Author Archives: Scott C. Lemon

About Scott C. Lemon

I'm a techno futurist, interested in all aspects of humanity, sociology, community, identity, and technology. While we are all approaching the Singularity, I'm just having fun effecting the outcomes of the future!

More advances with RNA

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It was recently at Accelerating Change 2005
that I heard Ray Kurzweil talk about more advances in RNA Interference. 
This is a powerful process where we can now alter the expression of
various genes using RNA.  This article demonstrates yet another
powerful use of RNA in our continuing exploration of genetics. 
Just imagine where we are going to be in the next five to ten years!

Purdue scientists treat cancer with RNA nanotechnology. PhysOrg.com Sep 14 2005 7:02PM GMT [Moreover Technologies – moreover…]

Phil Windley’s CTO Breakfast

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This morning was the November/December CTO Breakfast that Phil Windley
put
together. The breakfast started with a question about hiring good
talent. One of the employees from Canyon Bridge
said they have been looking to hire some good engineers, and have been
finding that few can answer some very simple questions. The
example that they gave was about reversing the order of a linked list.

There was a lot of talk about how to alter the hiring process, and also what types of questions people ask: What do you do outside of work? What Open Source projects do you work on?
There was also a lot of talk about how to gather names. Examples
were leverage your existing employees to get the names of “known good”
co-workers. The problem with this approach is that you can
quickly run out of references.

The conversation went on for a long time before it finally went over to the CP80
issue. CP80 is the “Clean Port 80” initiative to create laws
which forbid certain types of content to be delivered over port 80 …
the standard port used by web browsers. It again becomes an
interesting way to attempt to legislate morality. In the end, it
will not be technically possible, but could give lawyers a way to go
after the producers of “unacceptable” content. Yeah …
“unacceptable” to who? ([tags: ])

The conversation at one point moved to downloading content from the
Internet, and the subject of Digital Rights Management (DRM). 
Several sites were mentioned where you could get free content –  Pandora (which is a very cool streaming site – part of the Music Genome Project), and one of my favorites Epitonic. ([tags: ])

There was a brief exploration of the whole area of Wikis and the
inability of the “average” user to use “yet another markup
language”.  I have to admit that it truly aggrevates me that the
various Wiki platforms have subtle differences … and most do not
provide WYSIWYG editors.  and we spent some time discussing the
fact that there is a not a really good – Open Source – AJAX/WYSIWYG
editor.  I mentioned the fact that my parents can use Microsoft
Word, but that having to learn a whole symbology wasn’t going to
happen.  It reminded me of a great Podcast by Robert Lefkowitz @ OSCON 2005 … I’ll have to blog about that one!  ([tags: ])

Phil Burnes through out comments about Flock … a very cool Mozilla-based project, I brought up a very cool article that a friend sent me from Make
Magazine … it was about Mologogo
… which is a very cool mash-up of Cellular phones with GPS and Google
Maps giving you a very cheap “real-time” geopositioning/geolocation
system.  We wrapped up on one of my favorite subjects … wearable
computers.  We didn’t spend a lot of time on it … I’ll have to
bring some of my toys to one of the next breakfasts!  ([tags: ])

On the way out, Phil brought up a good point.  His gatherings
bring together an incredible group of people with diverse interests and
experience.  It is the level of experience of some of the people
that really brings a great spin to the whole conversation.  We
ended up going almost 2.5 hours … and it was a great conversation the
whole time … and we could have gone longer!  I’ll look forward
to January!

Jabra BT250v

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Every now and then you buy a product that really just works.  I recently bought a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone – a Jabra BT250v
– and I have to admit that I am truly happy with this product. 
I’ve always used a headset, but the wired type.  When I upgraded
cell phones and bought a Nokia 6820
one of the features that I wanted was Bluetooth for a wireless
headset.  But I stuck with wired headsets for a year or two.

After destoying the wired headset for the second time by jerking the
headset out of my ear or catching the wire on various things, and
having to untangle the wire one too many times, I broke down and bought
the Jabra.  It is now something that I would not go without. 
The sound quality it great, it has a ‘vibrate’
feature so that I have now turned off the ring on my phone, and the
buttons on the earpiece allow me to answer a call, and change the
volume.

I have had two problems with it over the last month that I have had the
device.  The first I was warned about … if I am outside and
there is any wind, the people I am talking to immediately complain
about the wind noise.  I have learned to mute the phone, or warn
people that I am talking with.  The second was that one time the
headset locked up and would no longer communicate with my phone. 
The on-line support indicated that I would have to ‘reset’ the Jabra,
and that meant re-inserting it into the charging base … which was at
home.  That did piss me off.

