North vs. South
I moved my family down to Chicago's south suburbs end of last summer, from the north suburbs of the same city. For those living in the Chicago area, particularly in the suburbs, it's worth noting a few anecdotes about that experience so far.


Why we moved:

• To be closer to my wife's family
  
• To get a larger home
  

Why it was stupid to move:

• Property values in the north suburbs (Lake Forest, Vernon Hills, Libertyville, etc.) are skyrocketing. When we sold our home was growing nearly 20% per year in value.
  
• The schools are among the best in the nation. 93%+ of Libertyville high school students, for example, go on to college. Also, they spend something ridiculus on public schools. I want to say something like $12k/year/pupil.
  
• Many of the towns have quaint and genuine old-fashioned down town areas. Libertyville definitely does. Pretty architecture, cute stores, pedestrian friendly, and lots of activities throughout the year to draw traffic.
  
• Parks. There were parks and forest preservers everywhere. Heck - there were even two forest presevers just for dogs within about five minutes drive from us.
  
• Education level of residents. The average education of the citizenry up there is about 2 years greater than those in the southern suburbs. The difference is even more striking in some towns.
  
• Lake Michigan water. Standard pretty much everywhere near Chicago, except my current town (Frankfort), and other areas where dysentary and rust-filled water is viewed as a good thing;
  
• The neighborhood we were in was awesome. Tons of nice people, lots of other families, and our close friends Chris and Khris had bought near us.
  

Why is good about Frankfort and the southern suburbs. These are anectdotal based on only a few months of observations, but there it is anyway.

• Neighbors in the immediate area of our subdivision seem ok
  
• Property taxes are ridiculously low
  
• Real estate here is only about 60% of what is what in Libertyville, but that 60% includes twice as much as house, and a mammoth yard
  
• Our house is awesome.
  
• The ride on the express train is about 15 minutes shorter each way
  

What the south suburbs leave to be desired,

• Only 83% of high school students go on to college.
  
• Frankfort, one of the better suburbs down here, spends 1/4 as much per pupil as
  
  
  

test

WinXP Networking Nondeterminism
My Fujitsu is running XP Professional Edition, and my other machines are running variously Win2K, and WinME. From the get-go when I got the Fujitsu machine almost a year ago, it could not browse my Win2K or ME machines. As it turns out, it required that both NetBEUI and NetBios over TCP/IP be enabled on the XP machine, as well as the "Computer Browser" service enabled on all of the machines. That solved the problem and I was able to browse the rest of my home network from my XP machine. Mysteriously, one day that functionality simply stopped working. All of the settings and changes were still in place, but it stopped working. The Microsoft Support database was, as should be expected, utterly useless. After wasting endless hours that could have been spent doing something that, say, MADE me money, instead trying to correct the consequences of abject Microsoft incompetence, I finally googled on the error message I was getting. There were about 75 relevant responses, and I found that I was neither crazy nor all that unique. Apparently, XP often exhibits aberant nondeterminstic behavior. (ie, network protocols simply ceasing to operate without an incipient action to precipitate such failure.) Anyway, to cut a long and boring story short, here's an XP problem and solution :

Problem: Unable to browse non-Windows XP machines from a Windows XP machine in a workgroup network
Error message when trying to browse a Windows network from a Windows XP machine:

Workgroup is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the network administration of this server to find out if you have access permissions

Solution:
The following actions were tried:

• Enable NetBEUI on all machines
  
• Explicitly enable NetBios over TCP/IP on all machines
  
• Ensure that the Computer Browser service is enabled on each of the machines.
  
• Manually edit hosts file to map all workstation machines and IP addresses. Do for each machine.
  
• Do same as above, but for lmhosts file on each machine.
  
• If still unable to browse the network or map drives via the GUI, try browsing to the machine manually via the UNC in the Explorer. That is, try typing in \\machine\share\. Sounds stupid, but this is what finally worked.
  

A Promise
After nearly a year of neglect I'm reasonably certain I've killed off any interest those one or two errant readers may have had in occasionally tripping upon this log. Moooo haaa haaa haaa! How evil and nefarious of me. Or lazy. But, I do have a bunch of backlogged comments and thoughts on a variety of things over the past many months. Technology, philosophy, religion, war, peace, politics, raising kids, etc. I will make a point of extracting them from my other devices and syncing them up over the weekend.

