Ashley's Items of Interest

Some new photos

2006-09-04T10:40:00.000Z

Take a look at some new photos my father and I have taken. We are experimenting with our new digital SLR with a variety of lenses.

Version 2 of UK Travel News Widget Released

2006-08-18T16:32:00.000Z

Version 2 of the UK Travel News Widget has now been released. It is now being distributed via my company's website. Enjoy.

I am now a registered Debian Developer

2006-04-16T09:01:00.000Z

I finally received confirmation around a week ago that I am now a registered Debian Developer. I have added my details to the Key Signing Page to offer GPG signing to other prospective and current Debian Developers in Norwich.

Last set of holiday photos to look at

2006-02-25T15:55:00.000Z

I've finally uploaded a small number of photos from my visit to British Columbia in Canada back in September 2002.

A Collection of Comments

2006-01-29T13:26:00.000Z

This is a bit of fun. A collection of comments found in code. This is from The Daily WTF.

A few more pictures to look at

2006-01-20T15:41:00.000Z

I've uploaded some more of my pictures to Flickr. These were taken in 2003 and are from the Muir Woods and Yosemite National Parks in California, USA.

Finally...

2006-01-17T15:38:00.000Z

... I have managed to get my Ph.D. research stuff up and running at home. I collected an SGI Indy from Cambridge on Saturday and following a bit of experimentation managed to get the executables I built several years ago working first time. This is cool :)

However, in order to actually re-compile the code, I need to get a hold of a license for the MIPSpro C compiler. If anyone reads this and know where I can obtain this at a reasonable piece, please email sgi at ashleyhowes.com.

Silicon Valley 2004

2006-01-13T16:57:00.000Z

A selection of my photos I took whilst in Silicon Valley and the surrounding area in April 2004 have been uploaded to my Flickr account. Enjoy.

Version 1.6 of UK Travel News Widget Released

2006-01-06T16:56:00.000Z

Version 1.6 of my UK Travel News Widget is out. A bug fix has been implemented to solve a problem with multiple instances of the widget. Grab the latest version at the project page. Note: you will need to reselect your region to reset the preferences upon installation.

Day of New Discoveries - upcoming.org

2005-12-14T16:28:00.000Z

Event listings done right :) Not much for Norwich currently, nor Cambridge.

And...

2005-12-14T16:02:00.000Z

I've also created a SuprGlu account to bring together my blog, photos, lastfm feeds, etc. Can't get the lastfm feed userid: ashley_t_howes to work for some reason. Anyone know why?

Better late than never

2005-12-14T15:31:00.000Z

I've finally started to play with Flickr. To begin with I've uploaded a few photographs taken back in September at an English Heritage property in Norfolk. I've also added a Flickr badge to this blog that displays the latest photo added and links back to the rest of my photos.

Version 1.5 of UK Travel News Widget Released

2005-11-08T17:08:00.000Z

Version 1.5 of my UK Travel News Widget is out. Several changes have been implemented: 'one Railways' feeds have been consolidated, so have Virgin Trains; new Top Incidents feeds for Road and Rail; new cycling category for Scotland; new background colour for cycling; and I've added the backstage feeds that are available in Welsh.
More information can be seen at the project page.

lavaps now builds on amd64 for Debian GNU/Linux

2005-10-17T08:12:00.000Z

I've just submitted a new upload to Debian so lavaps now builds correctly on the amd64 architecture. The new upload also includes some minor housekeeping.

UK Travel News featured in Mac Format Magazine for October 2005

2005-08-25T15:39:00.000Z

My UK Travel News Dashboard Widget has been featured in the latest edition of Mac Format magazine. Issue 160. October 2005. It is on page 21. They liked it so much they have started a readers competition for widgets :)

Version 1.4 of UK Travel News Widget Released

2005-07-29T06:42:00.000Z

Version 1.4 of my UK Travel News Widget is out. It fixes a bug with the Hampshire feed and background change failures on some ferry feeds. More information can be seen at the project page.

Wow! What A Response

2005-07-21T07:18:00.000Z

On the day that my UK Travel News Widget was placed on Macworld.co.uk, I received over 1000 visits to the project page. Wow!

