Staticfree Blog

I went to a free show (a monthly "cirque du singe brise") at the Zeitgeist Gallery last night with David. A bunch of local Boston musicians played short sets for a few hours. I primarily went to see James O'Brien and Ari, but left needing to check out Lisa Bastoni, Anna Freitas, and The Kieran Ridge Band.

In addition, Joseph Fogarazzo played some nice Renaissance and Bach guitar solos and Rod Webber shook the stage a bit with his energetic pieces. Joe Bellamy, one of the coordinators for the show, performed some entertaining spoken word. Overall, it was a good show and worth the trudge through the snow.

So, I did an experiment with my dad's shiny, new television: I turned on the V-Chip blocking for all ratings, G, PG-13, X. Now the television only displays ads (and the occasional sports game). I can now understand exactly how the system got in place: who could say no to something that would let the hooks be displayed, but hide all the meat?

With this on, you can't watch a TV-PG PBS special, but you can watch football, the home shopping network, ads, and infomercials.

Liz has officially announced the new Lab for Social Computing over at many-to-many. Starting this quarter, I'll be working at the lab in addition to running the Social Computing Club. The lab and the club should be a great way to help get RIT on the map with social computing.

Currently, I'm one of two undergraduate researchers who will be working there. As of now, our main efforts lie in helping get the lab on its feet (website work, wiki work, etc.). Once that's more stationary, it'll be interesting to see what direction we start going. I'm really looking forward to diving into some code again.

If you haven't seen it yet, Feedster is an interesting website that attempts to be the Google of RSS feeds. You can search, use it as an aggregator, and even create a RSS feed of searches. Nifty note: it's based out of Newton, MA - my hometown.

So, I got a new futon today. My old one was a bit limp and hurt my back. Tina and I picked a thick, fluffy one and got a nice wooden frame for it (never get a metal one: they're almost always bad). Tina and I spent the remaining bit of the day rearranging my room so there's more space available. She picked a wonderful layout and things feel much more spacious. And now, I depart to enjoy the new bed :-)

New photos in NewFuton/:

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Photos from the RIT IT election night party.

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I just got word that the Social Computing Club I've been helping start at RIT has been approved and is now officially recognized by the student government. This means we can now apply for student government funding, have a table at club days (there's one upcoming Nov 12th), and other such nifty things. Yay!

We meet regularly in Java Wally's. (Check our page for more details.) We are presently a discussion group, covering the latest topics in social computing, social software, communication, blogs, social networking, etc., but will eventually be working on laying the foundations for social software development at RIT. Hopefully we will be working with some companies on projects in our field in the near future.

If you're interested in learning about how the future of social interactions could be shaped by technology, have neat ideas of your own, or just want to promote your blog software - come by for one of our meetings. If you're not at RIT but want to learn more about social computing, check out our page.

UPDATE: The club has a new homepage over at the Lab for Social Computing's site. Check it out!

New photos in Halloween/:

My hair passes near my face and I smell it. It's familiar, but misplaced in time, like a yellow envelope of childhood photos found behind the past-forgotten classics on a bookshelf. A rich aroma of log cabins, battered-pan cooked beans and marshmallows stuck to fingertips. It smells of thick night woods and a spring sleeping bag that never seemed quite warm enough. It smells of earth: smoke-stained hair from a gentle beach-driftwood flame.

It found me again, this old-friend smell; the kind you don't realize you miss until you head home. I hope to come back, with a smile on my face and tell it about all the things I've learned since we went our separate ways. It will quietly listen, coughing politely with sputtering flames and seething embers. Together we will glow, exchanging stories and writing memories to scent and scent to body. I won't forget you, friend; we'll meet again soon.

New photos in FrogPad/:

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I do not believe in the Christian God. Most people I talk with probably know this and believe me to be an atheist, which is probably the most true classic religious affiliation that I have. However, I do believe in the value of having a strong set of morals with which one leads their life by - not any specific morals, mind you, just that they exist and be internally consistent. I strive towards personal betterment, revising my morals to more effectively be better in the future. Eventually I'll reach a moral low-energy state where I'll be able to live my life as I see fit, where it doesn't interfere with others.

This is what organized religions generally provide and what I dislike about most of them. The morals in most religions are out of date - they involve too much viral propagation and don't allow for personal moral growth.

That's why I like Discordanism: "It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs." It's a little hammer that breaks that annoying rock of morality that most religions have. Eventually most Discordians realize that it's actually humorous in nature and move on to having a nice, wholesome set of beliefs anyhow - just ones that are more practical.

So, on God: If she existed, I imagine she wouldn't want to be worshiped, prayed to, or be displayed piety. If there's a God, we can understand her as effectively as ants can understand a computer. We may reach the day when we can understand God, but until then we should just go about our lives, enjoying them, living and learning how to reach that ultimate state; God is a good goal, but not something to be obsessed with.

God's probably just a kid at a higher-level computer playing with the nifty fractal that is our universe.

The party last night was most excellent. A goodly number of people showed up from all across my social circles. Frigames people met old highscool people met gothy, poly people - a wonderful mixing.

I put up some photos taken on my camera. Tashari should hopefully have some up soon as well. Let me know if you have any other photos from the party, so I can link them here.

Thank you all for coming, I had a great end of the summer party. I hope to have more parties when I'm back in the Boston area again. Of course, I should also have some Rochester-based parties coming up soon as well.

I found this cell phone at my dad's appt. recently. I don't know how long ago it was lost and can't start it up to check it out, as I don't have an appropriate charger available. It is a Verizon flip phone with a leather case. If you have any idea whose it might be, or want to ask about the ESSID (unique ID number) contact me.

