Opacity - Nassem Taleb's view on e-Books

 I am an avid book collector ("hoarder") and I agree that it is much better to pick up a book, to read the spine, look at the dust jacket, the writing font, the photos, the colours; before picking it up and physically measuring the quality of its content by weight and visualizing the content inside.

That doesn't stop me from wanting one of those e-ink e-book readers when they come down in price and have a faster page turning rate.

I think the best type of reader will be like the wiimote or iPod, with various dust jackets, book-style holders, and containers to hold the reader, based on the type of book you are reading.  A double-sided reader with two screens and the layout of a book could also mimic the feel of a true book.  This type of experience would be immensely closer to the true experience... though it still won't match the real thing.

Fools do not want to accept that the real thing is better than the electronic. In other words, a text does not simplify a book. A book is so much real than a PDF on my hard disk. The experience of reading something you hold in your hands is more aesthetically rewarding: a book is better looking than a flat screen –it has an extra dimension. But to me, the main advantage is that I remember far, far better what I read in a book. My memory solidifies around hard objects, specific books, parts of my library. The classical mnemotechnic originates with the Greeks method of the loci: it consists in attaching memories to physical objects, a stone in a wall, a specific part of a ceiling, etc. You imagine a building & invest some of the locations with things to remember. In Luria’s account of the synesthete who could remember everything in great detail, there is a striking scene. Sh. [the patient-protagonist], has his memory failing him on a small detail because there is a cloud hiding the object to which the memory was attached.

Source: Opacity

Of course, there is something to a book that contains video, 3D virtual reality, links to web pages, music, and an author's commentary to figure out what exactly they were trying to say.  Some fools can appreciate this kind of book... I'm one of them.

http://www.bcpictures.com/pages/richmediaebrochures.html

YouTube - NXT Rubik's cube solver - Final version

Yet another useless but amazing application for Lego Mindstorms...

This last version of my LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Rubik's cube solver can solve ANY cube (no matter how shuffled) in 3'30" minutes maximum.
I adopted on PC a fast algorithm to solve the cube.
Anyone who thought this robot was fake must see!

YouTube - NXT Rubik's cube solver - Final version

Engadget - Alpine

I was never a big fan of Alpine - their decks seemed really klunky to me, however I know that the quality of the sound that comes out is much better than any dolphin-swimming stereos like the ones I used to have.  And my audiophile friends always liked them.

Now it sounds like they have a way to measure the interior space of your car and eq the deck properly.

Audyssey's MultEQ acoustic correction technology to "measure and analyze the entire interior space," after which it combines results with a set of equalization filters to produce the best sound for each environment. As if that weren't impressive enough, the integrated RoadEQ is also there to "compensate for music distorted by vehicle / road noise."

Engadget

Dakar costs a bit underestimated

I slightly underestimated the costs of the cancellation of Dakar Rally for one team... by a few million.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. --Robby Gordon said Monday the cancellation of the Dakar Rally cost him approximately $4.5 million, and he disagreed with the decision not to race at least a portion of the event.

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''An entry for the Dakar is $12,000 per person, not counting the vehicles,'' he said. ''I think our entries were $360,000 and that's just the entry fees. That's not shipping trucks. That's not flying people there. That's not hotels in Lisbon. It's a big deal, and it's got me completely messed up right now in the head.

What's even more interesting is that all of the infrastructure was setup to race and a course alteration would have been acceptable in lieu of cancellation.

''All of the equipment was there,'' he said. ''All of the teams were there. Television was set up. All of the stuff was done, and Portugal is not a dangerous area to race. It's a safe country, it's a beautiful country, and we had the permits to run on those roads and those trails. Some of it was military proving grounds, and we had what we needed to do to race there.

''Why didn't we go to Morocco and run a few stages in Morocco? ''

One team member is still going to Dakar with supplies intended for a school.

Despres will still be in Dakar on January 20, “I have decided to honour my own humanitarian obligations. I will inaugurate the new school in Dakar and make sure the school materials that I took to Lisbon will reach their intended destination."

http://www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/sport/sportresults/mcn/2008/January/7-9/jan0808cyrildespresondakarcancellation/

Noise-cancelling... speakers?

Think of a video projector... now translate that to audio.   Audio that follows you around when you walk, but doesn't disturb others.

“If you have audio going into a single speaker, it pours into a room like water. It just goes everywhere. Once we have multiple speakers under computer control, we can pre-distort the audio so that it builds up in some areas of the room and cancels itself out in others. We can do computer simulations of how the sound is going to propagate from the individual speaker cones and specify that we want more sound in one region and less sound in another.

Personal Audio Space: The Headphones Experience sans Headphones

First step is to catch up to "state of the art".  Second step is to blow right on by.

“The way I like to design research projects,” Droppo says, “is that each phase answers at least one or two questions that we don’t know [the answer to]. While we don’t have anything spectacularly different yet, in the past few months, we’ve been able to catch up to the state of the art, and the real exciting part for me is where we’re taking this in the future.”

Bikers Dakar Rally Dream Is Shattered (from York Press)

The stories about losses around the Dakar Rally cancellation are coming out now...