UK Travel News article on Macworld.co.uk

2005-07-20T10:57:00.000Z

Thanks to Macworld.co.uk for writing an article on my UK Travel News Dashboard Widget for Mac OSX Tiger 10.4. My web traffic has just now spiked considerably.

Version 1.3 of UK Travel News Widget Released

2005-07-19T11:14:00.000Z

Version 1.3 of my UK Travel News Widget is out. The Widget has had a graphic overhaul with a new look-n-feel to match a UK road sign. The background colour on the sign now changes with feed selection as follows: green (roads), blue (motorways), black (train), dark blue (underground), dark yellow (ferries) and grey (airline). I also changed the icon used on install and placed in the Dashboard dock.

As usual, more information (including updated screenshots) can be seen at the project page.

Version 1.2 of UK Travel News Widget Released

2005-07-16T06:40:00.000Z

Version 1.2 of my UK Travel News Widget is out. The Widget now shows the region / travel interest selected on the front so it is easier to use multiple instances of the widget, and displays a 'last updated' timestamp in bottom left hand corner so you can see how fresh the content is.

It also now gracefully handles failed lookups and failed refreshes of travel feeds, and I fixed a bug for the display of South West Trains. More information at the project page.

UK Travel News now on Apple.com and Backstage.bbc.co.uk

2005-07-12T08:45:00.000Z

My UK Travel News Dashboard Widget for OSX Tiger 10.4 is now listed on the Apple.com and the BBC backstage website.

Version 1.1 of UK Travel News Widget Released

2005-07-09T16:32:00.000Z

Version 1.1 of my UK Travel News Widget is out. You can now filter the list of incidents you see based on the severities you are interested in. I have also fixed a display bug with the scrollbar. More information at the project page.

Version 1.0 of UK Travel News Widget Released

2005-07-08T07:29:00.000Z

Version 1.0 of my UK Travel News Widget has been released. It is built for Apple's OSX v10.4 Tiger Dashboard. The widget provides realtime UK traffic news sorted by severity. Simply set your region or mode of transport. Click on an incident to see more detail. More information can be viewed at it's project page. It is also now linked from the Apple.com Dashboard website.

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Google

2005-04-13T11:14:00.000Z

The University of Washington has a streaming video available for viewing of a recording made in October 2004 detailing A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Google.

Lavaps-tcl not going to happen now :(

2005-04-11T14:44:00.000Z

lavaps-tcl for Debian is not going to happen now. I uploaded it to the Debian archive on 28/1/2005, and it was stuck in the new queue. Today it got rejected :( Lavaps itself is still in the archive (linked against gtk), but a tcl/tk specific version is not. Bug 243328 contains more information.

Oh well, the good news is that some other related bugs were identified and have been incorporated to the master source for the program.

Cool Linux-based PDA

2005-03-14T14:36:00.000Z

The Archos PMA400

Productive tips for reading and writing emails

2005-03-13T17:33:00.000Z

Boing Boing pointed me to this set of tips that try to increase productivity by reminding email users what is important.

NASA World Wind

2005-03-13T08:33:00.000Z

I discovered a very cool 3D dynamic map viewer yesterday. It is NASA's World Wind. You start with a global view of the world, rotate, pan and zoom into your point of interest, and extra images are streamed in when needed. I spend hours playing with it :)

Removing bugs from lavaps

2005-03-08T14:07:00.000Z

About a week ago, I discovered some graphs that Wouter Verhelst produces on Debian packages. Below is the graph for my package list (currently lavaps). It's a good feeling to see that bug level so low.

Good laugh from Wired News: Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill

2005-02-02T14:32:00.000Z

I like this. Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill.

lavaps-tcl coming real soon now :)

2005-01-25T16:26:00.000Z

Ever since I adopted the lavaps package for Debian, there has been a wishlist bug requesting a tcl/tk version of the application. This was first blocked by a bug in the original code as discussed yesterday. This was corrected in lavaps 2.7 (available in late December). Since then, I have been struggling with the Debian packaging system to build multiple binaries (lavaps and lavaps-tcl) from a single source. This morning I had a major breakthrough, and it all looks ok so far.

lavaps 2.7 just uploaded to Debian unstable

2005-01-24T16:06:00.000Z

lavaps 2.7 has just been uploaded to Debian unstable. Mostly bug fixes, along with a blob autoscaling code re-write. It also corrects a tcl/tk bug I found during development a few months ago. This will allow me to create a tcl version for Debian, as well as the current gtk version. Just need to work out how to create multiple binaries from a single source and have then end up in the correct location.

