May 31, 2006
BarCampBoston this weekend
I'm starting to get excited about attending BarCampBoston this weekend. I don't have a working laptop right now, so I'll be a little cutoff while I'm there. But it should be fun anyway.
May 28, 2006
Back to the Future
I'm away from home over this holiday weekend. To get on the net I've had to resort to an old Mac Performa machine, running OS 9.1 and Internet Explorer 5.1.
We've come a long way baby!
May 25, 2006
Crowdsourcing
Welcome to the age of the crowd. Just as distributed computing projects like UC Berkeley’s SETI@home have tapped the unused processing power of millions of individual computers, so distributed labor networks are using the Internet to exploit the spare processing power of millions of human brains. The open source software movement proved that a network of passionate, geeky volunteers could write code just as well as the highly paid developers at Microsoft or Sun Microsystems. Wikipedia showed that the model could be used to create a sprawling and surprisingly comprehensive online encyclopedia. And companies like eBay and MySpace have built profitable businesses that couldn’t exist without the contributions of users.
New med may reduce need for many hours of sleep
The Economist.com:
Tests conducted on rhesus monkeys last year suggest that CX717 can wire users to remain awake for 36 hours without the jitters, euphoria and eventual crash that come after mega-doses of caffeine or amphetamines. Further down the line are even more radical compounds—stimulants that can wipe out sleep for several days at a stretch, and pills that deliver a whole night’s shut-eye in two hours.
Read more...
Towel Day
To remember Hitchhiker's Guide author Douglas Adams, Thursday is "towel day". Carry a towel with you all day.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have.
May 17, 2006
Google simplifies video system
AP via Yahoo!News:
Internet search leader Google Inc. is making it easier to post and share online videos on its site, hoping to widen the appeal of a service that so far has been eclipsed by upstart YouTube.com.Until the system was changed late Tuesday, uploading a video to Google's site required a special piece of software to be installed on a computer. The Mountain View-based company has retooled its service so that step is no longer required.
May 14, 2006
Apple Forever
I found this video on the TUAW, The Unofficial Apple Weblog. The video quality is poor, but if you "bleed six colors" like me, then it will make your heart beat faster. It is from an Apple meeting in 1984.
May 13, 2006
Meditation improves brain, and possibly slows aging
This story is from sciencenewsden.com, and I know nothing about their credibility. If it's real, it's an interesting story.
Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That's intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking cap, normally get thinner as we age.
"Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being," says Sara Lazar...
Read More...
May 11, 2006
4 things that make a good internet cafe
One day I will run an internet cafe.
Nathan Willis has some observations on what make a good one:
One of the benefits of living in a place as exotic as Abilene, Texas, is that it presents you with a choice of not one but three Internet-connected coffee shops. Last week, I spent an afternoon in each, scouting for the place I'll go to hole up and get work done this summer when the triple-digit temperatures hit, when mentally calculating the air conditioning costs begins to prove too distracting at home. I haven't yet reached a final decision, but I have some choice words for anyone weighing the idea of starting up a new Internet coffee shop.Before I begin, let's be crystal clear about one thing: When I say Internet-connected coffee shop, I mean free Internet. I'm looking at you, T-Mobile and Starbucks -- if I'm interested in paying for a wireless connection, I can do that pretty much anywhere (not to mention more cheaply) without you.
May 10, 2006
You are being watched
When you wander around the MIT campus with a Wi-Fi-enabled cell phone or laptop, Carlo Ratti is watching you. Ratti, a practicing architect with a firm in Torino, Italy, runs the SENSEable City Laboratory in the university's department of urban studies and planning. He can pinpoint the location of users on the MIT wireless network, which blankets almost the entire campus, simply by tracking which wireless access points they're connected to.
Hacking your car
People scoffed at me when I refused to buy remote, keyless entry for my car. But I was right!
...decrypting one 40-bit code sequence can not only disengage the security system and unlock the doors, it can also start the car--making the hack tempting for thieves. The owner of the code is now the true owner of the car. And while high-end, high-tech auto thefts like this are more common in Europe today, they will soon start happening in America. The sad thing is that manufacturers of keyless devices don't seem to care.
Via Dvorak's blog
May 07, 2006
Musician's Cut
Thomas Dolby has posted a piece of video to his blog.
It's a video of him doing a live performance of one song at this past year's TED conference. He's added a commentary on top of the clip explaining how he's using all the music and audio technology to create the piece on the fly.
Resistance is futile
I think this looks a little like a video camera the way the Borg would make one. But there's a lot of talk about this camera. It's potentially a revolutionary step forward in hi-def cameras, for a much lower price than ever before.
The Red Camera.
Some things never change
I've been noticing an internet TV trend lately which I want to point out. Let's call it...
The Geek and the Hot Babe
Notice how many internet video shows are hosted by a geeky looking guy, and a really cute woman?
Command-N: Amber Mac & Mike Lazazzera
Geek Brief TV: Callie Lewis & (the invisible) Neal Campbell
Control Alt Chicken: Heather Stewart & Alex Albrecht
I'm just saying...
