WooHoo! "The dRuby Book" is out. Will review later

The dRuby Book: Distributed and Parallel Computing with Ruby

I just got it synced into my dropbox, so I'll get to read it soon.

I am not "The Internet with Boobs"

B invented that term for me. But it's not quite true. I, do however, have what seems like an impressive ability to dredge up seemingly obscure facts from my memory.

My colleagues at work have endless fun trying to find something about which I don't know something.
Like asking me if there was ever a game show involving a goat with an aqua lung and Henri Bergson.

The answer is "yes" by the way. 1969. Monty Python. The show was called "Spot the Brain Cell".

But the reason is far more prosaic. It's simply because I'm old. I'm 55 (well nearly 56 but who's quibbling). I grew up in a world of broken iPads (Books as they were called then) and I had an insatiable appetite to find out what the f*ck was going on. So I read. And read. And read. And still do.

I find young people today far too willing to have their whims satisfied by quick facts. When I had a whim, I had to work at it. They're called libraries, people! We grew up in a world without plastic. No gadgets. So if we had to figure something out, we had to dig. And dig. And dig. We found out eventually what it was that we were looking for, but in the process absorbed tons of other stuff that made life worthwhile.

So if the process of satisfying a whim about why so many of my grand parents hated Germans, I discovered that Russian MIG-15 fighters where based on designs made by German engineers and that there was this guy called Demajanuk who was a concentration camp guard (who's died yesterday aged 91 btw) and that he was at Sobibor about which movies and TV series were made and... and... and... You get the picture.

The point is I had to WORK FOR IT. I didn't have wikipedia or anything else for a quick fix. All the data that is available at a click and tap seems to me to be destroying the act of discovery and the osmosis of interesting stuff. I absorbed. And absorbed.

So in a sense, I am the internet with boobs. So maybe B is right.

Book Review: "The Great Disruption" by Paul Gilding

Fascinating. I've always been a bit of an anti-consumerism nutter, so this book tickles more than just my fancy. Both B and I tend to buy only what we need and often resort to 2nd hand. We tend to hang on to things long after their end of life and when we do finish with things we don't tend to throw them away, but pass them on to a good home wherever possible or pull them apart for parts. In fact I'd venture to say that the only consumerism we, or should I say I, engage in is the creation of a large Nerf gun arsenal.

Anyway, enough of us. So. Here's this guy who has a long pedigree of environmental activism and was the head of Greenpeace for many years saying this:

"It's over. There's no point in campaigning to save the environment. It's too late. Now it's time to brace for impact. The maths are clear: we can't grow the economy any more, so we need a different approach."

Well argued, snappy and amazingly upbeat, he articulates how humanity can survive the coming economic crisis and emerge into a bright steady state economy where peoples needs are met and are, more importantly, happy.

The book is peppered with amazing quotes, fantastic economic opportunities and details about companies that are using Schumachers approaches right now and making serious profits sustainably. And, most importantly, he clearly articulates how "steady-state" in no way implies "stagnant."

Sounds insane yes? I've often been described as a pessimist, but I prefer the term "An optimist with experience." And as such, I think his suggestions, actions and his hope are what is needed.

I have always been shocked at the state of the conspicuous consumption culture, the vain belief that growing the economy infinitely was viable and that we could always trade our way out of any difficulty. To me, these ways of thinking are out dated and just plain wrong. It seems to me to be sheer madness to think that with Earths finite set of resources the billions of poor people could ever reach a western level of wealth. So it is refreshing to see a well argued, statistically backed and experience led book can show a way through the coming economic problems.

So. Go buy a copy.

Some Ruby IDEs I didn't know about...

Interesting...
From the ruby-lang mailing list:

<snip>

I just stumbled across some IDE's I never even knew about:

http://arcadia.rubyforge.org/

http://www.cloud-ide.com/

http://shiftedit.net/home

I know that there are others out there, but these are what I found 

first.  What's remarkable here is the install process for these IDE's is 

quite different from what I'm (somewhat) familiar with:  Netbeans and 

Eclipse.  

These IDE's are distributed either by gem or through the browser.  Quite 

interesting.

</snip>

Haven't put the author's name for privacy reasons.

Book Review: "The Science Delusion" by Rupert Sheldrake

Hmm. It's 3:30am and I have just put this book down.

Fascinating. I read the dust jacket and my immediate thought was that this was a load of old bollocks.
But it isn't and the dust jacket is just plain wrong.

The tone is one of sober, deliberate questioning of the dogma and paradigm of 'traditional' science. In one sense the concept of 'traditional' science is the thing he's suggesting needs addressing.

Sheldrake isn't saying that his ideas are right or that the universe is alive or that parapsychology is real.
He's just saying that the questions about them should be treated the same way as other 'scientific' questions.
So at the end of each chapter he provides clear questions about what was discussed and possible experiments that could be performed to approach the 'heresy'.


I have to say that many of those experiments are doomed to failure because they are not constructed very well. The crystallization experiments are just plain silly. But that's not the point. In any case I particularly like his idea for X-Prizes for proving various things such as over unity devices. Cute.


Each chapter attempts to address a key assumption, dogma if you will, about the current state of science. He then asks questions about it and provides 'evidence' to the contrary. His 'evidence' in most cases is utter rubbish, but again that's not the point. The fact that asking the question at all in the current materialistic science view is viewed as heresy IS the point.

Finally I would like to say that if I hear the phrase 'morphic resonance' one more time I'll throttle the person saying it and shove an easter island statue into their nether regions. The idea is completely unfalsifiable and there are time-slice-universe field theories that, I feel, better address the issues than a morphogenic field.

