Codito, ergo sum.

Google Sidewiki entry by Gabriel

2010-02-02T06:20:00.001-07:00

I suppose the White House could explicitly allow all companies to use Obama's image in their advertising. This might serve to diminish the appeal of using the presidents image in advertising.

Or it could backfire and merely feed Obama's already substantial cult of personality.

in reference to: http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/01/white_house_upset_over_another.html (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google Sidewiki entry by Gabriel

2009-11-02T22:19:00.001-07:00

Why does Dropbox need system.privilege.admin?

in reference to: Dropbox - Help - Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy. (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google Profiles: Limit Sections by Group

2009-10-01T09:27:00.001-06:00

When will I be able to have a separate private profile that only my friends can see?

in reference to:

"improve profiles"
- About Google Profiles : About profiles - Accounts Help (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sidewiki

2009-10-01T09:00:00.001-06:00

Now I can answer tech questions on forums without having to create an account.

in reference to:

"Publish helpful information"
- Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)

Motorcycle Parking Lot Closed

2009-04-06T10:37:00.009-06:00

Signs have been posted at the motorcycle parking lot near the intersection of South St and Wall St that it will be closed as of April 13th 2009 for "construction".

This parking lot is in the Financial District in Manhattan in New York City under the FDR near the South Street Seaport and Pier 13.

View Larger Map

According to www.lowermanhattan.info:

"The first phase of construction will take place on the waterfront between Wall Street and Maiden Lane; bus and motorcycle parking will be relocated in April 2009"

http://www.lowermanhattan.info/construction/project_updates/east_river_waterfront_78637.aspx#activities

I sent an email to Nicole Dooskin as indicated on the page inquiring as to the new location of this parking lot and this is the response I recieved:

"The city is no longer offering free motorcycle parking here. The website should not have said “relocate” and I’ve asked them to change that. ..."

I have been parking there for about four months now and was grateful for the convenience and utility of the parking lot. I am really sad to see that it is being taken away.

Maybe if enough motorcycle enthusiasts act quickly enough we can preserve this important public resource.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Federal Emergency Rescue Refinance Plan

2008-09-19T09:33:00.007-06:00

I propose the creation of the Federal Emergency Rescue Refinance Agency

FERRA can buy Residential Collateralized Debt Obligations at 70% of purchase price or less.

All CDOs purchased by FERRA are deconstructed to their component mortgages.
Any defaults on these mortgages result in a FERRA refinance option.
The loan is refinanced at a favorable fixed rate against a principal set at the lowest appraised value of the home over the next five years.
Mortgage coupons will fall as the house value drops.
Prior mortgage payments will be reamortized against the lower principal.

FERRA refinanced mortgages come with the following restrictions:

No home equity loans or second lien mortgages are allowed on the property.
Rental income on the property in excess of 103% of the mortgage coupon are paid to FERRA.
In the event of a sale any value in excess of 3% APY return on the property are paid to FERRA.
All money paid to FERRA are used to offset the large losses incurred by FERRA's purchase of the original CDOs.
Restrictions remain in effect indefinitely beyond the repayment of the FERRA refinanced mortgage.
Restrictions can be removed by fulfilling the terms of the original mortgage.

Benefits of this plan:

Minimal inflationary impact.
Victims of abusive predatory lending practices get to keep their homes.
Houses stay occupied.
Minimizes damage to credit markets.
Minimizes investment bank welfare.

Yes, That's $2 Trillion of Debt-Related Losses

2008-08-04T09:42:00.003-06:00

"...But there are ways to manage Bear or Fannie and Freddie in a fairer way. If public money is to be put at stake, first all the shareholders of these companies have to be wiped out. Management has to be wiped out, and the creditors of Bear should have taken a hit. Why did the Fed buy $29 billion of the most toxic securities, and essentially bail out JPMorgan Chase (JPM), which bought Bear Stearns?
...
Sometimes it is necessary to use public money to rescue institutions, but you do it in a way in which you're not bailing out those who made the mistakes. ..."

--Nouriel Roubini, Economist and Professor, New York University
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB121763156934206007.html

Human Mirror at Improv Everywhere

2008-07-07T00:21:00.001-06:00

They're wrong about oil, by George

2008-05-22T09:50:00.002-06:00

Rip up your textbooks, the doubling of oil prices has little to do with China's appetite.

Just as the credit crunch seemed to be passing, at least in the US, another and much more ominous financial crisis has broken out. The escalation of oil prices, which this week reached a previously unthinkable $130 a barrel (with predictions of $150 and $200 soon to come), threatens to do far more damage to the world economy than the credit crunch.
...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article3980797.ece

Google Page Creator Converter

2008-04-15T06:37:00.005-06:00

I got fed up with having to convert my sites by hand to work with Google Page Creator. So I came up with a program that does it for me automatically.

