It's fairly well known that birds use magnetic fields to navigate, but recent research has shown that it is linked to the chemical cryptochrome which is present in birds' retinas.
When cryptochrome is struck by blue light, it shifts into an active state where it has an unpaired electron – these particles normally waltz in pairs but here, they dance solo. The same thing happens in a companion molecule called FAD. Together, cryptochrome and FAD, both with unpaired electrons, are known as a “radical pair”. Magnetic fields act upon the unpaired electrons and govern how long it takes for the radical pair to revert back to their normal, inactive state. And because cryptochrome affects the sensitivity of a bird’s retina, so do magnetic fields.
Sweden's Pirate Party, the political party promoting reforms to copyright, want to make use of "parliamentary immunity" to protect The Pirate Bay from prosecution.
The Swedish Constitution is often ignored, but it contains an interesting detail. It says that MPs can not be sued or prosecuted for something that is done as part of their political mandate.
In practice, this implies total immunity for any political action taken within this working environment. Some of the Pirate Party's prospective MPs intend to use this to host the entire Pirate Bay from inside the parliament, if today's operators of the site accept this and if we win a place in parliament in the Swedish elections on September 19.
The Solar Impulse project, which aims to build a manned solar powered plane that will circumnavigate the globe in less than four weeks, have completed their first night flight test.
The HB-SIA flew throughout the day, charging its batteries before operating at night.
Pretty amazing that solar and battery technology have advanced to the point where this is possible.
Certainly not conclusive, but this small study surprised me in one way: users ranked the iPad and Kindle as having more satisfying reading experiences than a book.
Nils Voelker and Christien Meindertsma have built a robot which monitors people's eyes while they look at artwork, and then paints a picture based on where their eyes were.
Their flaws, always major and always awe-inspiring in their insipidness, are inevitably attributed more to the device itself than to the underlying Android operating system. There’s a sense, not just from reviewers, but from fans of the device, that what Android really needs is just killer hardware.
Which is just absolute horse shit.
Android is an asshole of an operating system.
In my own experience the only advantage that any Android device has had over the iPhone is the G1's hardware keyboard. In fact, the G1 with the original Android OS is the best Android device I have used so far.
The 3DS has got some favourablereviews, but I'm not sure how Nintendo are going to market the device when you can't see 3D on TV.
New Goldeneye was very surprising, and new Kirby and Zelda were also welcome additions.
360 redesign looks nice. The cynic in me wonders if a major goal in the new design is cutting down on Red Ring Of Death.
The Kinect and the Move are both too similar to, and more expensive than, the Wii.
That said, Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Rez fame is developing a shooter for both Kinect and Move called Child of Eden. I would probably buy Kinect or Move for this game alone.
I've spent this evening bowling (badly) and thinking about ways to simplify working with the canvas element. On returning home I stumbled across the above blog post on Dreaming In Javascript. I didn't think I would like modifying the canvas methods in this way, and seeing the code I still have my reservations, but it's not as bad as I thought.
Method chaining in HTML5 Canvas
Posted
2010-06-10
@
09:56
UTC
I've started playing with the new HTML5 canvas element. Here is an example from Mozilla's canvas tutorial:
var canvas = document.getElementById("c");
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");
// Draw a circle
context.beginPath();
context.arc(75,75,50,0,Math.PI*2,true);
context.stroke();
The first thing that springs to mind is that this code could be improved with method chaining:
var canvas = document.getElementById("c");
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");
// Draw a circle
context.beginPath().arc(75,75,50,0,Math.PI*2,true).stroke();
As great as this would be, beginPath and arc don't return context. It would probably be possible to alter how context's methods work, but I think a better alternative is to create some sort of wrapper, a bit like jQuery does. I envisage something like:
var context_wrapper(document.getElementById("c"));
context_wrapper.circle(75,75,50).stroke();
Even this could be improved, but it is elegant enough for me to tolerate.
