Leonardo Aranda's posterous

Yes, Roboto looks a lot like Helvetica.

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:58:00 -0700

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I want a Kindle but...

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 07:06:00 -0700

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Global Warming vs. Terrorism

Wed, 18 May 2011 08:20:00 -0700

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The Richest 400

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:19:00 -0800

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March Madness 2011

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 07:19:00 -0800

It is March, which means that March Madness is just around the corner. Last year I made a graph that showed the history of the tournament since the 64-team format was implemented. As pretty as I think the graph is, it did come with some problems, the biggest one being that it is easy to assume that each one of the four areas represents a specific region (currently named Midwest, West, East and South). Well, that is not the case.

This year, I wanted to get rid of that problem, but it was not as easy as making sure that the regions were always in the same spot because the regions are not always paired the same way (leaving aside the naming changes that have also happened.)

So here is what I decided to do for this year:

All 4 regions are grouped into one
Each team is shown individually – 1664 teams are shown
Teams are arranged by date

My plan is to post a few more of these graphs over the next days and weeks but I figured that it would be good to start with the Champions. I hope you like it and find it useful when filling your bracket this year.

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Recommendations - 2010

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:41:00 -0800

This is the first time I get around to writing a recap of the year in the form of recommendations. Some of the things are not from 2010 but I got to know/use them for the first time this year. I hope it is useful to some.

Movies. This year was not big on movies for me. I became a father back in February so time has been limited. The Hurt Locker was by far the best movie I saw in 2010 and one of the best I've seen in my life. The low budget film Moon was not great but was very enjoyable. Taxi Driver... yes, I saw it for the first time this year. I know you know it is good. Other worth watching films: Sherlock Holmes, Riding Giants and 180 South. Disappointments: Religulous and Capitalism: A Love Story.

Books. My brother gave me The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata and it was such a pleasure to read. I might be biased because I enjoy Go so much, but it also got Kawabata the Nobel Prize for Literature. Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis is a fascinating and infuriating book to read about Wall Street. Food Rules by Michael Pollan is a compilation of simple – and sometimes obvious – rules about food that is worth having. Finally, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber is a life saver.

Music. I was really disappointed when Apple shut down Lala.com, I then signed up to Rdio and I definitely recommend it even though it is missing some great music (like Vampire Weekend). Jack Johnson may be the artist that I listen to the most, in part because I listen to his music with my son, he made the soundtrack for Curious George which is fabulous (The Sharing Song, and The 3 R's are my favorite songs in the album). Jack White's third band The Dead Weather is awesome and so is Mumford and Sons. I discovered in 2010: The Raveonettes, Florence + The Machine, The Von Blondies and The Avett Brothers. On my rotation: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Them Crooked Vultures, The Roots, Kings of Leon, Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz, The Kills, Vampire Weekend, The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. But I cannot finish this list without mentioning the song Fuck You by Cee-Lo.

iPhone Apps. Communication: Facebook, Twitter, PingChat and Google Voice. Photography: Camera+, iMovie, Hipstamatic and Instagram. Reading: Instapaper, Reeder, NYTimes and iBooks. Games: Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Osmos and Zen Bound 2. Music: Rdio and Pandora. Miscellaneous: Google Earth, Dropbox, Posterous, MLB At Bat 2010 and Netflix.

iPad Apps. Flipboard is fantastic, Twitter works great, iBooks, NYTimes, Instapaper, Pandora, Netflix, Google Earth, MLB At Bat 2010 and World of Goo which plays great on the iPad.

I think that is it. Again, I hope you find this list useful and please let me know if you have any recommendations for me.

Best wishes for 2011!

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A hot dense soup of quarks and gluons

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 09:52:00 -0800

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a 'mini-Big Bang'

"At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma."

Quarks and gluons are sub-atomic particles - some of the building blocks of matter. In the state known as quark-gluon plasma, they are freed of their attraction to one another. This plasma is believed to have existed just after the Big Bang.

Fascinating.

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Radiohead's Creep. A visualization.

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:04:43 -0700

Inspired by FlowingData - Famous Movie Quotes

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My pre-review of Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape" [UPDATED]

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:01:00 -0700

So, Sam Harris is coming out with a new book titled "The Moral Landscape." You can learn more about it here. I have not read it – it comes out tomorrow – but I've found that every time he talks about his idea about a moral landscape he has to explain why he thinks that science can and should be involved in morality. This is a good question on its own, but what bothers me is that this question is never asked to all the other institutions that claim that they can define morality.

More important questions are: Why should morality be defined by any religious institution and not by science? and based on what?

We've taken sets of moral values for granted. They were here when we were born and they had been here for centuries. But what most people choose to ignore is that these set of values can be traced back to a set of people who did not follow a scientific method to define them. And although some can claim that they came from divine inspiration, this claim cannot be proven.

So, could these sets of moral values that were defined by people centuries ago be improved by people now? I bet.

