Listening to: Bedda At Home - Jill Scott

Fletcher Bing sent this to me. Magic
Missile. I’m told *cough* that it’s even funnier *cough* if you used to play *cough*
D&D.

Listening to: The Fact Is (I Need You) - Jill Scott

Day 120 is now
online. Peter Jackson provides an overview of the process of winding down production
on a movie.

Listening to:  Can’t Explain - Jill Scott

Like most email addresses that have been posted on the internerd mine is being used for
spam. I don’t normally pay too much attention, but I checked out the headers on bounce
that appeared in my inbox this morning:

X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.22
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 01:22:51 -0500
To: xxxx@xxx.xx
From: “Overpopulating S. Tyrannosaur” david.tenhave@provoke.co.nz

Subject: Meega Asian FFFFFFFFMMMMMM Ganggbang Movies
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Kaspersky-Antivirus: passed

Not too fond of the email subject… but the name Overpopulating S. Tyrannosaur is
kinda catchy.

Listening to: A burble from over in Brendon’s corner of the office.

Found on We Make
Money Not Art.

During the Expo 2005,
spectator queueing to see a movie at Toshiba’s digital cinema are
submitted to a futurecast,
they place their faces into a hole in the wall for a few seconds. High-resolution
digital cameras perform a quick scan from several angles, and everyone takes their
seats.

The animated film, Grand
Odyssey, begins as normal but the entire cast is made up of walking,
talking digital replicas of people in the audience.

Listening to: The Sound of Rain.

From Brad Delong’s blog. Peering
into the Future of China:

How long can China keep growing?

• 400 million peasant workers whose productivity is 1/3 the average

• 100 million manufacturing workers whose productivity is 4 times the average

• Do the math:
• Basic mechanization of agriculture plus transfer of 250 million peasants will
  triple the size of China’s economy and its desired manufacturing exports…

Well worth a read.

Listening to: Wire - Strawpeople

Found this over at pasta
and vinegar. The Open EEG Project:

Many people are interested in what is called neurofeedback or EEG biofeedback
training, a generic mental training method which makes the trainee consciously aware
of the general activity in the brain. This method shows great potential for improving
many mental capabilities and exploring consciousness. Other people want to do experiments
with brain-computer interfaces or just want to have a look at their brain at work.

Unfortunately, commercial EEG devices are generally too expensive to become a
hobbyist tool or toy.

The OpenEEG project is about making plans and software for do-it-yourself EEG
devices available for free (as in GPL). It is aimed toward amateurs who would like
to experiment with EEG. However, if you are a pro in any of the fields of electronics,
neurofeedback, software development etc., you are of course welcome to join the mailing-list
and share your wisdom.

Right now, this site is mostly about the hardware; schematics, part lists, building
instructions etc. However, a few members have developed some useful software which
is hosted on their own websites. You can find these through the software pages.

I know, based on my last post, that I shouldn’t be surprised by this project… but
still… cool!

Listening to: Love My Way - Strawpeople

Last night I started rereading Neuromancer by William
Gibson. I first read the book when I was seventeen and was taken more by the writing
style and the cool tech… the book sat very nicely as a main course to the pooly
proofed (yes, yes, I know… a silly statement coming from me… but it was very badly
proofed¹) hor’dourve of Wired 1.0. Reading it back then I got maybe
20% of the references. But then it didn’t really matter because the book was just
plain cool. The grunge of the book matched the grunge that owned the commercial
airwaves at the time. I had a driver’s license, I had ‘Ten’ by Pearl Jam and I had
tracked down a copy of Neuromancer via a BBS contact… I was king of the new order.
The only thing that kept me from jacking into the matrix full time was my mum bleating
about the toll bill.

I haven’t really read it since then so last night it was almost like coming to a new
book.

Reading the first chapter I was floored by how incredibly relevant the book still
is, perhaps even more relevant in today’s world. I flicked to the front page and was
gob-smacked to see that the book is now twenty-one years old. The only thing that
jars is the importance placed on the USSR… but in 1984 they were still very very
bad and very very scary. Now able to get +90% of the references in the novel I am
struck by how amazing prescient William Gibson was in his writing. His world view
is tracking against our world reality with a shocking level of accuracy. Considering
the book was banged out on a manual type writer it is an amazing feat.

In my own life there are many examples of the world that Gibson painted. I spend the
vast majority of my time using and creating bits of a worldwide network.
My sister spends the vast majority of her time searching for proteins that tweak human
cells one way or another. My brother spends his time doused in neon light mixing
music for amphetamine driven dance hordes. When my parents went to Tokyo they dossed
down in a capsule hotel. A close friend from university spends a good amount of her
time probing and tweaking the inner workings of the brain.

Happy 21st Neuromancer.

¹Though not as badly as the first issue of Business 2.0… which I wish
I had kept, just as an example.

Listening to: Ring Ring Ring - De La Soul

My Easter was spent learning
how to sail (along with Jeff). The Royal
Port Nicholson Yacht Club has a great little sailing
academy. Every day we got out on the water and were able to get hands on experience
in most of the major aspects of yachting. The yachts used for training are 8.2 metre
keel boats that are very responsive (if a tad crowded with eight bodies on board)
and evidently close to unsinkable.

The first
day involved a “white knuckle” (for a newbie who hadn’t quite grasped
the physics of yachts) trip up to Somes
Island and back. A one metre swell combined with thirty knot winds was enough
to scare bejeezus out of me, but it was also enough to show me that the limits of
the boat were far beyond what I thought. It turns out you had to try very very
hard to capsize the beast (I think the easiest was to do that would’ve been to unbolt
the keel). Added to this was the fact that the wet weather gear was spectacular, keeping
me dry even after a continual dosing of oddly blood tasting sea water. Immanent death
has never been so comfortable. Peace with God or not… I was not going to die that
day. All of these things I registered as I clung to the lifeline… but as we all
know, registers are storage elements and not processing units. My poor little reptilian
brainstem was mewling and the mammalian wrapping was amping on all sorts of adrenalin
junk - a combination I highly recommend!

By the fourth day I (and most of the others on the course) were comfortable and confident
on the boat and were tooling around the harbour with few errors.

Normally the course is done over a four week period rather than the four day
exercise I signed up for. Given how tired and sore I am I think the 4 week approach
might be better. The tiredness was the real surprise… I am still bone tired and
my whole body hurts. I never realised the amount of effort required to keep yourself
working on a rocking, sometimes slippery, surface.

Why did I do it? Because I could. It cost $400 and it turned out to be money very
well spent. Sailing has been one of those “wouldn’t it be nice” type things.
Generally my enthusiasm for it coincides with Americas Cup regattas and then tails
off completely as the racing ends. An opportunity came up to do it and so I jumped
at it. I really recommend it (if you live in Welly I recommend that you check out
the Sailing Academy - they are brilliant)… At the very least your soft, little,
office-worker paws will begin to feel more like ruffty, tuffty, man-hands.

Listening to: Paused - Aspen

King Is Kong have finally tided up their Production
Diary pages… so catching up with old postings is now a hellva lot easier.

• Day 115 - Sound Department
• Day 118 - Helldivers

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

a
great day to learn how to sail

>

Originally uploaded by flash5.>

avast me hearties! it be blowing a gale!

I have just spent the day pounding up and down the Wellington harbour in a wild gale.