Moving to Gandi.net
Posted
2010-06-07
@
07:33
UTC
I've been using GoDaddy as my domain registrar for years but I've recently decided to move to Gandi.net. I'm transferring this domain at the moment, so I apologise in advance if anything stops working over the next few days.
Oi is a sofa designed to easily adapt to people's lives. I like the idea of being able to use your existing furniture in a different way rather than buying something new every time your needs change.
Personally I think this would be great for people with children.
Cory Schmitz wants to make a different kind of video game magazine:
The purpose of EXP is to reject the idea that a video game magazine has to be be comprised of reviews and previews of the latest games. It hones in on the gap between game magazines and design magazines, embracing the relationship between video games and artists. A big focus of the magazine is the experience games provide, and how that is a great inspiration for creative people to draw from.
Sofa have released a new file comparison tool. I've played with it for a little while within Git this evening and I'm impressed. It even shows the differences between images.
Hacker News user bearwithclaws started a project to create a monthly magazine consisting of popular posts from Hacker News. I was skeptical of the project, but the PDF version actually looks quite impressive.
Links
Posted
2010-05-31
@
21:50
UTC
The majority of my posts are links to other websites. I've altered the feed to try to make things clearer. Now posts that are links start with the domain name of the site that they link to, so this:
A link to a fun youtube video
becomes this
[youtube.com] A link to a fun youtube video.
Let me know if this breaks anything, or if you have any suggestions for improvements.
Now, what I hope to do is, I hope to be able to convince you that the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
Ars Technica produce some of the best video game reviews on the Internet.
Metacritic aggregate scores from hundreds of websites to give a simple indication of the reception that games have received.
So why do Ars Technica actively avoid inclusion on sites like Metacritic?
You lose control over what your score means, because Metacritic has locked down a numerical score that tries to take non-numerical scoring systems into account. You lose control over when you can release your review, because companies give you ultimatums based on how Metacritic interprets that score. If you take your reviews seriously, both of those restrictions seem to be intolerable.
The fact that Ars Technica doesn't really provide a score at the end of reviews is probably why they are so good.
If you use a Webkit based browser then this demo looks amazing, although the discussion on Hacker News seems to indicate that Safari does better than Chrome because of Safari's hardware acceleration.
No idea what this looks like in Firefox, and I'm too mesmerised by it to check.
Scott Aaronson on why we don't yet have quantum computers:
The central technological obstacle to building a scalable quantum computer is well-known, and is decoherence, or unwanted interaction between the computer and its external environment. When information about a quantum state leaks into the outside world—by any means whatsoever, intended or not—the state loses its “quantumness” and reverts to being classical. So to do a quantum computation, it’s necessary to keep the qubits (atomic nuclei, photons, or whatever else they are) almost fanatically isolated from their environment. But at the same time, you also need to manipulate the qubits, move them around, etc., in such a way as to carry out the computation. Those twin requirements are the reasons why the most famous ’success’ of practical quantum computing to date was factoring 15 into 3×5.
The BBC reports on the changes being made to the school curriculum in Texas
The changes include teaching that the UN could be a threat to American freedom, and that the Founding Fathers may not have intended a complete separation of church and state.
Critics say the changes are ideological and distort history.
However, proponents argue they are redressing a liberal bias in education.
I have always seen the sense in using SGML (or XML) for storage, but XML for data-interchange or configuration elicits a visceral reaction. I detest it.
Scientists have managed to create the first fully-functioning synthetic bacteria.
This is really exciting. While I can't wait to see what happens in this area next, it seems as though the process was not as straightforward as the scientists initially thought, so we might have a long wait.
Linked from Openbook is this article on Business Insider that quotes a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, having just launched the original 'The Facebook', as saying the following:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
A lot of people post very sensitive information on their Facebook profiles without realising that their profiles are public.
It's a simple task to correct your privacy settings, and as geeks we are more inclined to search for those settings and configure them, but the average user has no idea. Unlike Twitter, Facebook appears to be closed so most users assume that it is.
