tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59979123186200147332024-03-12T22:19:37.586-04:00bespoke thoughtrafknúið heili, 电脑
informatique couture, þúsundþjalasmiðurEiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-80484136857351941752024-02-18T15:09:00.001-05:002024-02-18T15:09:12.710-05:00My Xanadu<p>I was thinking today about how to create a future Internet by using something like Xanadu Hypertext as an overlay network.</p><p>Xanadu is the name of Ted Nelson's 1960 invention of the Xanadu
Hypertext system. Ted's a great guy, and he foresaw most of what would
be needed for a Memex-like Knowledge Navigator. The World Wide Web is a
drastically watered-down subset of Ted's original idea.</p><p>I realized that the page moving or document renaming problems in the<br />underlying internet are still a problem. I don't see anything<br />addressing it that could be deployed in the forseable future. So, why<br />not have my Xanadu bi-directional transclusion links use a<br />content-addressable link like IPFS document addresses. I don't know<br />how/if you can address a bookmark inside an IPFS document, which could<br />be in any document format. Perhaps search and format conversion would<br />be required.<br /><br />I'm envisioning a document creation, editing, and reading tool that<br />has Xanadu's bi-directional links, micropayments, and a document<br />format that the Xanadu network understands. Hmmm, I'm starting to<br />think that this should be an IPFS-native application which can operate<br />over the overlay network to reach anything on the public internet.<br /><br />So, imagine a full-featured document editor such as LibreOffice<br />Writer, or perhaps Microsoft Word. It has the ability to embed<br />sections of other documents via rich bi-directional links. It doesn't<br />work with ordinary filesystems on storage disks. It's 100% IPFS file<br />access (with content-addressability) all the time. The editor doesn't<br />create "files." It creates an IPFS filesystem in a workspace file or<br />connects to a MyXanadu server, which can be local or remote. This<br />editor can import and export files in the most-used document formats.<br /><br />I don't see why not to set this up as a project. I think the primary<br />client document editor should do something more reasonable than the<br />current document representation file types. Perhaps text and structure<br />are represented in a markup language and displaying or converting a<br />document is delegated to Latex or similar. Hmmm, that implies being able<br />to edit a Latex document in a WYSIWYG fashion. That's not a trivial idea.<br />Since I need a new document editing application, why not support simultaneous<br />multiple-user editing via CRDTs. That's a bit trendy in some circles.<br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Pros:</p><p>All of this could be an infrastructure with a fully-documented protocol, to allow for the development of alternative client software. I think that mind maps and other outline-adjacent thought aids could be included.<br /></p><p><br />Cons:<br /><br />WYSIWYG editing of a formatted, camera-ready, final form<br />document. It seems overblown to create a new editable-in-final form,<br />so I'd like to just have final.<br /><br />Dependency on IPFS features. It would be nice to work on any overlay<br />network.<br /><br /></p>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-66044126669767267582023-09-17T19:12:00.003-04:002023-09-17T19:18:28.638-04:00Morphology of Coloration in Sexy Librarians<p>Due to regulatory consolidation and union consistency work the sexy<br />librarian trope became more or less standardized in 1934. As of then,<br />to be a sexy librarian, you had to be a female natural brunette. This<br />standardized the common stereotype and met with little resistance.<br />There were a small number of angry blondes and redheads, picketing, who wanted these poorly-paid positions, but the stereotype held.<br /><br />1950: The advent of Eastmancolor meant that the fine texture and highlights of blonde hair could be rendered sympathetically on screen, and the world changed. Regulations and safety rules were adjusted to permit natural blonde sexy librarians up to 0.8 Albedo on-screen and off. </p><p>1964: The Ginger League achieved parity for redheads.</p><p>1972: Lobbying by the Bathhouse Boys created a revolution. Now male librarians could be sexy. <br /></p><p>2023: Redheaded sexy librarians of either sex are not yet common. Albinos are disallowed because fire regulations prohibit Albedos of 0.95 and greater.<br /><br /><br /></p>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-34707690652005156622023-07-03T20:39:00.002-04:002023-07-03T20:39:55.245-04:00The Admiral<p><span style="font-family: Fira Sans;">J.D. Salinger's description of Boo-Boo Glass, from his Glass Family stories. (collected in Nine Stories, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, and Introduction) She's worried about her son. She's Franny's sister Barbara. I love his descriptions in the way that I love Raymond Chandler's. The text is from "Down at the Dingy" in Nine Stories. I think this is her only on-stage appearance in a story. My opinion that is that Dingy isn't his best work because he lets viewpoints we don't really care about chatter before he gets his main characters on stage, but when his lights are on...</span><br /></p><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r56:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: PT Serif;">"The swinging door opened from the dining room and Boo Boo Tannenbaum, the lady of the house, came into the kitchen. She was a small, almost hipless girl of twenty-five, with styleless, colorless, brittle hair pushed back behind her ears, which were very large. She was dressed in knee-length jeans, a black turtleneck pullover, and socks and loafers. Her joke of <span></span>a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was-in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces-a stunning and final girl. She went directly to the refrigerator and opened it. As she peered inside, with her legs apart and her hands on her knees, she whistled, unmelodically, through her teeth, keeping time with a little uninhibited, pendulum action of her rear end."</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: courier;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Fira Sans;">Permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive. She's a Glass.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Fira Sans;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Fira Sans;">Later, in that same story:</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><span style="font-family: PT Serif;">Boo Boo closed the screen door behind her.<br /><br />She stood on the slight downgrade of her front lawn, with the low,<br />glaring, late afternoon sun at her back. About two hundred yards ahead<br />of her, her son Lionel was sitting in the stem seat of his father's<br />dinghy. Tied, and stripped of its main and jib sails, the dinghy<br />floated at a perfect right angle away from the far end of the<br />pier. Fifty feet or so beyond it, a lost or abandoned water ski<br />floated bottom up, but there were no pleasure boats to be seen on the<br />lake; just a stern-end view of the county launch on its way over to<br />Leech's Landing. Boo Boo found it queerly difficult to keep Lionel in<br />steady focus. The sun, though not especially hot, was nonetheless so<br />brilliant that it made any fairly distant image--a boy, a boat--seem<br />almost as wavering and refractional as a stick in water. After a<br />couple of minutes, Boo Boo let the image go. She peeled down her<br />cigarette Army style, and then started toward the pier.<br /><br />It was October, and the pier boards no longer could hit her in the<br />face with reflected heat. She walked along whistling "Kentucky Babe"<br />through her teeth. When she reached the end of the pier, she squatted,<br />her knees audible, at the right edge, and looked down at Lionel. He<br />was less than an oar's length away from her. He didn't look up.<br /><br />"Ahoy," Boo Boo said. "Friend. Pirate. Dirty dog. I'm back." Still<br />not looking up, Lionel abruptly seemed called upon to demonstrate his<br />sailing ability. He swung the dead tiller all the way to the right,<br />then immediately yanked it back in to his side. He kept his eyes<br />exclusively on the deck of the boat. "It is I," Boo Boo<br />said. "Vice-Admiral Tannenbaum. Nee Glass. Come to inspect the<br />stermaphors."<br /><br />There was a response.<br /><br />"You aren't an admiral. You're a lady," Lionel said. His sentences<br />usually had at least one break of faulty breath control, so that,<br />often, his emphasized words, instead of rising, sank. Boo Boo not only<br />listened to his voice, she seemed to watch it.<br /><br />"Who told you that? Who told you I wasn't an admiral?"<br /><br />Lionel answered, but inaudibly.<br /><br />"Who?" said Boo Boo.<br /><br />"Daddy."<br /><br />Still in a squatting position, Boo Boo put her left hand through the V<br />of her legs, touching the pier boards in order to keep her<br />balance. "Your daddy's a nice fella," she said, "but he's probably the<br />biggest landlubber I know. It's perfectly true that when I'm in port<br />I'm a lady--that's true. But my true calling is first, last, and<br />always the bounding--"<br /><br />"You aren't an admiral," Lionel said.