New photos in UnknownCell/:

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I will be having one last summer party this Saturday, 2004-08-28 at my dad's apartment. If you are reading this, you're probably invited. However, if you don't know where that is, you may not yet be invited - so contact me and see what's up.

Festivities start at 19:00, there will be small amounts of alcohol (BYOB), snacks and open WiFi will be provided. Bring your friends, bring your laptop, and bring your conversation. NOTE: an outfit for this event is required. Suggested outfits are:

• Renaissance garb
• any other period costume, 1980 ≤ x ∨ x ≥ 2005
• top hat, monocle, and a long cigarette p_o
• wearable computer / cyborg gear
• fetish formalwear
• kitten
• your favorite [web]comic character
• Jesus, Eris or any other religious figure
• a stylistic impression of your normal outfit

New photos in 2004-08_Wildwood/:

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New photos in CellcamArt/:

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I finally got my driver's license. It's been awhile since I got my first permit (about ${23-17} years ago), but I finally finished up the driver's ed courses (for knowledge and insurance discounts) and got around to practicing some. I've even driven on a semi-real trip outside of Newton/Watertown. I'm now a fairly decent beginner driver and intend to drive more often to gain more experience. So, for those who know me, the eventual has now happened.

I'm somewhat apathetic when it comes to this, however. I realize the practical value of having the license (to aid friends in road trips, to become less dependent on others, and drive if needed), but I still dislike the entire auto industry and things relating to it. I suppose it's like my opinion of US-grown meat: I don't really like it (for social and health reasons), but I won't entirely make myself incapable of using/consuming it. What I really need in both situations is moderation.

Thankfully, I will have a car over the winter to get around Rochester in the snow. I'm going to try and continue doing my carpooling, but perhaps with myself being a driver. I'm sure my housemates will be thrilled.

Party updates: the party this Saturday evening, will be held at my dad's appt. This is a fairly small place, so I may attempt to move some of the party outside if it's not rainy. We'll see how things go.

I've got a guestlist here. Let me know if you don't want your name listed here for any reason. If you're not on this list, let me know if you can come or not, and I can put you on it somewhere. It's here primarily so I can stop answering people's incessant, "who's coming that I know?"

confirmed

• spinfire & aelscha
• cole
• dave
• tali
• mink
• tashari
• alex jackson
• sam
• tina
• big john
• amber
• alex butterfly
• care
• katie FL
• ellf
• faboo
• laurie
• celeste
• tetron

most likely

• lisa
• beka
• susannah + boytoy
• sandy
• james

possibly

• b1o
• nick

VIP-Insisting People

• pablo escobar

unconfirmed

• alan

not coming

• kris
• stu
• dyfrgi
• fluffy
• paul
• henry
• m00n
• rachel

Please RSVP ASAP, 0xd00d. Contact me to do such.

Tonight at 19:30, Howard Bloom will be at 38 Cameron in Davis Square, talking about groupthink and mass psychology. I'll be going with Aelscha. Tickets are $5 for students and it looks like it should be pretty interesting. Contact me if you want to meet up beforehand.

New photos in G-MaKeiter/:

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I know you.

I can smell your cell's RF scent
when you enter the station.
I can see your body
from ultraviolet to infrared;
watching you get hot
when you see the cute boy
with the spiked hair.
And I can hear your heart's murmur
from the back corner of the train.

But you don't know me.
You may see me,
but you do not perceive me
the way I dream that you do.

You are oblivious of my desire,
as I am oblivious of the thoughts
in your head.

And so we pass.

You exit at Kendall,
heading towards your 7th floor,
corner-window job at Biogen.
And I continue on,
watching.

Some day you will see me.

New photos in 2004-07-MaineCamping/:

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New photos in Rochester/:

I'm on the bus, heading back from the first of my packed weekends with friends. This weekend, however, was spent entirely with my lady Tina. We had a wonderful time, with the exception of her getting sick on Sunday.

One notable occurrence was our Saturday walk (a map of our walk). Tina wanted to check out the Village Gate Square in Rochester. It was a beautiful day out, so we decided to walk there. It turns out it is about 3 miles from her place, so we got a bit of exercise in the process.

On the way there, we noticed a clearing in the woods on the side of one of the roads we normally would have driven. It turns out it was a private(?) park and bird garden. We explored it, determined it was rather small, and continued on.

On the way back, Tina suggested a detour and we found Highland Park - one of Rochester's great secrets. Up a hill by way of concrete stairs, we found the top of a hill that overlooked the area. Also on the hill is a large reservoir - entirely not something we expected to find on the top of a hill. Someday we need to go stargazing from there. The longer I live here, the more I find that Rochester has a lot of beauty to it, it's just tucked away by the sides of roads and rivers.

Now I head home, back to an excellent job doing things I love. I have weeks and weekends planned all the way up through July. Now is the calm before the storm. There are girls on the back of the bus, singing in beautiful harmony and talking loudly. There's one man reading near me, one woman reading further up in the bus, and everyone else is dark and listening to music and sleeping.

A woman behind me seemed interested in my computer, so I told her about it some. I told her it had Internet access ("www comp" she called it) and she said she hadn't used it much. I figured I'd show her one of the more powerful things I've found on it - in my eyes: everything2. I asked her to name something she wanted to know more about, and she said "cigarettes"; she wanted to know where she could buy them in bulk. I showed her people talking about them, having opinions on them, saying "ewww" saying "try this brand" and other things e2 tends to have. She didn't seem interested in that, or even seemed to understand what it was. Later on the trip, she proceeded to smoke one in the bathroom at the back of the bus.

A Greyhound bus says a lot about people, as almost everyone is presented with isolation from their peers and native environment. [How] do you cope with isolation?

Grr. I keep getting comment spam on these posts. I'm going to disable commenting on them until I can find a better way of preventing it. Until then, you can contact me through other means and I'll update posts if you care to add to what I said. I simply don't have time to manually delete all the spam before it actually wins by increasing various search engine link ranks.

