and one fine morning…
Ideas
you open doors and close them, quicker than the eyes of most
Aug 30th
In the past, I’ve decided on a specific computer hardware configuration and then purchased a custom systems with exactly that setup. In July, I chose and shopped for each piece separately and put things together myself. Here are the components I chose, taking me a total of 3 hours to physically assemble:
- Case: Antec 902
- Processor: Intel Core i7-930
- Cooling: Corsair H50 self-contained water cooling
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
- Memory: Crucial Ballistix 6GB (3x2GB in triple channel) DDR3 1600
- Boot Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ (1TB, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache)
- GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 (1GB DDR5)
- PSU: Corsair 750TX
- Data Drive, Optical Drive, and Card Reader: scavenged from unused computers at home.
I have the system overclocked from the stock 2.8 GHz to 3.8 GHz. It’s stable and smooth, and the H50 provides plenty of cooling, even when the processor is at 80-90% load. I installed the H50′s cooling fan backward on purpose. This means that the radiator for the cooling sits on the back exhaust of the case, and not on a back intake. I based this off of an article at Tom’s Hardware which suggested that preserving overall airflow of the case is more important than getting cool ambient air for the processor’s radiator. I find that both processor and Northbridge temperatures do not exceed 65C, which is 15-20C below their suggested limits. I am also very pleased with the H50′s noise performance, since I can hardly hear it. The 902 is also a very quiet case in general, unless all the fans are turned up to high.
All in all, this build is a success! I did it for $400 under the “custom configuration” style websites, a full $550 under the Dell equivalent, with a better case to boot. As an added bonus, I now feel fearless about putting my own components together. If you are considering making such a step, just know that pieces these days don’t fit together the wrong way (for the most part) so it’s hard to “put it together wrong” and that your actual assembly process will probably take you twice as long as you think it will. Email me if you want tips or ideas. Otherwise, I think Tom’s Hardware and AnandTech are great for ideas. Check out MicroCenter for your processor (I saved $99 by going to this “brick and mortar” store) and investigate Bing Cashback for your online purchases.
Unrelatedly, I heard an interesting discussion on the Nature Podcast about an experiment that calls into question something called the “testosterone folk hypothesis.” Most people associate testosterone with aggressive, antisocial, and egoistic behaviors. However, researchers found that testosterone actually resulted in people being more fair in negotiations when blinded to the drug they had received. Here is the fascinating, yet somewhat unsurprising part: those people that were told that they had been given testosterone behaved less fairly and more aggressively in negotiations. Essentially, the prejudice about testosterone influenced people in the opposite way of the actual hormone! Read the full paper free, here, courtesy of Nature.
On July 11, my lovely friends Jonathan and Lida just had a beautiful baby girl named Eva Ann. She’s the first baby that I’ve actually known since the beginning, and despite her predilection for emptying her bowels when I hold her, I am fascinated by her.
Lastly, (since I am wary of counting chickens or bragging), I will add that my first academic paper has been submitted. It is called Predicting criticality and dynamic range in complex networks: effects of topology. You can read the preprint abstract here, or download the preprint PDF here from the arXiv. My collaborators were Juan G. Restrepo, my advisor, and Woodrow L. Shew, a physics-trained neuroscientist with the National Institute of Mental health, a part of the NIH. I am really excited about this submission, and will post any news about it here.
we do what we must because we can
Jun 29th
Yesterday I played soccer for the first time since 2005, and felt great. Well, actually my game was pretty awful and I was seriously winded the whole match since I haven’t done any sprinting since January 2009′s adventure. Regardless, I am very very happy with how my leg and ankle held up, and I’m already looking forward to playing again. Seb and I were just going to kick a ball around, but then got wrapped into a pick up game, and it was great. The only downside was a ball to the face that bruised the bridge of my nose, but luckily didn’t rebreak it.
