Posts

Posted on

speed, apple and a broken hi-fi set

once more i’ve noticed how much faster my old (but actually fine) vaio notebook is when running lean fluxbox as window manager instead of using full-blown desktop environments such as kde or windows. as i prefer fluxbox anyway i’ll probably keep it like this for a while.

so far, i haven’t heard anything new from apple regarding their 15.2″ aluminium powerbook screen problems. this is lousy. i don’t know yet whether i should risk ordering it anyway and let apple just fix it if required. after all, i still think that both mac os x 10.3 and the new powerbooks are great things.

in other news, my hi-fi set doesn’t work properly anymore. troubles with l/r channels, low frequencies (aka “give me bass, baby”) and the audiocd drive. that’s a pity. i think it’s time to get rid of it (yep, we’re living in a “junk society”). i’m thinking about not replacing it but re-activating my workstation’s 5.1 digital surround boxes instead. i prefer listening to web-radio (lounge-radio.ch, radio42.com etc.) anyway (much better sound, no news, broader choice, international stations, no advertisement). of course it’s also more suitable for listening to mp3/ogg, audiocd etc.. hmm.. yes, i think i will soon have my do-it-yourself mediacenter pc ;)

Posted on

changes

a) blogrolling.com was way too unreliable and sluggish. i thus replaced it by the previous simple but reliable and fast link list. my suggestion to the blogrolling-gang: use active tracking of changes instead of just relying on pings.

b) added a new plugin called simplecomments. it treats trackbacks (“pings”) as comments which makes it handy for creating “last comments/pings” listings. the relevant code on this site is:

<div class="sidetitle">
Latest comments/pings
</div>

<div class="side">
<MTSimpleComments lastn="5" sort_order="descend">
&lt:MTSimpleCommentIfTrackback>
<a name="trackback-<MTPingID>"></a>
 » <b><a href="<MTPingURL>"><MTPingBlogName></a></b> 
 (<a href="<$MTPingURL$>"><$MTPingTitle$>..</a>)<br />
</MTSimpleCommentIfTrackback>
<MTSimpleCommentIfComment>
<a name="comment-<MTCommentID>"></a>
 » <b><$MTCommentAuthorLink$></b> 
<MTCommentEntry>
 (<a href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$>..</a>)
</MTCommentEntry><br />
</MTSimpleCommentIfComment>
</MTSimpleComments>
</div>

c) added a category archive and a listing of category mappings for each entry. further added some numbers for counting entries per category and per month.

Posted on

semantic web vs. semantic web

mindmanager X5 Pro for the semantic web?

if we’re talking about the “semantic web” as basically just another “non-intelligent” tool for intelligent people, then tools such as mindmanager (as any other content editing/linking tool) might indeed be helpful for building it (why shouldn’t it be? ;)

my take is (as stated earlier), that this kind of “semantic web” is possibly fine for the next say ten years or so. it’s a rather pragmatic view of the “semantic web” but as a matter of fact this view suffers from an old-fashioned approach which will never allow the “semantic web” reach a higher level than that of just being a tool. (there are many problems with the current approach such as the frame-of-reference, categorization, generalization, adaptation, symbol grounding problems, lacking emergence etc.)

if however we are interested in making things intelligent, a new approach is needed. this approach should try applying some of the principles of “new ai” (brooks, pfeifer et al.) in “virtual worlds” (true “new ai” advocates may shudder when reading this ;). i have some ideas how to start with this.

a good starting point for anybody interested in this field is “understanding intelligence“.

Posted on

blogroll

i’ve finally migrated my tiny “blogroll” to blogrolling.com. no changes content-wise (so far). i’m still waiting for the most cynical blog (“the dullest blog in the world”) to rise from the dead. else i will have to remove it *sniff*.

blogrolling.com does not really offer the thing i am looking for (a pull to push converter for better scalability). looks like i’d need to implement such a service myself. like this, i could also implement notification upon new comments on others’ blogs. i don’t get why comments aren’t included in any bloggersoft’s rdf feed i know of. the rdf grammar is pretty general actually.

Posted on

ada rocks

ada is a great programming language. i started reading a tutorial a while ago and i’ve even made initial gentoo ebuilds of gnat therefore (unfortunately i’ve lost those and several other nice ebuilds prior to submitting them). now all ada-related stuff in gentoo is maintained by david holm (which is a good thing as he’s proficient in ada).

i’m still a bloody beginner regarding ada, but i’m looking forward to digging deeper.