October 24, 2004
Grow a brain!
Wow. Scientists have grown a brain. I won't try to explain it as I can't do it justice, check out the link.
"When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who's next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself, he said. (The brain is) getting its network to the point where it's a live computation device.Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn't know how to control the aircraft, DeMarse said. So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.
Cool airplane crash footage
NASA crash footage and put it to music and you get: Coudal Partners
October 23, 2004
Maya Skills
Check out Jayson's Maya skills.
Someone should hire this guy!
Metal Working
Check out my buddies "foundry" page. The list of new toys and things he's doing makes me heka jealous: Jaysons Metalworking home - Metal Talk
October 22, 2004
Actual support from a software company?!??
One task at the new job was to get some EDI (Electronic Data Interchance) software (by DynEC) working. The software had already been purchased months ago, but was simply never installed and setup.
So I get to it, install it all, setup as best I can, and run stuck. So, too lazy to pick up the phone, I decide to just email the support email addy. Then I forgot about it, I figured I had a few days before I received a response.
I think less than 10 minutes later the phone rang and I was on the phone with a support rep. A few minutes later it was figured out. Perhaps the fact that I find this so amazing is a bad sign of the industry in general, but it's good to be surprised once in a while!
October 19, 2004
You call this a blog?
Scoble linked to this Weblog. Check it out, skim the first line or two of each entry and report back.
Ready to gag yet? If you're going to do a blog, be a bit more creative! I'm not sure if MS Word has a "Blog Entry" template that they're filling in, but it's so obvious it makes me wanna rip up my monitor into itty bitty artificially-sweetened blog fragments.
"Hi, when I was little I loved mustangs and they were cool and now I have a career at Ford Motor Company! I'm so proud to have worked on this beauty! You're so gonna love it like I do and we'll be best friends!"
October 11, 2004
419
An interesting email came to Lani (my girlfriend, a florist) the other day:
dear sales this is mr bola, I will like to known if you can ship international and i want to purchase from your store , i will like to know the courier service you use in shipping to lagos nigeria. moreso i will like you to know that i will be paying with my credit card accounts. regards BOLA .Y
I reply asking what he wants and that we use the cheapest shipping for any destination. I "accidently" called him Mr. E Bola just for shits and giggles. A few hours later the reply comes... He wants 10 each of 4 different products, including fresh flowers (obviously only for local delivery, which I had already informed him of in my first email.) He also specified to use "usps global express 3/5 day shipment"
Now this is obviously a scam of some sort, but what kind could it be? Is it just an attempt to use a stolen credit card to get free product, or is there more coming? Of course, the question remaining is... do I reply with a price and see what happens next, ask him to send a picture of himself holding a sign of some type :), or... ?