Is this irresponsible of Facebook? I don't know. But hopefully services like Openbook will help educate people.
Amazing images captured on autochrome plates from the
beginning of the last century. I especially love the depth
of field in this picture from Bulgaria.
Some of the newly inserted material consists of brief
reaction shots, just a few seconds long, which establish
or accentuate a character’s mood. But there are also
several much longer scenes, including one lasting more
than seven minutes, that restore subplots completely
eliminated from the Paramount version.
For example, the “Thin Man,” who in the standard version
appears to be a glorified butler to the city’s
all-powerful founder, turns out instead to be a much
more sinister figure, a combination of spy and detective.
Despite a 1% increase in their share of national votes the
Liberal Democrats have lost five seats so far. The UK's
plurality voting system doesn't seem equitable.
Ben Kuchera reviews the highly anticipated Xbox exclusive.
It sounds like a really interesting game.
I am no doubt doing the game an enormous disservice but I
think that the plot can be summarised in one sentence:
Steven King goes on holiday to Silent Hill.
Google are producing an advert for Chrome where they
compare the speed of their browser to extremely fast
real-life events, such as bolts of electricity and the
speed of sound.
It looks like this would have been amazing fun to make!
Reg Braithwaite has a posterous! His first post, Demo or
Die, seems more inline with his 'Raganwald' blog
than homoiconic:
There's nothing like a demo with a date attached to
really focus your efforts. Even if progress is slow, a
weekly demo establishes a heartbeat, a kind of informal
iterative development process.
China is famous for many things – the Great Wall, ancient
dynasties, a communist doctrine that combines
elements of marxism and free market economics and, of
course, fake Harry Potter books.
11points.com has compiled a list of eleven Chinese bootleg
books, including:
Harry Potter and the Leopard Walk-Up-To Dragon (in which
the Hobbit is retold with Harry as the central character)
Harry Potter and the Chinese Overseas Students at the
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (which kind of
explains itself)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Relative Prince (which
sounds similar to an actual book in the series, however
in this book Harry is the villain)
Subversion uses blueprint-like graphics to simulate a
world in which you play a team trying to infiltrate
buildings.
This is the first footage that they've released and
accompanies a post where developer Chris discusses how he
decided on a pathfinding algorithm:
Writing a system wrongly is often the best way to learn
how to do it right.
Path finding has been a great example of this. I've
written two pathfinding systems in my life : one for the
static world map of Defcon, and another for the numerous
maps in Multiwinia. Both games used a pretty crude
method which I was never entirely happy with, solving
route-planning the same way the internet routes messages
between distant routers, and for Subversion I knew i'd
have to solve it properly.
...
The world is rasterized onto a 2d grid. Walls produce
solid grid cells that cannot be walked through.
Navigation uses A* across the grid. It does use a lot of
memory and there's a practical limit on how large the
world can be, but it's perfect for Subversion. It can
support dynamic scenery such as using shape-charge
explosives to blow a hole in a wall (you simply change
the relevant cells in the 2d grid), and it can support
dynamic obstacles by simply rasterising them onto the
same grid. Best of all, producing the 2d grid is
extremely fast and error tolerant - I basically don't
need to worry about navigation again.
There's more detail in there about optimisations they've
used which help you appreciate what's happening in the
video.
Started SICP
Posted
2010-05-03
@
16:52
UTC
Today was a public holiday so after a nice walk this
afternoon I decided to start reading Structure and
Interpretation of Computer Programs (I'm reading the hard copy). I'm only at the
preface to the first edition, but a passage stood out for
capturing something I've wanted to say for a while:
First, we want to establish the idea that a computer
language is not just a way of getting a computer to
perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal
medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus,
programs must be written for people to read, and only
incidentally for machines to execute.
Any programming language is capable of performing exactly
the same tasks as any other programming language. So why
don't we all use COBOL, or assembly, or binary?
