Crooked House, a model in Second Life of science fiction write Robert A. Heinlein's concept. This is built by my friend Henry Segerman (segerman.org). The cat in the vid is my avatar “Xah Toll” in second life. For external view of the crooked house, and other vids by Henry, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOEFvCZJM4s.
Some update on Problems of Microsoft IntelliType. (software; keyboad macro)
Intro To Firearms From Second Life Military.
Monster.com commercial “When I Grow Up”.
Humor video: Monster.com Commercials.
Updated What is Technical Drawing, Descriptive Geometry, Projective Geometry, Linear Algebra.
My brother bought: “The Oxford Spanish Dictionary on CD-ROM” amazon. Great product.
See also: A Review of 3 Dictionaries.
Mathematical Models of 3D Inputs Control (essay)
Found interesting articles today.
Nicole B Ellison, a researcher in social networking sites, has written many articles. See: https://www.msu.edu/~nellison/pubs.html.
Some amazing videos.
Video of insect fights. You have Mantis, spiders, centepeds, wasps, scorporions, Atlas beetle, Hercules beetle, and even shrimp!. Look at the following 2, wasp vs scorpion. In one of them, wasp won, but the other, the wasp got stung dead by the scorp. http://www.japanesebugfights.com/2.htm http://www.japanesebugfights.com/15.htm. In this one, http://www.japanesebugfights.com/4.htm wasp vs centepede, the wasp is aggressive, but loses.
This one, atlas beetle vs hercules beetle. http://www.japanesebugfights.com/5.htm.
This one, wasp vs centipede: http://www.japanesebugfights.com/12.htm. The wasp got killed by the venom.
Youtube video search: mongoose. Mongoose fighting snake. Also, lots of other animal fights, e.g. cat vs snake, etc.
A guy cutting off his penis and balls. http://www.muchosucko.com/show/bme_pain_olympics_finalists-26629/search
Amazing. With the rapid advance of communication techonolgy, in particular the internet, we can watch all sort of things readily at home within 5 minutes. Just 20 years ago, it would take months of research and digging in libraries.
Beetle are interested to me in particular of their anatomy. in particular, they have a hard protective shell cover for their wings, called Elytron. Also, their wings are folded! Folded wings is quite fascinating from the design perspective. The elytron function as a armor, of course. Imagine that. The disadvantage is of course the weight and decreased mobility. Another intriguing thing about insects is the Antenna (biology). In particular, read about their functionality.
Discovered a new keyboard hardware design, by a hobbist. The site is humblehacker.com, see: http://humblehacker.com/Keyboard/design/Influences(3C616352).html. It is the most idiotic keyboard hardware design. A chimera that has the opposite effect of synergy. See also: All About Keyboards, Keyboard Layouts, Shortcuts, Macros.
Though, i admire his dedication to actually manufacture the keyboard hardware. See his writeup here: http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:6292. Something i might do in the future.
I'm mentioned by teen do-nothingers: http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1256151238. Been mentioned in 4chan a few times starting this year. What is 4chan? It's one of those social network of the juvenile. See 4chan.
My latest Second Life creation: Xah Combat Dive Roll Movement Enhancer.
Art of Luis Royo (erotica)
Wrong Hole Song.
For detail, see: Wrong Hole Song.
The Candy Mountain Cave song.
For detail, see: Candy Mountain Cave.
Daylight saving time, a problematic hack. The benefit of a modern concept of time, is in its precision and universal agreement. Daylight Saving Time is a hack, originally for the benefit of saving electricity, and a very reasonable one. It was effective in the era of early 1990s or so. However, checking on Wikipedia, it is no longer so today. And, consider its other effects such as economics, health, etc, there is no conclusive evidence that it is good.
Basic tutorial on Windows environmental variable, pulled out from my PowerShell tutorial: Windows Environment Variables.
Haskell has a new logo. For creator, context, see bottom of A Lambda Logo Tour.
XahLee.org Web Traffic Report 2009-09.
Now, http://xahlee.info/ is online. The xahlee.info is basically a mirror of xahlee.org, except it does not contain any pages that are of sexual content, political, offensive, or otherwise controversial. Basically, that means good old math, programing, english literature, contents.
I made this mirror because in order to put google AdSense, they don't allow such contents. There are about 40 pages that are of sexual nature, and about 40 are controversial. Out of the 3864 pages on xahlee.org.
