Now this is scary. I can just imagine that one of the first applications will be in fast-food advertising.
NZ Herald : Sony aims to beam sights and sounds directly into brain
Greenflame
Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
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“All in all a very successful, relaxing and peaceful few days. Now some solid work is required over the next few weeks while I’m still fresh from it.”
Stomach bug decimates the entire family this week. Even those who have recovered have no energy to do anything. Must pick the most uncomfortable chair in my supervisor’s office tomorrow for my PhD meeting. Would not be a good look going to sleep in front of them halfway though a sentence….
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Have returned from a pilgrimage to the sacred city of Wellington for the weekend. Time off with no kids for the two of us to visit friends and family. Stayed out at Raumati Beach with my brother and his family, went the commissioning service on Sunday of friends heading off overseas this week with Wycliffe, caught up with an old Uni friend, meandered around old haunts and purchased extra luggage to cope with the various secondhand book shops that we came across. Plus the Hurricanes beat the Chiefs (didn’t look like it at half-time) at the Cake Tin (though we didn’t go to the game).
All in all a very successful, relaxing and peaceful few days. Now some solid work is required over the next few weeks while I’m still fresh from it.
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The Buzz Report: Enter the robots – CNET.com is a brief survey of robots seen at the International Expo in Japan.
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Andrew Jones briefly answers a question about putting photos into your blog at : Mac, blog and photos. Both the suggestions cater for simple blogging – Blogger + Flickr or Typepad. (Flickr can be used with other blogging systems too – see here for the list).
Now that works probably for a lot of people but I’m thinking about setting up some photo galleries – with the option of using some of the images in a blog or two – but want more control for the set up. I already have my own web host with database, PHP/Perl and other features, and would like to configure the set up how I’d like. I’d also like to be able to provide access control – for viewing and for others to upload – and to set default parameters for maximum photo dimensions and file sizes etc. I’m also not keen of “giving” my photos to someone else to manage and then having people who need to access them giving personal information to a third party.
Enter Gallery which seems to do most of what I need, is open source and has some sort of integration with various CMSs and blogs like Movable Type (plug-in here). From the Gallery web site,
Gallery is a web based software product that lets you manage your photos on your own website. You must have your own website with PHP support in order to install and use it. With Gallery you can easily create and maintain albums of photos via an intuitive interface. Photo management includes automatic thumbnail creation, image resizing, rotation, ordering, captioning, searching and more. Albums can have read, write and caption permissions per individual authenticated user for an additional level of privacy. Give accounts to your friends and family and let them upload and manage their own photos on your website!
Now, I have all of my photos set up in iPhoto on my iBook where they have meta-data (comments, dates, times, titles etc.) linked to the photo. I don’t want to have to do the whole export photos from iPhoto to a folder (losing the meta-data), use the Gallery Java-based importer to upload them (slowly) and then have to renter the details in Gallery. So I was overjoyed to discover: iPhotoToGallery which is a plug-in for iPhoto (version 2+) that allows you to select your photo’s in iPhoto, select export from the file menu and send them to Gallery on the server (see screenshot). How cool is that? Now my only limits are disk-space and upload bandwidth.
Anyway, for those of you who have a technical bent, want more control over the look-and-feel of your photo sets, and access controls for others then this might work for you. I’ll be trying it out over the next few weeks to see how it works but as always YMMV.
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Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies is a web site that brings together information and links related to things like “transhumanism”, technological augmentation of human beings and technological approaches to longevity and immortality.
By promoting and publicizing the work of thinkers who examine the social implications of scientific and technological advance, we seek to contribute to the understanding of the impact of emerging technologies on individuals and societies.
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To keep Paul happy I’m also posting the link to the Chiefs wallpaper.
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You can download the 2005 Hurricanes wallpaper and screensaver (Mac & PC) here .
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Spent Easter up in the lovely Bay of Islands where we went to a family wedding and just spent a bit to time unwinding. Here are a couple of panorama shots at the place we were staying – The Pukeko’s Nest. Well worth effort to get there (it’s about 30 minutes off Highway 1 near Kawakawa but a lot of that is dirt road). Serene and safe surroundings (unless you’re a 2 year old with a desire to investigate the mangrove swamps) with no imposition of “modern life”.
Mangroves are a nice metaphor for Easter for me. There is this swampland, covered by the sea a high tide, that looks just like yucky, sticky, smelly mud. Yet out of this seemingly “dead” land life teems – mangrove trees grow up, crabs scuttle, pukekos nest – the place that looks initially uninhabitable is a rich, ecosystem. But you don’t know that unless you take time to “unwrap the grave clothes.” -
Lawrence Lessig’s recent blog post never again links in nicely with the discussion Tim highlighted at SanBlogue: When copyright fails. In it Lessig comments on the restrictive nature of “Publication Agreements” and the loss of author’s copyright. His slant is that he will now “not agree to publish in any academic journal that does not permit me the freedoms of at least a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.” Interesting to see if it can be done.
