Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • Eliza, 140 characters at a time

    Nick Carr has a fascinating essay in Edge Magazine on the history of ELIZA, the software program that simulated intelligence, and its creator Joseph Weizenbaum who passed away recently. ELIZA represents the frontier that computer science must cross if someday to arrive at true intelligence – ELIZA itself is merely artificial, but still certainly intelligent enough to have fooled a lot of (presumably) genuine intelligences.

    However, in one of those weird quirks of computer life, Nick appears to have also posted the entire essay about ELIZA onto his Twitter account. Given Twitter’s 140 character limit, this means that almost every sentence in the essay was posted as its own tweet. The effect is strangely hypnotic. Whereas reading the original at Edge gives a sense of cohesion and narrative, reading it on Twitter makes it discrete and disjointed, even though the sentences are still adjacent.

    In a way, the context of the content affects its meaning. Is that a limitation of our brains? Or of the medium?

  • Makoto, light!

    Astro and Nick have been talking about Makoto Shinkai for a while now. Astro’s pending review of a Place Promised in Our Early Days is one I am looking forward to, I just watched it two days ago myself and plan to rewatch today and take some screenshots. The thing that struck me the most about it was the way Shinkai is in love with light. He places the “camera” to capture the light in the most charismatic way possible, treating the light as if it were the main character in the frame. I need to snag some frames because while the plot was intriguing in its own way (I found it somewhat Kino-esque), it was really the visuals that took me in and have made me a Shinkai fan. I have quite a backlog to get through, though. I already know where I need to start.

  • Ranma disc 2

    Steven and I are eerily in sync on Ranma. I just finished the Martial Arts Gymnastics arc yesterday. In a nutshell, what he said, especially about the telegraphed (spoiler) plot development. Still, while Kodachi was a waste of screen time (imagine Greta from Sugar, but without any of the redeeming qualities, and a violent streak), I had to admit that the development of the love “hypercube” (as SDB put it) was fascinating. Oh, and the conversation of the St. Hebereke gymnastics team while, ahem, under cover, was hilarious.

    I still don’t quite get why Ranma doesn’t expose Ryoga, but I suppose this will become more clear.

  • BSG Season 4 starts tonight

    so say we all! Tonight’s episode is titled “He That Believeth in Me”. Promotional screenshot:

    BSG Season 4 Episode 1

    Spoilers at the Battlestar Wiki. Any predictions on what happens tonight?

    Somewhat relatedly, AICN has a character cast list for the Caprica movie pilot. The most interesting character? spoiler below the fold… (more…)

  • caffeine protects your brain

    good for my brain in more ways than oneSeems that caffeine has neuroprotective effects beyond just keeping the lights switched on upstairs:

    Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

    The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer’s Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why.

    A vital barrier between the brain and the main blood supply of rabbits fed a fat-rich diet was protected in those given a caffeine supplement.
    […]
    “Caffeine appears to block several of the disruptive effects of cholesterol that make the blood-brain barrier leaky,” said Dr Jonathan Geiger, who led the study.

    “High levels of cholesterol are a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, perhaps by compromising the protective nature of the blood brain barrier.

    “Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilise the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders.”

  • The Twittering of the President

    Joe Trippi recently observed on Twitter that both Obama and Clinton have fairly lame presences there. Both seem to be recycling standard issue campaign schedule material, example from @barackobama:

    Holding a rally at Penn State University and a Town Hall in Harrisburg, PA today Learn more at http://PA.BarackObama.com. 02:46 PM March 30, 2008

    Just spoke at Cooper Union in NYC, called for immediate relief for the housing crisis & an additional $30 billion to jumpstart the economy. 11:10 AM March 27, 2008

    Holding a town hall meeting at the War Memorial Auditorium in Greensboro, NC. 12:04 PM March 26, 2008

    Note that Barack Obama has more followers (20,199) than any other Twiter user, but his campaign has only posted 92 tweets. To say that they are underutilizing the service is a massive understatement.

