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".

joke

Q : what's the square root of 69?





A : 8 something













(it's funny because it's mathematically correct)

too long

not much inspiration happening to me currently.



i have been spending most of my free time trying to reorganise my new house, and also obsessing over my music collection.



a lot of my experimental stuff is residing on miscellaneous hard drives that are scattered around the house.



i promise you that i will post more frequently when i start to amalgamate all of my data in to one place. i have my eyes on a ONE terabyte hard drive right now, but i will be away in montreal for a week.... so perhaps once i return.





anything in particular you guys want to see more of? less of? or just some fresh ideas for me to mess around with?





in the meantime - here is a video of a sunset from steve & ang's place that i captured this summer. in time-lapse :

interesting

here is a startling fact for you to ponder :



China, a country without trees, is now the largest exporter of wood products in the world.



anyone care to discuss?





btw - the image above is my current "desktop picture". like most of the images on this pathetic little blog thing, it was captured by my phone. click on it to "biggify" it.

snowfall

this video is a timelapse capture from tuesday night/wednesday morning. somewhere around 20 cm of snow falls during the duration of the video, but a lot of it also blows away at the same time.



the video has been edited slightly, in order to make sure that is a little more interesting to watch.





some highlights to watch for :



- me shovelling

- snowblower in the top right corner

- neighbour taking FOREVER to shovel his driveway

- scott and a friend shoveling and stuff

- snow plow on my driveway



(it all looks so painfully boring to see it written there. but at least it is less than four minutes of your time to watch this).





other things i didn't notice the first time around :



- the snow moving across the roof of the house opposite me

- house spider crawling all over the window

- how fast the sky appears to move at some points.

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?

meh.

what the deuce?

Meteorologists in China say that that if necessary they will modify the weather on August 8 so it doesn't rain on the 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies. From the Los Angeles Times:

Training with the Olympics in mind, the meteorologists have been practicing their "rain mitigation" techniques since 2006. They have had a couple of dry runs, so to speak -- a China-Africa summit and a panda festival in Sichuan province, among others.



The bureau of weather modification was established in the 1980s and is now believed to be the largest in the world. It has a reserve army of 37,000 people -- most of them sort of weekend warriors who are called to duty during unusual droughts. The bureau has 30 aircraft, 4,000 rocket launchers and 7,000 antiaircraft guns, said Wang Guohe, director of weather modification for the Chinese Academy of Meteorology.



"We have the largest program in the world with the most people involved and the most equipment, but it is not really the most advanced," Wang said. That honor belongs to the Russians, who he says used sophisticated cloud-seeding in 1986 to prevent radioactive rain from the Chernobyl reactor accident from reaching Moscow.

more diary

more stuff pulled out of my diary from my earlier years......





January 21



math class...... man, i tell ya - what a bummer. they guy behind me farted right in the middle of an explanation of of an algebra question. everybody in the class turned and looked straight at me. i couldn't help but laugh, because it was a really juicy fart.



sometimes the things i say in front of the other guys are really dumb. but like that famous philosopher W.A. Yankovic says : "dare to be stupid".





January 22



boy, did i get mad today. during english, "DAVE THOMAS" hit me in the back of the head. i got fed up with him always hitting me in the head whenever i tried to get anything from under my desk, so i just bashed him in the side of the head.



then after that class, during lunch, "MARK HIGGINS" kept flicking my ears and squeezing my juice box. he also punched me in the stomach. so i left the table where i was sitting, and hit him in the back of the head. then he chased out of the cafetorium and into the office.





January 23



well... another boring day. i'm not writing this today, but i am writing it tomorrow. actually, it is the day after the 23rd. i got home late last night.



the reason i was late was because i went to a snow party over at "TIM MEADOVALE"'s house, with the youth group.



i took my brand new white coat off while i was horsing around, and it got run over by a snowmobile. luckily nothing happened to it.



January 24



you know what really bugs me? it's that my new favourite show is already doing re-runs. it's only been on the air for two months, (8 shows). i mean, like, the character isn't even that good. it's not hard to act like a kid or say something really dumb - i do it every day. i think i'll write a letter to the creators of the show, and tell them how peeved i am.





January 26



i feel pretty awful about today. sam was trying to get a bag of potato chips ($0.48) from me. he got me down on the ground, did the camel clutch***, and started to pinch and punch me.



so i got mad and punched him in the head once, and a couple of times in his side. (5:30 PM). then about 11:00 PM he started to throw up.



mom blamed it on me and made me stay with him for about an hour.





January 27



once upon a time, far far away, there was a princess that they were not allowed to look at when she walked through the town.



but one guy looked at her and they got married, had children, and lived happily after ever.



for a while.











(***i have no idea what that wrestling move is ---- b-dot)

hello again

so a while ago, i came across a diary that i had started to write from over 20 years ago. i have decided to post it here, one week at a time, because i got a big kick out of how naive i was back then.



it needs to be mentioned that i have changed the names of people in here, to save myself from further embarrassment. it should also be noted that i used to be REALLY little in size......





let me know if you think that this diary thing sucks..........





January 15



i really don't know what to write - except that i just got this book yesterday so that's why there isn't anything written up until today.



i guess i will talk about what happened at school.



i think that "NANCY SMITH" is starting to like me. i can tell by the way she keeps looking at me. i hope that one day i will go steady with her (maybe more). well, see you tomorrow.





January 16



today was a real bummer. the guys at school were really rowdy, pulling my hair, throwing me on the typewriters, and kicking me. some day i'll be able to just turn around and belt them.



today i am not so sure if "NANCY" likes me because when she walked down the hall with her friend "CATHY", "CATHY" turned around and saw me behind them, looked back at "NANCY" and she ("CATHY") laughed. so i don't know what either of them said about me, or if they said anything about me at all......





January 17



most of today was boring. you know, re-runs of cartoons, hardly any snow around for us to go tobogganing. about 1pm, dad took us in to newmarket. we went to harvey's for burgers, to the comic wizard for - what else - but comics. we also went to this place called the balloon saloon, where i bought a knife that looked real, (plastic), and had a retractable blade so it looked like i was killing my brother.





January 18



today? same. i went uptown & looked around in some of the stores. i bought 99 cents worth of sugar-free candies, (Eda-candies), batteries for my walkman, which cost me $2.28, (Eveready). sam bought the second edition of a three-issue limited series and that's about it. so for all the days i've written, you can see i lead a pretty dull life.





January 19



i just figured it out. i think our mid-term reports are gonna be out soon because we are having a lot of tests lately.





January 20



you know what really peeves me? is when you can't think of anything to write about. whether it be in a letter or in a diary.