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Archive: December 1, 2024
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So Grok, what do I look like?
 Based on the information available and your X handle, I can give a speculative description:
- You might have an interest in technology, innovation, and possibly entrepreneurial activities, given your interactions with figures like Elon Musk and discussions around product use cases and RSS features for podcasting. This suggests you might be someone who keeps up with the latest tech trends or works in a related field.
- Your engagement with varied content from media criticism (like your comment on The Babylon Bee), to health (mentioning Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong), to politics (engaging with posts about CNN and Vivek Ramaswamy), indicates you're well-read or at least very engaged with current events and different spheres of public life.
- Given this, one might imagine you as someone with a thoughtful appearance, perhaps glasses for reading or working with digital interfaces, dressed in a manner that could be described as smart-casual - comfortable yet ready for a professional or tech-related setting. You might carry a laptop or tablet, or even a smartphone with tech-focused applications.
- Your positive engagement with posts around Thanksgiving and general well-wishes might suggest someone with a friendly demeanor, possibly a smile, reflecting an optimistic or at least hopeful outlook on life, technology, and society.
However, this is all speculative. If you want a more accurate or personalized depiction, perhaps you could share more specific details or even ask for an image generation based on self-description.
Nothing about my family, sailing, cycling, nor software development or healthcare … obviously my X-ing takes place in a limited lane 🙄
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Archive: December 2, 2023
Archive: December 2, 2022
Archive: December 2, 2021
Archive: December 2, 2020
Archive: December 2, 2019
Archive: December 2, 2018
Archive: December 2, 2017
Archive: December 2, 2016
Archive: December 2, 2015
Archive: December 2, 2014
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 Kottke links a great video, "Wanderers", narrated by Carl Sagan: "a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds - and how it might appear to us if we were there." Excellent.
Bertalan Mesko: IBM Watson is the stethoscope of the 21st century. "If AI can improve a chess player, it can improve a physician as well." IBM have been casting about for commercial applications where Watson delivers value; expert decision support like advising physicians seems to be one of them. Onward! 
This is quite amazing: "In Paterson, New Jersey only 19 kids who took the SAT’s are considered college ready. This means that they scored at least a 1500 out of 2400 on the standardized test, and this number is truly shocking considering how large the school district is." So, is the problem the schools, the parents, or the students themselves? Well... "the Paterson school district said that they no longer use SAT scores to gauge students’ success."
 In response to the announcement that the next America's Cup competition will take place in Bermuda (despite the current victors Team Oracle are from America), the Horse's Mouth notes "my gosh, there's no place to sail in the USA". I think Bermuda is a perfectly fine venue, but watching those cats scream across San Francisco Bay in the last 'Cup was pretty cool.
 I just recently had a chance to see "The Theory of Everything", the new movie out about Stephen Hawking (it's pretty good ... worth the watch), and so found this story most interesting: Giving Stephen Hawking a Voice. Incredible that he was able to write books only by moving a muscle in his cheek.
Well I guess we knew this: Attending meetings lowers IQ. One of the great things about running a cool little startup is that we have very few meetings.
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Archive: December 1, 2013
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December! Wow. Should be great... :)
 An inconvenient truth: return of the arctic ice cap as it grows 29% in one year. This is the same year that some pundits are calling the "hottest on record". I'm not a climate denier, more of a climate skeptic. Seems like behind every liberal cause is a desire to profit from it, making the innate virtue of the cause harder to judge.
 Continuing our theme of big Christmas trees ... check out this huge floating Christmas tree in Rio de Janeiro's harbor. Wow.
Continuing our theme of not coercing people into helping others: Penn Jillette on compassion: "Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness."
If you're Microsoft, this is not good news: Win 7 handily bests Win 8. This is Vista all over again, except that this time the desktop is less important. Microsoft better get Win 9 out soon...
 This excellent once-in-a-decade phenomenon happened yesterday: gorgeous photos of the Grand Canyon filled with fog. Wow. Looks like a lighthouse on a seacoast, doesn't it?
 Magnus Carlsen, the new king of chess. How interesting that in this era when computers can beat humans, humans still have good new games against one another. There is so much more complexity to chess than you would imagine from the relatively simple rules...
Yes that *is* Magnus with Liv Tyler; perhaps Brent Musburger will now advise teenage boys to play chess?