<br /><br />"I beg your pardon?"<br /><br />"You aren't an admiral. You're a lady all the time."<br /><br />There was a short silence. Lionel filled it by changing the course of<br />his craft again--his hold on the tiller was a two-armed one. He was<br />wearing khaki-colored shorts and a clean, white T-shirt with a dye<br />picture, across the chest, of Jerome the Ostrich playing the<br />violin. He was quite tanned, and his hair, which was almost exactly<br />like his mother's in color and quality, was a little sun-bleached on<br />top.<br /><br />"Many people think I'm not an admiral," Boo Boo said, watching<br />him. "Just because I don't shoot my mouth off about it." Keeping her<br />balance, she took a cigarette and matches out of the side pocket of<br />her jeans. "I'm almost never tempted to discuss my rank with<br />people. Especially with little boys who don't even look at me when I<br />talk to them. I'd be drummed out of the bloomin' service."</span></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><span style="font-family: PT Serif;"><br /></span><br /></div></span></div></div></div></div></div>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-82686528984586286832023-06-07T01:53:00.001-04:002023-06-07T02:00:24.149-04:00That UFO Whistleblower<p> "Why did we ever think they'd come in metal ships?" -- from the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers remake.</p><p><br /></p><p><picture><img alt="founding" class="frontend-components-responsive_img-module__img--Pgjj2" height="66" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_66,h_66,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack.com%2Fimg%2Favatars%2Fpurple.png" width="66" /></picture></p><div class="profile-img-badge" title="Founding Member"><svg fill="none" height="14" stroke-width="1.8" stroke="var(--print_on_pop)" style="height: 14px; width: 14px;" title="Founding Member" viewbox="0 0 14 14" width="14" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g></g></svg></div><div class="comment-meta"><span class="commenter-name"><div class="pencraft frontend-pencraft-Box-module__reset--VfQY8 frontend-pencraft-Box-module__display-flex--ZqeZt frontend-pencraft-Box-module__display-inline-flex--ZE941 frontend-pencraft-Box-module__flex-align-center--rSd6h frontend-pencraft-Box-module__flex-gap-4--zeW5_"><div class="profile-hover-card-target frontend-reader2-ProfileAndPublicationHoverCard-module__profileHoverCardTarget--Od_YL"><a href="https://substack.com/profile/136265-eirikur-hallgrimsson"><div class="pencraft frontend-pencraft-Box-module__reset--VfQY8 frontend-pencraft-Text-module__size-14--Ume6q frontend-pencraft-Text-module__line-height-20--p0dP8 frontend-pencraft-Text-module__weight-semibold--LJBj3 frontend-pencraft-Text-module__font-text--QmNJR frontend-pencraft-Text-module__color-pub-primary-text--RzL7j frontend-pencraft-Text-module__reset--dW0zZ frontend-pencraft-Text-module__body4--Pl3xY">Eiríkur Hallgrímsson</div></a></div></div></span><a class="comment-timestamp" href="https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/major-breaking-news-pentagon-whistleblower/comment/17007254" rel="nofollow">just now</a></div><p><span>I've
watched the interview video. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Under oath, maybe he'll be able to talk intelligently about things he
was denied access to? I'd be happy to be wrong, but what I see is a
straightforward retelling of Majestic / Area 51. A slightly updated
version is the tale of Bob Lazar, but Lazar fabricated the education
that supposedly got him the Area 51 job. He's not the physicist to hire
to reverse engineer a spacecraft--he was a garage inventor. The Majestic
/ Area 51 thing is a charming story in it's own way, but think about
it, a leakproof conspiracy of at least hundreds of people (worldwide)
concerning world-breaking information. I'd expect former conspiracy
members to be coming out en mass if the whistleblower is telling
something like the truth, because finally they are (I'd guess) free from
retaliation. The "I can't prove anything and I don't have evidence to
show" cant is sort of galling. It's a tell often seen in the crashed UFO
mythos. So, let's posit that the whistleblower who was denied access
actually knows something. Then we have HUGE PROBLEM #2: Biological
aliens flying around in our atmosphere and buzzing navy ships and
crashing into things? Really? After they cross light-years of space and
who knows how much time with technology that we can't even imagine.
Seriously, people in the extraterrestrial intelligence field do not
expect living creatures to show up in metal ships. I'm an amateur, but I
expect to maybe see something that we think is a radio beacon in my
lifetime, but more likely the optical pulse searches could find
something that looks like an intelligent signal. If we stick to a 'they
come here' model, best projections for how we would do this job are very
small robotic probes. Just sit in orbit and soak up all our
communications. They could even get human DNA that way, or via
environmental objects. No need to interact with us. People who wanted to
interact with us could call us on the phone. Just put a radio signal in
the Water Hole, the spectral absorption line (hence radio-quiet) of the
hydroxyl molecule, at 21 centimeters / 1,40 megaHertz. I've been
researching this since I read I.S. Sklovsky's "Intelligent Life in the
Universe" (US Ed. with forward by Carl Sagan, at about age 10, when it
was published. When a modern version of this tale pops up with
approximately the credibility of a George Adamski, I don't know what to
say. One way this could have some truth is if the aliens are profoundly
different from anything we expect. Perhaps they would create biological
robots and send them in unsafe metal ships because we'd understand
that. Perhaps the real witnesses don't know what they saw and describe
their best take on it. I'd love to be wrong. I've been totally excited
about this field since I was a kid.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">I'm triggered because a real whistleblower needs to show that they're not a Bob Lazar or George Adamski. If they don't know who those people were or why this is critically important, they don't know their field.</span><span> </span><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en">If you want to be taken seriously don't act just like the con men.</span></p><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"> </span></p>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-54688825743984161402023-05-01T12:22:00.003-04:002023-05-01T12:22:47.074-04:00How to invent musical notation, without even trying.<p> I have a problem.<br />conceptual model --> computer model --> user interface<br /><br />I've revived my "Liquid Notes" musical phrase recorder. My question<br />is one of determining user intent when there is no data, which<br />probably means that I have to use the context. It's a musical context<br />and therefore complex, but I've been trying to adhere to a very simple<br />data model. I was seeing this as a tape recorder and I view this as an<br />experiment in brutal simplicity. A simple data model will yield a<br />simple user interface. I have no: grid, bar lines, beats. This is<br />intentional. I have only events.<br /><br />"What happens after the last event?"<br /><br />The problem shows up when you record a phrase and then play it<br />back. It defaults to repeating the (assumed fairly short) phrase. How<br />do I determine the pause time between the end of the last note and the<br />start of the first note? There are currently two pieces of data<br />available, they are time values, and they are both wrong for this.<br /><br />Press <b>RECORD</b> (time 0)<br />pre-gap<br />Play some notes, hit some pedals, etc. (times 1 - n)<br />post-gap<br />Press <b>STOP</b> (time n+1) <br /><br />It sort of looks like one could use either the pre-gap or the post-gap<br />as the gap between the last and first notes when repeating, but<br />neither are correct enough. Both of those values have egonomic slop to<br />them. It may be my own lack of discipline that I am not pressing STOP<br />exactly on the next beat, but I assume I'm not that much worse than<br />typical non-professionals.<br /><br /><br />Proposal:<br />Discard the pre-gap. The code basically does this now. It's probably right.<br />There's really no musical intent to be had there. Oh, egad, this post just paid for itself.<br />In the case of creating a multi-track loop, the pre-gap IS musical itent.<br />Back to the drawing board....<br /><br />What I wanted was a way to guess what the post-gap should be, in order<br />to provide a sensible default. I'm going to assign a knob to adjust<br />this value for experimentation.<br /><br />It appears that the underlying data model will have to be complex. I'm<br />guessing that the gap between note 1 and note 2, in the phrase, is<br />owned by note 1, because we know note 2's arrival time, and it<br />shouldn't need to know anything about note 1. The gap could be a rest-like pause event of some kind. It complexifies my player function, but perhaps not much.</p><p><br /></p>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-19549641946556226432023-04-12T19:48:00.004-04:002023-04-12T19:48:51.312-04:00No User-Servicable Parts Inside<p> </p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">N.B.
