Cutting edge archaeology using an iPad

Discovering Ancient Pompeii with iPad
[Via Apple Hot News]

Archaeologist Steven Ellis and his team are using iPad — with apps like Pages, FMTouch, iDraw, OmniGraffle, and Photos — to capture invaluable historical data in the trenches at Pompeii. Says Ellis, “That my team could both type and draw on the screen, and also examine all previously entered data, made it an ideal single-device solution.”

[More]

Lots of paper records are normally created in an excavation:

Excavators generally make four kinds of paper records in the field: forms (sometimes a hundred per trench) for describing soil layers and features; notebook entries for recording elevations and space; daily scaled drawings of the trench; and a Harris Matrix, an illustration that shows chronological relationships among layers.

He gives a nice estimate of the effect of having access to an iPad:

Ellis, who estimates that iPad has already saved him a year of data entry, plans to increase the number of iPad devices from one to two per trench. “The recovery of invaluable information from our Pompeian excavations is now incalculably faster, wonderfully easier, unimaginably more dynamic, precisely more accurate, and robustly secure,” he says.

You can check out the results at their website.

The mortgage companies really do not care

by woodleywonderworks

Bank of America forecloses on a man who has no mortgage
[Via Boing Boing]

Jason Grodensky, a Fort Lauderdale man who bought his house with cash last December was surprised to discover that Bank of America had foreclosed on him, though he has no mortgage. Florida’s foreclosure mills being what they are, the checks and balances against erroneous foreclosure have eroded to the point where banks can seize and sell homes they have no interest in.

Grodensky’s story and other tales of foreclosure mistakes started popping up recently across South Florida. This week, GMAC Mortgage — one of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers and a major mortgage lender — told real estate agents to stop evicting residents and suspend sales of properties that had been taken from homeowners in foreclosure. The company said it might have to “correct” some of its foreclosures, but was not halting those in process.

In Florida courts, which have been swamped with foreclosure cases for several years, mistakes “happen all the time,” said foreclosure defense attorney Matt Weidner in St. Petersburg. “It’s just not getting reported.”

And the legal efforts required to resolve a foreclosure mistake are complicated. “Unwrapping it is like unwrapping Fort Knox,” said Carol Asbury, a Fort Lauderdale foreclosure attorney. “It’s very difficult.”

Man’s home sold out from under him in foreclosure mistake

[More]

This is not the first time I have heard about a home being sold when there was no mortgage involved. Makes you wonder how many other types of mistaken foreclosures there are, especially given that one guy was supposed to be checking, signing and getting notarized 10,000 foreclosures a month. That worked out to about a minute devoted to each foreclosure. Simply not possible.

They do not care about getting it right. And, as shown here, there are many cases appearing where the entity doing ths foreclosing has no legal grounds to to that. LAst year the courts trusted that these companies had it right. Now, not so sure.

What is troubling is that only 23 states have judicial oversight of foreclosures. The other 27 do not. So, GMAC is continuing to do what it has been doing for those states because there is nothing to restrain them. Nice.

Companies that commit acts like this should be heavily fined, to the point where they actually take notice and put in procedures to prevent it from happening. It should not be up to the innocent homeowner to have to fight these mistakes.

But what is really stupid, as shown in the article, is that banks are going through with foreclosure, even when there is a buyer for the house who is willing to pay more money that the bank can get from foreclosing.

Yep, the banks not only screw up things like selling houses they do not own but also are not selling houses that they could get a better return on. Why? Because they do not lose any money no matter what happens. The use the financial system to protect themselves so they do not have any real skin in the game. They get the same amount for their books no matter what happens with the house.

Since they really do not care, they have no reason to have a tight process. But their lack of caring results in greater reductions in housing prices than would normally happen. These foreclosures and cheaper houses hurt all of us.

But they do not care. They are protected and so are the salaries of their CEOs. What does it matter if it hurts the rest of us?

I’m on Ping

by Per Nordin.

I downloaded iTunes 10 and set up my Ping account. It was immediately useful in its purpose – to sell music. I saw that Steve Miller had a new album out and bought it.

It is still very basic in its social networking aspects. For example, I love progressive music. Although it was not one of the choices available, I thought I might be able to find others who really like that genre who might help tip me onto some bands. But Ping does not let me do that, at least in any way I found useful.

In contrast, I follow ProgArchives, which has a comprehensive list, with many reviews, of virtually any band that even has a connection with progressive music. I checked out their highest rated albums of 2009 and have found several really good bands – in particular Transatlantic, which has a new album and is made up of several members from the best bands of the last 10 years or so – Dream Theater, Spock’s Beard, Flower Kings and Marillion.

I have since bought all their music I can find.

Finding a new band that hits my sweet spot is one of the most wonderful things in the world, but finding it can be very hard. The Web has made that easier but it is not optimal.

Neither is Ping but it has some promise. What other bands are out there for me to find?

[Listening to: Set Us Free from the album "The Whirlwind" by Transatlantic]

The old days when Shell ads showed how they made asphalt salad, or something like that

Shell Research: as delicious as rocks slathered in crude
[Via Boing Boing]

For reasons I am at a loss to explain, someone at Shell Research once believed that their mission could be made attractive to the public if it was summarized in this advert featuring a slimy petroleum salad.

Shell Research

[More]

I love the little cruets with oil in them. And the ‘salad’ in the wooden bowl. And the obviously female hands are supposed to be from our POV so we are the ones fixing the salad.Did this kind of stuff ever work? Or did people just remember that Shell made nice salads?