Munden's Bar

Things I've seen on the web over the last two weeks that are far more important than either Kate & William's marriage or Osama Bin Laden's death. (Since when did the births, deaths, and marriages section become the headlines anyway?)

• Angela Belcher of MIT describes "growing" better batteries and solar cells with no toxic by-products using viruses. (TED Talk)
• University of Sydney creates graphene "paper" that is stronger than steel.
• Lasers may replace spark plugs for ignition devices.
• The Complete Guide To Not Giving A Fuck.
• The First Zombie Proof House.
• The Fire Hedgehog.

Oh, alrght, I included the last two for fun, they're not really all that important. Though the Zombie proof house might end up being more important...

Turns out I should have said "Where's my HAL suit?" Where are the superheroes one wonders? And should we be worried thatt it's being produced by a company called Cyberdyne?

MaximumPC builds a multi-touch surface from scratch, for far less then Microsoft's offering, as ell as explaining simply how they work. And that explanation makes me think that we'll be seeing a boom in this sort of tech in the areas where it provides utiity, because it's pretty damn simple!

When will we see the first example as a gaming table at KapCon I wonder?

I have just found a reason to buy a Mac. This is exactly the sort of application I've wanted for years. Not just for what it does, but for how it does it, but waving the bar code of your book, DVD, CD, etc in front of your web-cam. Feck, for the first time I really wish I had a Mac.

Edit: Heh! And then a quick search determines there's a clone for Windows that's free called Libra. Will have to have a play.

Yea thats what I thought too. But that's how The Register subtitled their article on Google's interest in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).

Have you noticed how often (or should that be easily?), I am amused?

Old Sisters in high rotation on the phone.

Saw something this morning on the train. Seems the Samoan Church wants to charge each member, including all babies, twenty dollars. Now the congregation of the Samoan church tends to be Samoan. Who tend to be at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Who often have large families. How can a church put that sort of load on their members?

I have no real issue with the overall goals of the Family Violence - It's Not OK campaign, though I do sometimes wonder what will happen when we're all spineless wimps and we get invaded by a country that hasn't emasculated itself. But I do take issue with the way it emphasizes males as perpetrators, with all four of the campaign "faces" being male, even though statistics show that the majority of child abuse is carried out by women, and that there are almost as many beaten husbands as there are beaten wives. So I'll add my own line to it : "It's Not OK to continue to propagate the myth that men are the only perpetrators of domestic violence". They need at least one female abuser to add to their line up of four males, if not more, to help represent the reality.

However, I find the idea of women sending used panties to the military dictators of Myamar extremely amusing. Of course, as Asylum points out, it may backfire, as there's a market for used panties in Japan and elsewhere.

There's a lovely NT times article on some old scientific books going up for auction at Christies, including a 1543 edition of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) and a copy of the first ever telephone directory (Connecticut, 1897). Some of the contents of that are lovely to read through, and it contains, amongst it's instructions for using the phone, the gem : "When you are not speaking, you should be listening."

Our owners (HP) have just release this piece of lust-creating technology, a 30-bit colour accuracy, 1 billion colour, 1920 x 1200 pixel 24" wide screen LCD

House is remarkably clean for a week-day. Slept poorly. Woke up several times during the night. Not sure why. Got up late but still managed to squeeze all normal morning's activities in the reduced time, and leave earlier than normal. Even made bed. Far more cars are parking at the Silverstream station in the morning these days.

Tonight I play Corwyn of Jerbiton, somwewhere. Tomorrow lover arrives in town ! Squee! Then there will be Sweet Mother's Kitchen with French-speaking folk Friday, followed by flat-warmering and other stuff.

P.S. : Here's a little bit of technical education on the OO concept of polymorphism passed to me by a work colleague. Warning : It contains words of a sexual nature, thus making it easy for non-technical types to understand it.

Cracked are once again amusing me with lists (yes, I know, I am easily amused) , this time with The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes To Ever Escape From The Internet. An excerpt that really tickled me was :

It charted in Europe and follow ups were released. By March 2008, the Crazy Frog had three complete albums, all of which serve as proof that music can be weaponized effectively.
...
Worse yet, a German production company called The League of Good People have made a sad mockery of their name by entering into talks with a production company to create a Crazy Frog TV show. A film is rumoured to be in the works, and is likely.

Unless, of course, it turns out that there is a just God.

I actually liked the Axel Foley theme once.

So I succumbed to temptation and bought the BattleStar Galactica set. I agree, drowninghail, that after season four is finished, they'll release a full set, but it turns out that this box is merely the three season sets and the original mini series release, complete with all original packaging, put inside another enclosing box, and sold for a price that makes one season and the mini series effectively free. Even more amusing is that Whitcoulls are still selling the individual season's boxes next to the full set for $50! If they do a special collector's set at some point after the fourth season comes out, I may go there. Or I may not.

At lunch time I met up with an ex-IBM colleague from HP, to speak about a web site I'm helping him with, but talk turned to the merger and HP's Linux systems teams which he is involved with. This might get interesting. He also gave me a promotional HP / Red Hat USB vacuum cleaner! The mail this morning also delivered a key-ring laser pointer/LED flashlight. Right now I'm loading the Ultimate Boot CD onto my keyring 4Gb USB flashdrive following these instructions. Which makes today an officially geeky gadgety Friday!