The Moties are the alien species from Larry Niven's novel "The Mote in
God's Eye." The watchmakers, or mini-moties, are like a sort of comensal
rats, or I'd offer that they are a smaller micro-me version of Mike
Meyer's clever idea of "Mini Me" in the Austin Powers movies. Very
clever. Not sentient. They just know what needs doing from observation
and do it. If we had them, they'd look like little people a foot tall,
or little chimps of that size, but, like rats, they stay out of sight.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />I've been skimming all the hype and some of the hysteria about AI. It's clear that we're going to be drowning in it.<br /><br />What
do you do when enough of the AIs in your environment get wonky and the
working ones aren't working well enough to put things back in order?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I think you have to one of two things that amount to the same solution.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">1)
The Moties just open all the airlock doors, depressurizing the habitat
and killing all the mini-Moties. Then they just a get box of a few
mini-Moties from somewhere and turn them loose. It might take a few days
before everything is running perfectly, but it works for them.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">2)
From 1979's Alien film: "I say we take off and nuke the site from
orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Okay, we won't need nukes, just a
favorite fictional invention of mine, the EMP hand grenade.. It's a
portable device that emits a loud 💥 and a bad 🦨 smell while
transmitting a powerful electromagnetic pulse. Depending upon the
severity of your infection, you might need a grenade per room.
Apartment-dwellers? Well, I don't know.<br /></span>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-81576875315796201242017-07-14T17:44:00.000-04:002017-07-14T17:44:18.312-04:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cQirXI4umeA/WWk6vv0lNPI/AAAAAAAAAxM/o4fQunm-gYsDwzGT-UbFUYVstXY96n66QCLcBGAs/s1600/Twin%2BPeaks%2B-%2BKathleen%2BDeming%2Bas%2BBeulah.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="1194" height="159" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cQirXI4umeA/WWk6vv0lNPI/AAAAAAAAAxM/o4fQunm-gYsDwzGT-UbFUYVstXY96n66QCLcBGAs/s320/Twin%2BPeaks%2B-%2BKathleen%2BDeming%2Bas%2BBeulah.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Kathleen Deming as Beulla, in the 2017 Twin Peaks. She does a huge job with just a scowl and a handful of words. I hope that we see her and her household again in the remaining episodes.<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-35967365890440352912014-07-25T10:45:00.000-04:002014-07-25T10:45:25.267-04:00Where to go for Self-Directed Investing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is choice in this market. These firms want your business. The largest firms with the TV ads are not the best rated. This choice basically depends upon your goals. If you are looking to explore, you'd like their site to offer research tools. If you know how to find out what you need to know, you can go for the best package of transaction-cost and services for you. You can test drive their web sites because (I believe) all of them let you open an account before depositing any money.<br /><br />Nerdwallet shows the $5.00/transaction brokers and rates them:<br />(None are fly-by-night. It looks like TradeKing is the winner)<br /><a href="http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/best-online-brokers/stock-trading-accounts/">http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/best-online-brokers/stock-trading-accounts/</a><br /><br />A nice set of capsule reviews (TradeKing wins again):<br /><a href="http://cashmoneylife.com/best-discount-brokerages/">http://cashmoneylife.com/best-discount-brokerages/</a><br /><br />Good summary of features in a table but a bit out of date:<br /><a href="http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/broker/fullcompare.aspx">http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/broker/fullcompare.aspx</a><br />Fool.com used to be a great source of information but it's gone downhill. I like Tom and David Gardner (founders) but the site has gone commercial in a big way.<br /><br />You will be fine with the web interface from any of the firms in those lists. I have never used TradeKing, but I would probably start there. I think they all let you open an account with no deposit, so you can test drive the user interface and see if you find it usable.<br /><br />I'm still with TD Ameritrade for two reasons:<br />1) Historical. This is the successor firm to the first internet brokerage, the old Datek.com. I still have my original account. <br />2) They bought out the ThinkOrSwim brokerage and got the nice Java-based trading platform which they provide for free and are continuing to develop. I've come to like it. You do not need this, and it's much harder to learn than a web interface.<br /><br />I need to move off of TD Ameritrade, at some point, for my more active trading. Their data feed is thinned and bursty and intentionally low-bandwidth. Their transaction routing is no longer optimal. Datek was famous for, and I experienced it myself, the fact that they optimized your routing and often you would get a better price than you asked for. That never happens any more. You won't find it elsewhere, either. You have to expect exactly what you asked for.<br /><br />Be insanely careful with your money, Okay? If you do go into this, talk to me about how to protect yourself in the market.<br /></div>
Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-7354264800002990182014-01-31T15:45:00.000-05:002014-02-02T01:19:29.257-05:00Please Try These At Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Inspired by my friend Paradox Olbers, here's my first annual list of security stuff that I recommend that you do. I will help you if you need help finding and setting your preferences.<br />
<br />
I follow all of these recommendations myself. In each tool, I enable all of the protections. I suggest that you do so as well. That will cause a very few slimy web sites to not work very well. You might have to list them as exceptions to the rules. The privacy and security rules should be strict. Complain to those sites. Not working correctly with modern security has become completely unacceptable.</div>
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Web browsers: use only Firefox or Iron (Google's Chrome minus privacy leaks)<br />
If your web browser is not Free (as in Freedom) Software or at least Open Source, they are hiding something. If you can't audit it or have it audited, it is not safe. Period. You've heard me say this before. The community-developed Free Software web browsers are actually better than the stuff that came with your computer---which can't be trusted. <br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="https://getfirefox.com/" target="_blank">Get Firefox</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php" target="_blank">Get Iron</a></li>
</ul>
On those more secure platforms install:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere" target="_blank">HTTPS Everywhere</a> to turn normal web connections into secure ones. This is from the Electronic Freedom Foundation, AKA the good guys.</li>
<li><a href="https://adblockplus.org/" target="_blank">Adblock Plus</a> to completely remove most advertising from your web experience. Ads can be deceptive, with simulated popups that look like real warning messages from your computer. Just say goodbye to all of them. Turn on the feature that blocks Adobe Flash until/unless you click on the movie to start it playing. Flash shouldn't be allowed to run unattended. </li>
<li><a href="https://ghostery.com/" target="_blank">Ghostery</a> is a tool that blocks the invisible trackers, monitors, beacons and other spyware that popular websites use or tolerate. Crank it up to 11. There is no reason to put up with any of this stuff. Turn on the popup that shows you all the spyware that it found and blocked per page. You will probably turn this feature off after a while. I leave on. It's pretty appalling, all this stuff that is hidden under most web pages. It invades your privacy by tracking you and it slows the entire web down. Slowing down the internet is bad. That's damage. We have to route around it.</li>
</ul>
If you have extremely good and pressing reasons that require you to use a commercial operating system, you need to plug the holes they left in. Get a top-quality antivirus/anti-spyware package (Kaspersky, Norton, AVG) and keep it updated. I don't consider that sufficient but I do consider it mandatory.<br />
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For Windows there's a free (as in price) version of AVG: <br />
<a href="http://www.filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus_64/download/c095290479919d5eb1aa2a8fc04dbf99/" target="_blank">AVG Free Edition 64-bit</a><br />
