June 30, 2006
Endovascular Triple-A Repair
This stuff is a miracle. It's a big step toward the Singularity and its dramatic extension of life-span. If I needed one of these I'd do it without hesitation.
Here's an animation of the actual process of inserting this device. Very cool.
Discovering mod_rewrite
Last night and this morning I finally got around to implementing something that I learned at BarCampBoston earlier this month. How to clean up my URLs using mod_rewrite.
In addition to figuring out the tricky syntax of the rewrite directives, and exercising my meager understanding of regular expressions, I discovered that failed rewrites can persist, even after you've corrected them in the directive, because the the error message page is saved in the browser cache.
For quite awhile I struggled to figure out why my corrected rewrites weren't working the way I thought they should, till I discovered that clearing the browser cache also cleared the error.
Much thanks to Andrew Shearer for his session at BarCamp, and his personalized help in getting this to work.
June 29, 2006
The Man Who Sold the Moon
NASA is encouraging private space transportation. Technology Review story:
So just how affordable can manned launches get? Private companies could do them more cheaply than NASA by developing rocket engines that use hybrid fuels rather than traditional propellants, for example. The six companies who say they're finalists also use money-saving strategies such as building rockets from ceramic matrix composites, which are substantially lighter than conventional steel and nickel-based alloys. SpaceX claims that this approach could help it reduce launch costs by a factor of 10 and expects to be able to offer a price of $1,000 for each kilogram sent into orbit by 2010.
Swell prize if you can identify the title reference. No googling it.
June 26, 2006
Digg 3.0 is in labor
Around 8am EDT this morning digg.com went offline in order to install the much awaited version 3.0. Reports are that this new version will expand the news aggregation/judging system, beyond the world of technology, into general news and entertainment.
Live to age 1000
From a story on the BBC website:
I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.
Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon extend dramatically to 1,000. Here, he explains why.
Read more...
June 24, 2006
PodCamp Boston
Chris Brogan, and some other BarCampBoston alum, are trying to put together a podcasting camp, based on the Foo/Bar Camp model.
I've signed up to help out with putting on the conference.
The date is still imprecise, currently it's looking like early September.
"The Art of the Start" video
I've never really been a Guy Kawasaki fan. Something about him has always rubbed me wrong. But for some reason I watched this video, of his talk to an entrepreneurs conference, and it's actually filled with many very good ideas.
June 21, 2006
Wetpaint wiki system
A Seattle startup called Wetpaint launched the newest Web-based "wiki" platform this week, offering people who register with the company the ability to create community websites that can be edited easily by any user, or by invited members only, depending on the creator's preference.
June 14, 2006
Quote: Kurt Vonnegut
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., writer
June 09, 2006
Twelves
A-word-a-day writes about the number 12:
Twelve is a magical number. It's divisible by two, three, four and six.There are twelve months in a year, twelve hours on a clock, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve tones in the musical scale, and twelve in a dozen, twelve inches in a foot, twelve Knights of the Round Table, twelve members in a jury (usually), twelve labors of Hercules... twelve must have something going for it.
We use the decimal system because there are ten fingers on our hands. But we might as well have used a duodecimal system: there are twelve phalanges on our four fingers (thumb used as an indicator). In fact, some cultures do use duodecimal systems. One can find a Dozenal Society that advocates use of duodecimal system in the US and in other countries.
June 07, 2006
More BarCampBoston coming soon
I have summaries from more of my time at BarCampBoston coming soon. I promise.
Drinking coffee makes you more open-minded
Here's more evidence that coffee is a health food. Newscientist.com:
The coffee you drink as a pick-me-up in the morning could also make you more open to persuasion, researchers say. Evidence from a new study suggests that this happens because caffeine revs up the brain, not because it generally boosts mood.
June 05, 2006
New TiVo
I've been thinking lately about buying a new TiVo digital recorder.
The one I have I bought in 1999. It was one of the very first ones ever.
It's served me well, but they stopped upgrading the software years ago. There are many features on the current machines that look interesting. And the new machines are practically free.
Well almost.
I now pay $13 a month for the TiVo service. For a one-time charge of $30, plus $20 a month, I can get the newest, "record two channels at a time" machine.
A couple of years ago I was very disappointed with TiVo. I really despised their spamming me with video ads that couldn't be declined or deleted.
I still think those practices are despicable, but I'm weakening. The new features are overcoming my outrage. It's a slippery slope.
BarCampBoston: Tagzania and WTF
Over Saturday lunch I was chatting with Brian Del Vechio of BostonWTF. (BTW Brian recorded some comments of mine which may show up on one of his podcasts.)
