My bicycle is finally back on the road, after more than a month of mismanagement. I botched the process so thoroughly, I thought it might be instructive (or at least amusing) to tell the tale. This is sort of a How-Not-To Guide to Don’t-Do-It-Yourself bicycle maintenance.
I’ve been working through the seven CDs worth of photos that came back from my recent Italy excursion with my mother and sister, trying to piece them together into a coherent story. It’s not easy. The things you remember didn’t get photographed, some of the snapshots seem actually to contradict the impressions I picked up. [...]
Here’s an article on a virtual life experiment in the “online world” Second Life. To AI folks, it’s nothing groundbreaking: fish with flocking algorithms, fine-tuned by some artificial selection (upcoming plans seem to include sexual reproduction and natural selection). What’s really interesting is the social context. Second Life is a subscriber system providing a 3D [...]
Just had a short film session (both parse trees) with a friend, and I had to rave about these two animated films by Polish director Tomek Baginski: Cathedral and Fallen Art.
Stanley Fish, at the University of Illinois, requires his students over the course of a semester to create an entirely new language. The idea (reported in his NY Times op-ed piece) is not to teach linguistics, but writing skills; composition. “Students can’t write clean English sentences because they are not being taught what sentences are.” [...]
Many years ago (perhaps on an aeroplane journey?) I saw the Michael Douglas movie “The Game”. The idea (if I remember correctly) is that the Douglas character is given as birthday present a ticket in a Game, no other information given. Once he accepts the ticket, the gamemasters slowly but surely infiltrate his life — [...]
Couldn’t resist this, although it’s purely link propagation. If you don’t know who Claude Shannon is, this might not be so exciting. But the excellent blog collision detection has a post on juggling as a physical Turing test, which links to a wonderful short piece of video showing Shannon first juggling, then demonstrating his own [...]
I’m a bit hesitant about posting this, since it is blatant propaganda. But it’s propaganda in a good cause, and it’s very well produced and funny. It’s (Grocery) Store Wars, a Star Wars short-film spoof featuring Cuke Skywalker, Chew-Broccoli and Darth Tater. Those already opposed to the Organic Rebellion should probably not click through.
(Promo poster [...]
I get back from Italy to find that in my absence I’ve been appreciated :-) This site is apparently coolstop’s “best of the cool daily pick,” 25/5/05. It was almost a birthday present :-)
I’ve just started exploring the coolstop site, and it looks like I might be there for a long time yet… They say [...]