Doc Searles: how to rescue radio. Um, radio? Buried in the article is an important tidbit: the latest iTunes does have Internet radio, but you have to explicitly enable it via a Preference.
Parenthetically, my car came with Slacker, a Pandora competitor, and I love it. Listen to it all the time, this has pretty much replaced listening to my music from my iPhone, even though it syncs perfectly via bluetooth. I like the spontaneity of hearing music I've never heard, or haven't heard in forever...
 BTW Football Saturday sure came through; has there ever been a day with so many close games? And yay, all of my teams won, how rare is that?
Onward ... into December!
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Archive: December 2, 2012
Archive: December 2, 2011
Archive: November 29, 2010
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 So, what's next? That thought has been on my mind a lot lately... I am not someone who can just relax and enjoy the present - for long, anyway - I need to be working toward the future. And right now, for some reason, there doesn't seem to be a well-defined future for me to work toward. I know, I know, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. I'm working on it :)
From Scott "Dilbert" Adams: Unions. "Imagine how things would be different if education were treated as a national defense issue. In a world where education is branded as the foundation of national defense, if we didn’t get enough high quality volunteer teachers, a draft would be instituted." I can imagine.
 How the greatness of a nation is measured. If we treated education as a national defense issue, would we be greater or less great, when measured in this way?
Ten mistakes every programmer makes. Yep. And I'd add one more: Not desk checking thoroughly :)
 Here's something which could be in my future: a new field of physics. Just when you think a field is already crowded, you realize There's plenty of room at the bottom.
Josh Newman: what's next: body hacking. Cool, but I don't think this is what's next for me. Maybe brain hacking :)
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Archive: December 2, 2009
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This past Monday and Tuesday I made my annual pilgrimage to the RSNA show in Chicago (Radiological Society of North America). This huge conference features about 50,000 attendees and nearly 1,000 exhibiting companies in the largest medical imaging show in the world. Some of the larger exhibitors have city-block-sized booths with hundreds of employees, including bars and restaurants, conference rooms, presentation theaters, and all kinds of state-of-the-art medical imaging equipment.
Digital Pathology isn’t a big deal at this show – yet – but many of the Radiology imaging companies are aware of digital pathology and some of them have even begun their own product development, such as GE and Philips. It is always interesting to go and see what the industry is doing, and especially to compare what has changed year-over-year. Of course one of the biggest changes this year was that the whole show was scaled back; most companies plan their presence at the show a year in advance, and given the economic downturn at the end of last year, booked smaller spaces for this year. As a result the overall square footage of exhibitors was less than in years past, and somewhat less spectacular. It is still an amazing showcase.
What follows are a few notes and pictures from the show (please click any picture to enlarge)…
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 Welcome indeed! RSNA, just like I pictured it.
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 McCormick Center Grand Concourse never fails to impress.
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 Good to know.
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 The show is smaller this year, but not small; as always the sea of booths is amazing.
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 GE has a smaller presence, but not small; they still have a city-block-sized booth. This year their theme is "healthy imagination".
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 Toshiba's presence is as large as ever.
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 ... exhibit booths stretch off into the distance ...
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 ... in every direction ...
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 A meeting with Stephen Willaert of Barco. They use Aperio's ImageScope viewer to demonstrate their 3840 x 2400 pixel 800 lumen 16-bit color 30" display. Cool!
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 I like this Hologic navigation pad. Something like this dedicated to digital pathology reviewing would be great.
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 Okay, time for a walk around the hall!
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 GE Healthcare - here we go...
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 Very cool projection screen. The display technology for exhibits keeps getting better.
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 If this RSNA had a theme, ''women's healthcare'' was it. Featured everywhere...
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 GE is definitely in the imaging hardware business. Note FDA 510(k) pending sign.
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 Inside GE's innovation pavilion. Omnyx were exhibiting their digital pathology system here. I managed to get myself kicked out :)
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 Check out this display. Amazing. Would be great for reviewing slides!
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 Healthcare IT is an increasingly big emphasis for GE
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 Hitachi has some amazing MRI machines.
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 Invivo, another MRI vendor. I like their ''private'' meeting room.
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 Nuance - a speech-to-text company. A few too many concurrent messages in this display, I think.
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 Bracco had a huge booth. Among other things, have software for *improving* image quality.
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 Vital Images - 3D workstations. Had a nice meeting with them, they're expanding into other 'ologies' and have a nice 3rd party API.
