Powerful data visualizations are like masterful paintings– through art and insight, they intimate broad ideas and usher in understanding.
I, however, am neither a master painter nor an expert data visualizer. Neither are many of my contemporaries in the “technically skilled and socially aware” demographic. Still, I believe that even mediocre pieces of art or analysis [...]
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Posted in Art, Computing, General, Science-ish, tagged bio-electronica, genes, genetic, information audioization, Music, science techno on May 2, 2008 | No Comments »
I enjoy artistic experiences that communicate some expression of meaningful information.
Maybe this is inherent to all analysis-junkies and artists. Pretty graphs that explain complex data sets. Poignant songs that sum up intricate social and political circumstances. Equations that encompass beautiful realities. Etceteras, etceteras.
In that vein, what could be more meaningful than the blueprints of life, [...]
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Posted in Computing, General, Musing, tagged Asynchronous Bayesian Classification Database, augmented reality, broadcasting, computer vision, geosynchronization, lifestreaming, mobile web, object recognition on April 30, 2008 | No Comments »
I’d like to peek around the next corner in technology. Specifically, what technological challenges and solutions will arise following the advent/ascension of the mobile web. Let’s fast forward about five years, give or take some technological optimism.
Assumptions
Broadband wireless internet is widely accessible in the developed world.
Mobile audio and visual data capturing devices with day-scale battery [...]
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For those outside the know, lifestreaming is the phenomenon of more or less continuous recording and transmission of observations about one’s life. It’s the log of a perpetual twitterer, the live webcam someone wears on their hat, the flickr account of a geotagged-mobile-phone-camera-addict.
The side of lifestreaming everyone talks about is the fact that you get [...]
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People remember images more easily than they can remember complex strings of words. Furthermore, images can automatically evoke complex sets of associated thoughts and emotions. We should leverage the associative power of images to help sort through thick information sets.
I’m talking about web-searching with an unconventional “semantic” twist.
The tools to make this work are all [...]
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Posted in Art, Computing, General, Musing, tagged backgrounds, design, desktop, eyes of a chile, Productivity, wonderment on April 28, 2008 | No Comments »
Back as a grade school kid, I was impressed by the array of neat options we had for decorating our desktops on the old Macs. Patterns! Colors! Eventually… whole pictures! “Cool beans” at the times, really. Even back then, I was wondering how we’d be entertaining our eyes in between games of Super Word Muncher, [...]
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If there is such a thing as a universal truism, is there a way to communicate it universally?
Some working definitions to guide the thought process:
Truism
A bit of wisdom about life. More specifically, wisdom that can be practically applied.
Universal
Applicable and understandable at some point in any given person’s life, regardless of cultural circumstances. Caveats added for [...]
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Posted in Art, General, Silly, tagged humor, graph, chart, robot, gynoid, research, ghost in the shell, star trek, battlestar galactica, terminator, number six, motoko kusanagi, seven of nine on April 7, 2008 | No Comments »
A graph showing the relationship between the amount of effort humans put into making robots and the amount of sexy female robots found in popular culture.
The graph is fictional, but I’m not convinced the relationship is false.
P.S. Yes, I know that humorous graphs are all the rage these days. I couldn’t help myself in this [...]
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The roiling media-orgy surrounding Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Wright, will ultimately yield great benefit to Mr. Obama’s campaign. Why?
The controversy draws significant attention to the fact that Senator Obama is Christian. Some of the less scrupulous portions of American society have been trying to put the notion that Obama practices Islam into the heads of [...]
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Anarchist.
“Better a ghost of a revolution than an elder of an empire.”
Fascist.
“Better a soldier in restricting armor than a barbarian in the finest of furs.”
Socialist.
“Better an overbearing father than an absent mother.”
Capitalist.
“Better an open range herd than a farm-fattened few.”
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Posted in Computing, General, Science-ish, tagged humor, jokes, artificial intelligence, AI, Turing, machine, intelligence, Turing Test on March 20, 2008 | No Comments »
As an adolescent, I invented a silly landmark for myself. I would only consider myself proficient in a language if I could “get” a joke in that language which had no straightforward translation into my primary language.
Hardly a scientific milestone, but it seemed to make sense back then, since “getting” a joke requires at least [...]
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