Frustrated by the general lack of responsiveness of the medical industry to new and alternative treatments (with suspicion that most research is drug company funded and colossal bureaucracy generally) I’ve started doing my own research into possible treatments. I’m on Cortisone right now. The only real treatment gastroenterologist will prescribe when the shit-hits-the-fan (literally). So, since [...]

Here is Jane McGonigal TED talk on “Gaming can make a better world”: This is an inspiring talk about using the drive of gaming to useful ends. I have mused before on weather games can be used for education and believe this is an untapped way of motivating people to better themselves and improve their performance. One [...]

Some observations on “live coding” (as apposed to dead coding? Perhaps “Performance Coding” is a better phrase): http://robmyers.org/weblog/2010/02/05/livecoding-as-realistic-artistic-practice/ The content would always seem to be generative art, which is bleached of humanity (usually). This is no to say this is a problem, just a limitation. One can not code the same way Jimmy Hendrix plays guitar [...]

I rediscovered this old (1999) interview with Doug Engelbart and consequentially Ted Nelson which both touch on their alternative paradigms to information management. Here are the juice parts extracted. I found the Engelbart to be more lucid that Nelson :) Doug Engelbart About fifty years ago, december 1950 and early 1951, I said to myself ‘let [...]

Alex May just put up a sample of his latest interactive performance instillation which he demos with a dancer. Shadows of Light from Quadratura on Vimeo. I saw an Australian dance performance last month here in Berlin called Glow which was a floor dance also with real-time interactive dance visuals. I like this direction VJing is taking. Slightly [...]

10/GUI from C. Miller

In another post I talk about living with Crohns disease. Someone asked me to put a up the script of herbs that my Chinese doctor in Australia put me on. I’ve found it helps when an attack is coming on. Here it is: The Alexander Technique Recently I’ve started reading a book about the Alexander Technique and [...]

This is a great TED talk from Tim Berners-Lee who created the internet. Here he talks about Linked Data and the importance of sharing and linking data. Just as with his first break-through, the hyperlink, he realises that its the links that make things useful. To take this on step further the linking is how [...]

Once upon a time this Sad&Sorry Was a slick-as-flying-shit-hot Coder (Not as good as me) you see But he could, as they say, “Get The Job Done” The Man could LDL (Lay-Down-Lines) Ready to GO and insect free Like some Neo-Jesus Christ slapping miracle suppositorys up your repository. He was good. So slowly they started to max him out. Day after day and task [...]

There is a dull drone in my head that squeezes my shoulders to to the ears A graffiti proof paint on which no thoughts may stand out Except to bite at the world EVERY SINGLE SOUL So the mind is put to the grid Till it is only sharp and stabbing And every stranger is your new found enemy And every friend only [...]

Wired has an article on “playing Tetris actually gives you more brain to work with“: This, says the doctors who undertook the study, shows that focusing on a “challenging visuospatial task” like a videogame can actually alter the structure of the brain, not just increase brain activity. I wonder if this has anything to do with learning?

Here is a list of things I have found affect Crohns over the last 12 years of dealing with it. Western doctors will give you no info regarding this. Mainly because all research is funded by drug company’s and its safer, liability wise, for them to prescribe drugs than diet change. I have meet [...]

Source: Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty

Mobile phones started the decade as an elite toy and ended as something owned by everyone from taxi drivers in Bangladesh to fishermen in Ghana. In 1999, around 1 billion people worldwide had telephone subscriptions. Now that number is more like 4 billion.
According to the World Bank and the International Telecommunications Union, in 2000 people in developing countries had one-quarter of the world’s mobile phones. But in 2009, people in developing countries held three-quarters of the world’s estimated 4 billion handsets.
Where philanthropy failed, the market succeeded. With Western mobile markets saturated, telecoms looked to the developing world. As economist Jeffrey Sachs has said, “The digital divide is ending not through a burst of civic responsibility, but mainly through market forces.”
And with those phone towers came benefits. A 2005 study by Leonard Waverman from the London Business School showed that a 10 percent rise in mobile-phone penetration in developing countries could raise GDP by 0.6 percentage points.
2G mobile phones have already made crucial differences for people living in isolated societies: fishermen receiving weather updates by SMS, farmers checking prices before taking their goods to market, and so on.
In Kenya, M-PESA, a phone-based banking service, now has over 5 million subscribers, mostly people who have never had bank accounts before.

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