This might just be the best blog post I have read this year. It’s nominally on patients with delusions of parasitic infestations, but it’s so much more.

I saw a patient recently for parasites.

I get a sinking feeling when I see that diagnosis on the schedule, as it rarely means a real parasite.  The great Pacific NW is mostly parasite free, so either it is a traveler or someone with delusions of parasitism.

The latter comes in two forms: the classic form and Morgellons. Neither are likely to lead to a meaningful patient-doctor interaction, since it usually means conflict between my assessment of the problem and the patients assessment of the problem.  There is rarely a middle ground upon which to meet. The most memorable case of delusions of parasitism I have seen was a patient who  I saw in clinic who, while we talked, ate a raw garlic clove about every minute.

“Why the garlic?” I asked.

“To keep the parasites at bay,” he told me.

I asked him to describe the parasite.  He told me they floated in the air, fell on his skin, and then burrowed in.  Then he later plucked them out of his nose.

Much more here.

So far it’s been a good read, nothing terribly groundbreaking. The advice seems to come down to this simple process:

Confronted with apparently difficult measurements, it helps to put the proposed measurement in context. Before we measure we should ask five questions:

1. What is the decision this is supposed to support?
2. What really is the thing being measured?
3. Why does this thing matter to the decision being asked?
4. What do you know about it now?
5. What is the value to measuring it further?

All in all, simple stuff, but a great crash course and overview for finding metrics that matter, especially for new managers / leaders.

— begin old post —

I use Eucalyptus to read books on my iPhone. I love the feel of the app and the ease of downloading new books. The iPhone’s small backlit screen bothers me occassionally for reading. It’s almost perfect. What I’d love in an e-Reader:

1. It should do three things exceptionally well:
   1. read books (like Eucalyptus)
   2. read RSS (like Byline)
   3. surf the web (like a CrunchPad)
2. Should still ‘feel’ like a book, much like Eucalyptus does. It’s near perfect in this regard. Touch screen required.
3. Color screen (backlit is ok but not preferred)
4. Super easy to download / purchase books
5. Connect over wireless or cell network
6. 5″ x 8″ screen – ish, something about the size of those lousy romance novels in the supermarket checkoutline, and the thickness of an iPhone. The concept below literally folds like a book, showing 10″ x 8″ of screen space. awesome!

The iPhone hits just about all of this list, except it’s backlit and too small. Also, Eucalyptus is only free books, and the Kindle app (a) sucks to read on and (b) doesn’t have in app store.

The Kindle proper (device, not iPhone app) is larger, which is nice, and has a better screen for reading, but frankly, it’s ugly as sin. If they made blackberries in the 80s, they would look like a Kindle. yuck.

All this brings me to an article that came across Harper Studio (via Corr77, thanks!)  describing a French concept e-Reader / netbook from Editis. Click the image below for the 5 minute concept, skip to about 10% to see the eReader section, and yes, it loads exceptionally slow, but it’s worth it imo!

I’d love a netbook that actually looked and acted like a book. Swipe left/right to turn the page, tap for HUD screen, coverflow for book covers, etc. Turn it on it’s side, and the bottom becomes a HUD style keyboard and screens turn into netbook goodness. Fold it up to protect the screen and minimize footprint, throw in the bag and go.

I’d buy three, easy.

But the data presented at the Brussels meeting made it clear that something strange was happening: the therapeutic power of the drugs appeared to be steadily waning. A recent study showed an effect that was less than half of that documented in the first trials, in the early nineteen-nineties. Many researchers began to argue that the expensive pharmaceuticals weren’t any better than first-generation antipsychotics, which have been in use since the fifties. “In fact, sometimes they now look even worse,” John Davis, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me.

Before the effectiveness of a drug can be confirmed, it must be tested and tested again. Different scientists in different labs need to repeat the protocols and publish their results. The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws.

But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable.

more here.

Alex Payne on Adobe AIR:

Humans are gifted with extremely sensitive bullshit detectors. The average computer user may not internalize the difference between an AIR app and a native app, but he knows when something doesn’t feel right or work correctly. Your tech-stunted uncle may not ever request a “native app” by name, but he’ll sure complain about his computer acting funny. People aren’t dumb.

You better believe that this isn’t just about AIR. As mobile apps become a mandatory part of doing business, more and more cross-platform mobile frameworks are cropping up. As with every cross-platform framework to date, only one in a pile of the resulting applications might even begin to pass for native. These apps just ain’t right, and people can tell.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: cross-platform code is good, but it should never define the user interface.

more here.

From the Cultured Code’s FAQ page on cloud sync:

We will be doing a large scale test with quantifiable data to estimate server and bandwidth costs. It is not yet clear whether or not it will be necessary to pass any of those costs to the user base. This should not be taken as indication that there will, or will not, be any cost. A final decision will be made later based on the aforementioned testing.

They need to offer a cloud service for free. Its like they don’t understand how unhappy many of their customers (and former customers) are.

The company also doesn’t understand the concept of ‘if you don’t have anything to say, keep your mouth shut.’

[via Federico Viticci]

Now open Twitter for Mac. Tap and drag from top to bottom on your Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad and the list scrolls down- as you’d expect for any normal Mac app. Except that Twitter still feels like an iOS app even though its on my Mac, and this won’t change anytime soon.

I can’t get over how awkward it feels to have the same scrolling gesture produce the exact opposite results. I suppose it’ll eventually become second nature, but I suddenly feel all upside-down when I’m working on my Mac!

Any one used Smart Scroll before? How long until OS X changes scroll direction to match iOS?

• searching custom fields
• searching categories
• searching by author
• easily setting up multi field search forms
• insert your dream feature here

Unfortunately I’m swamped with work at Jive and with Here, File File, so my wpSearchMu development time is virtually non-existent. That’s where you come in.

I would love to have additional developers helping to support wpSearchMu for the WordPress community. Are you interested? Skills required:

• love for the WordPress community
• love for hacking on some PHP code
• love for building things

and as a bonus:

• experience with lucene
• experience with WordPress search filters
• experience with multisite WordPress

Leave comments here if you’re interested or send me an email or tweet.

Thanks!

Well tonight I spent some time and got everything fixed  - upgraded the plugin, re-customized, re-tested. However – for about 30 minutes tonight my site’s feed was listing not only my blog posts, but was also including my bookmarks! That means if you’re one of the lucky few who’s RSS reader refreshed during that blessed half hour, you likely be seeing 20+ “posts” from me. While each of those bookmarks are assuredly awesome – I did not, in fact, go on a hellish post-writing spree – apologies for possibly spamming your RSS inbox with my bookmarks.

And apologies all around for 2 months of broken RSS + a hectic 30 minutes of too much RSS. I believe that everything should finally be back in working order. Please let me know if you notice any oddness.

All that said, if you are interested in reading what I’m reading, then head over to my bookmarks section or subscribe to them as well.

warning: Turning off phone number detection is not supported on iPhone OS versions prior 3.0.

I couldn’t find the answer on Google, so I kept poking around in Interface Builder until I finally found the answer, and I thought I’d go ahead and share it here – just in case your as compulsive about squasing warnings as I am!  :-)

First I double checked my build properties were all set to iPhone OS 3.0. right click on your target

to show and click Get Info to show:

Once confirmed, I opened the problematic .xib in Interface Builder and found the culprit. Press the unassuming info button then set the Deployment Target for that specific .xib!

It had been set to OS 2.0. Switching the .xib’s target deployment to 3.0 fixed the problem.

Easy!