...more recent posts
Go read rageboy right now. At least that entry and the next three. That is some good stuff.
This world, this life so intricate, delicate, complex. Precious beyond measure. I’m slamming my head against the walls of empire, the habits of power, enraged. Blasting and burning for your love. Imagining the network finally connected. Imagining joy. A wall of horns and drums and dangerous magical noise. I’m bending over my Fender, working the circuits, incendiary, incandescent. Rocking in the free world, serving notice on Babylon. Ain’t in for a dollar, ain’t in for a dime. Ain’t going down for no two-bit dream. Armed only with imagination, I’m back in your spiral arms tonight. Everything has at least two meanings. But one thing girl that I want to say, love is love and not fade away.
I've got a new feature coming soon. It's pretty simple, but I think it might be powerful in terms of really helping conversations flow. Particularly for these highly interlinked conversations that have been going on, around, and through doc, rageboy, David Weinberger, Tom Matrullo, AKMA, etc.... These guys are saying some interesting stuff about blogs, and what this all means, but sometimes it's hard to find the periphery of the conversation. More soon.
There's no doubt that I don't know enough to judge this one, but if it's true...
Holy shit. The math works. Bernstein has found ways of using additional hardware to eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies which appear in any linear implementation of the Number Field Sieve. We just never noticed that they were inefficiencies and redundancies because we kept thinking in terms of linear implementations. This is probably the biggest news in crypto in the last decade. I'm astonished that it hasn't been louder.Here's the top ranked replies in the slashdot thread. (I don't pay too close attention, but I'm pretty sure this is an unusually high ratio of +5 posts - 21 out of 423.)
Note that there have been rumors of an RSA cracker built by a three-letter agency in custom silicon before this, but until analyzing Bernstein's paper I had always dismissed them as ridiculous paranoid fantasies. Now it looks like such a device is entirely feasible and, in fact, likely.
Well they didn't come out too good, but I put some pictures up anyway from dinner last night at Alias (76 Clinton.)
I mentioned Bill Seitz's excellent Wiki the other day. Today Stating the Obvious has a short exchange with the man himself. Nice links.
The new chef from 71 was in for dinner last night. We were talking a bit at the bar, and he was asking me about the iPod. Turns out he has one and was curious about how to exchange music among multiple computers. I told him he needed something like this to do it (except there was no hyperlink in my conversation - not quite as helpful.) Anyway, I went on to ask him about having a Mac because I'm always curious about people who don't choose Windows. Turns out his girlfriend used to work for Apple, and for Next! I don't think you can impress me more than by saying you worked for Next. Not that I know much, but they seemed really cool. Hopefully I'll get a chance to talk with her soon.
AIML: Artificial Intelligence Markup Language.
(Not that it matters, but can intelligence ever be artificial? What does that even mean? I think this distinction will become increasingly unclear.)
If I were writing a hollywood terrorist thriller it would go like this:
Main character would be a Johnnie Walker type all american kid descending into the murky underworld of militant islamic thinking. He rises quickly in the terrorist network like Johnny Depp rising through the drug smuggling ranks in Blow. Eventually, after a series of exciting capers proving his abilities, he is given the big job of making a deal with the Russian mob for a nuclear device. He gets to the deal expecting to take posession of the bomb, but the clever Kyser Sose-ish bad guy calmly informs him that he does not have the device. Pause. "Because it's already in the U.S."
It turns out that the Soviets, years ago, fearing the U.S. ability to cripple all their long range nuclear capabilities with some sort of lightning first strike (EM bomb?) planted nuclear weapons at many key points inside this country. Deep cover secret agents exist just waiting for the orders to trigger the devices. After the break up of the Soviet Union there was no real way, or desire, to deactivate these devices. So instead of an actual bomb, Johnny gets the location of several devices and the satellite codes needed to defeat the fail safe mechanisms. Nail biting chase ensues, followed by an improbable computer hacking scene (the single master password is the name of some Soviet general's mistress, or possibly his cat.) But in the final scene it turns out Johnny was working for the CIA all the time. When you think he is about to blow up Washington D.C., he is really deactivating the bomb. He suceeds with one second to spare, of course. Much rejoicing.
Note: I didn't say it would be a good movie.