Because different programming languages are suited to
articulating solutions in different contexts.
More new software, fantastic Mac FTP software Transmit is
now at version 4 and looks seriously impressive. Aside
from the gorgeous makeover it's a lot faster:
Transmit 3 was fast. The Transmit Turbo engine in Coda
was faster. Transmit 4 is scary, wicked fast. We tuned
and tweaked the new Transmit Twin-Turbo engine to get
you hauling up to 25 times faster.
And a whole host of other features, including the ability
to mount online storage, like FTP or Amazon S3, as a drive
in Finder.
I love using Spotify but, understandably, not all of the
music I like is available online, which means switching to
iTunes for certain songs – so this will save me some
valuable keystrokes!
Seems like there is a staggered rollout, so I'm still
waiting for mine to update.
I spent a little time reading about Marina Abramović and she
is absolutely fascinating. She started performance art in
the 70s and in one exhibit, titled Rhythm 0, she placed 72
objects on a desk, including a gun and a bullet, and allowed
the audience to use those objects on her in any way they
chose. She said about the performance:
The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision
to the public, you can be killed.
...
I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose
thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my
head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive
atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood
up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran
away, escaping an actual confrontation.
you can't hide those eyes... same girl as on Day 35 -
Portrait 6, Day 34 - Portrait 11, Day 33 - Portrait 13,
Day 33 - Portrait 6... i appreciate the different styles
though :)
kendo_ is right, the same woman appears at least 6 times in
various guises:
3D glasses in cinemas tend to use polarising filters in both the projectors and the glasses to limit what the left and right eyes see. It seems like some 3DTVs will use radio waves to synchronise with the glasses so that when the image on the screen is for the left eye then the right eye in the glasses will be blacked out.
Comparison between John McClane's actions in Die Hard and Israel's strategy during the invasion of Nablus in 2002 where they blew holes between buildings to avoid enemy detection.
This article describes the problems Pixar face when manipulating high-resolution models and the techniques they've used to mitigate them. I didn't understand all of the maths used, but the examples are clear enough that you don't really need to.
An intricate method for drawing a seventeen-sided polygon using only a straight edge and a protractor. I can't imagine trying to draw this.
Museo
Posted
2010-04-20
@
18:27
UTC
I'm a huge fan of Jos Buivenga's 'Museo'. It looks beautifully crafted at every weight and is easy to identify thanks to its odd semi-serifs.
That it features ligatures and multiple language support makes it all the more surprising that this font is free at most weights – and it explains why I have been seeing it everywhere, from high-street optician signs to album covers.
Despite its charm, the more I see it used the less I want to use it myself. Perhaps its popularity is a double-edged sword.
A brilliant visualisation of time zones by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs. Some nice features, including the way that they demonstrate whether the time in a different timezone is yesterday, today or tomorrow.
I've been refreshing the page to watch the nice animation as well.
Twitter are introducing new advertising functionality that they call "Promoted Tweets":
You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We'll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate.
I was quite disappointed when I first heard about "Chatroulette". I presumed it had something to do with cats – "roulette" is a French word and "chat" is French for "cat".
I am therefore eternally grateful to KittehRoullete for redressing this balance.
I haven't finished reading this yet, but two paragraphs in and I'm impressed. Some interesting analogies. And the third paragraph starts with the Wide Finder project! Awesome.
Twitter, which has flourished thanks to tools built by outside developers, is taking more of those tools under its own wing. In a move that is sure to rattle its developers, Twitter has agreed to acquire Atebits, the start-up that makes the Tweetie apps for using Twitter on Mac computers and iPhones. The acquisition price was not disclosed
Tweetie 2 for iPhone is easily my favourite Twitter app, so from Twitter's point of view I think this is a good acquisition. While there's a risk that an official Twitter app for mobiles and desktops could threaten other Twitter-client developers it could also mean that Twitter improve their API benefitting everyone.