One other thing that I have learned is that every now and then it will
‘disconnect’ from my cell phone, for example if I set down the phone
and walk away with the Jabra on my ear, or hooked in the neck of my
shirt.  Its easy to ‘reconnect’ by simply clicking the button on
the Jabra.  Likewise, if I switch my phone to speakerphone, and
then back to ‘normal’ the Jabra will be disconnected.  One quick
click on the Jabra button and it reconnects.  I have to say it is
one of the best investments I have made related to my cell phone. 
A very nice design, and very easy to use.

The Gigapxl Project

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I just listened to a great podcast from ITConversations that was a
presentation at Pop!Tech 2005.  It was a wonderful talk by Graham
Flint about the Gigapxl Project. 
This is some amazing work where they are now taking pictures at extreme
resolutions – close to 4 Gigapixels!  That is close to 4000
Megapixels … a LOT more than the digital cameras that you can buy
today.  They are using some highly custom cameras to be able to
take pictures with incredible resolutions, built out of old U2 spy
plane parts.  These are still “film” cameras, but he also
discusses the work on fully digital versions of these cameras being
built.

In his talk he mentions some interesting things that they find when
they are able to zoom in on these extremely detailed images.  He
talks about this image of paragliders
on the coast of California.  When his wife was reviewing the
image, she found people watching with binoculars and telescopes … but
they were looking down
… not up!  When they followed the track of the people’s vision,
they found that below the paragliders was a nudist beach!  When
they put this particular image in a museum, the resolution was so good
that they had to mask the faces and heads of the nudists!  This
opens a whole new conversation about privacy … and continues to beg
the question “Is there such thing as privacy?”

The site has got a lot of very cool images, and examples of the
abilitty to zoom.  They even had a cityscape of my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! 

I’ll have to check which podcast had the Q&A, however they did
bring up the questions of privacy.  In this image of  PETCO Park
he talks about the fact that they have detailed images of ~15,000
people … and how would you ever get a release from all of these
people?  As a friend and I talked about this, it means that a
single photo of a demonstration or rally might give details images of
the people attending.  Uh … what are you doing in that hotel room on the 15th floor?

It is truly some amazing work, and the podcast was a great
listen.  I’ve attached the link to this post … we’ll see if it
works for you!

You mean what I say publicly can’t be used against me?

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I love this article … and I’m almost amused at the perspective presented in this article – Blogger Blocked at U.S. Border. 
A Canadian citizen was blocked from coming into the U.S. from Toronto
when U.S. border guards found references in his blog to being based in
New York. The blogger seems to be surprised that someone would hold him
accountable for what he wrote!

“One of them, a very sharp guy in fact, started to read every single post on
my blog. And it didn’t take long until he shocked me: ‘So you live in New York,
right? That’s what you’ve written in your [blog].'”

Derakhshan did, in fact, write that he was based out of New York—mostly
because it sounded “sexier” than saying he was based out of Toronto, he said.

But between his offhand blog comment and the fact that he was carrying a
Newsweek magazine sent to him at a New York address, the guards found grounds to
refuse his entry into the United States, for at least the next six months.

According to U.S. policy, as a Canadian citizen Derakhshan may be legally
entitled to stay in the United States for up to six months.

Canadian citizens entering the United States as visitors for business do not
require either a passport or a visa, although visitors are required to satisfy
border guards of their citizenship, according to the U.S. Customs and Border
Protection’s site.

“It was obvious the guy was trying to find an excuse not to let me in, and he
found something,” Derakhshan told Ziff Davis Internet News. “He found that I
said in the blog that I said I’m based in New York now. He said being based in
New York is illegal.”

Uh … excuse me, but it seems to me that Mr. Derakhshan made the
choice to be irresponsible with his writing … he publicly claimed to
be in violation of the law.  The “sharp guy” realized that not
only was this Canadian carrying a magazine with an address to him in
the U.S., but he outright claimed to be “based” in New York … in
direct violation of the law!

So what is the big deal?  You got what you asked for.  You were more interested in “looking good” (“Derakhshan did, in fact, write that he was based out of New York—mostly
because it sounded “sexier” than saying he was based out of Toronto, he said.”) and are now surprised at the consequences of your actions and words.

It is always amazing to me when people want to act surprised when they
get caught in their inauthenticities.  I remember being taught to
be very careful what I say … and to understand the consequences of
telling lies.  It appears that either he really was based in New
York illegally, or that his claims to look good have simply caught up
with him.

In either case, I love the idea of the border guards using Google!

Adding a secondary IP address on Fedora Core

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Every now and then I find another thing in Linux – or a particular
distribution – that really impresses me.  Tonight was one of those
times.  My home network is connected through a Fedora Core Linux
box, to a wireless link to my communications shed up on the mountain
above my house.  The shed then has a ~6 mile wireless link to my
office up at the Heber City Airport.