<a href="http://www.filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus_32/download/0e1bd7309e27efa9e3d85e076d14cbb0/" target="_blank">AVG Free Edition 32-bit </a><br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
</ul>
Don't use the same password on more than one web site. Don't use overly simple passwords. Follow the guidelines that each site will tell you, they are right to ask for better passwords.<br />
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Following these recommendations is not going to create peace in our time, but it will improve your security online.<br />
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People who sell or buy web advertising will say my stance is antisocial. Tough. Nobody ever said they were entitled to revenue streams. This isn't censorship. Content producers will claim that they will go out of business if you don't view the ads. Tough. If they reviewed all their ads, and insured your privacy, there would be no problem, but hey want to leave their pages full of messy invisible scripts and other stuff that you don't have control over. Except that now you do have control.<br />
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I need you to know that you have that control.<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-69960203836783348352014-01-30T14:09:00.000-05:002014-01-30T14:45:31.849-05:00Everyone is Equal and the Mail Must Go Through<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
That is the message that is the internet.<br />
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This is my rant, that I know is very much in the vein of Marshal McLluhan's "The Medium is the Message." Wikipedia's take on this work seems a bit off to me and I won't link to it. McLuhan was saying that the ultimate message of a medium is the medium itself. Broadcast radio or television is a few-to-all message. "The few of us decide what we provide to everyone."<br />
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The message that is contained in the very lowest layers, the autonomic system, of the internet is this: "Everyone is equal and the mail must go through." This was "an accident, really" because it was needed during the Cold War. Parts of the network might get blown up and the surviving parts would have to cooperate and reroute things so that messages could get through. This is serving us very well today because servers are always crashing and companies go out of business, but the mail goes through. Massachusetts moment: a lot of this autonomic layer was created near Fresh Pond in Cambridge at BBN. A bit later at BBN, at my first real job, I troubleshot some of the very first internet routers.<br />
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You probably connect to the internet through a cable company or a phone company. These companies are trying to extort money from popular internet sites because "we provide the customers to you." They want to slow down your connections to video sites that they don't own, unless they pay the extortion money, etc. They want to block access to whatever they want to or whatever the government (UK, China, US) dictates. This is what the "Network Neutrality" legal fight is about. There is no real question here at all. "Everyone is equal and the mail must go through." No tampering. No reading everybody's mail. No extortion. These companies must understand that they are providing a utility like water or electricity or we have to replace them and they will just die. "The mail must go through." I tell you: one antenna per housetop, no access companies at all. The technology is ready. <br />
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I cannot tell you how deeply this is written on my bones.<br />
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John Gilmore famously said "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." He was preaching to the choir, so I'll interpret. If all of the mail<i>, everyone's mail, everyone's opinion</i>, is not getting through, well, the internet is broken. We will wake up and re-route around the problem.<br />
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The internet does not consist of machines. It's made up of people.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf%27s_law"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf's_law</a> The people who feel this most deeply are the people of my age who were exposed to the message before the public implications of that message were even understood. For us, we'll carry it on our backs if we have to; the mail must go through. You'll see gals and guys of my age, all the way down to pre-teens, running around with wires and antennas yelling things like "Maybe we can route through Cleveland!" and "What about Canada?"<br />
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I think the long term future of the internet is secure, but there are going to be huge ugly legal and political battles. Nations and major corporations and business models will die. The message that is the internet is not the message of corporate interests. It is not compatible with a top-down government. I think it will get very ugly.<br />
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Internet people think about the very long term. Electricity might become scarce so some are raising pigeons:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers</a> It works. Today, avian data transfer speed is increasing at three times the rate of increase in electronic internet speeds.</div>
Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-87615316807308322112014-01-20T15:33:00.004-05:002014-01-20T15:33:54.062-05:00Cat urine vs. Digital Piano, Round 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Formerly-Feral-Fergus peed into my digital piano before settling down into his new home. <br />
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Round one was adjudicated as being won by the cat pee because the rubber-boot key contacts would not sit straight when the circuit board was slid over them from the end of the action.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UOIW545A-0A/Ut2CcAzy8XI/AAAAAAAAAKk/aLJrhsjGrk4/s1600/100_2560.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UOIW545A-0A/Ut2CcAzy8XI/AAAAAAAAAKk/aLJrhsjGrk4/s1600/100_2560.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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You can see pee-induced corrosion and the way that the boots are not all happily slotted-in. They have to be un-stressed in order to move freely.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v4HXzYidSoE/Ut2DZvtipDI/AAAAAAAAAKs/WxczgCEQ_FE/s1600/100_2559.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v4HXzYidSoE/Ut2DZvtipDI/AAAAAAAAAKs/WxczgCEQ_FE/s1600/100_2559.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
This shows the skews caused by trying to slide the tight-fitting circuit-board under the rubber boots. The boots are molded in long strips. There are three sections in the bass half of the keyboard. The contacts are graphite that is somehow applied to the bottom of the dents of the boots. Strike force is calculated by measuring the time between two switch events. If you look closely you can see two dents in each boot.<br />
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This instrument has a great deal of spill resistance in that the switching is capacitive and not based on making electrical contact. If it weren't for the fact that the urine crystalized, I think there would have been no problem. It still worked while it was wet. <br />
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I put one of the hammers on top of the keybed so you can see it. The hammers strike up through the slots from below and pass into the body of the key. They don't actually strike the keytop, though.<br />
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If you look carefully at the hammers, you'll see a round opening with a bushing. That's completely unused in this instrument. At first I thought it was a feature for a different action using these same hammers, but after removing most of them manually, I've figured it out. That bushing takes a rod. The rod is a tool that allow you to install or remove a bunch, maybe all, of the bushings in one operation.<br />
