Entries Tagged 'Geek' ↓

This is what the USA needs: Macgyver for President.

I don’t vote in the US, but I’m sure I can get a few votes for him.

Google Talk is available for download. GMail account required to use it, though.

Text and voice messaging, by the way.

If anyone wants to try it, I’m “wafonso”.

So, I decided that I need want (and can afford) a portable MP3 player. Therefore, I’m looking for one. What I want is:

• very small and light
• long battery life
• at least 512MB

The first two requisites point to a Flash-based player, and the third one removes from the running all of the really cheap ones. After some (admittedly not very extensive) research, my two choices at the moment are the iPod Shuffle and the Sony Network Walkman NW-E405 (and its brothers 407/505/507).

The Sony models have in their favour that they are beautiful, the battery lasts for up to 50 hours (and a three-minute recharge gives you three hours of use), they have a display and there’s the option of an integrated FM tuner. Against them, I’m told that their music management software is terrible (but you can bypass it, apparently), they won’t talk to iTunes and they’re more expensive. The iPod has in its favour that, well, it’s an iPod. And it’s cheaper and slightly lighter, besides having those cool white earphones. But Apple is apparently not very nice if you want to use your iPod with two computers, and that’s a problem for me; the relatively short battery life (12 hours) is also a problem.

The iPod costs $149, and the cheapest Sony model costs $239. What I have to decide is whether the advantages of the Walkmans are worth 90 dollars (those are Australian dollars).

Would anyone have any comments on any of them? Advocacy is cool, and pointers to other candidates would be welcome as well.

Someone in a mailing list mentioned that 2005 will have a leap second on 31 December, just before the year ends (ABC has a nice report about this). This means that the minute starting at 23:59:00 on that day will have 61 seconds (23:59:57, 23:59:58, 23:59:59, 23:59:60, 00:00:00).

This is caused by the rotation of Earth slowing down, and is not that uncommon; the last time we had a leap second was in 1998.

In any event, this gives geeks an amusing little thing to do on new year’s parties: try to convince as many people as you can to count “…4, 3, 2, 1, 1, happy new year!”.

It may not work, but you will get lots of geek points by trying.

For those who thought Microsoft was still living in the past (Win95 = Mac89 etc.), guess what? It’s true!

Lifehacker notes that, not only Microsoft’s Virtual Earth does not show the Apple headquarters because their images are too old, they still show the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York.

That does explain a lot.

No spoilers, you can keep reading.

This is something that’s been bugging me for a while… the Hogwarts students (and, possibly, all other wizards and witches) could really use a Wikipedia-like resource! Or at least their own version of Google. How many times have they had to spend countless hours looking for some obscure piece of information in dusty old books? They need a search engine and a better repository of information.

Yes, I know, they can’t use electronic devices inside the walls of Hogwarts. But surely they would be able to do something like that by, hmmm, magic. Really, guys, it’s the 21st century, get on with the times. There are good galleons to be made by providing a service like this to your fellow wizards.

This is very nice. The new Boeing 777-200LR planes are undergoing flight tests and FAA certification, and Boeing is writing a blog about the process.

There are only two entries so far, but it promises to be very interesting.

Two weeks ago, I was introduced to Doctor Who, the classic (and traditionally low-budget) BBC sci-fi series. Yes, that’s right, I had never watched a single episode until now. And I started with the first episode of the new series, being shown now by ABC here in Australia.

I more or less knew what to expect from the series (from reading about it here and there on the net), and was not disappointed: it is very good! My feeling, though, is that you do have to know what to expect in order to like it straight away. Their budget is clearly much higher now than for the old series, and the special effects are definitely very good. Storylines are interesting as well; of the two I watched so far, “The End of the World” (the second one) was better, but both were good.

For those who, like me, are not familiar with the story (and history) of the series, which started in 1963, kuro5hin has published a timeline that makes up for very interesting reading. And I will be keeping an eye on the series from now on. In Australia, it is on ABC at 7:30pm every Saturday; next week’s episode is #3, “The Unquiet Dead”.

As I work, the movie “Contact” is playing on a 24-inch LCD screen a few meters away; yes, it makes it a little harder to concentrate, but I’ve watched the film enough times that I actually remember most of the dialogues word by word.

I think it’s a great movie, and a very good adaptation of the book. Even the parts that are different are quite nicely done, and usually for a good reason (I still wish they had made Dr. Arroway meet the rich guy (Hadden) in Babylon, though). The terrorist act is much more spectacular in the movie than in the book, if my memory serves me right.

