I just finished reading John Gribbin's Science: A History. Prior to this book I [finally] read Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver after [finally] finding an English copy of it in a bookstore in Sapporo. Inspired by the characters in Quicksilver, I picked up the first 'history of science' book I could find, and I got lucky.

Science: A History is the enthralling story of the men and women who changed the way we see the world, and the turbulent times they lived in: from Galileo, tried by the Inquisition for his ideas, to Newton, who wrote his rivals out of the history books; from Marie Curie, forced to work apart from male students for fear that she might excite them, to Louis Agassiz, who marched his colleagues up a mountain to prove that ice ages had occurred. Filled with pioneers, visionaries, eccentrics and madmen, this is the history of science as it has never been told before.

As well as introducing the scientists, Gribbin does a great job of describing and explaining the inventions/discoveries. And having it all in a 600+ page book is a good format to digest all the information - it's a perfect 'not too much, not too little' sort of thing. I've already got myself a list of people I want to find biographies or autobiographies for.

John Gribbin has a site, and while it's kind of out of date [Warning: This site is in hibernation, and I have no plans to update it as I am busy writing. Please don't ask!], there's still some interesting essays there.

Panoguide.com seems to have some useful information on creating panoramic photos. In particular their how to section. The site is a little out of date and seems to mainly be a forum now, but it's worth a look and worth remembering.

I've started using Michel Fortin's PHP port of Markdown & SmartyPants, which orginally comes from the Perl versions by John Gruber - here & here. Actually, I've found that I'm using Markdown and not SmartyPants, because SmartyPants screws with my function that prepares the post data for entry into MySQL, but I've still implemented it into my blog software. I'll sort that out that problems eventually, but for the time being Markdown is doing a great job by itself.

Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

"Markdown" is two things: a plain text markup syntax, and a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text markup to HTML. PHP Markdown is a port to PHP of the original Markdown program by John Gruber.

See the dingus page [or here for the Perl version] to see how it works. As you can see the few things it does, it does well. It's a god send for entering posts via a HTML interface, although because I'm so use to typing the HTML when required I'm initially a little bit slower than normal.

I've started going through my archives to convert some of the data, because previously I was converting all CR/LF combos into HTML break tags. So far I'm up to somewhere in July 2003, so if you check anything further back than that in the next few days, it may seem a little funky.

Post 80 pics and a sparse narration of Episode III on /. Even the MirrorDot mirror was crapping out after a short while. Luckily a few others came to the party and I was able to spoil the whole movie for myself…although the story is very similar to a script I read years ago. It looks to have some promise against the earlier two films, but you could chuck 20 random DVDs in a blender and come up with a better movie than Episode I or II. Let’s hope Revenge of the Sith is what The Empire Strikes Back was to the first three movies.

Also good to see that Coral [The NYU Distribution Network] handled it’s part of the load.

A few months ago I posted about the Nano-ITX motherboard from VIA. Since then the president of VIA has displayed the new version of the motherboard [where mini-itx.com got some snapshots] and there’s been a few changes - for the better. Seems like this version is going to have 2 SATA connections…nice

Blog Torrent looks like it might be an interesting solution to all the recent closer of trackers.

Blog Torrent is software that makes it much easier to share and download files using the bittorrent protocol. Blog Torrent is easy to install on your website: we don’t require MySQL so installation is as easy as uploading a folder to your web host, and all administration happens in the web interface. Blog Torrent is easy for users: even if they don’t know what bittorrent is, they get an installer that downloads the file they want. But most of all, Blog Torrent makes publishing with bittorrent painless. Just click ”upload”, pick a file, and you’re done. This is our preview release and it has a lot of bugs and rough edges… but we’re smoothing them out for the next version, so stay tuned.

Might be better to wait until they’ve got things smoothed out, but it’s worth noting and remembering. BlogTorrent is from the people at Downhill Battle, which is a non-profit organization working to support participatory culture and build a fairer music industry.

Following a lead from kottke, I’ve also finally been able to use my USB Cam [the Lego version] with OSX. The webcam osx project over at sourceforge doesn’t support Panther at present, but the people over at multi-cam have an updated version with a patch that works just fine.

Here’s a bit of talk about the Muji House that’s been built in Yurakucho.

Muji’s - no brand, good product - philosophy appeals to a lot of people in Japan and around the world [where is was popularised through Gibson’s Pattern Recognition]. With a wide range of house-hold related items, it’s kindof like Japan’s answer to Ikea, but with a twist on simplicity, recycling and the avoidance of waste.

Above all, MUJI’s product development guiding principle is flexibility — allowing consumers to select and purchase what they need and want — without waste and without forcing them to buy components with no relevance to their lives. This philosophy has important secondary benefits: reduced cost, earth-friendliness, the use of unexpected materials, minimal processing, and efficient packages. The results are products which people really do need, and that can easily be personalized and upgraded — through component and module purchases — as they wish.

