Daily Stuff--9/18/2012

Languages--Chinese:

I watched episode 61 of Travel in Chinese. This episode was about booking tickets for a vacation.

Articles:

There were a couple of interesting articles in the Wall Street Journal and one in the Union Tribune. The first WSJ one was about big companies buying up small tech companies in order to get the software engineers working for them. This is good for software engineers but unfortunate for anyone who isn't one because the big companies like Facebook rarely have any use for them. It can also be unfortunate for the software engineers because it often means that all the hard work they put into their original company just disappears. This begs the question: Is it even worth it to start a small tech company if it means larger companies will eventually come in and buy the company up?

The second WSJ was about the use of 3D printers to print living tissue samples that can used in transplants and skin grafts and other various things. Right now, the tests look promising but they're still a long way away from commercial use. The "ink" used in the printer is a mixture of cells that get added onto each other one layer at a time, while a mold is put down simultaneously. Once all the layers are added, the cells naturally bind together and eventually the mold can be taken away. The main problem right now is the fact that the tissue samples that have been created aren't strong enough to actually be used for anything. But if this problem can be corrected, this method could be a very reasonable one and would save millions of lives because people won't have to wait for transplants.

The Union Tribune article was about a San Diego start-up called Chic CEO. What Chic CEO does is give advice about starting a company, and their main audience is women. Women, in recent years, have started more companies than men and the two founders of Chic CEO realized that there wasn't one spot where women could get all the information they needed to start a business. Their website is a collection of tips and strategies from various sources.

Philosophy:

I read about the term "axiom". An axiom is a simple statement of fact that can't be contradicted. If one were to try to contradict a true axiom, that axiom would have to be used as premise for the argument, making the argument pretty much invalid.

Internships:

I found an internship program in computational linguistics at unlweb.net. Interns create dictionaries, grammar entries, and knowledge base entries. These are both in their native languages and dead/dying languages.

To-Do (9/18/2012):

• Health insurance waiver
• Have to sit down with mom and get it done tomorrow
• Khan Academy on electromagnetic fields
• I watched the video about magnetic fields caused by currents
• Find out how headphones work
• Watched several youtube videos about how headphones and speakers work as well as a couple on how to build a speaker
• Change address on bank account
• Did this and updated my other account info