Skiing

2005-01-23T10:25:00.000Z

I went on my first skiing lesson last night. It was only a one-hour taster session on a local dry ski slope, but it was good fun. The only after affect is a sore right knee I got after falling backwards coming down the slope, and was dragged along until I stopped.

After my knee is better, I will probably sign up for the introductory course. Then I'll be allowed on the main slope unsupervised!

RSS2Email

2005-01-23T10:20:00.000Z

I discovered RSS2Email this morning after reading Planet Debian. It reads RSS/Atom feeds and converts them into email messages. This means I can now read my feeds inside mutt with all it's searching abilities :)

Header searching in mutt

2005-01-22T14:02:00.000Z

Whilst sorting out a load of old email, I discovered that Mutt can search based on header information outside the normal: from, to, date and subject. In fact, it can search, tag, and take action on any part of the email header. It's great.

To tag on a pattern use: T ~h <search pattern>
To search on a pattern use: / ~h <search pattern>

Installing Debian Sarge on an Original Apple iBook

2004-11-15T14:27:00.000Z

I have recently installed Debian Sarge on an original Apple iBook. I have placed my notes online in case it helps anyone.

Reading update

2004-09-21T07:36:00.000Z

I finished David Carradine's autobiography, Endless Highway, some time ago. Yesterday I concluded the wonderful account of Ishi, "the last wild indian in North America". It was written back in 1961 by Theodora Kroeber and published by the University of California. If you are interested in native american people (as I am), it is well worth tracking down (I was lucky enough that my library had it in their archive stores). It not only covers Ishi life before entering the modern world, but also his views and experiences afterwards.

Next on my list is something a little different, "Freedom from the Known" by Krishnamurti.

Latest version of lavaps will be in next major release of Debian

2004-09-04T10:21:00.000Z

The latest version of LavaPS 2.6 (the package I maintain) has just moved from the unstable to the testing branch in the Debian archive. Therefore it will be in the next major release of Debian.

Piled Higher and Deeper

2004-08-16T16:05:00.000Z

I've recently discovered an online comic strip that started at Stanford University and covers graduate student life. I particularly liked this strip. It reminds me of the years I spent at UEA doing my own Ph.D. research.

lavaps 2.6 now compiles from source with gcc3.4 in debian unstable

2004-08-08T09:12:00.000Z

A bug was reported against lavaps2.6 in debian unstable. It did not compile from source with gcc3.4. A patch has been applied and the new version is now available from the debian archive.

New version of lavaps uploaded to debian unstable

2004-07-27T12:05:00.000Z

The new version of lavaps (2.6) has been uploaded to debian unstable. It should be available soon. Thanks to Daniel (Kinnison) for acting as my sponser.

Debian developer in training

2004-07-09T11:35:00.000Z

I've started along the road to becoming a Debian Developer. The package I will be working on is lavaps, a cool application that draws process usage as blobs in a lava lamp. Version 2.2 is currently packaged, I'm planning to upgrade it to the latest version 2.6 available from the author.

Ontological Engineering

2004-06-29T15:58:00.000Z

I've finally started to experiment with ontologies. If you understand the term, please leave comments and maybe we can collaborate on some interesting projects.

Oh, and XCode 2.0

2004-06-29T09:24:00.000Z

Apple also have details online regarding XCode 2.0, their own development environment. The new features of "Dynamic class diagrams" that update with your code (giving you another path to navigate by) and "Graphical remote debugging" look interesting to me.

Apple's Tiger OS

2004-06-29T08:59:00.000Z

I've just finished watching the keynote from Apple's WWDC2004, where Tiger, the next Apple OS is being shown for the first time. Of the new features, my favorites are Spotlight and Automator.