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 Hitachi's presence was scaled back this year. Note empty carpet areas.
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 IHE is an initative sponsored by NEMA (the DICOM people) to demonstrate inter-operabilty between vendors.
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 Thinking Systems - CAD solutions (pattern recognition). I love the 256 processor activity map (displayed between the people in the foreground).
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 As usual remote MRI trucks on display, but this year a focus on breast cancer.
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 Konica Minolta had their usual array of amazing digital radiology machines.
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 Varian - emphasis on software solutions for *Oncologists*
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 One of the more interesting and different booth designs...
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 NightHawk - outsourced radiology services - their presence has expanded
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 NightRays - lots of other companies are in the ''Nighthawk'' business now also.
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 Imaging on call - customized teleradiology (aka outsourced :)
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 Fuji has had the same booth for years, but still big and impressive.
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 These photomultiplier tubes from a Chinese company are like fine sculpture. Also would make a great chess set :)
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 The huge Toshiba booth was packed. Now featuring women's health prominently.
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 Toshiba's industrial design is awesome!
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 biospace - X-Ray machines you can stand in! Whole body images, cool.
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 DR Systems - a San Diego -based PACS company, we might work together...
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 Merge Healthcare - a company or an imperative? Huge presence as always...
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 Quantum digital radiology systems - note emphasis on 'made in U.S.A.'...
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 Cerner has a huge presence, primarily featuring HIS and RIS solutions.
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 Sentinelle featured a lot of pink-colored devices, saw that a lot...
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 Pink was definitely in vogue at this show, even pharmas like Bayer got into it.
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 Shimadzu's mobile digital X-ray machine, compact and cool.
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 Medrad is a PACS company moving into EHR.
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 Brit Systems - best penguins at the show :)
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 Digrad makes 'test phantoms'; targets used for calibrating digital radiology systems. Perhaps there will be 'test phantoms' for digital pathology too some day...
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 Bard - handheld breast core biopsy devices. These are used to create the needles analyzed by our customers.
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 Carestream had a strong entry into the 'lifelike display' sweepstakes, wow. 32 monitors stitched together.
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 Imris systems for neurosurgery - imaging and surgery on one table.
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 TeraRecon sells systems which manage radiology imaging workflow.
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 An increasing number of Asian firms exhibit at RSNA, including many from Korea...
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 Canon had their usual large presence; they make components for other vendors.
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 Philips had a HUGE exhibit area, with lots of cool 9-panel displays.
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 Philips' industrial design is pretty cool. Note new message: ''people focused healthcare''.
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 Philips had an interesting ''workflow pavilion'' with maps showing how their products integrate. Nicely done.
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 SonoScape - a Chinese ultrasound vendor.
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 Amicas is a leading EHR vendor; always like this poster at their booth...
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 The Agfa city. They'll take you there (wherever 'there' is :) ...
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 ... especially if 'there' is image-enabled EHR. They need Aperio for digital pathology :)
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 McKesson had a somewhat scaled back presence, booth was full of people. Interesting new tagline: 'take financial control'.
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 Sony has radiology solutions, and entered the 'huge lifelike display' contest with a strong entry...
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 Virtual Radiologic's teleradiology booth seemed scaled back from previous years.
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 Dalsa - Camera vendor (!) and also make digital X-ray panels.
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 Time to cross the bridge to the Lakeside Plaza... no shortage of attendees.
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 ... keep going straight through the RSNA administrative booths ...
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 ... and there's Lake Michigan! Calm and clear today.
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 This year the Lakeside Center had exhibitors also, instead of a big CME area.
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 The winner, largest display - Siemens. Their huge booth had a huge monitor running from one end...
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 ... to the other.
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 Siemens tagline: 'images, my way.'
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 Covidien is one of the leaders in FNA equipment.
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 Sectra - another company focused on women's health.
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 The inner guts of an MRI - very cool. The rollers have to conduct power into the rotating center.
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 Quest International - support for imaging monitors. And they have a pretty big one of their own!
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 Hologic turned pink for the show as well...
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 ... they seem to be marketing to patients as well as to hospitals.
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 A sobering reminder of what RSNA is all about.
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 Always the coolest part of visiting McCormick Center - the programmed water fountains :)
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 And the coolest part of attending RSNA in Chicago is always... Michigan Avenue, dressed for Christmas!