Not your normal cooking show
I heard about Control-Alt-Chicken awhile ago. I subscribed to it in iTunes and then didn't watch. I didn't quite get the concept, so I never picked it, from my huge unwatched list, to watch when I had a few minutes to watch anything.
This morning I finally got to it, and it's great!
Alex Albrecht and Heather Stewart, a geek and a hot babe (who is probably also a geek), take suggestions and challenges which come in by email from viewers. Then they surf the web for a recipe, and try to make the target dish.
Sounds weird, but it works.
Readers of my Etcetera blog know that I'm a big Food Network fan, but Control-Alt-Chicken is unlike any show there. Heather and Alex -- who begin each episode by warning, "we're not cooks" -- fumble their way through the recipe, wondering aloud if they're doing it right, and then get to sample their concoction at the end.
"We're shooting for 'edible'," they say.
One of my favorite moments was their surprise and delight, when their Monte Cristo sandwich -- a food which neither of them had ever had before -- turned out so good.
Check it out.
May 06, 2006
Boston Media Makers
I was hoping to attend this meeting tomorrow morning, but it looks like I'm not gonna be able to make it.
Airbus 380 assembly
This clip is for aviation geeks like me.
It's called "building" an Airbus 380, it's actually "assembling" the plane, but it's still pretty cool.
Video via Google.
May 05, 2006
Font: Biscuit
Go to this website and it will generate a graphic of any word(s) made from crackers.
May 04, 2006
Quicktime Pro video masking
Here's an interesting tip for, basically, cropping a video.
What do you do when your QuickTime movie has ugly artifacts around the borders? Use QuickTime Pro’s unlikely Mask feature to slice ’em off. Here’s how.
May 03, 2006
The camera never lies
Look! It's me and Steve, at the Refresh Boston meeting.
It's true, the camera adds 30 lbs.
It's a life-saver!
The trapped gold miners in Australia have been given an iPod to help pass the time till the rescue tunnel reaches them.
The men, trapped after a cave-in in a gold mine in the small mining town of Beaconsfield on the southern island state of Tasmania, were found on Sunday huddled in a small metal cage.Food and fresh water has been delivered to the men through a small 100-mm (4-inch) plastic pipe, along with fresh clothes, a digital camera, magazines and an iPod player.
Engineered cancer treatment
An engineered virus tracks down and infects the most common and deadly form of brain cancer and then kills tumor cells by forcing them to devour themselves...
[Via digg.com]
RefreshBoston Meeting Notes
Here are my rough meeting notes from last night's session.
May 02, 2006
Spiderman please
This Saturday is Free Comic Book Day.
RefreshBoston Meeting
Tonight I attended a meeting of a group called RefreshBoston. It's a new group, a gathering of web developers and designers who get together to discuss building websites.
Tonight's main subject was the review of, and brainstorming of possible improvements for, an educational site called Windows Around the World.
Interesting discussion. I'll probably go again.
Macworld Digital Photography Superguide
I haven't yet reviewed this, so let the buyer beware, but MacWorld has published a guide about all things digital photography.
...the Macworld Digital Photography Superguide, direct from the editors of Macworld! With more than 100 pages of expert advice, this book will guide you through every step of the photography process, from buying the right camera to capturing the perfect shot to organizing, editing, and printing your photos. Each section is filled with hands-on experience and troubleshooting tips from the pros!
Movable Type is no longer free!
I guess I'm a little late to this story, but I've only just discovered that the Movable Type blogging software is no longer free.
I guess I'm just cheap, but I think that's too bad.
This blog, and most of my other blogs, are based on MT. I never upgraded from version 2.6x mostly cause what I had was working OK, and I didn't want to deal with the upgrade process. (I've made some mods to the basic MT templates and architecture, so an upgrade might not be a trivial thing.)
I'm still content, more or less, with my old version, but I wanted to set-up a blog for one of my clients, and I was gonna install the latest MT. Only to discover that it's not free anymore.
There is a "free personal edition", but it only allows one user, requires a TypeKey signup to download, and the license specifically disallows the use by my client, which is a not-for-profit organization.
I completely understand, and approve, of the MT people wanting to make some money off of their success. They've earned that. But this new pricing structure is kinda turning their back on the type of users, and the community, which helped make them successful.
It's too bad.
(It's also counter productive, cause I ended up setting-up my client with Blogger instead. Not my first choice, but the client's needs were simple, and Blogger's basic service did the trick.)
May 01, 2006
Head tracking camera
This is so cool that I'm tempted to think that it's a fake. But it comes from Make so I'm thinking it's for real. Imagine the processing power it takes to do this.
(Click "continue reading" to see comments)
COMMENTS:
Alex R writes:
A Playstation 2 with an EyeToy camera can do this, although perhaps not as smoothly as today's average PC.Many of the EyeToy games have effects like this, but recognition of individual facial parts isn't much of a game.
Alex
I knew that motion tracking was available in high-end consumer video editing software, like Apple's Final Cut. But I didn't realize that it could be done in real-time like that. Ain't technology great!