Saturday, July 31, 2004
The Secret Swing and Accordion Guy exposed in The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail exposes The Secret Swing first bloged by Joey DeVilla (aka Accordion Guy) back 2 weeks ago (and Here) and then picked up by Boing Boing
The secret is out! and Joey's Wuffie is up! (How long till you get "Lunched" by Jan Wong?)
Friday, July 30, 2004
Code 46
I missed seeing this in last Year Toronto's International Film festival, but now its comming to "select theaters" August 6th
Code 46 is a love story set in a Brave New World-type near-future where cities are heavily controlled and only accessible through checkpoints. People cannot travel unless they have "papelles," a special travel permit issued by the totalitarianistic government, the "Sphinx". Outside these cities, the desert has taken over and shanty towns are jammed with non-citizens - people without papelles forced to live primitive lives.
William is a family man who works as a government investigator. When he is sent to Shanghai to solve a case of fake papelles, he meets a woman named Maria. Although he realizes she is behind the forgeries, he cannot help but fall completely in love with her. He hides her crime and they have a wild, passionate affair that can only last as long as his papelles: 24 hours. Back home, William is obessed with the memory of Maria. When the original investigation is inevitably re-opened a week later and William is sent back to finish the work he started, he tracks her down, only to discover she has been accused of a Code 46 violation and any further relationship is impossible.
Here's the IMDB link and the trailer site (which appears to be a IE only piece of sh*t)
Bouncing around Toronto and 2 post Singularity futures
Over the last week or so, Elicia and I have been able to spend some extra time doing stuff around Toronto
In addition to a couple of morning tennis matches (which made up for your schedule evening games rained out), and seeing a 2 very good movies ( SpiderMan 2 and Will Smith's I Robot) we also visited:
I also managed to polish off Ken Macleod's "Newton's Wake" and Chariles Stross's "Iron Sunrise", after much anticipation.
Of the 2 I enjoyed Surnrise more, but that may be because its a sequel (more familiar) and its story universe is a little more interesting (to me) and messy.
Ken's writing has a background about the collision of societies (and its ideologies), where as Charile's is about the collision of technologies (and its ideological implications), which inform the stories they tell.
I look forward to read more from both authors placed in these settings.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Bloggers represent Community
Even if it's a Community of Interest or a community of One....
Via Globetechnology: "The presence of all the bloggers at the two political conventions suggests that there is still a need for the local angle in information, even if it isn't done with much professionalism (at least not yet)."
It also makes another point that : "stripping local news out of a newspaper is a better way of killing it than of making it more profitable."
Update : Dave linked to the story as well "Bloggers are rushing in to fill a void, one that was once held by local newspapers."
Ebook's done wrong
Cory takes a bat to the puffy PR piece on Gizmodo.
for addtional background to the subject : Cory's own paper Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books, his talk to Microsoft on DRM, and Charlie Stross's very recent A brief rant about ebooks.
In a related convergence, Russel Beattie writting about celphone/moblie technologies notes :
There's got to be a tipping point where Powerful or Possible technologies become the Practical day-to-day items.
I might dispute the "got to be" (because there is no "right" for any technology to succeed; "should" is not "would"), but I agree with the intent : technologies only become main stream (dare I say Commodities) when they move beyond possible and become practical (and then become useful). Camera phones are there. Digital music players are there and got there before DRM started to get in the way. Ebooks are not (yet) and DRM slowing their emergence into "Practical" and/or "useful".
Myths and realities of nano futures
Via Howard Lovy's excellent NanoBot comes a link to BBC : Myths and realities of nano futures which set a more measured tone about where the use of these technologies and techniques are today without some of the typical cheerleading of either the magic "fantastic voyage" type or the fear mongering gray (or green or blue ) goo scenarios.
Enough material for a couple of sci fi novels in there or at least some good day dreams! One question is, of course time frames. By Short term is 5 to 10 years, with the list of "Nanotechnology in our lives" as direct examples on applications of the short term uses. The Long Terms list is more 20 to 40 years out. Industries that supply or use products in the short term list should certainly be thinking about how to take advantage of these trends, or risk becoming obsolete and/or out competed.
Short term Nano uses :
Some Longer-Term Nano Uses
Nanotechnology in our lives
1 - Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) for displays
2 - Photovoltaic film that converts light into electricity
3 - Scratch-proof coated windows that clean themselves with UV
4 - Fabrics coated to resist stains and control temperature
5 - Intelligent clothing measures pulse and respiration
6 - Bucky-tubeframe is light but very strong
7 - Hipjoint made from biocompatible materials
8 - Nano-particle paint to prevent corrosion
9 - Thermo-chromic glass to regulate light
10 - Magnetic layers for compact data memory
11 - Carbon nanotube fuel cells to power electronics and vehicles
12 - Nano-engineered cochlear implant
update 1 : from Berkeley Lab Notes :A Catalyst for Nano-Energy Innovation via Boing Boing
update 2 : Howard went and linked back to me Thanks!
Now with Google searching...
I've added Google search of this site to the Navigation bar, so I can find stuff.
Enter your query, hit return, and be amazed (or alarmed)! Only positive positives.
or to hear the 
