You do not recognize answers to questions that have never arisen.
Walker & Shipman 1996

So... what was 2001 like? Tasted like chicken.
But after getting used to blogs, I did start my very own.
And we got Joel, our first born.
And I reached a new level of understanding about life after pouring my thoughts into my blog. A defining moment in my life.

An article about Computers that improve themselves. By using Field Programmable Gate Arrays the chip was able to program itself to identify two different sounds. The researcher claims to be suprised by the results. I'm sure Kohonen Neural Nets will give some clues.
Cool stuff anyway. Computers are moving away from the discrete performance to something more ... alive.
Scott Ladd has some resources about evolutionary algorithms and artificial life on his Complexity Central.

While I don't read Dilbert daily (anymore), I do enjoy immensly the Dogbert's new ruling class newsletters. Well the quotes and true tales anyway.

It's an exercise in fertility.

Jakob Nielsen revisits the year 2001. I did some pilots with micropayments... the ubiquitous infrastructure Jakob mentions is a major obstacle. Many elements have to click into place (banks, service providers, pricing models...).
BTW: Jakob has excellent articles. With a grain of salt they are very informative.

My neighbor Totoro is a lovely film. In my personal top 20 best movies ever. It's in Roger Ebert's Great Movies selection. IMDB lists it as nr. 3 on the Top 50 Family movies. I just have to get it on DVD.

Can you pass the Insanity Test? (Sound required.)

The economist has a good article about computer evolution. It starts of with the movie 2001: A space odyssey, and moves on to human and software evolution. (It also mentiones reasoning, which relates to consciousness.)

...an impartial observer might conclude, humans have become symbiotically intertwined with their machines. Humans work to further the replication of computer code, while computers help to propagate human code, supporting the highly-evolved economic and financial infrastructure that sustains human society. The two are not so intimately related as flatworm and algae. But neither, realistically, can each do without the other.

Mindslip wrote a good analysis of the movie BTW. It cleared up my view of the movie and I agree with his analysis.

Joel is learning to walk. I think he managed to take about 5 steps. He has already been standing with support for several weeks.

Well this was fast. Currently The Fellowship of the Ring is nr one on the IMDB Top250 list. Amazing. While it is an excellent movie, I wouldn't rank it quite that high. I have to admit that having read the books a long time ago gave the movie a huge boost in the form of nostalgy. Childhood memories when woken are very powerful.
The movie does however belong to the top 20 -group.

This is just disturbing. If you think piercing is nasty, you'll freak out when you read what a couple of twins have done to their bodies.
I suppose with increasingly better education we humas will continue to make even more amazing stuff. This reminds me of the artist, that uses a detachable robotic arm controlled by his muscles (can't find a link).

World's Funniest Joke. Not ROTFL, but at least it challenges the reader. Here's something I wrote about humor.

Slashdot talks about the Fellowship of the Ring. Oh and some students had a bit of fun.

Just saw Fellowship of the Ring. A very nice movie. Gave it 10 points at IMDB. All my childhood memories of the book really came to life. It's not a movie that changes your life, but as a fantasy story it is beautiful. The story held well together and the fantasy world looked fantastic. Parts I especially liked: the introduction, the wearing-the-ring effect, the mines ("whoa").

Dan Bricklin has some ideas why the Segway might just work. Not quite yet, but in 10 or 20 years.

Slate has some pretty funny cartoons about the Segway.

HP has a quick guide to remarkable web pages - blogs. You can just feel this bloggin thing betting bigger.

The annual Scripting News Awards for 2001. The nominees have been selected.

Dilbert theorizes in one of the daily strips about meetings being a life form. Why not.

Talking moose has a weblog manifesto. I like the first item: Write.

Metacrap. And why metadata won't really work:
1. People lie
2. People are lazy
3. People are stupid
4. Mission: Impossible -- know thyself
5. Schemas aren't neutral
6. Metrics influence results
7. There's more than one way to describe something

The W3C forms a Technical Architecture Group. There's a press release. Sounds like a good group - wouldn't want the Big Co's dominating that area.
It's already slashdotted.

Google has added a freshness indicator. If the index was updated recently, google will display "Fresh DD MMM YYYY". Cool.

Google has a 20 Year Usenet Archive. Their announcement has picked a few highlights, including first mentions of Microsoft, compact disc, Amiga and CERNs announcement of the WWW. Slashdot is discussing it.

Looks like Snorland comments are quite unreliable... sorry about that.
The Blogback group has a post that lists some commenting systems for Blogger. And here's Blogspots list. Maybe I'll switch to some other...

Tracking virus manufacturers through IRC sounds like a good idea - and apparently has worked at least once, The Register reports. DALNet tracked down the Goner virus creators through IRC. I guess many groups want to show off on IRC.

I'll test Snorland comments. This way you can comment on these posts.

Made a new videoclip of Joel standing.

