Self Folding Robots

Wow! Self-folding.

Google+ Comments

G+ comments are nice. But are they worth it?

I've just noticed that it's still possible to use blogger with a personal domain. As part of my project to reclaim my independence from the mega-corps of the internet I'm tempted. But I'll lose both the existing G+ comments and this integration.

Is it worth it?

What do you think?

Answer by G+ comments .. for now ;-/

Robo-Oppression

Mashable :

iRobot recently announced that it will outfit Brazil with 30 PackBot robots, units similar to those that have been deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq and inside Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. Each PackBot is camera-equipped and remotely controlled to allow operators to examine suspicious objects and explore threatening environments.

The robots will work in tandem with thousands of soldiers who will be patrolling the 12 host cities in Brazil. The $7.2 million in contracts include maintenance, spares and associated equipment.

Each PackBot 510 unit typically costs around $100,000 to $200,000.

Brazilian police will also be donning some high-tech gear. Officers will sport facial-recognition camera glasses that claim to capture 400 facial images per second, then archive each face in a database that stores up to 13 million faces.

In their attempt to make “one of the most protected sports events in history,” Brazil invested $900 million to boost its security forces for the 2014 World Cup. Besides purchasing surveillance equipment and helicopters, the country reportedly acquired four Israeli-made drones to provide additional security at the FIFA Confederation next month.

Yeah. I'm sure Brazil (with massive inequality and paranoid rich people) will lead the world in cyber-security. :-(

More Quadrotor Construction

No Tears

"Mansion House"

RIP Ray Harryhausen

Gates of Dawn

Windows has spontaneously imploded for me, leaving me unable to use FL Studio or other music software I'm used to. So, I'm taking the opportunity to get to grips with Pure Data.

The problem is, I've always found the UI of PD fairly fiddly and off-putting. I don't want to have to think about laying everything out in 2D space when all I'm really interested in is the flow relationship between objects. Also, I've never ... ahem ... quite worked out how to do reusable components. It looks laborious to me.

Theoretically, I'm much more attracted to the SuperCollider approach of writing code. But that has some quirks. Also PD seems to be running in more interesting places (eg. as an engine in Android and iPad apps) than SuperCollider.

Because of this I decided to look into the text representation of PD patches. It's very low level, but easy to understand. So I had a quick go at creating a Python library to generate it.

The first (after a day or so of work) draft is now up on GitHub.

Already, I'm pretty excited about this. It works the way I want to think about synthesis. Objects are connected by function composition. Here, for example, is how you take any signal and turn it into a feed to FM synthesis.

def fm(sig,id=1) :
    return sin(sigadd(
                sig,
                sigmult(
                   phasor(num(slider("fm_freq_%s"%id,
                                            -1000,1000))),
                   num(slider("fm_amp_%s"%id,-500,500))
                )
           ))

Every time you call functions like "phasor" and "slider" you get new instances of the objects, added to the patch. So this is actually a declarative description of the relations between objects. It's partly inspired by my playing with signals in Elm-Lang. Though there's nothing similarly clever happening here, it's just producing a text-file.

Sliders controls are layed out automatically. Once again, it's very crude and lacking. But enough to make a small workable instrument.

Anyway, as I continue to explore Pure Data I'll do it by adding to this library. Will keep you posted with updates and some musical examples soon.

Decluttering, Platform Wars

Various changes going on at the moment. I'm working on some new things. And I've started to feel the need for a new online identity. And to try to find some collaborators with similar interests to join me in this next project. That's something I'm going to talk about more, very soon.

But I can't keep opening up new fronts. There's a balancing / decluttering that's needed too.

I just shut my Facebook account. That was for other reasons, but it's also going to clear some space and time. And it's pushed me towards thinking about further changes.

Therefore I've decided that I'm going to close Platform Wars.

Permanently. Unless I can hand it over to someone else within the next week. It's possibly my most popular blog. But I've basically finished with it. I have nothing more interesting to say on the matter. I'm done with fantasizing about running other people's companies. It's time to worry about running my own virtual career.

Shut Your Facebook

So, I officially shut my Facebook account.

It seems I can reactivate it at any time, just by logging in. And I can keep the option that anyone sends me a message or invite I get an email. So it's not clear exactly how much I'm "gone". (Would be interesting to hear from someone else if they still see me and my posts. What my "absence" looks like.)

But I am (kind of) out of there.

Design Fiction Dragons

Bruce Sterling on Fantasy prototypes and real disruption from John Lester on Vimeo.

Google Glass and Segway

Story about Google Glass looking geeky.

My comment :

Why do so many people misunderstand the Segway? Segway didn't fail because it looked dorky or was too rational. It failed because it solved the wrong problem : people don't use cars to avoid walking, they use them to a) stay dry, b) carry their junk around, c) feel safe on the streets and public transport. Segway solves none of these problems.

