Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Today I finished the final piece of office reorganisation.

The 3 x 6 unit rack of Effektiv shelves now fills one side of the room, and is slowly filling up with kipple, while the venerable old Sten unit that sat beside my desk has now been mounted as a wall unit above marypcb's desk.

The tricky bit here was dealing with the room's picture rail - but four rubber door stoppers made excellent spacers, and the shelves now hang in the air in just the way that bricks don't. At least, now that's finally fitted, I don't have to perch precariously above a desk, powertools in hand while trying (like a doctor in ER hunting for a vein) to find a spot for a rawplug in a wall full of blown dry paster...

The whole exercise made and excellent excuse for purchasing a cordless screwdriver/drill combo - which came in the most macho black and orange box. marypcb rather enjoyed carrying it home from the shops...

Looking across the Marlborough Valley to the distant mountains, from the entrance of the Cloudy Bay winery, where we had just had a rather delightful tasting session.

Marlborough, New Zealand
December 2004

One for ramtops - the view that's used for the label of one of her favourite wines...

Data from the Where's George money tracking web site is being used by epidemiologists to track just how people move around the US (and the world).

The results of their research are a new set of models for handling the movement of viruses - based on simple scaling laws.

Hufnagel said that the group's findings were surprising because the bills moved along a simple mathematical model, called universal scaling laws. In this case, scaling laws describe movement from local areas to regional to long-distance lengths, but they have been applied to biology and physical systems.

Using data from half a million bills tracked on the site, the scientists developed a scaling law theory that describes the observed movements of travellers over distances from just a few kilometers to a few thousand. For example, most money travels locally, but there is a small likelihood it will move across the country.

Fascinating stuff, and all from what began life as a simple idea.

rowanf'll certainly find this interesting...