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Every year RSNA gets a little more interesting for Digital Pathology; wonder what it will be like next year? Stay tuned...
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A filter pass made while flying from Houston back to L.A... (offline, will be posted when I land :) It has been a great trip so far, with my annual visit to RSNA, and a great meeting with an impressive customer this morning (wow! was it only this morning?) And now on to L.A, a late dinner in Encinitas, and then... my birthday! The big Five-one, which does not feel big at all; and I've switched to hex anyway so it is 33 :)
 Dinner report: Sepia, in Chicago was amazing... pictured at left, flat iron steak, bone marrow beignets, braised greens, w Callejo Ribera del Duero and of course my trusty Kindle, serving up Nine Dragons. It doesn't get better.
So Monday was "Cyber Monday" - did you do any shopping online? I didn't, but I think maybe I was the only one; I heard that 96M people bought something, 4% from smartphones. Cool.
Apparently Amazon "won", with a 44% year-over-year increase.
 This is clever; The Sun celebrate their 40th anniversary with iPhone-like ads. When you look at it this way, a newspaper really does have some advantages. I particularly liked the emphasis on speed; once you have on in hand, there is literally no waiting for content.
Stephen Baker, blogger at Blogspotting for BusinessWeek, is moving to TheNumerati. Adjust your bookmarks. I guess having bloggers was an interesting experiment for BW, but they found there is no money in blogging. Sorry :) It is fun though!
 Square looks really cool; a new payment services which uses a small [square] peripheral to read credit cards and converts their contents into sound, which can be used by any device with an audio input jack. Clever. I'm not sure credit cards will be with us long term - phones themselves will probably replace them - but for now, this is a good way to replace cash with debit cards.
 From Slate: Slap on a pink ribbon, call it a day. "That little loop seems to have replaced real feminism, which is why women's health priorities are so screwed up." I will say, having just attended RSNA, that awareness of breast cancer is at an all-time high. Which might be more important than "real feminism".
 Amazing photos of Dubai in decline. Wow, that bubble has burst at last. [ via kottke ]
The biggest story of 2009? The rise of the virtual newsroom. I'm not even sure it's really a 2009 story, but definitely it has become apparent this year that the virtual army of amateurs is out-executing the mainstream media. I think going into the tank for Obama in 2007-08 was really the MSM's shark jump...
I like this, from David Pescovitz: "Beschizza's Law: 'Any sufficiently advanced reality is indistinguishable from Photoshop.'" Just wait 'till we have augmented reality, then the line will really blur.
Related; I like Paul Spinrad's idea for an opening title sequence: The following titles fade in and are crossed out one by one:
A True Story
Based On A True Story
Inspired By A True Story
Inspired By Real Events
Inspired By Reality
- Partially Inspired By Reality
This could totally describe my blog!
Picture of the day, this amazing sunset from Jason Weisberger. In me it inspires a feeling of serene peace. Please enjoy!
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... left on my desk by a friend ...
I like it
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Archive: December 1, 2008
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(... sitting at LAX waiting out a snow delay on my way to Chicago...)
So, today was not the best day. The details will filter out, this is not the time to recount them. It all went as well as could be hoped for under the circumstances, but the circumstances themselves were tough.
Not the best way to celebrate Five-O T minus 2, either. I am off to Chicago to attend the RSNA conference - one of the largest conferences anywhere, with over 60,000 attendees. Stay tuned for more on that...
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Archive: December 2, 2007
Archive: December 2, 2006
Archive: November 26, 2005
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Can't really call these coffee notes, because I've already had my coffee. In case you're wondering, yes, I did put up our Christmas lights yesterday, and yes, I did not fall off the roof. It wasn't raining and it wasn't windy, so this year was easier than some. (Of course there was a light string which worked perfectly in the garage, but failed when attached to the gable on the second floor, with me standing on the sloping roof, changing bulbs, trying to find the bad one...) Anyway, here's what's happening...
 I am reading Woken Furies by Richard Morgan. Almost done with it. I love it, this is his best yet. (The third in a series which began with Altered Carbon and continued with Broken Angels.) And I am so happy because I really loved the first two books in this series, but then Morgan wrote Market Forces, which wasn't part of the series and which I didn't like at all (and didn't even finish), and so I didn't think there would be more books in the series. But there are, so yay!
