stream of consciousness http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/feed/ 2008-06-28T17:04:55-04:00 Chyrp tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-28:/notebook/id/246/ 2008-06-28T17:04:55-04:00 2008-06-28T17:04:55-04:00 Pete Vilter <p>A <span class="caps">NASA</span> guy writes this Twitter feed to keep people updated on what the lander is doing.</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-23:/notebook/id/245/ 2008-06-23T21:16:38-04:00 2008-06-23T21:16:38-04:00 Pete Vilter <p>hooray for semantic markup!</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-21:/notebook/id/242/ 2008-06-21T18:17:36-04:00 2008-06-21T18:17:36-04:00 Pete Vilter <p>Japan&#8217;s culture evolves so fast&#8230;</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-21:/notebook/id/241/ 2008-06-21T17:57:30-04:00 2008-06-21T17:34:59-04:00 Pete Vilter <p>Things like advanced form elements (sliders, draggables/droppables, sortable lists, etc) and instant client-server messaging (<span class="caps">AIM</span>, etc) have been done for a long time in normal programs, but are only now making their way into the web browser through the work of caffeine-powered JavaScript ninjas (see <a href="http://script.aculo.us/">Scriptaculous</a> and <a href="http://rubyjudo.com/2006/12/4/the-state-of-push-on-the-internet">Comet</a>). That these kinds of things can be implemented at all is a testament to the flexibility of the <span class="caps">HTML</span>/JS/CSS platform, but it also means that the platform needs updating &#8212; relying on these complex workarounds is not good.</p> <p><span class="caps">HTML</span> 5 is happy because in it a lot of these complex things &#8212; form elements, plus <code>&lt;audio&gt;</code> and <code>&lt;video&gt;</code> tags, local storage, and more &#8212; are built into the browser, so web designers can use simple, semantic tags to do complicated things instead of big, complex JavaScript. Building these things into the platform puts their implementation back into the hands of the OS, which had them figured out decades ago and can do them faster, more consistently, and more reliably. Yay!</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-20:/notebook/id/240/ 2008-06-20T16:22:59-04:00 2008-06-20T16:22:59-04:00 Pete Vilter <a href="http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/uploads/crazyposter.gif"><img src="http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/feathers/photo/lib/phpThumb.php?src=http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/uploads/crazyposter.gif&amp;w=500&amp;h=500&amp;f=gif&amp;q=100" alt="crazyposter.gif" /></a><br /><br /> <p>gakk!</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-17:/notebook/id/238/ 2008-06-17T13:39:23-04:00 2008-06-17T13:38:50-04:00 Pete Vilter <p><em>n.</em></p> <p>A phrase coined to fit a preexisting word, as if the word is an acronym of the phrase. But the word came first.</p> <p>ex: kludge =&gt; klumsy, lame, ugly, dumb, but good enough</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-17:/notebook/id/237/ 2008-06-17T13:08:47-04:00 2008-06-17T13:08:47-04:00 Pete Vilter <blockquote> <p>Serendipity is when you find things you weren&#8217;t looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damn difficult</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/161">Erin McKean</a></p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-17:/notebook/id/236/ 2008-06-17T12:23:27-04:00 2008-06-17T12:23:27-04:00 Pete Vilter <!--cut and paste--><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="432" height="285" id="VE_Player" align="middle"><param name="movie" value="http://static.videoegg.com/ted2/flash/loader.swf"><PARAM NAME="FlashVars" VALUE="bgColor=FFFFFF&file=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/WadeDavis_2008_high.flv&autoPlay=false&fullscreenURL=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/fullscreen.html&forcePlay=false&logo=&allowFullscreen=true"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"><param name="scale" value="noscale"><param name="wmode" value="window"><embed src="http://static.videoegg.com/ted2/flash/loader.swf" FlashVars="bgColor=FFFFFF&file=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/WadeDavis_2008_high.flv&autoPlay=false&fullscreenURL=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/fullscreen.html&forcePlay=false&logo=&allowFullscreen=true" quality="high" allowScriptAccess="always" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" scale="noscale" wmode="window" width="432" height="285" name="VE_Player" align="middle" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></object> <br /> <br /> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-17:/notebook/id/235/ 2008-06-17T12:21:29-04:00 2008-06-17T12:21:29-04:00 Pete Vilter <blockquote> <p>Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/62">Wade Davis</a> &#8212; A long time ago I was struck by something I read in National Geographic about a language of forest hunters that had gone extinct, and about how centuries of hunting knowledge had been lost with it. Perhaps this guy was the writer.