David Deutsch talks cosmos

Witty guy :) Yet another kickarse TED video. Some great descriptions and insights into what our universe is really like.

Mac OS X Leopard 2 hours in...

Leopard rocks. I had no upgrade problems whatsoever. No hung blue screens etc. There are a few minor quirks with the dock and the way windows behave around it. But no showstoppers for me. I can still do my postgresql development, and perl, and java, and play all my movies, and music and so on. Also, the new UI changes are really growing on me. I can finally reorder tabs in Safari, though I'm typing this from Firefox :) I like the new dock, and I like the semi-transparent top menu bar. About the only thing I'm disappointed with is that the funky FrontRow transition has been replaced with a simple fade-in fade-out.

Quick Look is groovy (the way Dustin Hoffman would say it), though a 13" macbook screen is probably a little small to really use it effectively. Cover flow in Finder is ok. Will see how I go after using it a bit. I'm keen to try out Time Machine, but I'll need to get a new external HDD. Spaces is fine, but I've been using similar functionality in Linux window managers since 1997.

Oh and Stacks just rock. I enjoy sitting there opening and closing them. How cool is it that they reflect the first few documents you have in the stack when collapsed? Brilliant. I like that I can drag and drop to and from stacks as well.

Overall, Leopard looks great. "I like it alot!" :)

Wolfram lectures

Fascinating stuff. Complexity, randomness, computational irreducibility, cellular automata, undecidability.

Something is nagging me at the back of my mind though. I have a feeling I'll disagree with much of it after I've had time to think about it and digest the ideas here.

Anyway, give it a watch if you have a spare hour.

Wolfram Blog

Absolutely fascinating ideas and thinking over at Stephen Wolfram's blog.

Here are two posts I've enjoyed reading recently. I hope you enjoy reading them too.

• The simplest Turing machine


• Universe hunting

Perl6 stuff-o

Re: Is Perl 6 too late?

Great description of the philosophy behind Perl.

I)

Girl: "Can I speak to you about something?"

Boy: "Sure."

Girl proceeds to relate deep secrets and asks that they remain in confidence.

Boy: "Wow ok. I'm not sure it's any of my business, but here's what I think..."

Boy proceeds to relate his experience and understanding of similar situations in which he has personal and direct experience.

II)

Other boy: "So you've talked to Girl about deep dark secret eh?"

Boy: "Yeah, but it's none of my business."

Other boy: "I agree with that."

Boy: "What?"

Other boy: "That it's none of your business."

Boy: "Sure, yet both you and her insist on involving me. Doesn't it seem contradictory to plead to speak to me about it and then maintain that it's none of my business?"

The world isn't the thing

Krishnamurti and Anderson YouTube playlist. Listen for Anderson's "MmmHmm"s.

An almost anniversary

It was a year to this day.

Nessun Dorma by Pavarotti (Torino 2006)

Pretty special.

"Positive development" - a situation where houses and other infrastructure leave the environment in a better state than where it started.