My favorite and weirdest part of this book is where Morgan describes huge vertical structures on alien planets. (Morgan's planets were formerly occupied by "Martians", who flew, and who left behind amazing "buildings" made of inexplicable materials with unexpected properties.) Somehow their verticality really confers alien-ness, I can feel my vertigo as I read the words. Great stuff.
 Speaking of science fiction (we were), did you catch this picture of Saturn's moon Hyperion? Now that is cool. How did those craters form? What a mystery. Almost like something from a Richard Morgan book :) Cassini is awesome!
Christmas Cards are on my mind today. Today is the day I must compile a collage of pictures of my kids, so we can print them, so they can be included with our Christmas Cards, so you-all can see how beautiful they are! Seriously it sounds like a fun project, and it is, but having today as the deadline makes it a bit less fun. I wish I'd done it, like, last weekend. But I didn't, and so here we are. Weird the way that works...
A little while ago Wired ran a story called The Silence of the Leaf Blowers. With which I so agree. I hate that sound - especially on a Sunday morning, or a Saturday, but all other times as well - and I wish there were a good alternative. He who invents a quiet powerful motor will reap great rewards, and not only financial ones. Talk about a problem worth solving!
This problem doesn't only affect yard equipment. How about off-road bikes? Or snowmobiles? Or outboard engines? There are a lot of recreational vehicles which make a ton of noise, and wouldn't it be great if they didn't?
Today is the day for SpaceX. Finger's crossed, good luck, guys! Although they don't need it. I'll be monitoring Kimball's blog all day...
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Do you hate business jargon as much as I do? Blech. Stephen Baker of Business Week's Blogspotting wants to Rid the World of "Solutions", and I heartily agree. One of the first things I do when I encounter a company is check whether their website has a “products” page or a “solutions” page. Products = good, this is stuff they make and sell. Solutions = bad, it is sometimes impossible to tell what is being made or sold, besides marketing hype. As an example, I received an email from a company called BSIL, and this was on their home page:
"We are a global, end-to-end IT solutions provider with a global delivery footprint. With over 20 years of experience, we understand our customers’ needs better and provide a portfolio of services, using robust processes, which enable them to leverage their IT investments."
Do you have any idea what these people do? Nor do I. (Apparently they "provide solutions" :)
 A classic example of meaningless jargon is "Web 2.0". Nobody knows what it means, it doesn't mean anything. It is simply buzzword-compliant crap to put in a marketing plan. Or for naming a conference.
(And don't tell me it means "web applications built with AJAX", because that is not what it means, and anyway "web applications" and "AJAX" are two other examples of bogus jargon. (meta-jargon, anyone?))
I'm not the only one to think so, there seems to be backlash forming:
Xeni Jardin spots trends before most of us: Web 2.0 cracks start to show.
Joel Spolsky's reliable BS meter reports: The Architecture Astronauts are Back!
And not only is "Web 2.0" itself jargon, it has spawned other jargon; check out this page, which allows you to create your own Web 2.0 company. The general schema, "X via Y", is a great clue to the cluelessness of it all. Truly interesting concepts are just "X", the "via Y" part is mere implementation...
Hey, and we even have Web 2.0 Bingo!
For an unbelievable example of jargon run amuck, consider Microsoft's recent "Live" announcement. Talk about meaningless blather.
 Just look at this diagram, does this make any sense at all?
I happen to think Bill Gates is incredibly overrated as a smart guy. He is a lousy presenter, and really smart guys give good, focused presentations that make you realize they are really smart. Steve Jobs would be an example. Kip Thorne - now he's a smart guy. Or how about Richard Feynman; in addition to being interesting, he exuded intelligence and deep understanding. Bill Gates may be a great businessman, but he is not a great technologist. And he is not a really smart guy. Sorry.
If you disagree, please refer back to the picture. Would a really smart guy stand in front of that diagram? (Click for a bigger picture, or see Niall Kennedy's Flickr photo, which has a great comment thread. Via Tom Coates, who comments: "God, does anyone have the slightest idea what Microsoft are on about?")
We've all become a bit immunized to Microsoft's jargon; the reaction to the "Live" announcement was fortunately muted and mostly negative:
Steve Gillmor: Beep Beep. "Remember Wily Coyote? He's the Roadrunner's nemesis, chasing him out off the cliff's edge. Then there's that exquisite moment where he stands on thin air, about to realize he's got nothing. That's Microsoft, folks." Ouch.
