Friday, December 28, 2007
Damn! BldgBlog is so good. Now I remember why I don't read it.
I can't cope with something this awesome in such high doses ...
Update : and I certainly can't handle another architecture blog
I can't cope with something this awesome in such high doses ...
Update : and I certainly can't handle another architecture blog
Been commenting on the future of Microsoft and the home "device swarm" over at Gaping Void today. (Scroll down)
Then Adrian revived the subject in comments on Smart Disorganized.
"Device Swarm" joins "Yasn-as-platform" as a convenient label.
Update : and some posts at platform wars
Then Adrian revived the subject in comments on Smart Disorganized.
"Device Swarm" joins "Yasn-as-platform" as a convenient label.
Update : and some posts at platform wars
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Why do people keep saying this stuff?
Seriously, it's kind of embarrassing, isn't it? The Bhutto assassination is very sad for her family and probably heralds a lot of trouble. Bhutto was meant to be a popular secular politician who could bolster Musharraf in the forthcoming elections. Now, her supporters are accusing Musharraf of deliberate negligence if not active involvement, and worry that he'll call off the elections.
If he does, attempts by the West to build a proverbial shining democratic beacon in Pakistan go into remission. If he doesn't, who is likely to win? Will the secular groups spend so much time quarreling with each other that more fundamentalist Islamic groups benefit?
Whatever. The assassination was undoubtedly the work of careful planning and concerted effort by groups who had a definite goal of what they want to happen as a result of this. Do these political speeches give any indication that the politicians really have a grasp on the situation here? Do we really think that the people who killed Bhutto were "cowards"? Or "afraid" of democracy (rather than just out to sabotage it)? Or that the act was "senseless"?
How can you win any kind of fight, when you keep insisting to yourself and everyone else that the enemy is "irrational" and acting without motive or strategy? Just for once I'd like to hear a politician get up and say "Damn! We were beaten this time. Better pull our socks up before the next round." Just for once I'd like to imagine a media who wouldn't dive in and punish such an admission as a "gaffe" and start a witch-hunt against the offending politician.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has condemned the killers of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto as "cowards afraid of democracy".
It was a "tragic hour" for Pakistan but terrorists must not be allowed to "win there, here or anywhere", he added.
Earlier, Foreign Secretary David Miliband called the apparent suicide bombing a "senseless attack".
Seriously, it's kind of embarrassing, isn't it? The Bhutto assassination is very sad for her family and probably heralds a lot of trouble. Bhutto was meant to be a popular secular politician who could bolster Musharraf in the forthcoming elections. Now, her supporters are accusing Musharraf of deliberate negligence if not active involvement, and worry that he'll call off the elections.
If he does, attempts by the West to build a proverbial shining democratic beacon in Pakistan go into remission. If he doesn't, who is likely to win? Will the secular groups spend so much time quarreling with each other that more fundamentalist Islamic groups benefit?
Whatever. The assassination was undoubtedly the work of careful planning and concerted effort by groups who had a definite goal of what they want to happen as a result of this. Do these political speeches give any indication that the politicians really have a grasp on the situation here? Do we really think that the people who killed Bhutto were "cowards"? Or "afraid" of democracy (rather than just out to sabotage it)? Or that the act was "senseless"?
How can you win any kind of fight, when you keep insisting to yourself and everyone else that the enemy is "irrational" and acting without motive or strategy? Just for once I'd like to hear a politician get up and say "Damn! We were beaten this time. Better pull our socks up before the next round." Just for once I'd like to imagine a media who wouldn't dive in and punish such an admission as a "gaffe" and start a witch-hunt against the offending politician.
I'm fascinated by http://www.made-in-china.com/
Look at all the Dance Dance mats (including football), video glasses, PC cameras, etc.
Update: USB gloves?
Update 2 : USB incense burner, Flipping Book!
Look at all the Dance Dance mats (including football), video glasses, PC cameras, etc.
Update: USB gloves?
Update 2 : USB incense burner, Flipping Book!
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
For various reasons, I've never been very happy with my MPhil thesis. Looking back on it now, I tend to feel that it had lot of interesting ideas and ambition, but wasn't really a very good bit of scientific research.
That's partly because "Artificial Life" (or any kind of computer modeling) lives in a gray area between science and "philosophy". It's not quite "science" in the sense at looking at evidence from the world. Yet seems more than "conceptual analysis". It's fun to surf between the two very different worlds with their different requirements and notions of rigour, but easy to fall into the trap of doing neither well. (Especially for me, in those days. :-) )
Nevertheless, that's not the reason that the thesis wasn't online. It was because I only had it in Postscript format which is not all that common outside academia. But now, thanks to PS2PDF.com I have it available as a PDF.
Quite an impressive online conversion given that there were some horribly heavy bitmap diagrams in there. That first blank page was there in the original postscript. Not the fault of the conversion.
That's partly because "Artificial Life" (or any kind of computer modeling) lives in a gray area between science and "philosophy". It's not quite "science" in the sense at looking at evidence from the world. Yet seems more than "conceptual analysis". It's fun to surf between the two very different worlds with their different requirements and notions of rigour, but easy to fall into the trap of doing neither well. (Especially for me, in those days. :-) )
Nevertheless, that's not the reason that the thesis wasn't online. It was because I only had it in Postscript format which is not all that common outside academia. But now, thanks to PS2PDF.com I have it available as a PDF.
