I was walking towards Botterell Hall today (there’s a colloquium by Gordon Logan at 3:30 in B139 about “Executive Processes with Attention and Memory”) and I glanced at a window, seeing a street sign that said “Traube.” And I was like, “Traube?” I didn’t know we had German street names here. And then I realized that I was reading the sign in a mirror and it actually said Stuart St. (which is almost “traube” backwards). That’s the danger of top-down processing when combined with bilingualism.
There are a few really neat articles at Developing Intelligence about cortical growth and the computational models that explain pruning strategy. I suggest you check them out.
Overgrowth, Pruning and Infantile Amnesia
The Structural Signature of Intelligence
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Darnit, darnit, darnit!
I don’t think Spielberg needs to be worried, but this film-making robot seems to have all the makings of a decent director.
It uses a neural network to develop its own appreciation of well-composed and aesthetically pleasing shots. And, unlike some human filmmakers I could mention, it displays an aversion to using scenes similar to anything used before.
They’ve made my idea. Yes, my idea.
Darnit!
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You know how it starts: you download a news aggregator, add a couple feeds, and you think that’s where it’ll all end. Then, the aggregator offers you a few more feeds. Here, Eve, take this news feed about The Coca Cola Conspiracy. It has three C’s. Don’t you want to read it? And how about you take this other feed on music news? Just try it. The first hit is free. Before you know it, you’re subscribed to 188 feeds and you haven’t left your room (except to pee) for 23 days. If Howard Hughes were living today, he would be proud of the steps we’ve taken towards never leaving the house again.
I’ve been without an aggregator for about 2 years now, and I think my blogging has suffered. I hear about SNL Natalie Portman videos from Tavis instead of being one of the first people on the bandwagon, picking little bits of straw out of my hair after the hay fight between Kottke and Doctorow. So I’ve decided to start subscribing to some of the more interesting feeds so I can check out the latest in knitting as well as a few cogs blogs at the same time.
I’ve only found a few web-based aggregators that look snazzy enough. I’ve always admired Kinja, and it looks to be the only service that does what I’d want it to do. I think I’d only ever choose one with both functionality and style, because I’ll be looking at the site every day and I don’t want to end up looking at crap.
There are also quite a few plugins for Mozilla out there: WizzRSS, Sage, Pluck, and Habari Xenu, to name a few. I’m tempted to get Xenu just for the name, but I believe my love of Scientology is clouding my judgement.
There’s also the possibility of getting a feeder for Mac OS X, but I think that would be too much of a hassle. I like integrating everything into one spot. It makes me feel efficient. Once I get the feed aggregator, all I’ll need is a little plugin to automatically download all the links in my del.icio.us inbox.
I think I’m going to muse about this for a bit until I decide which route to take. I’ll likely get a plugin for Firefox, as there’s probably less effort required and more flexibility. If you are using any of these options, let me know what you think of them. Ta ta!
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I also found this picture of space chickens. Or maybe they were penguins. I drew a lot of penguins back then.
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I just found this on my computer. I did this about 7 years ago or so. Sure brings back memories.
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For some reason I came across a bunch of really neat patterns today. They are:
I also finished a mitten yesterday, but I left it at home so I’ll photograph it tomorrow. Yay!
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Duke Fistman has also been talking about the seal hunt lately. Apparently Brigitte Bardot is a crazy right-wing racist and the Humane Society is a bunch of filthy liars.
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