracy in China

Data mining of publicly available information from Google and China’s main search engine Baidu reveal that college-educated, relatively affluent, information technology professionals and students are most likely among their compatriots to be using search terms associated with finding pirated business software, at least according to a new study by Yale University. Writing in the International [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkSoftware piracy in China

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3:32 PM | Tunlr way out of the US to watch region-coded streaming

Do you want to stream video or audio from U.S.-based on-demand Internet streaming media providers but cant get in on the fun because youre living outside the U.S.? Fear not, you have come to the right place. Tunlr lets you stream content from sites like Hulu, MTV, CBS, ABC, Pandora and more to your Mac [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkTunlr way out of the US to watch region-coded streaming

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10:02 AM | IFTTT recipes for Skydrive

Now that IFTTT can activate SkyDrive the number of recipes that users have created has grown quickly: Here are some examples of how you can use IFTTT with your SkyDrive account: Save your Facebook photo uploads to your SkyDrive, save your Instagram pictures to SkyDrive, sync new files in a specific Dropbox folder to SkyDrive, [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkIFTTT recipes for Skydrive

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7:14 AM | A few of my Twitter block words

Words and phrases in your twitter bio that will cause me to semi-automically block you and/or report you for spam: “I follow back”, “follow me please”, “always follow back” etc “I love 1D”, “I love one direction”, “I heart onedirection” etc “Bieber”, “Niall”, “X-factor”, “Sheeran” “guru”, “expert”, “maven”, “raconteur”, […]

October 22, 2012

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8:55 PM | Inequality drives everyone, but especially the poor, to support religious politicians

It's now widely recognised that social and economic inequality is an important factor related to how religious a given society is. But what's less clear is whether inequality actually increases support for religious politicians - and whether this affects the rich as well as the poor. Ekrem Karakoç (Binghamton University, USA) and Birol Bașkan (Georgetown University, Qatar) used data from the 2000 World Values Survey to test this relationship. They found that older, less-educated, poorer […]

October 18, 2012

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10:00 PM | Oh no, not one of *those* Christmas letters

I was putting together a draft post listing a few of things I’ve been up to this year. An excuse really just to reminisce and to share some photos from my Imaging Storm photo blog and to link to the reports I wrote following conferences, lab visits and exhibitions. I was also going to mention [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkOh no, not one of *those* Christmas letters

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8:48 PM | Why are religious people so fertile?

On average, religious people have more children than non-religious people. Now, that's a sweeping generalisation, of course. However, statistically it seems to hold good, to different degrees, for all the societies that I've seen examined. But why? It's an important question. A common answer is that this is evidence that religion is evolutionarily advantageous. The idea here is that religious belief in some way facilitates having lots of children (perhaps by making you a nicer, trustworthy […]

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10:30 AM | When Web 2.0 comes to the real world

Two facets of modern life: the social internet (web 2.0) and the web of things (internet-connected devices other than conventional computers and smart phones) are heading towards a confluence that could improve domestic energy efficiency, allow employees, family and friends to share physical as opposed to software tools and games more effectively as well as [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkWhen Web 2.0 comes to the real world

Kamilaris, A. (2012). The practice of online social networking of the physical world, Int. J. Space-Based and Situated Computing, 2 (4) 252. DOI:

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