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January 31, 2005
Einstein as a pin-up
Pirelli have started a competition. The prize is €25,000. They want a multimedia explanation of special relativity.
Cool.
I have a degree in Applied Physics and I have Flash on my computer*.
*Note: didn't mention how good (or bad...) I am with Flash....
Posted by dottie at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
Distributed Computing
For those that dont know, distributed computing works by asking ordinary joes with computers and internet access to download a little piece of software that acts as a screen saver on their computer. Wehn the screen saver kicks in the software will retrieve a bit of data from a central location, crunch it for a while and send back the results.
The most famous of these is of course the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) distributed computing initiative. This has been trying to find signs of intelligent life in the universe by processing data from Radio Telescopes. No results so far...
There are a few other distirbuted computing projects taking off, none quite as ubiquitous as the SETI program, that are actually achieving results.
One of these is the study of the problem of global warming.
The results? We're fucked apparently. The program ran something like 50,000 simulations - a lot more than the previous largest run of 128.
Apparently the earth seems to be a lot more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought. Meltdown expected by 2050.
I'll be 80 by then. I'll probably appreciate not having to make my pension stretch to heating bills...
The other thing about this is that you must choose between either SETI@HOME or the climate net program. What happens when there are more of these initiatives? Research bodies will have to adopt aggressive marketing to try and convince people to download there distributed computing client.
What about having a distributed computing client that would accept both data and algorithm (the maths bit...) from one of the research bodies so that you install one distributed computing client and then the computing power is available as a pool to whatever research bodies need it.
I dont know how it would be divvied up - committee? Round robin? Throw of the dice? Equal shares?
Posted by dottie at 1:56 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2005
Mountain Climbing
Funny sorts mountain climbers. They claim to want to climb because of the challenge.
Challenge them to climb the north face of the Eiger in the middle of winter. No problem.
Challenge them to climb Everest. No problem.
Challenge them to scale an ice climb with overhangs and crumbling ice using nothing but some crampons and a couple of ice axes. No problem.
Even challenge them to climb drainpipes while totally pissed and blindfolded. No problem.
Yet challenge them to climb the stairs with me on their back. Problemo!
Glory hounds, that's all they are.
As for me, when asked why I fall into bed drunk every night, I like to paraphrase Mallory - 'because it is there'
Posted by dottie at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)
Double Yoke-rs
I bought a carton of eggs the other day and every one of them had eggs with double yokes.
I've always thought they were lucky.
Although heart specialists might disagree...
Posted by dottie at 9:35 PM
Is there nothing that beer cant do?
trapped in car - uses beer to free himself
Remember - whatever else is going on in your life, there is always room for beer.
Posted by dottie at 8:47 PM | Comments (0)
Chimera
Chimera - a mythical animal from greek mythology with a serpents tail, a lions body and goats head.
Scientists have lately been developing animals with strange traits for use in laboratory study. These traits are familiar. They are human.
They have bred pigs that have human blood flowing in their veins. They have fused the embryonic cells of Rabbits and men and watched them develop for days in a dish before destroying them to harvest the stem cells.
What would human-rabbit hybrids have developed into?
Scientists are also considering developing mice with human brains.
Now it all becomes clear.
Science has been bought out by the two big giants of animation - Disney (Mickey Mouse) and Warner Brothers (Bugs Bunny).
I hope I'm wrong, but in 10 years time I expect to be greeted at the gates of Disneyland by a giant, talking mouse called Michael. He will have social security benefits, a passport (for internal travel) and will live in an apartment that holds a leather covered, eight foot tall treadmill and oversized, inverted water bottle.
I wonder if the trans-human mickey mouse will have his life as closely censured as others who attempt to subvert Disney's copyright? Will he be forced to reinact all the great screen moments of his alter-ego? Will Disney insist on script writing his entire life?
Imagine then that some animal/human rights activist group 'released' him into the 'wild' some night. His life would be a shambles. With no-one to scriptwrite for him he would fall foul of some manipulative agent of the darker side of life.
Using his talent for squeezing through tight spaces he would be a shoe-in to become a cat burglar (hah!) and work his way down the ladder until at his nadir - drug addled, broken-boned ,he might have an epiphany and turn away from penny and dime cruelty and theft to embrace showbusiness and easy money once again.
Yes, he would become the president of the United States of Ah-Meric-Ah
Posted by dottie at 8:45 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2005
Resolutions
You may have noticed that I haven't posted any new year resolutions.
The reason is simply this - I only have the one and I have only realised slowly exactly what that resolution was:
Live a little
Covers a lot of ground that one and it's easy to remember.
Seems to be working out so far...
Posted by dottie at 9:35 PM | Comments (0)
d'Interwebs is a great place to be sure
I was just talking with a friend of mine in Moscow using Skype, while instant messaging a work colleague about a problem and browsing the net.
