Posts with this logo use 
June 14, 2008
CalDAV
Like most people, I want to be able to access my data from multiple locations, and to be able to share it, securely, with others. Hence my interest in using WebDAV fileshares, in wiki’s for note-taking and collaboration.
When Apple introduced iCal, in Tiger, I was initially quite excited by the ability to publish calendars to a WebDAV server. The calendars on my home computer were accessible from the offices, and vice versa. My wife could “subscribe” to my calendar, and I to hers. Unfortunately the publish/subscribe model isn’t as great in practice as it sounded in theory.
What happens when I find out that the meeting I entered into my office calendar has been cancelled? If I’m at home, I can read my office calendar, but I can’t write to it. Much better than Publish/Subscribe would be calendars that are readable and writeable from anywhere. So I was pretty interested that iCal, in Leopard, supports CalDAV.
June 10, 2008
Bagger-Lambert Again
I haven’t attempted to post more about Bagger-Lambert Theory, since my earlier post. Every time I think it might be worthwhile to pause and take stock of developments, two or three new papers on the subject appear on the arXivs, and I drop that silly idea.
Still, one thread which got a fair amount of attention was the proposal by three different groups of a whole new class of “Bagger-Lambert” algebras, obtained by relaxing the condition that the bilinear form (the “trace”) on the algebra be positive-definite.
June 7, 2008
Polls
Well, the Primary Season is finally over. Which, I suppose, means that the Election Season has begun. Four years ago, Dietrich Ayala put together an XML interface to the electoral vote forecasts of The VoteMaster, which I dutifully displayed on my sidebar.
I haven’t seen any evidence that Mr. Ayala is going to do the same for this election cycle. And, besides, I wanted to display the poll results for the House and Senate races as well. So, this year, I decided to roll my own. As a gesture of public-spiritedness, here’s the XML interface. Share and enjoy.
Update (6/11/2008):
There’s a nifty electoral vote widget where you can while away the hours, playing “what-if?” games with the allocation of various States’ electoral votes.June 1, 2008
Not Forgotten
The comment sections of all my old posts remain open for business. You never know when some old topic will prove relevant to someone.
Lately, Urs Schreiber took an interest in my old post on Rehren’s Algebraic Holography. The ensuing discussion eventually focussed on one of the questionable aspects of Rehren’s proposal that I didn’t emphasize in my original post.