PlayStation 3 no longer supports Linux
Posted
2010-04-09
@
20:53
UTC
Sony announced last month that the original PlayStation 3 will no longer support the installation of an alternate operating system. As of Firmware v3.21 the option to "Install Other OS" will be disabled.
Now geek.com is reporting that a member of NeoGAF has written to Amazon claiming that his PlayStation 3 does not fit the original description of the product, and under European law have refunded him £84.
I wonder if this will inspire more PS3 users to contact their retailers for a refund, although I don't expect the proportion of PS3 Linux users is high enough for Sony to reverse their decision.
James Sturm, a cartoonist and graphic novelist, is quitting the Internet for 4 months and blogging about it. Every two weeks he will send a post to Slate.com and they will publish it on his behalf.
I'm a heavy Internet user and, perhaps because of that, so are most of the people I know. I think most of them have questioned whether the time that they spend on the Internet is wasted time.
I'm hoping James will find something insightful to say on the matter.
The Digital Economy Act was, by all accounts, rushed through UK parliament yesterday. The act gives the government the ability to block an individual's Internet access should someone claim that they have been downloading illegal material.
I just added an Atom feed to the blog. You can find it at http://paulboxley.com/blog/feed.atom. It was actually quite straightforward to add this and took about 5 commits. Thanks to the wonder of GitHub you can see for yourself!
Sleep Is Death is a two player game where player two tells player one a story using the game. It seems interesting. It's made by Jason Rohrer, who's responsible for some other equally interesting games.
A beautiful video featuring pixels, referencing retro games and retro game era game company logos. It seems to have been made by One More Production, a studio in Paris. Super cool.
I originally read on kottke.org that Scrabble were introducing new rules that would allow proper nouns. It transpires that this is not the case:
Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble outside of North America, is introducing a game this summer called Scrabble Trickster. The game will include cards that allow players to spell words backward, use proper nouns, and steal letters from opponents, among other nontraditional moves.
It can be a heartbreaking experience when you've spent days or weeks or months working on a feature only to discover that it is either irrelevant or unsuitable. The level of work that went into some of these unshipped features only highlights the commitment to quality that the Pixelmator team have.
There is finally a way to take your profile to a friends house. I've lost track of the number of temporary profiles friends have created on my Xbox just so that they can play a single game. Now they can just put their profile onto a flash drive and take it with them.
John McAllister has broken the record for a high score in Asteroids by reaching 41,338,740 points. The previous record of 41,336,440 was set in 1982. That's a difference of just 2300 points! Amazing.
Apple® today announced that it sold over 300,000 iPads in the US as of midnight Saturday, April 3. These sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores. Apple also announced that iPad users downloaded over one million apps from Apple’s App Store and over 250,000 ebooks from its iBookstore during the first day.
That's a lot of iPads. And at least one of them was blended.
WordPress and lines of code
Posted
2010-04-05
@
13:54
UTC
While looking at various blogging platforms I stumbled across ohloh.net's analysis of the WordPress project. As of today, excluding comments and blank lines, WordPress consists of:
89,825 lines of PHP
26,120 lines of JavaScript
13,902 lines of CSS
7,987 lines of HTML
37 lines of XML
That means WordPress has a total of 137,871 lines of code.
And a few more including some python and Objective-C, coming to a total of 63,749 lines of code.
Looking at these statistics WordPress has more than double the lines of code that Firefox has. It's impossible to draw any conclusions simply by looking at this data without any context, but I still find it fascinating.
The beginning
Posted
2010-04-05
@
11:22
UTC
I had been toying with the idea of starting to blog again for a while, but after attending the Scottish Ruby conference last week I decided to bite the bullet and get on with it.
I've built my own simple blogging engine. I don't like reinventing the wheel but I wasn't happy with the alternatives.
This blog is file based -- each post is a markdown file. I store posts alongside the source code in git and deploy to Heroku. The code for the site is available on github.
