Sorry Blogger, I've been hanging out with a new 61t¢h, initials fb, instead of you--but i dont love her the way i love you, blogger. She's just convenient.
The New York Times has a lengthy and interesting article by Rob Walker discussing digital immortality (or whatever you want to call it). Much of the article revolves around the late Mac Tonnies and his Posthuman Blues blog. Maybe you should download the article to your computer; you never know when The New York Times will suddenly disappear completely. The article include links to tribute sites Mac-Bots and Post-Mac Blues. According to one item in the article, the possibility of a real Mac-Bot is getting closer:
Something called Lifenaut.com has a product called a MindFile, “a database of personal reflections captured in video, image, audio and documents about yourself that can be saved, searched, downloaded and shared with friends.” This information is meant to be filtered through an “interactive avatar,” modeled on you, “that becomes more intelligent as you add more information.” The site welcomes you with a sweeping, ominous tone; the company’s tag line is “Eternalize.” VirtualEternity.com, from a company called Intellitar, also claims to convert the personal data you provide into an avatar — sort of like one of those chatbots that some online companies use for automated but more humanish customer service. “We want to give users the gift of immortality,” an Intellitar founder has said.
Mac Tonnies-tagged content continues to be created on the internets despite his physical death. Below are some recent YouTube movies.
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Macbots, a Mac Tonnies tribute site, is developing nicely. There was an interview on Technoccult with facilitators blazingbetta and capnmarrrrk. Mac's last book, The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us, published posthumously, is available from Anomolist books, amazon.co.jp and amazon.com. I haven't got it yet.
I never used to watch Break Room Live because I listened to it. They had some good video clips that I never noticed until now.
Our poor fallen masters. Give generously.
Sam
Marc's House!
Cats.
More Human Than Human
There is a lot of overlap here, but the corroboration and triangulation can be useful. LinuxLinks has a list of the 20 best free Linux books, in the editor's estimation. Linux.org has a reading list with several good titles on Open Source and Free Software, such as Open Sources, Free as in Freedom, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and Free for All. Some of the titles on this list look good, too.
Apparently, this guy --Doug Fine-- is on NPR (and has been on CNN at least once) but I haven't been listening to NPR for a year or so, so I must have missed him... but I read this reprinted in The Daily Yomiuri. A longer version is on his website.
Here is a 2008 interview in "Smithsonian" and a critical look at the capital requirements of his kind of simplicity from Alternet.
A record amount of time has passed since my last post. Among other things, such as grading and getting a fifth part-time job, I've been traveling to Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, Takayama, and Minakami. I posted pictures on Facebook and caught up with an 8 month backlog of pictures. Facebook and iPhoto software had changed since the last time I used it. I am using a Mac Mini as my main computer and even bought Snow Leopard to install on it. I don't think I ever boought a new Mac OS so soon before. The Quicktime is good. They should have bundled that in instead of asking users to buy a "Pro" license from the start. Actually, since I have been converting to GNULinux(and/or BSD), I finally decided on PC-BSD as the free, open-source OS for the mini, but I have had a heck of a time getting it to boot properly, so I think I will give up on BSD for the moment and install Fedora on it instead. Everything will be dual-boot except the eee 4G, which is Mandriva-only. OpenSuSE has gone on to a Fujitsu used by the family. I recommend OpenSuSE if you need to recover the MBR to boot your Windows properly after a botched Linux install. (This page was for SuSE, not openSuSE, but installing OpenSuSE replaced the bad GRUB.) At our house, Ubuntu (8.04) screwed it up, and OpenSuSE fixed it up and installed a much prettier and easily customized bootloader. The Eee 4G worked perfectly with Mandriva while traveling around; I could check train schedules, maps, and travel-related information. The eeexperience of Ubuntu on the 1000HE is good so far, too. I will put Yellow Dog onto the iLamp and set up a "Remote Station" for some "wired clients" on the third floor, to make use of my spare AirMac Extreme Base Station.
I should probably use more debian-based distributions since they are more community-supported rather than business-supported, possibly slightly. Here are some notes about that:
software package management
deb
ubuntu 26000 jp ppc
debian 25000 jp ppc
crunchbang 23000 - -
dreamlinux 23000
mint 23000
sidux 23000 jp -ppc
elive 20000
rpm
openSUSE 22000 jp ppc
mandriva 20000 jp -
arch linux 15000 - -
fedora 8000 jp ppc
yellow dog ???? ? ppc
Notes are about major Linux distributions, the number of packages, whether they support Asian languages and particularly Japanese, and whether they have a PowerPC processor build of their distribution.