Duncan Tweedy, 44, who lives in Harrogate, but is formerly from York, said he had spent tens of thousands of pounds and a year of his life preparing for the famous endurance race.

Bikers Dakar Rally Dream Is Shattered (from York Press)

One quote that caught my eye...

"I'm just a small fry here. There are teams here from all over the world - China, Russia - who've spent millions of pounds."

How much did teams spend on Dakar?  Perhaps around the $100,000 EUR mark each?  More likely much more.

Over 525 teams competed last year.  That's only $52 million EUR... but with tourism & media costs it should be much more...

Death Race 2008: Dakar Rally Canceled

It is ironic to me that one of the most dangerous races in the world was cancelled due to 'safety concerns'. Doesn't bode well for tourism in the region... or sponsorship of the race itself. Seems like really short notice to cancel the event the night before... Why not just cancel the Mauritania stage or put in a detour?

This seems to be more of a political issue than safety. Looking at the Dakar Lingo page...

"Polisario Front - The rally was criticized for crossing through the disputed territory of Western Sahara between Morocco and Mauritania without consulting the Polisario Front, which is considered representative of Sahrawi people."

Looking at a list of security threats to Dakar, perhaps the French government was worried about land mines in the region?

It will be interesting to see what the sports media will fill the space usually reserved for Dakar... and how the Dakar organization will spin this.

The Amaury Sport Association really had no choice but to cancel, considering the danger to both the racers and spectators even after Mauritania had offered up a 3,000 man security force

Source: Racing News: 2008 Dakar Rally Canceled

"The Mauritanian government said the shooting of the French tourists and a separate attack on a military base that left three soldiers dead were isolated incidents and claims of an al-Qaeda plot had not been proved."

More info here.

I missed the news that Colin McRae had died in a September, 2007 near his Scotland home. Sad times...

The Canadian Press: Canadian aid worker in Kenya worries for her visiting family; the region's people

This strikes a little too close to home.  January 1st I was driving on the 401 near Kingston at 9am.  I drove for 20 minutes without seeing a single car on the road.  I actually drove for 15 minutes without seeing the road at all.  It felt like a war zone, only this was just mother nature and an annual ritual for me.  There was about a foot of snow dumped everywhere, and the snowplow drivers must have been too hung over to get the highway plowed because I was doing the plowing in my car... without snow tires.

It took over six hours for what would normally be a 2 hour drive.  But we were able to get home eventually, unlike these unfortunate Canadian aid workers who can't get a flight out of Kenya.

"You just had such an eerie feeling of driving down what was supposed to be a highway and what normally during the day is completely jam-packed with people and yet you are seeing no one. All you're seeing is army and police and maybe a few media."

The Canadian Press: Canadian aid worker in Kenya worries for her visiting family; the region's people

The key difference for us is the worst thing that could happen to us would be ditching the car or spinning out into the guardrail.    We saw about 10 cars that were stopped facing the wrong direction on the highway going home.   All of them had tow trucks and/or police cars next to them.

The other difference is that the snow caused nothing more than minor annoyance for everyone except those dumb enough to be driving in that weather.  In Kenya, a lack of aid to countries like Sudan & Somalia is a life or death situation.  Things are not getting better.

Another example (they are so easy to find lately) of unrest in the Eastern Hemisphere is what happened over the last two days in Mirpur, Pakistan.  A strike by garment workers caused the city to shut down.  Was the strike over wages?  Nope.  They didn't show up for work for two days to protest and mourn the death of a colleague who allegedly died after being forced to work a night shift while sick.  By the account of the factory the employees held management hostage and refused to leave.  When the factory workers returned the next day, they found the factory closed and took to the streets.

The woman's family will receive 100,000 rupees (approximately $1620) from the factory for her death.  That is over 3 years of minimum wage earnings in Pakistan, though it could be more for a garment worker.

This isn't the first time this has happened. 

Why I'm not a big fan of Andy Warhol

I went to an Andy Warhol exhibit a couple of years ago at the AGO in Toronto.  I was not impressed with the art, and to me it was very commercial and trend-focused or shock-focused to get attention.

I didn't see the art, only canned pop culture meant for marketing.

Now I see why... Andy was a businessman.

The first edition of Hello! appeared on British news-stands in 1988, hastening the fulfilment of Andy Warhol's famous prophecy about everybody having their 15 minutes of fame - a cliché now, but also one of the greatest truisms of the age. (I met Warhol once, at a party in New York for an English rock star. It was clear Warhol had no idea who the rock star was; he had been invited simply to ensure the event would be mentioned in the next day's papers; he had come simply because he had been invited. His eyes were dead, and when I shook his hand it felt like talcumed parchment paper.)

"Making money is art," Warhol said, "and good business is the best art." And who doesn't want to be an artist?

Source: The 20 years that changed my life... and the face of modern Britain - Telegraph

 

I'm still looking for 15 - 30 minutes of fame...

Excellent story about someone growing up in the late 20th century and the turmoil surrounding his life as he reached middle age.