psyche

I think we’ve all seen the original seam carving video, but I hadn’t seen the following. It deals with problems in the original algorithm stemming from removing low-energy seams causing there to be more edges in the retargeted image - this roughly means that you can potentially make an image more jagged despite only altering the least edgy parts. Their solution was to consider “forward energy” and remove seams which, when removed, would insert the least amount of energy/edginess/contrast, which means generally the retargeted images are now even better quality.

They also treated 2D video as 3D objects, with the third dimension as time. Have a look:

I still find their work strikingly elegant. Not only is it effective, with many potential applications, but it’s also clear enough for us to get the gist of without reading their paper or doing any deep thought. It’s fantastic! If it’s proliferated, it’ll be even harder to tell what’s real and what’s not (e.g. is that field really that big, or are those inserted seams? Is that street really that narrow, or…?) unless it’s carefully managed. Right now we only have to contend with Photoshop (I say only but that’s only because people don’t abuse it as much as it could be abused, or with as much skill [generally] as possible)…

Pax

Ted Nelson gave a talk at school today. It reminded me of two things:

1. The Matrix (lots of prisons and systems to control us and adapting to the machines’ way of life…)
2. The God Delusion *(a densely-packed refutation of something that you’ve suspected was fundamentally flawed all along)

Prof. Nelson handed out some copies of ZigZag and Xanadu and demoed XanaduSpace. Having heard about it for ages and seeing demonstrations in other videos scattered across the web, it was great to see it right there. I think a combination of seeing it materialise despite the rather long-lived smear campaign against it (it was like a Googlebomb of “Xanadu” for “vaporware”, but in print) and hearing Prof. Nelson talk about the concrete concepts behind it (C++, OpenGl and Python backend, next platform will be iPhone, Flash version soon) really solidified the concept in my mind. I think I’m ready to believe that with fine-tuning, the computer world can be turned on its head (in a good way).

The basic premise of the talk was that technology was really just “packaging and conventions” and that we had learned to use kludgy solutions rather than good solutions being engineered (this was blamed on techies). Nelson believes that the web’s infrastructure (one-way links, unsourced quotations etc.) is severely lacking, and that 1984, when Xerox PARC gave us the desktop metaphor, was when “it all went wrong”.

Another thing that struck me was the sense of activity and understanding. Age 70, having been ridiculously ahead of the curve for so long but never really achieving the maximal recognition he deserves, Nelson continues to pursue his original projects with zeal and an apparently very perceptive mind. Listening to his anecdotes and analogies reminded me strongly of interviews with Richard Feynman.

The subject of Lain remained fairly suppressed, although people now frequently tell me how often I mention it even when I don’t (…).

Of course, the best thing about Xanadu would be sourced or transcluded quotations - as people may know, I have a thing about blockquotes [1, 2]. With Xanadu I will finally get my wish! FINALLY! OH YEAH!!

On a rather insane note, I think I read somewhere (probably New Scientist or Wired but I really can’t remember - I should really find the source and, y’know, transclude it) that the Google generation is actually very bad at processing and finding information in most scenarios because of their (no, not me - it’s them!) ridiculously short attention spans and inattention to detail.

I think this is the other extreme that I’ve been waiting for; people generally have this rather idealised view of internet-savvy folks being greatly intelligent data processing machines, churning through some huge number of articles on RSS feeds, tagging hundreds of links every week etc. while the minority believe that people are now just dumb keyword filters. I think both of these views are inaccurate. Yes, there’s a danger that people may deactivate their higher thought and just sift through pages of Google results but intelligent reading and data processing is not dead.

When I did our first Module 1 past paper last week (unashamed boast: 95%), I applied the rules that I generally apply to webpages (not consciously, mind you. I had to really think hard about what I do) :

1. Keyword search - what is the general feel of this page? Large text? What does it say?
2. Specific subheadings? (Mark allocation?)
3. Start forming fuzzy answers
4. “Oh, crap! That doesn’t make sense… wait - let me read this in detail.”
5. “Oh. Oh. Right, wait.”
6. Answer questions on this page.

Repeat for every page.

Then finally, check every page in detail.

It’s kind of like modular programming or drawing something starting with a basic sketch and refining it (but not both at once. I should have said “xor” instead of “or”). You can either choose random bits and focus down on them or get a general outline and keep refreshing your knowledge with slightly higher information resolution. Eventually the answer crystallises in your mind, like an infinite function tending to root 2 or a sign becoming readable as your camera desperately focuses and refocuses.

