Ok I dont know if i'm old news? but I just found wired's beta rss feeds. When you do a search for example this is a search for string theory under wired. And there is now a rss link at the top and bottom. This simply puts a flavor or format on the end. http://search.wired.com/wnews/default.asp?query=string%20theory&format=rss. I've added wired to my feeds by adding this rss feed. It will not allow to do it without the query querystring.
Month: November 2003
String theory explained
Ok I'm looking forward to watching this documentary on Channel 4. I'm hoping it will explain string theroy in a simple way, so I can show others it and have disscussion afterwards. It worked with Carl and time travel, i explained the theory and showed him the channel 4 documentary and he finally got it and we could then have a leveled discussion about time travel.
Didnt know the tv show was presentated by Brian Greene, the author of the book I was actually thinking of buying a while back
I was kind of happy with the documentary, but would have liked to see the others first. It wasnt as good as the Time travel one but good enough to follow and understand. Very interesting concept M-theory or Super String theory, will have to wait for cern to finish there project before I can say for sure i'm converted.
Another Native GPL XML Database
Xbox Linux 95 percent installed
Ok i tried to install Gentoox 3 home editon after reading about it awhile ago. And I came back today to find the xbox on 95 percent complete. Some kind of error to do with the actual rewriterable disc i think. Anyway I will try it again tonight see if i get better results.
Acres of Roses and Diamonds : Reuseit
At long last the winner of the reusit contest has been announced. Where did i come? well I didnt do it that badly, about half way down which isnt bad considering I spent 1 hour doing it while on jury service back in August.
Visual Appeal – 1.89
Usability – 2.00
Valid HTML – 5.00
Valid CSS – 5.00
Cross-Browser – 5.00
Accessibility – 5.00
Total Visual Score – 1.94
Total Validity Score – 5.00
Total Score – 3.47 – not bad seeing how number 1 was 4.58
I love the fact no one really liked the style of it but it was valid html/css, accessable and cross browser. Just wish I kind of finished the white edition. As that was cleaner and more pleasent on the eye. Saying that I think i was one of the only entries which deployed a dark background with white text.
On the downside, one of my MA students came 2nd from last which isnt good as they didnt even validate there xhtml or css. Oh well thats what happens when you face the rest of the world.
Talking of which, some of the entries were great work, nothing as radical as the stuff you see on csszengarden but very practical and useable layouts, real attention to detail style. I kinda of feel better than I didnt come near the top ten with my lame effort. Its quite cool how alot of them used a picture of Jakob Neilsen but I decided against it as I wouldnt put a picture of myself on my own website. I cant believe my entry was viewed by some of the great minds of the web at the moment, Zeldman, Meyer, etc. By the way nice to see Louise Ferguson on the panel. Would like to hear what Jakob says about the entries…
XForms and Microsoft InfoPath
Straight down to the facts Xforms vs Infopath. For those too busy, heres the conclusion. Both InfoPath and XForms are version 1.0 efforts, and both are likely to improve substantially in future revisions. For organizations that have already licensed Office System 2003, InfoPath will provide an excellent means to automate data collection tasks. For use on systems not running Office System 2003, including Mac and Linux desktops, phones, PDAs, and even some PCs, XForms remains a better path.
Oh this isnt really related but a interesting case study anyway.
Personal publishing / Social software hotting up
I was reading this on wired.com the other day and a good heads up on the state of play for personal publishing.
I had never heard of Wallop, but to be fair to microsoft it looks really good and backing it though the instant messager door is a good move. This is exactly what we've been trying to do with blogs and instant messager for a while now. Give students flexablitiy but depth when they publish. And theres little wrong with bundling already well known features into one packages, this is what makes apple popular. But on the other hand you know as well as I do, its going to be all propitery and propitery plus propitery does not equal fun at all. As wired says, it would be great to see Microsoft adding effort to the Atom spec.
At the same time though, some companys like Nokia are not so sure about user generated content. Sony Ericsson and Nokia have both launched initiatives to encourage people to use their multimedia handsets — one to take and share images, the other to just watch.
Seems criminal that Nokia are not embracing the personal publishing idea, well it will be there lost in the end when sonyericsson, microsoft, apple, etc will dominate in this area. Maybe Nokia's Ngage says it all…
Resin 3.04 upgrade
Just upgraded to Caucho's Resin 3.04 and theres no douht its super quick. I browsed my gallary of berlin pictures in extremely quick speed, much faster than resin 2.x. Did some tests and boy oh boy its quick. Caucho do claim that its almost as quick as Apache 2.0, and i'm not douhting it. I did do a test against IIS and you can guess which one lost out by along way. I actual couldnt believe the process power needed for IIS compared to Resin 3, and resin does JSP, XSP and Servlets.
Blunkett outlines ID card plans
Seen this on the BBC. And ok things are getting stupid in the UK, more comments when I got time…
Personal server
The feature reports on personal technology, more comments when I got time…
But they not seen the bluetooth personal storage server and the Oqo
Man vs Machine
Been following the new Garry Kasparov chess match.
Rage Against the (Chess) Machine. Oh my goodness there is some seriously smart moves going down on both sides, even the super computer is pausing for thinking time. Even sarahs friend birch is watching it live but under the x3dchess url while i'm watching under the wired chess game url. Oh loving some of the comments Wow, is X3D Fritz forcing the draw? Can silicon know fear?
The game is over officially result of game one is a draw! The score after game one is .5-.5. The next game is Thursday November 13th 6pm GMT.
Reloading the workplace
Saw this in my aggergater today Younger Generation Reshaping The Workplace . Interesting thoughts about how I currently live my work life. I for example dont usually do any kind of coding of any kind in the morning, thats usually reserved for reading and meetings. While my nights are spent coding and writing blogs. I could live with a game mid day, just before i get down to some serious work.
The Universe as a Hologram
Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm?
Ok this will fry your goose, i was flicking through matrix fan sites when I came across the above link. He's the main part of it…
Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.
Then more work was done David bohm from the university of London, and came to the conclusion that objective reality does not exist
. And that the universe is just a deeply connected hologram.
Let the matrix revolutions bashing start
Paulo sent me this during the week, Dave says everyone at college saw it and hated it and others I have met didnt like it. Am I the only one which actually enjoyed it? Anyway I would love to see it again soon as I was so blown away that it was hard to think about the ending. Specially seeing how I watched all the matrix's back to back in the berlin's cinemaxx. Anyway, i'm sure there will be lots of comments or more to add to the post later on when i talk to others or watch it again. So for now….
UK passes law to create online archive
Taken from Creative Commons
Last week, British lawmakers passed a new bill to add electronic publications (including websites) as documents stored in national archives. This new law augments existing laws that cover all printed materials produced in the UK since 1911
Now thats excellent news, because it will not be optional and the grey area of archiving will change. Lets hope those overbloated CMS can handle archiving too. Theres seriously no better time to make the change to XML.