Technology
88 posts · all topics
Decentralized Science (DeSci) at SynBioBeta 2025
Accelerating Scientific Development Using Crypto Networks
AI
All about AI and LLMs
How I think about large language models
How I expect to be using AI Large Language Models in the future.
#DeSci
Decentralized Science (#DeSci): how blockchain, DAOs, and NFTs are disrupting scientific research and funding.
AI Plagiarism
I've been plagiarized by an AI.
Personal Science Cookbook
Step-by-step recipes to study your own data
Counter-arguments against web3
Moxie Marlinspike's critique of Web3: most dApps rely on centralized services like Infura and Alchemy, undermining decentralization claims.
Comparing Amazon Halo to Apple Watch
Head-to-head comparison of Amazon Halo and Apple Watch for heart rate, sleep tracking, body fat, and tone analysis using R.
Leaving Evernote
Migrating 35,000 notes from Evernote to plain-text alternatives. Comparing Joplin and Obsidian for future-proof note-taking.
Mercer Island local election results
How to calculate Mercer Island precinct-level 2020 presidential election results using R and King County CSV data.
COVID-19 and its R-Squared Relationship to GDP Change
R analysis of the correlation between COVID-19 death rates and GDP decline by country, computing R-squared from Our World in Data.
Using Autocorrelation (Tutorial)
R tutorial on autocorrelation analysis for personal health data, using resting heart rate and weight time series to find hidden patterns.
Mask-Wearing: How to Lie With Statistics
How the same COVID-19 data can prove opposite conclusions about mask mandates, demonstrating chart manipulation and statistical bias.
Super-easy ad blocking
How to block ads on your Mac
MITM Proxy to see my phone's traffic
China is looking at my phone traffic?
How to make an R Package
Step-by-step guide to creating an R package with documentation, unit testing via testthat, data storage, and RStudio workflow tips.
R-tude: Read OneDrive Excel files
How to download and read Microsoft OneDrive Excel files into R data frames using readxl and curl_download.
R-tude: Labels on a ggplot chart
Quick R tutorial showing how to add text labels directly on a ggplot chart using geom_text with microbiome colon cleanse data.
R-tude: My Bifido Levels by month
R tutorial creating a calendar heatmap visualization of Bifidobacterium gut microbiome abundance levels tracked over multiple years.
Reevaluating my sleep experiments
Statistical reanalysis of self-tracked sleep data testing whether potato starch, alcohol, or Vitamin D supplements affect sleep quality.
R-tude: Averages and Standard Deviations
Interactive R tutorial exploring how averages, standard deviations, and subpopulations shape normal distributions with Shiny visualization.
R-tude: counting my sleep locations
R programming exercise using tidyverse to analyze and visualize sleep location data tracked over several years in a personal spreadsheet.
Tails I win
R simulation of a counterintuitive coin-toss probability puzzle: why heads-tails takes fewer flips than heads-heads.
Sonification of the microbiome
Listen to a year's worth of my microbiome results.
Analyzing my sleep and diet in R
Analyzing sleep data in R to compare rest quality on a low-carb high-fat diet vs regular diet using ggplot and t-tests.
Deep learning and the microbiome
Summary of links about how to apply AI to studying the microbiome.
Testing my blood glucose
Self-tracking blood glucose levels after sugar water using a Contour Next EZ monitor and plotting results with R and ggplot.
How a Citizen Scientist Will Win a Nobel Prize
How democratized data and citizen science are transforming hypothesis generation, enabling breakthroughs beyond traditional research.
Calculating regressions from a physics experiment
Linear vs quadratic regression in R applied to physics ball-toss data captured with the Video Physics app.
Aggregating Mercer Island local election results
Using R to analyze 2016 presidential election results by precinct on Mercer Island from King County data.
My activity data
A year of food and exercise tracking analyzed in R to find patterns in activity and health data.
Data is not a substitute for strategy
When I was in grad school, my data sciences class assigned us this incredibly complex optimization problem where we were supposed to recommend the best place to locate…
[book] The Rise of Superman
The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler is mostly about extreme sports — the people behind really crazy activities like kayaking…
What's in my microbiome?
Although I was an early customer of 23andme, I found the results unsatisfying because there is so little that is actionable . I mean, you don't need a…
Apple Watch: the first wearable good enough to criticize
The Apple Watch launch event was so popular that the livestreamed version I saw kept breaking down, but I saw enough to be impressed. My overall takeaway, to…
What's the point of a PhD?
