Aphorisisms & the Hesitant, Timid Writer

I have always loved Nietzsche’s writings, but not until I started this Blog did I truly recognize the complexity of his work; to convey philosophy through aphorisms. It is, for some reason, so easy to talk about an idea out loud with passion and to do it while another person is right there sitting with you provoking you to push the story forward. Maybe it is easier because you are able to wiggle through the holes in the statements you make or because you are less critical of yourself when you know your mistakes will be lost in time and not in black and white to later be scrutinized by a passerby — the cost is that any of your good substance will be lost in the shuffle.

I am struggling with becoming any level of what can be called a writer and my greatest hurdle is talking through a written medium. Not burdening myself with the need to explain every point that comes up that has some relevant story behind it or to be too verbose, to somehow incorporate my passions and stream of conscious into written form, to have an open dialog within the writing (maybe add a character to debate with) and to not be so critical of posting anything no matter how dumb it may feel.

This I suppose is the next chapter to my first Blog post “My First Blog & the Dreaded Blank Page” and hopefully this broadcast admittance to my fears, hurdles, and lack of skill will once again be an evolution in writing for me.

The neo-geek is neo-chic

LG has come out with a new and improved calculator watch, the LG GD910. It’s kind of an iPhone for the wrist. Check out this phone and other cool phones on youtube below.

And then man created life

Scientest have combined the building blocks of life and have been able to over come some major hurdles in the effort to create life from scratch. By creating a container for the life to reside in, a way to reproduce, and a way to convert raw materials to energy man can indeed create life if only for a few hours at a time. Scientist have made a confident claim this week that they expect someone to create artificial life from scratch, albeit microscopic at best, within 3-10 years.

New keyboard

Very cool, I love simple changes in technology that make way for completly new ways of doing common tasks. Like this subtle change in keyboard interaction. This keyboard uses pressure to interpret keystorokes. This allows users to add more demension to your typing or game playing. For instance, if you are shouting in your text simply press each key harder…..Anywho, it’s pretty neat check out the video.

Todays Tech: Editorial

Being part of the industrial revolution must have been amazing. I use to wish I was around during a revolution of that size as I would have wanted to take risks and catch the business wave as early as I could. Like being around when Bill Gates started MicroSoft. How could people have thought it was a fad, or rejected such an practical, obvious, beneficial product? Computers and software changed the way life happens and a majority of the population were/are late adopters. These last few years have been the beginning of yet another great revolution in my eyes and I wasn’t going to pas it up. I cant believe how many thought/think the technologies of today are a fad, many of those nah sayers who argued in my and coworkers face and mocked the industries goals are forgotten (lucky for them) and from only 1 year ago! More and more are getting on the ride. Im glad I started giving it my all early on, no regrets.

We still have a long way to go. Those who said Facebook was a fad are now on FaceBook with the rest of their family and friends and use it fairly often. What’s more disturbing is how often I over hear people on FaceBook or in passing that scream how much Twitter is a useless fad……I guess we just need to give them a few years in which I suspect that they will be bashing yet another new technology, but will do it using Twitter.

Even the most basic and useful forums of social media get bashed to this day, often purely for cultural reasons in which technology in many peoples eyes equal sub par information and practicality. I don’t know how many times I’ve over heard intelligent people bashing any information found on Wikipedia. Although not perfect it’s easy to for get that Webster and Britannica were all originally missions of one man traveling the globe. One man one perspective asking strangers and alike what they knew to be knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants. Accuracy is subjective and in this case a multitude of subjective persons might be more powerful and “true” then a single man is the final say.

Let’s try harder to find use in things that catch on or connect us all, that increase our perspective across greater bounds whether it be 100% accurate or not. If we are brought together and information is shared more readily then we are only following a path set thousands of years before us first with smoke signals, then to written stone, bibles, printed news, telegraphs and phones, radio and TV, internet and social media. Let us allow ourselves to find the good, as we have so reluctant at each point of our past, in connecting with one another and decipher the positive gains in mediums that do just that.

iPhone, Safari, and HTML5, Oh My!

iPhone Safari is purpoted to be trying to release HTML5’s newest spec that allows video tags. This means that we will soon be able to watch video inline easily not only on the web in general but on our pretty little phones.

Some of you may be saying, “I already can playvideo on my phone”. Which although true isnt really the whole picture. Have you noticed that when there is video you must play in in a seperate quicktime panel that pops out. Witht the inclusion of this new spec you will be ale to just press play from within the web page.

