codeXgalactic hosts polished technical writeups of the work of Dr. Christine Corbett Moran, as well as musings on productivity. For more work in progress notes, check out https://corbettnotes.com/, and for polished writeups on humanties subjects, check out corbett.medium.com
Staying Focused
I fully admit to being an information and interaction junky. I feed on bits and pats on the backs to the point of bloating, and with my schedule when I’m working I need to be on point. I try to take a media fast once a year for about a month for a personal cleanse, Read More …
Axolotl Protocol for Cryptographically Secure Messaging: An Illustrated Primer
Whisper At Open WhisperSystems Winter Break of Code, I had the privilege to announce our integrated RedPhone/TextSecure roadmap for iOS and Android. Code named Whisper, it offers a cross platform one stop solution for secure messaging and phone calls. This is a big deal! Close to a billion people are using data channel messaging and phone Read More …
Google Glass–using, hacking, loving
Motivation I’ve been obsessed with gadgetry since I was a little girl, much before I got into hacking and making which was the inevitable progression. I got a pager before I made more than 5 friends (I recall primarily paging myself and ignoring my mother), and was on my fourth palm pilot, second laptop, and Read More …
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 …