interesting

One of the weirdest computers ever built forsakes traditional hardware in favour of "gloopware". Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England, UK, can make interfering waves of propagating ions in a chemical goo behave like logic gates, the building blocks of computers.



The waves are produced by a pulsing cyclic chemical reaction called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.



Adamatzky has shown that his chemical logic gates can be used to make a robotic hand stir the mixture in which they exist. As the robot's fingers stimulate the chemicals further reactions are triggered that control the hand.



The result is a sort of robotic existential paradox – did the chemical brain make the robot's hand move, or the hand tell the brain what to think? Eventually Adamatzky aims to couple these chemical computers to an electroactive gel-based "skin" to create a complete "blob-bot".

iRant

my friend rich, has a post on his blog asking people for advice on what computer to buy. below is my response to him.......









here is my three cents.



get a mac.



and then run ALL THREE operating systems on that machine.





alternatively, you could buy a cheap PC, and install the mac os on it. HERE is one version of it, although i have seen various working models, including one installation on a $400 laptop.





now to convince you that you really should only buy a mac.......





i have been using macs since their first model back in 1984. i have used all kinds of other computers with all kinds of different OS's on them. i even used to have a xerox computer at home, (which was where apple got the idea for THEIR OS).



i studied computer programming, and network architecture on PC's.



i have used atari computing systems for generating music, and also used them for sequencing and slow, simple audio editing.



at the end of the day, i ALWAYS looked forward, when i could go home to my trusty mac.



it's not like the other companies are incapable of building a decent machine, but they simply just DON'T. dell/gateway/HP build computers with parts supplied by the lowest bidder. if they run out of a particular part, they substitute something else equally cheap.



microsoft strictly builds operating systems. not machines. one of the reasons their system crashes so frequently, is because they have to try and build a system that will work well with perhaps a MILLION combinations of bits of hardware.





apple builds the system, and it runs on an incredibly small variation of bits and pieces. it is this reason that makes them such stable machines to run. they may cost a little more to purchase outright, but if you try and build an equivalent windows-only PC, you will spend the same amount of money, if not more.



sure, there is more software available for a PC. that only makes sense, since the windows OS is so ubiquitous. but does this mean better? the answer is a simple "NO". the best way to prove my point is by using television as an example. is 600 channels of programming better than 30? nope.



600 channels means that all the programming that you would get from 30, is just spread out across ALL of the channels. and the content that you wouldn't normally get from only 30 channels, (meaning original programming), is so diluted and weak that it can hardly be considered worthwhile programming.



so just because there are more titles available for windows, doesn't mean that you are better off.





and guess which laptop runs windows the best? i posted about this one previously on my own blog.





anyway..... that's about all i have to say about that.











anyone care to comment?

bad names

here's a list i found online, of some funny URLs, where the designer didn't thinking about how people would read the name of the site:


http://www.whorepresents.com

http://www.expertsexchange.com (now extinct)

http://www.penisland.net

http://www.therapistfinder.com

http://www.molestationnursery.com (now offline)

http://www.gasheating.co.uk

http://www.powergenitalia.com




here are some other bad names for websites that i was able to track down :


www.graphicartsexchange.com

www.dollarsexchange.com

www.gotahoe.com

www.scatissue.com

www.penismightier.com (odd site now)

www.hiscockransom.co.uk/

www.fagray.com/

www.modelstalking.com



Go Ogle


bonus points to you if you can figure out where that photo at the top of the post was taken.......

a life less oblivious

apparently i can't keep up with the news.



(click on the image to enlarge)


the above image was sitting in my email inbox this morning, compliments of the RSS feed from wired magazine's "gadgets" news.


anyway - thought it was funny, so decided to post it.

life, (and apparently in some cases, a lack of), seems to just keep going on around me......



ttys



ps - to anyone who has left comments recently - i apologise for not responding more quickly. any time i went to respond, i couldn't log in, and my browser seemed to have forgotten how to log me in automatically. anyway - i responded here.....

what was i thinking?

the other day, i decided to do some LONG-overdue purging.


this meant getting rid of my vintage computer collection.


i almost barfed.


the picture above was a casualty, that wasn't meant to be a casualty. i almost wept when it happened.


here is the rest of what i threw out.

yes there are duplicate computers, but they are NOT duplicate images. and by the way, this is not all of what i threw out, nor is it everything that i have.........



i am still going through post-partum depression.