I finished watching a sequel season called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Along Complex (2nd GIG) and really loved it. I wrote previously about the first season of this series and pointed out that I enjoyed how it treated issues of technology. In the second season, I realized that what I like the most is the particular issues that the writers brought up about artificial intelligence. Specifically, through the “think tanks” called Tachikomas (pictured) there are numerous discussions among them that I believe are meant to be a weak A.I. trying to decide whether or not it is a strong A.I. or still only a weak A.I. In context, you should read “think tank” in the military denotation as a tank that thinks, and not in the political denotation as a lobbying research “think tank.” Weak A.I. is the kind that lives in Searle’s Chinese Room and seems like a person but just isn’t. Strong A.I. is a non-human intelligence that is actually intelligent in the sense that it thinks and is conscious (as humans are), beyond just doing human-like computation with identical output. The Tachikomas were interesting to listen to because of their setup: they are child-like helper robots, synced in memory every night, but allowed to differentiate from each other throughout the day (since they are not always synced). They therefore seem to do and think about different things each day, resulting in a bizarre setup when they confer and each instance of the machine is talking to the different versions of itself that diverged through experience through the course of the day. 
Meanwhile, since I have been saving tutoring money to upgrade my home computer, I have been back in computer hardware research mode. In the process I stumbled upon the following article that demonstrates that professional PC gamers have the physical health of old chain-smokers, but the minds and reaction times of professional athletes. It’s not surprising, but it’s fantastic that someone did the research. Here is a link to the article. Anyway, the only thing I’ve purchased so far is an Antec Nine Hundred Two case that was 50% off, new. 
where the skies are always blue
Oct 7th
Today I made some significant updates to the blog. Check it out at tomorrowiwillrunfaster.com . Interesting bits: sync with twitter, changed themes, added more options for users as well.
Tonight, we’re playing a show at Herman’s Hideaway in Denver. Call me if you’d like a free ticket. We’ve got two new songs that I think are our best yet.
if i were the keys, then where would i be?
Nov 29th
So my thought previously was that if you made a 3D computing environment that people navigated as pseudo-avatars, you’d be able to give users a better, more “virtual-realistic” experience. However, the second advantage that I saw was that as a human moves at (augmented) human speed through the environment, the computer, moving at a much higher speed (and in fact facilitating the human speed) could anticipate the movements and desires of the user and juggle system resources appropriately. For example, as you walk toward your word processing desk, the OS begins to load the word processor. It’s not that we need a faster processor, but maybe just a smarter one that covers up its slowness more smoothly. I also think we’ll see a bigger blurring of the lines between OS and application. The concept of an application “running” or “quitting” seems like it should soon be antiquated.
Maybe this isn’t necessary. Maybe people want a 2D environment for their computing. After all, if writing is 2D, then how the hell would making a 3D computer help with any important computing functions? All it would really do is make the interaction a little bit more fluid and fun. But people pay for that. People care about that. If you go to a coffee shop and open up a Dell or a HP, it doesn’t say anything. If you open up an Apple, it does. (This is where Dell and HP owners will stop reading because I am having a bad attitude or something.) Anyway, I think that there are arguments to be made for computer in a certain environment just for the image of it. I think that a sexy 3D operating system might fit that.
But still, maybe it’s not even desirable. Maybe there are better ways to go about things. As far as I can tell, there are two ways of doing things. One is objective, one is subjective.
In the objective sense, we can continue to bind computing to objects, and proliferate those objects. Good examples of these from the past and perhaps future are personal computers, wireless cards, iPhone, GPS navigation, and Microsoft Surface. In science fiction, these types of computers are well exemplified in Star Trek, where the computer is an object to which anyone can talk. It facilitates communication, food, and all of everyday life on the Enterprise. The computer is an object with physically ubiquitous access points.
