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  cobweb 11:40 am on January 31, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  Anonymous Protests 

  I first heard about this ‘Anonymous’ phenomenon on the Warren Ellis blog. They’re a group of protestors or hacktivists that have been releasing videos to Youtube and other places and in general causing some small amount of internet mayhem.

  You can see an example of the unsettling communications in the blog post linked above in which they protest the actions of the Church of Scientology, claiming human rights abuses and other villainy. They have gotten quite a bit of press due to a denial of service attack that’s been executed, bringing down the scientology web site and otherwise clogging up the organization.

  What really interests me is their attempt to crossover from an internet phenomenon into the real world. Some videos have indicated that there will be a real world demonstration on February 10th outside many centers of the Scientology organization, and I’m kind of curious to go check out the local one on that day (it’s a sunday.) I’m not really big on protests normally, but I think it would be interesting to get pictures and video of this event, if it turns out to be anything at all.

  Looks like Google has a picture of the one nearest to me in Farmington Hills:

  
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  cobweb 1:33 pm on January 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  Disturbing the Universe 

  Near as I can tell the purpose of Freeman Dyson’s Disturbing the Universe is to educate powerful scientists and heads of state on ways in which to conduct scientific inquiry without causing apocalyptic mayhem and destruction.

  As I am not a politician, nor am I a scientist at the head of my field, it may be that I am not the target audience for this book. I found it to be a bit rambling, but that’s to be expected from Freeman Dyson: a man who has expertise in such diverse fields as engineering, nuclear power, theoretical physics, politics, mathematics, astrophysics, and other head-thinkery.

  The strongest part of the book, I’d say were the personal stories about Oppenheimer and Feynmann and the other Manhattan Project scientists that Dyson worked with at Princeton. There’s a story about a road trip from Princeton to Ann Arbor to Albuquerque that really sticks out in my mind, and may be worth slogging through the rest of the book just to take that nugget.

  Yes, I am a reading fiend. At this rate I should have all of the books on my “to read” shelf done by summer, and then some.

   
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  cobweb 5:53 pm on January 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  The Invention of Hugo Cabret 

   

  The Invention of Hugo Cabret is marketed at the Young Adult crowd, and indeed I found it in that section of the library. There was a small amount of buzz around it on various steam and clock-punk sites that I frequent, so I picked it up not knowing a whole lot about it.

  I was first struck by the illustrations which are beautiful and simple, but the simplicity belies the complex way they fit into the narrative. Not only are they all really pretty drawings interspersed into the story, but they also act as frames to almost a flip book kind of movie, which meshes nicely with the story in which the early history of movies plays a big part.

  Don’t let the enormous size of this volume discourage you, many of the pages are full page and multi-page drawings that almost beg to be flipped past as they punctuate exciting parts of the book. It’s really only a couple hours reading material at most. Give it a try.

   
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  cobweb 11:29 pm on January 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  Weird thing on my site 

  So I found this really weird thing on my web pages recently. It’s kind of like something crashed and drops you to a shell or maybe I’ve been hacked or someone’s playing a prank on me.

  Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think. If you poke around, you can even hear some stuff that sounds like a robotic beacon or something. It’s weird.

   
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  cobweb 2:08 pm on January 21, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth 

  So maybe I am late to this particular party, but I recently checked out Cory Doctorow’s Overclocked from the library. I had already read several of the short stories contained within, Anda’s Game amongst others, but the one that has stuck with me and that I should have read long ago was When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth.

  The story is that of a group of systems administrators that survive an global apocalyptic nuclear/biological/conventional disaster and debate what to do with the internet. The heart of the text is inspiring and dedicated, and should be required reading for anyone that Works On The Internet.

   
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  cobweb 5:43 pm on January 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  An Amusing Animation 

  So I was thinking about pulling down a different site I have still kicking, and found this series of animations up on it.  I made them a while ago using various stop motion techniques that I kind of made up on the spot, and they’re kind of rough but it kept my hands busy.

  I basically took a series of index cards and did some charcoal drawings on them, and then did serial photos of them and other objects around the house.  I suppose I should remix and put a soundtrack on it.  Also the youtube quality is horrible.

   
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  cobweb 6:48 pm on January 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  Sleep and Sleep again 

  A recent fad amongst geeks has been the bi-modal sleep pattern — breaking up sleep into multiple segments in an attempt to maximize the amount of time awake that one can devote to coding or writing or running in place or whatever else one deems to be productive and useful.

  This initially struck me as odd and unnatural, and a product of modern slavery to ‘productivity’ but as it turns out it dates back quite a while.  Spotted at the excellent skullring.org:

  Back in Europe during the Middle Ages, people would sleep in two
  shifts, with a period of wakefulness in between where they might take
  care of chores, write, gossip with neighbors or have sex. They called
  these periods First Sleep and Second Sleep.

  I mean sure, you always hear about Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison and other oddball geniuses that slept in 4 hour stints, but this is the first I’d heard that it was a common practice.

   
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  cobweb 2:27 pm on January 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  Calendar Cease and Desist? 

   

  I was recently out shopping for a calendar for my girlfriend’s 5 year old son, and we came across this hilarious and, I assume, totally unenforceable “copyright” statement on the back of the Transformers calendar we ended up purchasing.

   

  

  As it turns out these were all over many of the calendars. I laughed because I have often chopped up calendars I like after the years end, and used the images for decoration. I’ve done this ever since I was little, and recall decorating my teenage pad with the remains of an Alan Lee Lord of the Rings calendar.

  Is this really a prohibition of removing and hanging up calendar pages or am I missing something?

   
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  cobweb 11:38 am on January 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  LOC has a Blog 

  I want to point out that the Library of Congress has a Blog and it seems to be pretty good reading.  I recommend it to anyone that like libraries and maps and things.  Unfortunately the Nicolas Cage vehicle that is ‘National Treasure 2′ is the top entry at the moment, since the LOC has a role. But it’s ok, check out some of the older entries, I know it’s definitely going in my RSS reader.