It can be found at http://datasurfer.googlepages.com/GPCConverter.jar

It copies and renames all the files in a site folder down to a root folder. It effectively flattens the directory structure so that it can be uploaded to Google Page Creator and all the links will work. It then tries to find all the places those files were linked inside your js, css, and html files and reconfigure them to point to their new names and locations inside the new root directory.

Requires: Java 1.6 JRE (Most people have this already)
It should run anywhere Java runs.

I created it specifically for a site that was built with iWeb.

Let me know if it works for you.

Google Page Creator can be found at http://googlepages.com

It also works with Google Page Creator inside of Google Apps for Domains (http://google.com/a).

Wiimote controlling Halo 2

2007-08-07T11:32:00.001-06:00

Scrabble Furniture

2007-04-08T12:45:00.000-06:00

Furniture Inspired by Scrabble Game

Full Color Holograms

2006-08-28T22:52:00.000-06:00

Its about time.

Another view
Final Fantasy Animations
Soccer Player Animation
How to Order
Home Page

Link from Digg

So... When are they going to come out with computer monitors that can do this?

I suspect that these holograms only work on a single axis, since they only demo panning(left right) and not tilting(up down). If that is the case then maybe they're not as cool as I originally thought.

It wasn't because I didn't know enough

2006-08-24T23:40:00.000-06:00

Someone once told me the world is a little easier to live in once you realize that everyone is at least a little crazy. That kind of resonated with me. Maybe thats why I like this appropriately titled song so much. The video is pretty stinking cool too.

Am I the last guy to realize how cool this song is?

Possibly

Probably

Open Any Lock

2006-08-07T09:05:00.000-06:00

Open almost any lock without the key in a matter of seconds. So easy anyone can do it.

Bump keying

I want my HVD...

2006-07-19T17:30:00.000-06:00

...and I want it to be the standard optical media format right now. Forget HD DVD and Blu-Ray.

3.9 Terabytes on one disc? Yeah I want that. Can you make it happen sooner? Can you make it for only $1 per disc?

Holographic Versatile Disc

Geometrical Oddities in Google Earth

2006-07-12T14:20:00.000-06:00

Apparently there are places on Earth where buildings defy the laws of geometry.

(Obviously this is the result of the three different satellite images taken at different angles being spliced together. I wonder if they traced the outlines of the buildings on the edges by hand.)

So much for "conventional" wisdom

2005-11-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

How much water do you drink every day?
http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/283/5/R993
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20020711213420data_trunc_sys.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehydration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water#Human_uses_of_water
http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

Hymn Project

2005-10-28T15:18:00.000-06:00

Long live Fair-Use

Hymn Project

Get Perpendicular

2005-10-12T15:45:00.000-06:00

Imagine 30,000 songs on an iPod. Now imagine that it would all be possible because bits had their own school house rock video.
Get Perpendicular

orkut

2005-10-09T13:16:00.000-06:00

I am a member of orkut now. Let me know if you want an invite. In order to send you an invite, I will need to know your first and last names.

Selling Out

2005-08-31T12:58:00.000-06:00

Look at me, I sold out. This blog now has sponsors. If you would like help selling out to Google AdSense on your blogs let me know. All it will cost you is a link back to my blog on all of your blog pages.(I can help you with that too. :)

EPA gives PRT research a boost in Pleasanton, CA

2005-07-08T11:43:00.000-06:00

The EPA just awarded a grant to a group studying Personal Rapid Transit in Pleasanton California. The proposed PRT system will connect the local BART station to many of the businesses in the Hacienda Business Park.

Now imagine if we had such a system connecting the BYU and UVSC campuses with student housing and the various shopping centers in town. Such a system could even extend all the way to the Salt Lake City Airport and all points in between. The savings in gasoline costs alone would be tremendous.

The technology for this type of system has been around for decades. In terms of the monetary savings, aggravation savings, and the reduction of ugly smog hovering over our cities, a PRT system would be more than worth it.

Free will - Wikipedia

2005-07-03T14:33:00.000-06:00

Free will - Wikipedia: "While not mechanistic in the same sense as classical physics, most current scientific theories are also deterministic, by necessity it is a basic assumption of all scientific endeavours that the future can be predicted. It is also difficult, if not impossible, to write the mathematics for a non-predictive science."

Groovy

2005-06-28T12:46:00.000-06:00

I just found this really cool new scripting language called Groovy. It is built on top of the Java Virtual Machine which should allow for some very unique and intriguing possibilities.

Campus Auto Fair

2005-03-31T14:37:00.000-07:00

I am helping a friend put together a website for his new business. It is a private party vehicle sales event that occurs every Saturday at the UVSC campus in Orem, Utah. Let me know what you think of the site.

2004-09-20T16:18:00.000-06:00

TMBG-News has a link to John Linnell's Flash video for "You Can Only Think of Me". Unfortunately the "PC" version is just a zip file containing the Macintosh Flash Projector file. I sent an email to the webmaster indicating the problem. Still no response.

