missing vowels located

he's like the good will hunting of conway's game of life...

Found out about this on good game, of all places...

So this guy has thrown this up on the Game of Life forum and stunned the Conway's Game of Life boffins.. :) Please enjoy the following expression of the purest of geek enthusiasm (and see links below for more info):

That, if it works as you claim, is undoubtedly the single most impressive construction so far in Life. We'll have to verify it, of course, but that would be the 13th spaceship velocity in Life attained so far. Moreover, you should be able to trivially modify the configuration to achieve an infinite series of spaceship velocities.

And it replicates in only 34 million generations?! The best estimate so far for a typical UCC-based Life replicator was 10^18 generations. I see that you have removed all but the bare minimum -- that is probably the simplest possible self-replicator, and very elegant, too.

I thought that we might see these things appearing by about 2020, but you are a decade ahead of your time! Well, congratulations -- you have single-handedly beaten the collaborative effort between myself, Dave Greene and Paul Chapman to realise a Life replicator. I see that you have opted for an active loop of gliders, rather than a passive tape. Wise decision -- the replicator only takes linear time, not quadratic time. And -- no, way! -- it cannibalises its parent configuration! So, it is an actual spaceship, and not a puffer.

> You should enter this in the Pattern of the Year contest.

Pattern of the Millennium, more like!

http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=399&start=0&sid=a4129b4df4ff2cbfae8e269c7e4b3af1

http://mcxperi.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/first-replicating-creature-spawned-in-life-simulator-physics-math-16-june-2010-new-scientist/

a vowel would be good

hope sandoval reviews

i didn't go but here are some reviews:
http://www.notaphoto.com/hope-sandoval-the-warm-inventions-the-tivoli-24-06-2010
http://undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=11183

summary: she is a bit moody

Panorama from AutoStitch

Panorama from AutoStitch

which muppet is the coolest?

it might be animal. (this video features a staring contest with an ok go band member. also ira glass and zack galifanakis)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHK0JVAqQgE
"go get drums... go get drums. NOOOOOWWW!"

jack daniel's streetfighter

so there is a motorcycle thing, for want of a better word, where you take a perfectly good sports-bike and rip the fairing off. depending on your budget and/or mechanical skill you could add some personal touches to make your bike uniquely cool (and to stop the lights from flopping about on their wires). the results are generally not pretty but there is sort of tough, mad max/post-apocalyptic appeal and you end up with a naked racing bike. (conventional naked bikes have a more upright riding position designed for riding sensibly). it's popular enough that manufacturers such as ducati are jumping on the bandwagon and releasing bikes like this.

i am telling you this so that you can appreciate the following. discovered at brookside westfied on the weekend. clearly a jack daniels fan. i also enjoyed the tiny, impractical handle bar mirrors. there were two helmets in matt black.

more streetfighters

dawn, winter solstice

so the weird thing is i didn't know it was the solstice when i took this. just happened to be up early on monday.

last post from iPhone OS

Notice my finishing move. That's the letter in white. :D Other
highlights include clef, 72 points, and atheist, 52. (You get 35 for a
bingo in words with friends, not 50)

You have to hand it to Nintendo

Early reviews of the 3DS are fairly positive. Apparently if you look straight at the screen you pretty nice 3D.

You have to hand it to Nintendo.

A timeline:

1996: Nintendo: Releases first console with dual analog sticks, basically inventing 3d console gaming. Also, vibration pack.

1998: Sony: Releases the dual shock controller for PS1 with analog sticks.

2006: Nintendo: Releases motion sensor and optical pointer control system. Sells a bazillion Wiis.

2007: Sony: Craps pants, scrambles to release six-axis controller with motion sensors.

2010: Sony: (Four years in development) Motion sensor and pointer! Does it look sort of familiar?

2010: Microsoft: (Four years in development) Motion sensor! And... Wii Bowling? Because no-one got tired of that three years ago...

2010: Nintendo: Releases a DS with an actual 3D screen. Also, a 3D camera which they are going to use for what sounds like some pretty amazing augmented reality, look-through-the-screen applications.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/15/nintendo-3ds-in-the-flesh/

http://www.siliconera.com/2010/06/21/target-shooting-nintendos-amazing-augmented-reality-3ds-demo/

Sure, there's nothing to play on the Wii once you've finished Zelda and Mario. And Wii's graphical capability is something of a joke. But thank you Nintendo, for pushing things forward. Again.

And finally:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/16/

the beautiful girls are now free range

you can tell from the photo they are pretty happy about it

heart lego

new softie

larder

churl, a noun: a chicken-squirrel

(see penny arcade for context)

okay, so...

that second to last picture made no sense. I will try to explain. Those are hand made fashion accessories that were for sale at the salon open day. Some of them I helped make.

Has anyone seen the movie Ghostworld? Based on a comic strip. It has some perfect moments.

moon + venus

there's been a lot of buzz about this collection already :)

Delicious Ferny Hills Indian

I recommend the chicken saagwalla

Chicken name update

The light orange one: Blossom

The brown one: TBA, maybe Brobie, maybe Buttercup, maybe Beatrice
(Biddy for short).

new simonbaird.com

Here's how it looks on iPhone. Coolclock works fine. No mouseover
effects though. It figures. Reload for different colours. View source
for sweet array shuffle technique I learned from @fremnet.

