Technology
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Prosper(ing) So Far
Monday, September 17th, 2007I made my first Prosper loan back in February. I contributed $100 at 8.4% to a $4,000 loan to a couple of grad students looking to max-out their IRA. Though the loan term is three years, they finished paying me (and the other 47 contributors) back this month.
After making my first three loans and seeing […]
Image and Photo Editing Software for Free
Thursday, August 30th, 2007Recently I’ve had the need to do some image and photo editing, but Microsoft Paint isn’t really up to the job and I don’t want to spend money on something I don’t plan on being good at.
I started of searching Google and found The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). The GIMP is a lot like […]
Human Computation
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007WARNING: The following post is very, very nerdy.
Luis von Ahn, inspired by the clever pornographers that defeated captchas, has come up with some amazingly simple and effective ways to get humans to analyze data that computers can’t… for free.
Next time you feel like playing Solitaire, why not play one of Luis von Ahn’s games?
What’s missing from the local news
Sunday, July 1st, 2007When someone you know is involved in a news-worthy tragedy, you quickly find that the vast majority of local news sites are inadequate. For example: When a forest fire nearly burned down my mom’s house in South Carolina, all I could find was a quick blurb about it that didn’t even mention the fact that […]
What I did when my data was stolen
Monday, June 11th, 2007Over the weekend, my laptop was stolen. Though I had security measures in place to prevent data theft, it’s best to assume that these safeguards have been compromised. Being a computer guy, I know how easy it can be to crack a password and defeat most forms of encryption.
Step 1: Freeze your Accounts
As I was […]
Fraud Warning
Friday, June 8th, 2007My laptop has been stolen. That means that if I had your contact information, now some asshole thief has it too.
If you get any strange calls mentioning me, don’t tell them anything about yourself or me. If someone comes to your door asking about me, don’t tell them anything about yourself or me.
Remember that they […]
Thank you Steve
Monday, May 7th, 2007How People Are Finding Me
Saturday, February 17th, 2007I’ve been running Google Analytics on JamesTharpe.com for a while now and have learned a few interesting things from it, such as:
Most newcomers find the site through Google, by searching for some variant of my name. Variants include: James Tharpe, Jim Tharpe, and Jamie Tharpe. This accounts for just over five visits per week.
Others have […]
Cool feature of Google Reader: Share
Saturday, January 20th, 2007Liz and I are thinking of taking a free online MIT Course together in the near future. To make it easier for us to pick one, today I explored the Share feature of Google Reader to share a list of classes I am interested in.
It is a pretty simple feature to use. Any time you […]
Wikiversity
Friday, January 19th, 2007Everyone should check out Wikiversity. Wikiversity is a wiki dedicated to providing free learning materials for all age groups. Currently they have learning projects for everything from agriculture to zoology.
Today I browsed around the School of Business and happened upon an Introduction to Statistics that I found very interesting. I also browsed around in Financial […]