cafe zeno: October 2004 Archives

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October 29, 2004

Playlist : Glenn Gould, J.S.Bach's English Suites

These are the 70s recordings remastered as part of the Sony Glenn Gould Edition. The recordings started in 1971 and finished in 1976.

Apparently written for a patron suffering from insomnia, the 6 Suites consist of sets of dances ...
- Prelude, Allemand, Courante,
- Double, Sarabande, Menuett, Passepied, Gavotte, Bourree,
- Gigue

Posted by sjc at 11:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 28, 2004

Bob Dylan Live 1964

The Bootleg Series, Halloween Evening, October 31, 1964. With Joan Baez. Tracks include

1.1. The Times They Are A-Changin'
1.2. Spanish Harlem Incident
1.3. Talking' John Birch Paranoid Blues
1.4. To Ramona
1.5. Who Killed Davey Moore?
1.6. Gates of Eden
1.7. If you Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got To Stay All Night)
1.8. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
1.9. I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
1.10. Mr. Tambourine Man
1.11. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
2.1 Talkin' World War III Blues
2.2 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
2.3 The Lonesome death of Hatie Carrol
2.4. Mama, You've Been On My Mind*
2.5. Silver Dagger*
2.6. With God On Our Side*
2.7. It Ain't Me, Babe*
2.8. All I Really Want To Do

* with Joan Baez

Posted by sjc at 4:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Meme Machine.

The New York Times discovers memes. "The Web is obsessed with anything that spreads, whether it's a virus, a blog or a rumor. And so the Internet loves memes.[1]" Then, in appropriate mimetic fashion, it quotes various blogs about memes ...

http://antidote.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/meme
http://iampariah.com/projects/memeslist.php
http://memes.org
http://memecentral.com/
http://mindingtheplanet.net
http://nodalpoint.org/node.php?id=1539
http://quotesexchange.com/2004/08/help-make-blogs-more-visible-05.html
http://snopes.com
http://streetmemes.com
http://Vmyths.com

[1] "A meme (rhymes with 'dream') is a unit of information -- a catchphrase, a concept, a tune, a notion of fashion, philosophy or politics. Memes compete with one another and are passed through a population in much the same way as genes pass through a species. Good strong memes can change minds, alter behaviour, catalyse collective mindshifts and transform cultures. In our information age, whoever has the memes has the power." Kalle Lasn, "The Meme Machine," The Ecologist, April, 2000.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2465/is_2_30/ai_62053052

Posted by sjc at 3:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Meet Science Teacher Qrio

Meet Science Teacher Qrio. It can walk, talk, dance and play soccer. It’s a cute silver-coloured toddler weighing around 7 kg and standing tall at 23 inches. It will greet you in English but if you quiz further the reply is bound to be in Japanese. It’s named Qrio (Quest for curiosity), the first running humanoid robot unveiled by Sony.

Qrio is in town to encourage scientific temper in young minds. When the Qrio Science Program was unveiled at Delhi Public School, RK Puram on Tuesday anxious students welcomed the shining toddler with a hearty applause. Created by the National Federation of UNESCO Associations in
Japan (NFUAJ) and Sony, the Qrio Science Program, India is the first destination for Qrio outside Japan. The Qrio Science Program is an educational initiative that aims to stimulate curiosity about science
and nurture and develop creative thinking amongst students. educational initiative that aims to stimulate curiosity about science.

Source: Science teacher named Qrio, Smitha Vijay, Hindustani Times, New Delhi, October 26, http://www.htnext.com/news/5922_1075908,001500230000.htm

Posted by sjc at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2004

Wind and Lightening

"Wind and Lightning: A Half-Century of Magazine Design by Sugiura Kohei"
is a multimedia retrospective of the work of one of Japan's foremost
designers of magazines and books. This online exhibit offers not only numerous color images of Sugiura's imaginative designs for nearly a dozen magazines, but also (in a first
for The Book & The Computer) several animated sequences of his work,
viewable with QuickTime.