I have hope that a good system will be found. I've seen some nice ideas out there, some wacky ones, and some ones that would require action on the part of the user that parallels switching from English to Metric (GPG-signed FOAF authentication? Riiiight).

2004-07-17 - Party! (vcs). This will be my annual celebration of friends, life, and the number 23. Yes, dear readers, you are invited. Probably.

It begins at 19:00 and ends when I say so — which I probably won't do. There will be food (snacky stuff including one-day-delayed bun-less hot dogs), drinks (H₂O, H₂O + CO₂, CH₃CH₂OH), and of course people.

So, be there and let me know ahead of time if you can make it.

I just got back from seeing The Decemberists with Bludroses. The show kicked ass. There were some technical difficulties with the sound during the show, so they ended with 2 "unplugged" encores. They should play unplugged more often.

During the show, I thought it'd be cute to broadcast it to Tina, who wasn't able to come to the show. So I called her on my cell, after warning her about it with IMs/SMSs. I called her and left my phone in my front shirt pocket for much of the show, taking occasional photos with it, while Tina listened on. She told me later that she was at a Friendly's at the time, so she curled up in a corner and listened.

On the way home, trains near the venue were blocked due to an automobile that managed to make its way onto the tracks. It was smack in the middle, seemingly two wheels on inbound tracks and two on outbound. There was no/little obvious damage to the car, so it was probably just a very stupid driver who made a wrong turn. We took a bus instead and eventually made our way to Kenmore and caught the last train home.

Afterthought: On the way to the concert, I bumped into Susannah on the train. Seeing her is always interesting, as she's in that group of people who I see online more than in real life. It's as though we know each other better than we do, due to Internet-based communication.

The Decemberists are playing in Boston at the Paradise Club this Saturday (2004-06-12) at 21:00. I'll be going with Bludroses and Zøe - you should come too! If you can make it, drop me a note so we can meet up.

This Friday (2004-06-11), I'll be doing a showing of Wizard People, Dear Reader. It's an audio track that's meant to be played along with the first Harry Potter movie, instead of the actual soundtrack. If anyone cares to come watch, call my cell, leave a message here, or otherwise let me know.

Various things have reminded me that I've not posted much here recently, so here it goes. I'm back in Boston, doing another internship at France Telecom R&D. I'll be playing with shiny new cellphones that do all sorts of neat tricks with the Internet ("futurephones").

I (as of a month ago) have a lovely ladyfriend, Tina, who is now living in Rochester. She has made me quite happy as of recent and things with us should be going well.

This summer I packed light -- 3 bags: Clothes (the biggest), Books, and Tech. I have been pondering minimalism recently and how best to achieve it in my life. Materialistic minimalism anyhow; the technological minimalism will be for later.

As I'm staying at my dad's appt., I get to exchange my nice, private Rochesterian room for a mattress behind a couch. It's the trade-off I have to make to have a job that I enjoy and that pays well, I suppose. And looking at the bigger picture, a good job and a soft, clean bed is certainly nothing to complain about.

I look forward to a summer of friends, parties, days on the beach, and nights under the stars. Let's make that happen - whomever reads this and is willing. There are mountains to hike, river trails to explore, and minds to mouths for talking and learning. There are hands to caress, eyes to kiss, lips to stare into, and bodies to hold (however for myself, those will be reserved for a certain [sadly] yonder someone).

I'm going to enjoy this summer whether it likes it or not. Who's going to join me?

New photos in RyansGraduation/:

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New photos in Rochester/:

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Various tech blogs posted a link to a nifty technology for camera-equipped cellphones: Semacode. Semacode 2D barcode system for printing camera-phone readable URLs. There's a demo client for SymbianOS (Series 60 it seems) and a Java encoder. You type a URL into the Java encoder, press "go" and you have an image that, when you print it and stick it to things, can be photographed and turned back into a URL on the phone.

This reminded me of Anti-mega's previous post on a similar subject. The difference here is Anti-mega was talking about encoding RDF data itself in the barcode, not just a link.

This, of course, reminded me of another site that came across my radar recently: Placetime.com's WGS 84 Geographic Point URI Space. This provides a URI vocabulary for talking about geographic points in space (Geekhaus for example). Placetime offers a nifty service that will generate appropriate RDF for a given URI. Now, toss one of the geo URIs into a Semacode, print it, and you have a flexible, machine-readable way of publishing a geographic coordinate in meatspace.

Possible applications: a sign in a park with the barcodes printed on it. Embedded in the barcodes are URIs of geographic coordinates of landmarks. You could then take your cellphone/GPS/PDA/datasponge and wander around the park, checking out the points of interest without needing a physical map. Of course, it'd be better to encode the actual RDF in the barcode itself, but due to current datasize and camera quality, that's not entirely possible.

Maybe provide a more automated way of tagging in for urban-wilderness games like PacManhattan.

The main issues with Semacode is unrelated to Semacode itself. Most cellcams need to get better short-range focusing capability. As-is, it seems to take a 3-4cm image of the barcode to get my Nokia 3650 to read the barcode. That's a bit big when you're talking about a magazine-scale print medium.

New photos in OntarioBeach/:

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Reading this article kicked my idea-generator into gear. The technology is here already for location-based games: interactive cellphone games which use the location-sensing mechanism on the phone to move the virtual character around a virtual realm. You are both a player in the real world, as well as the virtual.

Now, expand that idea some. How about take that to cinema? Make a story out of it. Combine that with flashmobbing and a net connection... what do you get? You get a group of people, armed with camera-and-GPS devices all congregating on a single site, perhaps a stage you set up or a performance you are doing.

