The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
They say you can peer into a man’s soul by looking at his bookmark file. Well, have a gander. To me, it looks like the yearly booksale at the library of Alexandria.
Unfortunately it’s impossible for you my dear reader to tell which links I use all the time and which ones I’ve only visited once. I apologize for that.
Rick bet me a dollar, saying that apples are a “negative calorie food”. IE: it takes more calories for your body to digest apples than the number of calories you get from them.
I was dubious to say the least. So I took the bet.
On about 7-14-09 I called the University of California at Davis at 530-754-9708. I spoke with a woman named Judy. She referred me to Dr Scott Johnson.
I called Dr Scott Johnson, Extension Pomologist at Department of Plant Sciences, UC Davis. He didn’t know the answer but said I should try 3 folks at the Department of Food Science and Technology at UC Davis:
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* Dianne Barrett, Specialist in Cooperative Extension, UC Davis School of Food Science and Technology (left message 7-14-09 4pm) no response.
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* Christine Bruhn, Specialist in the Cooperative Extension, UC Davis School of Food Science and Technology (left message 7-17-09 12pm)
I spoke with Doctor Christine Bruhn she says that some of the nutritional values of foods in the USDA nutrition lists are determined in part by having people eat the food and then they measure all of the outputs (breathing, pooping, peeing, etc) to see how the body digested it. So the USDA nutrition info is pretty correct. If it says that celery has 6 calories per stalk, that accounts for the calories it takes to digest it… IE: Celery is a positive calorie food. Raw unpeeled apples really do give you 81 calories (page 28 of the USDA Nutritive Value of Foods book, or search for foods here)
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* Adel Kader, Professor of Postharvest Physiology UC Davis (spoke to him 7-17-09) said that there is no such thing as a negative calorie food… and that he didn’t know of any studies suggesting otherwise. I asked about how fiber might take more energy for the body to attempt to digest. He said, “Fiber facilitates thing moving quickly, so it might even end up taking less calories”.
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Next week I’m going to call my favorite science talk show, Doctor Karl and ask! I’ve always wanted an excuse to call him. He’s on 11am Thursday… errrr. That’s 6pm Wednesday PST, the show is in Australia :-)
In the mean time, I’ve asked Rick to get that dollar ready for me.
I have generally thought of “Arse Elekronika” as just a humourous play on “Ars Electronica”. Kind of a “heh” thing. But the call below is very curious indeed!
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Call for Papers, Performances, Machines and Sponsors.
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Scottish SF author Iain Banks created a fictitious group-civilisation called “Culture” in his eponymous narrative. The vast majority of humanoid people in the “Culture” are born with greatly altered glands housed within their central nervous systems, who secrete – on command
– mood- and sensory-appreciation-altering compounds into the person’s bloodstream. Additionally many inhabitants have subtly altered reproductive organs – and control over the associated nerves – to enhance sexual pleasure. Ovulation is at will in the female, and a fetus up to a certain stage may be re-absorbed, aborted, or held at a static point in its development; again, as willed. Also, a viral change from one sex into the other, is possible. And there is a convention that each person should give birth to one child in their lives. It may sound strange, but Banks states that a society in which it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better than the other. Pressure for change within society would presumably build up until some form of sexual equality and hence numerical parity will be established.
Does this set-up sound too futuristic? Too utopian? Too bizarre?We may not forget that mankind is a sexual and tool-using species.
And that’s why our annual conference Arse Elektronika deals with sex, technology and the future. As bio-hacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, this year will see us explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer. Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough.
“Bizarre enough for what?” — you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century.
Don’t you think, replicants?+++++++++++++
Please send us [arse2009 AT monochrom.at] your papers, ideas, machines!
Deadline: July 31, 2009!+++++++++++++
Festival Schedule:
October 1: Film festival(*), opening ceremony and Prixxx Arse
Elektronika(*) Gala
October 2: Literature, fiction, reading
October 3: Talks and discourse
October 4: DIY workshops
(*) Separate calls will be out shortly.
A Scanner Darkly 6-25-09 – cool… but sad and twisted.
Stranger Than Fiction. I liked when Harold Crick ate his first home-made cookie 43:15–43:35.
The Bucket List. Maybe I should have found it sappy, but I didn’t. I enjoyed it greatly.