This was interesting:
GNUveau Networks builds solar-powered Linux computer networks for remote villages (video)
FreeGeek in Portland Oregon offers something productive to do with your used computers (or your free time).
Some free reading materials:
Free Software, Free Society by Richard Stallman
At the Duke University Law department's Center for the Study of the Public Domain you can read about the legal and social issues surrounding Fair Use in comic book form as html or as a pdf. There is an introduction by Cory Doctorow. The title is Bound By Law.
Hackett and Bankwell #1 is a free pdf ebook about converting a small business to Linux. It can be downloaded from "teh intarwebz". Issue 2 seems to have gone missing, though.
Teach the Children Well
I downloaded the (Fedora-based) Sugar-on-a-stick:strawberry OS for OLPC, Foresight Linux for Kids, LinuxKidX, and Berry (not really a kid-oriented distro but is Japanese and English). I am thinking of trying Qimo, too. These should work for kids age 3 to 10. We wouldn't want them to grow up using Windows, Mac, or other corporate proprietary software, would we? (link)
I figure I may owe my putative reader an explanation of why "blogging has been light" these past few months. Scratch that, it's not that i feel i "owe" anybody anything, but as a matter of courtesy and as a pubic service, it may be an excuse for making a post.
In most of February and March, I am "free", which usually means I am busy pursuing some projects and work that has been put off the rest of the year. In this case that meant cleaning out my office "laboratory" at the camp-us where I have been institutionalized for the past 9 years. I also had to clean and reorganize my house to accommodate things that previously occupied my office. I managed to get everything I wanted to keep in 1.5 carloads of material which fit into my house with no visible change, as I found things at home to discard from our 10 years here.
Among the things I discarded were many computer models from my computer "museum". These included an Apple Classic 2 (the size, shape, weight, and esthetic twin of a concrete block), an LC, a Performa, a couple of old PowerBook Duos from the mid-1990s, 3 or 4 6600/somethings from my significant other's office (also 1990s discards) and probably a few more I have forgotten about. There was a late 1990s "video editing edition" of something I had at home that got tossed. In addition to those, I had purchased 2 desktops and 2 laptops in my 9 years of serfdom as an institutionalized academic. These were obligingly returned to the institution and dumped on a basement storeroom floor for disposal (a particularly sad waste of a 2008 MacBook). From this you may conclude that I keep and adopt computers roughly the way the cat lady takes in cats, and you would be correct. I seem to have had roughly 17 computers earlier this year, some of them completely non-functional. Intake of computers left on the curb with minor problems such as a glitchy speaker or broken floppy has declined to zero in recent years as the recycling laws have made these treasures disappear. I now find myself down to a mere 7 (?) computers. Three "candy" iMacs and an eMac constitute the "museum" portion of my holdings (all running great), while a 21-inch iLamp (or "flower" iMac) desktop circa 2004 and two new laptops constitute my "active" array of machines.
The new ones are ASUS Eee PCs, a 4G (but I call it "Little Sucker" in respect to its performance) and the world's and Amazon's most popular netbook, the ultra-mobile 1000HE. I happily got the 4G in order to buy it on my office budget without having to return it (under $300). I am happy to move away from the Apple cult, although I think I would like to keep a working Apple CPU around to run some Apple software, probably a Mac Mini when I need to replace the fading iLamp.
As you may expect from a person with a slew of older low-spec'd computers around, I like to run free, open-source software, not proprietary corporate software licensed for use on one machine. It's natural to extend that principle to the OS itself, especially as I try to make use of the Eee(s) without using Windows XP Japanese version, which was the pre-installed OS. As a result, I have been busily learning Linux. What has surprised me is that there is much more software available than I had thought, and that the user interface can be very very slick after a little additional customization. It is nice to have 3 OS platforms available, as I can find an app to do almost anything.