Dave Winer on a Segway: I spent ten minutes on it, then it was time to let someone else play. I didn't want to stop. Getting off is like taking your ski boots off after a day on the mountain. You have to learn how to walk again. It's the first time I've learned a new way of moving in a personal way, in a very long time.
Sounds like it could be a neat toy for an amusement park or mall. (Rent it for an hour etc.)

Having a vision means "having fun with your product." By R. Scoble.
Couldn't agree more.

Consciousness II

As it happens, while reading about humor, Marvin also mentiones consciousness. Here's a quote:

As I see it, "consciousness" phenomena can emerge from the operation of a "self-referent" mechanism when it tries to account for some of what it itself is doing. I doubt we possess any especially direct and powerful ways to do this, so we probably do it much as we understand anything else -- that is, by making and refining models that may never be particularly accurate. Technically, discussing such matters is messy because of the web of different meanings for "self-reference" itself. Should we call a system self-referent just because it operates on data derived from its own operation? It might be considered so if it can be seen as trying to describe itself. ... Should we call a system self-referent when, only by accident, a structure inside it happens to resemble (in an outside observer's opinion) a larger-scale description of itself? ... In (other paper) I discussed how odels that are technically quite wrong can still be useful; in particular it suggests an explanation of the illusion of free will.

No answers, since there propably aren't any in this context. But it has the similar idea; thinking about thinking. Oh and that it's overrated :-)

Humor
My random thoughts about life, universe and everything

I'm glad I read Marvin Minsky's article about jokes and cognition. I had this rough idea about what humor is, and found out that I was on the right track. (Well the same track as Marvin anyway.)

My ideas were something like this:

• Humor helps learning. By identifying absurd situations, the brain rewards itself for being able to identify a new "unknown" situation.
  
• Humor is likely an evolutionary phenomenon.

Here are some quotes from Marvin's article:

...when we look deeper for that underlying structure of humor we shall still find a vexing lack of unity. I argue that this is a consequence of the way things usually evolve in biology.

Laughter focuses attention

On the issue of an evolving brain: ...once able to accomplish intricate chains of reasoning, we became vulnerable to new kinds of bugs: faulty variable bindings, subtle changes of sense, and more obscurely circular logic. Laughter creates an interruption.

Laughter's facial component suggests that it evolved in connection with social communication.

If a person could feel and hear himself laugh, grimace, and shake, why not exploit these side-effects also to make one's own self to stop doing something ridiculous or prohibited?

...it is probably futile to ask precisely what humor is.

What is pleasure, and why do we like it? It is not a tautology. Clearly pleasure involves a complex web concerned with: learning and goals; with activities one wants to continue and/or repeat; and with anticipations and rehearsals of such. What makes the issue elusive, I think, is that we "sense" pleasure only through an elaborately constructed illusion...

I made up my own (feeble) model a few weeks ago, and now I feel slightly better about myself. Climbed one more hill.

Marvin Minsky has interesting articles about AI, thinking, etc. When I find the time, I will read "Jokes and Cognition" and share my own thoughts about humor.

I just tried this blog on my Ipaq. Looks mostly ok. Stylesheets got automatically trimmed down. The title was a bit funny, so I'll be changing that.

Why are black&white photographs better than color? Well not always of course, but here's my explanation why B&W works. Dropping color allows the brain to focus on the shapes and their relationships. With color the brain does a lot more image processing, like texture and material analysis. With the color gone, the brain can spend more time with the objects and the related emotions. Especially with human faces the emotional response is very high. And with an emotional response the image has meaning.

Also your brain stores the shapes of objects separately, so a well constructed image (B&W with no distractions) will create an immediate and "pure" identification. Remember the picture of Hitchcock?

Pick an image of a human face and compare the same image in color and B&W. Which one would you hang on your wall?

So now what? Well... when taking photographs removing color just might give it more emotion. I also like to add contrast to the picture to ephasize the shapes even more.

BTW: the eye is much more sensitive to brightness than to color.

Rikard comments on the distribution of human thoughts (by using a power law). Which touches the consciousness thing and culture again. In culture, many of the culture habits are represented as various laws. And culture gets set in its ways. E.g. how could you really change the legal system, even if you knew a better one? Is it possible to have a culture that is continually able to adapt itself? Or do cultures have to die to be able to improve? Will the internet create a new renewing global culture?

Related to consciouness, Bob has some thoughts about the reality of our world (posted to the Singularity group). He also refers to two articles: "Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?" and "How To Live In A Simulation". I have some thoughts about this topic that I'll post later.

Jrobb provides a big picture of K-Logs. I feel K-Logs are a very good idea - that's one of the reasons I started this blog... learning how to share information with a blog.

Whoa! Now they have a turbo model of the Segway. :-)

Damn. A study for NASA says that "Space travel is inherently hazardous.". Space.com has the article.

Deja vu. Could the cause of deja vu be that the limbic system of the brain recognizes the emotional state. The point being that it's an emotional link, not one related to the physical surroundings. I'm pretty sure (not 100%), that my deja vu experiences have the same emotional state. The surrounding can be related, but is not required for the experience to happen. Does a person with an injury in his limbic system experience deja vu?