The New York Times has yet another article on weblogs today. Page C6. Same old story. "Weblogs could be big, and maybe even important, but right now they all suck." They give the last work to some guy who used to blog, but stopped in favor of email. He says, "If you want to communicate with people, email it to them. Don't force them to come to your site every day..." That is ridiculous. There is much more force involved in an email list. It shows up in your in box whether you feel like reading it that day or not. Plus, it destroys the most important thing: archives. What good are all those emails? Who can ever get at that information? Emails just sit on people's hard drives until their systems crash or get thrown out.
My good friend Jeff wrote me an email yesterday. We haven't spoken in quite some time. He's from the brief Bozeman Montana episode in my life. Said he looks in on this page from time to time. I'm glad. I wish all of my friends, especially ones living far away who I don't speak with much, would keep web pages. How the hell am I supposed to know what's going on?
What do you say Bubsie? And you too Frank (you've got to actually put some words on that page.) And I wonder if Diana ever looks in here? What I'd give for a window into that world. It doesn't have to be anything special. I just want to know what you had for breakfast this morning.
Well, OK, I probably already know: bacon. Still, I'd love to hear it from you.
I used to think to myself "Paul Ford should write a book," but I've come to be happy just reading his site. I mean who needs a whole exfoliated book when you can just get the seed? Much more efficient, really. I'll unzip it on my end. Here's the beginning to todays gem:
I took off my clothes and stepped into the shower to find another one sitting near the drain. It was about 2 feet tall and made of metal, with bright camera-lens eyes and a few dozen gripping arms. Worse than the Jehovah's Witnesses.
``Hi! I'm from Google. I'm a Googlebot! I will not kill you.''
``I know what you are.''
``I'm indexing your apartment.''
I am the worst photographer of all time. Not one picture came out from dinner last night. I'll try again on Monday.
Aside from that everything went well. The kitchen still has some work to do, but that was expected. What they had ready was tasty. The staff seems good. Very nice energy. And the place looks great.
For no apparent reason, here's a list of CDs I added at least one song from to the big mix yesterday. Not at all representative of the whole list (maybe just the opposite, as I'm trying to fill in some categories that are lacking.)
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Manu Chao - Clandestino
Sounds from the Verve Hi-Fi compiled by Thievery Corporation
The Very Best of Elvis Costello
The Stooges
Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
R.E.M. - Life's Rich Paegent
U2 - Boy
The very best of Booker T. & the M.G.'s
Patti Smith - Horses
The Rolling Stones - Some Girls
Shuggie Otis - Inspirational Information
855 songs total. 61 hours of music.
Tonight is the very first (and very small) tasting at the new restaurant: Alias. I'll take some pictures. Hopefully you'll be able to contain your excitement until tomorrow. I think Wednesday or Thursday will be the stealth (soft) opening. But we don't want any real attention for another week after that. Might be a good time to come in if you're someone reading here.
Another impressive looking information space tool (see last post) is the newly released Tinderbox. I'll have to wait for someone else to make something with it to really understand what it's about, but the site gives some general idea. I've noticed a lot of people are talking about this one. Evidently the lead developer, Mark Bernstein, is a big name in the history of hypertext spaces.
I've mentioned Wiki's before. They are open collaborative web spaces. Very cool. You could use a subset of their capabilities to run a weblog. But they go far beyond that into something more like what I always imagined was possible with hypertext information storage (and presentation.) They are many dimensional, and many directional. A real idea space (where a weblog is more like an idea timeline.) So I'm already impressed, but now that I've found Bill Seitz's Thinking Space I am completely blown away. Both by the Wiki technology, and by all the information Bill has collected. The hardest thing about it is that it's unclear where to point someone to best get them started. There's so much there there. The link above is to a weblog like view. Here's a more general information page. If you're interested in information spaces (I almost want to say 'externalizing the brain') you have to check out his site. Keep clicking. It takes some work, but there is a lot to reward in there.
