Tilting at windmills for a better tomorrow.
Hokey but fun: Transparent Screens. Move computer out of the way, shoot image of environs, make it your wallpaper, move computer back into place. Computer becomes window. This technique is similar to research that used to go into real-life cloaks of invisibility (the “chameleon effect”), though current experiments focus on preventing objects from reflecting and scattering light.
From my O’Reilly blog:
An old friend called in a panic the other day. The modem on her G3 lime iMac had crapped out, and she needed to get online that evening. We verified that she could still get a dial tone on the line. Had her reboot. No dice. “Still no broadband?,†I asked. “Maybe someday. Haven’t gotten around to it.â€
Started troubleshooting. “Click the blue apple icon in the top left of your screen,†I said. “I only have a rainbow apple.†Uh-oh. OS9 user on dial-up. How do people live? Time had caught up with her. Fortunately she had a bit of cash. Told her to order DSL, and meanwhile, I’d pick up a new iMac to get her online by evening. A new Mac is a very expensive modem — even as a stopgap — but the time was ripe.
Had the privilege of listening to a Robert Reich lecture last weekend. He maintains that there are four basic themes that run through most great stories and movies, and that “big” news stories can generally be seen through one or more of these lenses (two of them hopeful, two fearful):
Pick up today’s (any day’s) newspaper and see how many of the top stories can be characterized in these terms. Examples from today’s Chronicle:
(new appreciation for Gore, Nixon)
(new breast cancer drug possible)
(terrorism, immigration)
(disintegration of Bushco)
His message to journalists: This is just observation of a human tendency toward oversimplification, and the media plays into it. Maybe journalists have a responsibility to achieve better clarity by resisting the impulse to simplify. You have to hear Reich talk to appreciate the power of these metaphors – incredibly eloquent. Kind of a new Joseph Campbell figure.
Posted back in ’04 about “parkour,” the art of using the urban environment as an acrobatic playground, an empty canvas for physical experimentation as graceful as it is death-defying. Since then, parkour’s popularity has increased alongside extreme sports and perhaps as an off-shoot of skateboarding’s outer limits (“Dude, you’re good. Lose the board.”) Check out this young Russian:
My post-40 body would never stand up to this kind of abuse (though I guess the idea is to get so good that it’s not abuse), but if this had been a “thing” 20 years ago, would have been bouncing off walls.
Thanks baald
Technorati Tags: parkour
Just stumbled upon StumbleUpon, a fascinating mashup of del.iciou.us, Friendster, and “I’m Feeling Lucky” — bookmark rating/ranking/reviews plus social networking plus serendipity, designed to help you break out of surfing habits and discover things you wouldn’t have otherwise. Initially thought the whole thing was just an elaborate Firefox extension and would therefore be in use by a limited audience, but soon realized it’s a well-established web service that just happens to have an FF extension.
Very first stumble landed me at jacksonpollack.org, a nifty Flash-based full-view splatter paint application, which Miles loved.
I’m “shacker” on the service – hook up if you’re in.
Technorati Tags: networking, social
After much hemming and hawing and reading and plucking away at home on baald’s ukulele and in stores on others, decided on a wood-top Fluke — a good all-around durable starter uke with a really great tone for the price, and plenty of room to grow with for a while (though the huge variety of ukelele types and sounds has already sparked a small fetish fire – caution!) Best pics I could find are here, though the cheaper version I got does not include a pickup.
Taking a much-needed few days off work, and finally got caught up enough to spend the afternoon on the back porch plucking away at the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” and a few oldies. Out of practice, fingertips sore. Now all I need is the canoe.
Those big flashing yellow text road signs on wheels — the ones towed into place to mark a detour or other warning? Easily programmable by the creative passer-by. And, if you’re lucky, the password to the little hand-held text-entry console will be written on the inside of the control box in big black Sharpie letters. Zug’s Heyoka has some fun.