Joel Spolsky's BS meter pegged immediately: Massive Frontal PR is Incompatible with Ship Early and Often; a wonderful roasting even though it lacks Joel's usual pithy title.
Robert X. Cringley had Deja Vu All Over Again, in which he notes Microsoft's "Live" reaction to Google is analogous to Microsoft's "Active" reaction to Netscape. Perfect; neither "Active" nor "Live" have any content at all.
Mary Jo Foley: Hailstorm take 2. (You know you're in trouble when your new jargon is seen as the second version of your old jargon.) "When you get past the marketing fluff of 'sea changes' and '21st century Internet,' Microsoft did not announce a lot of new deliverables." She did go on to write, "We didn't notice a single mention of Web 2.0 during Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Technology Officer Ray Ozzie's remarks. That earns Microsoft some big points in our book." Okay, I'll give 'em that. They piled on their own jargon, but steered clear of everyone else's...
Poor Robert Scoble was left to respond: "I don't think it was clear." (D'ya think?) "This was the beginning of a major rudder turn on Microsoft." Iceberg ahead.
The "Live" demo itself was as lacking in content as the concept; Dave Winer liveblogged: "An hour into it they finally start the demo. The screen is blank, the guy is talking. It's live.com. The demo didn't work. A total demo disaster."
(Gates' performance prompted Dave to link his classic Demoing for Fun and Profit, from 1995; as true and relevant today as it was then. Perhaps Gates should read it.)
Even if the demo had worked, it would have been unimpressive; to my eye live.com is pretty uninteresting. Okay, we have a personalized portal. What is this, 1997? Not to mention, it is not even a good personalized portal; maybe they should have visited My Yahoo! or NetVibes, or even their own Start.com. Cue the clowns.
Perhaps we need some new jargon, a word which means "a word which actually means nothing".
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Archive: December 1, 2004
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Here's a question for all you Mac-ers out there: What's the best way to build desktop software for a Mac?
 My company Aperio has built a high-performance spiffy image viewer for very large images used in virtual microscopy, particularly Pathology applications. This is currently a Windows desktop program, written in VB wrapping a C++ OCX with C++ supporting classes. We're planning to build a native Mac version of the same program. I believe the C++ supporting classes will port directly with a bit of codesmithing, including the ones which deal with image files and network communications. However the higher-level stuff will have to be rewritten from scratch. So what do people use? Java? C++? Is there a technology similar to ActiveX controls which readily enables embedding functionality into other programs?
If you have thoughts on this, please email me. (I plan to post everyone's replies, so please tell me if you don't want attribution for your thoughts...) Thanks!
[ Later: Here's the answer... thanks, everyone. ]
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It is still cold here, and now windy, too... brrr... meanwhile, back at the 'net...
This is something to watch: WebMD reports Novel Vaccine Stops HIV. "A therapeutic vaccine has stopped HIV in its tracks. The vaccine is made from a patient's own dendritic cells and HIV isolated from the patient's own blood. Animal studies show that when dendritic cells are 'loaded' with whole, killed AIDS viruses, they can trigger effective immune responses that keep infected animals from dying of AIDS." Excellent.
Netherlands hospital euthanizes babies. "A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives." People are going to react to this with horror (see the comments in this LGF thread), but it is a pragmatic solution. Of course where do you draw the line...
The NYTimes: U.N. Report Urges Big Changes; Security Council Would Expand. Powerline explains why there's not much new at the U.N.: "Currently, all power at the U.N. resides in the Security Council, which has five permanent members and ten temporary, rotating members. Only the five permanent members have the power to veto any U.N. action. The problem is intractable; no nation that now has a veto will consent to give it up, while adding more vetoes inevitably moves in the direction of paralysis. And doing away with the veto power entirely is unthinkable, since no real power - like the U.S. - trusts the organization enough to give it meaningful authority without retaining a veto right." This is why the U.N. is a toothless debating society.
Tim Oren notes an interesting milestone: "The canard that it takes legacy media to effectively cover an overseas story died on the streets of Kiev. If you've been trying to follow the story of the Ukrainians' attempt to overturn a corrupt election, you didn't go to CNN or the NYT, even for primary coverage. Instead you picked up first hand reportage at quaintly named places like 'Post Modern Clog', TulipGirl, Periscope, and the Maidan Internet news collective." Exactly.