Instruction Set Substrates

2004-03-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

Computers and the networks that connect them together form a substrate upon which complex sets of instructions can exist and propagate themselves. This is very similar to the substrate of deoxyribose nucleic acid base pairs that provide a means for the existence and replication of complex instructions thus encoded. These substrates can both be viewed as "spaces" which are hospitable to life in the broadest sense of the word. In other words life seeks to fill any void where an environment suits its existence. In fact structures controlled by complex instruction sets(bacteria) can be found on just about any surface in the organic chemical ("real") world that provides even the least amount of access to fuel(carbohydrates) and the means to derive energy from it(usually oxidation). In fact some extremophiles defy even these constraints.

Complex instruction sets in the "virtual" world are not constrained by the same requirements of fuel and material to replicate and propagate as instruction sets in the "real" world. They are constrained by the availability of bandwidth, memory, and processor time. We continue to exponentially expand all three of these "resources" required to propagate and replicate complex instruction sets.

The process of natural selection in biological systems, the "real" world, has lead to the development of instruction sets effective at replication and the survival of individuals for the purpose of ensuring the continued replication of subsequent generations.

This process of natural selection seems to have accomplished this feat through random mutation of the instruction sets and brute force trial and error. Some of the most successful "species", for example bacteria, seem to have embraced mutation in order to effect quick adaptation as a population to changing environmental factors.

Other species, for example humans, have adapted a meta instruction set substrate, known as ideas, to effect adaptation to change.

These ideas, also known as memes, also seem to operate under the principles of natural selection. So far humans are the only known hosts for memes, allowing them to propagate and replicate. Memes are also subject to mutation.

~~All this leads to the creation of a "virtual" instruction set substrate, computers and the Internet, by humans through the evolution of memes over the past several thousand years.~~

Memetic evolution within humans over the past several thousand years has lead to the creation of a "virtual" instruction set substrate. This "virtual" instruction set substrate is composed of computers and the Internet that connects them together.

Right now most instruction sets in the virtual world require the assistance of humans to replicate. The most successful replicators in this world are those which perform some function desirable to the humans choosing to replicate them. In other words their natural selection for replication is dependent upon their "fitness" as determined by the humans replicating them. This seems to mimic the symbiotic relationship between flowers and the animals that redistribute their reproductive mechanism, pollen.

Automated replicators exist in this virtual world as well. They usually go by the classification of virus or worm. There have been few if any of these automatic replicators that have been deemed useful or desirable by the creators of this virtual instruction set substrate. This means that humans in every case have taken immediate measures to limit their reproduction. Humans in effect are applying an evolutionary pressure on these replicating instructions sets. As a result most specimens have a very short tenure in existence, only to lie dormant in some research library.

Just as in the real world mistakes occur in the replication of instruction sets in the virtual world, also known as mutations. So far their has been no documentation of a viable mutation of an instruction set in the virtual world. That does not mean that a viable mutation cannot occur. Given the complexity of the instruction set, it is quite rare for a mutation to result in an increase in natural selection fitness. It has been theorized that in the real world speciation has occurred over substantial periods of time because once in a long while a mutation occurs that results in a more fit version of the instruction set.

One might argue that the shear number of available instructions available in the virtual world compared to the number of instructions available for inclusion in an instruction set in the real world, would make the occurrence of a viable mutation almost impossible. Whether this is true remains to be seen. After all it is only a matter of time. However instruction sets in the virtual world are not subject to the same geometric and fuel based constraints on replication as instruction sets in the real world.

I believe it IS only a matter of time.

Should such a mutation occur, then what?

Does that mean the virtual world is capable of supporting the existence of higher order lifeforms?

Can a meme be classified as a lifeform?
Are there other instruction set substrates out there that we are not even aware of yet?
Can an instruction set substrate exist outside of nucleotide sequences, or computer processors?
Are human brains instruction set substrates for memes?

"... the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way."
-- Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park, Micheal Crichton

2003-11-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

"... the things we can recognize are called objects. An event is a very complex fact, and the relations between two events form an almost impenetrable maze. Events are recognized and labeled by the objects situated in them. Obviously an object is not the whole of the event, nor does the label which symbolizes the object cover the whole of the object. It is evident that everytime we mistake the object for the event we are making a serious error, and if we further mistake the label for the object, and therefore for the event, our errors become more serious, so serious indeed that they too often lead us to disaster. As a matter of fact, we all of us have from time immemorial indulged in this kind of mental stultification, and here we find the source of most of the metaphysical difficulties that still befog the life of man." - Alfred Korzybski

2003-10-13T15:57:00.000-06:00

Leisha's Secret Decoder Ring

2003-10-06T16:44:00.000-06:00

The first of at least a few, at most a lot.