Check out Wolfram Alpha. It’s a neat search tool, which can provide information right away, instead of just giving you a bunch of links to places where you might be able to find the information. It’s new, so it’s still limited. But, it has rather diverse uses. For example, in the search box below, you can type “Daniel” to see when my name was most popular in the US. Or type “Daniel vs David” to see which is more popular. You even get a plot in the results. You can also do fancy math like “integrate cos(x).” Take a look at their page for more uses.

Tags: Nerdy

Back in the summer of 2005, I had to make a webpage to describe my summer research project. So, I learned some basic HTML, and I decided to use this knowledge to also create a website where I could post pictures for friends and family to see (this was just a couple months before Facebook added the capability of posting photo albums). To the right is the first iteration of my website. Later, during my last semester of college, I took a class on programming with HTML and Javascript. I learned a couple tips for how to create a better layout for the website, and I created the second iteration of my website. I used Javascript to create a photo gallery that was easier to set-up than when I only knew HTML. You can still see this design in the College Years pictures on the current site. Later on, I learned style sheets which made updates and changes to the website design easier. However, I had issues with Internet Explorer compatibility. I even set-up two versions of the website, one for IE and one for every other browser. What a pain! I always recommend that people switch to a browser that actually adheres to accepted standards. Oh well, IE8 is supposed to be different. I made a couple other changes during this time. I started hosting my website with GoDaddy.com, and I purchased the domain name www.dancapellupo.com. Besides giving me a website name that people can easily find and remember, I also had the ability to add php and other fancy stuff to my website. That’s when I started using Coppermine for posting photos. It’s designed by other people and made to work in all major web browsers (including IE). The layout was somewhat customizable, but I never loved it. In two upcoming posts, I will discuss what I now use to develop my website...

Tags: Nerdy, My Website

The new Star Trek movie is coming out on May 9! I’m excited, as you should be too. I hope it’s good! Plus, they are already planning a sequel. Wow, they must be confident that people are going to like this one!

Tags: Nerdy