Fast laptop roaming

Fast laptop roaming.
Sounds cool.
Man, I'm so happy I don't have to get in any planes or even cars in my work, though. A ten-meter commute is all right with me.

Vincent?

[Thanks to Norm.]
A few years ago someone discovered this photo, taken in Brussels in 1886 by photographer Victor Morin, who took a number of photos of local clergymen.
There's no note on it about who's the subject, but it was taken when Vincent van Gogh would have been 33.
I think it's him. The skull shape and the hair lines are exactly the same.



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Michael Burton comments:
The man in the photo seems older than 33, but it's certainly an intriguing resemblance.

I almost wrote about that. People in the eighteen hundreds lived several decades shorter lives than we do now, and Vincent was a troubled soul. I think it very likely that he would look fortyish at thirty-three.

Baby mutations

I'm not normally one for posting "funny baby pictures", but I do think these really are funny, and more so, very well done. It is really not easy to make clothes that fit and so on, in the computer. Or to make a baby look like Michael Moore!

I would have made it a link if I could find the originals. However when I visit the site written on the pictures, all I get is some stupid commercial portal page. Funny enough, it contains this:
First the original:

Mr Woo's Robots

Mr Woo's Robots.
Makes you wonder why good robots are so rare yet. This man builds them from junk!

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Alex expounded:
Good robots are so rare?

I guess it depends on you definition of robot. I've seen some pretty awsome robots working production lines, but then a robotic arm looks a little less like a robot, and how much "intelligence" does it have? A lot of these robots are blind, but have a sense of touch.

The more impressive robots are like those bipeds put out by Honda a couple of years ago. To see a bipedal, humanoid robot walk up stairs is quite impressive.

iRobot make domestic robots. They are call Roomba's and are like automated curling stones which clean your floor. iRobot also make military/bomb disposal robots.

It turns out that they are introducing autonomous cars now. There is a trial turnpike in Southern Cal where they are embedding transponders in the road for course guidence and the vehicles are also equipped with adaptive cruise control (forward looking range finder, typically radar to govern headway).

More impressive robot cars are the ones raced in Nevada every year. These things have binocular vision to navigate the terrain. They are raced across the desert, and not on a track.

Home robotics is becoming more accessible. Lego Mindstorms have adopted a more powerful processor, and now have tools from National (ViewLab) which is a WYSIWYG editor, and 3rd party add on's include accelerometers and colour sensors. The older sets could have a video camera, but then became tethered to a PC. I only know two or three people who have scratch built home robots. We'd BS about how they'd do certain things, things that seem so simple like "how can I get it to plug into it's charging station in a way that is cat friendly."

Oh, there are hacks for Roombas out there too, you can mod them to do things other than the random clean patterns. I've heard tell of them being used to play Frogger - which strays into the realm of more money than sense, or urban legend.

One of the most interesting pieces I've read about robots was a chapter in Bradburys "The Silver Locusts" (Martian Chronicles), though Asimov certainly has much to say.

From the video it looked like Mr Woo had a combination of automata, and some seem to be controlled machines. I've seen many automata, be they clockwork or air logic or sequenced motorized critters. Woos automata have an interesting gait, more complex than an old 1950's tin robot with it's interlocking feet.

Ah, to have the time and resources to build something more that a simple trundle that can follow a line.

Robotics is very advanced now, the field I find fascinating are nano-bots.

So, my top fave robots of fiction:-
Maria from Metropolis - best styling.
Huey, Dewey & Louis from "Silent Running" most human non-humanoid robots.
Gort from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (aka Gnut from "Farewell to the master")
Marvin - the most wretched of souls from the Hitch Hikers Guide.
Data - the Android from Star Trek Next Generation.

For Mac newbies

For Mac newbies.

Sarcasm

I think The Onion is a bit hit-or-miss, but the best is good. For example: 70 percent of all praise is sarcastic.

A master debater...

Don't be afraid of taking matter into your own hands.
[Thanks to Anurag.]

Spaceship landing?

The damndest thing: just ten minutes ago I heard the strangest sound from outside. Going to the window I couldn't figure out or see what it was. It was similar to a very had rain falling, but there was only a very soft rain, so that couldn't be it.

I noticed additional aspects to the noise which made it seem like a big machine noise. And it was quite loud. I rushed out to investigate. It was much more distant than it sounded. I had to walk all the way to the back of our square of flats, and yet past a smaller collection of flats behind them, where is a motorway.

