Author: Joel

A game looking to “drone source” the entire planet.

It’s not about coding, it’s about solving problems.

“Like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, RocketHub and other crowdfunding sites to emerge in recent years, Experiment.com allows individuals to donate to projects and receive a gift in return. Unlike those sites, which include art, film, dance, technology and other categories, Experiment.com has one sole focus: science.”

“Everybody always asks me how to gain a competitive edge,” he said, “and I’m always surprised because the answer is so obvious.” Eighteen-year old me knew where this was going. He was going to tell us to work hard, that successful people prepare for their luck, yada, yada, yada.

“You cheat.””

High Speed Trading is cheating.

How to fly a broken space craft. Via Memo.

Intro to Clojure by nardove and toxi.

A new program for art supported by Google. I wonder if openFrameworks can be deployed via Compute Engine?

“The real artists of today will not find favour with us, or with our institutions, maybe not even in their own lifetime, because their work is not for us. It is for our great grandchildren. That said, I will still be happy when no one talks about ‘digital art’ or ‘digital culture’. For, when today’s intimidating technology seems as natural as a pen or a camera, we’ll know we’re on our way to finding our own Stravinskys and Duchamps, and that the cycle is repeating itself.”

Good article on “Digital Art” by Tom Uglow of Google.

“The red glitch blocks aren’t formed to serve you. They’re unfinished, or possibly corrupt, pulsing and fragmenting uncontrollably. You’re armed with a programming gun that brings up a drag-and-drop interface of commands, objects, and functions. These are the tools you use to manipulate the glitch blocks.”

I want a programming gun too.

“… the DARPA Open Catalog … contains a curated list of DARPA-sponsored software and peer-reviewed publications. DARPA sponsors fundamental and applied research in a variety of areas that may lead to experimental results and reusable technology designed to benefit multiple government domains.

The DARPA Open Catalog organizes publicly releasable material from DARPA programs. DARPA has an open strategy to help increase the impact of government investments.”

via Bruce Sterling.

Hyper Light Drifter looks and sounds delicious.

Origami is an in house prototyping toolset based upon Quartz Composer that has been released by Facebook.

forgotify.com: “4 million songs on Spotify have never been played.
Not even once. Let’s change that.”

Aruduino + touchscreen  = joy

A mystery signal from a helicopter. A great technical detective story.

HeartSync looks like a very interesting interaction.

I’m looking forward to some time with Spacebrew.

Kind of holodeck.

Being a man.

I think the scariest thing of all is that there isn’t an overarching world conspiracy, rather that no one is really in control. Rory Stewart agrees:

“But in our situation we’re all powerless. I mean, we pretend we’re run by people. We’re not run by anybody. The secret of modern Britain is there is no power anywhere.” Some commentators, he says, think we’re run by an oligarchy. “But we’re not. I mean, nobody can see power in Britain. The politicians think journalists have power. The journalists know they don’t have any. Then they think the bankers have power. The bankers know they don’t have any. None of them have any power.”

A neolithic site that may be more important than Stonehenge, The Ness of Brodgar.

I’m blogging to deal with overflow.

Here’s How is a great toast.

Interactive Digital Photomontage.

On on! Was a thing my father always used to say when we were jogging or running – all comes from the Hash House Harriers.

The original hand-written Oblique Strategies from 1974. Via Richard Kadrey.

New Sony CCD’s.

Gravity waves in Venus’ atmosphere.

“After the war, Flowers was granted £1,000 by the government, payment which did not cover Flowers’ personal investment in the equipment and most of which he shared amongst the staff who helped him build and test Colossus. Ironically, Flowers applied for a loan from the Bank of England to build another machine like Colossus but was denied the loan because the bank did not believe that such a machine could work. He could not argue that he had already designed and built many of these machines because his work on Colossus was covered by the Official Secrets Act. His work in computing was not fully acknowledged until the 1970s.”

Tommy Flowers. Designer of the world’s first programmable electronic computer, the Colossus. Quiet British genius.

“If we’re already going to go through the trouble of doing something, then let’s do something that no one else can do.”

Good words from Errolson Hugh.

A camera for the Raspberry PI.

Why Evan Miller is betting on the Julia programming language.

A coding book for children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCTMM1iZ5Lw

All of Tarkovksy’s films are now available online for free.

Does “Do What You Love” devalue workers and work?

Make systems not goals.

Marvin Minsky on Music.