Set up multiple such ones around a city; turn the city into your stage. Have people register their phone numbers to receive SMS messages telling them the new location after each micro-performance is done.

Make multiple locations at the same time and give different locations to different participants. What if they follow the crowd instead of their SMSs? You have a truly interactive audience and they are lost without your electronic guidance.

Is this in our future? If so, who would like to build it?

New photos in Rochester/:

These were taken along my walk along the canal

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New photos in Penguicon/:

This collection was taken on our trip to Penguicon

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I live right where the Eerie Canal and the Genessee River meet. There's a park nearby, whose green and trees makes up for the browns and murkiness of the water. There are also some paved paths along both bodies of water, so we went exploring.

Some of the more active Rochester crew and I walked along the canal tonight. We headed northwest, racing the sun to the airport. We stopped so we could watch the sky torn with sound and metal, while changing with purporanges and fading to black. We moved on.

Darkness came, and brought from me hums and walking songs. I recorded two onto my cell phone, and hope to be redoing them in some unsucktactular format soon. I need more of my own songs to sing.

We made it all the way to 390 and some railroad tracks. We turned around, as darkness had started painting the sky with stars. Trees and decay are such beautiful things. I will post pictures soon.

If you know me, or if you don't, we should walk along the river or the canal. I love these places the same way I love programming: though it may seem complicated or dirty, there is beauty living under the surface and in a certain viewpoint; you just need to learn how to find it.

Update 2004-04-20: Photos are online.

Penguicon was good. I met Greenfly (who I had previously known of through his Lifebook page), Rob and Hemos (the Slashdot people), and a rather awesome guy named Derek of the uhacc.

I saw an excellent talk on Mozilla by Scott Collins. I was very impressed by his presentation of the subject: it generally had nothing to do with the technology itself, but moreover the overall real-world concepts invloved.

Novi, Michigan was beautiful when we were there. It was coolwarm with a tickle breeze, in a soft, hazed sky. We saw a church with an enormous (150ft) white cross near it. The cross, upon closer inspection, was a cell tower.

There was unlimited Woodchuck cider and sodas in the conroom, which made me quite happy. One of the sodas I tried tasted of red and strawberries; I'll have to hunt it down.

I spent all the money I took out of the ATM on food, but it was worth it; I had a wonderful time.

Update 2004-04-19: Photos are now online.

For those who regularly read my blog, but wish there were more bloggy/journaly things, now's your chance to get your wish! I have read a few of these and found them to be interesting, so here is mine. I upped the number to 30, 'cause.

step one: load up all your music on your mp3 player and shuffle it

step two: write the first 20 songs here, no matter how embarrassing or misrepresentative

steve@mu:~% playsong -l /music/ > /dev/null
steve@mu:~% for ((a=0;a<30;a++)); do cursong -r $a; done

1. Banco de Gaia:Last Train to Lhasa - Amber
2. Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, Ginger Brooks Takahashi and Friends:Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project - interlude 9
3. Underworld:beaucoup fish - winjer
4. Mediaeval Baebes:Undrentide - Quan Vey La Lauzeta
5. Air:The Virgin Suicides (Score) - Ghost Song
6. Aphex Twin:Selected Ambient Works 85-92 - Xtal
7. pOW: - Project X 2
8. Aphex Twin:Selected Ambient Works Volume - Eleventh
9. Metallica:2-12.84 London - The Four Horsemen
10. R.E.M.:Document - Strange
11. The Cranberries:No Need to Argue - Ridiculous Thoughts
12. Aphex Twin:Selected Ambient Works 85-92 - Pulsewidth
13. AIR:moon safari - remember
14. Underworld:Live at the Riviera Theatre - Born Slippy.NUXX
15. R.E.M:Fables of the Reconstruction - Good Advices
16. Propellerheads: - on Her Majesty's Secret Servic
17. Delerium:Chimera [Bonus CD] - After All [Andrew Sega Remix]
18. R.E.M:Up - Airportman
19. Seanette Blaylock:Spammer's Paradise - Sounds of Spammage
20. Cranes:Loved - Lilies (flood mix)
21. The Cranberries:No Need to Argue - Disappointment
22. Anabolic Frolic:Happy 2b Hardcore Chapter One - Go Insane - Dj DNA
23. Kriston J. Rehberg:Spammer's Paradise - Write in C
24. Portishead:Portishead - Western Eyes
25. R.E.M:Dead Letter Office - White Tornado
26. Two Nice Girls:Lesbian Favorites- Women Like Us - I Spent My Last $10 (On Birth Control And Beer)
27. Simon & Garfunkel:Greatest Hits - Scarborough Fair
28. LioZ / Sv.index: - Enigmatic Soul
29. Infected Mushroom:The Gathering - The Gathering
30. R.E.M.:Reckoning - Time After Time (annElise)

Note: This is the exact output except for a few of the mod files which didn't show up properly in Xmms.

I'm a bit sad that none of my favorite female vocalists like Tori Amos, Poe and Ari made it to the list. Mmm, so good.

I am very picky about computers. As I use at least one, in some manner, over 90% of the time I'm awake, I figure I should have a good user interface for it; something that lets me worry about the things that matter, and let the computer sort out the things that don't. That's why I started using Ion. I have reached a form of interface zen with my computer and I'm never going back.

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New photos in silly/:

Ladybug ladybug,
what do you eat?
What do you do
that powers your feet?

Ladybug ladybug,
why are you here?
Such hostile grounds,
have you really no fear?

Ladybug ladybug,
why must you die?
You've beautiful wings,
just get up and fly.

New photos in robots/:

Things you have to do with a battlebot for charity. Hole in power switch.