Finally, have a look at this

We've probably all heard of the guy who grew back a finger because his research lab brother gave him some magic stuff, but here's a BBC report on it with all the details and some graphic video. The "magic stuff" is referred to as "extra-cellular matrix". So there's your new bio-tech buzzword.

I've been enjoying the increase in solid state memories as EEPROM flash memory systems become large enough to replace hard drives (though at present their re-use capability for fast changing data is limited, so your EeeePC's, for instance, have a quite limited life-span), but now something more fundamental has happened. HP Labs have announced that they can show that the memristor is actually a basic circuit unit, like a capacitor, inductor, or resistor, showing fundamentally different characteristics than anything constructed from those other three basic building blocks.

Avoiding details, the result of this is that a memristor-based computer would retain its information after losing power and would not require the boot-up process, resulting in the consumption of less power and wasted time. Even more important (IMO) is the potential use of these devices in constructing human-scale neural networks that are not reliant on power to retain their learned information. Most practical neural-networks are software-based simulations of neural networks, as constructing real ones is difficult. The memristor has the potential to allow the construction of real neural networks that do not need to be constantly powered at low cost, leading to the potential of embedding true learning devices even in small household appliance.

The answer seems to be "Have Sex!" Yes, I finally watched 300 today, after panda_pitt gave up on Mortal Kombat 3., which seems to have been made by a Californian porn movie company, based on the cheap budget, the actors, the style of martial arts, the music, and the women in it.

Some of the visuals of 300 are wonderful, and there are some good lines. But why are the Immortals dressed as samurai? The Persian immortals have a well defined image that would have been much more believable than the pseudo-samurai in the film.


A Persian Immortal wielding a spear,
wicker shield, dagger, and bow.(from wikipedia)
Still I suppose making Persians look like Persians might have made the propaganda content too obvious even for U.S citizens.

And why the mutants? And why did the cripple betray them? I was so hoping in the temptation of the cripple that he would say "Yes, I want all these things you offer, but there's one more thing I want... Respect. And I can gain that by your Death!!" followed by a lunge at Xerxes with whatever weapon was available. Even if unsuccessful, it would have been a good way to die. Except, of course, as in previous Frank Miller works, he is implying that weak, crippled, or deformed is equivalent to evil.

I also thought the queen should not have offered herself to the councillor, the old guy helping her, said that she had two days to get him to not speak against her in council, and killing him when he first met with her would have served that purpose. Finally, the women in Sparta seem to have small breasts. Or is that just because I have become accustomed to such bounty in that department recently?

Fever dreams were odd.

I am a powerful, capricious lord, similar to Bowie's Goblin King, and yet in another age, one of pistols and khaki. A Mexican stand-off, pistols at heads, hers against mine, mine against hers. She is with family, but still trying to stop me, an enemy, but a good and honourable one. I know neither of us will give ground, and I don't want to kill them, they have some utility to me, so I do one of those frame-rate speed-up things, and switch my pistols to her young son's head before she can react.

I wring word from her that we will truce for 24 hours. All the time I need to complete my nefarious plans, but to her it seems I'm generous, because I could ask for so much more.

Then there is an odd scene as I try to balance a large and heavy table on it's edge, which may have been inspired by too much use of the gravity gun in Half Life.

Speaking of which, I shivered when I entered the huge toilet and shower block in Nova Prospect, because I have had dreams about such a place for years. I do not remember ever actually having been in one so big, but a repeated dream has been fleeing or engaging in combat in such a place. So, in at least one way, Half life has fulfilled my dreams.

I am sick at present, nose running, throat sore, woolly headed, so am doing nothing except playing with my new mobile, a Nokia 6288. I have read my GMail on it. I have played golf on it, and I have listened to Simple Minds on it. The interface takes a little bit of getting used to, and the connection plug is ridiculous, I reckon it's designed to make you want to buy a Bluetooth headset. Which I do. So I can listen to music on the train without having to use that plug.

Now Nick has put on Sin City, he's having a Frank Miller day. Last (and first) saw this film the night Ele left me. It's going to be interesting what it seems like to me this time.

are getting closer..

I have picked up a purple pirate jacket and a tricorne. I popped into Bling who were having a 50% of sale and got a gold medallion, and a pair of gold ear-rings. The shop assistants were right into the whole pirate dress-up thing, and the really friendly blonde one chose an eye-shadow that she claimed was the sort of colour that was used for Pirates of the Carribean, and then proceeded to show me how to use it. They were all seemed very happy for some reason, maybe because it was Friday, and were full of suggestions, and most of the suggestions weren't of the type that would require me to buy something from them.

Now the question is, will I get drunk tonight in Syn and get someone to pierce my ears in the bar, y'know, the way most blokes get their ears pierced, or shall I be wimpy and just tie cotton round my ears? :)

Either way, looking forward to a fun KapCon, and then to flying down to Christchurch for a week!