Should the process used to improve these sets of moral values be scientific? I can't find a reason for it to be any other way.

UPDATE: Here is Sam Harris @ The Daily Show (10/4).

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About that Don't Ask Don't Tell bullshit.

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:07:23 -0700

So, you trust those in the military to risk their lives in Afghanistan. Watching for IEDs and snipers. Sleep deprived and knowing that it was just yesterday that one in their unit was hit. Stress as high as the temperature. Going from bunker to armored truck to bunker. Looking for the bad guys, who look exactly like the good guys that you are trying to build relationships with...

...as long as they are straight. Or if they are not, as long as they keep their mouth closed about it. Because it would just be too much for the rest of the military to handle. TOO MUCH!

Bullshit!

That bumper sticker in your car doesn't read: Support our straight (or discreet) troops.

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Is America ready for a black president?

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:15:29 -0700

We thought we answered that one when America elected Barack Obama as the next president of the United States, right? I mean, of course it is! Barack Obama got elected!

Well, because of all what I have seen since, and because of the rise of the Tea Party, the Birthers, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and all the rest. I am changing my answer to: Sadly, no. We just happen to have one.

*sigh*

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Steve, Please restore truthiness. - God.

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:21:00 -0700

Hi Steve,

I think God might've gotten our toasters mixed up. This seems to be for you.

Cheers!

( Original bread image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teojpg/3962873777/ )

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Apple, FaceTime is awesome, may I suggest TalkTime?

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:22:05 -0700

FaceTime is truly awesome and I find myself wishing that everyone in my family had an iPhone 4, but part of what is so great about FaceTime is the fact that once you start it, it takes the call to WiFi, and at that point, the chance of AT&T dropping your call vanishes.

This got me thinking: Why not do the same thing for audio alone? You start a call, you switch it to TalkTime if both parties are on WiFi and you stop worrying about AT&T dropping your call.

I know this sounds a lot like t-mobile's @Home service or AT&T's MicroCell, but these cost extra and require additional equipment. FaceTime doesn't and TalkTime shouldn't either.

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BBC: CRU climate scientists 'did not withold data'

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:17:00 -0700

Now that the damage is done.

BBC: CRU climate scientists 'did not withold data'

Climate scientists at a top UK research unit have emerged from an inquiry with their reputations for honesty intact but with a lack of openness criticised.

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Love for soccer is growing in the US.

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:15:41 -0700

According to this press release, president Obama called the US team and "told them that while he was meeting with General Petraeus in the Oval Office, he could hear the rest of the West Wing erupt when Landon Donovan scored the game winner."

Few years from now meetings may actually be moved so that they do not interfere with World Cup matches.

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Typographic mess: Adidas' jerseys

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:05:00 -0700

It doesn't apply to all of the jerseys made by Adidas this World Cup, but the jerseys for Denmark and Spain (and maybe others) are a typographic mess. The variable tracking and character-width are hideous. A red card for the designer and for those who approved the design.

Photo by: Christof Koepsel/Getty Images.

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Pizza bagel =/= bagel pizza

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 10:32:59 -0700

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Hey, Apple, let's not go crazy with those pixels, OK?

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:06:00 -0700

Apple, I am more exited than anyone I know about the iPhone 4 coming with four times as many pixels as the previous 3 generations, but your chart showing why more pixels are better is a bit misleading.

4 times as many pixels is impressive on its own. I don't think that there was a need to show what 289 times as many pixels would do to prove that point.

Screenshot taken from the video at: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html

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D8: Steve Jobs on the Gizmodo Story

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:08:04 -0700

via video.allthingsd.com

I might've missed it, but I don't think I had heard claims of extortion related to this case before.

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My thoughts on "Lost" finale - Spoilers.

Mon, 24 May 2010 07:38:07 -0700

First of all, I want to say that I enjoyed the ride. I liked most of the episodes of the whole series, with the exception of Season 3. I kept telling myself that there were answers to all of these questions that kept arising.

Well, the show is over and as my wife put it after watching the finale:

It feels as if "Lost" is a card game that you are playing with a 5-year old and he keeps making up rules as he goes along.

Now we know that that was exactly what it was. Were there things that got resolved in the finale? You could say so. They are all dead and they are all together now. If all you were hoping for was for all the characters to get back together and a word about what happened to them. You got it.

If you wanted answers to: what is the island? what is the smoke monster? what happens if the smoke monster leaves the island? who are the others? where did the woman who raised Jacob and "smokey" come from? who build the statue? who build the temple? what is the purpose of the temple? who are the people in the temple? what is the beef between Ben and Charles? what happened to Walter and Michael? what is the light? why can "smokey" not kill Jacob? how come Jacob leaves the island when he wants? how does Eloise know how to get back to the island? why do women who get pregnant on the island die? why are the numbers important? (Am I missing any?)

Then you are out of luck.

But, hey! everyone is dead and together! who cares about these other small questions, right?

Wrong.

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