Grand Challenge Home

I blogged this earlier this month (see "Robotic Vehicles Race, but Innovation Wins). It's happening soon, October 8. The link for this post goes to the home page, where you can see competitor's blogs, all kinds of background info, and where on October 8 the race will be online live.

Rational trigonometry

Wikipedia carries this entry on a new system of Trigonometry, to replace what we all learned in School. From the entry:


Rational trigonometry is a modern envisioning of trigonometry by Dr. Norman Wildberger of The University of New South Wales, explained in his book Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry.

Instead of distance and angle, it uses as its fundamental units quadrance (square of distance) and spread (square of sine of angle). This choice of variables enables calculations without square roots and trigonometric functions that generate irrational numbers - hence the name. For distinction, he refers to the traditional trigonometry as classical trigonometry.

It is otherwise broadly based on Cartesian analytic geometry, with a point defined as an ordered pair (x,y) and a line as a general linear equation Ax + By + C = 0.


It looks kind of cool. I get the feeling that it would feel weird to
use his approach for someone trained in "classical" trigonometry (his
term), until you grok it, then it would be really smooth.

Idea: Simple aid for the blind

I need to google a bit to see if this exists, but here's the idea...

I've got a friend who is a great musician, who also happens to be blind. It got me to thinking that blind people tend to have very good ears. Could they pick out different pitches in a chord well enough to use it for sight?

So imagine this device: one or two digital cameras (nothing too flash, the resolution you can manage would be pretty low I think with this device). Process the video stream into audio: any pixel can placed left<->right using a standard stereo pan position, and up<->down can probably be accomplished with pitch. Hmm, could you have enough different pitches to do this without it turning into a complete wash? If you used to cameras, could depth be done using a combination of audio level and some kind of echo effect? There is standard stuff people do in audio to achieve depth, anyway, so do that.

So we actually have two dimensions unaccounted for. up<->down for which I'm proposing pitch (would that just be awful?), and colour, which you might just leave out.

Is someone already doing this? Is the idea just completely stupid? It strikes me that you could probably get a couple of simple digital cameras for a couple of hundred dollars each (webcam level cameras), and a wearable computer for somewhere under $2000 (not sure about that, need to go hunting online). Steve Mann's stuff is the place to look, actually, he does wearables, and is big into video input. The only other thing you need is a $10 pair of headphones :-)

----

lol, 1 minute after posting I found this:

The Optophone
What is an optophone

This device was invented over 100 years ago :-)

However, it doesn't appear to have been commercialised successfully. It might do some good to put together a minimum cost recipe to allow people to cobble one together from cheaply obtained off-the-shelf components.

Here's a java applet that does it but uses time instead of stereo pan to give left->right; it sweeps once every second or so. Why why why do they not use stero pan????

Geek = Terrorist?

Apparently, it's not a good time to be intelligent and eccentric.

Richard M. Smith writes on a public mailing list recently:

It appears that there is a growing group of "geeks" who are being singled
out as "terrorists". Although suspected or charged with terror-related
crimes, these folks in many cases were simply in the wrong place at the
wrong time, have quirky hobbies, or showed poor judgement. Attached is a
list of articles about these individuals and their alledged crimes.

=============================================

Suspicious behaviour on the tube
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1575411,00.html

Cape pilot wages battle over FBI's 'No Fly' action
http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/capepilot23.htm

In N.Y., Case Of Germs Shifts From Bioterror To Moral Error
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16281-2004Jun29.html

Man Charged Under Patriot Act for Laser
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=385589

Agents search homes of bioterror expert [Kenneth M. Berry]
Actions in N.Y., N.J. part of anthrax investigation
http://tinyurl.com/c6fnu

Patent 6,710,711 - Method for identifying chemical, biological and nuclear
attacks or hazards, Kenneth M. Berry
http://tinyurl.com/3p6jj

Scientist in plague vial case set to appear court
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Southwest/01/15/missing.plague/

The Hunting of Steven J. Hatfill
Why are so many people eager to believe that this man is the anthrax killer?
by David Tell
http://tinyurl.com/8ac2m

Man wrongly linked to Madrid bombings sues
Names Ashcroft, Justice Department, FBI; challenges Patriot Act
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/10/04/mayfield.lawsuit/

Googlism

Find out what google thinks about you. Well, actually about someone with a long google shadow. Mine is not big enough to rate on googlism.com :-(

Neo-Networked Geek Manifesto

I accidentally got involved in pissing contest about who is the biggest geek (actually conducted between my wife and another fellow's wife on a list somewhere). I fail these kinds of contests, because I really only have workstations at home, no real servers, nothing really fancy. This article explains why.