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Wish me luck. I like this instrument. It's a GEM (General Music, Italy) PRP-800. The GEM instruments had something to them that I can only call a traditional Italian craftsmanship. They didn't have a lot of glitzy features, and they didn't compete on technical specifications. They just have a musicality and responsiveness that's often lacking in sample-based instruments.<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-49795072467569018312014-01-04T21:09:00.002-05:002014-01-04T21:09:45.898-05:00Word for today: Panopticon. It's where the NSA has put you.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon" target="_blank">The Panopticon Prison designed by Jeremy Bentham in ~1790</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.aclu.org/meet-jack-or-what-government-could-do-all-location-data" target="_blank">ACLU.org article on NSA tracking of all cell phones all the time.</a><br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-30602892912816182112014-01-04T20:55:00.000-05:002014-01-04T20:59:26.141-05:00Edward Snowden and the Universal Panopticon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lD80gJ_X8HM/Usi8QZjK_II/AAAAAAAAAKM/vPx5BBt9XYQ/s1600/Snowden+image+from+NPR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lD80gJ_X8HM/Usi8QZjK_II/AAAAAAAAAKM/vPx5BBt9XYQ/s320/Snowden+image+from+NPR.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Edward Snowden is a great patriot and American hero of the current era. I am supremely glad that I'm only at most two (and really only one) link removed from someone who has collected all the Snowden documents and is studying them. I would spend too much time screaming and throwing things were I to be doing it myself.<br />
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The UK is now going after the editors of the Guardian. I wrote the following in response to Marty Hiller's post that links to a petition about that:<br />
<br />
I'm going to be very grouchy and extremely worried (more so than I am now) unless a lot of senior people go to jail for significant time. It's not as though this was not deliberate policy. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" and it's not as if people were ignorant. Reimplementing the Internet from scratch isn't going to be easy, but it's a simple technical problem. Simple fully open modern best practices would fix almost everything. But I'm not spending effort there. That solution stands or falls on getting "Grandma Sally" and the teens and tweens to use it. That's the real problem. That and the fact that the telcos will spend billions to fight being put back into their box of providing only packet-forwarding. I wouldn't even let them see routing information. There's no reason that can't be encrypted with the public key of a trusted, auditable DNS/routing service. This is going to be extremely ugly because the telcos will buy law as they usually do. And, no system is idiot-proof and disinformation about how to be secure will weaken almost anything I can think up.<br />
<br />
-----<br />
Writing for a different audience, I should strengthen that and explain myself a bit further. The NSA knows where every single cell phone in the world is, all the time, unless they are switched off. I wouldn't trust the off switch, if I were you. So, the NSA knows who your political associates are. Any information that's available to the government is available for abuse. Remember J. Edgar Hoover's little hobby of helping out presidents he liked?<br />
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I imply in the above that I'd accept simple encryption of packet headers (the internet is a packet network, information travels in packets and the packet routing header is like the address on a letter that you send via the Post Office). When I say encryption I'm talking about negotiated dynamically switched pluggable ciphers with keys that are secure against being broken for the foreseeable future. I'm talking about chaffing and winnowing on top of that and using all the obsolete fields in the headers in arcane ways. (I've done this.) I'm not sure if foreseeable should include Turing-complete (fully functional) quantum computers. It would be good if we could stay ahead of those things. They are still looking almost impossible to build, but some day the NSA will spend enough billions, and the week after that there'll be cheap counterfeit-but-working chips for sale on the street in Shanghai. Praying that that won't happen isn't going to do much good if it is physically achievable. Look at the books by David Deutsch for a glimpse of what physicists think is possible. "The Fabric of Reality" is a good place to start. Deutsch is a physicist at Oxford. He's not a New Age guy.<br />
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I got an offer a couple of weeks ago to be the CTO of a firm that intends to "make the internet safe." They've got a pile of academic research that they assume you'll be impressed by. It doesn't matter for one second what their technology is. It relies on getting "Aunt Sally", her friends, and all the teens and tweens of the world to drop the real Facebook and Twitter and G+ and SoundCloud, to go with their replacements in something like an opt-in web-of-trust world. Okay, so none of their friends is there....it's SAFE isn't it? Just how safe was your behavior when you were a teen? Besides, that web-of-trust world will last just as long as it takes someone's idiot uncle to add "that annoying guy at the office" to his trusted circles just to shut the guy up.<br />
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If we fix the obvious problem with the NSA tapping everything all time in the only way that will really work, most of the big telephone and networking and cablevision companies are going to die. If they can't see what you're watching, they don't have any information to sell. Solutions that involve trusting the government to clean house and remain clean-and-sober, are absurd. The only thing that can possibly work is an infrastructure that's inherently secure. We can do that. I know smart people who are working on the technical side right now.<br />
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Having a free, perfect, solution won't work. Aunt Sally needs to prefer that solution and go cold-turkey on Facebook.<br />
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The best infrastructure imaginable will still allow your child to give his address or phone number (maybe via evading pattern-matchers) to a predator in a chat room. That's why Eli Yudkowsky thinks we have to create trustworthy godlike artificial intelligences). I'm almost more afraid of that solution than I am of the alternative that he's afraid of.<br />
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This next decade is going to be interesting, in the traditional Chinese sense of "interesting."<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-19153920713806503242013-12-27T14:36:00.003-05:002013-12-27T14:38:51.560-05:00What I Look At<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--nmDv-NWD9M/Ur3R8pFW-9I/AAAAAAAAAJ8/cJtLgLBtMyE/s1600/Screenshot+from+2013-12-27+14%253A05%253A44.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--nmDv-NWD9M/Ur3R8pFW-9I/AAAAAAAAAJ8/cJtLgLBtMyE/s400/Screenshot+from+2013-12-27+14%253A05%253A44.png" width="400" /></a></div>
This is what I tend to be looking at when I'm doing programming work. It's subtle, but you can see the effect of rainbow-delimiters-mode on the second line of real code. Nested parens and braces get highlighted in different colors. It beats counting them! All the long explicit names are there so that some future maintainer can understand the code. There's way too much use of numeric constant indexes here. It's hard to make myself replace a one character 0 or 1 with the name 'base_offset', though. I'm not sure that would improve clarity. This is definitely not as clear as I would like.<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-72862043222383971262013-11-15T13:41:00.000-05:002013-11-15T13:49:46.070-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316#Kitchen_Computer" target="_blank">The Kitchen Computer </a></span></h2>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316#Kitchen_Computer" target="_blank"><img alt="The Kitchen Computer" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rIbEYSrpBQo/UoZnJq_yCXI/AAAAAAAAAI8/nn1c1btXzKw/s1600/Kitchen_computer_ad.jpg" /></a></div>
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It's the perfect computer for my kitchen. I'll have to find one. I'm sure you can play kill-the-bit on it while waiting for the food to cook. Check out the genuine vintage sexism in the original photo caption. Mind you, this is sexism from Neiman-Marcus PR flacks against a chef who can read binary and enter her recipes using toggle switches. My mother and aunt Jane hand-built mad scientist radar research prototypes at MIT during WWII. They never really wanted to learn to cook, though. I had to scrounge through the cupboards on my own.<br />
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The described UI is wonderful. It's too bad they don't have a photo of that part.<br />