Personally I’ve only purchased their plastic CD folders and stationary products, but the other stuff looks pretty good - plain, simple, patternless. Applying these principles to designing a house has turned out well, although I gotta admit the demo house looks a bit sterile all decked out in Muji stuff. A more realistically lived-in, less commercial version of the house would be good to see.

Muji has an online presence for english readers/speakers.

Las Vegas mogul Robert Bigelow wants to have a little place in space to call his own. And he’s willing to make a few extra spots for people [or countries] that can afford it. Popular Science likes the idea…and SpaceFlightNow talks about it too. Discovery via /.

Jamie Zawinski of Netscape Navigator fame and who now owns the DNA Lounge has a nice how to on setting up a full featured diskless Linux kiosk [which is being used at the club].

Scattered around DNA Lounge are a number of flatscreen internet kiosks. Our goal was for these to be usable for web browsing, IRC, AIM, and so on. When most people set up kiosks, they tend to try and lock them down so that you can only run a web browser, but that’s a little too limiting, since I want people to be able to run other applications too (telnet, ssh, irc, and so on.) So really, I wanted to give access to a complete desktop system. But do so safely and reliably. I decided to set them up as Linux systems running the GNOME desktop, preconfigured with all the common applications people might want to run. However, I needed to figure out a way to make the system robust enough that one user couldn\’t screw it up for another, on purpose or accidentally. The system would need to be locked down enough that it was easy to reset it to a working state.

Might be worth a looksee if you ever get a client say - ”I want to set up an Internet cafe”

The trailer is available on the site now. It looks like it’s actually going to be an ok movie. Here’s hopeing anyways. Wonder if it’ll contain all the books, like the TV series, or if they’ll spin the other books off as a sequels [if the guide makes money].

I went to Sapporo on the weekend which allowed me to stock up on a few items. I ended up getting more hardware to build another [mini-itx] server, a couple of books which I’ll mention in another post, and a couple of films. It’s the films I want to mention because I’ve been hanging to see the 3 I’ve watched so far and wanted to share the joy.

I first saw the preview for this film at a cinema in Otaru about 6 months ago. For some reason it’s called God Diva in Japan [actually they do that alot here due to some titles just not translating correctly into Japanese - for example The Incredibles is called Mr. Incredible because there are no plurals in Japanese]. I pegged this film as a must-see from the preview simply because it was aesthetically beautiful, and I wasn’t let down.

Unfortunately it never made it to the big screen [or maybe it did and I missed it] and I gotta tell you, that’s a pity, because the imagery is amazing. No spoilers here, so you’ll just have to take my word for it and check it out yourself, but if you’re into sci-fi, CG, or graphic novels that have been adapted for film, I think you’ll enjoy it. More than half the cast are CG characters and the mix of these with human actors has been done really well, although sometimes [but not often] you do get a feeling you’re watching a cheap Saturday morning CG cartoon.

Funnily enough, I actually bought the graphic novel [The Nikopol Trilogy] on the weekend as well, simply because it looked like a good buy [nice artwork], and didn’t realise until I got home that Immortel is actually the film version of it. Only worked it out when examining the DVD cover and noticed that the director of the film [Enki Bilal] is also the author of the graphic novel.

A long time fan of Masamune Shirow’s work, I’ve been waiting for almost a year after hearing of the remake of Appleseed. This is a total CG anime, and as far as I’ve seen, the only film that has really pulled the technique off [although I believe Innocence did a much better job using a blend of CG and cell animation]. If you’re a fan of manga/anime you have to see it, not only because it’s one of the defining landmate manga’s around, but simply because it’s just a great anime film, packed with everything you love about the art form. While you might find the CGness of it a little disturbing at first, it’ll soon wash over and before you know it you’ll realise you’re enjoying a good film and a great manga/anime.

When I was first told about 28 Days Later it was described as - a zombie movie. Well, it’s not…it’s an infection movie. There’s not much diiference in this film though, because the infection is called Rage, and it makes the infected act like really pissed off zombies who can run really fast. But technically they’re not zombies as they don’t return from the dead and can be killed just like any normal human.

To tell you the truth, I’m not really into zombie/infection flicks, but there were 3 things made me want to see this film - 1) I’ve recently seen Shaun Of The Dead, 2) The director is Danny Boyle [director of Trainspotting] and 3) a friend of mine told me it was a good film and that it was worth seeing just for the ’empty London’ scenes.

As it turns out, I quite enjoyed it. It’s not so much scarey as it is unnerving. There are a few chair-gripping scenes, but it’s really more a look at mankind than a slash ’em up, centering on how people deal with the situation as opposed to the situation itself. The cast is really well chosen and scenery is just [for lack of better word - this is a long post for me] awesome. Do youself a favour and check it out - if you don’t mind a bit of blood and gore.

/. has a post that links to an article on installing Debian on the Mac Mini.

I would be very keen to give this a try, to setup up another small home server, but the notebook hard disk that comes with the Mac Mini has been putting me off. Those notebook hard disks just aren’t up for 24/7 usage. I’ve seen the mod that allows you to use a normal 3.5” hard disk, and that might be worth it if you’re willing to ditch the Mac Mini case and go for a slightly larger mini-itx case.

