Crayon Physics Deluxe

This is such an inspiring game. Pure intuition.

What's in a note?

I don't write down notes too often, really.  I do it when I feel it's expected of me, and sometimes not even then.  There are some things that need to be noted, though.  My thoughts about my research, for instance. It's really really hard to hold all the good ideas you have in your head indefinitely.  Since I really really want to graduate with a PhD, I need to hold those good ideas in a more permanent form.  Notes occasionally help improve my grades, though not that often.  For daily and weekly activities, my brain is good enough.  I write down noticeably less than most people.  Since I tend to read and write slowly, I prefer to listen and be able to respond quickly, rather than being bogged down with writing what was said 30 seconds ago.

This is a problem, don't you know.  People often take down notes under time pressure. People also want notes that give them the most information in the quickest way possible.  Note-taking is an internal discourse that allows you to connect ideas over long periods of time, and very efficiently.  Since I began contributing a couple bug fixes to the open source note-taking program called Tomboy, I've become aware of what kinds of features are most useful for note-takers.  This experience has led me to researching note-taking in depth.

I really love Tomboy because it sits right where I spend most of my time: inside my computer.  It's simple and intuitive for me, and it's more flexible and compact than writing on paper. For instance, I can link to websites.  I can also link to other notes, which I've found is an amazing feature when I want to take notes on multiple academic papers within a particular field...like my note-taking research!

What would make Tomboy better? Well, the main problem is that it lacks free-form control of note formatting and writing.  In other words, you use it like a flexible word processor.  Being able to "draw" your notes is huge for humans.  OK, let's take a step back from drawing.  This is clearly beyond the scope of Tomboy, which is supposed to be "simple". How about an implementation of an ad-hoc layout manipulator, in which movements of the mouse determine the shape and position of text on the screen either future, present or past.

Don't quite know what I'm talking about?  Well, take a look at the video demonstrating Crayon Physics Deluxe in the next post!

Remember, Remember, The Fifth of November

I've noticed a clever fund-raising campaign by the republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul.

Referencing the movie V for Vendetta, the Ron Paul campaign has fairly explicitly compared their candidate to the character "V" from the movie, who compares himself to a historical British revolutionary named Guy Fawkes, about whom the following rhyme is recited in Britain:

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The gunpowder, treason and plot,

I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

The implication is that Ron Paul intends to overthrow the government, though not by an act of terrorism as his counterparts attempted(they both attempted to blow up the British parliament building, but "V" succeeded). He intends to use his massive underground movement to raise $10 million on November 5th and send a shockwave through the mainstream press.

Will it work? We'll see...I'm tempted to give $100 myself to be a part of it, because in my opinion the US government has gone too long without a thorough shake-up. I'm also tempted to register Republican(I've always registered independent) so I can support him in the primary.

Gutsy Gibbon

I recently installed Ubuntu 7.10, which just came out on the 18th of October. I'm quite impressed with it. I'm writing from a blog posting applet integrated into Ubuntu. :-)

Confrontation

I have found that I lack the will/courage/nerve to confront practically anything in my life. It's very interesting. This trend goes to the extent that I have trouble even forming opinions about things. Or rather, I find most anything for which one could have an opinion to be agreeable to my liking and generally have to be shown otherwise.

Most of my opinions that I do form seem to center on the logic of the matter. I feel rather like Mr. Spock of Star Trek sometimes, recently. It doesn't really matter to me if I actually agree with some action/belief. But if there is a logic I can formulate around how the action came to be completed or the belief came to be believed, then I am OK with it, and I might even like it.

Dell And Ubuntu, Sitting In A Tree

Today, Dell released their first line of computers preloaded with the Ubuntu operating system. This most promising alternative to Windows is used by Michael Dell himself on his primary computer.

The importance of the release goes beyond the benefit of having a choice of operating system when you shop at Dell. The importance lies in the fact that Dell has a mighty influence over hardware vendors. One of the greatest stumbling blocks for Linux has been the lack of hardware support, since there is no financial incentive for hardware vendors to support an operating system with no major OEM support. And if there's no hardware support, then the major OEMs have no incentive to provide Ubuntu.

If these systems sell to expectations, and Dell can continue producing new models preloaded with Ubuntu, Dell will(and already is) leverage its influence to force hardware vendors to fully support Linux in its hardware driver software.


The downside of their current offering is that Dell isn't preloading media codecs that require royalties to be paid(MP3, DVD playback, etc.). This means any normal user who wants to use these common media formats will have to acquire them illegally. Dell is working to be able to offer these codecs eventually, though.

Lastly, the new systems are not available through the main website links, but you have to go to http://www.dell.com/open in order to find these systems. Dell explicitly states that they intend the current offerings for people who already know what they're doing. Hopefully, as the system-wide support becomes comparable with Windows, they will simply include Ubuntu in the drop-down list of available operating systems.

Here here! Hooray for Dell and Ubuntu!

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Just doing my part to stick it to "the man".