Interesting article in the March/April 2002 issue of Juxtapoz magazine by painter/visionary Paul Laffoley titled "Fables of the Reconstruction: Gaudi's NYC vision." In it he presents his latest painting which is itself a sort of proposal to erect the Gaudi designed Grand Hotel on the site of the former World Trade Center. Laffoley explains:
In 1908 the great Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudí was retained to design a grand hotel for New York City. The location chosen was the site upon which the twin-towered World Trade Center would eventually be built between 1962 and 1974....Included with the fascinating back story of the unrealized Grand Hotel is a reproduction of a new painting by Laffoley titled Gaudeamus Igitur. It deals with both the Grand Hotel, and the World Trade Center disaster. Laffoley seems to take the destruction of the towers as the end of post modernism. From text in the painting:
According to the architectural critic Charles A. Jencks, the heroic first phase of modernism died in St. Louis Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 5:32 P.M. central daylight time when Minoru Yamasaki's Pruitt-Igoe public housing project was demolished for its negative social impact. In a final paroxysm of irony postmodernism ended with the destruciton of an other building by Minoru Yamasaki - The World Trade Center in New York City, 09/11/2001 at 8:45 - 9:03 am edst.Apparently Laffoley thinks that Gaudi's Grand Hotel should be erected on the spot and that this will signal the dawn of the next period which he calls the bauharoque:
The Bauharoque is the third phase of modernism, sometimes called post-post-modernism, trans-modernism, or neo-modernism - the word means the utopian impulse of the bauhaus is united with the theatricality of the baroque. This period in history transcends science-fiction... and all technology will be actual living structures.Gaudi, in Laffoley's view, "is the perfect precursor of the bauharoque with his gothic bio-morphic metaphor of architecture." See here for some examples.
Strange stuff, for sure. I find him incredibly interesting, if not entriely convincing. Or even understandable. Here are some photos I took last year at a show at the Kent Gallery which will give you an idea of his style. Google, of course, points to a lot more information on this interesting man.
It just doesn't feel like anything is going to go right today.
On the positive side I finally flew, consciously, in a dream early this morning. Pretty cool. Before I woke up inside the dream I was being chased by dinosaurs. Not sure what that's about. But it made me realize I was dreaming, and from there I just launched right into flying without too much thought. Quite unusual for me. Still ended up in a bad mood though. Weird.
iPod restaurant mix update: 744 songs - 2 days 5 hours 28 minutes of music taking up 3.60 GB of space. Almost there. Thanks to Big Jimmy for the serious infusion of afrobeat, latin jazz, and funk.
My roomate for 3 years in college, D.R., was here over the weekend. We hung out on Friday night. He wrote today saying that he always seems to end up drunk on wine when he visits. All I can say is that it must be his fault because that hardly ever happens around here otherwise.
He's a real programmer doing some interesting things out in California. His company employs extreme programming. I've read some about this, but I've never talked to anyone who actually programs this way. The main idea involves pair programming.
All code to be included in a production release is created by two people working together at a single computer. Pair programming increases software quality without impacting time to deliver. It is counter intuitive, but 2 people working at a single computer will add as much functionality as two working separately except that it will be much higher in quality. With increased quality comes big savings later in the project.Seems cool, but my intuition accords with his findings: it's a good way to go if the people involved are very skilled programmers. On the other hand, putting me together with someone else on my level wouldn't really be very helpful. I wonder if it's something specific about coding that allows this to work, or could this approach benefit other pursuits?
The best way to pair program is to just sit side by side in front of the monitor. Slide the key board and mouse back and forth. One person types and thinks tactically about the method being created, while the other thinks strategically about how that method fits into the class. It takes time to get used to pair programming so don't worry if it feels awkward at first.
Cringely is urging Apple to port OS X to intel. Although this idea keeps being brought up periodically by various people outside of Apple, it is never going to happen. The notebooks and iMac might still sell, but the pro machines - which is where the biggest margins are for Apple - would be utterly devastated. People don't buy those machines for how they look, they buy them for the Mac OS. Despite what Cringely thinks, these hypothetical intel boxes would be Macs if they were running OS X, and the pros would buy them like mad because they'd be much faster and much cheaper.
But the larger issue is with support. Apple has a great advantage in only having to support a very small hardware set. Windows has the basically impossible task of running on countless different manufacturers hardware. Just supporting all the video cards alone might be beyond Apple's ability. Getting a port working is one thing, making it stable across the entire range of possible hardware (including every single combination of all those pieces) is completely different.
