Tag: images

XML summer school

I will be speaking at XML summer school (wadham college, oxford, 30th july 2004) about the state of xml for end users. i will look at XML authoring and blogging as 2 areas where end users get in contact with XML. the talk will be followed by a panel discussion with andrew orlowski (the register), peter rodgers (1060.com) and steve pepper (ontopia.net), chaired by lauren wood (textuality). it’s bound to be interesting with panelists like these 🙂
2004-09-02:

I pulled together and chaired a day on “What’s Hot and What’s Not? which was extremely thought-provoking. I certainly came back with lots of ideas from it, and others who attended said the same.

Androscoggin


sarah has the details:

I met up with Gregor in the square, went to Falafel Palace for dinner, and retrieved Tabor’s car from his driveway. Thankfully, it was not blocked in. 4 hours later, we finally arrived at the Inn. High points of the drive: my gigantic iced mocha latte at the Dunkin Donuts off Exit 57 and getting stopped by a cop on a deserted stretch of Route 26.

“You ever been pulled over before in Maine?”
“Nope. Actually, this is my first time ever getting pulled over. Thanks! It’s pretty exciting.”

Not even a lie. He didn’t give me a ticket.

I slept very soundly. That’s a lot of driving for a non-driver. We got up for breakfast, looked at the 2-week-old (very expensive) puppies, and promptly went back to sleep until 2pm. I imagine we would have slept longer, had Mark not called my cell phone.

The original plan was to go kayaking, but we didn’t leave until 15:30 so that was right out. We went to Grafton Notch State Park instead, where I learned a valuable lesson: Never agree to a hike a section of the Appalachian Trail without reading a brochure. You don’t want to be 1 hour into into it before realizing, “Hey! It says ‘steeply climbs 300m,’ no wonder I’m so tired!” We let a family from Delaware pass us just short of the summit, and I made a lot of Stephen King references.

Thank god we stopped for road pie on the way. Sweet, delicious blueberry road pie.
After the hike, we met up with our hosts and went into Bethel to eat Korean/Japanese fusion. I got the curried duck with wasabi mashed potatoes and felt very Special and Important that we were seated after closing because aforementioned hosts know the owners. The chef’s girlfriend left him and went to Florida 3 months ago, but he claims to be over it.

During dinner, I heard the Greatest News That Ever There Was, namely: They’re transitioning from a straight B&B to a spa. Can’t hardly wait.

After dinner I had an unfortunate experience trying to light a fire in the stove outside (didn’t happen), so we spent some time in the hottub instead. Boy, Maine sure does have a lot of stars.

I slept very soundly that evening.

Sunday we managed to wake up at a reasonable hour, ate breakfast, packed and made it to the kayak rental shop by 12:45. This gave us just enough time to talk to one of the owners, get the discount Mr. Host so kindly arranged, get paddles and life vests and make it onto the 13:00 shuttle. We were deposited several km up the Androscoggin River and enjoyed 4 hours of paddling.

No moose were spotted.

Then back to the Inn for a homemade dinner. Thankfully Jordan is much better at lighting fires than I am, so I did get to enjoy s’mores before the long drive home, during which we accidentally managed to stop at the exact same Dunkin Donuts we hit on the way up.

Tutankhamun


what they don’t say in the amazing exhibit about old boy tut and his gold treasure: how he may have looked like.
2015-08-16:

this is Nefertiti’s tomb. Tutankhamun has been sleeping on the couch in his mother-in-law’s living room.

2022-02-14:

More than 170 pharaohs ruled across 30 dynasties for more than 3 ka; Tutankhamun ruled for only 10 years, starting at age 8. The King’s accomplishments, many of them undertaken by one of his advisers, who succeeded Tutankhamun as pharaoh, amounted to reversing his father’s cultural reforms: he restored Thebes (now Luxor) as the capital of the New Kingdom and returned to polytheism after Akhenaten had promoted the worship of Aten above all other gods. (Born Tutankhaten, he changed his name to reflect his renewed worship of Amun-Ra.) Before the discovery of his tomb, he was rarely mentioned in histories of Egypt. Today, many more people can recount his biography than that of Neferkare, thought to have reigned the longest of any pharaoh, for between 64 and 94 years, starting when he was 6; or that of Khufu, who was buried in the Great Pyramid of Giza; or even that of Ramses II, who is regarded as the most powerful of all the ancient rulers of Egypt. More children have worshipped Tutankhamun during the past 100 years than ever did in his lifetime; whatever his authority in the ancient world, he now rules over the kingdom populated by dinosaurs and pirates, horses and astronauts.

geekman

GeekMan action figure with accessories

GeekMan is 15 cm tall, made from plastic, and comes with 5 accessories (his weapons of wisdom and tech gadgetry):

  • Geeky Glasses (the Geek Visual Input Device)
  • Handheld Computer / PDA
  • Notebook Computer / Laptop (the Cerebral I/O Device)
  • Coffee Mug (to re-energize super powers)
  • Wristwatch

Memetic networks


Valdis Krebs is mapping out memetic networks by analyzing Amazon buying patterns.
Jon Udell has some additional thoughts on how to apply these findings:

Filling the “structural holes” in networks, and creating large audiences from sets of smaller ones, is a fascinating idea — though I’m sure it’s easier said than done.

Visual tools to aid memetic engineering? Elsewhere, memetic networks are seen as a new form of infowar.