Justin Tyler Wiley

Last week I was lucky enough to be able to attend a presentation...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:00:56 -0400

Last week I was lucky enough to be able to attend a presentation by Grant Ingersoll to the RTP Semantic Web Group on Apache Mahout. Mahout is set of technologies designed to tackle machine learning problems in various clever ways, one of which is by using it’s fellow Apache project Hadoop (hence the name, Mahout apparently means “elephant driver”).

Grant did a great job explaining the use case for Mahout, by touching on how machine learning algorithms like those available in Mahout make Google news, Netflix recommendations, Amazon suggestions and virtually every other feature advanced web applications have come to rely on possible.

While HTML5 has been widely touted as “the future of the web”, I think it’s important to remember that the content has to come from somewhere, no matter how beautifully rendered, and that increasingly the content will be the result of inferences created by software like Mahout. Yet more of an incentive to continue plowing through Algorithms of the Intelligent Web.

Grant also spoke briefly about his new book Taming Text, which is all about extracting inferences from blobs of text. This also strikes me as a highly useful set of related techniques to have on hand, given the amount of data-munging typical software development jobs inevitably require.

Thanks to Phil Rhodes for putting together this excellent presentation.

As someone who gets gadget fever on a regular basis, I found...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:44:00 -0400

As someone who gets gadget fever on a regular basis, I found OSNews’s article describing the state of computer “recycling”, or what passes for it, very disturbing. Low or no safety standards for workers, shell charity organizations, and complete disregard for the environmental impact of discarded toxic waste are the norm in the foreign countries that receive our mountains iTrash.

The article mentions legal solutions to fix regulatory loopholes that allow this to go on in the United States, but more importantly it makes a solid argument for using refurbished equipment. Something I will have to consider before wandering the isles at Best Buy.

These pictures are courtesy of Basel Action Network

“But when the memory controller moves back onto the CPU...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:00:00 -0400

“But when the memory controller moves back onto the CPU die and takes the GPU with it, that’s going to give an instant, one-time boost to the overall platform’s performance and efficiency. In the case of both Intel and AMD, this boost should be large enough that, if you can hold off on your next laptop upgrade until next year, you should. These kinds of discontinuities, where a major, disruptive repartitioning of the standard system architecture drives a one-off performance boost, are quite rare. They’re worth holding out for if you can manage it.”

The oil continues to flow, and it does not bode well for life in...

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:59:00 -0400

The oil continues to flow, and it does not bode well for life in the Gulf. Based on studies at UNC of the Exxon Valdez in 2003, “…environmental consequences of the Exxon Valdez oil spill went far beyond the more than 250,000 seabirds, thousands of marine mammals and countless numbers of other coastal marine organisms killed in the first days, weeks and months.”

Come one, come all to the new Chapel Hill / Durham Peace Corps...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:53:56 -0400

Come one, come all to the new Chapel Hill / Durham Peace Corps Meetup group! I’m not sure what direction the group will take, but I’m definitely excited to meet some other volunteers, and folks interested in volunteering.

Are Autism and Fraqile X Syndrome reversable? “Dozens of...

Fri, 14 May 2010 19:00:00 -0400

Are Autism and Fraqile X Syndrome reversable?

“Dozens of academic labs across the globe have since shown that small molecules designed to block the activity of mGluR5 have the same effect, reducing abnormalities in mice with the fragile X mutation. Those abnormalities include seizures, atypical rates of protein synthesis, and other molecular glitches…”These compounds have made remarkable changes in animal models of fragile X, rescuing abnormal synaptic connections,” says Hagerman. “We’re very hopeful it will do the same for humans.”

“HealthCampRDU aims to be a highly-collaborative,...

Thu, 06 May 2010 19:35:00 -0400

“HealthCampRDU aims to be a highly-collaborative, day-long conference with a focus on issues and opportunities related to the changing face of healthcare.”

Mobile Health “Augmented Reality” Workshop, May...