Emacs Does Not Support Viewing Images Files In Windows (computing)
The ErgoEmacs Keybinding, a ergonomic based keyboard shortcut package for emacs, has a new version, and is now based on minor mode. Download at:ErgoEmacs Keybinding (Thanks to David Capello.)
Watched Coraline (film) today. Pretty good. Better in first half. Not as good as i expected though, because i read the summary of the story on Wikipedia first and i think i'd love it. I didn't particular find the animation that spectacular, nor the story extraordinarily fascinating.
This movie reminds me of Pan's Labyrinth, also a fantastic film. I think i liked PL better.
The technology of this film, Stop-motion, is rather fascinating. Basically, you just take still photos and sequence them together. I couldn't imagine how such method could make a good, smooth, animation, but apparantly it can.
Typically, stop-animation is done using clays for characters, because clay is easy to mold. This film is done by 3D printing to create models. Amazing technology. Imagine, in order to create this film, they have to build minature sets, and take tens of thousands photos of it. Quite amazing. Consider what it takes to build the minature sets, little houses, chairs, dolls... in a sense, they are high quality toys, custome made by dedicated professional artisans. The resulting product is a magnitude higher quality than mass produced minature toys you could by in toy stores. Fascinating. I wonder if they sell those sets and artifacts after the film.
Updated: Some Notes on Paper Folding.
Essay: A Short Survey Of Keyboard Shortcut Notation (computing; emacs)
Idiocy Of Unix Copy Command (computing)
Bang Brothers, a popular porn website. Wikipedia comes to explain: Bangbros
See also: Xah's Porn Outspeak.
Emacs Lisp Suggestion: A Function For Copying and Deleting Whole Dir (computing)
Lyrics appreciation time! Damn! (Youngbloodz)
More on: Math Notations, Computer Languages, and the “Form” in Formalism. (math; computing)
Random notes on math: Theory Of Equations (math)
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)*
* The analogy between the sea squirt and the associate professor was first pointed out, I think, by the neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas.
-Daniel C. Dennett (from Consciousness Explained, 1991)
The academic Tenure issue has been on my mind. My un-informed impression is that it's a extreme inefficiency. After reading the Wikipedia article, i learned that the origin of tenure itself is supposed to be academic freedom, but of course, some criticism states that its effects is exactly the opposite. I don't know for sure, but i think something of a life-long award is certainly bad. It basically make people lazy, by human nature. When food is guaranteed for life (by some unnatural modern social structure), it is questionable that the person will be as productive as before.
The tenure issue can be checked by statistical survey. (which probably has been done) We can look at all highly respected academics, and do a social study on their productivity, comparing those having tenure, and not, and productivity from before and after tenure. More likely than not, general speaking, tenure gets productivity downhill.
Spent about 2 hours to update: Mac and Windows File Conversion.
Essay: Problems of Emacs Supporting Obsolete Systems (computing)
I've known about induced lactation, mostly from Wikipedia reading few years ago, however, Wikipedia has taken it to a high ground! See Erotic lactation.
Essay: File Aliases Considered A Plague (computing)
Essay: Math Notations, Computer Languages, and the “Form” in Formalism.
This week i got a email from Rudy Rucker. He's writing a blog about pseudospheres http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2009/08/28/pseudospheres/. Our brief chat went over whether there's a animation of the Breather Surface breathing.
I don't know the answer. I don't even know what exactly the breahter surface is, and I've wondered about seeing it breathing. After asking Richard Palais, he gave me some explanation. Here's from what i understand. For detail, see: Breather Surface.
Been rusty with SVN. But recently, David Capello joined the ErgoEmacs project, and he put the code into google code's svn repository, and also created a draft emacs binary. Fantastic. With this, i needed to brush up my svn and start to work with svn to commit code. So, i wrote a basic SubVersion Tutorial.
Essay: How to Increase Your Computer Operation Efficiency. (computing)
News: CIA memo details procedures for breaking detainees (2009-08-26) (Reuters) Source. Quote:
WASHINGTON, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Sleep deprivation, “insult slaps”, water dousing and “walling”, or slamming a detainee's head against a wall, were techniques used by CIA interrogators to break high-value detainees, according to an agency memo.
Mont Saint Michel. See: Exotic Architectures in Second Life.
Wrote a basic tutorial on how to use AutoHotKey to create keyboard shortcuts and key macros on Windows: AutoHotKey Basics. (computing)
Added definition to this vocabulary page: Xah's A Word A Day.