This must be a joke. If it's not, and they can actually deliver on their plan (which, admittedly, isn't very clearly spelled out,) the world of music is about to change forever. A handheld wireless p2p music player with 1 mb/sec download speed (according to the original link on memepool, although I can't find that number on their site) with no recuring costs after your initial purchase of the player. Like an iPod (both have 5 gigs of storage) but with a free wireless broadband connection, handwriting recognition, and something like a gnutella client baked in. And if that already isn't unbelievable enough, it's only going to cost $199! Doesn't seem possible, but I'll keep my eye on it. (Requires flash and a little patience - click on 'Learn more about Musit')
Scriptingnews points to this 3-column, liquid, CSS layout that degrades gracefully (even) in navigator 4. That's just what I need. Thanks. But all that javascript! For some reason I'm always suspicious of javascript. Still, if you're going to use it this seems like the best kind. My biggest question is: don't most people who still use navigator 4 keep javascript off? In fact, don't most people have javascript off (unless your browser lets you selectively keep it on, like Mozilla?) I wonder if there are any stats on this.
As soon as Mozilla hits 1.0 I think we can stop catering to navigator 4.x. Or that's what I keep telling myself. These HTML problems are not very interesting to me. Of course there will still be problems even with navigator 4 out of the picture.
Mr. Wilson treats us to a sermon on Lent from his Central Park pulpit.
The ever mysterious Big Jimmy Fingers and I are talking Moxi server and the future of DRM and the computer over here.
If we're to believe him, Mr. Barrett saved a seized iMac hard drive by putting it in the freezer for a few minutes. I'll file that under options of last resort.
The Handspring Treo is shipping. Finally. I still can't figure out what the monthly costs will be. MB actually said last night, out of the blue, that she needs a palm pilot. And it's clear she needs a cell phone (although I think she sometimes likes being the last one in the world not to have one.) So maybe this is the one.
Well it turns out my friends S and V did order the new iMac. That is most excellent news. And not just that, but they bought a Canon G2 as well. Nice. Still some weeks before the iMac ships. I made them promise to invite me out for a weekend when it comes. I'll bring the Apple flavored Kool-aid.
Who did I hear (Dave? Alex?) call Enron the crooked E ranch? Maybe you have to be familiar with ranch names and brands (the hot searing kind, not the MBA kind,) but if you're not just trust me, that's funny.
Note to the e-commerce department: How about I just give you my credit card number every time I want to purchase something? You know, like in the real world? Like we always do it? My credit card number is already my unique identifier. Why do I need a seperate unique identifier at every site?
This would have the following benefits:
1) I wouldn't have to fight your bizarre web site to set up a user account.
2) I wouldn't have to repeat step 1 every time I go to purchase something because I can't remember the password from the previous account set up ordeal.
3) I'll feel more secure, because my credit card number is not stored in your computers. (Really, thanks for the offer for help, but I don't have much trouble carrying my card around in my pocket.)
4) You'll escape giving the impression that you're just making me go through this whole user account process because you think I'm dumb enough to purchase something from you in the future just because I already have an account set up.
Thanks for listening. I'll expect these changes in place by later this afternoon.
I've been thrown out of my routine, and now I can't get any traction. A bunch of stuff is about to happen. The restaurant is opening. The basement office is finally done and ready for occupation. The new software is basically done and ready to be deployed. But there is still work to be done, loose ends to be joined. For me it's always this last bit that proves to be the most difficult. At first it's all possibility. It's all about what we want to make happen. But at this point, so late in the game, these projects are pretty much in charge of us! Demanding that we finish up this piece or that. Too late to make any real changes that aren't already figured in the present shape of the project itself. I grow bored at this point.
I'm really impressed by MB and J's ability to stay focused. Right through to the end. Meanwhile I'm quite scattered, and not really much help (if I ever was.) Still, I have been secretly laying plans for what might come next, although it's too soon for any details. Plus, part of the trick is making it seem like someone else's idea.
I'm up to 478 songs on the massive restaurant mix. That's 34 hours, 24 minutes and 25 seconds of music taking up 2.31 GB of space. That makes the iPod about half full. This project is taking more time than I thought. Haven't really been able to get anything else done. And I probably have a few more days to go.
I'm going to try to take a few pictures today. The restaurant is really coming together. Now if Con Ed would just be a little more helpful we could launch this thing.
Not sure what this will do to my web project. Hopefully I'll be able to jump right back in and not have to spend too much time coming back up to speed. We'll see. These are the dangers of being involved in many different pursuits.