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I'm certainly not the first to come up with this idea, but I think it would be pretty swell to have a Lojban ↔ RDF converter. (For those playing along at home, unaware of what I'm babbling about, I'll try and make it understandable to as wide an audience as I can).

Lojban and RDF are more alike than you might imagine. One is a constructed spoken language intended to convey ideas clearly and unambiguously, while the other is a machine-readable language for describing things and ideas. Save the "spoken" bit, they're both of the same mindset: create a way to communicate (between people, machines, whatever) without all the crap that makes communication confusing.

There are a few levels to this. First off, to the skeptics: of course one cannot directly translate any arbitrary RDF to Lojban. Both Lojban and RDF provide languages for discussing objects and ideas. However, the meaning of those languages is up to the user to interpret (but is clearly defined in dictionaries and namespace declarations). So, besides the semantics of parsing the two languages, the real meat of a project working with the two is a mapping, a translation.

The best example of this that I can immediately think of is a Lojban mapping of the FOAF namespace. Consider, for example:

RDF

  <foaf:Person rdf:ID="steve">
    <foaf:name>Steve Pomeroy</foaf:name>
    <foaf:knows>
      <foaf:Person>
         <foaf:name>Carolyn</foaf:name>
      </foaf:Person>
    </foaf:knows>
  </foaf:Person>

The English equivalent would be something like, "I am describing a person (#steve). #steve's name is Steve Pomeroy. #steve knows a person named Carolyn.". The next step is to do a similar mapping into Lojban. For this, we will use the Lojban "se slabu" (which translates to "is old/familiar/well-known to", "prenu" which means "is a person" and "cmene" for name. For convenience, I'm translating the RDF identifier rdf:ID="steve" (which can be expressed as "#steve") to the Lojban "la stiv".

Lojban

la stiv. prenu .ije la stiv.se cmene zoi gy. Steve Pomeroy gy. .ije la stiv. se slabu da .ije da prenu .ije da se cmene zoi gy. Carolyn gy.

This parses, using the ever-handy jbofihe, to:

[₁(₂[prenu1 (person(s)) :] la stiv. [NAME])₂ [is, does] <<₃prenu being person(s)>>₃]₁ .i `.' je and [<sub>4</sub>(<sub>5</sub>[cmene2 (named thing(s)) :] la stiv. [NAME])<sub>5</sub> [is, does] <<<sub>6</sub>se cmene being named>><sub>6</sub> (<sub>7</sub>[cmene1 (name(s)) :] zoi gy Steve Pomeroy gy ?)<sub>7</sub>]<sub>4</sub> .i `.' je and [₈(₉[slabu2 (observer) :] la stiv. [NAME])₉ [is, does] <<₁₀se slabu being observer(s) of familiarity>>₁₀ (₁₁[slabu1 (familiar thing(s)) :] da X)₁₁]₈ .i `.' je and [<sub>12</sub>(<sub>13</sub>[prenu1 (person(s)) :] da X)<sub>13</sub> [is, does] <<<sub>14</sub>prenu being person(s)>><sub>14</sub>]<sub>12</sub> .i `.' je and [₁₅(₁₆[cmene2 (named thing(s)) :] da X)₁₆ [is, does] <<₁₇se cmene being named>>₁₇ (₁₈[cmene1 (name(s)) :] zoi gy Carolyn gy ?)₁₈]₁₅

You should be able to see that this isn't any where as optimized a way of saying it as possible (it doesn't make use of Lojban's subject context), but it conveys the exact same information as the RFD encoding (keeping things like "#steve" ≡ "la stiv." in mind).

The first step is to create a framework for creating direct translations between the two. Starting out with simple namespaces that can be directly mapped, as was shown above. Mappings should probably be encoded in RDF in order to please the sick and twisted. Eventually, features of Lojban and RDF will have to be taken into account and then translated/transformed. Logical constructors could be used for sequences, subjects can be omitted when redundant, etc.

Typing this at ~100KPH en-route to Rochester, NY. I'm traveling with Leighton and so I felt it was a fun chance to attempt to share my 'net connection with him. The easiest way to do such is to let him connect to my laptop via WiFi while my computer is connected via my cell phone. It's a bit of voodoo magic to get it going, but once it's up - it's pretty keen.

'Net → cell provider → cell phone via. GPRS → my laptop via. Bluetooth → his laptop via. NAT and ad-hoc WiFi.

See the complete entry to get the technical details on how to set it up in Linux.

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New photos in Rochester/:

Large ice crystals formed on all the plants this morning, due to extremely high humidity (thick fog), no precipitation and sub-zero temperatures. Nature can be so beautiful.

I updated my Rawdog to OPML exporter (ver 1.4) to now support categories. You can add OPML categories to your Rawdog file by using the following syntax:

           ### kittens
           feed 60 http://purr.example.com/index.xml
           feed 45 http://kitten.example.com/feed.rdf

           ### news
           feed 60 http://news.example.com/feed
           feed 45 http://morenews.example.com/news.xml

Where the ### comment designates the words after it to be the heading. Not complicated, but quite functional. I also removed the dependency on XML::Simple, as I don't really like using that module for XML generation. It should now be able to run on any out-of-the-box Perl installation.

I've noticed a number of "beta" websites popping up recently. Friendster, Orkut, Flickr, Peopleaggregator, and Plink just to name a few.

Now, beta websites have been around for some time. Cute little animated construction equipment icons used to be all the rage. "this page under construction" (only about 5,250,000 hits for "under construction" on Google) generally accompanied the icons. But, this "beta" seems to be a bit different: all the sites are related to social networking and only are of much value if a critical mass of people can be reached.

Is "beta" used to entice people into thinking they can be amongst the specially-invited few who (like Orkut and Friendster) get to participate in the website? Or is it simply a disclaimer warning users of potential instability? I can only imagine a bit of both - especially with Orkut which used invitation-only exclusivity to lure users in. They remind me of the those, "you might have already won! [but in all probability you didn't]" snail-mail ads - it's the little phrase that gets your interest.