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I knew this generation of computer hardware rather inimately. I hand-debugged H316 hardware in Alston, MA in the dead of night, part of my early internet plumbing days which extended to debugging Pluribae (plural of Pluribus?) at BBN. They had Tenex at BBN, of course, and I developed a sort of channeling skill where I could discover commands and APIs by absorbing the mindset of the developers. There was no documentation. Channeling the developers' mindset continues to come in handy.<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-80254394852550087252013-09-06T11:28:00.001-04:002013-09-06T11:28:28.716-04:00Giant map for my Chinese phase, which is still going strong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AJZvOLvwT7I/Uinz55Q6fzI/AAAAAAAAAHs/NsRXvNOBjDs/s1600/big+china+map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AJZvOLvwT7I/Uinz55Q6fzI/AAAAAAAAAHs/NsRXvNOBjDs/s320/big+china+map.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This thing is a real whopper of a map. It's the best topographic map of China that I've been able to find. I got it on eBay, which is where some of the greatest stuff washes-up.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">- HUGE Vintage Canvas Backed Roll Up Wall Map - China</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">- Canvas Backed</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">- Made in Germany by Denover Geppert</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">- BIG - 66" x 90"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"> </span></div>
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-36228817508396135202013-07-13T16:11:00.001-04:002013-07-13T17:08:31.708-04:00Reverb, verb, verb, verb, erb, erb, erb, buh, buh, buh....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LYm6Ie1xACQ/UeG15dfa5yI/AAAAAAAAAGw/Rq0wQLSGgRQ/s1600/reverb_rev1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LYm6Ie1xACQ/UeG15dfa5yI/AAAAAAAAAGw/Rq0wQLSGgRQ/s320/reverb_rev1.png" width="300" /></a></div>
<b>Ariesverb</b>, it doesn't get better than this. If you can just use the presets in the demo, get 0.7.6 beta demo. If you want to save your work and can live with a host-provided GUI, get 0.4, which sounds just as good to me. Insanely wonderful modulated tails to die for. You wouldn't think that modulation in the tail was important--I didn't--but it is.<br />
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<b>Wizooverb</b>, if you can find an old copy. One of my go-to reverbs along with Ariesverb. Great sound, great GUI. Wizoo is gone, and no one took it forward. Algorithmic and "High Def" Convolution. Cute trick: Convolution early refections fading into an algorithmic modulated tail, but you can get one or the other purely if you want. Sounds terrific, but more clinical than Ariesverb. I probably haven't played with it enough. I think it has modulation somewhere. Much, much more approachable than the latest Ariesverb which lets you play with the algorithms. Won't ever go 64bit, obviously. Where the heck is the code? It should be released, not chained. I'm an Open Source hacker.<br />
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<b>Ambience</b>. The go-to reverb for many people, but for some reason not me. Lots of people agree with the tag line "Rivals the quality of many commercial reverbs." Lots and lots and lots of great presets. Get it for this alone. Among the preset developers you'll see Rob Papen who is rather famous in the plugin world. Hey, I'm liking the presets right now as I write this.<br />
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<b>MuVerb</b>. Algo. From MuTools, makers of the MuLab audio production workstation. Original algos, not Synthedit. Really nice tails! Odd, but nice purple GUI. Seriously, this is a nice reverb and I need to start using it! Watch me put this up near the top of this list.<br />
<b><br />Reverberate LE</b>. Convolution with many controls. Commercial promo-ware which probably gets updated.<br />
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<u>Old freebies that are still useful, but will probably stay 32bit</u>:<br />
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<b>Epicverb</b> from Variety of Sound. He's still in business and has other great stuff. This is the go-to freeware reverb for many people. Algorithmic. Get the presets that are in another download. Nice GUI for a freebie! Not too many controls, but I have trouble controlling it.<br />
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<b>Revolverb Lite</b>. Convolution reverb for people who are non-technical. Three total controls, plus loading your convolution file. Sounds great, just like you'd expect a good 16bit convolution verb to sound like--despite the dated GUI. Was this the first freeware convolver? There never was a non-Lite version. Just get this. You'll like it. Download a few impulse response files and go to it. Search the forum (not the whole site) at kvraudio.com. This verb does not get enough attention.<br />
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<b>SIR</b> is the commonly-mentioned freeware convolver, but since it went commercial for V2.0, it's really in the same boat as Revolverb, but it works and offers more controls than revolverb.<br />
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<b>EVM V90</b>. I don't like all his plugs, but I have some affection for this one. Maybe it has some fixed modulation in the tails. Can go to huge hall/outer space sizes. Simple, cute, algo-only.<br />
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<b>Gigaverb</b>. Algo. Nobody but me seems to use it. I mentioned huge halls in EVM 90. Gigaverb is for when you really need spaces up to 300 meters in size and decays of up to a minute. Smooth! Good to have in your collection. Hard to find, get it here: http://www.mathieubosi.com/zikprojects/GigaverbVST.zip<br />
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<b>Antress ModernSpacer</b> (black or silver) The Modern-Foo plugins, and there are dozens, are a mixed bag, but this is a nice little algo reverb. Algo. Sounds pretty good to me. Hmmm, a quick check says it doesn't appear to be a Synthedit-made plug. I don't like his other verb. Remember that (pace Waldorf, Inc.) black sounds better.<br />
<br />
<b>Cinematic Reverb</b>. Algo, ancient GUI. Good sound, and can go into nearly infinite decay. I love infinite decay.<br />
<b><br />Freezechamber</b>. Algo. Speaking of infinite decays... This thing has a freeze button which keeps the reverb sound from decaying! I think it's just looping over the buffer, but with some smoothing so there's a clean loop. Doesn't sound like a loop, though. This is a serious product. Has manual, has MIDI controls. Just get it.<br />
<br />
<b>Empire 2</b>. An oldie from the well regarded spiritcanyonaudio.com. Nice sound, you get to select from the algorithms, which have helpful names like "Catacombs" and "Ballroom." Ugly but usable GUI. A professional product, really.<br />
<br />
<b>Hispasonic reverb, hispverb, Hispasoni</b>c. I don't know why this algo seems to sound better than the Freeverb it's based on. I think this is just a skin, really. Maybe it's the latin flavor. It has the "Olga synth" factor for me. I can't read the controls and have to experiment. Algo, the Freeverb algo.<br />
<br />
<b>Freeverb</b>. Algo. Many people like it. I don't use it or the Hispasonic version. Ugly but usable GUI. Has a convo version that I have not tried. Now has 64bit. In active development.<br />
<br />
<b>LIŚĆ VERB</b> (hey,with a name like mine, I can type this name correctly) Brand new. Synthedit. Is this the standard Synthedit reverb? Doesn't sound bad, and the GUI is rather nice. I want to like the guy whi makes these "Saltline" plugs. Has a weird freeze implementation that is hard to use, you have to turn a knob. I don't love the sound. Maybe that's just me? I haven't seen any reviews.<br />
<br />
<b>Mverb</b>. Wusik did a new GUI for this classic algo. Get it from their site. I like the "quad" version which gives you two reverbs in parallel in one plugin. I used that for flexible early reflections using one, and tail from the other. See the original Novaflash-style GUI on the single version and recoil in horror. No offense to that artist, I just don't get his GUI designs. I just picked up the 64bit versions since I was writing this.<br />
<br />
<b>Reverbering</b>. Rather old, but I like what I heard just now. Bizarre GUI, good sound, very few presets--but nice ones.<br />
<br />
<b>GlaceVerb</b>. A current favorite of many people. Nice sound, seriously great GUI, with a checkerboard display of the room you've created. A professional product all around. Can't go wrong with this one. See their new synth plugs, too, but I have not tried them.<br />
<br />
<b>Reverb-O-Matic</b>. Fun! Moorer's six comb filter algo. File name moorereverb differs from the plugin name I seen in Reaper (Reverb-O-Matic). You can get wild interacting chaotic echos with the six LP coefficient sliders. Eccentric GUI. Wear sunglasses or ingest substances before opening. Wild fun!<br />
