blueblog

6/27/2000 11:44:50 PM | +

It's funny how it always comes back to Unix and Bell Labs.

Today I was thinking a lot about the importance of pipes and deepleap as a kind of generalized "pipe" for the internet, although I'm not sure how much I like the metaphor.

For those of you that never use unix and the command line, pipes just allow you to connect the output of one program to the input of another. So, you have a lot of "simple" tools - but since they can all be connected up together you can do all this great complex stuff.

And the problem with web sites is that all of them take disparate types of input, and return output unusable by any others so you can't easily pipe things together and make connections - except in rare cases, and even then it's usually too restrictive. Like if you're at cnet.download.com, you can save a file to your xdrive. But xdrive is ugly and crappy and even cnet admits idrive is better, but due to business deals they have xdrive. I should be able to pipe my files to whatever storage I want. Scratch that... I will be able to pipe my files to whatever storage facility I want... it's just a question of when and with what tool and what kinds of things I'll be able to pipe together and how... ok. So there's a lot of questions.

My budding collection semi-annotated pipe bookmarks - interesting mainly for historical perspective. I'm in the process of dealing with my deepleap bookmarks and annotating and making them public.

6/27/2000 09:38:18 PM | +

OPEN SOURCE, INSERT FOOT

"We will run [.NET] with the same kind of openness that we've run Windows."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, fulfilling the software industry's fears in announcing an embrace-and-extend Internet services initiative, Salon.com, 23 June 2000

salon | dot net coverage

6/26/2000 11:58:54 PM | +

Today on Über - A Very Serious Review of Titan A.E..

There were all these great links I was going to put in but because I'm stuck on a shared 56k line I didn't. I forgot how much broadband changes that whole user experience thing. Also, I wrote this piece a while ago but never posted about it here. Oh, the horror.

I can't believe I actually signed up for not one, but two of those stupid web voicemail things. I'm an idiot. Nobody sends me voicemail, but every time I look at this page I see my unfunny "tell me i'm your hero thing" and remember that people could be sending me voicemail, but don't. Ever. But then I remember that even if they did, it would probably be stupid anyway, and why the hell do I want random people to send me voicemail anyway? I don't. Never mind. Unless you have purple hair. In which case please call my voicemail immediately. Thank you.

6/26/2000 12:38:45 AM | +

"The fundamental idea behind Microsoft .NET is that the focus is shifting from individual Web sites or devices connected to the Internet, to constellations of computers, devices and services that work together to deliver broader, richer solutions."

I haven't had time yet to really read and analyze this "new" vision for Microsoft yet, but this idea of connecting devices and sites and managing the flow of information is really important.

As usual, anything mildly interesting here is pilfered from somebody else... Michael Sippey has some good quick thoughts on the .NET strategy.

6/22/2000 02:21:30 PM | +

Let's just say it was a long day. And night. And morning. I saw the sunrise this morning. I can't remember the last time I was up for that. It was quite traumatic.

6/21/2000 03:44:43 PM | +

"Here's the animated space adventure I've been hoping for--a film that uses the freedom of animation to visualize the strangeness of the universe in ways live action cannot duplicate, and then joins its vision to a rousing story. Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's "Titan A.E." creates the kinds of feelings I had as a teenager, paging eagerly through Asimov and Heinlein. There are moments when the movie even stirs a little awe."

6/20/2000 01:06:19 PM | +

6/19/2000 05:34:12 PM | +

6/18/2000 12:09:21 PM | +

I saw Titan AE tonight. I loved it. Not only does it have a cute girl with purple hair, which automatically makes it a good movie, but I kept thinking, wow, this movie is so good, and I can't figure out why... and then I saw the screenplay was by Ben Edlund. Ben fucking Edlund! Creator of The Tick!! No wonder this movie is so damned good. My god, I love this movie. The soundtrack sucks, and yes, the movie on the whole is rather cheesy, but it was so much fun and the visuals were so good and I love Don Bluth animation and I hate Disney and I hope Fantasia 2000 flops and why don't I know any cute girls with purple hair.

Yes, there should be links in the above post, you know, this being a "web log" and all, but whatever. Fuck it. I'll do my part to help degrade the genre by being lazy and posting this pointless drivel sans linkage, sans thought, sans work. Note to self - never use the word sans again.

6/17/2000 12:49:48 AM | +

6/14/2000 08:15:40 PM | +

6/12/2000 12:25:30 AM | +

Tomorrow I leave for Austin. I'm excited, and a little nervous. This summer is going to be quite an experience: working for a deepleap, and living in Ben's house.

6/9/2000 08:05:25 PM | +

I almost forgot about my favorite regular blueblog feature -

The Quarter In Review

To bring you up to speed In case you just tuned in and haven't been obsessively stalking me for the past few months, at the end of every academic quarter, I like to take a step back and think about what I've learned from each of my really, really, really expensive classes. It's fun for everybody: I get to make stupid jokes about my classes and laugh at them, and you, well, ok, so it's only fun for me. Sorry.

CS157 - Computational Logic

• I wanted to take the "real" logic course - Phil160a last quarter to fill this requirement, but it met at 9am. Let's see, get up early to take the more difficult class, or wait a quarter and take the less difficult class at 1:15pm? Yes, I am a bum.
• Blah blah propisitional logic, blah blah relational logic, blah blah, resolution. There ya go. You know enough to pass.
• This class will sure come in handy the next time I'm thinking about how best to optimize an automated theorem prover using ordered resolution. So, basically, never. Also, due to the TA's incompetence, I actually became more confused and lost knowledge every time I went to class or did a problem set.
• But it doesn't matter because logic is a farce.

• Millions of hours of work have been put into providing an abstraction layer between the innards of hardware and the software the uses it.
• Now I have a whole new appreciation for that
• There's something very disconcerting about spending three hours designing and wiring up a circuit that acts as a two-bit adder with a bunch of MUX's and logic gates, and then just dismantling it after someone verifies it works.
• I don' t do hardware. I'm a software guy.

• This is the first hardcore computer science theory course, where we cs majors get to learn all about automata, and, umm, complexity theory
• No, I still don't know what any of that means
• The reader for the class is great. It's just full of dense, difficult, theoretical stuff and proofs, but every once in a while they'll throw in "real world" stuff to keep us from falling asleep. See this is the theoretical basis for important stuff! Look, XML! e-commerce! Pay attention! Now, back to this extremely boring proof about the closure properties of context free grammars...
• The most interesting part of this class for me was when I had a spiritual awakening that made me realize that it was morally wrong to use turing machines to prove things about binary representations of turing machines. Unfortunately, finals do not take into account such newfound religious convictions.

6/9/2000 07:09:03 PM | +

6/8/2000 08:20:42 PM | +

And now, in addition to cartoon network, there's boomerang, full of all those (crappy) old Hanna-Barbera shows. I watched hours and hours of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop last night. It was awesome.

Umm, powerpuff girls are on. I've gotta go.

6/7/2000 08:29:59 PM | +

6/6/2000 12:20:55 AM | +

6/3/2000 08:42:29 PM | +

Nothing like a bright sunny day with screaming, crying, little kids just oustide my window to get me psyched for my Saturday final exam.

6/3/2000 02:02:47 PM | +

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