2008 Nov 9, 11:29
I finally replaced my old regular cell-phone which was literally being held together by a rubber band with a fancy new G1, my first Internet accessible phone.
I had to call the T-Mobile support line to get data added to my plan and the person helping me was disconcertingly friendly. She asked about my weekend plans and so I felt compelled to ask her the
same. Her plans involved replacing her video card so she could get back to World of Warcraft and do I enjoy computer gaming? I couldn't tell if she was genuine or if she was signing me up for
magazines.
I was with Sarah in her new car, trying out the phone's GPS functionality via Google Maps while she drove. I switched to Street View and happened to
find my car. It was a weird feeling, kind of like those Google
conspiracy videos.
The phone runs Google's open source OS and I really enjoy the application API. Its all in Java and URIs and mime-types are sort of
basics. Rather than invoking the builtin item picker control directly you invoke an 'intent' specifying the URI of your list of items, a mime-type describing the type of items in the list, and an
action 'PICK' and whatever is registered as the picker on the system pops up and lets the user pick from that list. The same goes if you want to 'EDIT' an image, or 'VIEW' an mp3.
I wanted to replace the Google search box gadget that appears on the home screen with my own search box widget that uses OpenSearch descriptors but apparently in the current API you can't make home screen gadgets without changing
parts of the OS. My other desired application is something to replace this GPS photo tracker device by recording my
location to a file and an additional program on my computer to apply those locations to photos.
tmobile personal api phone technical g1 android google 2008 Nov 3, 2:01Software that can produce the design for a key from a photo of a key. "Scenes from one of the proof-of-concept telephoto experiments using a new software program from UC San Diego that can perform
key duplication without having the key. Instead, the computer scientists only need a photograph of the key."
security photo software research paranoia key 2008 Oct 23, 1:58"The table can sense the level of liquid inside a glass, making it possible to tip off a waiter that it's time for a refill."
microsoft surface research restaurant refill 2008 Sep 29, 1:45"So the manual is correct, and this truly is a mixed-format, mixed-architecture, mixed-sided diskette. This diskette has officially blown my mind."
hack disk hardware history game computer 2008 Sep 29, 1:41"Lately I have been thinking about Glitch-Art, an emerging aesthetics inside Digital Art which takes the computational error as its subject."
art computer error glitch 2008 Aug 22, 5:35Photosynth now available and easy to use: "Photosynth, a technology demo from Microsoft Live Labs, has graduated from its "ooh, that's pretty" status to being a viable Web service for consumers. The
technology, which takes a grouping of photographs and stitches them into a faux 3D environment, can now be implemented with photos you've taken on your digital camera or mobile phone, and converted
right on your computer. Previously, the process of stitching these photos together took weeks of processing on specially configured server arrays. With its latest version, Microsoft has managed to
shrink that into around the time it takes to upload your photos."
via:felix42 photosynth photos photography 3d microsoft free tool 2008 Aug 20, 9:48Apple will or will not license the canvas tag? 'Apple Computer, Inc. ("Apple") believes it has intellectual property rights ("IP Rights") relative to WHATWG's Web Applications 1.0 Working Draft,
dated March 24, 2005, Section 10.1, entitled "Graphics: The bitmap canvas". At this time, Apple reserves all rights in its IP Rights and makes no representations as to Apple's willingness or
unwillingness to license these IP Rights. However, in the event that the Web Applications 1.0 Working Draft, dated March 24, 2005, becomes part of a formalized draft standard at W3C or IETF, for
example, Apple is prepared to address the disclosure/licensing rules of such organizations.'
apple patent html ip html5 canvas whatwg browser browser-war 2008 May 30, 10:52'"Richard Feynman reporting for duty. OK, boss, what's my assignment?" The assembled group of not-quite-graduated MIT students was astounded.... So we sent him out to buy some office supplies.'
history richard-feynman programming computer article essay technology physics science via:swannman 2008 Feb 18, 1:34
I got a FlickrMail from Emma J. Williams a bit ago saying that they wanted to
use two of my photos in their Schmap San Francisco Guide online travel guide. So now you can see two of my vacation photos on the Westfield San Francisco Shopping Center Schmap page and the Hotel Diva Schmap page.