<b><br />RoomMachine844</b>. Algo. Old GUI looks like a drawing of a rackmount. Decay control seems to operate backwards. Some people love this thing and it doesn't sound bad. It was a go-to for a while in the freeware scene. Original algos.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Space360</b>. One of those interesting reverb plugs that show you the parameters as speakers and a human head in a room, but, no, you can't drag the icons. I can't get good results right away with this and I dropped it. You might do well with it.<br />
<br />
Last but not least: <b>Algorverb</b>. Simple, clean GUI. Really nice sound. Original algos. A forgotten gem. I love this one. You can push it into oscillation, and infinite decay. A grand total of four presets, but it's so simple that it's ultra easy to make your own sounds. Six total sliders. No other controls. Mayhem if you want it.<br />
<br />
That's all folks. That's the contents of my Reaper reverbs folder. Try not to ask me about my old EnergyXT reverb folder. It's scary in there.<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-29562835550728540832013-06-29T13:00:00.001-04:002013-06-29T13:00:32.594-04:00Type non-English characters easily on Linux or any X-windows system!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The following works extremely well and does not break anything for typical users of English-language keyboards.<br />
<br />
You have to edit the ~/.Xmodmap (traditional name, any file name is okay) then do this in your init (.bashrc or .profile):<br />xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap<br /><br />You are telling the xmodmap program to load custom keystrokes for this login session.<br /><br />Below is the edit to get a Compose key that enables most Unicode characters such as the í in my name or the the â in the French château. I once broke the â in a Digital Equipment product, and you hear from the French, immédiatement if you do that! To get that â, you hold down a special key call Compose, (like a shift key) type the a, which does not show immediately, and follow it with the ^ key. This works for any vowel. Other sequences are similarly obvious. Just try it until it works for you.<br />Type Compose-i' to get the í in my name.<br /><br />keycode 133 = Multi_key<br /><br />That's the entire content of my .Xmodmap. It turns the Windows key into the Compose key. Works for just about any well-behaved program, LibreOffice, browsers, etc.<br /><br />This is a universal (any X-windows system) solution.<br /><br />I find this super useful because it gets you French and Spanish, German, and most European languages with no fooling around. Asian and Aramaic languages are harder to do and having a dedicated keyboard would be the best thing. Experts in a language might be able to manage with an English keyboard, but not me.<br /><br />See this page for a readable, if simplistic, tutorial:<br />http://www.3till7.net/2005/12/28/non-english-characters-in-linux/<br />I just found that via Google.<br /><br />The official technical docs make this look really hard. It's not hard!<br /><br />Thanks to Aron Insinga, who inspired me to write the first draft of this. Anyone: please correct me if I'm wrong about some detail or failed to explain something well enough.<br />
<br />
I once had all 14 Digital Equipment Co. keyboards in my office there.<br />
<br />
Anyone: Please correct me if I got something work or failed to explain something well enough. <br />
<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-24641454441268069272013-06-26T21:06:00.000-04:002013-06-26T21:06:45.605-04:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1IhUZyKqY1I/UcuP4UZ1lII/AAAAAAAAAGc/K4DgNdFbb84/s1600/full-mixer-view2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1IhUZyKqY1I/UcuP4UZ1lII/AAAAAAAAAGc/K4DgNdFbb84/s320/full-mixer-view2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
More skeuomorphism in the music software world.<br /><br />This guy is a design genius with the artistic clout to make it happen. Seriously he does UIs for hardware and software. It's insane that this is free. It's going to be my main platform for making music. I was already in the process of moving off of EnergyXT (abandonware), but this skin makes Reaper like having a wonderful huge mixer to work with.<br /><br />Okay, so why am I endlessly posting about skeumorphic interfaces when I am a noted objector to them? I object when the metaphor doesn't work well enough or when the implementation is harder to use than a simple UI using the platform-native widgets.<br />
<br />
What you get here in this mixer skin is a number of what Don Norman
calls affordances--the way a polished metal panel on a door affords
(suggests) pushing. Here the controls are so very 'tactile' that the
sliders afford sliding, the knobs, turning and the buttons being pushed.<br />
<br />
Here the 3D element provides an excellent set of contrasts
in the differing kinds of knobs, along with the physical beauty. The
artist is fully conversant with traditional mixing boards and is using
that set of controls and layout. It's not slavish, though, it takes
advantage of things like tooltips and and pop-up menus. It's not a
replica of any specific vintage console, but it speaks to my heart.<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-62609379597963935572013-06-22T10:25:00.000-04:002013-06-22T11:51:08.699-04:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>A piece of outstanding skeuomorphic art:<u> <a href="http://www.sknote.it/XTrim.htm" target="_blank">XTrim</a></u> from <a href="http://sknote.it/">Sknote.it</a> </b><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-04s8nDCF-ow/UcWr3abL3hI/AAAAAAAAAGM/IsGODT-clyw/s1600/XTrim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-04s8nDCF-ow/UcWr3abL3hI/AAAAAAAAAGM/IsGODT-clyw/s320/XTrim.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<b>Functional Art </b><br />
<br />
It's an audio processing plugin made to look like a vacuum-tube era studio device. You need a music or audio processing program as a host for this VST format plugin.<br />
<br />
XTrim works very well and retains all of its skeumorphism as it does. Rotate the knobs and the specular highlights (bright spots) stay in place as the knob rotates very, very precisely, meaning hundreds of images were made for each knob. Despite the incredible skeumorphism it provides extremely precise adjustments.<br />
<b><br />Narrowing and Panning</b><br />
<br />
One piece of its functionality that I use is the stereo field narrowing and panning. Many physical and virtual synthesizers produce exaggerated stereo (which sounds good in the music store, or in a demo) which becomes difficult in a mix. Imagine several different instruments, each with its own idea of the stereo field. You can't meaningfully move them to toward the left or right. You can merge to mono, and then pan, but the phase shifts that create the stereo field then become phase cancelations that greatly alter the tone and behavior. What you need, and what this tool does, is to narrow the stereo field of each instrument to taste and then be able to move the instrument to where you want it. After I saw this thing, I had to have it, just looking at the images, but it is extremely useful just for this one of its features. This is just one (two, really) of its features. I could implement these features now that I understand the idea, using several different plugins with different user interfaces and different ways of storing settings. I certainly won't do that when Sknote offers this lovely piece of work for $19.99. If I want to, I can use one on each instrument in a mix.<br />
<br />
<b>Copy Protection that can't get in your way</b><br />
<br />
The copy protection is only a small overlay of the purchaser's name at the bottom, which is a nice, classy touch.<br />
<br />
<b>One possible improvement</b><br />
<br />
What do I think could be improved? The labels are deliberately fairly low contrast against the background. The graduations around the knobs are fine, but at the standard fixed size of the GUI, the labels are hard to read, and made harder by the acronyms. I think the labels need to be a bit brighter. The acronyms are standard ones and should be kept for space reasons as on the original devices.<br />
<br />
<b>The company</b><br />
<br />
Quinto Sardo of Sknote answers email quickly and provides excellent customer service.<br />
<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-79576619168295961522012-12-08T20:12:00.000-05:002012-12-08T20:12:11.059-05:00Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you know his name, all I have to say is "He's got another book out." This is the author of "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan."<br />
<br />
I'm not finished with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Gain-Disorder/dp/1400067820/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355015342&sr=8-1&keywords=antifragile" target="_blank">Antifragile</a> yet, but I can tell you that it's a
rant. The good thing about it is that it's his third book. He doesn't
have to prove anything and he lets his hair down and just blasts at
anything he doesn't like. And that makes it rather fun.