Yeahhh! I'm finally off my butt. But, I have not totally lost my laziness. To re-anoint this log, I hereby repost one of my recent Amazon reviews. It is on Dreamer of Dune. A biography of Frank Herbert, by his son Brian Herbert. Herbert jr. has recently been more well known for his co-authoring of a series of Dune chronicles prequels (of moderate commercial but generally poor literary success).

I'm actually only part of the way into the book, so this review is provisional. However, only a few of chapters in and I am enjoying it thoroughly. This book I think will be greatly enjoyed by any big fan of Frank Herbert. His Dune, and other, novels and short stories have enchanted millions around the world. As popular as they are, it is amazing that Herbert, who died in '96, is so enigmatic. This substantial biography (it's fairly long) will wipe away the mystery, and really give a detailed view into what shaped his writing, his values, and his life.

Brian Herbert knows his audience, and jumps right in providing links between Frank's life and the Dune stories (and others) almost right off the bat. These little morsels are sprinkled throughout descriptions of Frank's growing up near Tacoma, WA and his later years. The complex layering of political, religious and scientific belief systems evident in the Dune chronicles is revealed as you spend time with Frank Herbert during some of his childhood adventures and experiences.

In places, you may feel like you are reading passages from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Frank Herbert had a truly amazing childhood, and the telling of it can make you wish for simpler times.

I am not generally a big fan of biographies. However, this one (so far) is well written, and discusses one of the most important and least understood icons in all of literature, let alone science fiction. Furthermore, having read other works from Brian Herbert, I would say that Brian Herbert's emotion and devotion to his father comes through clearly without being syrupy or pedantic. This is arguably one of his best written works, if not the best.

Major yawn...

Got half-way through the audiobook version of Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell. Yawn. Will have to give it another try later...

Fujitsu P-2048 update

OK, so I've had this little guy for almost two months now. I couldn't be happier with it. So far, knock on wood, no wierd behavior, crashes, or anything like that. Some discoveries, anecdotes:

1. The top of the case has a gun metal blue piece of metal in the center, about 3 inches by 7 inches. Kind of strange, but when the battery is charging you can feel the electrical potential as you move your fingertips across the panel. Not strong, but sort of like a much weaker version of touching your tongue to a 9 volt battery. Only when it's charging and the battery is not yet fully charged.
   
2. If a disc is in the DVD/CD-RW and you move the computer quickly through an arc along its vertical axis (imagine an invisible line from the center bottom of the case up through the center top of the case), you will induce a spin in the disc. You can hear it spin. Important safety tip – don't go using this thing for table-tennis or as a raquetball raquet.
   
3. My earlier complaints about battery-powered screen brightness were unfounded. Idiot Eric found the brightness controls on the keyboard. They work beautifully. All is well with the world.
   

I just got a new IBM ThinkPad T23 at work, and that thing is a joke. I took it home the other day from work for the first time, and while working on the train I felt like I had a 27” TV in my lap. The added screen size of traditional laptops is absolutely not worth it. While this subnotebook could use some enhancements (further weight reduction, IR port, thinner, bluetooth, Palm Vx-like battery life), I find nothing compelling in traditional laptops. Abandon restraint, ignore naysayers, release your impulses and go buy one for yourself (the newest models are even better than mine).

PS, for those of you who have read SF author John Barnes this is the first device I have ever seen that could actually stand up to his “werp” devices predicted in Kaleidoscope Century. A terrific read, btw.

A long overdue update....
It seems like ages since I updated this weblog. Since about mid-June, so in weblogtime that is an eternity. Things have been busy. A quick run down:

• Been house-hunting. Found one... it's been a bit of a soap opera, so it's anybody's guess how this turns out....
  
• Been quite busy at work... RFI's, distributed/grid computing research, blah blah. Check out my review of Claudia Leopold's parallel computing book, posted earlier today.
  
• Been reading a surprisingly good SF piece. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
  
• Recently moved buildings for work... only about 5 blocks, but some small hassles involved.
  