Yeah. It’s all good, basically. It’s crazy about Taniyama, isn’t it? Man.

Mr Smith covered the talk in a slightly less haphazard way…

Pax

* Mr Smith has told me that there are in fact better alternatives.

Camden Sabre is coming up soon, as is the Public Schools and the Club Sabre. The latter two will both be interesting in that I did well in both last time but this time I’m going to be in a higher age bracket - and close the bottom of it. Oh well. Such is life. I enjoy fencing. I dislike most people. Thus fencing most people is a compromise. Semantics! OH YEAH!!

I’ve randomly done this - take a look at the source to see what I did. It’s not terribly exciting, useful or even technically awesome. Oh well.

Ted Nelson on Tuesday. Awesome. I regret not tracking Baudrillard down before he died.

Pax

Jeremy Keith visited us a while back and I think his talk has been my favourite so far as he seemed to be not only generally awesome but also deeply aware of the tardation of the web. Unlike others who misread or ignore symptoms of the web’s disgustocrap, he, parallel to the Ted Nelson school of thought, appears to embrace a much more semantically-enabled and generally non-retarded and awesome web.

This article of his is just about the most awesome article ever.

Pax

Adam Zethraeus provided useful linkage which helped me upgrade my WordPress thingy. I wholly recommend the WPAU; it’s totally awesome.

Storrs Kegel (case of fractured virtual identity, hence Googlage) put me onto Coda which is possibly the greatest app I have ever used. It’s also the first thing I’ve used my debit card on. Yeah, I’m a real man (…I also think wtf at this).

I spoke to Elliott Katz about computer science at Cambridge (he’s been offered a place there to do that) and he seemed very modest and repeatedly claimed that he had simply “got lucky” (regrettably, I’m getting Americanised, I think: I kept trying to type “gotten” for “got” back there). In any case, awesome. I need to know more stuff.

Everybody loves subnet masks. The internet is serious business.

I’ve attempted another rather weak redesign of the main site but it’s ultra-clean, so, you know…

In CompSoc today, I realised just how retarded some of the things in Mac OS X really are. The ability to remotely control the GUI (not just background processes and stuff) via the shell and stuff… urgh… it’s like… whatever. And then being able to (re)set the root password by having the install disc: this makes me nervous.

However, it was entertaining to use the following sequence I devised to annoy family, which caught on pretty quickly at school too:


user$ ssh loggedinuser@x.x.x.x
Password: ******
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ osascript -e "set Volume 10"
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ say -v Zarvox
I AM WATCHING YOU
YOU ARE UGLY
^Z
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ ps -x
[A bunch of processes and their numbers are displayed; too lazy to type them out properly]
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ kill [pid of something like web browser]
[actual loggedinuser now tries to open System Preferences to disable remote login]
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ ps -x
[pid of System Prefs displayed]
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ kill [pid of System Prefs]
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ sudo shutdown -h now
Password: ******
SYSTEM GOING DOWN NOW or something to that effect


And then I win!

Pax

My to-do list for this web stuff:

• Update WordPress
• Do a proper WordPress theme

The front page of disinformatics is the only bit where there’s markup that serves no semantic purpose (the glider). Adam2z is the ultimate fusion of form and content, while Blue Eye Labs is mostly form and disinformatics is mostly content - a shame that there isn’t even really much content.

Anyway, I don’t know where these thoughts belong so I’ll leave them here.

Pax

I Pownced this before but having been since removed from Pownce, I’ll put this here:

Alex Wright - The Web That Wasn’t (embedding was disabled by request…)

It’s pretty awesome.

I watched The Golden Compass and it was okay - they did the person/daemon thing quite well.

This is my critique of Will’s performance on them and I’ve posted my thoughts on his new podcast on the accompanying blog post.

It’s worth a listen as Will is really spearheading the “I like podcasting”… movement… at school… He’s right, though - twitter is worth looking into, although I use it and jaiku rather half-heartedly.

I’ve just realised that while sometimes my thoughts are ugly, I really do try to blog beautifully. Every English essay I have scored full or close to full marks on has been angst-ridden and cynical. So be it!

My father somehow won a second Nintendo Wii (???) by accident and I’m thinking that rather than selling it, I could do something involving some of this stuff? That is, if my brother will let me. He probably won’t. I wonder.