    Meanwhile, @hillaryclinton is no less dry:

    Today I’m kicking off a three-day economic tour with “Solutions for the Pennsylvania Economy” events in Harrisburg and Fairless Hills, PA. … 09:56 AM March 31, 2008

    Today, I am hosting Economy Town Hall events in Indy and New Albany before heading to Kentucky. 03:01 PM March 29, 2008

    Today I’m making stops across Indiana – I’m hosting two town halls, a roundtable event, and ending the day with a rally. 12:11 PM March 28, 2008

    Hillary has 2,509 followers and posted 94 updates, meaning that her campaign is utilizing Twitter 10 times more more effectively than Obama’s.

    I couldn’t find John McCain there (@johnmccain clearly isn’t official, though there are 40 people following that account in some vain hope).

    What would a cool campaign use of twitter look like? To really fit with the tone of twitter (rather than just another outlet where campaign staffers phone it in) I think it would be great if the campaigns actually used it to educate and inform. Anytime a policy issue position is updated on the candidates’ web sites, for example, a tweet could be sent. Likewise, when a transcript of a speech is posted, or a new video uploaded. Rapid responses to attacks from other candidates/opponents could be announced. And, of course, fundraising on twitter would be groundbreaking – I wager that the response rate to a pitch on twitter would be 10x that of email, given the generally more tech-savvy and affluent nature of the twitter userbase. Also note that much of this could be automated, using RSS feeds from the candidate’s website and a service like Twitterfeed.

    The pretense that Barack Obama is really twittering just to tell us where he happens to be and what he happens to be doing (town hall X, Y, Z…) is transparently fake. How about the campaigns drop the facade and just embrace the tool for what it can do rather than the cachet it might bring? In some ways I prefer McCain’s non-embrace.

    Twitter is a classic example of a web 2.0 technology whose mundane description belies its power and utility. Much like blogs. The power of twitter is in the community, which John Unger has described as almost a sixth sense (scroll down and read his anecdote about traveling to Austin).

    If a high-profile candidate were to truly embrace twitter – including a personal tweet themselves once on a while – they’d be opening the door to an entire new realm of potential publicity, support, and grassroots (techroots?) manpower. And more, in ways we can’t even predict yet. It’s inevitable, really.

  • rethinking Ranma

    I was not impressed with Ranma – I barely made it through the first disc. But Steven’s enthusiasm is somewhat infectious. I wonder if I approached it from the wrong perspective; it seems more like a recurring romantic sitcom than a genuine story arc-driven plot. If I treat it at the level I would, say, Three’s Company, then maybe it will work for me. It probably also helps that Steven started in season 2, where presumably the writers had long since hit their stride. Pete theorizes that this might be the best way to approach a long-running series (and they don’t get much longer than Ranma). So, I think I will give Ranma another chance.

    UPDATE: Steven discusses the plot structure:

    It’s more comedic and slapstick than Maison Ikkoku but the characters are far better conceived than in Urusei Yatsura.

    One thing becomes clear at this point: the series is constructed of a sequence of multi-episode story arcs. There’s an occasional one-off ep (like the “Ramen Delivery martial arts” story) but what you mainly have is arcs that cover 3-5 episodes. And that really does work pretty well. If the series were constructed entirely of one-ep stories it would come off as rather vapid. This way the stories are more deep. It keeps me coming back.

    I think “vapid” and “slapstick” accurately describe my impressions of Ranma after watching disc 1 of season 1. All the more evidence that Pete’s theory is generalizable to long series. The writers simply take time to mature into their characters and flesh them out. I know I still wince whenever I see an episode from season 1 of Star Trek: Next Generation…

  • it begins

    Looks like TechCunch is jumping the gun a bit.

    UPDATE: well, I couldn’t resist either. I also confess that I was taken in by Darren, but my excuse is that I didn’t take the time zone into account.

  • upgraded to WordPress 2.5

    Thus far everything seems to be working smoothly. All my plugins are working fine that I can see (knock on wood). The new layout and aesthetics are quite clean and nice. I also like the widgetized Dashboard. I’ll just jump in start using it and see what my thoughts are after a week.

  • Summoner Geeks

    a classic for your Sunday afternoon pleasure.