Spotlight is a meta-data and full content index/search engine. Automator. allows automation of repeative tasks by combining tasks (with connectors) into a workflow.

The new 30 inch display is quite nice as well :)

Endless Highway

2004-06-16T13:26:00.000Z

Finished No Logo and Snowcrash now. Starting on David Carradine's autobiography - Endless Highway.

A description of Apple's Mail Spam Filter

2004-05-19T08:29:00.000Z

O'Reilly's MacDevCenter have a description of how Apple's Mail Spam Filter works.

Something the best score is no score at all

2004-05-14T15:01:00.000Z

I have been attending classical and chamber music recitals for several years, and last night was a real treat. It was Imogen Cooper playing the piano.

As stated in her performance, she is interested in connections, especially in music. She then proceeded to play several separate, but related pieces back to back. Specifically:

Satie Gnossiènne No.1
Liszt Les Jeux d'eau à la Villa d'este
Ravel Jeux d'eau
Satie Gymnopedie No. 1

She also played all pieces without the aid of a music score. I have only seen a few piano performances where the artist does not need a score, and all have been excellent. So, if they don't have a score, it's a good sign that the performance will be good.

Re-examining representation of primitive numerical types

2004-05-12T16:37:00.000Z

I've discovered the work of Oskar Mencer at Imperial College. He is examining ways to vary number representation using FPGAs. Instead of simplying choosing an Integer or a Floating Point type in your language of choice, he is started to take advantage of the reconfigurable FPGA to find optimal representation of each type against specific metrics.

One important point he does make is in calculating a primitive function like sin(x). Many researchers have published methods to compute sin(x), yet there is no mention when to use which method. Furthermore, even after you choose the method, there are many options that can be adjusted. How do you choose which options to adjust?

Why I will never eat a hamburger again

2004-05-11T15:50:00.000Z

As I make my way through No Logo, I am reminded of Eric Schlosser's books called "Reefer Madness" and "Fast Food Nation".

If you haven't read Fast Food Nation, you must read it now, and you will understand why I (and probably you after you read it) will never eat a hamburger again!

So many books, so little time

2004-05-10T15:05:00.000Z

I have managed to accumulate over 30 books and 20 audio books I have yet to digest. Add that to the list of almost 100 books I want to read in the library, and I appear to have a large task on my hands.

Recently I have finished John McEnroe's autobiography, Faster: The Acceleration of Everything by James Gleick, Neuromancer by William Gibson, and Hackers' Tales by Dr. K.

I have just begun No Logo by Naomi Klein and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

An Efficient Index of all Human Knowledge

2004-05-03T07:49:00.000Z

"There is no practical obstacle whatever now to the creation of an efficient index to all human knowledge, ideas and achievements, to the creation, that is, of a complete planetary memory of all mankind. And not simply an index, the direct reproduction of the thing itself can be summoned to any properly prepared spot.

This in itself is a fact of tremendous significance, it foreshadows a real intellectual unification of our race. The whole human memory can be, and probably in a short time will be, made accessible to every individual. And what is also of very great importance in this uncertain world where destruction becomes continually more frequent and unpredictable, is this, that ... it need not be concentrated in any one single place. It need not be vulnerable as a human head or a human heart is vulnerable. It can be reproduced exactly and fully, in Peru, China, Iceland, Central Africa, or wherever else. ... It can have at once, the concentration of a craniate animal and the diffused vitality of an amoeba."

H.G. Wells. 1937

I've got a GMail account

2004-04-27T14:40:00.000Z

I've got a GMail account. I am finding it very useful for my mailing list traffic, due to the excellent threading support.

SV Trip 2003: Apple's Campus

2004-03-31T15:37:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

No trip to Silicon Valley would be complete without visiting the Apple campus at 1 Infinite Loop. They have a nice company store onsite.

This concludes the commentary from my trip to Silcion Valley in 2003. I started with Apple's garage and ended with one part of their large office complex. I have lots more photos and stories, and I may blog them later. Please contact me if you want to discuss anything in more detail, or want to highlight any mistakes I've made.