Movie Review: "Legion"

Hmmph.
Downgraded to Meh.
First off I just don't get this obsession with end of times stuff.
I don't mean the save the world stuff like Independence Day (not that I don't have serious beefs with that one), but rather this Armageddon apocalypse nonsense where some invisible mystical being sends 'down' warriors to destroy everything and kill everybody but the ones who are faithful.
Messianamericism I guess.

Anyway, apart from one scene where I thought the angels use of wings as a potent physical weapon was an original idea, I felt the movie just fell flat.
There were a lot of zombies involved, but they were a characterless inert bunch and if they had not been present I don't think anyone would have noticed.

All in all if you want to get a feel for the movie, watch Terminator followed by The Prophecy movies.
Same result but more enjoyable.

Say this in a Christopher Walken voice: "If you want the baby to live, come with me"

Meh.

I was feeling miserable so I built a castle out of cushions.

I work in IT. Anyone who does will recognise these:

P1: Worlds going to end.
P2: Worlds going to end later today.
P3: Worlds going to end by COB.

All of which have the following consequence: Managers will make you commit hari kari if it isn't fixed right frickin now. There is a P0 but no-one talks about that except in hushed tones as it usually involves an alien mothership, sharp knives and investors. OMG, I've revealed too much.

I have quite a few of these pending.

I've been sick. Flu sick. I was feeling shattered, aching, sick and miserable so I went downstairs and started watching a few episodes of King of the Hill season 6. Nice. Only problem was that every time I laughed I coughed up a lung. Not nice as I am running out of them.

We have this really nice sofa. L shaped. And I found myself in the corner and was cold. So I started pulling cushions in on myself. Then a pillow. Then my Blankie. Then a hyper-frickin-fluffy bath robe B's mother bought me.

Pretty soon I had a castle. Warm. Cuddly. Feeling better now. Mistress of all I survey. Which admittedly is mainly a coffee table, a TV and a glass of bourbon.

Only thing missing is a 50 cal and an AK-47. With sniper scope. And night vision. OMG I've made myself laugh. There goes the last lung.

Movie Review: "The Man with X-Ray Eyes"

From 1963. Does it hold up?
Frickin' A.
I first saw this in the early 70's and thought it was great.
And it still is.
Ray Milland as the obsessed scientist, Don Rickles as the fairground exploiter and so on.

I have only one beef with it...

"And if thine eye offends thee, pluck it out!"

Er... No... No I won't. I want more. Dammit. MORE.
Every now and then I get a glimpse into the underlying reality that is reality.
A "matrix moment" if you will. Brian Greene, Carl Sagan, Richard Feyman et al.
It's really there! A swarming mass of radiation. A fog of particles sleeting through us and around us and *is* us.
We are a seething mass of radiation swirling and interacting with other seething masses of radiation.

There is no 'red'. There is just a mass of swirling radiation with a little paint-by-numbers messages on it that our brains use to interpret as 'red'.
I love that. It makes sense.
I can almost see it out of the corner of my eye, Dirk Gently like.

Like the Inflaton field.
I can almost glimpse it sometimes, and I can almost feel the sheer frickin' expanse of it sweeping outwards.
The sound of one inflaton clapping so to speak.

Ray Milland didn't go far enough.
Just a bit further and the character might have seen the face of ... Er... No... Maybe Einstein or Godel or Feynman even.

So if you get a chance to see this movie, do so.

Movie Review: "Hybrid"

Ok. Once you get past the central conceit, this isn't a bad film.
The acting is good, the filming fairly tight and not flaky, the suspense and flow maintained quite well.
Nice sting in the tail and good characterizations for the most part.

The idea is that a bunch of police mechanics and doing a late night Friday shift and are working 3 levels down in a heavily secured workshop.
Unfortunately for them a car has been delivered that is, shall we say, not what it seems.
Ten little indians happen and one by one they get eaten by the car.
Until they trap it in.... No. No spoilers.

My only problem is the central conceit.
So... You know that certain octopuses, octopi or whatever can disguise themselves as coconuts, coral and what not, yes?
So... Thousands, if not millions of years ago, some octopi came on land.
And started hunting humans.
So they disguised themselves as caves, trees and what not.
Wait. What?
Ok. Ok. Never mind. Let's just drive headlong into weirdness.
So over the millennia they have disguised themselves using the current dominant useful thing.
Caves. Trees. Huts. Sheds. Cars.
What. What?
Ok. Ok. Never mind. Let's just drive headlong into weirdness.
Yes cars. So they camouflage themselves so well as a Buick town car or a Ford GTO that even trained mechanics can't tell at 2 feet that they are a frickin' great bad ass octopus.
When it's sitting there and they're all standing around it, why the phuque doesn't it reveal itself and eat them right there?
Oh well.
I enjoyed it. It just wasn't that bad as far a B- Grade sci-fi.
Or maybe I was too sick. Whatever.
So grab some beers and a pizza and watch it.

Contagion! Or why there were no links posted yesterday

B got sick. Then I got sick. Then several others got sick. Sweeping through the office like a brush fire.
Patient zero is just beginning to get over it after several days.
He spent the day intermittently:

1) carving chess sets out of chopsticks and
2) watching episodes of QI and Burn Notice and
3) coughing, choking, chucking up and
4) generally being miserable

I was absolutely hopeless yesterday spending most of the day in a daze of snot, coughing and chucking up.
It's 3:30am and I couldn't lie down for the coughing, so I came into our home office to check email.

It's the first time I've been able to use a keyboard or look at a screen for 24 hours.
Anyone that knows me would find that almost like discovering that the Queen is actually a lizard alien.

The worst thing about it is the headaches, joint aches and the dissociative state you're left in.
I need glasses to read, and the headaches precluded wearing them which made it all but impossible to code.

I'll try to get the links done this morning as I can almost function normally now.

Sorry everyone.