I hope this trend fades soon and these services come out of beta. Either that, or they accept the notion that the world is still in alpha and hasn't even gotten to beta yet.

I've recently observed that my life could be broken down to a series of chairs and wireless connections, roaming with a backpack, tech and a book. I'm a digital nomad with my home on my back: a glowing screen with my world inside. I like it this way - being connected as I roam - as I can be free yet not isolated. My world travels with me, varying in company, bandwidth and comfyness.

Right now I'm sitting in the near-closed Garage in Harvard Square, listening to some homeless men discuss the world as they know it. I type and listen, idly skimming websites as I go.

Time has passed now, and I sit on the train - off to another chair and wireless, releasing ideas and musings to the ether. The men were an intriguing crowd - certainly not what I had suspected, but not entirely unlike my preconceived stereotypes.

As I sat there on my island of music and 'net, more men started congregating around the table next to me. They all seemed to know each other and were mutually decompressing after a seemingly good day. They had been ignoring me until a tall, thick man walked in the nearby door. Rich (whose name I later found out osmoticlly) decided to "break the ice" by confronting me as though he were a gay man being all too forceful and untactful at asking me for a one night stand. I was very confused at first - as he seemed to play the part well - and did not seem to get my "leave me alone" vibes. After a tense moment or two, he let up and stated that he was only joking. Cute, really cute, but it was all too obvious that there was some deep set homophobia in him. He later admitted such, although he was statedly tolerant of homosexuals. His primary argument was that he didn't want "them" trying to "convert" him. I hope my generation will be better when we're his age.

Time went on, I listened as I read. There was talk about people: a collective brainstorm to remember a near forgotten body of the past; talk of jobs: memories from before, from the good times; talk of hope and compassion: wishing absent acquaintances better times with their abusive boyfriends and dead-end lives. I hung around until the Garage closed and said goodbye. My dose of surreality had been filled for the day.

Back "home", now in the comfiest of chairs and connected with the most bandwidth, I now write and think. Those men gave me a brief glimpse into their world, but what do I give in return? What can someone who feels as though they have all that they want, give someone who does not? In my mind I let these questions simmer and stew; perhaps something rich will result from them when I discover their answers.

Robert B. Aderholt just can't get enough God in his government. So, like last year, he proposes an act to let church and state mix, if they desire. This year, it's the Constitution Restoration Act of 2004. Last year, it was the Ten Commandments Defense Act, but that must have been a bit too religious-sounding. Ah, I love conservative agendas. They really make me wonder why so many people feel they should control other people's lives and what they do with themselves.

New photos in Guster/:

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I just stopped by Lorem Ipsum Books in Inman Square today and it was good. It's a brand-new used book store specializing in "useful books". It was started (at least in part) by Matt Mankins, an intriguing guy who keeps popping up on my radar.

Lorem Ipsum deviates from the homey, stuffy classic used book store atmosphere and is instead well-lit, neat and spacious, with cushions by the window for you to sit and read. Their selection is quite good for having just started 2 weeks ago, and I managed to find both Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams in the Sci-Fi section. I picked up a nice copy of Flatland, which was hiding on the shelves looking rather lonely. It's a wonderful thing to walk into a book store and see not only many books you that you recognize, but many that you don't. Just the former does you no good, and solely the latter can be intimidating.

All in all, I wish Matt luck with this store. If I were to create a used book store, Lorem Ipsum is probably what it would be like. Well, maybe with a coffee machine; you have to have your caffeine fix while reading. However, they had pop rocks and other candy by the register, so that about makes up for the lack of caffeine.

Shimon writes about the reality and individualism one faces when school is no longer the brunt of their life:

But planning starts to become appealing once you've left school. The conception of life as an unending journey of 6-month classes suddenly vanishes. After college, I became much more individualistic; the things I do have their most important consequences not for school or for the company, but for my abilities, fitness, happiness, and wealth.

It's often hard to get one's head out of the mindset of school. I find even though I love my job, it's challenging to get past the apathetic college student mentality. Routine still feels a bit forced and undesired, despite its obvious benefits. I get to work at 12:30 and then yell at myself, asking, "why didn't I get in sooner? I could have gotten so much more done." Then I look at why I didn't: I was up until 05:00 reading websites and chatting with friends, working on a project, or otherwise being social. I was simply trying to live the life I enjoy living. I then I fail to get up at my 08:00 alarm - my body likes 4-6h of sleep, not 3h. Eventually when 10:00 rolls around, I get up and out the door by 11:00. 1h30 of transportation later brings me to 12:30. Then I work late to make up for lost time, come home late, and then stay up to do what I enjoy doing.

These habits must change, but with change comes sacrifice. I am constantly getting frustrated with them, but unwilling to change them for fear of losing a bit of myself in the process. Why must I give up my quiet 04:00 evenings? Is the job I work at worth it? Can I function in a society being offset from everyone else by 4 hours? It's these questions I still need to answer.

And come spring, I'll be back at school. Midnight laptop parties in the coffee shop, hanging out on night roofs pondering pitas: friends and lovers, distant and near, live and let live, without ever fear. The habits are reborn and refreshed, the "responsible" intern is once again a college student.

Maybe someday I'll shake these bad habits. Someday I'll be responsible for more than 4 figure bank accounts. And someday, maybe if the world breaks my will, I'll get up at 8am, have 2.5 kids and a flower dress -clad wife.

Time will tell what I'll become,
but I shall choose my own kingdom.
My choices made will shape my way
as they have done up to this day.

Aside: this post was entirely written and posted from moving vehicles: started in a train, then finished and posted from a car. Oh how I love portable wireless technology.