In the subjective sense, we can bind computing more directly to subjects, and make the subject the access point to computing. One simple example of this is the pacemaker, if we can liberally think of it as a bio-computer that the user wears. Or a cochlear implant! In Card’s Ender’s Game series, Ender wears a bug in his ear to hear from, and subvocalizes using subtle jaw/throat movements to talk to, a remote computer (entity). In The Night’s Dawn Trilogy, Hamilton has dreamed up a neural nanonic computer implanted in the base of the skull, that users can use to enhance reality, datavise experiences (as in televise, but straight to the brain, rather than through a TV, so you feel like you are actually there). In The Golden Age Trilogy, Wright has conceived of telepresence, so that people actually live in matrix-like pods where their bodies are cared for, while they are telepresented to places to which they could not physically travel. Finally, in my personal favorite visual interpretation, the anime Dennō Coil lays a veneer of virtual reality over the physical reality, which is accessible only to those wearing special glasses, which interpret the signals of the virtual, visually and aurally.
For the time being, I think that humanity will most likely continue to go down the path of the objective technology. However, in the next half century, I imagine we’ll see more of an integration of technology into the subject, both for medical and augmentation purposes. The innovations of the iPhone and the Wii in their use of both reading finger movements and orientation using accelerometers may actually be a good staging point for future ideas.
nervous like a knife fight
Nov 24th
People started writing long ago, and the basic idea behind writing was to express ideas with characters. Out of pragmatism, characters are all two dimensional, because it’s impractical to write in three dimensions if paper is planar. The act of writing leaped from the quill to the computer screen with a brief stepping stone of printing in between, so it makes sense that now, we have computers that are two dimensional. We have windows, which are like sheets of paper, and we can stack them in different orders with different pieces of paper on top. Yeah, but why stop there?
I have in mind a 3D environment for computing. Rather than a desktop, on which all your papers sit, why not a more natural environment? The computer screen is physically planar, but it need not display only planar images. Where do you work? Where do you think you should work? Maybe in a garden studio? Maybe in a studio apartment? Maybe on a rooftop? Maybe in a cubicle? Maybe in a lab?
Look, the advantage of the computer over reality is that when you lose something on the computer, you can just search for it. And with apps such as GoogleDesktop, you can search inside the documents, deeper than just the titles. The advantage of reality is that you can arrange your office, room, or garden however you want. Some people like things to be cluttered and warm. Some people work better in cold fluorescent cube farms (maybe?).
Since we can’t google reality (yet) I think that we should design an operating system that is a framework for virtual reality. Applications and files are stored in virtual physical locations that have names based on what you want the system to look like. Let me paint a picture for an artist who would love to be working outside.
You turn on your computer and the screen displays a well-rendered picture of a CG garden. It is 3:30 in the afternoon in reality, and so the garden is lit by a 3:30 sun. You want to check your email. Since you are old-school, you’ve bound your email to a mailbox just on your left as you enter the garden, since email is the first thing that you check. You open the mailbox, and it’s sorted already, because it’s virtual…we can just DO that. Some of the emails are bank statements and bills, but you don’t feel like dealing with them right now. You toss them on your desk, which happens to be across the garden. But it’s virtual, so your ninja star throw lands the letters perfectly on the desk. You want to be sure to remember them, so you highlight them. They softly glow as if lit from inside to show that they are important.
It’s time to do some work though, so you walk across the garden to an easel which you have bound to Illustrator. As you walk closer, the OS notices, and begins to launch the application. You work for a while. The interface for Illustrator is like a HUD from a video game that pops up over the screen. As you’re working, you get some new mail. A ding from behind you lets you know, in rendered 3D sound (advances in stereo sound now have determined how to render things to sound above you, below you, in front of you, and behind you. This is not a fantasy technology yet, though the rest of this is).
I am not sure the best way to navigate a 3D environment that you can manipulate and bend as you wish. A mouse is fine, but I think that there are other things that would work better.
If you look at a picture with 4:3 resolution, you see 4:3. If you switch to 16:9, you see more of the edges. Imagine a continuum of this, that you adjust as you move around, so that your environment bends around you. At maximum bend, you can see nearly behind you. At minimum, you can see just a cone in front of you (standard video game). Think fish eye lens, but only laterally. (maybe??)
