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Here’s an oil painting I made after watching the film, The Fountain (2006). This was my first and last attempt in many years, but I think it turned out alright. It shows the Tree of Life floating in space.

Painting

This is the image I had in mind while doing it…

Poster

Here’s two of my favorite clips on the web. The first, is from George Carlin, famous Comedian who died last year.

The second clip is from the 1976 film Network.

Wilhelm Staehle creates some very cool images. Go and look at his Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre collection by clicking on the image below…

This video clip managed to induce a new stream of thinking in my one tracked mind and it’s all about Artificial Intelligence. Honda’s latest version of Asimo (a robot that can walk, run, carry stuff and do a ton of other handy things) now has the ability to reason! It can look at objects, analyze the characteristics and based on that determine which type of object it is. I seriously want one, but I’m waiting for the price to drop – at R10 million, it’s still a bit pricey for me. There’s always the NEC’s Papero, which goes for about R40 Large, but it’s like a big paperweight that sings annoying songs.

I wish I had the cash to buy Lego Mindstorms NXT. It’s programmable Lego, with servo motors, a light sensor, ultrasonic sensor, touch sensor, sound sensor and a 32-bit micro-controller. I can still remember some of the awesome stuff I built using simple blocks and wheels when I a kid, so I can just imagine what one could do with this set! Go to their website and see what amazing stuff people are building with it.

Your creations are programmed with the help of Lego’s version of NI LabView, which is used in the industry to program all different kinds of consumer electronics, although this is a scaled downed version with drag and drop functionality so you basically drag a loop icon instead of programming a loop etc… Another cool thing is that the firmware is open source and there’s tons of API’s out there for almost any language you can think of!

The best price I’ve found so far is at KiddiWinks (based in Rondebosch, Cape Town) for South African shoppers, if you’re interested. But maybe you want to wait for Version 2.0 coming out in October this year?

Yes, I’m plugging yet another author. This time it’s Chuck Palahniuk, who’s responsible for writing Fight Club. This guy is brilliant. I feel his best book so far is Survivor, but they are all good.

It’s hard to think what a long way we’ve come as far as computing goes. From Babbage’s Difference Engine, right up to the IBM RoadRunner that currently holds the record as the world’s fastest supercomputer, according to the authority on the top 500 Supercomputers June 2009 list. I was planning to basically just show some photos of the MareNostrum, which is a supercomputer (at one time the world’s 5th fastest), housed in a chapel in Barcelona. It is run by the Barcelona Supercomputer Center and I think it’s beautiful. By the way, Mare Nostrum means “Our Sea” and was used to refer to the Mediterranean, by the Romans, so I have no clue why they would call this computer that.

MareNostrum

What reminded me about it however, was the movie Angels and Demons, a bullshit sensationalist piece of crap. It’s sad that Science and Religion is on opposite sides of the spectrum (unlike the above example), as portrayed in the film, but it doesn’t surprise me, because as far as I’m concerned, religion is the furthest thing that you can find from God and that’s why there’s a divide between science and religion. But even science is not progressive enough – it’s just a stepping stone towards understanding divinity, if something like that is possible at all.

Part of it is getting over the Newtonian way of thinking about things – breaking everything down into their smallest parts and trying to make sense of it through mechanical ways of thinking (read The Turning Point by Fritjof Capra) . Funny enough, by doing this, it was proved that at some point it all breaks down (quantum dynamics), and one has to start thinking more holistically.  Note :  isn’t it funny how Programming also went this route – from procedural, to object orientated (breaking everything up into manageable pieces), to distributed (cloud) computing where the pieces are now getting connected again.

It’s this same tendency that’s responsible for the highest amount of Floating Point Operations (FLOPS) and No, it’s not any single supercomputer that can take the credit for this. The RoadRunner mentioned above’s record is currently at over a trillion (1.105 x 10^15)  or 1.105 Peta Flops per second. Even though this is remarkable, there’s projects out there like the Seti@Home project, which uses distributed computing to decipher radio signals from space in the search for extra terrestrial life and the Folding@Home project (used for protein research) which currently does 7817 x86 Terra Flops per second, so roughly 7.2 PFLOPS ! That’s the power of a holistic approach.

I found this really cool video that explains quantum physics / mechanics in layman’s terms and ties together all the loose ends that tend to manifest when I try grasp the concepts.

Quantum Physics

When I was growing up in a really small town, before having access to the interwebs, I found a book in the local library called “The Cuckoo’s Egg”. It was written by Clifford Stoll and basically told the story of how he noticed a small discrepancy in the amount billed for computer time at the computer lab where he was working in California. This eventually led to him exposing a group of KGB hackers. It was a great read and a true story, told by a great a guy with a great scientific mind – he’s a physicist.

This book was instrumental in getting me inspired to buid up my first linux pc (Redhat 4.2) and explore the world of networking and hacking in the nineties. So I was very surprised when I saw his name on Tedtalks the other day. He gives an amazing talk about the things that interest like Klein Bottles, Mobius loops, Dr. Moog (the synthesizer pioneer) and I highly recommend you watch it.

If you enjoy the video above, get yourself a copy of the book, which still makes for a good read. Click on the image to read more reviews and see the book on Amazon

Cuckoo's Egg

The best documentary that I have seen recently, is without a doubt “The Century of The Self”, by filmmaker Adam Curtis for the BBC. It is about how Government and Corporations have exploited Sigmund Freud’s theories in order to control the masses. Particularly interesting is the interviews and bits about Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who actually applied his uncle’s theories with great results. He came up terms like “Lifestyle” and was a big player in getting our culture to where it is today: A culture of Consumerism and individuals trying to express themselves through the products that they buy. Do yourself a favor and be watch this.

part 2

part 3

part 4