brisbane textile art festival

http://www.textileart.com.au/

One highlight was Prudence Mapstone.

She is a rockstar in the world of textile art.

ibis

robots need puppets too

eggs by blossom & buttercup

myer centre

from the outside it appears to obey the laws of Euclidean geometry.

aurora has retina scanners

apparently they are not operational though

aurora view

Inflatable outdoor cinema Marilyn

spirit and opportunity

i went to this tonight. really enjoyed it. here are a few interesting facts:

• every night on mars the temperature drops to -110 degrees C. this temperature would freeze and crack the electronics and machinery so the most important function on the rovers is the heaters. they run at night to keep the temperature above about -30 degrees C.
  
• their primary mission is do geological analysis of mars to see if there really used to be water on mars. (rock analysis has proved that there was water on mars).
  
• opportunity is still kicking along after 6 years. spirit is currently out of contact (but there's is still hope for it, see below). they were originally expected to last 90 days.
  
• the rovers are sent navigation instructions once per day but then move autonomously. they can move about 4cm per second but a range of about 100m per day is safer so that operators can visually see dangers by looking at the previous day's images
• the rovers are solar powered and have had problems with dust building up on the solar panels. strong winds sometimes blows the dust off, which improves the charging rates
  
• spirit lost a front wheel motor in 2006 and has been driving backwards since then, dragging one wheel like a lame paw
• it got stuck in some soft sand in january. engineers were working on getting it out with some success when the onset of winter meant that there was longer enough battery charge to keep trying (and still have enough power to run the heaters). at some point later it shut down it's radio contact. when summer comes around in a few months from now it might be able to build up enough charge to make contact again, and even (say the more optimistic) finish getting itself unstuck.
• the routes travelled by the rovers are pretty interesting. spirit has spent a lot of time at 'home plate' which is geologically interesting and thought to be an ancient volcanic hotspring. opportunity has been visiting craters to look at the rock features and is currently on it's way to a really big crater. see here and here. (a sol is a mars day which is just a little longer than an earth day, so each white dot there is like an overnight camp)
• the landing method is pretty interesting. they come down inside a big cusion of air bags and bounce several times. (you can probably find a video of this on youtube)
• read more at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_rover
  

best thing i ever got in a spam email

river tam and the fireflies (album cover)

stayin' classy

Ruby: Module extend and include basics

For some reason or another I had never figured out why this kind of thing does't work as I expected it to:

module MyStuff
  def self.static_foo  # <--- does not work!
    puts "static foo"
  end
end

class MyClass
  include MyStuff
end

MyClass.static_foo #!> undefined method `static_foo' for MyClass:Class (NoMethodError)

I'd google around for the solution but never quite hit on it.

Long story short, I have finally figured it out and thought I would make this blog post about it. Please see the following example:

 1 
 2 module StaticStuff
 3   def static_foo
 4     puts "static foo"
 5   end
 6 end
 7 
 8 module InstanceStuff
 9   def foo
10     puts "foo"
11   end
12 end
13 
14 class MyClass
15   include InstanceStuff
16   extend StaticStuff
17 end
18 
19 MyClass.static_foo
20 MyClass.new.foo
21 

For more advanced techniques, see this interesting article by Yehuda about how rails uses three or four stones to kill this one bird. :)

brisbane river bull sharks?

no-one told me about this...

http://www.google.com.au/#q=brisbane+river+bull+sharks

no big deal right?

not so fast:

http://www.google.com.au/#q=bull+shark+jump

BE AFRAID.

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..)