Category: science+theory

If: the lights go out, were pretty much fcuk’ed…

IF logo with black birds flying

Yeah its official were fcuked. Most of the power supply in England will come from northern europe or/and russia by 2010, says the BBC docu-drama. Been reading up about this anyway before the programme and I seriously thought we might be ok. However were not, wind power needs backup, which leads to gas. Coal burning is too much money because you need to put huge expensive filters on the pipes. To quote It would be like putting a level3 catylistic converter on a clapped out car.. While Nuclear power stations are being shutdown more and more, and could take as long as 15 years to turn back on. More facts here. Once again, we need to do something about it now, but people are too focused on other issues, kind of reminds me of the lack of media coverage to the EUCD. Even though IF was on BBC2, it was well advertised, on at primetime 9pm and had a good talk afterwards chaired by paxman. If only this was true of other issues…

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Maths and art

Miles dropped a email about kandid . It sounds interesting and I may try it out later after some other things have been done on my giant to do list. But my reason for blogging has to with how this reminds me of apps on my old 16bit machine. At the time there was little way to get the real feel for maths in art. It took too long to do fractials for example. I remember playing with L-systems and it would take hours to build a highly populated L-system. However even then I enjoyed the results. If you remember the old cubicgarden background, that was built using L-systems.

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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


me holding the elegant universe by brian greene


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.

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Man vs Machine

Kasparov with his chess controls

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.

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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.

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Time travel

I have always been interested in the time. But something kinda of shocked me yesterday at the party I had at my house. Miles didnt believe time travel was at all possible. Hummm i thought, thats odd… All the things I have read of the years of my life have pointed in me in a direction that were not far off. David seemed very interested in why I was a believer and Miles not. Not obvioulsy it was a party and not everyone wanted to hear a ramble about time travel at 1am, but I started thinking of ways to prove certain theorys right.

The one which came up alot was is there anything faster than light? Now I would say no, based on all i know but black hole theroy is still along way from being solved. Anyway, I started thinking again about a quick way to sum up all what I had learned over the years. Then I remembered the documentary from channel4 which pretty much covers the major areas including quantium theory in a simple way. I need to make a handy version available for others one day soon. Maybe Mpeg4 and stick it online?

Interesting enough however, Miles thought I was romancing the idea of time travel than really believing in it.
Could it be true than back to the future, William sleator and others like it have spelled out theorys which convently fit into the frame? I believe not but hey what do i know? maybe little but theres no douht that people are taking Prof Ronald L. Mallett seriously. His paper on the ringed laser system that he has built in fantastic. I highly recommend listening to Prof Mallett here in real audio. Also found the old link about the reality of a time machine. Oh and I know this is old but worth listening to also.

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Nico macdonald uncovered

I came across Nico Macdonald's website the other day. If you dont know who he is, I know him through his AIGA design talks he hosts every month which I usually attend.

Anyway it would seem he doesnt have a blog but some very interesting articles to do with social aspects of technology.
Started to read The future of weblogging which seems to be either inspired or otherway around by the event I attended a while back gone to the blogs. Where I do remember Nico also being too. The dangers of social engineering in design. also was a good read. I also got seduced away by some very tasty links in Nicos communication section, which your'll see more of in later blogs.

Oh yeah, I also noted something interesting in the facilitation section. Its basicly a small events-ish calendar almost in the same form of Louise Fergusons. Except it seems to be written in a more structured way. Just by looking at the code quickly I think I could write a xsl to transform the events out of that page into icals. But I'll have to check it some other time. Too busy reading Guardian arcticles.

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Open source democracy?

Rushkoff talking to Dave in the ICA after the talk about being a trickster

Me, Dave and Lucas got our butts to the talk quite late yesterday. And were hit by the instant heatwave in the ICA's Nash room. Goodness me, has no one ever heard of opening a window or a door before?

Anyway the talk was around douglas rushkoff's book he wrote for Demos. I had never heard of Demos before, but sure have heard of Douglas Rushkoff from the days of Rave.Anyway here's a few things I wrote down while listening to the talk.

  • The internet shook off miltary, government and now business constraints over its time.
  • All developments of the internet have been done for non profit in a gift economy.
  • Our reality relies on software more than hardware – clever, as in software is man made.
  • We can write the words that we live. Rather than listen to the ones we have been told.
  • We have been taught to deal with narratives in the same way, start – middle – end. Revolutions are circluar.
  • recruitiing people to narratives, is pointless
  • Technophobia = People scared of there own power
  • The media aims to exclude and divide, a lonely person is more likely to buy jeans if there told there acceptable with them.
  • 92% of kids don’t want to re-program lego mindstorms
  • A movement is a bad idea, easy target for the media to vilianfy
  • Media can’t brand a mixture a non-movement.
  • Emergence accepts the possibility that were nothing and that we may change that
  • Effort should be spent on development rather than creating a movement
  • Changing direction causes confusion and keeps businesses and the media guessing
  • Courage in the moment, small steps and tweaks have profound effects
  • Do rather than respond
  • The dot.com era was a pyramid scheme – never thought of it like that, but makes sense
  • Is google god?
  • Finland is the most trustworthy nation in the world
  • Governments need to get a grip on the digital divide
  • Once you have access to the tools your relationship with the narrative changes

Anyway I've started reading the book which rushkoff wrote and its a good read so far. Also started looking at the Demos site and Rushkoff's own. Some good content on there which I know I'll be reading back and forth between college and home for the next month or so.

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Quantum Computing

Its one of those areas which I wish I had the time to look into more and more. But I never have the time…
Anyway with all talk and theorys about the matrix reloaded, questions are once again been asked about Quantum theory.
I couldnt believe one of my students had never heard of it. And somewhat compared it to Quantum leap. I knew he was messing with me.
Anyhow its kinda hard to explain, so I will supply links instead.

Basics of Quantum Theory (if there is one)
Rudiments of Quantum Theory

What is Quantum computing?
In a quantum computer, the fundamental unit of information (called a quantum bit or qubit), is not binary but rather more quaternary in nature. This qubit property arises as a direct consequence of its adherence to the laws of quantum mechanics which differ radically from the laws of classical physics.
A qubit can exist not only in a state corresponding to the logical state 0 or 1 as in a classical bit, but also in states corresponding to a blend or superposition of these classical states. In other words, a qubit can exist as a zero, a one, or simultaneously as both 0 and 1, with a numerical coefficient representing the probability for each state.

And there you have the basic understanding of Quantum computering

Once you understand the theory this is where to go for the lastest. NEW SCIENTIST'S GUIDE TO THE QUANTUM WORLD

And for a true mind fcuk…
An introduction to quantum cosmology

And for those unsure about how all this relates to the chaos theory
Chaos theory explained

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Overkill

Been thinking about the xml blogging again.
Oh god yes, overkill it is using cocoon to transform the xml into text before blojsom uses it. But its a way forward because I have cocoon installed already for the site transformations. And I know where i stand with xsl.

Just thinking about why I want my weblogs in xml. I have a bookmark page and at the moment I usually copy and paste my bookmarks in. If I could grab all the href attributes out of the weblogs, use the section / catergory (as in this one is advanced blogging) for sections also. I could automate the bookmark page from my weblogs?
Actually if it was xml I could put in any tag i like, so in the transform a tag named italic tune link could actually be a short cut link for a link to my mixes. You get the idea? So the weblog would feed off the website and the website the weblog.
Nice idea needs work and time.

Humm, need to do some reading about xmlrpc and look into java development. Actually just thought, maybe I should speak to chris our java guy at work. This has to be easy enough for him to do as he will have classes to check for well form-ness, to validate xml, etc – Already.

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