I need to eat dinner now, but I think that this is the future of OS. It’s more like reality, more customizable than a desktop background, and still allows for a rigid hierarchy of file systems, but with a much more pleasurable GUI. Most of the technology is there from gaming. It’s just a matter of turning your OS into a game.
PS: Think of what video chat would be like when someone is sitting in your yard, and you are sitting in someone’s living room! All it would take is a binocular camera, and you could render someone in binocular vision!
cut green and rocket red
Oct 13th
If autumn’s falling in my mind, I’ll always have the spring.
I hit a squirrel on my bike last week. I was coming down flagstaff with Woods, and it jumped out in my path about half a second before I hit it at 35 mph. I didn’t know what to do, so I just let it die, and then took it off the road and put it on the side in a little bed of red and orange maple leaves. I’ve never really killed an animal other than a few fish with my grandfather.
Gadi was here in the ‘bama Bus. It’s really magnificent. Check it out here. I am really proud of what Gadi does. I keep a note in my wallet, in the window slot, that reminds me to be more like Gadi each time I open it to get something out.
Friday night I went out with JB and LB and had a really awesome time. I have been struggling to make friends with people here on a deep level for a while. But sometimes, it just clicks. We sat at Himalaya for a long time and talked about education policy. One of the more interesting ideas that came up, I think, was that the counterculture that rebelled against education when we were infants has now become mainstream culture. The other idea that I liked was that parenting has shifted from using pride as a basis to using fear as a basis.
I voted yesterday with my mom. I am excited for November 4.
við spilum endalaust
Sep 24th
Purge[mind[t],{t,a while back, now}]
Carlin moved to SF with Barry and Helen. Ollie arrived tonight. They are all living together, and I am very excited for them. I think it will continue to be positive for all involved.
Among other wonderful reinterpretations in Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl turns the concept of transitoriness on its head. Usually, we think of things that have passed as transitory; after all, things that have passed are no longer with us. Turning this on its head, Frankl writes, “[T]he only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are preserved and rescued from transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.”
Ok, let’s take that and spilum. Given that at any moment, there are a (countably*) infinite number of possibilities (Frankl calls them potentialities) and that whatever entropic process pushes time forward has the capacity to select one of those possibilities as what actually happened, we conclude that human’s** free will*** has the property of being scribe/selector of which potentiality becomes past reality. Id est: choose your own adventure. “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.” Except that on Rosh Hashanah in this case, there’s too much written, so free will lets us edit the text up until the Yom Kippresent Moment. And in implementation, we use the continuous-time version of the model instead of the discretization—we don’t need the error anyway. </garbage>
Here is maybe not some garbage though. ∃ a huge number of potentialities
⇒ one may exert a large amount of influence over what entropy makes permanent when it records/makes irrevocable the past
⇒ one should attempt to maximize the value of what one allows to be made irrevocable
⇒ contrive a plan to Live Now that solves the maximization problem.
School is going well. Sometimes I think that classes and teaching really get in the way of learning. That, however, has a bit to do with who is lecturing that day. I have continued to heed BE’s advice and have enrolled in a macro econ class. It’s fun because the other students in the class don’t understand that math, and I don’t understand the econ. However, I think the econ is made clearer and more intuitive when the math is already intuitive. I regret (for the sake of the other students) that sometimes the econ intuition may not help with the math intuition, but who knows? I haven’t been there, so I don’t really know.
I have been riding my bike a lot, and recently rode my first century. It took me (and my aunt) 6 hours and 25 mins, which is fine with me, since I just wanted to finish. I got going 52 mph down a hill outside Boulder, which was really exhilarating. Finished with a good attitude despite a flat at mile 83 that really messed with my head a little.
It’s too late now, and I need to TeX up analysis notes in the morning. More ideas than usual lately, but sometimes a little trouble getting them all down. Here are my current goals, with which I have been having a fair amount of success over the past couple months:
- Write every day.
- Eat breakfast every day.
- Emulate Gadi’s confidence.
