http://mischiefinthemachine.com/

Anyone going? Or interested in going? It does have 3 different days it's happening this weekend...

I just got back from seeing Ray Kurzweil give a talk. He showed off some really interesting research. The keynote seemed to be his presentation of a cell phone that can take a picture of a page from a book and then translate the characters to speech, intended for the blind. When people think of Kurzweil they tend to think of these kinds of gadgets as he was the first to create text to speech software and character recognition programs.

However, his other research seemed to be more biological. He's looking at tumors and comparing them to fetal stem cells growing organs and seeing a striking resemblance, which leads one to believe that tumors are really just organs growing in the wrong place. He also is doing animal testing on nanoparticles that can attack cancer cell on red blood vessels.

He predicted by 2010 that we will start seeing more pea sized computers being implanted in things like clothing and we'll have heads up displays being embedded in our eye glasses, often showing information based on what you see where you are... a humorous example being that you see someone and it tells you when their birthday is and, more importantly, what their name is. People will have access to total immersion of the senses in virtual reality.

He thinks we're going through a massive shift in new methods of generating power with solar being the most likely to be of use.

These were just the main points I remember, but he covered many other topics as well.

MBTA chief says agency is broke, despite fare hikes

Massachusetts has one of the highest costs of living in the entire country. I'm wondering where all the money could possibly be going if it's not going to public transportation.

Tomorrow is the last final.

After skimming 350 out of the 500 pages and answering all the questions I encountered along the way over the course of 2 and a half days... I can say I'm really burned out.

I don't know what to do about the last 6 or 7 chapters.

It's that eternal question... how long can you stay awake and still absorb material?

I just got back from my first MIT Flea. At the very last booth I FINALLY found the copper foil tape I've been looking for. Score.

This guy is my new hero of the week.

1. Figure out what you love doing more than anything else
2. Save up some $$$
3. Move to a place that is inexpensive
4. Work your butt off making stuff day and night
5. Do not listen to others that are critical about the work you are doing. This is what you love, remember.
6. Promote your work through blogs, small print media, and eventually let it trickle up to mainstream media.


I'm still figuring out #1, but in the meantime I'll keep chipping away at #2.

Today was one of those days that you spend your life looking for.

The day started early, as yesterday I had worked myself into the ground at my job, so when I got home I just passed out. I was one of the first people to get into the lab at school, and I started hacking away at my program that's due on Saturday. I accomplished a good piece of it and went to class. The professor gave a clear cut discussion, with some good little geek jokes hidden in his speech. His previous speeches were much more energetic and were more like sermons, as he has a class of almost 50 students and almost all of them are freshmen slacker CS students (the worst kind of slacker!), but now I guess he feels he doesn't need to sermonize so much, and he can go on to more direct discussions with more subtle humor embedded.

Enough of that already, I finished class and hit up the cafe, and from there it was a mad rush headon into the huge pile of work at the job that's been eating away at me for weeks. Tomorrow is a big deadline, there's going to be a meeting at 9am between my coworker (who has more or less taken on the role of manager) and our manager, and the other remote devs. I'd written a lot of the hard code but some of it was still hanging around, and we were both a bit worried that we wouldn't have enough to show at the demo. Around 5 in the afternoon I had finished all my meetings and for the next 5 hours we both just hacked and slashed our way through the remainder of the code (or at least as much as we could). It was as if an entire legion of code monkeys had attacked the load of work and carved it down into nothing!

I really enjoy when I'm actually productive. I don't like that it takes hard deadlines to get into that place, I like being in that place where a lot gets done. I haven't really found the correct balance, because if I'm always trying to convince myself I have deadlines I tend to get really stressed, and that eventually just makes me tired and paranoid. It probably also helped a bit that this is the first week after my exams, so the school load has been rather light and I haven't been doing a whole lot of heavy lifting, but still, there has to be a way to get into that place easier. It's hard to say how I will feel after a day of almost 12 hours of coding, it may end up taking its toll on me.

I learned the 3-beat weave tonight at Chad's class forward AND backward.

And everyone cheered.

Because I'm awesome.

Searching for the Soul
Under an overwhelming
Pile of Red Robots

Class is canceled and no one will be at work. I plan on sleeping as long as it's humanly possible.

Hooray!

My Burning Man ticket came in the mail. Hooray!

I actually want to try and make art for it this year beyond making a bunch of shiny light toys to give away. However, it's a naturey green man theme, and I'm more skilled with electronics, so finding a way to create art about nature through technology could be a challenge.