Setting up a friends iMac today. Straight to OS X which I think will be good for a beginner. But what do you say to someone who really doesn't know anything about computers? I mean really nothing. How much do you explain? This is a hard question I've been thinking about for a few weeks now. I can't come to any obvious answers so I'm just going to wing it. But I'd like to have something more systematic to go by. Perhaps this will be the start of me developing such a rap.
Mozilla 0.9.8 is out.
I know my part. Don't expect any big surprises. With that said, I'll continue:
The iPod rocks. (Dude.) If one of your goals is to pick up weird geeky guys in public places then you definitely have to get one of these things. Girls, unfortunately, seem a little less enamored. Still, if you can get them to spin the silky smooth navigation wheel there is an occasionaly small rise in pulse.
So far I have 217 songs (that's 15 hours 8 minutes 5 seconds of music taking up 1.02 GB of disk space) loaded into iTunes. That's the program on my Mac that holds all my MP3s. I just put an audio CD into my computer and iTunes opens up automatically showing me all the tracks. One click and iTunes goes to the internet and fetches all the CD and track information (or I could type it in manually.) One more click and iTunes converts the whole thing into the much smaller MP3 format and adds it to my growing library.
I can search through the library in a bewildering variety of ways. And I can create "play lists" which are the digital equivalent of mixed tapes. I just make a new list (like making a folder) and drag whatever tracks I want out of the library and into the new play list.
So far this is all in my computer. Now when I plug in the iPod it also opens up iTunes and automatically syncs, adding any songs from iTunes that weren't already on the iPod and deleteing any that have disapperaed from the mothership. Play lists are treated similarly. Of course there are manual controls to override this behavior, but so far the fully autopilot mode seems to work just fine. Seperate volume adjustments (crucial for making mixes) as well as track length editing (cut out that talking at the beginning of the track, or trim the 45 seconds of applause at the end) are all preserved between iTunes and iPod. (Equalizer settings are lost, but to me that is much less important that track length and volume.)
The firewire connection transfers all the songs quite fast. And it charges the iPod which, by the way, came fully charged right out of the box. I walked around with it all last night and it didn't go below half on the power meter.
I'm ripping Love - Forever Changes in the background right now. Up to 221 songs. But I need your help. If you had to make the music for a restaurant what would your top album be? Top five? And don't say Getz and Gilberto because as great as that album is, we hear it everywhere. Ditto for Buena Vista Social Club. But that maybe gives you an idea where I'm at. So, like those (or not,) but songs people aren't already sick of. I know this crowd has some ideas. Come on, give it up. Free meals for a lifetime* to anyone who contributes. Thanks.
* offer dependent on validation from someone actually in charge
By default, perhaps, but I am in charge of the music system for the new restaurant. Of course I bought an iPod. It just came in the mail (I ordered it Friday with 2 day shipping - pretty good.) So far it's as slick as I expected. Apple is so good at this.
So now I get a week or so with it to make a lot of playlists. And then it will live at the restaurant. If this works J. said she'll buy them for all the places. Still, I'm trying to convince her to just get iMacs so that we can put all the numbers on the web and she can work from anywhere. But this is a good first step. And if we do end up following my ultimate plan then maybe the iPod will fall back into my hands.
I'll report more this week as I play with it.
I think I remember something like this happening before. I'm within striking distance of being preliminarily finished with my project. And now I've had another realization about how to greatly simplify the underpinnings. Why didn't I think of this three weeks ago? Probably because I didn't understand the problem well enough at that point. I needed to work with it in order to get to this point where I can see clearly. But now what am I supposed to do? I thought I was almost done.
In some ways this is probably a trap. Sure I can keep writing it over and over again and probably always make some improvements. But the idea is to finish. And something that works right now might well be better than something that will work better when (if) it's done. Still, this was an important insight. I'm genuinely confused.
Last night I was lying in bed thinking about this and I decided I'd dedicate today, one day, to laying the foundation for the new idea. I'll keep all the old work intact, and I won't do anything to prevent myself from just switching back to where I am right now with the present code. But I'll give the new idea one day and see how far I can get. Might be just a wasted day, but it's a Sunday so that seems alright.
Not like I'm going to watch the Super Bowl or anything.