The exhibit is a special feature of The Book and the Computer Journal which explores the future of the printed word in the digital age.

Posted by sjc at 1:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2004

iDebate in the Creative Commons

engadget.com uses this image from joi ito where it leads to a discussion of the creative common. The discussion unfortunately refers to "this particular image", and not the original photograph(s) that "ispired" it, or the Apple ads that it riffs on.

Posted by sjc at 6:59 PM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2004

Robot Use to Surge Sevenfold by 2007

AP reports on the United Nations Robots 2004 study:

"The use of robots around the home to mow lawns, vacuum floors, pull guard duty and perform other chores is set to surge sevenfold by 2007, says a new U.N. survey, which credits dropping prices for the robot boom.

"The report, issued Wednesday by the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe and the International Federation of Robotics, says 607,000 automated domestic helpers were in use at the end of 2003, two thirds of them purchased last year. Most of them - 570,000 - were robot vacuum cleaners. Sales of lawn-mowing robots reached 37,000.

"By the end of the decade, the study says, robots will "also assist old and handicapped people with sophisticated interactive equipment, carry out surgery, inspect pipes and sites that are hazardous to people, fight fire and bombs."

URL:

U.N.: Robot Use to Surge Sevenfold by 2007, Jonathan Fowler, AP, Oct 20, 9:07 PM (ET), http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041021/D85RGNNO0.html

UNECE issues its 2004 World Robotics survey, http://www.unece.org/press/pr2004/04robots_index.htm>

Posted by sjc at 7:52 AM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2004

Thinking Robots, an Aware Internet, and Cyberpunk Librarians

Cyberpunks use all available data input to think for themselves.

You know who they are.

Timothy Leary, "The Individual as Reality Pilot" in Storming the Reality Studio edited by Larry McCaffery (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 245, 253. as quoted in Thinking Robots, an Aware Internet, and Cyberpunk Librarians>, by Hans Moravec, Bruce Sterling, and David Brin, The 1992 LITA President's Program Presentations

Posted by sjc at 1:39 PM | Comments (0)

Timothy Leary's Mind Mirror

"The purpose of a mirror is to reflect."

Timothy Leary's Mind Mirror is a "game" published in 1985 by Electronic Arts. It's a "game" only in the sense that no one can otherwise make heads or tails of it - there is no winning, no losing, no scoring. It is, however, deeply interactive, multi-media (of sorts), and hypertextual. Each play of the game results in a mind map - of you, your family, oyour friends, of a leader in history, your pet cat.

The vendor observed "Mind Mirror allows the performer to digitize (scope) any thought, compare it with other thoughts and compare thoughts with others, and to engage in simulation of various roles." MobyGames classified it as a Zen / Meditative sport.

Popularly considered "abandonedware", a 16 page "user manual" (pdf) and an executable MS-DOS version (zip) can be downloaded from The Underdogs.

Links:
Bonesy Jones, Timothy Leary: biography, bibliography, filmography, links, PosSubCulture Bibliography Project, 2001.
Sean Kearney, tim.html,The Increasing Intelligence Project, 2004.
Scott Thomas, Alter Egos and Mind Mirror, Compute Magazine, 1987.

Posted by sjc at 9:41 AM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2004

Keitai Blog from Tokyo Gameshow 2004

Tokyo Gameshow 2004 was held in Chiba, Nippon Convention Center (Makuhari Messe), September 25 and 26. Next year, it will be held from September 16th through 18st.

URL: http://tgs.cesa.or.jp/english/index.htm

Posted by sjc at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2004

Humanoid Robots : QRIO and HOAP-2

NewScientist.com news service reports on the 2004 Intelligent Robotics and Systems (IROS) conference (Sendai, Japan). Some of the latest entertainment bots Japan demonstrated their stuff.