I got more and more curious, because even from a distance, a big cloud of steam was rising behind the trees and houses, and the noise was really loud. There was a loud whistling/howling noise together with the sound like the raizing of a hail storm. It was like a spaceship landing. Uh, I imagine.

It turned out to be a road crew with a guy pointing a big stick at the road which glowed fiercely orange. It was clearly discharging a powerful heat. Maybe they were softening up the asphalt for cutting it up, I don't know.

When I got back near my own flat, I met a nice young couple coming out, and we had a cheerful brief chat about the phenomenon, on which I was the local expert now.

But until them, I did not see a single person out there to look. There must be a hundred people at least living in earshot of that amazing noise, and I was walking down there alone! Am I practically the only one who has a healthy curiosity about what's happening? Very weird.
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I'm reminded of a similar phenomenon many years ago when I was living in Copenhagen very close to the railway tracks. This was also happening near midnight. And it was a very slow-moving train which was, get this, replacing the stones between and under the tracks! I know, it sounds like a joke, but it was what it was doing. It was sucking up the old fist-sized rocks in front, and pouring down the new rocks in the back. Why the hell they would need to change the stones I have no clue.
But: can you imagine the noise?! It was fantastic. I walked around by the train for a couple of minutes, because with the strangeness and the lights and the noise, it was all like a huge performance art event. I enjoyed it. I normally don't like noise, but this was just so unique.

Spook Country

Time in a couple of weeks for my own "Harry Potter" update: William Gibson has a new book coming out, yoobee (as the Danes say in lieu of "yahoo").

Here is an Interview.

Quote:
"Famously his first novel set in the present, Pattern Recognition made me feel like I had put on special headphones tuned into the frequency of our lives with a sensitivity that my own biological antenna could never match. I was the fiction editor of our Canadian site at the time, and the great irony of that year was that Gibson had written a novel set in the present that was "literary" by any measure except his sci-fi pedigree, while the Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood in the same year wrote a classic science fiction novel, Oryx and Crake. Although by my lights Pattern Recognition was the far better book (and the best Canadian novel of the year), when it came time for the yearly literary award nominations, Atwood's science fiction book was recognized but Gibson's was nowhere to be found."

I can't believe SF is still a stepchild. Come on, literary people, wake up and smell the coffee. Science Fiction is not a "genre" like westerns or romance. SF is literature unbound from only describing the present "reality".

Twenty years ago Gibson said in an interview "I can't see how anybody can write a serious novel and have it not be science fiction". Well, apparently these days he can see it. Fortunately, like Iain Banks, he is equally good at both.

Nice coincidence, just found this quote:
"Mainstream literature seems like painting in miniature a lot of the time, and then suddenly you get to science fiction and you get the opportunity to work on a proper canvas." - Iain M Banks

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I am trying to make it clear when text is not my own by using italics and colors. And I seem to have fallen into the convention that when I quote from comments here on the blog, I use blue text, and when I quote (larger blocks) from outside, I use green. Crystale claire, n'est pas? :)

Guess who dies

OK, so I haven't slept since yesterday, but I have now finished the last Harry Potter book.

I'm so sad that Hermione died.

Ooh, should there have been a spoiler warning?

Just kidding, I have not read any of the Harry Potters.

Man, there must be 20 million hardcore fans holed up in their bedrooms with that book today. What a publishing phenomenon, unbelievable.

I wonder if Rowling will ever write again after this.
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F.I. said in part:
"...or bad in that they're learning to commodify learning by buying more products full of facile understandings and simplistic language."

Jes answered:
What's wrong with simplistic language? I'm a notoriously slow reader. It usually takes me about a month to read a book, I don't know why. But this doesn't seem to apply to the Harry Potter books. Somehow I'm able to just breeze through them with a clear picture of what's going on in my head. The simplistic language is one of my favorite aspects of the books. It always confuses me why people talk about simplicity like it's a bad thing.

Is it intellectually stimulating or escapism? Who cares? In my mind, it's an amazing story with tons of interesting characters, and an entire universe unto itself. Whether or not anyone agrees with me is their business as far as I'm concerned. Just different perspectives is all.