Update: Um, yeah. I had linked to the article Shimon linked to instead of his article itself. Whoops.

New photos in Care/:

Care rules: she made me a Sierpinski triangle valentines day cookie. Aww yeah.

I just added a nifty set of geographic tags to my blog. Now there's a keen little G and M on geo-enhanced posts, representing GeoURL and ACME Mapper respectively. I don't quite know what I'll do with the data, but it seems like a nifty thing to have. The coordinates are also included in my RSS feed for completeness and potential post-granularity Localfeeds posting.

Technical details: I used the meta Blosxom plugin to tag individual blog posts with geo coords and the interpolate conditional plugins to then optionally add them into my feed/page. The RSS feed, being a well-behaved RDF, has the wgs_84 namespace in it and accompanying geo:lat, geo:lon tags describing the various RSS items.

New photos in MITWebcomicPanel/:

What you see is true. This is, in fact, an auditorium full of geeks dancing to "badger badger badger". Who's that sitting at the table in the front? Why the creators of it of course. As well as Randy from Something Positive and Stephen from Bob the Angry Flower.

MIT is having occasional webcomic lectures full of keen guest artists. Sadly, I probably won't be able to make it to the last one as school will have started already.

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J Baumgart wrote about last Thursday's dinner. She mentioned how the small group of techies at our end of the table had an unusual fondness for librarians. Like artsy, bi chicks, I think there's a strong similarity between the personalities of librarians and techies.

I have a feeling that one of the main reasons computer techies appreciate librarians is because they both understand exactly how challenging it is to wrangle large quantities of data. This might seem specific, but it takes a certain type who can look holistically on a subject and make organizational judgments on it. Unlike managerial types, both techies and librarians tend to get their hands dirty in the process as they are both frequently the designer and the builder of a given project.

Techies frequently are behind-the-scenes and like being that way. Librarians, on the other hand, generally have to deal with the actual users. The long battle of techie-vs-user is solved by establishing a human buffer between them - the only problem is that the buffer generally loses a great deal of signal from the users. For example, if a user complains about a problem with the user interface of a tool, often the buffer between the techie and user will write it up as user error and ignore it. Librarians, however, tend to know better. They know the tech (at least from a maintainer's point of view) and they know the users (however much they wish they didn't). Techies can, on a base level, appreciate the librarians for being intelligent user filters.

And it's not just what they do, but the attitude in which you do it. When dealing with large quantities of data on a computer, a small misstep can lead to large-scale destruction. Without careful foresight on an organizational scheme, you will have to deal with large-scale reorganization. Both require a careful-but-firm approach to dealing with things.

Lastly, I find that people who can grok the power of information are intellectually hot. When it comes to intellectual attractiveness, librarians are supermodels.

New photos in SarahCBday/:

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I keep on drawing myself back into the internet, into its warm folds and snuggles of people caring and exchanging energy and voices and laughter. I wish to be a part of this flowing mass all the time because I feel such a lack of real connection in those near me. I more than anything wish for someone nearby to connect into on a daily level...

*smiles and gets back to coding reality-augmenting technology*

A new [borrowed] toy

We just got a few Socket Bluetooth GPS adapters in at the office the other day. This device meets my approval with its minimalist interface, while still remaining hackable enough to not suck. It has a place to feed it, a place to make it stronger (antenna), a switch to make it go, and three blinky lights to let you know what's going on inside its little black case. This is good. Except for the ability to replace the battery or perhaps change the Bluetooth pairing key, I can't think of anything else it'd need to meet my approval. I like this trend of devices: where they function on a basic level, do it well, and are flexible enough to meet a geek's approval.

I managed to make it go with both my Palm and my Linux-running laptop - a true trial of a device's compatibility. They both work Really Well with it, so much that they make me want to go get one right away.

In more technical terms, it's simple as well: you pair it with a device, establish a serial connection and it starts spitting out GPS coords in the standard NMEA format. I was able to successfully get it going in Linux with GPSDrive (and gpsd) and on my Palm with Mapopolis. I've been pondering a cheaper USB one for µ, but the novelty (and potential benefit) of being able to use it without a full-fledged computer is starting to win out cost. Walking down the street on my Palm, GPS in backpack, listening to OGGs playing off it is just too wonderful a thing.

Bluetooth doesn't suck!

Despite initial skepticism, I'm starting to like Bluetooth. Devices today seem to mostly play nice: I can go online using either my laptop or cellphone as PPP proxies from either my laptop or Palm without any trouble. (Well, not quite, but that's a known firmware bug on the cellphone.) I can send vCards and other contact information the like between any of the devices, I can place calls on the phone from the Palm - all in all, it actually works.

In my extensive playing around with the technology, I've come across a few usability bugs.

1. Pairing - an obvious problem for devices, like the GPS, with no user input. The device really should have a user-configurable "pairing password", but most just have some arbitrary hard-coded value. Otherwise, anyone who's near you can pair with the device without your knowledge and potentially get at sensitive information. (Although GPS data is arguably not "sensitive" data)
2. Detection - Bluetooth device detection seems to be flaky. Frequently, when I scan for nearby Bluetooth devices, one or more that should be shown are not. A second scan tends to correct that problem, but you shouldn't have to do that. Once device detection occurs, a way of seeing what the device can do (can it connect to the 'net and act as a modem? can it accept contacts? can it act as a fax sender?) called service discovery takes place. That frequently fails to give useful information (at least in Linux with Bluez).
3. Too slow - I've already hit the limit of Bluetooth, hard. I've tried to go online with my cellphone, connect the phone to my laptop so the laptop can be online, then connect my palm to my laptop so I can use that connection. That totally hosed the Bluetooth. I'm not quite sure entirely what went wrong, but I have a feeling it has to do with sending/receiving so much data at once. I ended up getting less than 1KB/s on the Palm which is simply unacceptable.