Just bought 2 keyboards: “Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000” (review) and “Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard” (review) Love them both.
Update on the Computer Keyboards Gallery page, on the purpose of the keys: PrtScn (Print Screen), SysRq (System request), ScrLk (Scroll Lock), Break keys. Also, some design problems of Apple's keyboards.
Tim Burton's new film. Trailer at http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/aliceinwonderland/. See also: Misc Alice Artwork, White Rabbit. Jefferson Airplane live.
News, “AP sources: Report shows CIA interrogation methods” at Source. Quote:
AP sources: Report shows CIA interrogation methods
By PAMELA HESS (AP)
WASHINGTON — As the Justice Department considers whether to investigate alleged harsh interrogation practices sanctioned by the Bush administration, sources say a soon-to-be-released report by the CIA's inspector general reveals that agency interrogators conducted mock executions of terror suspects.
These latest allegations are contained in a 2004 report that has been kept secret and is to be released next week, two congressional officials told The Associated Press. They spoke late Friday on condition of anonymity because the report has not yet been cleared for release.
Threatening a prisoner with death violates U.S. anti-torture laws.
In one case, interrogators brought a gun and power drill into a session with suspected Cole bomber Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, the report says. The suicide bombing of the warship USS Cole killed 17 U.S. sailors in Yemen in 2000.
In another episode, a gunshot was fired in a room next to a detainee to make the prisoner believe another suspect had been killed, according to the report, which a federal judge has ordered to be made public Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
See also: A Love of Torture.
Spent 30 min to update: Xah's A Word A Day (page 11). (English literature)
In 2005, Google denied me from participating their AdSense program. I've documented this incidence in my 2005 traffic report, but now i separate it out onto its own page: Google AdSense Ban on XahLee.org.
New tutorial: Working With Tables In Emacs (computing)
Discovered that a new emacs 23 feature. Fantastic. For detail, see this new page: Emacs Suggestion: dired-do-query-replace-regex Replace ALL (computing)
Looking for a day job now. Xah Lee's Resume 2009.
A amputee furry. Added to: the Glorification of Female with Limblessness.
“Mathematica Notation: Past and Future” (2000-10-20), by Stephen Wolfram, at http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/mathml/index.html.
For some commentary, see bottom of: The TeX Pestilence.
Update: Exotic Architectures in Second Life. (virtual world; tech)
More Second Life screenshots: Second Life Futuristic Cities. (virtual world; tech)
short notes on Unicode: Carbon Emacs 22 vs Emacs 23 (computing)
Tutorial: How to use and setup Emacs's whitespace-mode (computing)
Rant: A Exhibition Of Tech Geekers Incompetence: Emacs whitespace-mode (computing)
Updated: Emacs: Where to get JavaScript, Visual Basic, PHP modes? (computing)
Updated: The Cream of Juggling Videos. (video collection)
Emacs Manual Node Persistency Issues (computing)
Emacs PowerShell Modes and Emacs Visual Basic Mode (computing)
A new essay index: All About Keyboards, Keyboard Layouts, Shortcuts, Macros. (computing)
Took about 2 days to write: New Features in Emacs 23 (computing)
Today, on my Windows machine, the system pops up telling me Java has a update. Then, the Java update offers me some Carbonite Online Backup free trial for 30 days. Fuck Java. Fuck Sun Microsystems motherfuck.
Analogy vs Reasoning (humor; computing culture)
Emacs, Dvorak, C-x (computing)
Difference between Emacs's “(setenv PATH ...)” and “(setq exec-path ...)” (computing)
Collection of tools for: How To Create Your Own Keybinding In Microsoft Windows (computing)
From Wikipedia: Group of Two
Sino-American or U.S.-China relations refers to international relations between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China (PRC). Most analysts have characterized present Sino-American relations as complex and multi-faceted, with the United States and the People's Republic of China being neither allies nor enemies. Generally, the American government and military establishment do not regard the Chinese as an adversary, but as a competitor in some areas and a partner in others. At the same time, it is acknowledged that the nature of Sino-American relations will be a major factor in determining the fate of the world in the 21st century.
The U.S. has the world's largest economy. China's economy is the third largest and will soon overtake Japan's to become the second largest. The two countries are the two largest consumers of motor vehicles and oil[1]. They are the largest emitters of greenhouse gases and thus have a disproportionate impact on climate change.[2]
HIV World Map (human animals)