I seem to visit dozens of Linux pages every day, but as an Eee user, this page has been particularly useful to compare Linux distributions. I have downloaded ISOs or IMGs of eeebuntu, OpenGeeeU, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04, Mandriva (Gnome), Mandriva (KDE), FluxfluxEEE, and EEEpcLinuxOS. I have rejected OpenGeeeU as wasting too much screen space and for compatibility reasons. I suspect Fluxflux (and the gOS) would not use screen space efficiently either. UNR 9.04 was slow and glitchy on the 4G and has a nasty desktop-switcher bug that the newer ISO still hadn't got rid of, so I dumped it, and the Little Sucker is now running Mandriva (Gnome) very well. Mandriva is extremely impressive; only the default partitioner was not as good as Ubuntu's Gparted. The 1000HE runs Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 without trouble so far, although I am afraid to switch to Classic Mode because I would (probably) have to re-install everything --with a different OS-- if the bug shows up. I'd recommend avoiding Ubuntu Netbook Remix and perhaps sticking with the standard Ubuntu instead. You can right-click the top menu and select Autohide and Show Hide Buttons (I think it's called), --and do the same for the bottom taskbar-- and they will both disappear with one click (or just automatically) any time you like, leaving you with the full screen for Firefox or whatever your working window is. This is much less buggy than Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
If you are considering Linux, visit Distrowatch. Try this distro selector and/or another one of these as a second opinion.
While searching for an image of a stereoscope, I came across Early Visual Media, a kind of archeological museum of image culture. The aims of the site are diverse and varied. It's certainly entertaining and very educational. Among the stereoviews, you'll find some nudes and related collections from the 1800s! Yes, your grandmother's grandmother was a flousey. And although she is dust, she looks pretty hot. The site's creator, Thomas Weynants, has an exhaustive bibligraphy of publications and links. Television in its earliest forms is among his interests.
There is a fLIckr group of stereo photography--actually several groups divided into parallel, cross-view, and anaglyph factions. Can't we all just get along? Via Xorsyst, I found the wonderful fLIckr site of Okinawa Soba and
his T-Enami dedicated site as well. Since we're on the subject, you could start at this 3D set and his instructions for parallel viewing. I may require several years to fully explore Rob Oechsle's collections.
Digital stereoscopy is slow to get started despite what seem to be advantages. I think it is more practical than ever before, as all photography now consumes fewer resources. Only the design of the camera lens --not all components-- would need to be effectively doubled. An 8-megapixel camera would become a camera which takes two 4-megapixel images and stores them in a single image. Three-dimensional photographs would have much more information (regarding depth) than 2D photos and would have applications in forensic analysis, for example. Surveillance cameras might benefit from 3D video imaging as well. In addition to depth, the photographer.jpg)
who wishes to use the 2D image has 2 slightly different versions (of the 2D image) to choose from. Dust and scratches could be more easily removed with a second image as a reference. Perhaps a new file type like the JPEG could be created, but in principle it should not be necessary. The left-eye and right-eye images can just be recorded side-by-side in a single wide jpeg. EXIF data or some tag in the 3D jpeg could indicate to software that this is a stereoscopic image. (Alternatively, software might detect this fact automatically.) In that case, additional tags could indicate from several options for displaying the photo. The left and right sides of the photo could be displayed straightaway in parallel as a default. A tag indicating cross-eyed viewing could instruct software to divide the image and display the right-eye image on the left and vice-versa. A third way to view it would be to display the right-eye image and the left-eye image in the same frame in rapid succession, like an animated GIF, producing the illusion of three dimensions in this way (the "wiggle" method). This works for people with one eye since it fools the brain rather than the eye. Another technique would be to specify either the left or right or the image as a default to display, and the other half to display upon mouse-over.
There are a few easy adjustments to be made on the software side before stereoscopy can experience a mainstream boom or revival. I would hope that a digital camera maker would come out with stereoscopic model soon and find it to be extremely popular. Alternately, the development of 3D display technology may be driven from the display side, it a breakthrough occurs there first and enables the easy viewing of 3D content on inexpensive screens.
The scowling, muzzled visage of vice Richard "Dick" Cheney, traces of his sidekick Governor "W" Bush and moll, and the twisted, satanically-W-inscribed fo'ead of Tony "W" Blair have long held a place in the banner image of this blog, reminding you, the reader, that the world is full of kindly elderly gentlemen (and ladies) who secretly wish to hurt or kill you and chew off your face. Although I hesitated to remove these reminders of an earlier time before the inauguration due to a lingering paranoid suspicion that Mister Cheney's minions would crash a fleet of airliners into the inauguration ceremonies, decimating the attendees and leaving Mister Cheney as the highest-ranking surviving government official in the Secure Undisclosed Location from which he would emerge and declare himself ruler for life in a new Republic, I feel that the probability of such a plot succeeding, were it to be attempted, is safely low enough that I can delete his muzzled mug and all signs of the others and allow myself to imagine and enjoy an era when they are slowly forgotten. They have been replaced with a sunflower, a lotus blossom, and --lest we forget and lower our guard-- a bee.