Abandoned playground? The Lain PSX game movie media038.avi (stuff mirrored here [much more disturbing than anime, only gave me sound when I used MPlayer]) contains a weird moving still of her on a swing. This reminds me a little of the Animatrix short Beyond. The whole atmosphere of Lain, The Matrix (first one), The Animatrix and the Matrix Comics is one of despair and confusion. It seems to be my favourite thing in the world.

It appears that the new I Am Legend movie again fails to accurately mirror the novel. This is a shame as the novel is awesome.

I was recently put onto Denno Coil by weirdo in #lain while discussing how I thought Lain showed “augmented reality gone wrong”. How chillingly specific this is.

Why has the iPod been so successful? Because it enables people to quickly and easily turn on, tune in, drop out…

Pax

In the true spirit of teenage clique-ism, I’m going to have to point towards our friend Will Morland’s appearance on them.

While generally I make quiet hints about stuff causing me angst, I think I’m going to have to step it up for this…

Enthusiasm for technology…

Mm, ok.

…being good at it…

DEBATABLE, WILL! DEBATABLE!

You can’t just sort of like… luh [pause] become a social luddite [???] and sort of hang out in a corner sort of like staring at your old phone…

That kind of speech really takes itself apart.

I do realise that [pause] what I do does inf…er some social st-stereotypes on some people

…I don’t think you deserved to pass your English (Lang.) GCSE…

The internet isn’t working; quick, we must fix it!

HA HA HA!

As my sort of listening habits have changed, it’s changed me as a person OH GOD NO! OH GOD NO!

A skinny tie sort of worn without much sort of [pause, strained expression] well-tying and sort of just sort of slung around in a trUH! An uh… an attempt to look sort of formal

Sort of sort of, sort of? HA HA HA!

Just shove [jeans] in the wash, iron it [sic]

Iron… jeans…?

You have to pay for the T-shirts! They’re £7.50…[pause]… so we’ll have to go somewhere else […] the best thing about the event has been… the free pens and stuff that you get; all that crazy stuff.

Oh. I see.

[Hey There Delilah plays in background trying to make us feel sorry for suspected neek] An interest in technology conflicts with an interest in fashion and an interest in staying cool

As plaintext this seems like a good point but the situation made it ridiculous somehow.

Shop assistant:

Out of all our customers, they’re our favouri[laughs]

I have to give kudos to Dabson for this one - it’s funny:

My computer… just… crashed…

I think a quotation from Elliot sums this up quite well:

I have the utmost respect for the cameraman and crew: you don’t hear any laughing.

HA HA HA HA HA!

For the record, Will initially asked Elliot and me to accompany him to the MacExpo. We refused. Can you see why? Let us just consider, before we part ways, one more thing. Do people feel the need to identify with a group so strongly that they will create a persona? Let us ask ourselves this: should the BBC add a new profile to their list - that of the gutbustingly infuriating poser? Surely I would then be able to join the ranks.

Will, I’m increasing your traffic. Final word: HA!

Pax

I thought this was quite interesting.

Also, this.

This work could help better understand disorders linked with timing, such as schizophrenia. Still, in the end, “it’s really about understanding the virtual reality machinery that we’re trapped in,” Eagleman told LiveScience. “Our brain constructs this reality for us that, if we look closely, we can find all these strange illusions in. The fact that we’re now seeing this with how we perceive time is new.”

Pax

Well, I’ve registered and populated disinformatics.com.

psyche will now be the name of this blog and disinformatics the rest of the site. I redid the tactical calculator. Now there are fewer tables. Eventually I need to extend it to allow for you to define an enemy squad and have a squad recommended to you, perhaps with financial constraints. Later, maybe.

The BIO was good although I got 28%. It was nice to try to program without distraction.

This blog has been updated for nearly a year now. In the past year, stuff has happened. Computing replaced physics and my guitar playing improved slightly. It’s been a good year.

I have a really bad headache.

There have been talks at school by Thomas Vander Wal, Riccardo Cambiassi, Paul Farnell + David Smalley and most recently, Jeremy Keith. I’ll briefly talk about Mr Keith as his talk is the only one I can remember properly at the moment. He was pretty awesome - the talk went far beyond what I thought it would be and actually it touched on many of the things I’ve been wondering about recently. As well as appearing to be some sort of web development god, he seemed acutely aware of everything to do with the web. Unfortunately a statistics test prevented me from talking to him after the talk but it was still awesome. David Smith and Adam Zethraeus have blogged all these appearances, I believe.

Reading through the science page confuses me a little. I seemed to consider lots of stuff in detail only to find it foreign when it presented itself again later in my life. Strange.

Pax