One thing that does bother me, though, is one part of the Congressional enquiry in which the “prosecutor” argues that it would be possible to fake a signal from Vega using a satellite. It isn’t. If there were only one place receiving the transmission, yes, it might be possible; but you can’t shadow Vega from being seen from anywhere everywhere on Earth with one satellite, or even with a large network of them. And you can’t predict all the listening locations; even if you use one satellite for every large radiotelescope out there, there would be smaller antennas being used, or even being built after the message started, that would be pointing to Vega and getting nothing. And Dr. Arroway should know that.

Or am I wrong? I would actually like to be, but I don’t think I am.

A group at the MIT is promoting the first (and, possibly, the last — you only need one) Time Traveller Convention. It will be next Friday, in the East Campus Courtyard (42°21’36.025″N, 71°05’16.332″W).

Even if you can’t attend, you can help by publicising it and making sure that people from the future, when time travel is invented, know about it so that they can attend.

Why do you need my help?

We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

Great idea, I’d love to help! What should I do?

Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

You can also make an absolute commitment to publicize the convention afterwards. In that case, bring a time capsule or whatever it may be to the party, and then bury it afterwards.

Closer to home, and with apparent official support, the City of Perth has appointed Forrest Place (31°57’7″S, 115°51’32″E) at noon (GMT+8) on March 31st, 2005 as Destination Day, a reunion place (and time) for all future time travellers. It is a little disheartening, though, that the day has passed with no visible tourists from the future.

The User Friendly guys are coming down under…

I’ve finally managed to get my hands on the new O’Reilly magazine, Make. Yes, one of the disadvantages of being on the other side of the world (with respect to the USA) is that things take a little longer to get here…

As I was browsing it last week while “Better Homes and Gardens” was on TV, I couldn’t help but noticing that there are similarities between the magazine and that show… sort of a “Better Hacks and Gadgets”, so to speak. It’s a book-lenght (and format) magazine, filled with projects to be made at home; lots of geek appeal, as only O’Reilly could do. Project include building a $14 steady-cam, using a kite to do aerial photography (with a silly-putty timer) and others. Plus, lots of geeky-content, “life hacks” and cool stuff in general.

It’s a quarterly magazine, and the next edition will come out in May (which means it will probably get here in mid to late June). There are lots of web content as well: besides their website, they have a blog, a photo pool on Flickr, a del.icio.us link stream, and a huge fan base. Definitely recommended.

Seeing as the Iron Chef (see also this) seems to be a very popular show with IT professionals, I bring you… Iron Hacker!

Nearly a decade ago, a man’s fantasy became reality in a form never seen before: Coding Stadium, a giant hacking arena. The motivation for spending his fortune to create Coding Stadium was to encounter new, original programming, which could be called true, artistic creations. To realize his dream, he started choosing the top hackers of various languages of programming, and he named his men the Iron Hackers, the invincible men of code hacking skill. Iron Hacker Assembler is Rokusaburo Michiba; Iron Hacker Perl is Hiroyuki Sakai; Iron Hacker C is Chen Kenichi; and Masahiko Kobe is Iron Hacker Python.

Coding Stadium is the arena where Iron Hackers await the challenges of master hackers from all over the world. Both the Iron Hacker and challenger have one hour to tackle the theme of the day. Using all their senses, skills, creativity, they’re to prepare artistic programs never ran before. And if ever a challenger wins over the Iron Hacker, he or she will gain the people’s ovation, and fame forever. Every battle, reputations are on the line in Coding Stadium, where master hackers pit their artistic creations against each other. What inspiration will today’s challenger bring, and how will the Iron Hackers fight back? The heat will be on!

Now all I need is a producer. Any takers?

Now, this is cool… I was mentioned in the November 1st “Daily Source Code”, by Adam Curry, thanks to a comment I sent him regarding a Gilberto Gil song he played. The audio is here, and I’m mentioned some 61 minutes into the show (but listen to everything, it’s all good).

Very interesting article in the latest Wired magazine about the strong open-source (and Creative Commons) support in Brazil, both by Brazilians and by the government: We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin.

The magazine, currently on sale, comes with a CD filled with, in the words of Adam Curry, RIAA-free music, including Oslodum, by Gilberto Gil. This song, as all others in the CD, can be redistributed and shared freely. Enjoy!