Is Hungary Turning Fascist?

Bloody hell!

This isn't good at all. Sign the petition.

Luma Module

My friend Mark is involved with this Kickstarter project.

Looks fun.

Google+ Comment Integration

So Google have integrated G+ comments with Blogger comments.

This is something I've been wanting for a while. Closer connection between my blog and G+ is valuable in so many ways.

OTOH, I can see how dangerous this road is. G+ is going to eat my blogs. Very conveniently, I'm sure.  I'll value every step of the way. But will I find, in a year or two that there won't really BE blogs here at all? Just my profile on G+. As much of a Walled River as Facebook? (Big question ... will there be an RSS feed from it?)

I'm troubled by how much I'm dependent on Google. I can walk away from Amazon and Facebook if I want. If I need to I can leave LinkedIn and Twitter. But everything I do (and have done) is deeply intertwingled  with Google.

Of course, at least I have my home page. My own address on the web that I control. An essential for the contemporary cybercitizen. I even have several WordPress blogs, but they're specialised things. My 3 real blogs : Composing, Smart Disorganized, Platform Wars are all very much Google properties.

Again I turn my mind to whether I should do something about this?

Criolina

Local outfit Criolina repped on Generation Bass.

Update : listening to their free album. Good stuff.

BTW : DJ Oops (who's behind this) once remixed one of my remixes of 2 Finos e um Grave. To be fair he saved it from a couple of weaknesses. A fine touch with the compressor managed to beef the bass up to a considerably more respectable level than my feeble effort. OTOH he lost a certain poly-rhythmic chaos to the rap that I considered a feature rather than bug.

US Government Obsessed With Housing Prices?

Just creating the conditions for a new housing crash?

Facebook Export

So after a couple of hours, Facebook sent me a link to a zip file that contains a rather nice plain html facsimile of my Facebook profile page. Contains the few pictures I uploaded and comments on them. A list of my FB friends' names (and a couple of email addresses where they were available) and the not-very-interesting archive of all the private messages I've sent and received. (Most of which are just co-ordination).

I'd say they did a good job of this. It's probably even possible (theoretically or someone may have already written the script) to import this into another YASN.

What's missing, of course, and the major value (from my perspective) of what I put into Facebook, is the huge amount of writing and discussion I've had in comments on other people's threads and in particular in various groups (including secret groups).

I knew I wasn't going to get this. And think there's a good rationale for it. But it's kind of sad too. 

Looking to what else I can recover and how.

Super Monetization

Very interesting video of Jaron Lanier promoting the idea of a fully monetarised web (all information should be charged for) as a reinvigoration of an economy that works for the middle / professional class.

My notes on ThoughtStorms.

ps : Music heralds, as always.

Facebook Export

So, I've found that Facebook do have an option to export some of your data (including pics).

Let's see how it does.

International Workshop on Document Changes

This is striking. The first international workshop on document changes. You can see that this is actually a big issue. Probably some very interesting work going on there.

Exit Planet Facebook

So, this is the last straw. I'm leaving Facebook.

I've been too caught up, not so much talking to real-life friends (which FB is useful for keeping track of) but having discussions with various interesting online people and groups.

This is ludicrous. Most of these conversations could be had anywhere. We used to have them on blogs and wikis. Or on Tribe. Or Slashdot.

We don't need to give this power to Zuckerberg and Facebook. We shouldn't have let our social AND intellectual lives get enclosed like this.

I've been saying this for a long time, of course. But this time ... I mean it. I've logged out of FB. I haven't deleted the account yet because I want to make sure the message I sent to all my FB friends doesn't disappear too. But I'm gone.

There's also a deeper problem, which I may have mentioned before. I think Facebook has essentially reinvented TV. It's an absolutely lousy medium for thoughtful discussion. Long comments are truncated to a couple of lines. Your actual content is squashed into a narrow column between acres of adverts / chat and infrastructure and is unceremoniously flowed off the page as quickly as possible. Facebook's design is ruthlessly optimised not to let you talk and listen but to keep you titillated with NEW items. Little hits of stimulation (an easily shared new image / meme;  status from a DIFFERENT friend you hadn't thought about in the last 10 minutes.) etc. All your emotional / personal connection to people is harnessed to keep you fixated on an overwhelming flux and your response to little more than automatic "likes" and "forwards".

The patterns of Facebook interaction are as disinforming and dis-empowering as the mindless channel hopping that TV promoted.

Marshall Mcluhan was right: the shape of a medium swamps its actual content. It's time to say no this perverse refinement of the flow internet and look for something that enables productive networking, thought and discussion.