Consciousness
My random thoughts about life, universe and everything

Humans are/have a group mind. It's called culture. And following the human model of life, it tends to die (culture that is) and re-invent itself into another culture. Not many cultures have survived for a long time.

With fast communications (letters, phones, internet) different cultures get mixed, creating a new culture that might just have a better chance of surviving.

Is this intentional? Is our culture conscious? Is the planet conscious?

I would say yes to both - but not in a way we could interact with. Some of the definitions do not help, since we (humans) can't have a dialogue with a culture (or our planet). But some definitions seem to apply: culture seems to have a will to survive, it makes deliberate actions and it can analyze and improve itself.

Currently I feel that consciousness is a bit overrated. :-)

What I'm still thinking about is whether this consciousness is a a property of information processing, an element of evolution, or a property of this universe.
- Maybe a sufficiently complex information system (brain) eventually forms consciousness.
- Maybe it just helps humans to survive (evolutions) - an extension of the will to survive.
- Maybe our universe is constructed of conscious particles, that propagate that property to living beings. (I'm not sure what I mean by a conscious particle... chaos theory could mean that the outcome is the result of a choice.)

Or maybe consciousness is just the ability to make choices (thinking) and remembering how and why a choice was made. Maybe thinking about thinking just gives it a definition; consciousness. "I remember thinking and now I'm thinking about my thoughts. I think therefore I am. I'm conscious." The ability to notice and analyze own thought patterns.

I like this definition.

The abstract of Foreman's paper provides some views about consciousness.

I'll have to get back to this issue after a few years. At least I've written down something I can review much later. :-)

Zimran Ahmed is guessing that Microsoft will bring out some new network layer to replace TCP/IP. Based on the unclosed security holes of raw sockets. I wouldn't be surprised.
Ahmed has an excellent blog, BTW.

Here's an interesting service: FilePile. The sign-ups are closed for the moment, but the concept is neat. You can upload mp3s, images, movies and texts. Others get to vote on them. Files are organized chronologically with the oldest ones (one week) being deleted.

Independence day here in Finland. Lots of activities available in Helsinki.

Well this is a fun game. The Random Game. All you do is click and random numbers are added to your score. But the community features are what makes the game fun. Discussions, hi scores, rankings, etc. Nice concept.

An informative article about project management at SoftwareMarketSolution titled "An Interview with Joel Spolsky of JoelonSoftware". It contains thoughts on why software projects fail (like Netscape and Lotus). It's a bit black&white, but does make good points. Slashdot has the comments as usual.

I just love this photo of my wife and son. Taken with a Digital Ixus, removed color, moved the black and white points closer, and printed by Ifi to 20x30cm.
I've taken about 1000 digital photos during 1.5 years, and 4 of them I consider excellent - this is one of them.

Bad nordic online shopping (in Finnish). About 35% of shoppers in the nordic countries and 60% in Finland were unable to buy stuff online. Big suprise. The shops are a bit better than a few years ago, but still suck. I'm sure Nielsen could teach them a thing or two. I still can't understand why the paper catalogs have much more information than the online version (...well I can, but it's a bad excuse).

There's already a blog about Kamen's IT. Paul Nakada's web sightings of Dean Kamen's Segway. Is that device cool or what. I doubt it will be a huge success... but hopefully it will find its niché market.

New pics of Joel:

Finally I can plug one of my study works. It's in Finnish. Erikoistyö: Kuvanpakkausalgoritmit.

I updated my old homepage to match the template of this blog. Now it looks to be a part of the same site.

Heh. Crashing a Nokia phone with SMS. The Register has the article, Slashdot the discussion.

Perfect Software at NASA. I suppose we (in the software business) all know it's possible, but can't find a customer willing to pay for it. "This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved.".

Some daily links I like at this point of time: Slashdot, Scripting News, diveintomark, Duuni.Net, Shacknews.

Cool. Kamen has revealed the details of "it". "Developed at a cost of more than $100 million, Kamen's vehicle is a complex bundle of hardware and software that mimics the human body's ability to maintain its balance. Not only does it have no brakes, it also has no engine, no throttle, no gearshift and no steering wheel. And it can carry the average rider for a full day, nonstop, on only five cents' worth of electricity."

Nuuksio woods 03-Jun-2001 16:00. Gallery page 7.

I'm thinking about covering the following themes in this blog. I'm sure that after a while I will find my style. Wish me luck.
- News I find newsworthy
- Weblogging and Internet (like everyone else?)
- Joel, my 10 months old boy
- My bits of wisdom about life (well... ideas anyway)

I guess we all start with an empty blog.

I did take a very short spin with Greymatter, but decided that a public blog is the way to go. I need to be able to show this stuff to a wider audience.

Choosing the correct template for my blog is of course a very important task. I like simple styles that focus on content. Maybe - in a way - it will make this content look very important. (Templates define the perceived value of the content?). On the other hand, that ad on top of the page will grab the readers attention anyway.