• Started writing on a series of hopeful tech rag articles on chat and instant messaging. Pending approval from my employer, a weblog will be used to solicit input and conduct research. The objective is to help educate IT managers on a variety of enterprise issues when considering deployment of these technologies.
  
• Have made substantial progress on what will ultimately be a large fiction project. The genre is SF (naturally), and that's about all I'm comfortable disclosing at this point. Have also been doing research into characterization, plot construction, etc. The basic backdrop and universe for the novel have been formulated for about two years. Linearization of the plot, and character development have only picked up steam recently. If I can find an effective and comfortable way of doing it, I hope to put together a private weblog for specific invitees to comment on the story in progress.
  

Review of Parallel and Distributed Computing, by Claudia Leopold
This book is subtitled as “An all-inclusive survey of the fundamentals of parallel and distributed computing.” It both succeeds and fails on this point. Leopold does indeed cover a wide expanse of technologies and approaches that characterize the space of high performance computing. It is in many ways still an emerging space, so conclusively nailing down every possible thread (no pun intended) in a coherent fashion is eminently difficult. The author's treatment of these different possibilities is uneven, overlooking some important contemporary technologies and implementations. However, first I should touch on the book's successes. The book has chapters that include:

• Architectures
  
• Data Parallelism
  
• Shared-Memory Programming
  
• Message Passing
  
• Client/Server Computing
  
• Code Mobility
  
• Coordination Models
  
• Object-Oriented Models
  
• High-Level Programming Models
  
• Abstract Models
  

As you can see from the chapter headings, Review does cover a wide range of topics within the fields of distributed and parallel computing. Furthermore, within the chapters Leopold treats us to both high-level discussions of approaches and provides a glimpse into some of the implementation challenges involved. On the latter point especially, this book is very useful in that it gives the noninitiate some understanding and appreciation of the peculiarities of parallel programming, without requiring substantial technical background in the technologies. The examples in High Performance C and Parallel Fortran were useful.

Where the book fails is that it is far from as “all inclusive” as the subtitle would indicate. The book was published in 2001, from which we can infer it was written between 1999 and 2000, perhaps 2001. There are a number of prominent and important developments from that period that have not been included. Similarly, there are other interesting newer technologies that have only received cursory treatment. Some examples include:

• No mention of SETI@Home. SETI@Home is the poster child of massively distributed computing, and with 15 teraflops of raw computing power, it is more capable than IBM's ASCI White supercomputer. [see more of the world's fasted supercomputers at Top500.org]
  
• No mention of distributed.net, or other notable exercises in public and commercial grid computing.
  
• Grid computing gets only a glancing reference at the tail end of one chapter. A comparative analysis of this important and still-forming space is glaringly absent from this text.
  
• JavaSpaces, Sun's answer to tuple-spaces, gets only a few sentences.
  
• Java RMI similarly gets less than a paragraph.
  
• Although DCOM is now basically legacy for Microsoft, it represents an important milestone in the evolution of distributed computing. It receives only a paragraph.
  
• Talk of web services and .Net would have been hitting the airwaves as the writing of this book as progressing, although possibly late in the effort. However, some cursory mention at least should have been made. There is increasing discussion of exposing grid compute services via web services interfaces, and Microsoft has recently announced their intention to port the Globus toolkit to Windows.
  
• Oh yeah, about Globus. Barely a mention.
  

It was clear from the text that the author came from a strong UNIX and CORBA background. The text has the feel of a PhD thesis-turned-book, and the areas of concentration are decidedly academic. There are a few other areas of minor complaint. Some of the wording in the text is clumsy, reflecting inadequate editing. Some topics feel like they are introduced in reverse order, assuming the reader already has some context about the given topic. Some topics showed only minimal knowledge on the part of the author, such as her review of the Common Gateway Interface for building web applications.

The author makes a sometimes-clumsy distinction between paradigms and models. The distinction is important in that an understanding of models brings a reader closer to envisioning how they might tackle a given problem themselves. However, reference to various models are sprinkled throughout the book. A comparative analysis, even brief, would have been very useful had it been centralized.

Those complaints may sound harsh, but overall the book is useful. It demystifies the problems of parallel programming, and provides a reasonably concise starting point for researching the distributed computing space. But, consider this book a starting point, and not an ending point. Also – try to find it at a discount, because it's probably not worth the full retail.