My Website is Back!

My website is back! Fantastic! For ages, emlynoregan.com has been pointing here. But eventually I got it together, bought some server space and recreated my old site. From the site:

"My website is back. I've painstakingly converting it to C# from Delphi.net, and to MySQL from SQL Server. Why? Well, it's running on a linux machine, using mono, apache, and MySql. Amazing! Even more amazing, I'm developing entirely in plain vanilla Visual Studio 2003, on IIS on Windows 2003, deploying by copying the copiled code to the linux box, and it just works."

Damn, I'm so stoked to have it back and working, and now I'm undertaking major renovations. Already, it's able to cope with test & production versions sharing a database, multiple sites working from the one installed codebase, and user authentication with varying levels of security. Yee-haa!

(Stuff like this really excites me - yes I'm that much of a geek)

I love business analysts (who wouldn't?)

I was having a bitch session with a developer friend of mine on Messenger, and the subject of BAs (business analysts) came up...

(btw, I love the picture to the left. Notice how it looks important and informative but is actual quite mysterious and utterly useless. My bet is that it was made by an actual BA)

reptar says:
erg - BAs - people too retarded to be IT managers
Emlyn says:
"erg - BAs - people too retarded to be IT managers" - lol, I love it, truest thing I've heard all day.
reptar says:
oh seriously - how often have you met one with an analytical mind that can communicate effectively?
Emlyn says:
BAs have no skills. Zero. I've never met one who had a clue about anything useful.
Emlyn says:
Surely there are actual useful analysis skills and stuff that BAs *could* have, but for some reason they never do.
Emlyn says:
Ability to understand basic logic would be good. "And", "Or", "Not". It'd be a start.
reptar says:
no - they generally go about writing incomprehensible shit - and then blame everyone around them when the things fails
Emlyn says:
Or any concept of systemic thinking. The idea that features can be interconnected, for one thing, that seems to entirely elude BAs.
reptar says:
yes. what you actually need is a good developer who isn't a nerd and is sick of coding (and therefore isn't a nerd)
Emlyn says:
Yes, you need people who've had to actually develop serious software, and understand the consequences of the things they ask for.
Emlyn says:
Hard to find though. The absolutely worst BAs I've had to work with have been those with some programming background; they really think they know better than you, and that you can't question them.
reptar says:
yes - agree with that sentiment too
reptar says:
"I'VE DONE HTML CODING BEFORE, THEREFORE I CAN TELL YOU YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT US NOT BEING ABLE TO STREAM LIVE VIDEO CONTENT VIA THE MOON'S MAGNETIC FIELDS"
Emlyn says:
Whereas, I noticed eventually that the BAs with a coding background actually come from the ongoing flood of people who leave coding because they were never suited to it and were always completely shit at it, because they have completely the wrong mind for it.
reptar says:
yes - I've noticed that too
reptar says:
yet somehow, it's the universities that should be weeding them out
Emlyn says:
Then they become BAs who think they are Overlord of all they survey, and think they can get something built by demanding mutually incompatible streams of features with no regard for overall design. They still have absolutely no aptitude for working with complex systems, but they are now less accountable and can do more damage.
reptar says:
hahahahahaha

If engineers were treated like developers...

"That bridge, it's almost complete, but it turns out one of our customers has trains. Can you throw in a train track?

"Oh, and the CEO of one of our backers likes the Thunderbirds. You'd better make the bridge be able to whoosh up like a ramp, with palm trees that lie down, you know, like the takeoff ramp for Thunderbird 2?

"No, no wait, it turns out that a potential customer (big multinational! BIG MONEY, omg) needs it to be able to float. Make it into an aircraft carrier by Friday, when their people turn up.

"No, you can't have anymore equipment, we just bought you people a new hammer last month. Seriously, you technical people just don't understand business."

Shoreline Spotted on Saturn's Moon Titan (Space.com)

This blog entry is basically all about the cool picture of a shoreline on Titan. Click the picture to see a larger version.

Oh yeah, and how cool is it that there is a shoreline on Titan? Really very cool. Possibility of extra terrestrial critters.