Yes. The internet gives us many and varied ways to avoid work, concentrate on anything BUT our conversations, put our mortal souls at risk by looking at pictures of ladies with no clothes on (allegedly - the soul thing that is. The pictures definitely exist!), and fulfil the potential we all have to become dilletantes.
And still, I keep thinking that the internet is still not living up to its potential. It is now the equivalent of a magazine insert. There's so much more it can be. What that is I dont know otherwise I'd be eating cheese and drinking wine at my IPO offering.
The current level of the internet is not engaging. I find my level of concentration waning very quickly - I have had to read a lot more (and throw away my TV) to fight this insidious decline.
Everything is SO compelling (like a train wreck...) on the internet - well for three seconds anyway. I would be surprised if anyone got this far down the page actually.
Just as a testament to how powerful the new media experience can be check out this John Perry Barlow post:
Maybe it is the next big thing - getting skyped by hot young asians looking for a husband.
I could think of worse things...
It does seem strange that two young asian girls would call an aging US citizen on the same evening, but there you go. It shows the power that is at our fingertips now that allows us contact a perfect stranger in another country essentially for free. All they need is to be running the same software we do. In essence they are part of our tribe.
Just as tatoos or clothing, or music (think of the mixolydians, lydian and phrygian tribes of aincient greece - now names of musical scales that once defined the identity of the tribes) define who we are and who we trust. Now our software and how we use it will define who we are and who we trust.
AIM or ICQ? Skype or Vonage? Outlook Express or GMail? It's not exactly what you might think would inspire wars, but then what inspires wars never seems like it should have.
There have been many efforts recently to try and 'discover' what it is that will kick the net up a notch. People (clever people) are trying hard to cobble together systems that will allow people communicate through the medium of the net. Its a free for all at the moment because thats the way it has to be. Its not that people will stumble across the 'next insanely great thing' as Steve Jobs puts it. Its that people will begin communicating, interacting, sharing media, and generally learning new ways to connect with others with a myriad of devices that will begin to make it abvious that there are new and subtle ways that are similar through all these modes of interaction.
At that point an imperceptible level will be gained, people will optimise and re-release software, combining modes of communication. Users will find new ways to enhance, degrade and generally bleed through and blur the lines. Another level will be gained, another release. Rinse. Repeat.
The big thing is always affordance. Eventually you will reach the point of no return where the communities will be so large that the intricate knowledge, mores and social interaction needed to be part of these intricate societies will become just plain old common sense. The boundaries will break and in will rush all the newbies. Exponential growth will follow as they discover the coolness of al lthe toys that the bleeding edgers have created for them.
Then their minds will blow when they discover the intricacies and subtleties of what has been handed to them and they will bleed the edges a little further, making the pristine world of the original digital frontiersmen a little dirty and commonplace and they will jump to something new.
A many headed hydra, constantly evolving and growing new heads, eating all in its path and leaving nothing unchanged in its wake.
Or maybe not.
Posted by dottie at 5:58 PM
Flats are Fun!
I'm looking for a new flatmate at the moment.
I have been living in my flat for two months now paying all the rent myself. It hurts. I could have had a foreign holiday on the extra rent! In the snow! With my own gear! And change!
I was showing the room to prospective flatmates last night and all of them commented on how big it was and how it would be great if it was clean. Yes, I'm still talking about the room (filthy little minds...).
So hopefully I should have a new flatmate and I can once again buy expensive bottles of wine at a moments notice without suffering the guilt and worry of double rent looming over me.
Well, the wine usually helps to dissolve most of those feelings anyway, but MORE wine would be better!
Friend: woud you like more wine Mark?
Me (and six glasses): NO. I'm fine.
Friend: you'll be finer
Bottle: gurgle gurgle
a little later...
Me: NO, no. I'm grand.
Friend: you'll be grander
a little later...
Me: I bet you I can climb from the mantlepiece around the room without touching the floor...
And there, friends, gentle reader, kind patroniser of these, my arts - lies another story. Especially considering that I dont even HAVE a mantlepiece.
Posted by dottie at 5:12 PM
January 23, 2005
Experts
An expert is someone who has graduated from answering questions correctly to starting to ask them.
Posted by dottie at 7:46 PM | Comments (0)
US poops
German pranksters are planting US flags and flags with Bush's mug on them in piles of dog poo in parks in germany.
Claim some for the US today!
Posted by dottie at 6:32 PM | Comments (0)
Amphetamine patch
yeah right
Posted by dottie at 5:45 PM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2005
Ah mondays...
First entry of 2005.
Just back from skiing, drinking, relaxing. Relaxing. Now there's a thing.
If I have one resolution for the new year it will be to find more time to kick back and chill.
And women. Women will definitely figure in there somewhere.
Your first monday after holidays is always the worst. It almost makes you look forward to normal mondays.
Almost.
Now back to my chocolate...err... work.
Posted by dottie at 2:35 PM | Comments (0)