Besides these complaints, I'm fond of the technology. I still can't get over how keen it is to have a bunch of boxes in various locations on my person (cell in cargo pants, GPS in backpack) and have them all work successfully. This is the wave of the future.

I just pre-registered for Penguicon 2004, a geek convention up in Michigan this April. Penguicon = StarTrek + Linux + Anime. From their description:

What is Penguicon?

To those of you familiar with the Linux and Open Source community, think of a weekend long Linux Users Group meeting with hundreds of other geeks which also just happens to have nationally acclaimed guests, its own wireless network, free caffeine and snacks always available, lots of folks talking about Science Fiction and Fantasy, situated next to a place to buy really cool t-shirts and buttons and such, and with some extra events like amateur singing, anime, a costume contest, and a fantasy art show.

To those of you familiar with Science Fiction conventions, imagine all the convention features you know and love, with the addition of wireless Internet access, computer gaming (including the fabulous Celebrity Frag Fest), non-stop Internet access, people who know about online publishing / books on demand / digital art, a programming track involving computing topics and another one focusing on the crossover between Science Fiction and computing.

I'll be going with Rym and Scott of the RIT Anime Club fame. Yes, it will be perhaps the single geekiest event I've ever been to, but that's part of the point, isn't it?

New photos in CelesteBday/:

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This is perhaps the funniest video I've seen in a long time. Disco never dies. The best part is that the song at the end is something that Geekwad showed me way back in high school. [from BoingBoing link-fu]

I just dug up an old piece of code and cleaned it up some. It reads a DTD and spits out a pretty-printed (and hyperlinked!) HTML document for easy navigating the file. It uses CSS and spits out HTML 4.01 so it should be decently friendly. It's called dtd2html and is free to use/hack under the GPL. Post any comments here regarding bugs or feature requests (or you can email them to me if you want).

New photos in Arisia/:

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The cult classic that spawned the wall coverings of many-a-college dorms is now available, legitimately, from Archive.org. Download Reefer Madness and enjoy the wonderful 1930's propaganda against "the other tobacco".

Check out more media pertaining to this meeting at the official blog.

New photos in Berkman/:

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edge.org has a good article on life laws and what famous minds' laws are. One of the ones that directly applies to me (at least recently):

Sterling's Law of Ubiquitous Computation

First, your home is a constant, while the Net is a place you go; then the Net becomes a constant while your home is a place you go.

Or, perhaps, the 'net is the home, while the place-of-residence is just a place to sleep? "Oh how times are a-changin'".

New photos in hangingout/:

Some people came over to my house and baked cookies in our kitchen. They were quite good, though.

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I put together a quick hack for the upcoming geek holiday: a binary countdown clock. It requires Perl, Time::ParseDate, and a VT100-compliant terminal. Run it with no arguments for this holiday.

The holiday is another high-order bit being flipped in the Unix time. Unix time, for those not in-the-know, is the number of seconds since midnight of Jan. 1, 1970. You might think, "wow, that must be a lot of seconds". It is. At precisely 08:37:04 tomorrow (January 10^th), it will reach 2³⁰ (or 1,073,741,824) seconds - hence the holiday.

So, happy almost-2³⁰-seconds-since-the-Unix-epoch!

Update: I put together a Javascript version of the countdown clock. Enjoy :-)

New photos in Berkman/:

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In playing around with presence and broadcasting presence information, I've created an RSS feed for my physical status system, PhysStat. Now you can subscribe to my status to find out exactly when I go to sleep, or run off into the world. The usefulness of this is questionable, but it's certainly an interesting idea.

PhysStat is a simple set of tools that I use to provide a form of presence and status information to various parts of my computer systems. Think of it as a global "away message" for your life.

I wrote some utilities to set and query the status from both web pages as well as programs. Perl scripts can query the status in order to act on them. For example, I have an "alert Steve" command that will attempt to get a message to me depending on my status. If I'm "away", it emails me the message, if I'm "online" it will display it on my On-Screen display or speak it out loud (depending on another flag), and if I'm "asleep" it will wake me up and speak the message to me. I've written a Jabber bot that will set the status based on my Jabber status and keyword matching (an away message with the words "sleep" or "dream" in it sets the status to "asleep"). As soon as I redo the main storage mechanism, I'll put up a page and publish it for anyone who's interested.

I just recently discovered a language blog that seems to have some rather wonderful content on it. Mark Liberman wrote a wonderful piece, Divine Ambiguity, that pokes fun at Pat Robertson's recent [mis]use of the word, "like". Mark does well: it is a piece of absolutely hilarious and subtle wit.

Paul Graham wrote an intriguing article on what you can't say. He shares some good thoughts on heresy and how cultures always seem to have heretical thoughts, even modern ones who often think they're beyond such things.[from Slashdot]

Low. I wake on a bed of cushions in a foreign room, but this is not abnormal. My body still feels last night's dancing. All sounds seem like my blurry vision, just awakening; still deafened from the thrashing guitars and wailing vocals of the 6 hour show. It was the type of music that's so loud you have to plug your ears to hear anything other than static and I enjoyed exactly half of it. If only I could regain half-again as much hearing to make up for my sacrifice.

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Matthew Haughey wrote up some interesting ideas for social software that doesn't seem to exist yet. A few ideas are based on social networks - one of which my coworker and I were actually playing with ourselves ("Geographical opinion systems" and potentially "Collaborative consumed media"). My co-worker's idea was based on using FOAF as the publishing format. We also pondered arbitrary ratings of entities, like restaurants or public restrooms (which could be tied to geographic locations).

New photos in NewYears2004/:

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