Sony's miniature humanoid, QRIO performed some impressive tricks for onlookers - automatically navigating an assault course, dancing, and even roller-skating (3.07 MB Windows Media).
Fujitsu's HOAP-2, a less sophisticated but nonetheless impressive specimen demonstrated performing traditional Japanese sumo-wrestling ... Dohyo-iri (ring entering ceremony) (1.99 MB Windows Media) moves. [Note: a collection of Yokozuna Dohyo-iri is available at banzuke.com (real media).]

URL: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996507

Posted by sjc at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

Concept Centaur

From time to time Segway's product development team devotes days, or even weeks, to creating new product concepts with the goal of finding a prince among frogs. It's a product exploration process they call "frog kissing." During this time, engineers and designers are encouraged to use any available materials in a very short time frame to prove a concept will work. Concept Centaur is a challenge to the way we think about four-wheeled transportation.

URL: http://origin.www.segway.com/centaur/

Posted by sjc at 9:10 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2004

Ubiquitous Computing for Higher Education Programs

Oqo's Handeld Computer, available today This morning, Russ Agne brought me a copy of Anne Thompson's article Ubiquitous Computing for Teacher Education Programs which describes how Iowa State's College of Education is building it's program around ubiquitous computing -- supporting both undergraduate learning and professional practice.

The google search for the article led to several other good resources, particularly the Handheld Devices for Ubiquitous Learning Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Posted by sjc at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2004

Blogging at Middlebury

Middlebury College has several blog like projects.

The first is a classical Movable Type based "open" installation : http://mt.middlebury.edu/. Some developed examples include Barbara Ganley's ArtsWriting.

Another, somewhat earlier project based on Manila, is the CETblogs site supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. An exaple there includes Prof. Banley's earlier ArtsWriting blog.

The third is Segue, an open source content management system designed for e-learning that combines the ease of use of course management systems with the flexibility of weblogs for creating various types of sites including course, news, journal, peer review and e-portfolio. When integrated into an institution's administrative systems, it can become a portal providing access to an indivual user's course and personal websites.

URLS:

Posted by sjc at 9:56 AM | Comments (0)

October 9, 2004

Keitai device translates Japanese and English

NewScientist.com news service reports that NEC has developed a handheld device, about the size of a handheld PDA, that enables a user to chat in another language - without having to learn any words or phrases for themselves. The system will initially be aimed at Japanese tourists and business travellers and be available only in Japan. But Akitoshi Okumura, the NEC researcher behind the system, says there is no reason why it cannot be adapted for other languages. Okumura told New Scientist that NEC has started working on a version that translates between Japanese and Chinese.

Source: New Scientist, October 7, 2004. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996503

October 8, 2004

Free Punch Cards

Found in Berkeley, at http://www.acme.com/jef/

Posted by sjc at 7:22 PM | Comments (0)

Moped magic from Honda

"We’ve heard a lot about fuel cells (based on methanol or ethanol) recently being used to power laptops, phones, and PDAs, but Honda’s prototype fuel cell moped seems like a lot more fun. The FC Stack scooter is due out here sometime next year, and the company reckons it’s no weakling, being approximately equivalent to a 125cc gas-powered model. Freezing Nagano mornings should also be a breeze for the green machine, as the fuel cell is not susceptible to freezing the way a regular bike engine is. www.honda.co.jp/motor (Japanese)"

From Metropolis Magazine of JapanToday.com.

Posted by sjc at 8:31 AM | Comments (0)

October 6, 2004

kid of speed

Elena, kidofspeed, rides her personally rebuilt kawasaki big ninja through the dead zone of chernobyl.

I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads.
The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes.

In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago - except for an occasional blade of grass that discovered a crack to spring through. Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again........ a few centuries from now.

Posted by sjc at 5:54 PM | Comments (0)

EduForge

EduForge.Org is an open access collaborative learning and exploratory environment designed for the sharing of ideas, research outcomes, open source educational software, and tools within a community of educators, researchers and developers.

I was particularly attracted to their Distributed Textual Discourse project designed to support the creation of hypertextual conversations right on a web page, and be used to enhance the collaborative features of existing tools such as blogs and wikis. DTD is a peer-to-peer online discourse management system, allowing participants to collaborate without the use of software running on centralized servers. It also features social filtering mechanisms, such as peer review and membership-based filtering.