But more and more I’m starting to think that it’s just not worth running Linux on Mac hardware. While OSX is intergrated so well with the hardware, and runs almost anything Linux can, why bother?

Another nice little app to have around is Disk Inventory X. Sure you can ’du -sH’ all you want, but seeing things graphically can be a big help when it comes time to purge data.

Disk Inventory X is a disk usage utility for Mac OS X 10.3. It shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called ”treemaps”. If you’ve ever wondered were all your disk space has gone, Disk Inventory X will help you to answer this question.

It’s GPL’ed and works like a charm.

The EFF has release a tool to help administrators get rid of unwanted personal data in their log files.

By finding unwanted log files, logfinder informs system administrators when their servers are collecting personal data and gives them the opportunity to turn logging off if it isn’t gathering information necessary for administering the system.

Here’s the full press relase.

Seems like a good tool to have around in case you get a load thumping on the door, followed by ”Open Up! This is the FBI.”

As Jeremy points out here, MapQuest might finally have some serious competition. And if you spend just a few moment playing with the Google Maps interface I think you’ll agree. That’s some seriously cool coding, not to mention the backend of the system which must be amazing.

The only thing it’s really lacking is…ahhh…the rest of the known world [at present it's US only, but I'm sure that will change in the near future]. But at least I can check out where my sister lives, where my father lives, and how to find my way between the two.

And I use to work here.

Wow…did I say it already or is that interface cool. Well done Google, you beast you.

Update: There’s a more indepth look at Google Maps here.

John Battelle seems to have all the info you’d want on the Bloglines sale to Ask, except for the price, which you could safely guesstimate as - ashitload. So why do search companies like blog companies so much?

…In other words, Bloglines is growing like a weed, has tons of users, and more interestingly, tons of data about what those users read. Those profiles might make for some serious endemic advertising plays down the road…

I have a bloglines account, but hardly ever use it [I think I\’ve logged in about 3 times], although I do think it’s a quality product and well worth the attention. At present I’m using my own hand-rolled aggregator [with a little help from the magpie].

If you’ve ever attempted to make music on a ’puter, you’ll know it’s pretty hard going if you don’t have a keyboard [meaning a piano type keyboard] attached. I’ve used Reason for a number of years and without a keyboard it’s just hell to enter anything musical. The obvious solution is to go out and buy a MIDI keyboard, but the choices out there seem to be limited to over-sized, over-featured and over-priced products. Over-featured is not all that bad if you want to get serious, and over-priced…well, what can you do.

But it’s the over-sized factor that’s really been putting me off. With a small workspace as it is, I can’t fit another bulky block of plastic on the counter, and I’m not into moving stuff around anymore that I have to, especially when you suddenly get a melody in you head and want to nut it out quickly before it disappears.

Que GarageKey:

We built the GarageKey simply because we love to play with Apple’s wonderful GarageBand software, and, because there has just not been a small, elegantly designed MIDI keyboard available that matches nicely with Apple’s product styling, and is small enough to actually put somewhere on most desks. The existing keyboards are bulky, complicated designs that may be great for trained keyboard players. But, they just don’t match up to the real needs of most Mac users who decide to begin experimenting with GarageBand. That problem is now solved… If you have other music software besides GarageBand, for sequencing, recording, or notation, you will be pleased to know that the GarageKey is a fully class compliant MIDI controller that will work with any Mac OS X software application that supports a USB-MIDI keyboard input.

It draws it’s power from the USB connection, has a 7ft cable [for when you want to lay back with the headphones on…I’m guessing], and [compared to the alternatives] takes up hardly any space at w20.5” x h1.75” x d6.75”.

Hope they start selling these in BicCamera, ’cause next time I’m cashed up I might just drop the $119US.

I knew it wouldn’t take long for the Mac Mini community sites to start showing up. BYODKM.net stands for ’Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard & Mouse’. And in the community spirit they’ve devoted a rather large in-your-face section of the page to adverts. Anyways, good luck to ’em, I’m sure it will be a winner, especially since a whole swag of accessories have already been released.

Update: Thanks to pheloxi for pointing out the typo - it’s not Build, but Bring.

I happened to walk past a free Internet installation yesterday [it was to promotion for Yahoo! BB, which is the name for Yahoo!’s broadband service provider company here in Japan] and thought I’d check out some sites I’ve been setting up from my home server. First time I was able to check that I could access the stuff from outside my ISP. It all seems to be working ok [gotta love the DynDNS - Custom DNS Service]

I also checked on r0nin and noticed that, after the slight change I made to the templates, the site doesn\’t display correctly in IE. I’ve become so complacent in the last few years [has it been years?] since switching to Firefox, and for anyone still using IE to browse, I apologise for the site looking a little out of wack. When I get some time I’ll hunt down whatever it is that’s confusing IE [after all, it’s valid XHTML & CSS] and ammend it.

I have to admit though…the making-sure-it-works-in-IE care factor is pretty low.