Unabashedly out of date...
Ok... several embarrasingly out of date, and now probably completely irrelevant posts. Anyway, may as well get them off disk on up here...

Review of the Fujitsu LifeBook P-2046 - First Impressions

Very excitedly yesterday I opened my birthday present to myself – a brand new Fujitsu P-Series LifeBook P-2046. I have been looking for a suitable, lightweight machine for writing and other odds and ends. I began my search with the Sony Vaio PictureBook at the high end, or a Toshiba Libretto 150CT (used) at the low end. Trolling various retail, review, and auction websites, I found myself led to the Fujitsu. This machine is simply amazing. First, let me give a little rundown of its chief features:

• Transmeta Crusoe 800 Mhz processor
  
• 256MB RAM
  
• 20GB disk
  
• DVD / CD-RW drive, built-in
  
• 7 hour battery life with the extended battery I bought (3.5 hour normal battery life, up to 14 hours with two extended batteries)
  
• 2 USB ports
  
• 1 FireWire IEEE-1394 port
  
• 1 S-Video output port
  
• 1 Type II PCMCIA port
  
• External USB floppy drive
  
• 1280 x 768 @ 16 million color internal display (half-height as is typical of this form factor)
  
• 802.11b wireless interface
  
• 56k modem built-in
  
• 10/100 Ethernet wired port built-in
  
• Windows XP Professional installed
  
• Trackpoint-style mouse/pointer
  
• Headphone, microphone, and line out ports
  
• Micro-VGA out port, with adapter
  
• InterVideo (link) WinDVD software, etc.
  

As described above, it comes to about $1900 new, not including tax and shipping. A really amaazing deal. Oh, and did I mention that it only weighs about 3.4 lb!! A similarly configured Sony would add about $1000, and require extra cables and external peripherals. Further, the top Sony only has the 733 Mhz Crusoe chip.

The machine is beautiful. It has clean, unadorned lines, in a simple silver/titanium color. A gunmetal-blue LifeBook logo on the top gives it a sharp, distinctive appearance. The wi-fi unit sits on the left side of the display and is unobtrusive. Overall, the machine feels solid, and quite respectable. The machining and workmanship seem impecable. 3.4lb is both lighter and more substantial than I expected. The battery seems to take up the largest single chunk of that weight, so if you can deal with the normal 3.5 hour battery life (which is still very generous – a commute to work and back) you may want to consider sticking with the standard battery. The machine is definitely lighter and less bulky than the Apple PowerBook / Titanium, which I also considered. For all Apple afficianado's extoll the virtues of their light laptops, this Fujitsu wins hands down. All told, the machine is extremely totable, and I intend on having it with me just about all the time.

Getting back to the battery – the extended lithium ion battery gives you about 7 hours of life if you're not using the DVD / CD player. Watching some old Monty Python on the way in to work this morning saw the battery tick down about 40% over a 65 minute ride. One good thing about the extended battery is that it actually juts out in front of the keyboard just a little to handle the additional capacity. I actually find this nice, as it provides extra room for you to rest your wrists while typing.

The display is very nice. Despite the so-called half-height form factor, for most applications I think you would barely notice. The colors are deep and very smooth for a device of this size and capability. The screen does dim noticeably when you are running on battery. There a brightness settings for the ATI video driver that allow you to adjust the brightness a bit. You cannot achieve the same brightness unplugged as you can with AC, though. It doesn't seem to bother me, but it is something you will notice. One thing to consider is if you will be using the machine outdoors often. The dimness is most noticeable outside, and if writing the great American novel at the beach is your intent, this display may not be right for you. A minority of reviewers on CNet commented that theirs came with dead pixels. Mine has no such unfortunate artifacts..

So far, all I have installed are WinDVD, OpenOffice, and PaintShop Pro. (link) So far so good. DVD's play smoothly, and make for a nice diversion on the way to work, or maybe even during boring conference sessions. :-) The DVD drive is nice and quiet during movie play, but it was rather loud while I was using it to install some software. If it occurs more frequently I will update this review to indicate any annoyances. One thing about DVD playing, is adjusting the WinXP volume control in the tray seems to make the DVD stutter just a bit. I've only played one DVD so far, so I will have to test further and make sure it wasn't something about that disc.