 Wired has an interesting interview with Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne. "In the coming era of manned space exploration by the private sector, market forces will spur development and yield new, low-cost space technologies. If the history of private aviation is any guide, private development efforts will be safer, too. A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That's a $100 billion industry." I'm eagerly awaiting Elon Musk's next update from SpaceX.
Slate has a puffy interview with Richard Dawkins: The Man Behind the Meme. He's promoting his new book, The Ancestor's Tale, which is [of course] a must-read for me. "When Dawkins introduced the meme concept a couple of decades ago, hopes were raised that the evolution of culture, or even of the human mind, might be explained as a sort of Darwinian competition among memes. But little has come of this project, even if the word "meme" does continue to get tossed around quite a bit by pretentious intellectuals." I bet Susan Blackmore would disagree!
 CNet reports New microscope could focus nanotech dream. "The U.S. Department of Energy is enlisting partners to develop a microscope that can capture images of particles measuring a half an angstrom, or half the size of a hydrogen atom." Cool. Of course these government-funded projects are part boondoggle, they've earmarked $100M for the development... The micrograph at left shows gold atoms, 23 angstroms apart (proving all that's gold does not glitter :)
 Engaget links an NYTimes story about a guitar-like robot called GuitarBot, and wonders whether it could beat Yngwie or Satriani in a shredding contest. I haven't heard its "music", but I suspect Ottmar is not worried :)
AOL has updated Singingfish, a multimedia search engine. I tried Singingfish by searching for "Ottmar Liebert video", and it worked - it found this Bravo movie (RealVideo) of Ottmar in concert. (Click through if you're never seen him - you'll love it!) I also tried searching for "GuitarBot", but no luck...
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Archive: December 2, 2003
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Shirley and I have some parties coming up - my birthday, a dinner party, and an open house - and so we have to pick wines. I visited our local cheaper-than-dirt wine distributor (Wade's Wines), and picked eight possible chardonnays, in the range $5-$30 per bottle. I also threw in a known-to-be-good $50 bottle for comparison, and we did a blind tasting. Hey, it's hard work throwing parties :)
Tasting Chardonnay Blind
The results were amazing. I totally mis-called which wines I thought I'd like. My personal favorite going in was the 2001 Forman ($30), which ended up dead last. This is why you have to taste blind.
Remarkably, Shirley and I had similar tasting notes. We both found one wine to be the clear pick of the bunch - the 2001 Peters ($25). I promise you, this is a great Chardonnay. Our third favorite was a South African wine, the 2002 Graham Beck, which at $9 is a great bottle. And the cheapest wine of the bunch, the 1997 Chateau Woltner ($5), finished a respectable sixth, ahead of the expensive "benchmark", the 2000 Kistler ($50).
Here are the results, your mileage may vary:
- 2001 Peters Family, Napa Valley ($25)
Rich and smooth, with a wonderful nose and long vanilla finish. What can I say, this was a great Chardonnay. Yum!
- 1999 Thunder Mountain, Napa Valley ($20)
Lighter than the Peters, but very sound. Nicely balanced with full body. Shirley thought it would be better with food than by itself.
- 2000 Graham Beck, South Africa ($9)
A delightful surprise, nice and smooth, with full rich flavor. Kind of an exotic finish. It is always fun to find an inexpensive wine from "somewhere else" which is such a delight.
- 2000 Gary Farrel, Alexander Valley ($25)
A rich buttery chard, maybe a little unbalanced. Great nose. Gary Farrel is pretty reliable, and this was really nice. Plus, they have beautiful labels.
- 2001 Muir Hanna Estate, Napa Valley ($20)
Austere and complex, a little dry, but overall nicely balanced. Nice nose with a slightly bitter finish. This grew on me, I rated it higher on each pass. Maybe needed more time to air out...
- 1997 Chateau Woltner, Napa Valley ($5)
A lighter wine, clean and smooth and dry. Not rich enough to stand up to food, but a nice "sitting around and drinking" wine. And at this price, get a few cases!
- 2000 Kistler Les Noisetiers, Napa Valley ($50)
Probably not ready, seemed unbalanced and dull. Not much nose and slightly bitter finish. I'm a big fan of Kistler, this was a disappointment. Might be better later but so what.