Reading an o ld Slate article about why MOOCs (online classes) devalue the importance of a one-on-one relationship between professors and students, I have a few thoughts: Sure,…
Using the AliveCor Heart Monitor
Every few months, I feel a slight flutter in my chest, almost like a cough but coming not from the lungs or throat but from something deeper inside.…
Remembering Seth Roberts
Like many people, I first heard about him back in 2006 through a chapter in the best-selling book Freakonomics . His strange habit of tracking various aspects of…
Sneaking into the Macintosh launch
The Apple Macintosh was launched 30 years ago, which seems like ancient history because of course it is, but it’s fun to reflect a little on it because…
A few hardware links to get started
I've been playing with hardware now for a year or so and this may be a good time to summarize some of the interesting products I've found. I…
Charts of RAW data
The Density Design Lab at Politecnico di Milano just released a cool new (free) web site , called RAW, for very simple data visualization. It’s roughly similar to…
The Clover of Brewing Machines
Five years ago, the Clover Coffee Equipment company was hand-assembling high-tech, excellent automatic coffee-making machines for the super high-end market. At tens of thousands of dollars each, they…
Krugman on Microsoft and Apple
Paul Krugman is mostly correct: Back in the 80s, Microsoft and Apple both had operating systems to sell; Apple’s was clearly better. But Apple misunderstood the nature of…
Sleep Times: BodyMedia vs. Zeo
Most of those wrist-style activity monitors try to tell you how well you slept, but I’ve found the technology isn’t particularly accurate . Lately I’ve been trying the…
Why I’m skinny
I weigh about the same today as I did in college: 160 pounds. In my entire life I’ve never weighed more than 170. Maintaining my weight has been…
Thoughts about WWDC 2013
My takeaways from today's WWDC announcements (in no particular order): The UI changes for iOS7 are gorgeous, of course, and I can't wait to make the switch. I…
LINE and more Facebook/Twitter Asian Competition
Before you start to think Facebook will take over the world, look again at new competitors emerging in Asia, including this one originally from Japan and now boasting…
[book] Makers by Chris Anderson
View on Amazon "Hardware is the new software". I'm not sure if that exact phrase is in Chris Anderson's new book , but it should be. It's a…
My first Arduino project: a temperature sensor
I've been saying for two years now that hardware is the future of software , and one center of action is the world of Arduino programmable microcontrollers. You…
Printing in 3D
There is a wonderful online tool, tinkercard , that lets you easily and quickly build simple 3D models entirely in your web browser. It's a competitor to SketchUp…
Asymco's Dediu in China
Horace Dediu's asymco.com (Twitter: @asymco ) is one of the best mobility analysis sites out there, so I was excited about his recent trip to China, hoping that…
Calibre for books
A mazon Kindle has become my main way to buy books, which of course is incredibly liberating because nowwith the Kindle app I can put every book on…
Mike Daisey and the fight to keep people in crummy jobs
I listened to the riveting This American Life podcast retracting its January episode "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", featuring the dramatist Mike Daisey, who misrepresented himself…
Zeo vs. the motion sensors
I don't have a Jawbone UP . I tried to buy one earlier this month but Best Buy wasn't stocking them until the kinks have been worked out.…
The Chinese Twitter (English version)
Now available on the US App Store: Sina Weibo 微博 download here: http://itun.es/igk6zp then follow me at http://weibo.com/2140336255 and see why 200M users like it. Note: to create…
Facebook’s addicting even if you don’t admit it
It’s a few minutes before the next meeting. Or maybe it’s right before dinner is ready. Or there’s a commercial on TV. Or it’s time to go to…
Weibo: The Chinese Twitter++
I bet at least 50% of my work friends check Facebook every single day. For those under age 30 it's probably closer to 100%. Twitter isn't nearly as…
An Apple File Store
How often have I been annoyed because I forgot to sync something on my iOS device before leaving the house. I store a lot of data in the…
Mac needs a half-way decent blog editor
Say what you want about Mac versus PC, but if you are a blogger there’s no question: Windows7 PC is better. I’m writing this sentence on a Mac…
Banned in China
I’m not sure most of my non-China friends (whether “real” or “Facebook”) understand what those of us in China must do when we get on the internet. Here…
Kindle Singles and the future of publishing
The print publishing industry thinks a lot has changed in the past 20 years, but they haven't seen anything yet. The transformation from print to all-digital publishing will…