Thu, 06 May 2010 14:59:48 -0400

Mobile Health “Augmented Reality” Workshop, May 26

“After nearly 20 years behind closed doors in research labs, Augmented Reality is taking shape as the next major wave of Internet innovation, overlaying and infusing the physical world with digital media, information, and experiences. At IFTF, we already know that mobile technologies are changing the way we interact with our health today—and we believe that Augmented Reality will furher transform this interaction by enabling us to see and envision, in real time, the full impact of our health and lifestyle choices.”

Image source

Megabiblioteca

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:00:00 -0400

Megabiblioteca

"Your identity is too important to be owned by any one company."

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:00:00 -0400

"Your identity is too important to be owned by any one company.":

Facebook’s Open Graph protocol is interesting…and disturbing. It’s “open” in the sense that anyone can use it. It’s closed in the sense that it references only Facebook, requires a Facebook account, and Facebook will own all the inferences it can draw from the link graph. A Facebook controlled web makes a lot of sense from Mark Zuckerberg’s perspective, but not from mine.

Visualizing the Health Care Debate

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:46:50 -0400

AMD’s What would you do with 48 cores contest will supply one...

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:04:00 -0400

AMD’s What would you do with 48 cores contest will supply one lucky winner with a 4 CPU, 48 core monster mother board based around the new Magny-Cours architecture, which has been characterized as the “CPU version of the American muscle car”. No mention of power draw

“We believe the Internet should make life better. Join us...

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:16:00 -0400

“We believe the Internet should make life better. Join us the week of September 14-21, 2009, as we take action to make a difference in our communities, our world, our Web.”

Alex’s excellent philly based urban hydroponic farm...

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:31:59 -0400

Alex’s excellent philly based urban hydroponic farm classes are up and running. Waiting to see the 45 pound tomatoes.

Environment & Finance Enterprise is live!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:13:30 -0400

Environment & Finance Enterprise is live!:

The first version of environmentfinance.com, a global project focused on promoting sustainable enterprise, is now live. It was great working with John Ganzi and Fred Gerards, looking forward to collaborating with them further.

Why is my Macbook running so hot all the time? I said to myself...

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:33:54 -0400

Why is my Macbook running so hot all the time? I said to myself today. Could there be a hidden process running thats gobbling up my CPU? Could it be a rootkit cloaking itself from a normal ps? Could I be hacked? Oh the paranoia. I couldn’t stand it, so I downloaded the antiquated Mac version of Rootkit Hunter and let it fly.

Searching for RH-Sharpe’s default files… Possible RH-Sharpe’s rootkit installed

Oh boy, I thought, and proceeded to wade through the enourmous shell script that is Rootkit Hunter for an hour, finally determining that the file /usr/bin/slice was the supposed culprit. slice, it turns out, comes from:

sh-3.2# /usr/bin/slice
/Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems.rb:636:in `report_activate_error’: Could not find RubyGem merb-slices (>= 0) (Gem::LoadError)
from /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems.rb:141:in `activate’
from /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems.rb:49:in `gem’
from /usr/bin/slice:18

The merb slice gem. Ay yi yi, a case of mistaken identity. So my computer just runs hot. Maybe.

When efficiency isn't everything

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:59:00 -0400

According to an article in the Internationl Herald Tribune, as many as sixty million Chinese citizens are facing a unique problem. China is rolling out a new identity database to keep better track of their citizens. Unfortunatly, the new identity database only recognizes 32,252 unique characters, far less than the estimated 55,000 characters in the Chinese language. Meaning huge numbers of Chinese citizens who happen to have those characters in their names, will soon have to change them.

It’s not clear why this apparent trade-off (fewer characters means fewer hard-drives to store the names database?) was made. But saving storage space at the expense of the developing cultural and lingual richness of the Chinese language, and the traditional freedom to uniquely name your children, seems like a poor trade-off in any language.

Professional Profile

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:35:28 -0500

Professional Profile:

My professional profile, hosted at LinkedIn.

Git Hub

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:28:04 -0500

Git Hub:

Various Open Source projects I have started or collaborated on, past and present.

First post

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:26:00 -0500

My Hosting Rails account has long been neglected. Because of that I’m moving to tumblr, because:

It’s more fun.
I don’t have to maintain it.

I hope to post more regularly in the future, thanks for stopping by!