Egg #1

!!!

i am crafting

Another chicken!!!

Chicken!!!

you gotta see the hoodie bit

what can you say about this video of zuckerberg... i think it speaks for itself...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebooks-zuckerberg-has-richard-nixon-moment-2010-06-03

kara: "right girls...?"

girls: ... 

[crickets]

 
kara swisher is pure brilliance in that clip

Fwd: [it's my blog] New comment on Announcing Fractalmapr.

PageForest seems interesting though (I don't really understand it as yet).

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mike Koss <noreply-comment@blogger.com>
Date: Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 8:02 PM
Subject: [it's my blog] New comment on Announcing Fractalmapr.
To: simon.baird@gmail.com


Mike Koss has left a new comment on your post "Announcing Fractalmapr":

I just finished a similar project as a demo for a JavaScript development service we're building (PageForest).

Check out:

http://mandelbrot.pageforest.com/

The main difference is that this one is progressively rendered, with image tiles cached dynamically on-demand in our cloud storage service.



Posted by Mike Koss to it's my blog at June 04, 2010

Steve: I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on. I asked our people about it. And six months later they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He then got inertial scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, 'my god, we can build a phone with this' and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/01/steve-jobs-live-from-d8/

Sono Portside

Omg it's pretty nice. Been to the city one a few times but never been here. Out that window is the river. You can ride the ferry here (it's the second last stop) but I came by motorbike via the ICB and Kingsford Smith Drive. I'm early (hence blogging)...

Nooo!!!

My beautiful basil has been decimated in two nights by a single
caterpillar. That's him in the foreground relaxing with a full belly.
The black specks I presume are his basil flavoured poops. (So far he
hasn't developed a taste for chives..)

LittleDog robot handles rough terrain (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUQsRPJ1dYw

autonomous quadrotors maneuvering aggressively (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM

a sweet hairpin

anzac day

location in google maps

joanna newsom as simpson character

why we love _why

"When you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. So create."

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/15/why-a-tale-of-a-post-modern-genius/

 My copy of 'nobody knows shoes' is one of my favourite things.

Hope Sandoval anyone?

You might remember her from Mazzy Star.

Halah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0dbofSTlTM

Fade Into You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF0lRYhhiwI

Sometimes Always (with The Jesus and Mary Chain)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdAcS4c0-Qk

Playing the Tivoli in June with her new band, Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions:
http://www.thetivoli.net.au/coming_events.php?event_ID=90

A new song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldCtRxALvyY

Hmm, she still has that voice...

Jónsi on the Telly

http://stereogum.com/370941/jonsi-brings-go-do-to-ferguson/news/
the guy on the synths at the back is his boyfriend/collaborator, alex
(on sale tomorrow, just fyi)

this blog of a guy in a band is good

http://mikehsucks.blogspot.com/

long bebot delay jam (plus imovie tricks)

warning, six minutes of improvised electronic music of dubious merit.

recorded with quicktime and the microphone instead of line in (hence sound quality is a bit crap). tried the overdrive at one point and it was way too loud. also i wish i'd realised sooner about changing the pitch range. the video stuff is just imovie transitions done real slow and in two passes.

watch on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-FYcFKTtjM

hack to fix broken number_to_currency in ruby on rails

The rails function number_to_currency for some reason puts the negative sign after the currency symbol. So you get this kind of thing: $-123.55 instead of -$123.55.

Someone wrote a patch for this, see here, but it seems to have been forgotten. So here is my dirty hack.

I put it in module ApplicationHelper in app/helpers/application_helper.rb.

  # The number_to_currency function puts the negative sign after the dollar sign instead of before it.
  # This is a hack to fix that behaviour. Use at your own risk. It shouldn't cause harm when used with
  # other currencies, but it won't fix the negative sign unless it finds $- at the start of the string.
  def number_to_currency_fix_negative(number, options={})
    number_to_currency(number, options).sub(/^\$-/, '-$')
  end

It could be improved obviously to work with currencies other than dollars.

And for convenience you might like to do a monkey patch version of this fix. I leave that as an exercise...

(Disclaimer: Written by a rails noob).

I think it would be a cool life goal to find all of the Mamans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maman
http://www.google.com/search?q=Louise+Bourgeois

The trick is they sometimes move around. I have seen two.

(Long time readers may recognise these pics)

iphone autostitch panos

at the the powerhouse. the guy in the blue shirt is the singer from montpelier who played a free show there

(click photo to see full size)

random walk in march

brisbane st paddy's day parade

i guess it was a while ago now

Crazy fog today

lml

Note star counts

Hardest is probably 5-16. Though 5-19 and 5-20 are pretty close. Now I
might start the brand new levels from this weeks update. I heard there
is a new bird. Ps, I REALLY LOVE ANGRY BIRDS. Pps, I've heard you can
search youtube for videos showing how to beat each level, or consult
certain walkthroughs or howtos. This is CHEATING and I did not do it!
Hahaha!!