Into the Void

yeah

Just upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1. The release, not the release candidate. I wound up have to go into phpMyAdmin and set the auto_increment value in some of the MySQL tables.

Now that I’ve sorted it out, I have to say that so far I like it. Sidebar widgets and tags are built right in.

About a year ago there was a video circulating on the net about a computer game. You all know I’m too boring for computer games, but this one had a tie-in with physical, cultural and technological evolution. You can’t beat that.

[The name, Leslie, tell them the name!] The game is called Spore. Better pre-order that puppy. It’s going to sell out fast.

You know you want it. If you think you don’t want it, go grab another can of Monster, sit your hyper little butt down and watch the 36-minute video below. In the video, developer Will Wright demonstrates an alpha version of Spore at the 2005 Game Developer’s Conference. You’ve never seen anything like this before!

So why is so cool about Spore? Well, you get to design one-celled organisms. The fun is in configuring your creations and watching them feed and grow and evolve. Give them a new limb, watch them figure out how to use it, that is, watch the software figure out how to use it! Put them together, watch them build a community, watch them build a nation. Give them technology and they’ll incorporate it into their culture.

Plus the game is published by Electronic Arts, the folks who brought us The Sims. These guys have been creating games since Commodore 64 days. I can’t remember being this psyched over a silly computer game. I pre-ordered it and am waiting waiting waiting impatiently for the release date.

Technorati: evolution Geekess Spore The+Sims Will+Wright

Spoofcard.com

Oh, this is a fun site. What Spoofcard.com does is allow you to block your telephone Caller ID and disguise your voice. Apparently they offer a service for folks who like to play practical jokes on their cellphones.

No, not really. Where this would come in handy is if you want to display your company phone number when making business calls from your personal phone. You can record the calls and play them back from spoofcard.com’s web control panel. Very nice!

If you aren’t into putting together a 555 timer and a comparator for a barebones audio distortion circuit Spoofcard.com could be a lot of fun.

Responsible Nanotechnology: 3D Spam?

In the “just one more thing to worry about” category, the CRN blog has an article about what might happen if spammers figure out how to control the 3D nanofactories we will all have on our desks.

SkyScout

SkyScout is a digital planetarium. You point it at the sky and it identifies whatever star or other celestial object you point it at.

I…
WANT

Technorati: celestron sky+scout planetarium

I have been thinking about about the environmental and medical effects of nano-pollution. Nanotechnology is a catch-all phrase that describes microscopic man-made objects. These come in many shapes and sizes - soccer-ball-shaped cages made of 60 carbon atoms, nanotubes the thickness of a hair, among others.

These objects persist in the environment after they’ve been used and disposed of. There has been little, if any, investigation into the effects of exposure to environmental nanotechnology.

Nanotechnological pollution is on the horizon. Fortunately, at least one group is looking into it. The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) is trying to put together a multi-disciplinary collaborative network to establish guidelines for safely handling nano-materials.

We don’t have very long to get the guidelines and some procedures in place. An emerging illness called Morgellons Disease is quite possibly the earliest indication of what we can all expect from nano-pollution.

“Morgellons disease” is the name given to a cluster of symptoms that includes skin lesions, often with small fibers in the lesion. Fascinating stuff. Right now the medical profession is pooh-poohing it as a symptom of mental illness - Delusional Parasitosis. The folks at the Morgellons Research Foundation have posted as much information as is available on their web site.

The medical profession as a whole is particularly unscientific when it comes to identifying and treating new illnesses. Have you noticed? You can buy a lot of time if you pass the patient off to a psychiatrist.

It is possibile that some, if not all, cases of Morgellons are the result of exposure to tiny bits of nano-technology. These objects may lodge almost invisibly in the skin, causing unexplained lesions. Larger nanotubes or groups of smaller ones may appear to be fibers. According to a recent article in Popular Science, many of these objects are so small that when inhaled they can be carried directly into the brain using the same pathways as smells do.

Reading the Morgellons information reminded me of the few times I’ve come in direct contact with fiberglass insulation. You can’t see it, but it is painful and itchy. What if the fibers were microscopic? Would they still cause discomfort? I don’t know.

The dangers of asbestos were ignored for decades while thousands of workers died of the lung cancer it is now known to cause. I hope we don’t repeat the story with BuckyBalls.


Technorati: Morgellons+Disease nano-technology nano-tubes nano-pollution asbestos nanotube+modeler buckminsterfullerene buckyballs

I think I’ll name my next dog
“Hash: b2e189abf85e809a51522cdb0e53083a”

I found Don Park’s site (see below, Identicons) while searching for 2D codes such as ShotCode and QRCode. Once I get everything tagged, life is going to be much simpler.

Ok, so Don had links to some other fun icon sites, and I’d like to share them.

This one, created in php by Charles Dark of Visual Consumption, uses the same concept but a different implementation to build a colorful 9-code “Visiglyph” of your IP address.

This avatar, also based on IP address, can be found at planetOzh. I like mine. It’s purple.

And here’s your identicon:

Technorati: Visiglyph Identicon security tech

Don Parks Daily Habit - Visual Security: 9-block IP Identification

An interesting site I came across a few weeks ago, lost, then found again.

Look, I’m beautiful! Uh, well, at work anyway. My identicon at home looks like one of the bugs from the movie “Starship Troopers.”

Update: Since you wondered…

SanDisk Takes Action Against Alzheimers

For some reason, Sandisk believes that selling special purple flash memory will fix Alzheimers. I have no idea why I think this is funny. I fully expect to spend the last few years of my life not remembering from moment to moment what I am doing. Oh, look, a plate of half-eaten something I don’t know the name of… should I eat it? Shudder.

They’re going to find out that Alzheimers is caused by a low-fat diet. Those plaques? They land in the empty spaces left behind when the brain - which is largely fat - melts away.

Sandisk was one of the major backers of the Secure Digital card format. I recommend the product highly, no matter what color it is.

Technorati: memory Alzheimers

I’ve been playing with the .mobi stuff and discovered that 2D codes have a use other than to count packs of cigarettes. I can put my web site URL into a QR-Code or a ShotCode, print it on stickers, and stick the stickers to things. Then folks can point their cellphone cameras at the code block and the URL will show up in their phone as a clickable hypertext link.

I was thinking I could sell my bumperstickers that way, put the QR-Code on them.

There is a nice java app for cell phones at QuickMark Mobile Barcode - Web Site QuickMark. This app also reads SemaCode. Some fun! QR-Code even has error correction built in so that if the code block is torn or partly obliterated the app can still get the information out of it.

    


Create your own code with the QR-Code Generator.

Another 2D code is ShotCode. This one is targeted for advertisers. You have the option of logging all kinds of information about the cell phone and user.