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.

Neato backup tool idea

uses S3 Amazon (or other online storage facility)


does incremental and full backups


allows specification of particular directories or filetypes


honours all Mac OS X metadata


very fast


very little system overhead


secure


scheduled


integrated nicely into OS X

ZEITGEIST, The Movie

Wow. This film certainly makes an impact. Not sure what to make of it to be honest. But I think it's well worth a watch.

Is seems strange to realise that primitive man would have masturbated watching another male and female copulating in the "wild" or perhaps the "cave". It's socially acceptable to masturbate to a hardcore porn clip of a couple "coupling", but not socially acceptable to copulate in Time Square or to watch another couple going at it. Can someone give me a compelling reason why that might be the case?

History will prove him mad

Nice summary of the disgrace that is George W. Bush.

e·con·o·my

I've always thought of Bram Cohen as a snotty nosed little kid - despite him being primarily responsible for revolutionising file sharing on the internet (BitTorrent) - however his last few posts on his blog have really been jiving with me. I've been thinking about the logic behind global economic theory and the share market more and more lately. Not much of it makes sense. Cost increases over time. People are given good credit ratings for effectively being a "high credit risk". Western Australian politicians positively stain their shorts when the President of China visits their state - "We can make billions".

What gives? I'm expected to be impressed by economic theorists building economic models which borrow from expansionist theories of the universe? I can type equations into LaTeX? That undoubtedly lends weight to my malignant stupidity. Give me a break! What data supports this? People like Nick are swayed by the mathematics. They have no idea what it means. Who are they to lend weight to the ideas presented here? Do they? Undoubtedly not.

So Cohen launches into self obsessed rant after rant, but it's invariably enteraining:

Mortgage Lending
Insurance Rates

Well I'm going to learn something about it and get back to you all. I suspect it'll be as scientific as psychology and about a rational as postmodernism.

Greed factored into the economic equation? Doesn't seem quite so illogical anymore.

The Cat Empire lyrics

Do you ever look around
turn your ear to the ground
show your face to the sky
on a night when the skies echo sounds
from inside of your mind
on the stage that you shone
where the sun did become you
and move with your thoughts
through the sighs and the scenes
of the worlds you have seen
and the sights that have been
your reflection in shadows and dreams?
- your reflection in shadows and dreams

Did you ever see a man
who did walk down the street
white robe with no shoes on his feet
and on top of his head place a box with two slits
and the sign from his neck said
‘I do not exist’
or a woman who could not remember her name
did stutter and stutter
again and again
and saw you and called you her son
her eyes said
‘my being is gone
but still I’m not dead’?

Miserere

Have you ever seen a sound
have you listened to an image
have you ever touched a thought
have you ever tasted nothing
have you ever told a lie
that was true more than truth
because truth it had lied
all its life when it spoke to you?
And what did it say
it is that it is this
this goes here here is there
it is not yes it is
it was dulling your senses
your eyes they were bound
have you ever my friends
been looking around?

And the other replies
with a wave of a hand
I am already here
in this promised land
but not by a god and not by a king
and not by a spirit
deep from within
I am here
because a miracle’s a whim
it’s a flash of glory
it’s an empty tin
and maybe might lets you in
not to save you
but to keep on looking-

Miserere…

Have you ever
been so happy that you’re sad?
that the lights turn to stars
and the stars become eyes
and hello’s are goodbye’s
and the laughs are the sigh’s
and the show disappears with the note
‘until next time’

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Do you ever look around
turn your ear to the ground
show your face to the sky
on a night when the skies echoe sounds
from inside of your mind
on the stage that you shone
where the sun did become you
and move with your thoughts
through the sighs and the scenes
of the worlds you have seen
and the sights that have been
your reflection in shadows and dreams
Do you ever look around
and find what is yet to be found?

Miserere - The Cat Empire

"all I want to do is face my fears and problems and do some really cool shit with my life"

Call me slow, but I only just reinvented the conspiracy theory link between 911 and 9/11.

Now this is a supercollider. From a very interesting article titled, The Biggest Thing in Physics.