I have actually overlaid two different IP subnets on the wireless
network, one being the small subnet provided by my DSL provider, and
then other being a 10.x.x.x subnet that I created for a set of hosts
that I use for testing.  When I set up my Fedora Core Linux box as
a home gateway, I gave it a public IP address that is part of the fixed
range through my DSL modem.  So I can get in and out of my house
just fine, but was unable to access anything on the 10.x.x.x network
from my house.

To resolve this, I had to bind a second address to the same NIC card
… something that I had done with other operatings systems in the
past, but never with Linux.  After a quick search on Google, I
found a couple of articles that outlined a manual method of configuring
this, and then realized that I ought to look at the GUI config tools
that are a part of the Fedora distribution.  I opened the Network
Configuration tool, and simply clicked the “add” button … chose the
ethernet card, and provided address information.  I was impressed
that the tool added the new binding perfectly!  I clicked the
“activate” button, and up came the secondary IP address.

In a matter of 10 minutes I had the secondary binding working, and now
have a host that is connected to both the public IP address range, and
my private 10.x.x.x network through the same ethernet card.  Yeah
… I know … simple stuff.  But I had to comment how impressed I
was that the config tools managed this in such an intuitive way!

[tags: ]

Sam and his swimming progress

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There are certain skills that I believe can really alter your life
experience.  Swimming is one of them.  I remember learning
how to swim as a child at the Hidden Valley Swimming Pool near our
home.  There were a couple of eventful lessons, but then there was
no looking back.  I love to swim, and it has enabled me to
participate in numerous activities around water.

Over this last summer I have made it a point ot take my son Sam, now
just over three years old, to the local swimming pool one or two times
a week.  Its been fun to be a part of his progress from being
uneasy in the pool, to being ok floating by himself wearing his life
jacket.  Months ago he progressed to kicking and paddling with his
hands, and a month or so ago he started to jump into the pool … not
caring about going under water anymore.

Two nights ago, he amazed me as he demonstrated absolutely no fear
about doing belly-flops in the pool … and intentionally putting his
face into the water while holding his breath.  It was too funny to
watch.  Somehow he got the idea, and then for the next 15 minutes
he would stand … walk forward .. and the dive forward onto his belly
and go underwater.  He repeated this over and over.  And then
it got better.  He suddenly ran towards me and said “I want a
mask!”

The pool that we go to has all sorts of equipment that is free to use,
and we went and got a mask for him.  As he put it on, he seemed to
question the fit, but then quickly walked forward and dove on his
belly.  He got up smiling and spent the next 30 minutes repeating
this over and over again.  He told me several times that he could
hold his breath.  It was a blast to see.

I again have to admit that having a child, and watching them develop,
has to be one of the most amazing experiences.  I get one set of
feelings watching him learn and accomplish things.  I get another
set of feelings imagining that I too went through this process. 
Its wild what we forget about our own development and learning. 
Its fun thinking about how Sam will enjoy going to Hawaii the next time!

The value of learning multiple languages

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Last night I was talking with a 13 year old who is creating some
impressive works in Photoshop.  He created some very cool graphics
for his Counter Strike clan web site.  I have to admit that I was
really blown away by what he created.

As we talked I asked him what he used to create the graphics, and that
is when he told me about using Photoshop.  I asked what else he
was doing on the web and he replied “Some Javascipt … and a little
PHP.”  Wow … I was surprised.  We talked about Javascript,
and although his knowledge was not incredibly deep, he had a good grasp
of the basics of the language.  I showed him some of the stuff
that I have been working on lately and he asked some good
questions.  We then progressed to talking about PHP, and he
explained some of the small things that he is learning there. 
Impressive.

What struck me today is the shift in learning to “speak” different
“languages”.  Decades ago, or even hundreds of years ago, it was
seen as important to learn to speak other languages from around the
globe.  People in non-English speaking countries learned
English.  Most of the schools here in the USA taught middle and
high-school students Spanish, French, German, and other
languages.  (I actually spent years learning Spanish … although
it is very rusty at this point!)  It always seemed to me that the
intent was to give me a leg up on interacting with people of other
countries and origins.  I have, from time to time, found value in
my Spanish learning.

Today it now appears that the future is more in “talking” to computers
and the Internet.  And so now it seems there is more value in
learning “computer” languages … then “foriegn” langauges.  As I
thought about this today, I realized that this is probably true. 
More and more people from around the globe are learning English, and
much of the Internet – and computer technology in general – is based on
English.  So where do children turn?  To “interacting” with
computers.  And so understanding the languages used by computers
is becoming more and more important.

