Bing! I am coming to London, Israel

Bing pleasantly surprised me today – was able to get a ticket to London for the 18th of December for 500 bucks.  The lowest fair of all I’ve seen so far online.

So, it looks like I will be in London 19th and 20th, on the 21st or so I am planning on flying to Israel and spending a little over a week there and then back to US.  If anybody is there, ping me – would be nice to meet up, catch up, cause some trouble 🙂

Haven’t gotten myself a ticket for London-Tel Aviv.  Got a recommendation to go EasyJet.  And then there is the coming back to US bit, which looks like it might cost an arm, a leg, a first-born child and God only knows what else. (seriously dude, what’s up with fluctuating prices?)

Anyway.  Not sure what to expect.  Looking forward to seeing Cyn, meeting Matty, driving on the wrong side of the road without a license if they let me, etc.

Dad and Lyme Disease

Lyme Disease is apparently very nasty stuff – dad was recently diagnosed and now it’s taking him a long time to recover.  One month of antibiotics seems like intense treatment, but, talking to him, despite this intensity, I get the impression that he is frustrated over the lack of concrete knowledge/prognosis of the disease that would tell him with some certainty how soon before he feels better.  Initially he was told that it would take 10 days to feel better.  Then 2 months.  And now 2 years.

So I decided to do a bit of research on my own and see what’s up.  Here is what I found:

Contradictions

My mind is thoroughly blown by the fact that nice girls can turn out to be complete, pardon my French, bitches, while badass girls can be the sweetest, nicest, pretty much hopeless romantics.

AT&T after SfN

This year, at SfN, I had a terrible experience with ATT unable to make or receive calls while at the conference center while drooling at Verizon and T-Mobile phones not having any problems.  So I decided to call ATT and resolve this issue.  The following is a record for me (and you in case you don’t want to waste your time):

Unhappy with MozyPro

OK, as a business customer, I am becoming extremely unhappy with Mozy Pro.

Clubbing in NY

OK, ever since Linda taught me a little how to dance (Linda, you are freaking awesome – for those who are interested, she started teaching in New York.  Flyer below), I began to actually enjoy dancing.  Perhaps it was in part because I discovered that Capoeira has beat rhythm into me, perhaps it was all Linda – no idea.  But the point is that I now enjoy it to the point that, on occasion, when I am in NY, I just go, by myself, to clubs to dance…  I know, freaky, I had no idea I’d be the type to do this, but stranger things have happened.  To me anyway.

Virtual Desktop Manager

So, thanks to Nick, I am installing the Virtual Desktop Manager.  Supposedly very cool.  Actually, I probably should get myself a new laptop with Windows 7.  Apparently, doing virtualization plugs directly into hardware, so it’s possible to run Windows 7 in Windows 7 with virtually no performance hit.  Good stuff.

Update: sluggish on my Lenovo.  Gah.  Nick recommended this as an alternative: http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/

Mozy Pro – Backup Into the Cloud

Update: Unhappy with Mozy Pro (link).

Service: www.mozy.com

Overall, I am happy with them.  I had a hard-drive crash once, and was able to recover data.  Except for one thing…

Reading

Reading a paper call Eye Movements in Reading and Information Processing: 20 Years of Research (published in 1998).  Gonna use this thing to take notes. 

• It being 11 years old seems a bit old, but perhaps most of the interesting stuff was found early on?
• Basic terminology:

• Saccade – when eye moves from looking at point A to point B

• Duration of a saccade related to distance covered: 2º take 30ms, 5º take 40-50ms
• saccade latency – saccade a motor movement –> latency – 150-170ms.

• separate process: decision on when and where to move eyes
• evidence: cognitive processes can influence latency
• gap effect – if fixation point disappears before appearance of target, latency goes down

global center of gravity effect – given two objects, first saccade goes between them.  Position related to “weight” of objects (closer to heavier).