Also, maybe they've got good beaches? ...
---
"We also see a network of channels that run across the bright terrain, indicating that fluids, probably liquid hydrocarbons, have flowed across this region," said Dr. Ellen Stofan, Cassini associate radar team member from Proxemy Research in Laytonsville, Md.
---

Hmm, liquid hydrocarbons might not be totally relaxing.

DNA Hack - The website for Amateur Genetic Engineering

Holy crap, this is what I really need to be looking at. The biotech dream is still alive in me. Here's a comment from the DNA Hack site:

---
Interesting thought, from Michael Schrage in the June 2003 Technology Review: "Maybe bathtub biotech will be the next to capture the mindshare of the techie tinkerers. Maybe bioinformatics and the diffusion of genetic engineering technologies will inspire a new generation of bio-hackers. Certainly the technologies are there for those inclinded to genetically edit their plants or pets. Maybe a mouse or E. coli genome becomes the next operating system for hobbyists to profitably twiddle. Perhaps this decade will bring a Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates of bio-hackerdom -- a hobbyist-turned-entrepreneur who can simultaneously innovate and market his or her DNA-driven ideas."
---

Looks like it's time to get in there. Trouble is, I really want to get into tinkering with electronics (which I know nothing about) and biotech (which I also know nothing useful about), both of which will take time. But I have to work for a living, and then there's the obsession with music, and of course my wonderful family, dammit! What's a wannabe mad scientist to do?

Robotic Vehicles Race, but Innovation Wins - New York Times

FLORENCE, Ariz. - Cresting a hill on a gravel road at a brisk 20 miles an hour, a driverless, computer-controlled Volkswagen Touareg plunges smartly into a swale. When its laser guidance system spots an overhanging limb, it lurches violently left and right before abruptly swerving off the road.

With their robotic Touareg, known as Stanley, impaled in the brush, the two passengers - Sebastian Thrun and Michael Montemerlo, both Stanford computer scientists - pull off their crash helmets and scramble out to untangle the machine.

A quick survey reveals that the sport utility vehicle is covered with debris, but the bug-eyed laser, radar and optical vision system on top of the vehicle is undamaged. So Stanley and its passengers continue on their way, over 50 miles of dirt road through a cactus-covered landscape, in the final weeks of preparation for the second round of the Pentagon's great race.

(etc...)

NASA - Tempel 1 Ejecta Development

NASA's Deep Impact mission sent a probe to comet Tempel 1. An "impactor" was smashed into the comet, while the main probe watched on. Here are some cool pictures of the result, an ejection of material that was 10 times as large as expected.

I think it's fabulous that people are putting together space missions purely to smash stuff and see what happens. Really very cool.

Keyboard-emanations.org

Here's a recent paper by three researchers who have a method (software?) which can turn an arbitrary recording of someone typing (10 minutes plus is required) into the text they typed. The researchers claim that the recording can be from outside the room that the typist is in, and can be on a quiet keyboard. Yowsa!

btw, this is a picture of my laptop keyboard, from which you can probably easily recall all my secret ideas using some simple processing on a commodore 64. Oh well.

Phone pics

I worked out how to get pictures off my phone and onto my PC. Too easy. Here's a crap picture of me that I just took.

Making Light: What we did on our vacation

Here's an incredible account of some survivors of the Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath in New Orleans. By these people's account, people on foot were prevented from leaving the city, and harrassed and endangered by authorities there.

That this would happen in a first world country just beggars belief.

More music

A friend was just asking me where my online music is. The answer is, that if you don't find it at RadioCandela or RadioCandelaMusic (see the links to MyBlogs on the right), then it's here (Hi to Geoff and Julia if you are out there)

'Miracle mouse' can grow back lost limbs - Newspaper Edition - Times Online

No picture, sorry. Here's the start of the article:

SCIENTISTS have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.

...

“We have experimented with amputating or damaging several different organs, such as the heart, toes, tail and ears, and just watched them regrow,” she said. “It is quite remarkable. The only organ that did not grow back was the brain.

“When we injected foetal liver cells taken from those animals into ordinary mice, they too gained the power of regeneration. We found this persisted even six months after the injection.”

Heber-Katz made her discovery when she noticed that the identification holes that scientists punch in the ears of experimental mice healed without any signs of scarring.