Posted: April 28th, 2012 | Author: mattsly | Filed under: Code, Life | 4 Comments »
I used to be good at basketball. *
Now in my old(er) age, I’m more of a “cagey veteran.” Which means I do things like apply statistical analysis to my shooting strategy.
Something I’ve been thinking about recently: how does “winner’s outs” (make a basket and get the ball back) that is the common rule in a half court game affect the optimal shot taking strategy? Scoring and earning another chance to score is a different outcome than scoring and having the other team get the ball (like in a regular full-court game).
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Posted: September 24th, 2011 | Author: mattsly | Filed under: Life | No Comments »
7 years ago, I started my essay to graduate school with this sentence: “My career goal is to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities in educational technology.” Last month, I finally made good on that statement – leaving Microsoft after 4+ years to become the VP of Product with BetterLesson.
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Posted: March 10th, 2011 | Author: mattsly | Filed under: FutureMe, wacky interwebs | 4 Comments »
Might there be an inverse relationship between the ease of with which we create digital content…and the permanence of the cultural artifacts that we are creating?
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More than 10 years ago, when I was in college, a friend and I created a web art project that we (pretentiously) called art(i)facts. Mostly, it was our excuse to hack around with Photoshop, perl and html and explore this crazy Internet thing that was suddenly all the rage.
So we made a small site based on the premise that some apocalyptic rapture event had occurred, and you (the viewer) had discovered an archeological site (a bunch of photoshoped pictures like the above), and were in charge of interpreting the objects you’d discovered, with a simple web form to add your ideas. For example, one viewer said the that”item 361” (a CD) was a projectile toy, most likely used by children for simple amusement. (The site kinda still works, but this was 1997, so be nice)
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Posted: June 6th, 2010 | Author: mattsly | Filed under: Life | 3 Comments »
A few months back, my colleague, Matthew Hurst posted a link to a interesting infographic from the New Scientist that visualizes data from a spam-bot called “Storm.”:
(click the image the see the full-size graphic)
The visualization is interesting, but doesn’t explore what I think is the most interesting question with regards to spam: “what’s the marginal revenue per spam email sent?” Based on some of the numbers presented, here’s my math to back that number out:
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Posted: April 27th, 2010 | Author: mattsly | Filed under: Bikes, Life | 6 Comments »
drive? or bike? hmm...
this is part of my route home.
I’m not a hard core bicyclist type. No tats of chain rings. I think fixed gear bikes are fun but kinda dumb, really. But I’ve been commuting by bike for about six years now…and it’s just so freakin’ sensible on so many levels, that I don’t understand why it’s not more adopted by the mainstream, and not more supported by various levels of government. What follows is my case for why I ride.
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