I am typing this in OpenOffice on the LifeBook, and OpenOffice is running fine. In fact, unscientifically, it seems to be running a bit faster than on my PII 233 Mhz Dell or ThinkPad laptops, and more smoothly than on an old Pentium II MMX 450Mhz clone at home. Not too surprising.

In terms of performance, it's too early to tell. As mentioned above, OpenOffice runs nicely, but a word processor is not the best measure of performance. I will post updates as I get a better feel of this machine's performance. Of the only 9% or so of CNet reviews that did not give this a thumbs-up, a recurring complaint was speed. One thing I may end up getting my hands on is a copy of Mathematica, so if I do I will update with some performance figures. Also, this is my first box with XP, so it's unclear to me how much perceived slowness people see is really just a result of code plaque inside XP. Turning off animated menus and other dancing baloney seems to help, but we'll see. Those who know me know that slow machines make me rip my hair out. Anyway, more to come on this point.

OK, down to the brass tacks – annoyances. In no particular order:

1. For convenience there are three application launcher-buttons on the face of the machine, at various positions around the display. One is for launching email, and is just to the left of the display. Unfortunately, that's precisely where I find myself grabbing the machine when I move around. Will have to see if that button can be disa bled.
   
2. Audio volume when playing DVD's is too low – even at maximum volume, with either the speakers or the headphones.
   
3. The screen dimming when on battery can be a little annoying in the wrong light. Not a deal breaker, though.
   
4. Windows XP. I don't think I'm going to like it.
   
5. Fujitsu ships using UPS (link) 2nd day air from Osaka, Japan. UPS sucks eggregiously. They regularly deliver next day or 2nd day packages to me in 4-7 days. Unfortunately, many vendors use them exclusively. My machine took 5 days to arrive. The UPS site showed it had been stuck in Anchorage for 2 days and in Kentucky for 2 more. The UPS customer service people are a joke. Useless and obstructionist. Perhaps more in a later rant....
   

Most surprising things about the Fujitsu P-2046:

1. It stays very cool during operation... was able to have the machine on my laptop for an hour of DVD watching and writing and not even be aware of any heat. Totally unlike my Dell and IBM laptops.
   
2. Netscape 6.1 came installed.
   
3. WinDVD did not come installed – had to install that myself with the provided CD-ROM.
   

Other machines I looked at before deciding on the Fujitsu:

• Sony Vaio PictureBook (US and Japanese editions)
  
• Toshiba Libretto L3 (Japanese edition)
  
• Apple iBook
  
• Apple PowerBook
  
• Gateway Solo 200
  
• Dell X200
  
• Compaq Armada
  

The iBook is too toylike, and PowerBook is too heavy. The Sony is an entirely bad value-for-money proposition. Anyone buying a Sony over a Fujitsu (or over an L3 for that matter) is a fool, IMHO. The Toshiba is comparable price-wise with a similar configuration, but only had the 600Mhz Crusoe, and all of the goodies were external and required cables, etc. But it was very light. The Dell was bland and uninspiring, as was the Compaq. I'm also a fervent hater of glide-point style pointers. The Gateway, glidepoint notwithstanding, was the only other serious contender in the final analysis. Very nice machine, has gotten lots of good reviews. But, heavier, more expensive, and unnecessarily larger form factor.

In conclusion, if you are thinking about getting a subnotebook, or a very light laptop, I urge you to take a peek at the Fujitsu. They have just come out with new models with slightly more processor speed and bigger disk (much to my chagrin :-/ ) without increasing the price. Fujitsu has done a bang-up job on this little box, and you would be doing yourself a disservice to not include them in your analysis.

That's trippy.....

Had a seriously messed up dream last night.... It involved a Dremel tool, a really nasty argument, a flight in a light aircraft with some MIT luminaries, and a bad crash. With me in the plane. With no seatbelt. Oh, I'm traumatized. But... it got me to wondering ... how far ahead is the dream being written? IE, 5 minutes of "dream time" into the dream, was it already determined somewhere in my brain that I was going wind up in a pile of mangled flesh, metal, and Jet A? Is the "script" being "written" in real time? Dunno. I did come out with two important conclusions though: a) MIT professors can't fly. b) I'm keeping that Dremel tool safely locked up for a while - I can't be trusted with it.