The project is cordinated by Ulises Mejias, of eCornell. His Distributed Textual Discourse: A New Approach to Online Discourse provides a detailed presentation of his ideas about how such a system would function.

Posted by sjc at 3:40 PM | Comments (0)

October 4, 2004

Personality type A/B

Personality type is a modified version of the Jenkins Activity Survey. This survey was originally formulated to detect behaviors which lead to heart attacks (Jenkins, Ayzanski, Rosenman, 1971). Type A personality generally refers to hard workers who are often preoccupied with schedules and the speed of their performance. Type B personalities may be more creative, imaginative, and philosophical. The test consists of 30 multiple-choice items. Scores range from 35 to 380. Type A is associated with a high score while Type B is associated with a low score.

To take Personality type A/B Test Click here

From http://www.psych.uncc.edu/pagoolka/TypeA-B-intro.html

Posted by sjc at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

Bogging with CuteNews

CuteNews v1.3.6 Information
http://www.cutephp.com/cutenews/

Welcome to Cute News project page. Cute news is a powerful and easy for using news management system that use flat files to store its database. It supports comments, archives, search function, image uploading, backup function, IP banning, flood protection ...

Quick and easy installation
You don't need MySQL, everything is stored in files
Visitors can post comments
Can be used smilies, avatars and HTML code
Optional support of categories and multiple templates
Password protected admin page
3 different levels of user access
Add/Edit/Post news, comments and users online
Auto archiving of old news
No news building, everything is automated
Edit news templates
Visitors can search in your news news database
Password protected names in comments
IP banning visitors from posting comments
Flood protection
Auto wrap long words in comments
Time Adjustment
Backup Function

And many more cool functions ...

Posted by sjc at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)

Six Sigma Themes

"Six Sigma" is a current manifestation of the "Striving for Excellence", "Total Quality Management," etc. approach to management. The themes are quite familiar, and concisely stated.

1. focus on the customer

2. rely on data- and fact-driven management

3. focus on key processes and how to improve them

4. take a proactive management stance

5. collaborate across boundaries

6. drive for perfection but tolerate failure

Source: Chief Learning Officer, October 2004

Posted by sjc at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

October 3, 2004

Blogging for jobs

"A driving factor behind job market blogging is the search engine Google, said Elizabeth Lawley, associate professor of information technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. 'If you are thinking of interviewing someone, it's almost standard now to Google them online and see what you find,' Lawley said. 'If that person has a blog, it's usually the first thing that comes up.'

From "Before applying, check out the blogs," Eilene Zimmerman, The New York Times, October 3, 2004, found at http://news.com.com/Before+applying,+check+out+the+blogs/2100-1025_3-5394050.html

Posted by sjc at 8:00 PM | Comments (0)

Transatlantic Howl!

A Dedication to Allen Ginsberg
Thursday
14 October 2004
2:00 pm EDT (additional times listed below)
http://arts.internet2.edu/howl

In this history-making transatlantic poetic happening, celebrating Allen Ginsberg and his epic poem HOWL, poets will perform at venues in London, Paris, and across the United States. These live poetry readings and poetic theatre pieces will be simultaneously streamed across JANET, Renater, and Internet2 advanced networks. Streaming video and audio will allow audiences at each site to not only observe readings on location, but will provide the ability to experience the art of poetry in remote theaters as well. While Transatlantic Howl! A Dedication to Allen Ginsberg is streamed, anyone from Calcutta to Caracas with broadband access will be able to watch the entire poetry reading as it happens.

Program

The program for Transatlantic Howl! A Dedication to Allen Ginsberg is still being formulated. Watch this space for details. The program will take place at the following time:

Paris, 20:00
London, 19:00
New York, 14:00
Boulder, noon
San Francisco, 11:00

Posted by sjc at 2:05 PM | Comments (0)