I think its wonderful that digital cameras are at
the point where I really don't have to know much about their workings to produce a photo that's reasonable looking. And its thanks to Flickr and searchable tags that Schmap could find my photos.
Since my photos on Flickr are all licensed under a Creative Commons license named Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works
2.0 Generic which only applies to non-commercial uses, Schmap, which is advertisement supported, kindly asked me if they could use my photos. I agreed to their license which was human readable
and included wonderful stuff like I get in place attribution and the license is only applicable while Schmap makes their guide freely available online.
Previously I've only heard of folks having their flickr photos used without their permission so I'm glad to know that's not always the case. Or
perhaps this is just Schmap's clever method of getting me to blog about them.
me photos creative-commons shcmap flickr 2008 Feb 8, 12:52FTA: "Quantum mechanics has a number of weird consequences... In trying to come up with a classical conceptual model in which to capture these non-classical phenomena, we eventually hit upon using
the idea of using computer games as an analogy. ...let us
humor nerd science quantum-mechanics tomb-raider game gaming 2008 Feb 2, 12:19Another essential for setting up a new computer.
wget download opensource gnu windows tool free internet setupnewcomputer 2008 Jan 28, 10:39Name your computer an HTML string to inject that HTML into the target wireless router's HTML configuration page.
via:swannman security xss injection dhcp 2008 Jan 16, 2:44I always have to hunt for this page when setting up a new IE.
ajax bookmark bookmarklets browser delicious extension link script setupnewcomputer 2007 Nov 15, 4:03Colossus set to compete against modern PC in decrypting Nazi messages in promotion of museum.
bbc article computer cryptography encryption hardware history turing 2007 Nov 12, 1:15How to turn off the PC speaker in Windows.
audio tips howto pc-speaker sound windows beep setupnewcomputer 2007 Oct 22, 4:47
I purchased the
Orange Box off of Steam a bit ago and like
others before me who have
discussed elsewhere, I already owned two of the five games that come from the Orange Box. However, the combined price of
HL2E2 and Portal, the two games I actually wanted was supposedly equivalent to the price of the Orange Box bundle. Incidentally, if anyone would like HL2 or HL2E1 I can
gift them to you.
HL2E2 was excellent of course but the big surprise for me was Portal. (Mild spoilers follow) It has a sort of zen simplicity: there are a few simple game-play mechanics, a handful of textures and
objects, and a deceptively simple story all used well and tied together to produce an entertaining and polished game. It seems a bit short but its probably better to end with the gamer demanding
more. The humor and the sort of
play within a play aspect of the game is what really sold me though. It has the funniest
ending theme I've heard (also
blogged by the creator). The voices of the automated turrets are so adorable I would feel compelled to hug them if they weren't
always trying to kill me. Additionally the
weighted companion cube seems like an experiment in understanding gamers'
attachment to NPCs. In this case the NPC is a box and yet I still felt awful incinerating it. The whole time I was vaguely reminded of
Solitary the reality show
that sticks contestants alone in small rooms forcing them to endure various tests all the while being watched by a humorous computer with a female voice. Someone should sue...
RPS has articles on Portal including
a Portal review, a page
suggesting Portal is a tale of
lesbianism, and
others.
hl2e2 game hl2 solitary valve portal nontechnical 2007 Oct 17, 10:49Chumby is a hackable little wifi computer. Its like an expensive alarm clock that also shows you stuff off the Internet. I kind of want one.
purchase shopping wifi wireless opensource flash design hardware chumby 2007 Sep 19, 6:14The story of the first smiley emoticon.
history humor computer culture web internet emoticon smiley 2007 Aug 27, 10:35Article on laptops in meetings by Dean Hachamovitch my GPM. I knew the people in that photo before they were in an article in NY Times.
article laptop culture microsoft dean-hachamovitch
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