<br />
<br />Despite the fact that he seems to have met Stuart Kauffman, he doesn't
seem to realize that 'antifragility' is pretty similar in concept to
self-organization and self-assembly. Self-assembly requires an energy
source like the buffeting of random inputs that he describes.
Everything he talks about that is antifragile is really
self-organizing--that's how it retains its recognizable shape in a
turbulent environment.
<br />
<br />Really this manuscript should have been passed through the Santa Fe
Institute crowd (not that they've produced anything notable since
Langton's Ant), but that would have cut the legs out from under it.
<br />
<br />One thing I like about Taleb is that he's the complete reverse of many
of the authors whose books I've read about markets.
I've read entirely too many (planning to read more) books by academics
about the stock market. Taleb is a stock market technician who made
good, now bailed out of that field and using his one toolbox on the rest
of the world. And he hates intellectuals and philosophers who don't
have any experience in the areas that they talk about. Of course.
<br />
<br />I have the feeling that I'd find him quite charming in person, but this
book makes me want to shake him and yell "Get over yourself!"
<br />
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-78806737590954356362012-08-20T14:32:00.002-04:002012-08-20T14:40:11.737-04:00not without some Pitiliness....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Jorge Luis Borges on maps: <br />
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<tr valign="top"><td colspan="16" width="48%"><b><i><span style="color: maroon; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"></span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="color: maroon; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">On Exactitude in Science </span></i></b><b><span style="color: maroon; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">.
. . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection
that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and
the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those
Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds
struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which
coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were
not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw
that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was
it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In
the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that
Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other
Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.</span></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658</span></i></b><br />
<b><span style="color: teal; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;">From </span></b><b><i><span style="color: teal; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;">Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley Copyright Penguin 1999 .</span></i></b></div>
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Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-81467367116735353222012-08-08T17:45:00.002-04:002012-08-08T18:02:57.755-04:00"Bitter Seeds" and "The Coldest War" by Ian Tregillis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you love literature, get these books. The second one is just out in hardcover and is totally worth the hardcover price. If you like monsters<br />
versus wizards, you will find that here, but be prepared for<br />
spectacular prose. Warning, there's a third volume that the publisher<br />
has scheduled for mid-2013. These are self-contained novels with<br />
endings, though. Not like a lot of what one sees.<br />
<br />
Speaking as a writer, I tell you that this is a writer who can handle<br />
exquisitely everything that he assays here. That's rare. As a species we tend to put our best foot forward. I'm not sure this guy has a less-best foot at all.<br />
<br />
Imagine a 19th century literary novelist with the delicacy of a<br />
Nabokov, the sledgehammer of a Jennifer Levin, and the effortless<br />
style of a Chandler or a Salinger. Maybe not so effortless.<br />
He's so good that it's a bit effort intensive at least on my part<br />
as a reader. He will make you think. He will make you question<br />
what is right.<br />
<br />
He's got the epic stage of World War II. He's got a classic<br />
British spy novel with a madman worthy of Mary Shelley. He's got<br />
the handful of dregs, the final generation, of English warlocks<br />
forced out of hiding by a minor aristocrat whose grandfather was<br />
a warlock. They are all that stand between civlization and the<br />
monsters. They are a handful of old men.<br />
<br />
Initially innocent evil supermen created (with suitable horror) as weapons<br />
by the Nazis. English warlocks who really should (and did) know<br />
better than to....<br />
<br />
The idea of the Enochian language is a favorite of mine and it is a<br />
thread that Tregillis weaves through the books. I first learned<br />
of it when I was collecting unusual fonts. Need I say "John Dee?"<br />
<br />
<br style="color: red;" />
<span style="color: red;">Spoilers Below</span><br />
<br />
He has situations such as: We took X course of action, which was<br />
morally wrong, but appeared the lesser of two evils. It may have<br />
been the lesser, but it has failed, and the consequences have<br />
come home. What do we do now?<br />
<br />
And this: The enemy precognitive (seer) has defected to us. We know<br />
the enemy's been getting increasingly unhappy with this person. What<br />
do we do? The precognition has been proved. Can we take *any*<br />
course of action, given that we know that the precog exists, that is<br />
not a part of some unknowable plan on the part of the precog? Is it,<br />
ummm, *okay* that our actions appear to lead ultimately to something<br />
that the hostile and possibly insane precog wants? "Ah, damn it!.<br />
This is where the precog *learns* fact Y from us and transmits it<br />
back...." So it's a full classical time-travel story, too. I find<br />
classical time travel stories are like intricate mechanical puzzles<br />
where everything depends on everything else. If you're honest and<br />
know what you're doing.<br />
<br />
I think you'll have a lot of fun with these books.</div>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-72228455712154005602012-05-25T20:41:00.000-04:002012-05-25T20:43:25.863-04:00The Big Move<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On May 29th, we're going to watch a team of movers load all our stuff<br />from the apartment and our self-storage locker. On the 30th we're<br />going to drive our two cars, three cats, six birds and an uncountable<br />number of computers from Philadelphia, PA to Oneida, NY. On the 31st,<br />our stuff will be delivered to our new apartment, where we will have a<br />lot more space for about 2/3 the rent we are paying here.<br /><br />Oneida is upstate, between Syracuse and Utica. It has the virtue of<br />being on I90. Yes, it is the ancestral home of Oneida silverware, the<br />Oneida "People of the Standing Stone" Native Americans, and the Oneida<br />religious community founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848. It's a<br />pretty place, very rural, but not remote. The residents complain<br />about traffic when there are more than two vehicles in sight.<br /><br />The relocation (and its funding) are for Jen's new job as a primary<br />care physician. It comes with relocation expenses, substantial<br />payment of her medical school debt, and eligibility for the New York<br />State Underserved Area medical loan repayment program. She's already<br />spent a week up there learning the ropes and even seeing patients on<br />her own. She went straight from med school into research and from<br />there into the pharmaceutical industry, so this is a major career<br />change for her. She got very tired of being the person who had to<br />tell the marketing people "No, that research study does NOT let you<br />make that claim!" Supposedly it's hard to get a medical licence in<br />New York, but they were the first state to licence her after she took<br />the national exam.<br /><br />I will continue to work on my trading and develop software for Limelight Networks. They cache and optimize video delivery for video-heavy web sites.</div>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5997912318620014733.post-91459663972465302822011-12-23T22:24:00.000-05:002011-12-23T22:24:07.688-05:00Television<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Would you allow giant corporations to run a pipeline into your brain?<br />
<br />
All of the technological optimism that the early television movement was fraught with has been entirely overcome by the inevitable implications of the one-to-many broadcast model. This was not seen at first because the model that television was compared to was that of radio, a medium which required imagination in its audience. In fact, radio eventually succumbed to centralization by giant corporate conglomerates as it would have even in the absence of television.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Eiríkur Hallgrímssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12252813254582656174noreply@blogger.com0