</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-16:/notebook/id/234/ 2008-06-16T20:14:42-04:00 2008-06-16T20:13:17-04:00 Pete Vilter <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" class="object-youtube" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/PYFTT5kvgAQ" width="468" height="391"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PYFTT5kvgAQ" /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerMode=embedded" /></object> <br /> <br /> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-16:/notebook/id/233/ 2008-06-16T18:21:14-04:00 2008-06-16T18:21:14-04:00 Pete Vilter <blockquote> <p>We in France are, in terms of race, where we were in terms of gender 40 years ago.</p> </blockquote> <p>A black man in France, where <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/arts/17abroad.html?pagewanted=1&amp;8dpc&amp;_r=1">Obama&#8217;s canidacy is sparking a new discussion about race</a></p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-16:/notebook/id/232/ 2008-06-16T13:07:41-04:00 2008-06-16T13:07:41-04:00 Pete Vilter <blockquote> <p>Great spirits have always encountered violent resistance from mediocre minds</p> </blockquote> <p>Einstein</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-15:/notebook/id/229/ 2008-06-15T14:59:47-04:00 2008-06-15T14:59:47-04:00 Pete Vilter <p>I&#8217;ll have to read this at some point, but I&#8217;m supposed to be studying&#8230;</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-15:/notebook/id/228/ 2008-06-15T14:49:34-04:00 2008-06-15T14:49:34-04:00 Pete Vilter <p>interesting.</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-15:/notebook/id/227/ 2008-06-15T14:21:58-04:00 2008-06-15T14:21:12-04:00 Pete Vilter <p>Super cool article about analyzing Wikipedia&#8217;s web of links as a graph &#8212; to find its &#8220;center&#8221;, etc. There&#8217;s also a tool which uses the compressed dataset the guy used in his research to find the shortest path between two articles. You&#8217;ll be surprised by the results.</p> <p style="text-align:right;"><em>thanks, Alex!</em></p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-15:/notebook/id/226/ 2008-06-15T12:47:57-04:00 2008-06-15T12:47:57-04:00 Pete Vilter <blockquote> <p>Am I disappointed by the amount of progress in cognitive science and AI in the past 30 years or so? Not at all. To the contrary, I would have been extremely upset if we had come anywhere close to reaching human intelligence — it would have made me fear that our minds and souls were not deep.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://tal.forum2.org/hofstadter_interview">Douglas Hofstadter</a></p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-15:/notebook/id/225/ 2008-06-15T12:07:58-04:00 2008-06-15T12:07:58-04:00 Pete Vilter <a href="http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/uploads/53580133602606ead07.jpg"><img src="http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/feathers/photo/lib/phpThumb.php?src=http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/uploads/53580133602606ead07.jpg&amp;w=500&amp;h=500&amp;f=jpg&amp;q=100" alt="53580133602606ead07.jpg" /></a><br /><br /> <p>This is Prypiat, a city near Chernobyl that&#8217;s been abandoned since the Chernobyl disaster. Saw it in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us#Synopsis">Wikipedia article</a> on <a href="http://www.worldwithoutus.com/">The World Without Us</a>.</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-15:/notebook/id/224/ 2008-06-15T12:09:04-04:00 2008-06-15T11:44:32-04:00 Pete Vilter <a href="http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/uploads/6685422.jpg"><img src="http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/feathers/photo/lib/phpThumb.php?src=http://thinking-chair.com/notebook/uploads/6685422.jpg&amp;w=500&amp;h=500&amp;f=jpg&amp;q=100" alt="6685422.jpg" /></a><br /><br /> <p>This is in Myanmar&#8212;Google Maps superimposed it over my map while I was memorizing countries for school. Geodata mashups are pretty cool.</p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-15:/notebook/id/223/ 2008-06-15T20:33:16-04:00 2008-06-13T20:04:08-04:00 Pete Vilter <blockquote> <p>Claiming to be &#8220;offended&#8221; is just a morally lazy way to tell another person to shut up without having to prove that what they said is false.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://ryan.norbauer.com/">Ryan Norbauer</a> &#8212; This is like the chapter called &#8220;Deserved and Undeserved Respect&#8221; in <em>The God Delusion</em></p> tag:thinking-chair.com,2008-06-13:/notebook/id/222/ 2008-06-13T18:52:04-04:00 2008-06-13T18:52:04-04:00 Pete Vilter <object width="400" height="241"> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1152218&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" /> <embed src="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1152218&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="241"></embed></object> <br /> <br /> <p>This is what the Firefox people are cooking up for firefox mobile. Pretty slick&#8212;the first thing I&#8217;ve seen that gives the iPhone browser a run for its money. The <a href="http://azarask.in/blog/post/firefox-mobile-concept-video/">blog post</a> talks a lot of sense too.</p>