For developers this also menas that including images in a pahge will be as easy as using a simple <video> tag as appose to needing to use a plugin like quicktime or flash. As Isaac put it, we are one step closer to getting rid of flash.

Example:

<video src=”http://www.ananova.com/about/vap_windows_check.wmv”>
your browser does not support the video tag
</video>

New RadioHead single

Harry Patch (In Memory of)

Thom Yorke, one of my favorite creators of melodically interesting sounds has put out a new song called Harry Patch and debuted it a few days ago.

As usual the Radiohead guys are bypassing labels and selling the song through their website and all proceeds go towards a good cause.

As for background on the song, Harry Patch was the last living UK World War 1 Veteran, he was 111 years old. Radiohead released this single in order to make sure he is not forgotten. The song is a tribute to Harry, as well as a fundraiser for the Royal British Legion.

The Sun reported that the family was enamoured over the song, “Our family is very touched thatRadiohead has reached out to its followers and especially the younger generation through the single that echoes” and that Harry “.

Patch was buried on August 6th 2009 in Wells, Somerset, with a public service taking place in Wells Cathedral.

Politifact

I heard about this site while listening to an interview on NPR. In this interview the host asked thier guest some questions as to why “they are so angry” at thier local senator. The guest replied that he is a liar and signed bills to allow a rediculous measure in an unwanted bill. She was irate at the situation, what was interesting is how the host then turned to a guest from Pilitifact who seemed to have researched the case and found taht many of the angry protesters points were driven by rumors as the references to documents they made were unsubstantiated. Now I am perfectly aware that Politifact is yet another level of abstraction from the “real truth” just like any other news agency. What is interesting to me, after I browsed around thier site is the fact that they give you thier opinion and consolidate every reference and statement into linkable sources on the right hand gutter of the web page. It’s like having your own senate secratary gathering the facts for you so you can make your own informed descisions on a topic.

They give a summary of statment or claims made by our politicatns and then exmine their refernces and sources and rate how true the statememnt is on a “truth -o-meter”. Their meter varies from basic true or fals all the way down to “Pants on Fire” for those claims made that are not only exagerated but baseless.

They also show you links to all the references and sources they reveiwed so you can digg into the claims yourself and form your own opinion. The site definitely fills a need and will ecome popular enough so that our politicians are more careful when trying to exagerate claims just to gain the viewers attention. ALso a nice reference for Politifact is thier wininnging of the 2008 pulitzer for national reporting after only being luanched in 2007.

Boxee

Isaac just demoed a great peice of software for the mac or PC called Boxee. Boxee is loaded on your computer and plays online video from hundreds of sources including videos from your local hard drive, hulu, youtube, and digg. Simply hook your computer up to your TV and watch these shows and click through options and menus with your remote. Best of all its an open source project so downloading is free and you are able to improve the product or add your own video modukes as you please.

Since Boxee allows you to login to your favorite social networks you can see what friends are watching while you watch and more. The bads: since it’s open source and downloaded software when a web site that boxee pulls from is changed those interfaces in Boxee fail as well until you download a newer build. Its a great tool and relly merges computer with tv experience, definitly a project that has been needed for a long time and meant for the open soure community.

See more about what Boxee can do below:

Screw Microsoft

Okay so only a year ago or so I was a PC MS guy. Since then I have adopted apple like many of you out there for various reasons that I soon shall post, but mostly for iPhone development needs originally. Since then I have set up 3 mac mini’s and 2 imacs. One of the mac mini’s i set up as a remote machine that i screen share to that works as a server for our company. I havent had a single problem and was able to screen share, transfer files, share music, and use any usb or network basd periphreal from printers to ipods to itunes. I was even able to transfer files onto my PC laptop instantly and it took much longer to do the exact same process from the laptop to the mac.

I havent really thought to much about it until tonight. Tonight I installed a new PC for my parents becuase 1) They wanted it cause they are use to it and 2) It was under $600. This one machine has taken me hours to set up, and I am so frustrated right now beucase printing was erroring out, not the pronter but the print option would hang. Installing and startng up the machine felt like an eternity and honestly $1500 does not sound so expensive when i think back to how easy all of my other mac based installs have been. I was ready to punch a baby in the face after this MS/PC set up process. Maybe I;’m spoiled by the MAC and I should be more patient with the PC/MS version of computers….or maybe having to be patient with your computer is f’en dumb. Oh, one more thing is it the PC’s fault or is it MS’s. I wonder what would happen if I installed the OS X on this hard ware, is it all in the software all in the hardware, or both?