Telekinesis

Why: I cannot imagine how a bio-chemical-electrical mechanism like the brain and nervous system can cheat Newton's laws and push dumb matter around at a distance. And I don't really believe that any amount of quasi-quantum theory can help make it happen.

Caution: If the brain has quantum effects built in, and if the many worlds interpretation of Quantum Physics is right, then it's just about possible that the brain might be able to choose to live in the universe where everyone's underwear spontaneously jumps 2 feet to the right. But that's a big if.

Corollary: There's a whole range of New Age claptrap that boils down to a belief in Telekinesis. Some parts of "The Law Of Attraction" amount to this.

Prove it: Follow this experiment for a week or two. Look for money on the ground as you walk the streets. Spend a week with the point of view that the money appears because looking for it is making it appear in front of you. Try to come up with several possible mechanisms for this. In the second week use the point of view that you're seeing money on the ground because you're paying more attention to what's around you. Develop several alternate hypotheses for why you're finding more money on the ground and try to test them out.

Seen on Slashdot | How To Tell If Your Cell Phone Is Bugged

I read through a full list of the ways in which the British State monitors me. When you read them all at once, it has quite an impact. The simple question I have is this: I am completely innocent. I have committed no crimes and am not suspected of committing any crimes.

SO WHY AM I BEING WATCHED?

Nobody is truly innocent. Anyone who rides a motorcycle understands this.

The key is "Getting away with it".

I'm getting there with my home build recumbent. When I first rode it, it was really twitchy and decidedly scary going down hill. I tried various attempts at changing trail, but today gave up on that and fitted a 24" front wheel instead of the 20". Much better. It feels more like a bike now and is just about ride-able hands off.

I've also moved the pedals further away which has helped drive especially up hills. I'm still occasionally bumping a knee on the handlebars. Not sure how to fix that.

The chain was 2 links too short. In top gear on the front chainring and bottom gear on the mech it was all too tight and prompting the chain to jump off the bottom guide.

I've now sourced an old Estate Agent sign (Coralite) that happened to be lying on the pavement across from our house. Next step is to fashion this into a tail fairing.

My No Weld Recumbent made the Makezine Blog.

Void.Bot was ProgrammableWeb's mashup of the day.

Ross Mayfield asks: Is she creating experiences, or just playing a spot market amidst DRM countermeasures?

We're all just playing the spot market between rival versions of the future.

[09:42:55] Julian Bond says: Just been pondering group forming. For a network of size N
- Metcalfe: Value grows by N^2
- Reed: Value grows by 2^N - N - 1
Some implications for Skype:-
- Group chats radically increase the value of the network because they move Skype from Metcalfe to Reed.
- What's the minimum average size for a group chat to be self-sustaining?
- What's the maximum average size for a group chat before it splits? There's some law that says groups become unwieldy at about 150 participants. So Skype public chats should be set to max 150 ?
[09:42:55] Julian Bond says: - Skype needs to actively encourage group forming. Which means things like public chat directories.
[09:43:49] Julian Bond says: Few-To-Few comms are more interesting than one-to-many or many-to-many
[09:44:37] Julian Bond says: "The long tail" is spiky. It's actually made up from large numbers of small communities.
[09:44:49] Julian Bond says: In any community, 90% lurk.
[09:45:37] Julian Bond says: The Fat Middle is more interesting than the Short Head or the Long Tail.
[09:45:38] Julian Bond says: Oooh. I can feel a book coming on.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbond/tags/noweldrecumbent/

One Ladies MTB.
One kids 20" MTB. Fork and front wheel
One older kids 24" MTB cut out the bottom bracket and upright.
Skateboard wheels.
Assorted odds and ends and time.

TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Boo.com to relaunch

Oh Nooooooo. The horror, the horror!

Is the moment when Boom 2.0 jumps the shark?

I have a project taking shape in my head.

1) Take one late model iPod with a broken hard disk
2) Build a 1.8" socket to 2.5" hard disk connector cable
3) Build a 3.3V to 5V convertor to drive the 2.5" hard disk from the iPod's drive power supply.
4) Build it into a case just big enough to carry the larger disk
5) Double up on the battery. Perhaps convert to a couple of cellphone batteries.
6) Load Rockbox on it.

What I'm after is a usable iPod thing with a 120Gb disk that still fits in a pocket. Just. What I'm missing is the electronics knowledge to design 3) I can wield a soldering iron but I'm not sure where to start on the voltage convertor. I'm fairly sure that there are one chip designs for this that can handle the 0.5 to 4W current, but don't know where to start.

Because of the way that iPod cases fit together I figure I can keep the iPod face plate and mount it flush on one side of a plastic box big enough for the drive and extra batteries.

This is the next level of sites like Make and Instructables. Here's an idea, now how do I make it? Open Source Hardware Hacking?

Today on Flickr

You've run into one of the limits of a free account. Your free account will only display the most recent 200 photos you've uploaded. All of your photos beyond 200 will remain hidden from view until you either delete newer photos, or upgrade to a Pro account.

None of your photos have been deleted, and if you upgrade, they'll all come back unharmed.

Sigh. Is this what is going to happen to each property as Yahoo! hoovers up the more interesting Web 2.0 startups?

I find it sad and irritating that the vast majority of Web 2.0 Mapping Mashups are USA only.

Not surprising, but sad and irritating.

Unofficial Skype Chat Directory is an attempt at documenting where the Skype 3 public chats can be found. Maybe Skype will do something similar.

Meanwhile void.bot keeps growing.
#motd // Returns message of the day
Add members // And it will welcome them.

