Rob Hoeting

"A rectangle with sharp edges takes indeed a little bit more cognitive visible effort than for example an ellipse of the same size. Our “fovea-eye” is even faster in recording a circle. Edges involve additional neuronal image tools. The process is therefore slowed down.” Professor Nänni is saying that rounded rectangles are literally easier on the eye. Put another way, compared to square-edged rectangles, rounded rectangles are more computationally efficient for the human brain. To me, this is a revelation. An idea that at the very least demands more investigation." - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

Wow, that sounds like fun! Any chance they'll stop by SF on the way home? - Paul Buchheit

I just sent him an email. I'm sure they're playing it a bit loose, so why not? You need to show him around the FF headquarters. Kenny's two boys are with them as well. - Rob Hoeting

thats a pretty nice picture - if they send you more you should post them :P - bob

"In a remarkable series of coincidences, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founding fathers of the United States and the only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence to become president, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the United States' 50th anniversary." - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

"A blasé attitude towards job security is risky when pennies are being counted but on the other hand excessive worrying can be counter productive. Fortunately in application development we are in the position where we can respond quickly to the changing market needs. We don’t have to re-tool a factory, throw out stock that doesn’t sell or keep paying for equipment and production lines sitting idle. All we need to do is identify the needs and opportunities, point our tools and skills in the right direction, and solve some new problems." - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

"I think Silverlight represents the likely future of computing for most of us. And by “us”, I mean both Windows and web developers on the Microsoft platform (and maybe beyond). I think we’re at a point of convergence, where two industry trends are coming together in a way that makes Silverlight the most compelling answer for a lot of development scenarios. These trends are the continued abstraction away from the hardware, and now the operating system; and the likelihood that the web as we know it is nearing the end of its life, so we’re looking for the next big thing in that space." - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

"Bad news is good. You can expect more of it. And you can expect the stock market to resume its recovery, which began Nov. 20. Do you find this line of argument perplexing? You have company. A lot of my clients are baffled at the notion that the stock market should be climbing at a time when employment is declining. Buy if you look back at the pattern in past stock market recoveries, or think about what the stock market represents, the combination of a bull market and a recession will not seem so strange." - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

To be fair, Fisher has nailed many past bear markets, but missed this one. He got back in too early after 2000-2002 bear market. Still, this guy is right quite a bit. - Rob Hoeting

It depends how deep the crash goes. 1929 didn't bottom until 1932: http://www.lowrisk.com/29crash... - Paul Buchheit

Interesting to note: Almost every place is a wealthy county just outside a major city. - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

I could not stand a page reload for every city. Too annoying. - Robert Felty

Ok, be nice... I realize these thing may have been invented before those dates, but you get my point :) - Rob Hoeting

I'm thinking, whatever it is, we don't even have a standard name for it right now. - Victor Ganata

So the question is, will they honor those great deals on the items I got into my shopping cart before the site went down? - Rob Hoeting

Ugh... you'd think a corporate environment like Sears might have some pretty rigorous load testing in place. So, any updates as to whether or not you'll get the deals? Wow, and I guess they didn't learn from last year, either: http://www.websitepulse.com/corpora... - Doug Bloebaum

Actually, their customer service was decent. They honored the deals, although they had me pay the regular price and they would credit the difference. That's funny the site crashed last year too. It's not like they had NO IDEA traffic was coming. - Rob Hoeting

A photographer looking for a good picture of the setting sun happened to snap this photo. What are the chances. Have a nice night. - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

The 34-year-old male employee was pronounced dead one hour after shoppers broke down the doors to the shopping center in Valley Stream, N.Y., and knocked him down at around 5 a.m. Friday, police said. A 28-year-old pregnant woman was also taken in for observation and three other shoppers suffered minor injuries during the incident, police said. - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

Running of the Bulls -- New York Style. I guess that's the reason they call the sales "door busters". - Gabe

Of course this is nothing compared to the Toys R Us double-homicide: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc... "Most years we have zero homicides" - Gabe

i dont know, its seems like this kind of stuff happens every year. - bob

Sears.com absolutely crumbled due to the black Friday traffic. When I finally was able to checkout my items, the sale had expired. The shopping cart knew this, but the catalog did not. Man, can you imagine what life must be like in their IT organization. - Rob Hoeting

If you're wasting time fighting with CSS -- and we know you are -- we've got just the tool you need. Download the Give Up and Use Tables timer. We've scientifically determined the maximum amount of time that you should need to make a layout work in CSS: it's 47 minutes. When your time is up, we'll even give you the table code you need. Take three minutes to build a table. And ten minutes to get a donut. Bill the client for an hour. Done. - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

Asustek is expected to launch an Asus Eee PC model priced at $200 next year, the company’s president Jerry Shen said. Shen also pointed out that Eee PC netbooks with 7- and 8.9-inch displays will slowly phase out of the market. They will be replaced by 10-inch models. Eee PCs with a hard drive account for 70% of total shipments, while solid state drive-based netbooks account for the other 30%. The ratio of Eee PCs preloaded Windows XP and Linux stands at 7:3. - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

What kind of laptop? - Paul Buchheit

I'm in love with my Thinkpad X61. - Neil Dunn

Hopes for a treatment for common cold have been raised after scientists discovered how it causes symptoms such as sneezing and a runny nose. - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

On Wednesday the S&P dropped 9%. It was the 3rd time in less than a month that it dropped over 7.5%. Since my S&P data only goes back to 1960, I checked out the Dow to see if it had ever dropped 7.5% 3 times in one month. It had. Once. In the 1929 picture you see above. While history never plays out exactly the same I’m sure everyone is wondering how the current picture resolved itself in 1929. Was the initial crash low broken? - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

They mostly care about "anal fissures" apparently. - Paul Buchheit

how is this proof? lol - Brandon

These pages show 8 different sorting algorithms on 4 different initial conditions. - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

i saw this awhile back, cute :P - bob

Pretty cool. But it doesn't work on Safari :( - j1m

Didn't make it out to China a couple weeks ago... but I did manage to catch some photos as they made a stop 5 miles from my house. Talk about luck. - Rob Hoeting

Very cool! I like Misty May Treanor because her name sounds like a complete sentence. ;-) - Doug Bloebaum

"Among those who said they shop regularly at Wal-Mart - a demographic group that Zogby has found to be both "value" and "values" voters - Obama is getting walloped by McCain. Winning 62% support from weekly Wal-Mart shoppers, McCain wins these voters at a rate similar to what President Bush won in 2004. Obama wins 24% support from these voters." - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

Just reading the first review made me sad... :) - Rob Hoeting

Say hello to Paula's eventual replacement. - Rob Hoeting from Bookmarklet

I've had this happen to me twice in the last year now. It's really sad, since I love the gmail interface and use it exclusively for my personal mail but I'm not going to be able to rely on it any more. It's really hard to convince the Google support team that I am who I say I am, and that I'm not a spammer! Why should they believe me, I guess. My account is blabes@gmail.com if anyone has the "inside juice" to get me reinstated! - Doug Bloebaum

They let me decide another password after telling them the label names of my gmail account and they did this very quikly actually - dogan kaya berktas