codeXgalactic hosts technical writeups of the astrophysics work and associated side-projects of Dr. Christine Corbett Moran.
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Tips for the Tough Traveler
I travel quite a bit, and am away from home from 24hr-30 day stretches. Even longer, but after 30 days I transform my coordinate system, and home is again where I am. My advice would fill pages, but here are a few simple tips to keep on the road. Read More …
Hacking Philips Hue, wireless controlled multicolored LED lightbulbs
Philips makes a series of wireless controlled, multicolored light bulbs which I purchased. In the month or two I’ve had the bulbs I’ve fallen in love with them! Best of all, they have a great API integrated. After plugging in the bridge, connecting it to my wireless router, and plugging in the bulbs I can control them fully with Philips’ native iOS client from my iPhone or iPad, where I renamed the bulbs. The app works via a REST API, and there’s an iOS SDK you can use to interact with this easily via Objective C. The future of really is made of JSON! They also have an easy way to get started learning the API and controlling your bulbs from web browser. Read More …
NASA Space Apps Challenge 2013
As in 2012, I participated in the NASA Space Apps Challenge Hackathon, this time as a participant rather than an organizer. Read More …
Cozy Bachelorette Party Games With No Supplies Required
A bachelorette party is a great way to have a night out for a bride-to-be where someone else does the planning, here are some tips if you are the one doing the planning. Read More …
Packing for Mars
I recently read an excellent book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, a Christmas gift from my brother. Read More …
Road To Reality–Part I
This past year I read Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
The tome is definitely the read for anyone interested in our current understanding of reality from the ground up. It doesn’t shy away from mathematics like most popular science accounts. Rather, as mathematics is the gasoline to travel the Road, it fuels the reader up along the journey. Yet the mathematics quickly progresses from exploring what a number exactly is to a graduate level textbook equivalent and this whirlwind journey is not to be taken lightly. Rather than a Road, I actually consider The Road to Reality to be more of a Roadmap indicating a path to reality without fully providing the reader with the tools to travel it. It worked for me–a Physics PhD student–as most of the book was putting familiar things in a grander context. However, for those not on the Road as a career, supplemental work is probably needed to get the most out of the book. In the that spirit I am presenting a condensed Roadmap in chunks of 6 chapters (there are a whopping 34 chapters covering 1123 pages) with additional links to online courses (primarily sourced from the wonderful Khan academy, Coursera, and MIT OCW).
Without further ado, I present the Roadmap I of VI of Chapters 1-6 of The Road to Reality: Read More …
Humans vs. Robots: Showdown in Space
Some months ago, I reviewed a paper about the efficiency of human space exploration versus robotic space exploration. The question isn’t as simple as you might think. Read More …
Extreme Email Management via GMail Filters
To follow up on my old blogpost http://cosmicrays.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/gmail-workflow/ I now have a refined method-much the same as in the original blog post only more of it: more filters, labels, and inboxes. I was reminded of this is a post TEDxZurich 2012 conversation about my email management techniques and as part of that conversation I did a few quick analytics on my Filter system and was inspired to create an infographic of the result. Read More …
Android vs. iOS development
circleof6 for Android is out now! Download and spread the word.
My first Android application was a real trip, and I’m extremely happy to have developed the exact same application under both iOS and Android to be in the unique position to make a fair comparison. Read More …
Cryptography course–the power of XOR
I took a Cryptography I course on coursera.org taught by Stanford’s Dan Boneh. The lectures are easy listening (I usually put on my wireless headphones while doing a household chore, and set my iPad somewhere convenient if I need to glance at the slide), although clocking in at about 2 hours a week, are certainly a bit of a commitment. The are broken into 5-20 minute chunks, the online system tracks which you have listened to already, and asks you 0-3 questions a lecture to make the whole process more interactive and to jolt you to attention if you’ve filtered out an important section. Read More …