MAKE: Blog: DIY Thanksgiving - HOW TO - Fry a turkey, turkey fryer kits, safety and more...

Jeez'! No sooner do we get over endless Halloween costumes, than we're into another American festival and another round of DIY madness.

There's a bit here I don't understand. Why would anyone want to fry a turkey? Did the Pilgrim Fathers fry their turkeys and it's been handed down as the correct way to cook them? Is it all a conspiracy from KFC?

And is Goose an optional alternative for Thanksgiving?

1. DRM doesn't prevent illegal use of files, it just makes it a bit more difficult to access them.
2. All it takes is one person to crack the file and it can be made available to everyone.
3. Anyone selling content on CD is already selling unprotected files anyway.
4. DRM adds a lot of costs for content producers - Implementing DRM isn't free of course.
5. There's a huge hidden cost in trying to sell DRM'ed content
6. Often the costs of the DRM are passed along to the consumer as well.
7. DRM-free content will play on your device of today and your device of tomorrow
8. Your media devices of the future will be significantly different than your media devices of the present.
9. DRM fundamentally changes who is control of your media.
10. Whenever you buy DRM'ed content you support the system of DRM

Explanations here.



Just Say Not To DRM - Support DefectiveByDesign.

How ironic that Gregor Mendel, the founding father of modern genetics and hence one of the underpinnings of evolution should have been a Christian monk.

WMP wasn't streaming properly. So I re-installed WMP 10. That took ages and required a restart. Then my Creative Zen Xtra with PFS stopped being available. It only half worked and sat there without fully connecting.

So I installed WMP11, which again took ages, required a restart, grabbed a load of file associations and left icons everywhere without asking. At least the Zen now connects ok. Although Sync is slightly better in WMP11, I still won't use it, because I have neat file structures both in the music library and on the Zen which I don't want screwed up. Amazingly, you still can't play music off the Zen in WMP11 although this works in Winamp 5.3 mostly OK. For some unknown reason, the Winamp playlist editor lost the connection and the streaming stopped working, although starting again from an existing playlist was ok. This morning I discover that the Zen connection didn't survive putting the laptop into standby. I had to pull the USB plug and put it back in again.

So tired of all this. Yet again, MS seems to have a huge pile of bloated crap which I'm forced to use because they're business people did a deal with the 2nd market share PMP maker. And they've then reneged on that deal by going into competition with them.

I'm stuck in this loop because nobody makes the PMP I want to own. It's a redesigned and updated Zen Xtra with a 2.5" disk, plain old USB Mass storage for sync, no DRM support and a half way decent firmware system or RockBox. The 2.5" disk is the killer. 1.8" disks are neat, small, energy efficient. But they're also expensive and don't have enough capacity. The new top of the range 80Gb iPod is *just* big enough capacity for my needs. But god it's expensive for what it is; an essentially disposable piece of electronics. And taking an old iPod with a broken disk drive and fitting an 80Gb 1.8" disk isn't really an option for price reasons even if Apple's usual hardware lock ins actually allow it.

Go back to that mythical perfect PMP. Now that MS is dumping on their PFS partners, maybe it's time for Creative, Samsung, Toshiba, Cowon, Achos, iRiver, et al to just turn their backs on this whole sorry mess and produce the PMP we want to buy. Forget about all that DRM, downloadable music store nonsense. You can't compete in that area with Apple anyway. Just build a better PMP. And one that doesn't depend on WMP to get the music on and off it.

Grrr.

I actually bought a second hand ancient Archos Studio 20. to see if I could create my own version of this, given that PC World are now selling 120Gb 2.5" disks for under a 100 quid. I've installed the latest RockBox on it. and it does kind of work. But the tiny screen, military industrial design and the crappy buttons mean it's not really usable and a bit embarrassing. And only having USB 1.1 is a show stopper. I've thought about whether it's hackable into something usable, but I probably can't do anything about the screen or USB so I don't think so.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=joinpublicchat Looks like it will work for finding pages with a link to a Skype public chat. As long as the author used the redirect via Skype. Still haven't found a way of searching for the short link skype:?chat&blob=yadayada

I have a requirement for an unusual Google search. Does anyone know how to search for a link like this:-

skype:?chat&blob= *

I want to find all web pages that contain a link to a Skype Public chat.

Answers to julian_bond at voidstar.com

The final episode of the very wonderful "Spooks" posed some interesting questions.

Let's say for a moment, that :-

1) Global Climate change is real. And because it's a laggy, exponential system with some tipping points, it's too late to do anything about it. Even if we drastically change our behaviour, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

2) Sooner or later and perhaps sooner, oil demand is going to seriously outstrip oil supply. Exponential growth in the West, much faster exponential growth in the East and supply that is growing linearly.

3) As for 2) but also for a range of other raw materials. Like Tungsten. Or water.

and

4) A small number of extremely powerful and extremely wealthy western nations.

Now what should the governments of those Western nations do? It's very difficult to imagine their populations giving up their taste for cheap air travel, air conditioners and personal transport. They can

a) Follow Kyoto and try to turn their consumption habits around, leading to a world wide economic slump or
b) Take any and all steps to protect their current way of life and head off potential widespread panic and insurrection.

So that means an aggressive, nuclear backed external policy of securing control of raw materials allied to a repressive domestic regime designed to maintain control.

The fight for control of the Earth is just beginning. It's the 19th century "Great Game" but another loop up the spiral.

Private Copy : We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to create a new exception to copyright law that gives individuals the right to create a private copy of copyrighted materials for their own personal use, including back-ups, archiving and shifting format.

Submitted by Suw Charman - Deadline to sign up by:26 December 2006 - Signatures: 788