On high performance computing...

Been busy lately doing some research into parallel and distributed computing for a work project.... lots of homework. So, weblog entries will be a little slow for the next week or so. Am currently reading the book Parallel and Distributed Computing by Claudia Leopold. I will be posting an Amazon review soon, but the sneak preview: 3 stars out of 5.

Separately, I have started a little unscientific experiment on the side to track the transmission of Wolfram memes into webspace. Over the next year I will be observing how certain key ideas of Stephen Wolfram's in A New Kind of Science actually propogate through the web (and hence, our collective consciousness). More on this to come, so stay tuned.

Latetrain.com

The Metra commuter train system here in Chicago is beginning to suck eggregiously. Trains departing Union Station especially are increasingly delayed by equipment problems, derailments, etc. There is no way to find out beforehand either - which sucks. So, I got to thinking about ways to get alerts of some kind.

1. Have Metra post alerts on their website. Too easy and Metra is ultra low tech.
   
2. Put a webcam watching areas where people congregate when things go pear-shaped. Sadly I know no one in an adjacent building.
   
3. Do a cellphone/pager tree. Whoever in the group gets there first reports back, and the message gets propagated. Unreliable and no fun.
   
4. Monitor track activity via satellite imagery. Hmmm. No real-time satellite tasking.
   
5. Monitor uptick in cellphone traffic near train station. Hmmm. How? Poor data granularity.
   
6. Use CB radio/police scanner to check for increased chatter by metra staff . A good option if on public frequency and at sufficient power.
   
7. Ask in-station bar to call-in or email reports. Unlikely.
   
8. Put a telescope in my new office. Maybe, if unobstructed.
   

The radio option may be the best bet. I will have to find out about their radio system.... ... and yes, in answer to your query I suppose I do have too much time on my hands.... ;-)

Authority, Bootstrap, and Ayn Rand

Nothing much here, except that Eric Sinclair's post on OSS and the failure of progress for many non-authoritied projects got me thinking... His description of Authority potentially embodied as "process" made me think of Ayn Rand and George Orwell (disclosure: I have only read Anthem, and 1984. Oh yeah - I really dig 2112). It's that whole "ubiquitous they" thing again. [BTW, here's a very, I mean very, involved analysis of Rush and Ayn Rand.]

Running behind...

I've fallen behind on my personal goal of posting something of (at least personal) interest at least once per day. The long weekend was just too nice to be spent indoors, and I have a ton of work and work-reading to get done. Partially complete forthcoming posts include weblogging as exploration and discovery, Chicago commuting tips, memetics and Stephen Wolfram, and more. For the moment I leave you with a delightfully insightful and completely unrelated quote from a friend : "The key to happiness is good hydration." (Enrico Ferrari)

On Weblogs, the South Pole, and the Alchemist's Stone

They say that the great age of exploration is behind us. The Scotts, Amundsens, Shackletons, Armstrongs, Gagarins, and Hillarys of the world have come and gone. We have spoken ominously of "the final frontier" for the past half-century as though we will cease to have purpose once we reach (conquer? cross?) this -final- frontier. With the steady march in science and technology a number of things have happened to our civilization. First, we are no longer surprised by progress. The discussions now on cloning are as vitriolic as the uproar over invitro fertilization 30 years ago. More to the point, cloning (for example) consumes less of the collective imagination and consciousness than when the Wright brothers flew.

Secondly, it has exposed a human need for the unknown and unknowable. Carl Sagan discussed this in his final book The Demon Haunted World. In the 1600's we explained what we did not understand via witchcraft, sorcery, and religion. Today we do this with crop circles, alien abductions, conspiracy theories, and celebrity worship. We (i.e.
a large cross-section of our society) despite hard evidence to the contrary and despite a purported cultural drift toward intellectual enlightenment still have a need for such pablum. Indeed, we seem to create it to fill the void. Consider : the National Enquirer is the most popular newsprint in the USA. Two-thirds of human conversation is gossip. Tom Cruise gets more Google hits [415,000] than Bach [171,000].