That’s Rodin’s Gates of Hell at a garden museum at Stanford. I went there last Friday before going to SubZero. You can see The Thinker up top. Yes THAT “The Thinker”. He was originally designed to sit atop this piece so that be could ponder the sorry souls that were going through the gates.
The piece is astounding. I would say “simply Astounding” but there is nothing simple about it.
And that’s Adam and Eve standing beside the gates. Interestingly, The cowering Adam is the piece in this garden of naked people with the most fully formed junk. All the others have “tastefully” partially formed naughty bits.
Do you want to know the secret to search engine optimization (SEO)?
Create useful, unique content.
That’s it.
There is no more to it.
Now stop reading.
And start clicking my ads!
Muhahah!
You are still reading!
I have teh google juice and I control your mind!
Now click! Click for all time!
Update 6-18-15: After several years of running Google Ads, they have pretty much stopped generating revenue so I removed them. Say “La vee”!
Doing:
* Sunday & Monday: repairing SWARM orbs for Google IO, finishing sound design, shelling etc.
* Tuesday: Charlotte’s office hard drive failed. Spent the afternoon and evening recovering
* Wednesday: More hard drive recovery, finished sound design for Orbs. Performed at Google IO with SWARM! (you couldn’t hear the music over the DJ :-((((((((((((((((( )
* Thursday: Attended Google IO, priced out computer for Charlotte’s office, attended Professional VFX Compositing With Adobe After Effects class at Crucible, sat in on German class at Noisebridge with Charlotte for a few minutes
* Friday: more computer help for Charlotte, working on lesson plan for a Crucible class I’m teaching, tidying hundreds of loose-ends emails
The class I’m teaching at the Crucible:
Learn kinetic techniques to design, engineer, and construct a mechanical sculpture, contraption, or gadget with lights and moving parts. Using new and salvaged components, you will learn how motors, lights, and switches work, how to create mechanical structures, how to create different types of motion, and how to incorporate switches to operate your very own fantastical contraption!
8-12 year olds, June 15-19 2009
Cost: $235.00 (Tuition: $180.00, Materials: $55.00), Members: $217.00
[KIN15-Y]
Build a simple remote-controlled robot . From the wheels up, you’ll create your robot’s shape and personality from salvaged components, mechanisms, and electrical components. You’ll also learn soldering, mechanical construction techniques, and how to remove and repurpose these items. Each student will receive a kit of motors, wheels, and a remote control toy.
June 15-19 2009
Cost: $295.00 (Tuition: $220.00, Materials: $75.00), Members: $273.00
I use Dragon Naturally Speaking version 8.0. It’s useful when writing long items… a few paragraphs or more. Here is a list of phrases you can tell DNS to do good things:
select that/ correct that – correct the last thing you said
correct [word] through [word] – correct a string of words
(hit – on the keypad) – pulls up correction window
Show-dictation-box – pops up a text window that will paste when it’s closed. Good for Firefox.
Edit-selection – You should select something, say “Edit-Selection” and it’ll be pulled into a dictation box.
Cap … – next letter is capitalized
caps-on – Capitalize the First Letter of Every Important Word until “caps-off”
caps-off
All-caps – next word is in ALL CAPS
All-caps-on – EVERY LETTER IS CAPITALIZED UNTIL “All-caps-off”
All-caps-off
No-caps – next word is in all lower case.
No-caps-on – no caps until “no-caps-off”
Cap-that – capitalize the first letter of each word in the last phrase, or the selected text
open-quote – “
close-quote – “
open-parenthesis – (
close-parenthesis – )
open-bracket – [
close-bracket – ]
at-sign – @
scratch-that-[X]-times – multiple undo
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Moving the cursor and mouse
mouse-grid – brings up the mouse grid. Then…
mouse-click
mouse-double-click
move-up-[n]-lines
move-left-[n]-characters / words
go-to-top / bottom
go-to-beginning-of-line / end-of-line
insert-before-[word] / after
select-[words I want]
select-again – tries other choices
select-[starting word]-through-[ending word]
select-all
copy-all-to-clipboard
paste-that
backspace-[n]
scratch-that
undo-that
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Actions
To kill a voice-recognition action that has gone awry, click the little red X inside the Result box. That will also turn off the microphone.
To spell out individual letters or numbers, pause, say “spell-that”. Wait for the spelling menu.
I am seriously skeptical about this whole 140 character revolution. That said, my friend Marah is going to be a presenter at the 140 Characters Conference in New York City June 16 and 17.