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Fingerjig Typing Game

The Fingerjig Typing game: http://www.jonmiles.co.uk/fingerjig.php. A useful distraction (hihihi, a distraction IS a distraction, stating it as ‘useful’ does not mean that you are less guilty letting you get distracted by it ) to check your typing speed, and perhaps somehow improved it. It took about six minutes to complete the whole test.

On the first try, my score is not bad, about 1.5 times better than the average test takers. The second one only yields 8 thousands points more, guess this is my average point then. Several lessons learned:

• Letter ‘b’ is typed using the left hand .
• My left fingers are slightly faster than the right ones. (42 vs 39 wpm).
• I have to put more believes in my fingers! Even though my fingers are placed correctly on the keyboard, at least for the first few strokes (just 2 or 3 strokes), I have to let my eyes confirm that indeed I will start at the right place. Afterward, it is all automatically handled by the fingers. If I really want to improve my typing speed, I guess I will have to start really believing my fingers then .
• I type faster when I know exactly the spelling of the words. Looking at the letters one by one and then press the corresponding keys is way too slow.

Via onetipaday.com (you may not want to subscribe to this blog if you do not want to be distracted with useful distractions every day )

Debunking Myths About The Developing World Using Statistics

This presentation below is a must see. Quite long, just a little bit over 20 minutes, but I was rooted to follow the presentation completely from the start to the end. Simply great.

So what can we learn from this? No, not that the Swedish professors are on par with chimps I was graduated from a Swedish university so I could assure you that they are really competent in their field, just like Prof. Hans Rosling (his blog, the wikipedia entry on him, his biography) from Karolinska Institute who was doing the presentation above (but my assurance only applies if you believe that I am way much better than chimps ).

Aside from the very good conclusions presented here, for me there are several points learned:

• Statistic can really talk, BUT only if you can present it in the way so that the data can be easily understood. How many times did you put numbers that could only help the audiences losing their way? The next time you present data and numbers, always present them in the way so that they can talk by themselves.
• For me, the presenter is great. He looks very confident (years of teaching experience must be very helpful here), he can convey his ideas clearly (supported by the awesome method for presenting the data), he seems to really understand what he is talking about and he can connect with the audience. Exactly the required recipe for great presentations. I should learn on how to do that in order to improve my presentation skill.

For you who missed the link when it was presented in the video above, to be able to play more with the data and tools used in the presentation, you could go here: http://www.gapminder.org/

Additional note: The presentation could also be followed here, in the website of TED conference (where the presentation was made).

Top 25 Semiconductor Companies - 2006

Top 25 semiconductor companies based on the sales for the year of 2006. Overall, the situation for semiconductor industry is not that bad, positive changes in most companies. May be this is really a good time to graduate (and — finally — get out from the school? ).

Longer report and analysis here:
EETimesEurope: IC Insights’ top 25 IC firms: ‘Haves versus have-nots’

Image shown in this entry is taken from the the original bulletin released by IC Insight, available here.