Quite an impressive online conversion given that there were some horribly heavy bitmap diagrams in there. That first blank page was there in the original postscript. Not the fault of the conversion.
Added BldgBlog and OrangeCone to my "following" blogroll. BldgBlog is so darned good and I never remember to read it regularly. Now, I hope I will.
Update : OrangeCone just linked a Midified Roombas video
Update 2 : And this is even more fun. Roomba controlled by MacBook accelerometers.
Thinking about that for a second. One interesting thing you see repeatedly is the transformation of a recording technology into a user interface : for example, vinyl records used to be a music storage device. Then DJs discovered scratching and turned them into a manipulable instrument. Now you can even hook turntables up to a computer and use one record as an interface to scratch an entirely unrelated MP3.
Pen and paper is likely going the same way with tablets and Livescribes etc. (And arguably the typewriter became the computer keyboard and printer)
Now here's a guy turning a laptop into an input device for a robot. Daft? Sure. Any dafter than scratching records?
Update : OrangeCone just linked a Midified Roombas video
Update 2 : And this is even more fun. Roomba controlled by MacBook accelerometers.
Thinking about that for a second. One interesting thing you see repeatedly is the transformation of a recording technology into a user interface : for example, vinyl records used to be a music storage device. Then DJs discovered scratching and turned them into a manipulable instrument. Now you can even hook turntables up to a computer and use one record as an interface to scratch an entirely unrelated MP3.
Pen and paper is likely going the same way with tablets and Livescribes etc. (And arguably the typewriter became the computer keyboard and printer)
Now here's a guy turning a laptop into an input device for a robot. Daft? Sure. Any dafter than scratching records?
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
DIY Christmas light-show
Note that "music synchronization" seems to be the "killer app." of automated control of lights.
Note that "music synchronization" seems to be the "killer app." of automated control of lights.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Have to say I'm liking my blogs more and more now we have keyword tagging.
I know Blogger was late with this feature, but I'm starting to find that it changes how I think about my blogs. I feel far more confident writing for the "long term" in the blog. In the past I considered ThoughtStorms for anything long lived, and blogs for the ephemeral. These days, really ephemeral stuff goes on Twitter. I'll use blogs for quite serious essays and more focussed stuff. And while ThoughtStorms is meant to be for the longer term stuff, it has, of course, got quite out of date.
I may be revisiting what I said over on ThoughtStorms:WikiLog referencing Bill Seitz, and in many debates with Chris Dent and Eugene Eric Kim.
Briefly I've been saying that you can't merge wikis (which have semantically meaningful "pagenames" as their addresses) with blogs (which have semantically meaningless dates as their addresses) or "purpled" paragraphs (which have semantically meaningless codes) as their addresses, because working in wiki requires the fluent link-making that semantically meaningful pagenames give you and you don't have.
Well, I still think that's kind of true ... but it's also damned useful to have ways of bringing together stuff that you've put on wikis and blogs. (And twitter). Perhaps we can't dismiss the attempts to produce hybrids so easily.
Maybe tagging can help. After all tagging doesn't give a unique ID, but tags are a) semantically meaningful, and b) exist in both worlds (on blogs, and as "CategoryCategory") in wiki.
Update : Interesting to see Chris Dent experimenting with something new.
I know Blogger was late with this feature, but I'm starting to find that it changes how I think about my blogs. I feel far more confident writing for the "long term" in the blog. In the past I considered ThoughtStorms for anything long lived, and blogs for the ephemeral. These days, really ephemeral stuff goes on Twitter. I'll use blogs for quite serious essays and more focussed stuff. And while ThoughtStorms is meant to be for the longer term stuff, it has, of course, got quite out of date.
I may be revisiting what I said over on ThoughtStorms:WikiLog referencing Bill Seitz, and in many debates with Chris Dent and Eugene Eric Kim.
Briefly I've been saying that you can't merge wikis (which have semantically meaningful "pagenames" as their addresses) with blogs (which have semantically meaningless dates as their addresses) or "purpled" paragraphs (which have semantically meaningless codes) as their addresses, because working in wiki requires the fluent link-making that semantically meaningful pagenames give you and you don't have.
Well, I still think that's kind of true ... but it's also damned useful to have ways of bringing together stuff that you've put on wikis and blogs. (And twitter). Perhaps we can't dismiss the attempts to produce hybrids so easily.
Maybe tagging can help. After all tagging doesn't give a unique ID, but tags are a) semantically meaningful, and b) exist in both worlds (on blogs, and as "CategoryCategory") in wiki.
Update : Interesting to see Chris Dent experimenting with something new.
I'm grabbing some free-as-in-beer samples from Zenhiser.
Writing that statement on intellectual property has really got me thinking over the last week or so. I need to write a lot more about that.
I also need to write about another thing that's come up that's pretty disturbing. But neither are 1 minute blog-posts, so will have to come back to them later.
Writing that statement on intellectual property has really got me thinking over the last week or so. I need to write a lot more about that.
I also need to write about another thing that's come up that's pretty disturbing. But neither are 1 minute blog-posts, so will have to come back to them later.
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