Python is one of those languages that I feel like I should know better. I bought a book on it a couple weeks back and thought I’d try to figure out why I can’t get anything that’s Python based to work on any of my Linux machines. I figure that it has to be something common that I’m doing on all of them. There’s some default I’m setting/not setting.

Anyway. My daughter came to me the other day and said, “Dad? Can you teach me to read computer codes?”

“What do you mean ‘computer codes’? What kind of codes?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know. Whatever there is.”

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Posted in Kids, Observations | 2 Comments »

The BigDog asks these interesting questions — several of which have been on my mind lately.

CogDogBlog » Blog Archive » Online Community Megalopoli
[W]hat sorts of online community based things do you participate in? How many are outside your organization? What is your level of involvement? What would make one something that will sustain your interest.

I’ve been participating in online communities since before there was web, really. It started out with IRC in the late 80s and early 90′s then moved into the text based MUDs, MUSHes, and MUSEs. Tapped-In is an evolved version of MOO with a graphical component layered on top. What made those communities work — and there were often two or three hundred people at a time online — was that there was “something to do” and it was generally more fun to do it in a groups. In MUDs the objective is to slay beasts, gain treasure, and increase skills — sorta like the old Zork games on steroids. In MUSE/MUSH/MOO environments the objective was to create fantastic worlds and experiences — like writing your own interactive novels. Of course, making them ‘cool’ and sharing them with your friends was key.

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It’s been just about 18 months since I’ve been carrying my MP3 player almost everywhere. I don’t think about it any more — unless I run it out of content and forget to reload. That happened recently and I was forced to turn on the radio in my car.

And just as quickly shut it off again.

Scrabbling thru my playlist I found a couple of podcasts that were worthy of a re-run and let them play rather than listen to the aggravating babble on the airwaves.

I realized at that moment that my iRiver has become the sound track in my life. Sometimes it’s music, mostly it’s not. But I’ve noticed some things that are different now than BP (Before Podcasts). Read the rest of this entry »

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Part of the impetus for redesign came from an evolving sense of what I want this space to be, part from just wanting to do something cool. A couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of The Zen of CSS Design which discusses the tricks and techniques exemplifying the designs on CSS Zen Garden.If you’re not familiar with CSS Zen Garden, it’s a site where only the style sheet changes, not the content. They have a huge gallery of various styles all displaying the same textual content in different ways. It boggles the mind.

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Of course all the genetic templates for our new biota are Terran; the minds designing them are Terran; but the terrain is Martian. And terrain is a powerful genetic engineer, determining what flourishes and what doesn’t, pushing along progressive differentiation, and thus the evolution of a new species. And as the generations pass, all the members of the a biosphere evolve together, adapting to their terrain in a complex communal response, a creative self-designing ability. This process, no matter how much we intervene in it, is essentially out of our control. Genes mutate, creatures evolve: a new biosphere emerges, and with it a new noosphere. And eventually the designers’ minds, along with everything else has been forever changed.

Kim Stanley Robinson
Green Mars

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Looks like I’m back up.

This version of CogDiss will be mothballed as the new and improved CogDiss comes online.

Watch this space for further developments as they happen.

The new WordPress 2 blog is up and running at http://durandus.com/cogdiss/. Please update your feeds accordingly. See you on the other side.

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