This is post number 404. I have deleted some posts before, and will do so again, so it's a meaningless number, especially since I am thinking to post (and post-date) some things I have been doing since November 9. This marks the end (perhaps) of an extended period of non-blogging. This has been a time for reading, listening, and action other than blogging. (I did add some feeds of Japan bloggers to the sidebar, though.) There are dozens of candidate topics for blogging daily, and I have reverted to sending mass e-mails, so I will try to resume blogging, perhaps by e-mailing posts. Blogging is just not a very high priority in the big scheme of things, as much as I would like to do more of it.
I have never been a fan of the "Blogging will be light the next few days" sort of message. This just seems wrong for several different reasons. First, it is presumptive about the future. I may be dead in the next few days. In that event, any "Blogging will be light" prediction will seem quite ironic. It is similar to signing in for every day of the month at the beginning of the month. Second, it assumes that there are readers, that the readers are sentient beings, and that the readers care. There may be no readers (statcounter could be fibbing?), those readers could be bots and spiders, and the reader(s) could be apathetic or hostile to the perceived probability of future postings. Finally, self-referential scribblings will accumulate and distract, eventually forming a large proportion of one's posts. If 20% of a blog's posts are about the expected frequency of future posts, or apologies for past nonexistent posts, it would be a nuisance to read. Fundamentally, this blog is not to serve or build a community of readers, but just for me to express myself. I would like to have one or more readers, but not too many more than that.
However, having said that, I will try to resume blogging (but it may be light for the next year or two…). I list no email address, but comment modulation is on and results in an email sent to my account, so post a comment to send me a mail. I have only rejected one comment, and that because it was about ten thousand words in German about UFOs. I guess there was no upper limit on comment length at that time, but it exceeded my own upper limit, which is that comments must be no longer than the cumulative content of the entire blog, at least, particularly when in a non-English lingo.
Happy New yEar, reader! It's a cow. The end of the noughties is within countdown range and the teenies will be upon us soon. After '09 the "twenny" will come into use, as in "twenny-ten".
This is the Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart, courtesy of the highly-perceptive reverse-engineering skills at adennak.com (AKA ph33r and loathing). Apparently the chart has gone viral, and I am only one of at least several tens of thousands if not millions of people who got this in an e-mail. What can I say? He so nailed it. This is far more articulate than any analysis you'd get on CNN. The programming metaphor may be a good fit since Palin looks animatronic, to me. Hollywood, it's not too late to include a Palin look-alike in the re-make of Westworld.
In response to a question pos(t)ed by Mac at PostHuman Blues, I offered a solution to the misbehaving banner on the Tic-Tac template. My solution didn't work on that template, however. To figure out the answer, I made a test blog called Blueberry Taster, (or tester, or taste-tester? I forgot already) and got into the css just enough to find a fix, or maybe two. I have noticed that there was still a visible glitch in my solution -- look at the right column top! I think I should have displaced the header banner down from the top a bit more. Anyway, I think Mac has the situation well in hand, and I have deleted the blog I made. I am experimenting with another template, "Stretch-Denim", which has variable rather than fixed column widths, and I may investigate migrating to another blogging platform for several reasons.
Even when I tried to google for a solution, my entry never appeared among the search results, so I don't think it will actually be of any use to anybody else. Personally, I'm not so interested in that template, either. Before I deleted it I took 2 screen shots to preserve it just in case, and I guess that can live on here until I run out of Google/Blogger/Picasa space and delete it. I doubt that anybody will ever read it, but …
…for what it's worth.
By the way, the leaf-with-rainfall in that picture is from a biwa (fruit) tree in my adjacent park. The fruits are in season now, and I sometimes taste a tiny bite just to see how it is. This is the rainy season, and the hydrangea and bamboo are obligingly omnipresent as expected.
I've had this image in my mind for a while. I think almost everybody does, although it may be at various levels of focusedness and resolution. I got onto Google Image search and dug around a little to see if someone had already done this. Of course, they had, although it took some digging to find out. The version at whatsdrivingyoucrazy.com was pretty good but a little too rough, so I decided to make a DIY version.
