The Archimedes Codex

Archimedes was a very cool dude. When you think of inventor/intellectuals these days, we have been trained to imagine a fairly wimpy, bookish kind of person. Not so for Archie, he was also a bad-ass who defended his beloved city of Syracuse to the death at the hands of Roman invaders. Archimedes invented what for the day, were some freaky advanced technologies.

Well, new information has been discovered about him, thanks to the painstaking work by Will Noel at the Walters Art Museum of New York. A dilapidated tome that was recycled by a 13th century monk, has turned out to contain a treasure trove of amazing information regarding this famous but actually little-known giant.

The Christian Science Monitor has a fascinating article about it. Here is a taste:

Most significant among the discoveries was the knowledge that "Archimedes was the first to calculate with actual infinity in the mathematics of the West." That is to say, he was operating at an intellectual level that didn't become common in the mathematical world until the 17th century, nearly 2,000 years after his time. The Archimedean texts, Noel writes, make the mathematics of Leonardo da Vinci "look like child's play."

The CS Monitor article is fun, and a short read. I really recommend it, if you want to get a sense of the "Original Hacker" was all about.

Excuse Me, While I Kiss The Sky

The demo that Microsoft showed at TED of Robert Scoble crying, ahem, I mean their future Microsoft Worldwide Telescope or whatever, looks really neat. In the meantime, those provocateurs over at Google have just put live Google Sky, a fully browser based version of their Google Earth software that started this whole "star wars" virtual astronomy competition thing in the first place.

I suppose since so many people cannot see the stars anymore, that we need virtual astronomy more than ever. In the meantime, it is pretty incredible to have such an educated introduction to the heavens. I could easily spend hours just like, playing with the universe, man.

The Telepathy Machine Demo

I just saw an amazing demo of communication without speaking. No, not instant messaging, or sign language. Instead, scientists at Ambient Corporation have succeeded in tapping into the nervous system that control speech, and translate that into digitized speech. Michael Callahan showed off their demo at the Texas Instruments developer conference. Wow, this is a long way from my TI-99/4!

Applications for secret agents, people who suffer from ALS, and people who cannot shut up when on the subway will be forthcoming. The quality is "at the same level of recognition as the early days of speech to text", so it will be a little while till all those people staring off into space at cafes are actually talking to someone else.

In the meantime, I would like to scan all of you in this room one at a time...

You Got Your DS In My Robot

The French press may be reeling in financial scandal, but the cool kids there are still concentrating on what is really important: drinking wine and controlling an open source robot with a heavily modded Nintendo DS.

The Pekee Mobile Robot and a whole bunch of DS hacking. That in itself just sounds like hours of fun. But then can you just imagine real-world robotic battles in your living room, fought remote controlled by DS. Can I preorder now?

C'est Manifique!

Lord Raise Me Up

As usual, human ingenuity has raised science to a new height. In this case, a very small height, but let us not quibble about a few details. UK researchers have discovered a way to circumvent the Casimir force, which is what causes very small things to clump together. By using a clever type of lens, the researchers were able to reverse the Casimir force in their experiment.

Despite the fun headlines, this does not mean repulsors for the masses. Any practical application would likely be amazing new manufacturing techniques for nano-tech materials, and new types of nano-devices, not flying cars at this point. More like nano-engines that are more efficient due to reducing friction by "floating" the components of the device together.

At the very least, this should spawn a new outbreak of copycat perpetual motion machines and the like...

Eventually The Machines Will Win

I have never been a big checkers fan. Good thing, cause I would have had to give up the game after the recent "solution" of the game by a team of Canadian computer scientists. Every possible move of every possible game has been mapped, and a checkers playing program can take each of these into account before deciding on its next move. No human player has such ability.

Actually, as it turns out, the best possible outcome in a game of checkers, given two players who each make perfect moves, is a draw.

The next game to be solved will likely be othello, than other even more complex games like chess, which has 10²⁰ more possible moves than checkers.

It is only a matter of time before sufficient computing power allows the machines to contemplate eventualities of which we have not even postulated the existence.

The Singularity IS coming...

I Have Seen The Future

The amazing artistic visions of computer science researcher Andrei State combine both grace and utility. I am reminded of how I felt first seeing the original Apple Knowledge Navigator video...a peek just around the corner into the future.

Check out Andrei's technical section of the really neat ARTA GRAFICA website. Thank you to my friend Dan Rasmus and his cool "Future of Information Work" blog for turning me on to this...

The Wigglebot Cometh

I saw this very interesting robot today. Not only can it crawl, shimmy, roll, and walk, but it does so by combining a small group of autonomous, modular, self-reconfiguring bots that operate together as a unit. Very cool!

Transformers, indeed. Have I mentioned that I want a set of Lego Mindstorms NXT for my birthday? I would love to mess around with ruby-nxt or the Microsoft Robotics Studio.

Fabbers Gone Wild

Why stop at fabbing a chocolate bar when you can just fab your own whole factory?
According to Behrokh Khoshnevis, a USC Engineering researcher, "The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands."
Seems like a scene from Manna to me, doesn't it?

When We Were Fab

A fabber is a machine that can make three-dimensional objects just like a printer can print in two-dimensions on a a piece of paper. Only recently had this technology escaped the realm of science fiction into the still unreal world of government and large-budget research labs...which is ironic given that the purpose of fabbers is to produce highly specialized items at very low cost.
Well, thanks to an open-source hardware/software project called Fab@Home, the technology is reaching out to the home enthusiast. You can now make anything you want, as long as it is constructed of silicone, or perhaps chocolate.

Optimus Mini Three is Prime

Time again for another incredibly cool looking device... the Optimus Mini Three Keyboard. The description on their site says "Optimus mini is an auxiliary keyboard with three keys, each complete with an OLED screen displaying the current function."
They call it a keyboard, but I think that is quite the understatement. It is really like an external display surface that you can press. Drivers for Win32, MacOS and Linux are available. The software allows you to configure each of the three mini-screens to display the results of a "plug-in". Plug-ins display whatever they want, and there are already plug-ins that grab data from commonly used applications like iTunes to display summary info on the tiny screens.
Imagine your continuous integration system, server farm health, or stats on your plans for world domination displayed on three tiny screens. If the indicator shows something interesting, the display is actually a button that can launch your desired application. How cool is that!

Gmail For Mobile Rocks

I just installed the brand new Gmail for Mobile on my Motorola RAZR. In just a matter of a couple moments, I was looking at my Gmail inbox! Gmail for Mobile is a Java-applet that runs on your Java enabled phone. Keeping the network traffic down this way is a lot better option that a WAP-based email solution, which is what I had tried and abandoned previously.

Not having a QWERTY keyboard is a big limitation for smartphones especially where something heavily textual like email is concerned. Gmail for Mobile deals with this thru a clever mapping of hotkeys to the most commonly used functions (delete, in my case).

Between Google Reader, and now this Gmail for Mobile, another bit of my online existence has been sucked into the Googlesphere...and I like it!

The Coolest New Device I've Seen For A While

I just saw a really neat new gadget called "The Device Patented Process Indicating Apparatus " for the first time. Check it out at http://www.processindicator.com/

It is a USB device that can be connected to take whatever data feed you desire, and use the "inscrutable dials", Ethereal Glowing Tube (EGT), and incandescent lamp on "The Device" to indicate whatever status you want. "The build is broken", "sales are up", or "there is a soccer game today" are only some of the neat automation possibilities that come to my mind without much effort.

The only process indicating apparatus you'll ever need, indeed! Too bad they are not yet for sale...I want one of these! It is the coolest thing I have seen since the "Ambient Orb".

http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/orb/orborder.html