SV Trip 2003: Apple Lisa Prototype

2004-03-30T15:31:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

The Computer History Museum also have a prototype of the Apple Lisa.
Unless, you haven't guessed yet, I'm a fan of Apple :)

SV Trip 2003: PIXAR Image Computer

2004-03-29T15:14:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

PIXAR uses to produce their own hardware for animation. Here is an image of the box.

SV Trip 2003: The Crays - Cray 2

2004-03-26T15:11:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

The Cray 2.

SV Trip 2003: The Crays - Cray 1

2004-03-26T15:05:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

Two good images of Cray supercomputers. These originally blew IBM's offerings out of the water in terms of performance. More history can be read here.

SV Trip 2003: Connection Machine CM-1

2004-03-25T14:51:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

The Computer History Museum doesn't just store personal computers, they also have many others. This is a Connection Machine CM-1 by Thinking Machines Inc. I was particularly interested in this because some previous work in my Ph.D. topic was performed on a Connection Machine CM-2 by Karl Sims. The box contains many processors that were coded in parallel.

SV Trip 2003: Altair 8800

2004-03-24T14:43:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

One of the first personal computers, the Altair 8800 by MITS. A wealth of information is available here. Picture taken at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

SV Trip 2003: Apple I signed by Woz

2004-03-23T14:32:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

Yesterday, I posted about the Apple I. Here is a picture of one of the early prototypes of the Apple I, signed by Woz (Steve Woznaik) (in the centre at the back). It is located in the Computer History Museum.

SV Trip 2003: Homebrew Computer Club

2004-03-22T14:15:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

The letterhead from a newsletter of the Homebrew Computer Club. The Computer History Museum has the following to say:

"The legendary Homebrew Computer Club provided a meeting place for computer hobbyists, many of whom later become pioneers in the microcomputer industry in Silicon Valley. At its first meeting in March 1975, held in a Menlo Park, California garage, this group gathered to discuss the Altair 8800, an early build-it-yourself computer kit, and other technical topics. It was through Homebrew that Steve Wozniak heard about mail-order personal computers and set out to build, with Steve Jobs, the Apple I. Wozniak said he designed the Apple I as 'a way of showing off to my friends' at the Homebrew Computer Club. The club disbanded in 1986 but celebrated its 25th anniversary at a reunion in March 2001."

SV Trip 2003: The Alto

2004-03-19T16:46:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

The researchers at Xerox Parc created a workstation called the Alto which provided a foundation for their work. The computer history museum has one of the machines.

SV Trip 2003: Spacewar on the PDP-11

2004-03-18T16:34:00.001Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

As described in Steven Levy's book Hackers, early work on video games was performed on the PDP-1 at MIT. The computer history museum has the machine. A java implementation of the game is available.

SV Trip 2003: Computer History Museum

2004-03-17T16:26:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

The highlight of silicon valley from a historical standpoint is the Computer History Museum. They offer tours of a portion of their *large* collection.

SV Trip 2003: Computer Science at Stanford

2004-03-16T16:16:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

The computer science department at Stanford is in the William Gates computer science building. Some of the lectures given by Stanford faculty are available online for public viewing. I am currently viewing a collection of lectures by Donald Knuth (author of the volumes on The Art of Computer Programming).

SV Trip 2003: Stanford University

2004-03-15T16:15:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

Stanford University has had strong ties to the surrounding area for years. In more recent years, both Yahoo and Google were started by students here.

SV Trip 2003: The birth place of the WIMP graphical user interface

2004-03-12T16:54:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

A lot of early work on computing and graphical user interfaces was done at Xerox Parc, including the creation of the mouse and the common Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointer (WIMP) interface model. Parc is located close to Stanford University.

SV Trip 2003: First semi-conductor company in Silicon Valley

2004-03-11T18:25:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

Today it is the turn of Shockley Semi-conductor, the first semi-conductor company in Silicon Valley. The sign on the right marks the spot.

SV Trip 2003: The birth place of HP

2004-03-10T17:03:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

Following on from yesterday, here are two photos of the garage where HP started. The one on the left shows the garage and the one on the right is of the 'birthplace of silicon valley' sign in the front garden.

SV Trip 2003: The birth place of Apple

2004-03-09T13:46:00.000Z

[From my trip to Silicon Valley, California, in 2003]

Last year I travelled to Silicon Valley. I took many photos and thought I would share some. Today's image is the birth place of Apple. A garage.