I like trucks
Steve Jobs is right : When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to…
How to use an iPhone over Ethernet
Okay, you're not really doing iPhone directly over Ethernet, and you'll need a Mac close by to do it, but this is a trick I find handy in…
Testing, testing
Is this thing on? One unfortunate part about switching to Mac last year is that I've been unable to use the excellent Windows Live Writer blogging software (cuz…
I’m still here
If you’re trying to find me, and you looked at this blog hoping for some updates, you’ve been disappointed. I’m still updating, even more frequently than before, but…
The Cloakbox Catch
The verdict is in: I’m pretty happy with my Cloakbox VPN router . I love being able to surf as though I’m on a computer in San Francisco…
Testing the Cloakbox VPN router from Witopia
The internet is a chaotic place, where packets of information swim all over the world, ready to be scooped up, peered at, or blocked by anyone (or any…
A Switcher with second thoughts
I'm a veerrry long-time Mac user. I had one of the first 128K Macs. I dropped out of college for a while with some friends to develop one…
I (heart) technology
Embedded content from flickr.com Heart CT Originally uploaded by sprague At my annual physical this week, my doctor suggested that I get a $99 CT Cardiac Score to…
Meeting Online friends
Today was the first time I’d ever met Ken Camp and Sheryl Breuker . For real, at least. But I feel like Ive known them well for a…
Twitter helps lazy people express themselves online
I think I finally understand the appeal of Twitter and why it’s making it harder and harder for me to get excited about blogging. For all the talk…
Write like me
I’ve hate handwriting. I’ve been using keyboards since I learned to write and my fingers just don’t want to use a pen. But there are too many occasions…
It’s Twitter’s Turn
Every great new social phenomenon has a "fad" phase , where zillions of people join in because, well, because zillions of others are joining. A few years ago…
My blog graphically
from: http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.richardsprague.com What do the colors mean? blue : for links (the A tag) red : for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags) green : for the DIV…
Don’t miss me
I’ve been blogging regularly for close to five years now, but I still can’t seem to get my Mom to read me. When I talked with her (and…
Cell phone calls from airplanes
A very smart, well-read, highly-educated friend of mine is convinced that the "standard explanation" for 9/11 is a hoax. As one proof, he points out that you can't…
Test Driving the Miles Electric Car
Mike Cero, always looking for cost-effective ways to help the environment , invited me to help test drive an electric car now available for sale from MC Electric…
Yong Zhao on how to use technology in the classroom
The Mercer Island education community is talking about Yong Zhao , a professor at Michigan State University with ideas on how to improve schools global competitiveness. He'll be…
Switch to P-I
I skim the Seattle Times print edition each morning because it's there on my driveway each morning, but otherwise virtually all my news about the world comes from…
Jesus Christ lizard and the bugs of Costa Rica
Everywhere in Costa Rica, all the time, there's something interesting to look at or hear. One of our days was spent on Rio Frio, watching some of the…
Watch me at the Small Business Summit
I'm doing a demo of Response Point , the super-easy phone system for small businesses, this morning (Tuesday) March 24th at the SB Summit web cast . It's…
I am a wimp
I don't like email. I started this blog many years ago partly because I'm too lazy to forward to my friends every interesting thing I find on the…
New Mercer Island blogger
Please welcome to your blogroll the new Surrounded By Water: A Mercer Island Blog . I don't know the author, but I can't wait to learn more about…
Bloggers and libel
It's fun, though a bit annoying, to watch inept PR firms try to shut down free speech in the name of "libel". One of my favorite foodie blogs,…
Hillary wants government bloggers
Hillary agrees with me : "We should even have a government blogging team where people in the agencies are constantly telling all of you, the taxpayers, the citizens…
I need a bigger living room
I'm at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, enjoying all the latest cool gadgets, including this one: Okay, it's just a prototype for now, but how long till…
Insect invasion
Eric LaGasa, State Entomologist for the Washington State Department of Agriculture was the speaker at last night's Scarab meeting . Boy does this guy know his bugs! He…
Bug Jam
Last night we went to the Bug Jam , sponsored by the Scarab Society and hosted at the University of Washington Burke Museum I was surprised at the…