Its fun to think about the evolution of computer langauges, and to see
the various roots of the popular langauges.  In addition, most of
the scripting languages are becoming so high-level, and the component
libraries so rich, that even a beginner at programming can create
powerful applications.  With the Internet as a platform, Web
Services, XML, RSS, and many other standards are emerging as the APIs
independent of operating system … or programming “langauge”.  I
can only imagine what a 13 year old, who today is learning Javascript
and PHP, might be developing in 5 or 10 years.  I know that it
will be fun to see!

New version of the RadioAtomBridge tool – v3.2!

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Tonight I posted the lastest version (v3.2) of my RadioAtomBridge tool for
Radio Userland
. This tool is a way to mirror blog posts from Radio Userland
to
blogs that are hosted at Blogger.com. The tool has been working
great over the last year, but recently Blogger.com changed their API
(wisely!) to require the use of SSL. I discovered this when my
tool failed and stopped working.

I spent the last several weeks making a number of changes, and cleaning
up the tool in general. There were several fixes that I wanted to
get in place, and I think that I have covered the majority of
them. The primary change was to allow you to specify using
SSL/TLS for the ATOM posts. This does require a download from
Userland of the Radio Userland TLS module … but it’s a free download.

I’ve done a good bit of testing, and have actually posted this article
with the tool. I believe that I have things working well enough
to release a build as v3.2 … so go and grab a copy and give it a
try! If you have problems, please post comments on the
RadioAtomBridge blog … I’ll look for them there!

Installing the RadioAtomBridge Tool v3.2

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The Radio Userland Atom
Bridge Tool is designed to allow anyone using Radio Userland an easy way to
mirror posts to any Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog, using the Atom API. This
tool is based on prior work from other developers – Dave Winer and Steve Hooker
– who wrote the ManilaBloggerBridge and xManilaBloggerBridge respectively.

The installation is straight forward and should require very little
effort overall. There are a few key points to understand about how this tool
operates:

  • Blogger.com has recently started to use SSL for all ATOM API
    access. With v3.2 of the RadioAtomBridge tool, you will have to
    download and install the Radio Userland TLS module. Make sure to download and install this before proceeding!
  • Once it is installed, you will configure the tool using the Radio Userland
    Tools link on the Home Page.
  • The tool will not mirror posts from
    your blog home page to Blogger … only posts to categories are mirrored. This
    is on purpose so that you can selectively post to your Blogger blog by using
    categories. If you want a post to go to your home page, and to a Blogger blog,
    then simply create a category and always check both your home page and that
    category when posting.
  • This tool ought to work with any other Atom API compliant server. Give it a
    try, if it fails then come back here and comment or complain. If you provide
    enough information I’ll see if I can take a look at it and get it
    working.

Ok … so how to get started. First, make sure to go and get the Radio Userland TLS module and install it.  Second, go and download the RadioAtomBridge
Tool. Once you have it downloaded, copy it into the Radio UserlandTools
folder on your computer. On Windows systems, this is usually the Program
FilesRadio UserlandTools. I’m not real sure where this folder is on a Mac. When
you copy the tool into this directory, give it a minute or so and the tool will
be installed.

Next, you’ll want to go to the Radio Userland Home Page, and then click the Tools menu. You ought to see
a new tool called the RadioAtomBridge. Make sure that the checkbox to the left
of the name is checked. If it is not, then check the box to enable the tool and
Submit the page. If the tool is enabled then the name RadioAtomBridge will be a
highlighted link … click
it.

You will now be presented with the configuration page. You will
see each category and a checkbox where you can enable that category to be
mirrored. The first three configuration fields are already configured for
Blogger.com, so you only need to update the Blog ID, your Blogger username, and
password.

To get your Blogger Blog ID, go to Blogger.com and log in. On
the Dashboard, click on the name of the blog that you want to configure in
Radio. If you now look at the URL in the address bar of your browser you will
see a URL like: http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=99999999

… your Blog ID is the number at the end . Your Blogger username and
password ought to be obvious.

Lastly … do not check the box about
Manila sites. I’m probably going to remove this option as it is an older feature
of the ManilaBloggerBridge.

Once you have entered all of these settings,
Submit the page and your changes will be recorded … and you’ll be ready to
start posting. Go back to your home page … write a post … check the category
that you configured. After you have posted, go to the Radio Userland Events page and look for
the indication that the post to Blogger occurred. You can also go back to the RadioAtomBridge page and
scroll down to your category. There should now be some statistics about the
post, and possibly an error message if there are problems.

I
have now been using this tool for a number of months, and I am
currently mirroring five different categories to five different
blogger.com weblogs.  I’m very happy with how this tool is now
working … I hope that someone else finds this valuable!