I was a little disgusted when my new version of MacOS, 10.5, broke iPhoto and made it much harder to browse through my photo collection. I also didn't like that my RSS headline screensaver now cycled through 3 headlines instead of 10 from Yahoo. When 10.5 repeatedly froze and locked up just by running a screensaver I ditched it and reverted to 10.4. I have the new Ubuntu running on a Fujitsu as an alternative since the Windows Vista OS still isn't multilingual and I don't want to use it in Japanese any more than I have to. MacOS has been multilingual for 6 or 8 years and Ubuntu has a few dozen languages built in, too.
Anyway, iPhoto runs, but no longer allows me to export to Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, a movie, or even as a file. All you can do is read the file name and Spotlight search for it.
Enough about Apple already. Oh, one more. I wish the fan didn't run in the computer 24 hours a day unless you manually select Sleep mode. They seem to have corrected the bug with their laptops but my downstairs iLamp still can be heard upstairs.
Anyway, I found a photo I had taken with an eerie likeness to what I was seeking, got the Obama logo, got a picture of Obama that I like, found some filters that chromiumized the logo, found the font was Arial Black as it appears (and Inner Shadow seems appropriate), and just had to throw in Dennis Kucinich. Don't stinge on the blur. That pretty much concretizes my image of the national mood (Zeitgeist Amerika) in this erection ear election year.
Below is an urban variation of the concept. Just an afterthought. In the background is a danchi, an industrial housing concept inspired by the Soviet combinats, perhaps. These images American-Made in Japan from Japanese and American parts.
Neither of these is intended for the use of right-wing headcases, BTW. All rights reserved, blah blah blah.
Uptweak:
To me, Jan Chipchase sounds a bit like an update of the "HAL chipset." My head was spinning for a while, wondering who he was and where he was coming from, when I landed on a random blog entry from a Google image search. Traveler? International jewel thief? (No.) It gradually became clearer. His blog Future Perfect is well worth reading for its one-of-a-kind observations and insights. You could also visit his work profile, the blog of his work colleague Younghee Jung (with the superior banner design;-), this interview, or this excellent article in the NYT.
It's funny that when I have free time, as during the recent holiday, I don't do much blogging. Instead, I turn to constructing a massive to-do list, which does include blogging, but at a lower priority. Free time is actually busy time for tackling my on larger projects, while blogging is a smaller project better for tiny slivers of time. Too busy or too free both reduce my blogging.
Well, I don't usually post posts about the frequency of my posts. I will move from the spring vacation to the busiest time of the year.
What have I been doing? Not traveling. Flying kites. Making kites. Out of garbage. Bought a new bike. I want to say "Specialist" but the brand name is "Specialized". Driving in to Tokyo, surprised that it sometimes takes under an hour, faster than the train. Moving shelves out of my office to the third floor of our house. Fixing up the third floor to be a study. Taking pictures. Facebook and other totalitarian imaginary friend anti-social nutwerx. Tried to buy an Asus EEE PC for ¥19,000 but the store ran out. Mac OS 10.5. Broke my iPhoto. Will go back to 10.4 which remains on the internal HD. Various other things. And now my work is getting busy again.
Update: Oh, yeah. I also transferred 20-odd tapes in the obsolete "Hi-8" format (dating from 1995 to 2005) to the hard drive of the DVD/HDD video recorder, from which they will be burned as DVDs. DVDs are easily scratched and becoming obsolete as well, but still a better archival option that the Hi-8 tapes. I got some little screwdrivers and dismantled the old video camera to remove a jammed tape. I think the flaw was entirely with the tape, since it also almost jammed the newerSony which replaced it. I also notices how the old Sanyo recordings were much better quality than the Sony. We also have a small HDD DV camera now that I never use. I never look back at old tapes although I have to admit that after 10 or 13 years, they are getting interesting. I generally just capture small segments of cellphone video these days.
I spent an hour or two on this site about a week ago after someone sent me a link to their Engrish, which was not very good. I think they are not very critical, and have some hoax content. It's best regarded as entertainment with the occasional fact, much like the Discovery Channel. Still, I was able to read about Alex, Washoe, and shape-shifting reptilians on the same site. Formatting every post as a list seems constraining, but gives the authors a template to use, I suppose. I will follow that format in this (meta-)list of 15 of the Best Pages at Odee.com.