- 2000 Muir Hanna Estate, Napa Valley ($20)
Thin and grassy, too much citrus. Lemon nose, weak finish. Way worse than the '01, not even remotely the same.
- 2001 Forman, Napa Valley ($30)
Just completely disappointing, thin, acidy, and unbalanced. Bitter finish. I picked Forman to win based on past history, but so be it. That's why you taste.
If you want to try this at home, here's how you do it. Person A uncorks the bottles, and wraps them in foil. Each bottle is given a letter (via a little sticky note), and Person A writes down the names of the wines and their letters. Next fold the paper so only the letters are visible. Then Person B removes the letter labels and at random assigns each bottle a number (via a little sticky note), writing each bottle's number next to the letter it replaced. Now you taste, and each person makes notes on the bottles by their numbers. Neither person knows which bottle goes with which number.
Some people like to compare notes as they compare wines. Shirley and I typically each make a pass without sharing our thoughts with each other, then make a second pass comparing notes.
Remember to have crackers, bland cheese, bread, and water handy for "cleansing the palate". Each person needs several glasses for comparison purposes. And remember you don't have to drink a lot! You can taste wines without swallowing... Of course you can, if you want to. Somehow our favorite, the 2001 Peters, was nearly gone by the time we were done.
Tasting Chardonnay, the unveiling...
Yeah, it's hard work, but somebody has to do it :)
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Bad things happening on my hard drive, I'm crossing my fingers and performing other pagan rituals...
A couple of visitors suggested gently that I was out of my mind for agreeing with godless' thoughts on fashion. The gist of their objection was that it is bad to judge women by their external beauty, and shallow to consider overweight women ugly. Hey, it is what it is. Bad or good, men judge women by their beauty, and shallow or deep, overweight women are unattractive. Deal with it.
Cory Doctorow considers the "Analog Hole", and big media's efforts to plug it. "The second section [of the MPAA's Content Protection Status Report], 'Plugging the Analog Hole,' reveals Hollywood's plan to turn a generic technology component, the humble analog-to-digital converter, into a device that is subject to the kind of regulation heretofore reserved for Schedule A narcotics." Not good. I can't believe these people actually believe they can put the digital genie back in the bottle. [ via John Robb ]
YAMPA, from Wired. (Yet another micropayments article.) Will BitPass and PepperCoin supplant PayPal. No. The way is shut.
Joel Spolsky hits another nail on the head: Craftsmanship. "It comes down to an attribute of software that most people think of as craftsmanship. When software is built by a true craftsman, all the screws line up." This is what I strive for, every day. Lining up those screw heads...
 At Slashdot a post linked this Christies auction of a 2,000 year-old 20-sided die, known to D&D gamers as a "D20". This is an icosahedran, a regular solid with 20 equilateral triangular faces. These fascinating objects have five-fold symmetry with edges forming regular pentagons. So I have to ask - what is the plane section with the greatest area?
Scoble discusses the state of Tablet PCs. "I think the problem is that most people buy on screen size and quality and the truth is that Tablets look weak when compared to a 15-inch high resolution monitor." That nails it for me. Give me a high-resolution screen (like that found on my laptop), and sure, I'd be interested. In 2003 nobody settles for 1024x768 anymore.
Matt Haughey reviews the Gateway connected DVD Player. "Overall, I'd rate this unit very highly as a capable network media device. With a simple setup and easy operation, it was painless to use all the files from my PC on my home entertainment center over the wireless network." There are going to be more and more of these things, until finally a network connection becomes a must-have feature.
And a big part of every home will be their media server. The Mirra is out, billed as the "first truly personal server". Among other things, it can be set to automatically backup and synchronize files from all the computers in your house. I wish I had this :
Here's a cool new group blog: Blogging L.A. No RSS feed, yet. [ via Xeni Jardin, who comments "and then, in an unguarded moment, they loosened their standards and let me in" ]
 Wired thinks Secret Energy Haunts Coral Castle. Check out the Coral Castle website. A friend who's seen it firsthand says it really is pretty amazing, especially the 25' lensless Polaris telescope, constructed from a 30-ton coral slab (see pic at right). Even if it wasn't done with some secret energy source :)
I'll leave you with the Wired Geek Gift Guide. A lot of terrific stuff here, for the geek on your list, or if you happen to be a geek, for your own list!
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