Design of a Self-Heating Mug

...why I went to so much trouble to fix it!

One of my favorite gifts this holiday season was a large mug that keeps my coffee or tea hot. I wish the battery lasted longer, but there are a bunch of really nice features:

Silly JavaScript Tricks

 ...or "Bookmark(let)s Are Your Friends"

Just a small collection of bookmarks and bookmarklets I created to make web browsing slightly more pleasant.

Fair warning: I speak Java, but not JavaScript. So fee free to laugh at my non-idiomatic code, or better yet, leave constructive comments. You're also welcome to copy, paste, modify, and share any of them. Just remember that most were intended to be quick-and-dirty solutions to problems that pestered me, which means they may fold, spindle, or mutilate any machine they run on. Think of them as week-old leftovers: they may still be delicious, or they may be growing green and black fuzzy critters. Or both.

Pacemakers and Negotiation

Tony

I first met Tony, our new VP, shortly after he joined the company. He’d already heard a lot of us software team leads complaining to each other constantly. If you've been with any company whose management doesn't understand software development, you know the perennial issues that frustrated us on a daily basis: old hardware; accumulated technical debt; overly aggressive, often arbitrary deadlines with far too little testing... the typical problems that non-technical management tends to be uninterested in addressing. Tony didn't claim to be unusually tech savvy, but he genuinely wanted to make things better. So he called a meeting to learn the details.

Lies Your Physics Teachers Told You

Originally posted on Quora in response to the question What are some high school physics misconceptions?

Here are two misconceptions that persist far beyond high school. They surprise even physicists and engineers!

Attach a ball to a bungee cord and swing it in a horizontal circle over your head. What path will the ball take if you release the cord?

We’ve all been taught that it will continue in a straight line^* tangent to the circle. That’s wrong!