BostonWTF is Boston Web Technology Forum, an online organization devoted to finding, giving visibility to, and evaluating new technology firms in the Boston Area.
We were also talking about Google Maps mashups and he told me about Tagzania which is apparently a system for storing your personal locations, and displaying them on a Google Map.
Sounds cool. I'll report more about Tagzania after I've had a chance to look at it.
June 04, 2006
BarCampBoston: Content Networks
Later on Saturday morning Chris Brogan gave a talk on "Content Networks".
His idea is that, more important than single-author blogs and websites, are sites which are an aggregation on content from multiple individuals. He also observes that the better way to make your voice heard is by contributing to sites which already have large audiences.
BarCampBoston: Geo/Mapping session
The first Saturday session I attended was on online mapping. Presenters Chris Schmidt and Schuyler Earl. Earl co-wrote Oreilly's "Mapping Hacks" and "Google Map Hacks". Schmidt and Earl are now working on an open source online maps API called Open Layers, openlayers.org. Schmidt, and maybe Earl too, is also working on something called MetaCarta and Palatial, also mapping systems.
My best take-away from the session: A discussion of ways to deal with Google Maps where you want to add a great many markers. The answer: There isn't a good way. You can group the markers so only some appear at a time. Or you can have them load/unload every time the map is scrolled or zoomed. The former is very modal, and has UI problems. The latter can be performance challenging.
I couldn't stay for this whole session, but I hear that they continued with some good discussion of the tech details of map hacking. Sorry I missed it.
[ I'm heading out the door for the Sunday sessions right now. I'll return to this post later and add some links to the things and people. ]
June 03, 2006
BarCampBoston: Welcome meeting
Free coffee, donuts, and other pastries. A good start.
I go out of my way to walk up to people and say hi.
Chris Brogan is a name I came across is prepping for attending. He's recording "sounds of barcamp" and he records a few of my answers as we chat.
Doug Martin walked up to me and commented on my EAA shirt. His father took him to the Oshkosh airshow years ago. Today he's developing a handful of websites. Notable are backupmyblog.com, an automated, online backup service. And gozenta, a referrer analysis system.
Troy Hatlevig is the head of "Monster Labs" and seems to be our Monster host this weekend. He and Shimon Rura, who did a lot of the organization, welcome us and explain the system: there is not system. Want to give a presentation? Write it on a piece of paper, post it in an empty slot on the wall schedule, and you're off.
It's a pretty amazing mish-mash of topics. All pretty geek oriented. A lot of programming and development stuff. Also a healthy smattering of entrepreneurial ones too. Check out the schedules here and here.
Me at BarCamp
I have some pics of my own, and a bunch of notes that I'll be typing up soon. For now, here's a pic from another attendee which shows me deep in discussion early on Saturday.
BarCampBoston or Bust
I'm headed off to spend the day at BarCampBoston.
Sadly I have no reliable laptop right now, so I won't be able to post from there. But I'm taking notes, and pics, and I'll post later.
Possible mail and web snafu
Due to a looming problem with the DNS for my domain da4.com, email & webpages at that address may have some problems over the next couple of days.
If you get any bounces, either be patient and try again later, or email me at jackhodgson@gmail.com
UPDATE: The danger seems to have passed with no downtime.
June 02, 2006
Manchurian Candidate, Geek Version
My favorite part of this story is that the head of the US Government's "Cyber Consequences Unit" is a man named "Borg". !!!
...the US Cyber Consequences Unit (CCU), a Department of Homeland Security advisory group, believes that attacks on computer networks are poised to escalate to full-scale disasters that could bring down companies and kill people. He warns that intelligence "chatter" increasingly points to possible criminal or terrorist plans to destroy physical infrastructure, such as power grids. Al-Qa'ida, he stresses, is becoming capable of carrying out such attacks.
Segway scooter gaining users
Here's a story about how security and law-enforcement folks are liking the Segway.
Thieves used to break into as many as five cars a week in the parking garage at Los Angeles' Union Station. Then the Metropolitan Transportation Authority came up with a simple solution: They put a security officer on a Segway Human Transporter.''The first day that one of the security officers was on the device was pretty much the last day there was a break-in,'' said Robin Blair, a transportation planning manager for the MTA, which owns about 19 Segways.
My first thought was to wonder what made the Segway a better choice than simply using a bike or a golfcart.
In Los Angeles County, MTA's Blair said officers prize it because it allows them to stand a head taller than they would on foot, so they can see over crowds and cars and project a more prominent presence at events like the Rose Bowl parade.