Feed My Pet Brain

Information aggregation

futhermet — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:57:20 +0000

Is it possible to streamline content creation and aggregation. Trying out post-by email to explore this.

Time to update my commonplace book.

futhermet — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:53:35 +0000

Time to update my commonplace book. I don’t remember exactly why, but reading Stephen Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From I had a brief recollection of a sort-of-related discussion of advertising and emotion based ads. I could not recall where I read this. I haven’t taken notes while reading for a while and I haven’t transcribed these into my commonplace book (blog) for longer. I could not recall. I’ve continued to keep a list of the books I’ve read. Searching for this discusion was a needle in a haystack. I thought I was on the right track with Secret Life of the Grown-up brain…maybe a discusison of the myth of midlife crisis. A search for early 20th century psychologist turned ad man gave me John B Watson which was a dead end. I couldn’t search Strauch’s book – it’s not available for search on Amazon or Google books. I was resolved to look things up in my book at home…I would have been frustrated. Fortunately I gave my book list one last shot and searched for Frauenfelder’s Made by Hand on Google Books (not avail for search on Amazon). There. Frauenfelder talks about cigarette sales killing ‘making’ and references Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s NNephew. Now how in the heck? Only Google could have given me that. I wouldn’t have taken that note while reading, either.

Filed under: feed my pet brain

Basic truths

futhermet — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:46:03 +0000

It’s easier to dream than to actually do something.

It’s easier to edit than create.

Filed under: feed my pet brain

No to Google’s homepage

futhermet — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:13:19 +0000

Is it just me, or is there a desert background on Google’s home page this morning. I just want my blank white screen back. This sucks. I’m not even logged into iGoogle. When I log in I haven’t found the ‘no image’ option yet. Dang.

Filed under: feed my pet brain

I am reading and not reading

futhermet — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:34:48 +0000

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid – Hofstadter is an incredibly dense read. It’s light hearted and funny, but at the same time really really tough to read.

The book starts by talking of strange loops like:

[This statement is false]

And goes from there.

So, both these statements are true:

[I am reading the book]

[I am not reading the book]

This is no paradox depending on what you mean by ‘reading.’

Another entertaining loop from the book: asking the genie “I wish that you would not grant my wish”

A related paradox from How to Survive a Robot Uprising by Wilson, that I’m listening to in the car:

“Never show fear. Robots have no emotion. Sensing your fear could make the robot jealous and send it into an angry rage.”

Nice.

Posted in Book

Intro to Final Six by Slayer, guitar tab

futhermet — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:27:14 +0000

16 notes from hell. After several unsuccessful Google searches for guitar tab for the intro in Final Six by Slayer, I used Audacity to slow down and loop the intro riff and figured it out myself. Here’s what I heard…posted for research only… The guitar is tuned at least a half step down. Asterisks by the notes where I think the bass is playing over the guitar.

Eb-----------------------------------
Bb-----------------------------------
Gb----7---7-----7---7---7-----7---7--
Db------7---6*----5*--7---7-----7----
Ab--5*--------5-------------4--------
Eb-----------------------------------

Posted in feed my pet brain, guitar

Upload ringtones and wallpaper to your phone

futhermet — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:58:22 +0000

Use audacity to clip tone
Save as mp3
Make sure under browsing options multimedia is turned on: I had to do this after getting online, going to the browser menu, selecting advanced and it’s an option there to disable/enable multimedia
Send sound via xxxxxxxxxx@mms.att.net attached to email
Save from message on phone

Save on a website site
Send link via email to phone at xxxxxxxxxx@txt.att.net
Make sure under browsing options multimedia is turned on
save from site

Both worked for LG/att but http for ringtone with VM/kocyera, mms from my phone with attachment with jpg

Posted in feed my pet brain

The Equation that Couldn’t be Solved, Livio

futhermet — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:10:04 +0000

The Equation that Couldn’t be Solved
How Mathematical Genius Discovered the language of symmetry
By Livio
http://www.amazon.com/Equation-That-Couldnt-Solved-Mathematical/dp/0743258215/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249502373&sr=8-1

A fascinating walk through the history of mathematics, Livio introduces group theory and shows its wide ranging applications. He integrates the human stories of mathematical genius with descriptions of the theories being developed.

P8 Interesting off-topic line “…This does not mean, however, that any delegation of visiting aliens would look anything like us. Any civilization sufficiently evolved to engage in interstellar travel has likely long passed the merger of an intelligent species with its far superior computational-technology-based creatures. A computer-based super-intelligence is most likely to be microscopic in size.” Someone has been reading Kurzweil.

P163 in describing operations and permutations, I was reminded of Wolfram’s a New Kind of Science. Simple rules. Identity, cyclic permutations, transpositions, inverse

P262 discusses possible characteristics of genius. “Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.”

Beyond a certain IQ there is no clear correlation between intelligence and creativity. For those that do make it into the roster of creators, a certain set of personality traits proves far more important than having a certain general IQ, or a high domain-specific ability, even one at prodigy.

Creators are hard-driving, focused, dominant, independent risk-takers. Complexity – tend to be able to harbor tendencies that normally appear at the opposite extremes.

The ability to think outside the box, stimulus freedom, break out of common assumptions. Tolerance of ambiguity.

Posted in Book, feed my pet brain

Planet Google by Stross

futhermet — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 11:44:41 +0000

Planet Google by Stross
http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Google-Companys-Audacious-Everything/dp/141654691X
Table of Contents
Introduction

1. Open and Closed
2. Unlimited Capacity
3. The Algorithm
4. Moon Shot
5. GooTube
6. Small World, After All
7. A Personal Matter
8. Algorithm, Meet Humanity

Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

The book covers the history of Google, through both good and bad decisions. Stross talks about Google’s branching out from its core technology of search. Google book search continues to be a timely and controversial topic.

“Google gave users the chance to set up a ‘personal collection’ of book titles, which could be search and also shared with others. “ Look into this.

Dig back into Google earth – mentioned sites Virtual Globetrotting, Google Earth Hacks, and Google Sightseeing…virtual tourism.

Posted in Book, feed my pet brain

Butcher quip

futhermet — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:12:15 +0000

A nice line from a Dresden Files book:

“Paranoid? Probably. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t an invisible demon about to eat your face.”
— Jim Butcher (Storm Front)

Posted in feed my pet brain