Friday Four
Friday, April 05, 2013
1. I haven't tried it yet, but I'll definitely
keep the new PDF data extraction tool named "Tabula" in mind the next time I want to fool around with data stored in a table from a
PDF file. Come to think of it, I might try it on tables from PDFs generated
from web pages by my web browser's "save to PDF" feature.
2. Having a neat idea is one thing; executing it
is another. At some point during my Boston days, I recall thinking that it
would be interesting to see a time-scaled map of Boston's subway
system. So did the folks at Stonebrown Design, who then also did the
hard part and created one.
3. A medical textbook features a graph showing
a very strong correlation between stork sightings and
population for Oldenburg, Germany. I guess I was wrong
(scroll down) about where my baby daughter came from, after all.
4. "By definition, [a] CAPTCHA should
be easy to read by humans but hard to read by machines," says a tech blogger of
a nearly ubiquitous Internet security measure. (This blog employs them to make sure that only humans can post comments to posts.) He then provides an amusing
example that he calls the "worst CAPTCHA
ever".
-- CAV
2 comments:
Gus, your GVH blog is a "must read" for its often wide-ranging content.
One reason islamo-terrorist plots failed in NYC's subway system has been the chronic inaccuracy of time-scaled system maps and inability to attain explosion simultaneity.
The system's unpredictable chaos has been in passengers' favor.
Thanks, Anon.
It's an interesting point, that, thanks to our lack of a rational foreign policy regarding terrorism, we have to depend on things being unpredictable.
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