Jes has a point. I have heard very clever writers saying that it is lot more challenging to write simply and clearly than to make it complex and impressive. Some academic books are basically unreadable.

Clint Eastwood and the attractive murderer

In an earlier post I mentioned Clint Eastwood and Unforgiven. It was suggested I give it another chance, and since it was available on HD DVD, I did.

It certainly looks beautiful in HD. And I admit it is a very good film with a lot of good points, perfect timing, excellent acting, good characters, the works. And it has a lot more nuance than westerns normally have.

But I will contend that ultimately it still boils down to the same old thing: admiration for a killer.

When William Munny, in the charismatic and handsome frame of Clint Eastwood, rides out of Big Whiskey in the end, saying that if anybody hurt the prostitutes for putting up the blood money, he will come back and kill everybody, there is pretty much not anybody watching who does not feel deep in his/her gut: "my god, there is a man!" You just can't help it, it's in our dark nature.

And you can even see this excemplified in the admiring and longing looks given him by the writer fellow and by the prostitute with the scars, as they watch him leave.

There is no way around it: it is gut-level admiration for a man who by his own admission has killed many innocent men, and women, and children, and who killed several more just minutes ago. And the film aims for it, it is where it gets its marketing power.

I am shocked that I've been unable to find any other reviewers who really question this. It is not a "great wrong", but there's certainly nothing beautiful about it, and it needs to be recognized.

In a documentary about Eastwood, the narrator says about Unforgiven: "the sherif has tortured and killed Will's best friend. He has no choice but vengeance." And that's the exact untruth to be uncovered. There is always a choice. Violence begets violence, and he who breaks the chain, wins.

Don't get me wrong, I am not villainizing "the Clint" here. His hyper-violent movie characters are merely reflecting an important aspect of human nature. I'm just saying it's an aspect we'd do well to look at some more.

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Joe Dick ads:

The following is from Wikipedia, and I have not checked the accuracy, so like all Wikipedia entries take it with a grain of salt:

"... although many critics and viewers consider the film emphatically anti-violence, David Webb Peoples has stated in interviews that this was not his intention: he wished to present violence as morally complex, as opposed to simply "wrong". Further evidence of this is the statement in the closing moments of the film that Munny is rumored to have gone to San Francisco and prospered in dry goods, lending support to the idea that Munny's brutal slaughter of Big Whiskey's sheriff and deputies at the film's climax was in some sense redemptive."

Eolake is back (and don't know how to stop):
Yes, or it surely depicts the idea that you can commit such horrible acts without any price to your life or soul.

Obviously I'm not immune to the charm of the movie, otherwise I'd not be upset by it. :)

Another way to express my problem with it: if you listen to the movie, it is clearly against violence. The characters say it many times. But if you look at the movie, it is clearly for it. The violence is presented in a way so it is enjoyable. A friend of mine said that the final big gun battle was "like an orgasm".

In other words it is not so much "ambiguous" as it is hypocritical. It is like "don't do what I do, do what I say."

By the way, I'm just watching the docu about the film, and the wiki entry is pretty correct, DW Peoples (the writer) does say that the reason people think it's an anti-violence movie is that most other movies are "pro-violence" in the sense that if it is the good guy doing it to the bad guy, it's OK. But that reality is more complex, and that it's often difficult to pinpoint who's the "good guy" and who's the "bad guy". Which I think is wise. You'll notice that each participant in a fight always thinks of himself as the good guy.

An interesting detail rarely pointed out is that the most hateful and vengeful character in the movie might be Alice, the prostitute madam. It is her who insists that the offending cowboys die and arranges for the blood money reward. This is despite the fact that one of them is a good man and pretty much innocent except for not having acted fast enough to stop his friend. And when he returns he attempts to do right by the scarred woman by giving her an extra pony of his own, which he was not required to do. And then Alice refuses this nice offer (without asking the victim) and drives him away into the arms of the killers. Not big on forgiveness.

I will concede that within the framework of a big, popular, Hollywood movie, this film is probably as far as we can currently go towards an anti-violence movie. If you'd made a movie like this and not made the violence seductive and aesthetic, it would instantly have lost 90% of its audience. At least.

OMG! All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash!!!

Very funny news report parody.

"... an archaic telephone-line based network of low quality printers..." Or what you might call "fax". ROTFL.

Can anybody figure out what's the source of the video? Who made it and have they made more?