Sample Apple WWDC 2003 Sessions available online

2004-03-08T14:35:00.000Z

Apple are hosting 7 WWDC 2003 sessions online as a taster for WWDC 2004. As an apple programmer from OS7-9, I found the sessions on Carbon and Cocoa application development useful.

Learning is important

2004-02-22T16:18:00.000Z

"In his history of cryptography, The Codebreakers, author David Kahn probes the emotional lures of secret writing, citing Freud's theory that the child's impulse to learn is tied to the desire to view the forbidden." -- Steven Levy in Crypto

Mars Spirit Surveyor

2004-02-22T14:17:00.000Z

Here is some analysis on the failure of the Mars Spirit surveyor, and how NASA resolved the problem.

PIXAR. I like PIXAR!

2004-01-27T14:47:00.000Z

PIXAR have a new short animation. Trailer is available here.

2003-11-09T08:26:00.000Z

An article from the Guardian discusses the importance of understanding computer languages and programming for the future

2003-06-07T11:01:00.000Z

Got back to my reading pile today which I haven't touched in some time. The founder of Lazy software, Simon Williams, has developed a different approach to storing information and the relationship between each element in a database. It is called the Associate Model of Data, and forms the basis of a product his company offers.

The basic principle is to use a syntax based on the english language: subject-verb-object, e.g. the sky is coloured blue. Once this is stored, the associations between the data elements can be used to offer several advantages over the relational database model. More information can be seen in this pdf.

2003-03-31T19:30:00.000Z

A very thought provoking article on the future of combining technology with location-aware services

2003-02-08T18:09:00.000Z

Excellent article on the Sun Microsystems website that challenges programmers to constantly reevaluate assumption

2003-01-11T11:18:00.000Z

The idea behind LazyWeb appears good. It allow computer users with problems to forward requests to developers

2003-01-11T10:43:00.000Z

A view inside symantec's security central that monitors unauthorised access to computer networks

2002-11-16T17:21:00.000Z

A practical guide to secure system development. The article also sees problems ahead with web services.

2002-11-16T13:27:00.000Z

Playing this version of Doom may not be good for your Linux boxes' health

2002-11-14T15:49:00.000Z

The law of leaky applications

2002-10-31T10:47:00.000Z

There is currently a large discussion on /. about Yahoo moving to PHP. Well more of an argument between programmers about their favourite web coding environment.

However they appear to be forgetting the basics of engineering. When presented with a problem:
* You analyise it
* You examine the tools available for solving the problem
* You test, experiment, benchmark and generally evaluate the best fit tool(s)
* You choose your tools based on the results of the above

You don't just use PHP or J2EE because you like it or have used it the most.

2002-10-11T10:34:00.000Z

Read an interesting article on Sun's Java Web Start product. It eases the deployment of java-based code to client machines. It can also check for updated content when the user subsequently launches an installed app.

2002-10-09T09:09:00.000Z

Found a very relevant article today.

2002-10-08T14:01:00.000Z

Builder.com are suggesting schema replication as a technique to use for moving data from an old system to a new one, and then have users examine it with adhoc SQL queries. Doesn't seem very efficient to me, unless the old system is being shutdown before completion/testing of the new one.

2002-07-27T15:01:00.000Z

Picture a machine so awkwardly designed that almost every software execution leads to a race condition; that survives intense magnetic fields and mild radiation but crashes when you expose it to excessive UV light; that incorporates bugs into its own design and devotes 90 percent of its hard-drive memory to self-replicating white noise.

Answer here

2002-06-15T11:40:00.000Z

Currently experiencing information overload from numerous sources. Thus lack of entries. Ordered and watched "Freedom Downtime" from 2600 a couple of nights ago. It is a very good documentary detailing the real story and issues behind Kevin Mitnick and other people who enjoy "playful cleverness", but have found themselves the target of law enforcement groups.

2002-06-08T18:26:00.000Z

Just found out about a common sense database from the development of artificial intellegence ideas. It is available at http://www.opencyc.org/.