Interesting articles: Cities rethinking ’50s-era parking standards and What makes people vote Republican?
Over and Out. Here is a picture of Frankl. I highly recommend Man’s Search for Meaning, because it is very good, and only 160 pages too!
*math joke only. No intended meaning.
**gender-neutral form of man’s? ⇒ No the apostrophe isn’t incorrect.
***for our gedanken, we assume ∃ free will.
you’ll find out
Jul 24th
Here is an interesting article that is constructed from exerpts from interviews with John Wheeler, who passed away this year. He studied quantum theory with the likes of Einstein, Feynman, and Bohr. He’s the guy who coined the term “black hole.”
His philosophy and its ties with quantum theory are very interesting: Quantum theory poses reality’s deepest mystery
the birth of blue
Jul 17th
I finished The Limits to Growth, and found their conclusions very interesting. Specifically, it was good to see simulations that made assumptions such as, “what if we had twice as many natural resources?” or “What if there were “perfect” birth control? ” The ability of their model to demonstrate a need for unified change, across all major variables, was very convincing. I am going to start on Jeff Sachs’ book, Common Wealth later this week.
DC sent me a link to a speech by a man named Adam Werbach, which was fantastic. It’s a video, or a podcast, or a pdf transcript:
Adam Werbach is former president of the Sierra Club (at age 23), and founder of the first sustainability consulting firm (originally Act Now, recently merged/renamed Saatchi & Saatchi S). In this speech, he talks about how we need to move beyond a green movement to a “blue” movement which can engage 1 billion people in changing their behaviors. The focus shifts from saving the planet (which appeals to a narrow audience) to saving people and making people happy (a mainstream goal). He started something like this at Wal-Mart by engaging employees and their families in a program called PSP (Personality Sustainability Practice). You can read more about Werbach’s controversial decision to work with Wal-Mart here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/118/working-with-the-enemy.html
Basically, each person chooses one “nano-practice” that is SMART
Sustains the planet
Makes you happy
Affects the community
Repeatable
Takes visible action to focus on for a period of time.
Ok. Here’s my commentary, in case you were interested: Werbach has vision. He is, however, the Danton who is too pragmatic for the enviro-Jacobins. I think that Werbach’s ideas show a lot of foresight, and he realizes that radical environmentalism isn’t the best way to change the world‘s environmental practices. I am getting excited now: Jeff Sachs has well-argued opinions on economic growth and eradication of poverty through the widespread, small-scale, e.g. microloans. Werbach’s message is essentially the same, but applied to a different problem that is endemic to current worldwide culture (broadly speaking.)
If you take Werbach’s small-scale ideas, and combine them with massive structural/policy changes, as suggested in Lester Brown’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, the result could be serious change on a large scale, capable of redefining what is thought to be possible by humans. Brown recognizes the need for change in policy very clearly, while Werbach sees the power of changing a culture… And all of this was written about 35 years ago in The Limits to Growth, whose conclusion is that reducing pollution, stabilizing population, and investing heavily in technology won’t change the world’s outcome—it will only change the timing of events, give or take 50 years. The real solution is a change in cultural practices in simultanaeity with changes in world policy. Otherwise the world’s dynamical system has predictable and not very bright futures.
festival
Jul 8th
Here’s a funny one, thank to SF, regarding Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest film: Bruno Pranks it Up
Also, another thing that I’ve been talking about, but finally got a link for: Inventor Trains Crows to Find Money
Jesus. The lols keep coming. Here’s an interesting one from EB: Dave Eggers Interviews High School Interns About Beck’s Odelay
Meanwhile, Barry and Helen were in town just overnight, and it was awesome to hang out with them. Their arrival coincided with my convalescence from some sort of stomach flu, so I had two good reasons to ask Kaslovsky to take my classes for me today. As a result, I will have a ton of grading to do, but that’s fine with me. I feel much better today than yesterday.
ALSO. Please note that new RATATAT, Beck, and Sigur Ros are all sweet.