:(

work, work, work

crazy busy right now. hardly have time to breathe. been on the road for two weeks, and my last stay at home only lasted a day and a half, after having been away for a week. i am going to be home for a single day this weekend, then i am gone again for another 11 days. so please forgive the sparse nature of my postings...... the above image is called "camera ape", simply because the guy in the image seems to resemble some sort of simian with the movements he is making. i have been working at a government technology conference this week, and there are a few things that got me excited over the last day or so.... yahoo pipes free knowledge wikinomics, and its' associated facebook group and because i am always hungry for new information, i am almost OBSESSED with this site hope you find at least ONE of these links to be of interest to you.......

mixed bag

it occurred to me not too long ago that the word multimedia is a bit of a redundant phrase. isn't the word "media" ALREADY plural???? and here is some footage straight off of my new phone it may be difficult to see in the video above, but the shadow of the plane is constantly visible as a little tiny spec on the ground. i just thought that the shadow on the clouds, (of the plane), was really neat! new phone ROCKS by the way...... expect to see lots of stuff from it on here in the future. my friend lorrie, (who is practicing MMA), and i have been obsessing over this song lately....... you may D/L it here : When in Rome - The Promise both "L-Dog" and i are wishing that someone would write a song like this for us.....

keep still boy, no need for static

edit : apparently the image above here isn't showing up for some people. you may click here to see it...... i have been away. and have been enjoying life as much as i possibly can, with great success. i have also been away from the internet for quite some time, but apart from not being able to be in touch with clients, i have really not missed the internet. i spend so much time in front of my computer from day to day, creating or manipulating data or images or video, that it was nice to disconnect for a while. (even though i have still been using my computer to give birth). i have MANY things that i have been working on. some good, some bad and some ugly. i will post more soon. i hope. sort of......

night lapse

. the other night i just COULDN'T sleep for some reason. i tried every trick i have, and nothing worked, so i just eventually got out of bed and started messing around on the computer. that is when i had the idea to set the computer for time lapse, and have it record the onset of daylight. this video was recorded from between 0300 and 0600, with some of the boring darkness edited out of the version you see here. i also edited the last 3 seconds of the video to make it go more slowly, so you could catch a glimpse of me after being up for 24 hours. the camera was set to capture one frame every second. hope you like it.

you've got mail

so..... i have had the past week off from work, and have REALLY been enjoying the time at home, since i haven’t been here much in the past couple of months. one thing that i wasn’t enjoying, was my inbox constantly “chiming” to announce to me that there was a new email for me. i found myself wishing that there was a way for me to distinguish between email from different people, so i started wandering around the internet once again. (side note : this was the absolute DEATH of my productivity yesterday, since i got obsessed with making this little idea work.) i came across some automator suggestions, and started messing around with different methods of letting me know the difference between when an important email arrived, and when an email that i could ignore for a while came in. i ended up using applescript to make this work, but i suppose automator could help you achieve the same thing. sadly, i can’t show you PC users a video of how this works. you will just have to believe me that this works..... now you Mac users are in luck, since i have the files and instructions you need right here....... the nice thing is, i wrote a little section in the script that automatically pauses iTunes, so that you can hear the message, and then resumes iTunes after the message has been spoken! and i guess it is important to mention that this whole project was inspired by marlo superstar, so a big thanks to her! ps - i have also made another little applescript that will play a sound file for “specific” emails, rather than the same sound for every email that arrives. if you are interested, let me know, and i will send it to you......

it ain't easy, being green

so i was messing around with the camera in my phone the other day, and managed to capture a really neat photo of myself. i projected some light on to my face, and switched the camera to "negative" mode, (which is how i take MOST of the photos with my phone), and the result was, to me, pretty impressive. then, while working on a client project, i was messing around with a specific style of dissolve for their logo, and came up with an interesting dissolve technique, and i decided to use the same approach with the photo i captured of myself a couple of days previous. as always, no manipulation of the photo was done after it was stored on my phone. here is what i ended up with........

major mishap

so i just got a new computer, and i am VERY much in love. she and i spent the entire weekend together, and it was wonderful. so i go to turn back to my other computer, and get all the important information off of it, and it doesn't work any more. all of my calendar information about when i am working for the next 5 months was on there. it's like the old computer got jealous and deliberately stopped working. there are other files that i needed from that computer too, but none as important as the calendar information. the good news is that i have the info that i need on my mobile phone, so i will just "sync" the information between the phone and the new computer. problem solved, right? WRONG! the stupid computer completely erased ALL of my contacts that were in my address book for some reason. there were somewhere around 200 numbers in there that i needed. work and personal. now i am TOTALLY screwed. i have no idea when i am supposed to be working, (beyond the next two weeks), and i know that i am going to end up having some clients get angry with me, since i won't be showing up for some of the work that i booked. that is very, very bad news. this is an example of the kind of things that happen with me and technology at home. i am a total wizard with technology when i am at work, (which is good, because i get paid well to do it), but when i try to do something at home, it all fails miserably. i think it is some sort of "cosmic trade-off", where i can either be good with technology at work, OR at home. just not both. i am so fucking annoyed right now, i just want to smash stuff.