The third point I would put on this is the increasing sedentarianism of our societies. On the one hand, we idolize and admire the "active" and "heroic" lifestyles, while on the other hand we eschew the activities in our own lives. Television ads for sport utility vehicles espouse their rough-and-tumble image, while in fact virtually none ever leave pavement. How many mountain bikes are bought each year that get ridden a handful of times the first season, and then sit in the garage to rot.

The third point is really pretty irrelevant, so ignore it for now. The point I guess I'm trying to work my way back towards is that perhaps the phenomenon we're seeing with blogs, and some other well-heeled Internet technologies/communities, is less about journalism, or technology, or voyeurism. Perhaps it is a mutated form of exploration .... instead of crossing unexplored continents, or reaching deep into space, or probing deep beneath the sea we are in fact creating a new landscape for the purposes of exploring and explaining it. Perhaps our need for exploration and discovery is so strong that we will go so far as to fabricate elaborate mind-puzzles of exploration so that we will have to tease out their mysterious meanings and implications. And further, perhaps the apparent ease and frequency of the past century's great discoveries coupled with the ready transmission of the same over television has also created a sense of impatience and need for immediate gratification. Everything looks easy and now unshocking on television. We can do that. We're that strong / smart / brave / clever / choose-your-inadequacy-cover-verbage. So, our subconscious takes over .... the Pivot Chair Elite (Hmmm... alternate acronym for Wolfram's Principle of Computational Equivalence? Maybe Wolfram is the Ultimate Pivot Chair Elite? A kind of Pivot Chair Prophet .... ) (read: sedentary technologists with too much free time and too few real problems) construct a new frontier in the interests of conquering and taming it. Is the hyperbole surrounding weblogging that much different from fantastical newsprint reports about the "dark continent" at the turn of the 20th century, or the rampant speculation about the Soviet space program after the lunch of Sputnik?

Arbitrary URL of the day

Illegitimi non carborundum. Don't ask me.

No, no, really. I'm in Hell.

I can't believe, for the second time in less than 24 hours I had an aberrant weblog event. This morning, Outlook pulled a gates on me, and killed a Note entry unretrievably. Just now, my home machine mysteriously rebooted just as I was hitting the "Post" button for my KartOO post. I mean "click" and "boom." Probably powersupply/heat problems with the machine, but not the point. This sucks. Could be worse though - luckily I hit the Post button just in time, and the submission made it. *whew*

KartOO - Really Nifty Search Visualization

Dr. Steve Jones (Dept. Head, Communication Department of UIC) forwarded the website KartOO to me today. KartOO is a unique and very interesting meta-search engine, spanning about a dozen other search engines. The most interesting thing is the way it visualizes the relationships amongst resultant links. A mind-map style graphic shows you the implicit relationships between different sites, and indicates the concept through which they are related. It seems to use a clustering technology to determine these concepts. Additionally, by hovering the pointer over a given site, it will highlight the clusters that pertain to that site. Click on a site, and it launches the page in a new window. I am going to have to play with it some more, but I've been using it for the past hour or so with a few different searches, and I am definitely starting to sense a different heuristic than when I use Google or Altavista. Despite the whining and moaning of the unwashed masses, search engines do indeed give the user the results they request. The problem is, naturally, the user. Most people couldn't query their way out of a paper bag. The point, however, is that Google, Altavista and others of their stripe train you to think of terms of term occurence, colocation, etc. Optimally, you imagine what words would be in the document if you wrote it, and you search on those words. Chances are, you'll find something. Use the +/-/etc syntax, and you can isolate your results very nicely. KartOO changes that, although I can't quite put my finger on it yet. For one, it's unclear what search syntax to use. In constructing a query using Google syntax (and this), the operators seem to have been stripped out ... sometimes. Also, quote marks for phrasing were stripped out. Second, and actually more importantly, is that I find myself spending more time examining the result sets and concentrating my detailed investigation within certain regions of the map. In Google, you may click in and out of different links until you find the one you want - usually very quickly. With KartOO you will spend more time exploring and pondering the relationships within the result set. Some of this is the nature of the UI, but I dunno... there may be something to this tool. It is strangely addictive... I can't stop searching with it. Check it out.