2002-06-08T11:31:00.000Z

Started using Meerkat for daily news needs. Got feed-up going to loads of separate websites.

2002-06-04T12:34:00.000Z

"The supreme time waster, though, is television. Many people still have trouble understanding how egregious a time consumer, how obsolete a business model, how atavistic a technology, and how debauched a cultural force it is. You sit down on a couch in front of a screen, to watch degrading and titillating lowest-common-denominator trivia, scheduled for you in some netherworld betweeb Madison Avenue, the FCC, and Hollywood, offering a sordid stream of sleazy banalities, gun grunge, bedroom mayhem, and offal innuendoes, some preening as 'news' and some leering as entertainment, for as much as seven hours a day, on average, consuming perhaps two thirds of your disposable time, year after year, all in order to grab your eyeballs for a few minutes of artfully crafted advertising images that you don't want to see, of products that you will never buy. Is it a breast? Is it a thigh? No, it is a vant of you, 90 percent of the time, as the worst telemarketing spiel. Justifying this scheme is the "free public service" that television supposedly offers, namely the "serious" portions of the "news" (chiefly government propaganda) and Saturday morning children's programming (more propaganda)."

[from Telecosm by George Gilder, 2000]

2002-06-03T17:30:00.000Z

"Leaving Britain at night headed for Holland in a British Airways Boeing 757, I was captivated by their plan. I relished the esthetics of new integrated circuitry that could attach every computer to the web photonicly at gigabits per second, ultimately for a few score dollars apience, the price of an Ethernet NIC. I looked down from the plane at the motorways surrounding London, scintillating webs of golden light, streaming with a heavy traffic of automobiles, sparkling like so many IP packets riding directly on the hard clad silicon loops and I let myself imagine that Bookham had done it, brought the light down every British street, linked every Oxfordshire Lane in endless trunks and branches, hubs and roundabouts, brocaded across the British nocturnal landscape like gilded and luminous lace in the moonlight."

[from Telecosm by George Gilder, 2000]

2002-05-30T18:43:00.000Z

"65,049,600" - the number of tons of copper wire supporting the communication of America.

"Regulators, politicians, and litigators always imagine that they can promote various high-minded goals, such as universal service, by offering monopoly privileges to companies for providing it. But the result, as Peter Huber and his associates show in their text, Federal Broadband Law, is mostly to promote monopoly at the expense of real universal services, which ultimately depends not on law but on innovation"

[from Telecosm by George Gilder, 2000]

2002-05-29T13:18:00.000Z

Started last ETConn2002 session, Rethinking the Modern OS presented by Richard Rashid @ Microsoft. Part of the session discuss ideas for modelling user behaviour by defining what is important to a user based on past behaviour.

An example is assigning priority to incoming messages from email, instant messaging, etc. Priority could be determined from the message structure (header/body), the communication history with the sender, the company structure, linguistic analysis, etc. This is what I need for my incoming email :) The idea was extended to encompass your machine monitoring your behaviour, e.g. knowing when you are in a conversation and hence not interrupting you, or determining how long you would be away to inform others of expected solution times to a problem.

2002-05-28T13:13:00.000Z

Finished Autonomic Computing talk. Morris defines an interesting concept of 'IT resources on demand', and sets a challenge to software/hardware developrs to create management systems across hetrogenius systems from many vendors. StorageTank, in development by IBM, will allow an IT manager to define the required availability, security, performance and backup for a storage array via metadata management. A uniform name space is then presented to all clients, and the system manages the resources to satisify the stated goals automatically.

There was also mention of building a goal orientated recovery systems, instead of bespoke scripts, in the case of failure. It would use a finite-state machine (auto-generated) to define a path from the system's present state to a final state in a number of steps. This is non-trivial to implement.

2002-05-27T13:40:00.000Z

Started to listen to another mp3-encoded session from ETCon2002. This one is Autonomic Computing by Robert Morris @ IBM. It highlights the problem on growing complexity in computer systems and details his idea to make computing devices for like the human body, e.g. self protecting, self optimising, self healing

2002-05-26T17:32:00.000Z

I listened to three mp3-encoded sessions from O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference 2002 over the weekend. Very interesting and thought provoking content