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Origins of the iPhone multitouch pinch & spread

Here Jeff Han talks about the technology developed by his team at NYU.

One interesting application of the technology is the "$100 computer" idea .

Most people will assume it's an Apple invention. That's probably frustrating for Jeff and others who actually developed the technology, but hey, that's the nature of business... actually just life. Did Thomas Edison actually invent ANYTHING?

Father's Day for Peace

A Moment

Henry and i had a moment tonight as i was putting him to sleep. Sleep is a sore subject in our home lately. Our little golden boy who slept through nearly every night from age 3 months through 6 has been a our little night owl since then, which has been about 5 months now. We've made various excuses - illnesses, travel - but now we're determined to put an end to it.

We've decided that our problem was not letting him learn to fall asleep on his own. We've always rocked him, shushed him, sang to him, and generally put him to sleep. Now we're trying to put him down awake, so that he'll learn to self-soothe, self-relax, and self-fall asleep.

Bedtime tonight eventually looked like most nights of the past two weeks, with Henry standing up in his crib and wailing away. I put his favorite book in the crib, The Ugly Duckling, and started reading it to him. He calmed down enough so that he could hear me, and eventually he was ready to sit down, shut up, and listen. When we finished the book, he looked around and for once didn't mind being where he was. We played with some stuffed animals, during which i tricked him into lying down by orchestrating a wrestling match between him, the monkey, and the bear. And then he yawned. And he looked at me as if to say "OK, this isn't so bad, maybe i don't need to cry about being here. I'll give this sleep thing a try." He sighed, and within a few minutes drifted off to sleep.

If you are child-free, this probably means nothing to you, but if you've been there, you know what i'm talking about.

Keyboard Trivia

explanation: I was sitting here staring at my phone and computer keypads, and wondering why they're arranged differently.

Overheard in the office the other day

"Oh yeah i'm incredibly lazy. Until i was about four, they thought i was mildly retarded"

Context

Things that we say at work sometimes sound bizarre or interesting, especially when taken out of context. A code comment i wrote today:

we will consider emptiness and non-existence equivalent for now.